The Limitation of the Intellect

Buddhi or the intellect cannot function without a certain bank of memory or data. Depending on the data you have, the intellect plays around. Suppose in your memory system, there are 10 gigabytes of memory. Depending on how sharp your buddhi is, one person can produce, let’s say, a trillion thoughts with these 10 gigabytes. Someone else can produce 10 trillion thoughts with the same 10 gigabytes of memory.

In the yogic understanding, there are 16 dimensions to the human mind.

If you can think a little better than someone else, it is considered as intelligence today. If someone says one thing and you can say ten things to that, you may be socially smart, but you are not any more intelligent. Unfortunately, in today’s systems of education and academics, everything is determined by this. If you can make more things out of it, you are considered intelligent, which is not true – you only have a sharper buddhi. The buddhi will not take you beyond limits in any way, because it can only function based on the data that is already there. It is not capable of accessing anything beyond that.

The Memory of Your Forefathers

The next dimension is called manas. Manas has many layers to it. But manas is not just the brain – it is right across the body. Every cell in the body has a phenomenal memory – not just of this life but of millions of years. Your body clearly remembers how your forefathers were a million years ago. Top to bottom, there is manas – this is called manomaya kosha. In every cell in the body, there is memory and intelligence, but no intellect. Intellect is only in the brain.

What is in the brain is intellect, not intelligence. Intelligence and memory are right across your body. But people have never been trained how to use this intelligence.

In English language, everything comes under one banner called “mind.” What is in the brain is intellect, not intelligence. Intelligence and memory are right across your body. But people have never been trained how to use this intelligence. Instead, they use their intellect for everything. The whole weight is on only one dimension of the mind out of sixteen. It is like loading a sixteen-wheeler truck and trying to drive on only one wheel – you can imagine the stress! That is what today’s world is going through.

People may be using other dimensions of the mind marginally, unconsciously, but they are not trained to use them. They have only been trained to use their buddhi, or their intellect.

The Sense of Identity

The intellect directly connects with the third dimension of your mind, called ahankara. Ahankara is sometimes translated as ego, but it is much more than that. Ahankara gives you a sense of identity. Once your ahankara takes on an identity, your intellect functions only in that context. It is important to function beyond the intellect, because the intellect is seriously enslaved to your identity.

There are other ways to know life beyond the identities we have taken on for our survival in the world.

Our identities, such as belonging to a certain nation, community, or whatever else, are necessary for our survival in a particular society. But you cannot think beyond this because you are functioning only from your intellect, and the intellect takes its sustenance from ahankara. Only along the axis of ahankara, the intellect can function. The intellect cannot transcend this, because that is its nature. But there are other ways to know life beyond the identities we have taken on for our survival in the world.

The Cosmic Intelligence

The fourth category of the mind is called chitta. Chitta is mind without memory – pure intelligence. This intelligence is like the cosmic intelligence – simply there. Everything happens because of that. It does not function out of memory – it simply functions. In a way, what you call cosmos is a living mind, not in the sense of intellect but in the sense of chitta. Chitta is the last point of the mind. It connects to the basis of creation within you. It connects you with your consciousness.

Chitta is always on – whether you are awake or asleep. Your intellect comes on and goes off. Many times it fails, even when you are awake. If chitta or the intelligence within you was not always on, you could not stay alive. Try to conduct your breath with your intellect – you will go crazy. Chitta is keeping you alive, keeping you going, making life happen. If you touch this dimension of your mind, which is the linking point to one’s consciousness, you do not even have to wish for anything, you do not have to dream of anything – the best possible thing that can happen to you will anyway happen.

Chit Shakti is about touching the dimension of your mind that is pure intelligence – unsullied by memory, unsullied by identification. It is beyond ahankara, beyond buddhi, beyond judgment, beyond divisions – simply there, just like the intelligence of existence that makes everything happen. If you access this, you do not have to worry about what happens or what does not happen. It will happen in a way that you never imagined possible.Once you have access to your chitta, it is also a multi-pointed telescope. It makes you see things that no one else can see – in every direction.

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