Dumbness is not inability to understand gibberish – it is inability to see gibberish for what it is Gita 18.63

So here we see Krishna appeals to Arjuna's intelligence and he doesn't Krishna is by this open declaration at the end of the Gita Arjuna, deliberate and decide what you want to do this indicates that Krishna is not trying to simply impress Arjuna he is trying to educate Arjuna, he is trying to inform Arjuna he is trying to inspire Arjuna so impression, trying to impress people means trying to put up a show by which the other person gets overwhelmed yes this is so great this is what I should be doing and this person is so learned who am I in front of this person I should just accept whatever they are saying now impressing others doesn't really help in the long run because it simply makes the other person more dependent on us this person is so great, I am so small that this person is so intelligent I have no intelligence in front of this person therefore I should do what they are telling me to do so impressing is not really the way of transforming for impressing might make people do something for some time briefly but it makes the person more dependent on whom they are impressed it doesn't necessarily convince that person's intelligence or educate that person's intelligence or inspire that person's heart and of course it doesn't really transform the mind, the mind has a tendency to act in a particular way and that is the way it will act in future so the solution is to recognize that we all need to work when there is communication we need to inform others, educate others thereby inspire them to become transformed to make healthier choices one of the characteristics of Kalyoga is that the audacious are considered truthful which means that the more a person believes a person can put up a show can bluff can brag has a lot of bravado then that person gets is able to influence others, because others get impressed and a lot of people who speak gibberish which is high sounding they use bombastic words now sometimes when people speak this high sounding bombastic words then others feel I don't understand any of this and they think this person is so brilliant but a person who thinks that at one level somebody who feels that I cannot understand this person they are speaking gibberish they are speaking such things which I cannot understand I must be a fool I am such a dumb person but actually inability to understand gibberish is not necessarily foolishness, it is not dumbness inability to see gibberish for what it is that is dumbness when people speak bombastic words but those words have actually no meaning then nobody can understand them and the inability to understand such words which anyway have no meaning within them well that is no fault actually who can understand that which has no meaning, so the inability to understand gibberish is not dumbness because if something is just fluff a lot of high sounding words with no substance in them then nobody can understand them and gibberish is gibberish even if it is spoken when a child speaks incoherently that is gibberish but because we know that the child is child's intelligence is not well developed so we can see gibberish for what it is but when an adult especially an adult who seems to be intelligent, who seems to be not just intelligent but very intelligent and that person uses bombastic words which we can't understand we may start thinking that oh I must be a dumb person now humility is good but thinking of oneself as stupid is not necessarily humility humility means that we don't let our ego come in the way of our intelligence all of us have been given some amount of intelligence, the intelligence may be in different fields a brahmana is intelligent in terms of memorization and analysis and also representation a kshatriya is expert in terms of managing people human resource allocation and development we could say a vaisya is good at managing managing money and resources from a monetary perspective a kshudra is good at managing things skills at doing things so all of them have intelligence of their own kind and that intelligence is not to be denied intelligence is not to be rejected it's to be acknowledged Krishna acknowledges Arjuna's intelligence when he tells Arjuna deliberate deeply and then decide what you want to do so making people feel that they are foolish is not the way to make them humble that's from the teacher's perspective and from the student's perspective just thinking that I am stupid is not the way to humility because the essence of humility especially on the spiritual path is to become focused on God, is to become Krishna centered and becoming Krishna centered means that we need to recognize that there is that we are meant to serve Krishna so if now if I am meant to serve Krishna I have to use the resources I have for serving Krishna if if I have say managerial ability and I don't have speaking ability so much then I cannot serve Krishna so well with my speaking ability so we need to have the intelligence to recognize what is the ability that I have and I have to serve him accordingly so there is all of us have some basic intelligence and one aspect of intelligence is also to know where we don't have intelligence and then we defer to those who have more intelligence in that field just like when we are sick so we may not be able to diagnose the disease ourselves and so we go to we consult some higher authority we go to a doctor somebody who is expert in that field and we ask them now this is we get their expert opinion and then based on that we take a treatment and we move onwards towards learning towards improving towards transforming ourselves towards making a better contribution so the inability to understand gibberish is not humility it is stupidity if we don't understand if somebody is just speaking something which doesn't make sense and which is just meant to simply impress others rather than we don't have to call their bluff directly if that person is in a position of authority then if that person is in a position of authority we just offer due deference to them and move on with our life we don't have to change our life based on just being impressed by someone if that person what they have said is not has not persuaded us has not convinced us has not educated us so if the issue is important we can go to someone else and seek understanding from them so that we understand properly and then based on that proper understanding we can make wiser choices ultimately making a healthy choice is our responsibility it is not anyone else's responsibility and for making a healthy choice we need to be convinced nobody else can convince us we need to train our mind nobody else can train our mind for us and when we understand this central point that if somebody is speaking gibberish then now if things don't make sense to us then we can ask someone who has the expertise in that field to help us make sense and over time we may also discern that this person is speaking gibberish so word play shabda chaapalyam expertise in playing with words now word play can be used to convey meaningful ideas in a enjoyable and memorable way but if word play is devoid of substance if word play alone if word play is just used to entertain without any deeper sense of meaning or purpose without any deeper meaning conveyed underneath then that word play is useless so if we just get carried away by word play if we just get carried away by bombastic words then that unfortunately indicates that we don't have adequate intelligence that we are being dumb so we can be on our guard to avoid that kind of dumbness and to move on steadily making healthy choices based on our intelligence after getting due comprehension of things after doing due deliberation on things after our mind is educated our heart is inspired after our intelligence is convinced then the attempted transformation that we will do that will be wholehearted and that will be a substantial and sustainable transformation thank you.