Can people’s intelligence be improved by giving external inputs?
Can we improve the intelligence of people by giving appropriate external inputs? Yes, definitely.
It's possible. Because there is intelligence as a potential resource and there is intelligence as an activated resource. So we all have a certain capacity, which quite often we do not tap.
One of the major causes of intellectual underperformance is distraction. So, especially students are trained in concentration. Meditation is one powerful way to train oneself in concentration.
By that, one's capacity to absorb whatever stimuli are coming from outside, that becomes greater. And memory has many faculties to it, but one basic faculty is concentration. It's only when I concentrate, then I can, information goes inside, then there's a possibility of recollecting it.
So, definitely, firstly by spiritual practices itself, we can increase our focus, our concentration, and that increases the memory aspect of the intelligence. Now, beyond that, our intelligence is like muscles. Just as by muscles, by regular exercise, the muscles can be improved.
Similarly, whatever exercise we do, so it is said that, especially people who are suspected of having brain degenerative diseases, then if they do regular mental exercises, then they are able to maintain their cognitional capacity for much longer. So they may have some degenerative diseases like Parkinson's or whatever, but if they do regular exercises, then they solve crossword puzzles or they read challenging books, or they do some mathematical exercise, whatever, something stimulating, then the brain muscles are activated. And by that, they stay active, they don't get atrophy, they can even be strengthened.
So definitely, doing specific activities for strengthening specific aspects of the intelligence, that can strengthen intelligence. Now, having said that, there are also certain innate resources that we have. That means all of us have different talents.
So we, by regularly doing mathematical sums, we can improve our mathematics. But it is not that this improvement is going to be infinite. There are some people who can, in the mind itself, multiply two 13 digit numbers and give an answer instantly.
No matter how much you practice, we may not get to that capacity. So there are limits based on natural endowments of how much things can be improved. But certainly, whatever is our present capacity, first of all, we can tap that capacity more by learning concentration.
And by specific training, we can increase that capacity also. Does it answer your question? So people are generally looking for material benefits. And if we tell them all the.