Sometimes I ask the students if it is possible to be totally intelligent for at least 30 seconds in 24 hours. They have no answer to this question. Nor do they question you what intelligence is. In fact, students rarely come with any questions and we seem to teach them what they don't want. This is one reason why students don't listen to teachers and why their attention is so poor. We are not answering their questions and so they have no interest in what we are saying. We are talking to the walls, mostly.
In schools, we call those students intelligent who score higher marks in the tests. This measurement of intelligence isn't very correct because we are measuring only a part of intelligence. When a student scores high marks in mathematics, we say he or she is intelligent and those others who don't do well in that subject are labeled as stupid. This particular student scoring high marks in mathematics is intelligent only in mathematics and therefore may not be intelligent in other things. This is partial intelligence. At most, only a part of his or her left side brain is enlightened and the most part of his or her brain is in darkness. This means, this student is less intelligent and more stupid.
Likewise people possessing intelligence in other things such as music, dancing, poetry etc are also only partially intelligent. Only a fragment of the brain in them is active while almost 90 percent of the brain remains in sleep. We live that way for most part of our life never knowing what kind of life we are leading. Our specializations in different things make us proud and vain and we think we know and understand everything. This is an illusion we live with. We never think we don't know. This is the main cause of our inability to learn. There is no learning without humility.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about bombs or the intelligence quotients of one race as against another ... if a man is a scientist, like me, he’ll always say “Publish and be damned.”
—Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974)
Who is responsible for this lack of intelligence in students? More often than not, teachers are blamed for being unable to develop intelligence in their students. This blame is not totally wrong and also not totally right. We don't have any programs in the syllabus to do so and although we interact with students we never think of this problem. We are interested only in completing our courses of study and are satisfied in that. Our prescribed lessons not only don't help develop total intelligence, they even undercut and block the way to do so. How? The subjects taught in the schools and colleges are devised for specialization and this means they can develop only partial intelligence. This is going on all the time and it denies the chance to develop total intelligence. A teacher willing to develop total intelligence will fail because he or she will be in two boats simultaneously. The conflict has to be transcended in order to develop total intelligence.
We know that we are promoting partial intelligence and that means we are also promoting stupidity. Nature has given us a brain of which we use only a small part. But nature doesn't produce anything that has no utility. Why is it that man doesn't use all his brain? This is unnatural and this has happened because of our unnatural living. Our unnatural living is again the result of our thoughts. Thinking is concentration. We concentrate on a particular point. As long as we think, we keep only a part of our brain active and the rest of the brain is neglected. It goes to sleep.
How can one activate the total brain? Is mutation of all the brain cells possible? This is possible only when we are free from our thoughts. When one becomes free from one's thoughts one becomes able to see the truth. As soon as thought enters, truth disappears. So observing something without thoughts and with full sensitivity is the key to total intelligence. Self knowing and intelligence go together. Either both are there or none is there.
I noticed occasionally very long troughs which supplied the road with water, and my companion said that three dollars annually were granted by the State to one man in each school-district, who provided and maintained a suitable water-trough by the roadside, for the use of travelers,—a piece of intelligence as refreshing to me as the water itself. That legislature did not sit in vain. It was an Oriental act, which made me wish that I was still farther down East,—another Maine law, which I hope we may get in Massachusetts. That State is banishing bar-rooms from its highways, and conducting the mountain springs thither.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
It is difficult to have total and integral intelligence because it is difficult to avoid thinking. We know this when we try. How are we going to avoid thoughts? We can invent the most sophisticated artificial brains but to become thoughtless is far more arduous than that. Inventing computers needs only a part of your brain but to have your brain totally activated is quite another thing which won't be that much easy. And to keep all the brain cells totally active for all the time seems almost impossible. We all can try to be thoughtless and be so but it can be easily so only for short periods. For most part of the day, we will remain stupid. But if one is really determined to keep one's brain awake all the time, it can happen and this person will now be a transformed person. He or she will never be the same person as we knew him or her to be. Only a few persons in the history of mankind have accomplished this feat.
Have you ever tried to be thoughtless? In the beginning you can't stop thoughts coming. The first thing to do is to stick to only one thought for as long as you can. It is better to practice it before sleep and as sleep overtakes, you can go into sleep with only one thought. Later you can practice listening to all the sounds coming, with all your senses attending to them and you will have dropped your thoughts. Now you are on your way to have total and integral intelligence which is the only thing worth having. aresthapa@yahoo.com.