Intellect is a part of intelligence which is useful for survival and is most common in societies where surviving is a crucial part of life. Sadhguru and Sam Munshani converse about the role of intellect in western society. Intellect can only use the data it has collected and cannot grow beyond that. If you want to flourish and grow to your full potential, you must move beyond intellect.

Full Transcript:

Sam Munshani: Why as a western society do we tend to feel that intellect is more important in dealing with situations on a day to day basis rather than feeling?

Sadhguru: I think it's a European handover. I think for long periods of time human societies have suffered this struggle for survival when you want to survive your ability to discriminate is the most important quality. Otherwise you don't survive. Till we create kinds of societies where everybody can survive this cannot be put to rest. so this is the reason why eastern societies did not bank so much on intellect but but on intelligence there is a distinct difference because probably in English language there is no distinct word to describe different aspects of one's intelligence. In Sanskrit language there are at least eight dimensions of your intelligence. So intellect is just one of them. Intellect is very useful for survival process because it gives you discriminatory capability if you allow your intellect to find out anything suppose you want to know this flower through your intellect you will see the only thing you will do is pull it apart and try to note dissection is the way of intellect. so if you want to know your mother please don't dissect, okay? That's not the way life happens. If you want to know life in it's entirety you need the other dimensions of intelligence. because intellect has given ability survive and a certain sense of dominance over others we have become devotees of intellect. Intellect is a wonderful thing; no question about that but you need to understand human intellect functions only from the limited data that it has gathered. It cannot explore anything entirely new It can only project fro what you know to another dimension and you can never project into an unknown dimension through what you know Right now that's the reason why I would say western societies have been in a tread mill for a long time They run a lot and they get fit but they don't go anywhere. Fitness happens of course.

When we talk about human identity and false association in a certain stereotypes why do we always strive to be in a certain stereotype I mean why does everybody in Pennsylvania want to have a big house with a white pocket fence why is that status of having arrived? Because this is a society this idea of role model is essentially from the west. So a few months ago I was being interviewed by someone from here and this lady asked me 'who is your role model Sadhguru?' I said 'I don't role with models. such an idea never occurred to me It never occurred to me how should I shape myself in whose image it never occurred to us because the east is always looking at how to turn inward and discover the deeper potentials in you never going out to be like somebody else. this is something which is there in the natural ethos of India that you cannot be somebody else. You can never, ever be someone else. you can only be yourself. and how to make this yourself into a full potential full blown growth is all the traditional yogic examples go like this if a mango tree looks at a coconut tree and thinks coconut tree is taller and aspires to become a coconut tree it will become a no good mango tree so every life is making it's own way and it has it's own place. The only thing that life has to do is to find the necessary nourishment to get full blown growth if you become a full blown yourself and that's all you can do. Otherwise you will become pretentious. So the problem is once you go by your intellect these two things are very connected. Once you go by your intellect you will have a whole lot of information but you don't know anything. This is modern education. You have a whole lot of information with you everybody is rattling out ...what... in a dinner party you can see people saying the exact distance between planet earth and planet Mars and everything but what relevance is it? It is just that you can gather information like this. When you have information you have a false sense of feeling that you know everything but you know nothing. It may help you in financial market to have information but with life what is needed is not information what is needed is profoundness of perches that you have in life you need into life experience in life you cannot know it if you read a book and think you know life or you figure out something in your head and you think you know it no you have to experience it the profoundness of your experience is what makes this life so if you go by the intellect imitation is a natural process and that's how the role models come.

Can I tell you a story? yes I always seek your permission because the moment I start once upon a time a lot of people think it's bed time that's the only time somebody told him a story So this happened in earlier twentieth century in 1910 there was a man whose name was topiwalah topiwalah means a hat seller people's second name indicates their trade so he is going from village to village town to town selling hats in the tropical heat. one afternoon he felt tired and he went and sat down under a tree opened his meager lunch and ate and dozed off after a little while he opened his eyes and to his horror all the hats were gone he looked all over the place no hats when you you do everything possible and when you don't know what else to do people pray so he looked up to pray and he saw a bunch of monkeys sitting there all hats on so he screamed at them they screamed back at him he abused them they abused him in their own language. he picked up whatever he could and threw it at them and they picked up whatever they could and threw at him not knowing what to do and out of sheer frustration he took his hat and flung it on the ground all the monkeys took their hats and flung it on the ground and he picked them up and went about his business 2013 December 21st another man was going around selling the hats his name also happens to be topiwalah and one afternoon he went and sat under a tree ate his elaborate lunch 21st you know and promptly fell asleep after some time he woke up hats gone he didn't look here and there he looked straight up a bunch of monkeys were sitting hats on he got up and jived they all jived he made funny faces they made funny faces he had all the fun he wanted to have when he was done he picked up his hat and flung it on the ground a baboon of a monkey quickly came down picked up the hat walked towards him and gave him a tight slap in the face and said 'you idiot you think only you had a grand father so there is substantial evidence there is evidence that monkeys are evolved like this okay? now once you go by the limitations of your intellect you are still a hunter and a gatherer may be instead of gathering pieces of meat and leather and bone and tooth from animals today you gather the information you know the distance between Mars and sun and this and that may be you gather but still the nature of intellect is to gather by gathering if you gather so much somebody who has this much in front of that person in comparison to that person you look better. but in the experience of life you will not feel any better. so if you have gathered that much if somebody has gathered this much then in front of that person you feel as nothing so gathering is always by comparison when your own gathering has no meaning it is only in relation to somebody else's gathering who is more meager than yours or in another words in some way you start enjoying somebody else's incapability or failure or whatever. so this is the nature of the intellect because it survives on what you gather.