Questioner : A vast number of people

 

 

Questioner : A vast number of people are inclined to think that another is more intelligent than themselves, and therefore they follow.

K : Sirs, what is intelligence? Does intelligence consist in comparison? If you follow this for a minute, you will see. When a teacher in a school compares one boy with another, is he making him intelligent by comparison, or is he destroying him by comparing him with the cleverer boy? You understand, sirs? Are you not destroying by comparing one boy with another boy, one human being with another human being? When you compare yourself with another, the master with the disciple, by all these ugly horrors, are you not destroying yourself? Is that destruction intelligence? So, what is intelligence? Intelligence is that state when you are not comparing. In understanding what you are, you do not really compare yourself with somebody else.

So to have this radical revolution, there must be no comparison. Surely, we are human beings, sirs. You are as good as I am. We are human beings, suffering, struggling, and understanding. You are not my Master, I am not your follower. To create a new world we must think of all this totally differently. I can only think totally differently when I do not compare. I am what I am. I want to understand what I am. I may be the greatest idiot, I want to understand what I am because out of this idiocy something marvelous would come, but if I smothered it, I remain an idiot for the rest of my life.

Therefore do not follow. I am showing the ways of your own mind. I have several times said to you to follow nobody, including myself. To follow anybody, including myself, is the most destructive, deteriorating factor in life.