30. *Don't learn from experience, learn from intelligence!*

A small story:

A young girl was learning how to play the piano. She was struggling to cope with the master's lessons. The man next to her was an expert pianist and was playing a song by himself. The little girl walked over and watched him play for sometime. She finally asked, 'Sir, do you by any chance have more fingers than I do?'

We always think that we are not gifted as we should be. The truth is, we have all that we need in us already. We only don't know how to use it effectively. Most of us express our potential like a bullock cart or a tractor. We don't know that it can transform into being an aircraft. The power to fly lies within you, but it can lie latent forever unless you learn the science behind your own emotions.

In these few days, you will get a clear insight into your basic emotions.

A master is one who talks out of his experience of the ultimate truth. He talks with the ultimate authority because he has had the ultimate experience. We are all generally under the impression that only with age and experience, maturity happens and one can flower.

Masters are living examples to show that you don't need time to mature and flower. Let me explain this further to you:

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When you were a child, you were very much attached to your toys, were you not? If someone took a toy away from you, how would you have reacted? You would have screamed and cried as if your whole life depended upon it, right? But now that you have grown up, if someone takes a toy away, will it matter to you? Will you feel upset? No! You are no longer attached to the toy. When knowledge descends on you, maturity happens naturally.

This kind of knowledge and maturity, although we feel can come only with age, actually have nothing to do with physical age; they are to do with what is called mental age. Research has found ways of detecting a man's mental age. They have found that the average man's mental age is not more than 14!

With a man's physical age, he needs to go through all possible experiences, make all possible mistakes, and become experienced and mature.

It is something like this:

When we touch the flame of a candle, we get burnt and learn that the candle flame burns. Next we touch the fire on the stove and learn that the stove fire also burns. Next we touch the cigarette butt and learn that, even that burns. Then we touch burning coal and learn that it too burns.

By touching various forms of fire, we learn that all forms of fire burn. By the time we learn this, it becomes time for us to go to the burning ghat ourselves! This is what we call learning by experience; acquiring knowledge with physical age. It takes you a lifetime to learn your lessons. With progressing age, you learn – at your own sweet pace.

On the other hand, just by touching the first fire, if you understand that all forms of fire burn, you are intelligent! This does not require age to learn. It requires only intelligence. This signifies your mental age. That is why we say that wisdom has nothing to do with physical age. It is a question of how intelligent you are, how much you have nurtured your inner intelligence to understand things.

Let me explain with things that happen in your own life:

During student life, when you are in college, you feel that you will be happy when you get a job. Once you get a job, you somehow don't feel the same happiness that you thought, you had expected, but you console yourself saying that you will be happy when you get married.

After marriage you feel that you will be happy when you have children.

You run after each desire thinking that you will be happy only when that desire gets fulfilled. In this way, you run to the end of your life and realize that none of your desires really gives you true happiness. Then you turn towards spirituality and meditation! This is the life of a man who learns with physical age, by experience.

A man with an advanced mental age is one who learns through intelligence; he is the one who clearly understands from his first desire, that no desire when fulfilled will give him true happiness. There lies the difference. He will be able to see through the whole and analyze the whole thing. He will know that real fulfillment comes from inside and not from outer world things.

To attain this wisdom, you need not be aged, you need to be in the present, that's all. When you are in the present, Existence itself will teach you. Existence is the greatest master. When we are not in the present, when we are all the time running behind the past and the future, we take our own sweet time to learn, that's all.

Over the years, if you take the lives of enlightened masters like Buddha, Adi Shankaracharya, Bhagwan Sri Ramana Maharshi and Swami Vivekananda, all the enlightened people who created the history of India, they all attained enlightenment at a very young age. So understand that age is not related to spirituality or learning.

That is also why they say, 'You are as old as you are.' It means, you are as old as your mental age is. You are as old as your maturity is, not as old as your physical age is. You may be 70 years old but have the understanding of only a 20-year old. Or you may be 18 years old and have the maturity and understanding of an 80-year old. So you cannot claim superiority just because you are old by age!

A beautiful story about Swami Brahmananda, a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa:

One day Swami Brahmananda was meditating in Brindavan. A devotee came and placed a costly blanket before him as

an offering. Swami Brahmananda said nothing. He silently observed what was going on.

A couple of hours later, a thief came by, spotted the blanket and took it away.

Still the Swami watched in the same way, silently, with no reaction!

The gaining and losing of the blanket made no difference whatsoever to him!

There is a similar story in the life of Bhagwan Sri Ramana Maharshi:

One day, some thieves entered his ashram. They took whatever little they could find and before leaving, even gave him a blow.

It is said that not only did Bhagwan show no reaction, even the pace of his breathing did not alter during the incident! He was supremely unperturbed by the whole incident.

When we become a mere watcher, our mind becomes just a tool in our hands. We can then use it as we wish to. Otherwise, our mind can simply make us its slave. If you can use your mind when needed, you have learnt to drop it! And you have become a master!

So in these few days, we will see how to handle our emotions and become a watcher of our lives; how to center ourselves well inside us and function in the periphery in an undisturbed fashion. We will see how to create a mental setup which is free from engraved memories that are responsible for our unconscious decision-making. We will see how to harness the energy of intuition in us; how to move from unconscious to conscious to super conscious; how to move from instinct to intellect to intuition; how to bring forth the fountain of bliss from within us!

We will meet for the next session.

Thank you.

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