Must watch a short video clip above about the disciples of Buddha, who react to the public on being mocked. Listen to the response of Buddha. Differentiate between mind and intellect actions.

What drives my body to act SANE or INSANE?

I am grateful to Vedanta Academy for enlightening me about this concept. Thanks Swami Parthasarathy and Dr Janki.

All the problems that we encounter with our relationship and business converge to one basic issue, called ’intellect’.

It is lack of ability to discriminate between good and bad, important and urgent, moral and unethical, honest and corrupt, trustworthy and untrustworthy, mature and immature, etc. The list of discriminatory words is endless. This faculty of discrimination: reasoning, thinking, judging, etc. is called intellect. It is the lack of development and use of the intellect (बुद्धि / विवेक).

Beside intellect here is another tool called ‘mind’ (मानस), which drives our body to act. Mind is the seat of impulses, feelings, emotions, happiness, sympathy, sentiment, reaction, etc.

When the intellect guides the mind the mind in actions, then they would be discretionary, matured and balanced. However, when mind overpowers the intellect, the actions would be impulsive, immature and imbalanced. Thus, all self-management and self-improvement emanates from these two tools of our body. The quality of our relationship and management, both at home and work will depend upon the appropriate use of the intellect and mind in deciding the course of action.

Someone asked me, if intellect (बुद्धि / विवेक) and intelligence (ज्ञान)  are same? There is a subtle and cosmic difference. Intelligent person is as bundle of information. They are like ‘Google’ baba; well informed, make good conservationists, always impressive. But very few are intellectual, that is the power of discriminate the relevancy of information and maturity to take appropriate action based on the information they possess.

Years back in late 60s, when I went for my interview for selection in the Navy, we were judged not only for knowledge on current affairs but also on our discriminatory skills during various physical and mental tests in next 5 days. A few months back I met a boy, who, besides being a software engineer was first class first from a good management institute, but could not get her desired placement. Another girl who I know, is unable to find her dream life partner after a breakup. My observation is that both lack reasoning and judgment in their thoughts and actions. Many gold medallist are not as successful as their average counterparts. Most people remain complacent, not realising the vital role the intellect plays in human life. All sound relationship and management of people must proceed from reason and judgment of the intellect rather than feeling and emotion of the mind.

The figure below shows the loss of intellectual application resulting in the deterioration of human being.

Let us study this figure:

• Position A. When a person’s intellect supervises and guides every impulse and emotion of his mind. Hence his actions would be 100% discriminative and 0% impulsive. He then a perfectly SANE person.
• Position B. As the intellectual supervision and guidance falls to 75%, so would his discriminative actions. His impulsive actions rise to %. This ration makes him EMOTIONAL person.
• Position C. With further loss of intellectual application and the ratio striking 50:50, he becomes ECCENTRIC person.
• Position D. with only 25% of his actions covered by his intellect and 75% taken over by the mind he turns HYSTERRICAL person.
• Position E. when his intellect is absent, that is 0%, his are actions are totally impulsive, that is 100%, he becomes INSANE person.

A careful scrutiny of the people around us would reveal that most human beings range between emotional and eccentric zones. There is nothing wrong in possessing emotions. But to let them interfere with our intellectual judgment would be erroneous and detrimental.