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joy and beauty of life. For experiencing the knowledge, joy and beauty of life, a young mind is required. The body is bound to become old, but not the mind; mind can always remain young. The mind can remain young till the very last moment of death, and only such a mind can know the mysteries of life and death. Only such a mind is a religious mind.
But the present education makes the mind old. It does not awaken the mind but fills it, and so it becomes old. By being filled with all sorts of thoughts, the mind becomes old, burdened and tired. Feeding thoughts means feeding the memory. It does not spark thinking or intelligence. Memory is not intelligence. Memory is mechanical. Intelligence is consciousness.
Thoughts are not to be given to you but to be awakened in you. Where thinking is awakened, the mind is always young. Where the mind is young, life is a constant challenge. There the doors of consciousness are and the fresh morning breeze comes in, the light of the rising sun comes in. When a person becomes imprisoned by the thoughts and words of others, his own ability to fly in the sky of truth is destroyed.
But what does education do? Does it teach how to think or is it satisfied only with feeding dead, borrowed thoughts? What other power makes one more alive than the power of thinking? But also nothing makes one more lifeless and rigid than learning others' thoughts. Accumulation of others' thoughts brings idiocy. By accumulation of thoughts, thinking and intelligence are not born. Too much emphasis on mechanical memory in the birth of thinking and intelligence, is fatal. Enough opportunities for thinking and use of intelligence should be made available if they are to grow. Doubt instead of belief is to be taught if thinking and intelligence are to grow.
Belief and trust bind you, whereas doubt liberates. But by doubt I do not mean distrust. Distrust is only the negative form of trust or belief. Neither trust nor distrust but doubt is required. Trust and distrust are both the death of doubt. And where there is no liberating intensity of doubt, there is neither any search for the truth nor its attainment.
The intensity of doubt
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