Sadhguru looks at the structure of the human mind, and how unless we ensure that the intellect is free of the burden of memory, it becomes a problem.

Full Transcript:

Questioner: Sir, the next question is from Subhashini. ‘Does anything worry you? Do you have bad days?’ The question is from Subhashini.

Sadhguru: (Laughs) First of all, I don’t have days because the days are only in your memory. In your reality there is only now, isn’t it? Yes or no? The problem right now is human intellect… See, of all the gadgets that you have… I know he is looking into the… his favorite gadget. What are you? Apple or Samsung… you’re?

Questioner: Apple.

Sadhguru: Okay. (Laughs) No, because it is a religion, so I am asking. (Laughter/Applause) It’s almost like asking, are you Hindu, Muslim, Christian, what are you? (Laughter) Are you Apple, Samsung or Blackberry? (Laughter) We’re almost getting there, isn’t it?
So, human intellect, of all the gadgets that you have, even including the Apple, human mind is the most sophisticated gadget on this planet. Do you agree with me?

Participants: Yes.

Sadhguru: Every other gadget has come out of this. But we are busy looking into the iPhone, completely missing the ‘I’. (Laughter) Right now, for most human beings - let me not use the word ‘most’. For too many human beings, this mind is not a miracle that it actually is. For so many human beings, this mind has become a misery-manufacturing machine. All the misery, human misery on this planet - where is it manufactured? Madras? (Laughter) No, in your mind, isn’t it? What should have been the greatest miracle unfortunately has become a source of misery for human beings. Why is this so?

There are two dimensions to your intelligence. One is perception, one is the penetration of your intelligence, another is the memory aspect of it. Because of the kind of education systems that you’re suffering right now which is one hundred percent memory based, all you have to do is memorize something, vomit it somewhere. Your idea of being intelligent right now has become purely memory based. Tonight… today evening at the tea-party, you don’t have to know anything. You just have to surf the internet, pick up some facts about that sixty four… you know, T-64 galaxy that nobody knows about; you get some information and throw it around. People think you’re smart. (Laughter) Because our whole idea of intelligence has become memory, unfortunately.

Once you’re dipping your hand into memory, your intelligence becomes very cyclical because it’s recycling the past in so many different ways. It looks smart for somebody who doesn’t know that, otherwise it’s just nonsense. Today, we know a god-damn chip can record more than your brain can record. It is not intelligence. Memory is just a resource, it is not an intelligence. The nature of the intelligence and the purpose of human intellect is that it should be able to penetrate, but it has got such a huge backlog, it’s identified with memory in such a bad way, it has lost its penetration. It is like you have a knife. Intellect is like a knife, it can cut through anything. But now you have a knife where the apple is sticking. (Laughter) Now whatever you try to cut, it’s not going to cut anything because there is a big apple sticking here. This is what has happened. A huge bank of memory is sticking to it and it’s lost its penetration. This is a tremendous loss that’s happened to humanity because of the nature of education systems that we have crafted.

So the fundamental process of spiritual process is to sharpen this intellect in such a way that if you sit here, your memory does not influence you, your intelligence is simply here. It sees everything just the way it is. If this doesn’t happen to you, your intellect will become the source of your suffering. You will see educated people are definitely suffering more than the uneducated on this planet, isn’t it so? They’re also causing much more suffering. The planet is suffering mainly because of educated people, not because of uneducated people, yes or no? The very life of the planet is being threatened by the educated, not by the uneducated. Because it is a completely memory-based education. It is not intelligence-based education. We need to shift this. If the education systems are not going to shift it, as individual people you must shift - especially if you want to be an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur means you must create an opportunity where there isn’t one. That is enterprise, isn’t it?