What is the use of intellect in the spiritual process?
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The intellect is functioning, right? Intellect is functional and you cannot get rid intellect off, even asking a question requires the intellect to be shaped. So the intellect is there, better use the intellect in a way that benefits the user of the intellect.
Who is the user of the intellect, why do we apply the intellect at all? We apply intellect because we feel incomplete, there is something missing and therefore we use intellect just as we use all our other resources to find that which we feel missing in ourselves.
Intellect is a resource, money is a resource, the senses are resources, correct! We use these resources to get something, the resource is not important, the user of the resource is important, and if that is remembered then the resource would never become the master.
Then you would never become intellectual, then you would be the user of the intellect, not someone who is identified with intellect, not someone who is ruled by intellect.
So ask yourself every time; yes intellect is great in problem solving, if there is a problem I apply the intellect but to whom is the problem; but who is facing the problem and why is a situation a problem for me? Or could I blindly rush into fighting a problem using the intellect as my weapon?
Before you go over eager to solve a problem, why don’t you ask why such a situation is a problem at all? Is it a problem in the first place, or is it just a situation that my ego quite does not like?
What is it that the ego wants, that the problem or the situation does not correspond to? These questions have to be asked, otherwise the intellect becomes a very unruly tool. People let the intellect run bizarre, that’s what man has done. Great intellect but misguided, very sharp intellect but being used in the stupid way.
Don’t you see the products of man’s intellect, very very sophisticated products, but if you see what those products have brought us to, then you will realize whether we are using the intellect or whether we are being used by the intellect.
Most people grow so overwhelmed by their intellect that they just don’t know how to carry it.
Just as you must learn how to carry a dress for example - there is a certain etiquette in carrying a dress - similarly you must know how to carry your intellect. There has to be certain grace, otherwise you would be buried under your intellect.
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