Harvard University; Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Andover Hall, Harvard Divinity School
30 April 1975

He is intellectual. What does it mean? It means that the weight of his head far
surpasses the weight of the rest of his body.
You are spiritual. What does it mean? It means that the weight of your heart
far surpasses the weight of the rest of your body.
There is a striking difference between his head and your heart. His head quite
often does not love his body. His head belittles the body’s capacity and the needs
of the physical. But you have a different story to tell. Your heart loves your body.
Your heart inspires your body to love God. From its own personal experiences
your heart tells your body that there is only one way to be happy and fulfilled and
that is to love God and serve God in every way.
Although his head does not care for God the infinite Light, infinite Energy,
infinite Compassion, infinite Delight, still his head wants to capture God,
measure God, bind God and scrutinise God. It is impossible, but his head wants
to break and cut asunder God, the evolving Cosmic Tree.
But your heart does not want to capture God, bind God and measure God, for
your heart knows that God is infinite, God is immortal. Your heart wants only to
love God and surrender its very existence to God and God alone. Your heart cries
for God and tries to live in God.
Inside his head there is the intellect. This intellect wants the world to kiss the
dust of its feet. It wants to prove that its existence on earth is something meaningful
and valuable.
Inside your heart is the light that tries to illumine the world within and
without. Inside your heart is the love that unifies the inner world with the outer
world. Inside your heart is the delight that immortalises your existence here on
earth and there in Heaven.
Being an intellectual man, he tries to inform the world at large. Being a
spiritual man, you try to transform the world within you and around you. An
intellectual man tries to compel the world around him to see what intellect can
do. A spiritual man tries to offer to the world around him only what God wants
him to offer and reveal.
My intellect-friend and my spirituality-friend play their respective roles. My
intellect-friend fascinates me; my spirituality-friend illumines me. My intellectfriend
has all the time in the world to criticise my shortcomings. My spiritualityfriend
forgives me day in and day out and accepts my mistakes as his very own.
My spirituality-friend accepts me as I am. Slowly, steadily and unerringly my
spirituality-friend carries me into the world of self-transcendence, where I
eventually become inseparably one with the Beloved Supreme.
The intellect has an intimate friend: the reasoning mind. This reasoning mind
is unfortunately quite often assailed by the doubting and suspicious mind. The
mind of destruction has a free access to the suspicious mind. In the reasoning
mind there is rarely any happiness. In the doubting and suspicious mind
happiness is never to be found at all. On the contrary, there we notice the dance
of destruction, total destruction.
Spirituality has a true friend: faith. This faith abides in the inmost recesses of
our hearts. This faith embodies God, reveals God and manifests God. In the
conscious embodiment of God, our faith brings us to our first destination. In the
revelation of God our faith carries us to our second destination. In the
manifestation of God, our faith carries us to our third and ultimate destination.
In our day-to-day life, in our ordinary multifarious activities, what we need
is intelligence. When we go one step forward in our outer life, we see that we
need intellect. If we do not have intelligence, we cannot survive. If we do not
have intellect, we cannot see the truth in minute detail. Both intelligence and
intellect know what ignorance is, but they do not consciously try to come out of
ignorance-night.
In our inner life we have a bosom friend: intuition. Intuition is the life of the
soul; intuition is the express train that expedites our Godward journey. Again,
intuition’s flame burns the past. It burns our undivine previous life. It illumines
our present life. It brings to the fore the remote future within us. With our
intuitive power we create a new life within us. With our intuitive power we grow
into the very Image of our Beloved Supreme.
The so-called intelligence, a seeker of the highest Truth does not need. Nor
does he need the so-called intellect. What he needs is an inner cry. On the
strength of his inner cry, he can easily have a free access to the world of intuition.
And inside intuition there looms large salvation, liberation and perfection.
The intelligence which we get from book knowledge cannot help us discover
our inmost reality. It cannot help us reach the highest pinnacle. It is our inner cry
that helps us dive into the deepest realm of our consciousness, that helps us climb
up to the ever-transcending consciousness.
In India, Sri Ramakrishna and other spiritual Masters of the highest order did
not care for earthly knowledge or intellect. They cried only for God, like children,
and intuition became their immediate friend, their constant and eternal friend.
Here in the West, the Christ also had intuition at his disposal. With his intuitive
power he realised his Father and distributed his Father’s Light to the world at
large. Intellect is of paramount importance when the physical in us no longer
wants to remain submerged in lethargy, in darkest night. Intellect is a beginning
rung in the evolving ladder of consciousness. But the intuition-rung is infinitely
higher than the intellect-rung.
A seeker of the Ultimate Truth may start his journey with knowledge and
intellect, or he can start his journey directly from intuition. His inner cry can
easily carry him to the intuition plane without entering into the intellectual
world.
My intellect-teacher eventually tells me that he does not know the answer. My
spirituality-teacher tells me that he knows everything. He tells me something else:
he tells me that it is God alone who knows everything in and through him.
My intellect-friend is a mental giant. He wants to devour the world. My
spirituality-friend is also a giant, a soulful giant. The soulful giant-friend of mine
wants to unburden God’s imponderable burden, God’s immeasurable burden. He
wants to unburden God according to his capacity, according to the power of his
receptivity, which God has granted him out of His infinite Bounty.
One giant frightens the world and wants to devour the world. Another giant
wants to put an end to the world’s excruciating pangs, wants to change the face
and fate of the world radically so that here on earth the Kingdom of Heaven will
become a living reality.
Eventually the intellectual giant will be transformed into a spiritual giant.
When we are transformed, we feel that this world of ours need not and cannot
remain always in ignorance-dream—that it need not and cannot consciously
wallow in the pleasures of ignorance forever. In the transformation of the
physical the reality of the Beyond claims us as its very own. In the transformation
of the vital our aggressive animal qualities are transformed into the dynamism of
the soul’s light. In the transformation of the mind the finite loses its very raison
d’être in the Light and Delight of Infinity.