As intelligence can make us calculative or over-smart how can we remain simple while being intelligent?

Anwser Podcast

And act according to higher principles. So how can we remain simple while practicing bhakti intelligently? Because intelligence can make us too calculative or over smart. There is simple mindedness and there is simple heartedness.
Simple heartedness means we have simply one purpose. We do not have any ulterior motives. Our purpose is to move closer to Krishna.
Our purpose is to serve Krishna more and more. So that simple heartedness is what a devotee needs. So it is not that, you know, I am practicing bhakti and we all have other motives, but we do not nourish those motives.
I am not practicing bhakti so that I will become famous, that people respect me, how clever I am, how religious I am, how this I am. Those motives will be there, but when they come, we beat them down. We do not nourish them consciously.
So we need to be simple hearted in terms of Krishna is our purpose. A simple mindedness means, actually, it is like a simpleton, a person who cannot analyze things very deeply. A person who just naively believes anyone and everyone.
So as bhaktas, we are not meant to be simple minded. We have to be simple hearted. Now, as far as practicing bhakti intelligently and becoming over smart or too calculative is concerned, calculation is not bad.
Krishna also, you see, when he talks about surrender, not Krishna, Bhaktivinoda Thakur and Padmapurana, when they talk about surrender, what do they say? That that which is favorable, I accept. That which is unfavorable, I avoid. Now, that means I have to discern, isn’t it? What is favorable? What is unfavorable? And that requires some amount of calculation.
The word calculative is usually used in negative sense. But again, we can go back to the word discerning. So what is favorable or unfavorable, I have to consider that.
And there is nothing wrong in that. Say, if I have limited time for practicing bhakti, then if I spend that time chit chatting with a devotee who is going to just gossip about various things, I may say I am in devotee association, but I am not associating spiritually with the devotee. Then I may say, okay, no, I just offer obeisance, offer respect to the devotee and I will associate somebody else who inspires me in my practice of bhakti.
This is not being calculative. This is just being purposeful. My purpose in coming to a temple is not just to gossip about who is doing what.
That I could do in the material world also. If I am coming to a temple, that is to go closer to Krishna. So being purposeful in that sense of what serves our purpose, that is actually essential for the practice of bhakti.
So calculative is a negative word for it. But a positive word is more of discerning. Now, we could become calculative even in the practice of bhakti in terms of you know, fulfilling our own agendas in bhakti.
You know, oh, this person is in a position of power. So if I please them, then you know, they can do a lot of things for me. This person, insignificant person.
So devotee, but we consider insignificant. I don’t pay any attention to them. If we start doing like that, then what is our purpose itself has changed.
Our purpose has become more get position, get power or whatever. And if the calculation is done for that purpose, then that will be unhealthy for our bhakti. But if we are doing analysis or discerning for the purpose of what is favorable for our bhakti, then that is desirable.
In fact, that is essential. So oversmart can also mean in a philosophical sense that if whenever we hear the philosophy, we start asking questions, we start doubting, we start becoming critical. So that can become a problem because in any field, we grow gradually.
It’s not that when a student starts studying physics first day, all the questions about physics are answered. One has to have faith. Okay, this teacher, he or she has taught for a long time, they know the subject.
It is that not all questions can be answered on the first day. So you have to have some faith. So it is said in the spiritual path, the intelligence should be our minister, not our master.
Minister is one who gives the advice. Master is one who tells us, do this, don’t do this. So our intelligence, we should definitely be taking guidance from the intelligence.
But just because or rather than intelligence, we could use the word reason or logic, which is one aspect of intelligence. So everything in bhakti may not, all the aspects of the philosophy may not be immediately understood in terms of logic. Because Krishna is transcendent to everything.
That means He is transcendent to logic also. Jiva Swami says that if He talks about Achintyatva of Krishna. Achintyatva means inconceivable.
And He says that if the absolute truth is truly absolute, if the supreme is truly supreme, that means He should be superior to our intelligence. And therefore, we will not be able to understand Him fully with our intelligence. Sometimes we may find some aspects of the philosophy which we don’t understand completely.
So it’s not that because I don’t understand this, so I’ll just not move forward. I will not practice bhakti. Unless you answer this question, no, I’ll not.
No, we have to use our intelligence. Okay, I don’t understand how important is it really. I can ask somebody else.
Maybe I’ll find out later. And we move onward in our bhakti. So if we let our intelligence get us stuck in any one place and over one particular issue and don’t move forwards, then we will not, then also our intelligence will do disservice to us.
So being simple hearted means, say for example, I study the Bhagavatam. The purpose of the Bhagavatam is to help Parikshit Maharaj remember Krishna. It’s also to help us remember Krishna.
If I come to the 5th canto cosmology in the Bhagavatam, I’d say it makes sense to me. How do I understand this? Well, there are devotees who have written books about reconciling 5th canto cosmology with modern scientific cosmology. If we really have interest, we can study that.
But we don’t have to become obsessed about that. This is just some pre-scientific mythology. I don’t believe in this.
I don’t believe in this Bhagavatam. I reject it. Not like that.
You have to understand this is just, this is what helped Parikshit Maharaj to remember Krishna at that time. Now, if it is helping me to remember Krishna, I’ll study it deeply. If it is not, I’ll be respectful, but I don’t understand it and I don’t have the time or the energy to try to understand his writing.
Let me keep moving forward in Bhagavatam and let me come to the heart of the Bhagavatam, that is the remembrance of Krishna. So that way, intelligence, we can be purposeful in making sure that we keep moving towards Krishna. So, if we use our intelligence to discern what is right and what is good for our bhakti and what is not so good for our bhakti, then that intelligence will never obstruct us in our bhakti.
That won’t make us over smart. But if we let the intelligence alone decide everything that we are going to do, including whether to practice bhakti or not, then that can lead to problems. Okay, next question.