DISCOURSES & TALKS BY MEHER BABA

 

INTELLIGENCE

 

 

25th March, 1926

 

At Shahane's residence, the Family Quarters, on 25 March, Baba gave the following discourse on intelligence:

 

Intelligence when it is not thinking is unconsciousness and may be likened to sound sleep. Thinking and imagination are latent in intelligence. When intelligence thinks of Itself, it realizes its Self and is God. When it thinks about imagination, it is the world, mind, body, and ignorance.

 

For example, take a gramophone record. When it is not being played, it is in a state similar to sound sleep, like unconscious intelligence (when it is not thinking); but when the phonograph needle is put on the record, it starts to play. This is like the thinking of imagination that is latent in intelligence and becomes manifest while the mind is thinking.

 

Take as another example an ocean to represent intelligence, which is calm at first. But when the wind blows (the desire of intelligence to know Itself), there is movement in the still waters (intelligence begins to think), forming innumerable waves, and the result is an uncountable number of bubbles. When intelligence starts thinking, it creates waves (universes), which form bubbles (different worlds).

 

The ocean (intelligence) is there in the bubbles (imagination), but in a limited form. So when we think, intelligence is there, but in a limited form. It knows that "I am this body."

Baba then put some water in a big pot and turned a cup upside down in it.

 

He continued:

Although the same water is in the cup as in the pot, its quantity is limited.

 

Lord Meher On-line page 646

Lord Meher Vol.3 p.786