The mind makes the intelligence act unintelligently

[Talk at Phoenix, USA]

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna the mind our power intelligence it doesn’t destroy it distorts it perverts it causes it to defect recently there was a news of how a police officer in Kashmir in India who had disappeared and was thought of as a casualty in the fight against the militants was suddenly seen on the internet with a gun having apparently joined the ranks of the militants this caused great consternation and alarm because those who were meant to fight someone was meant to fight against the terrorists had joined the ranks of the terrorists something similar happens to us especially with respect to our intelligence in the war against temptation the mind attacks us with dangerous desires and the more the desires become stronger and stronger the tougher and tougher it becomes to resist them and the mind eventually overpowers the intelligence but the mind is not satisfied just by overpowering then it recruits the intelligence and uses the intelligence to plan elaborate schemes for sense enjoyment and that’s how we end up perverted so essentially the mind takes over the intelligence and makes us do things which we would normally never do and we use our intelligence to do those things so we use the intelligence unintelligently for example an alcoholic tries to find out a way to drink alcohol that no one will detect no one will detect but their own habits are becoming solidified and that means they themselves are going to suffer assume that the very habit they are trying to break from they are reinforcing it when they reinforce it they find it almost impossible to fight it back so the mind makes the intelligence act unintelligently the intelligence is always going to be intelligent so in process there is intelligence but in purpose there is total lack of intelligence just like somebody may plan to commit suicide and they may actually plan in such a way that they may actually do it in a more sensational way and they may also do it in a way by which most people come to know about it and yet nobody will be able to stop them from doing it that is intelligence involved required in planning and executing a highly visible suicide say somebody wants to go to a prominent public tower and jump from there they are meant to go there where there are no security alerts they will come all that requires planning but unfortunately intelligence is used for an unintelligent purpose and that is what happens when we find ourselves unintelligent overwhelmed by the mind so intelligence starts making the mind become unintelligent and that is a great danger in that situation we can’t do anything except being overwhelmed because the very resource which is going to defend us has started working against us and that is why we need to recognize the dangerousness of the inner war that the forces of illusion can make our own forces fight against us it can make our own intelligence plan and scheme in a way that we think that we can outwit nature we think that we can outwit the forces of life and grace we can outwit, actually god is the ultimate force of life and grace he is the person who works for our greatest good but we end up doing things against the plan and purpose of god for our own lower interests and thus we sabotage ourselves so by recognizing the enormous dangerousness of situation we are in we can plan more determinantly and act more diligently to deal with the situation to overcome to prevent our intelligence from being conscripted by the mind so a soldier who defects over to the enemy does so because the soldier thinks that the enemy will offer me a better deal than what my own army is offering me and that is in the case of a war that is false so we need to regularly nourish our intelligence by which we will be able to remember the true nature of our designs our true identity what is actually in our deepest interest and accordingly we will be able to select that which is truly auspicious for us by scripture we ensure that instead of the intelligence the intelligence will apply itself in the process of bhakti by which the intelligence will convert the mind making it devotionally inclined