In plain words
All these numbers are changes of form of one. But apart from one, there is no other form in them at all. There is a number called three. Three ones joined and it became three. Without one, three did not come. If one more joins it, it grows into four. If one is taken away from this three, it shrinks to two. For growing and for shrinking alike, one is the basis; no other number is the basis of this at all. That is why it becomes clear to us here in many ways that there is one energy that is the root support of all such things. As long as we do not know this truth, we go on thinking that we are great. One man, out of Ahaṅkāra, said, ‘Mameva paṇḍitaḥ.’ “I alone am the scholar,” he said. He did research for some time. He recognised that there was another power in this world greater than himself. From there he said, ‘Mamaṃca paṇḍitaḥ.’ That is, he came down to “I too am a scholar”. From the first position, “I alone am the scholar”, he came down to the level of “I too am a scholar”. He went on doing still more research. There is a power in this world far greater than himself, and all subjects are there. He came to know the truth that he was behaving like this because he could not recognise the principle that the wise see all with an equal eye. After that he said, Mama na paṇḍitaḥ. “I am not a scholar,” he said. If we wish to recognise the truth that lies within everyday experience in this humanness, our own state too must travel on this same path, it said. Man goes about in the confidence, “I know everything.” We must take it that such a person knows nothing.
Before the Buddha's Nirvāṇa, all His disciples gathered: “Swami! How far have we come, to what state have we come, in knowing this world?” they asked. The Buddha was sitting under a tree. He took some leaves from a branch and held them in His fist. “My dear ones, how many trees are there in this forest?” the Buddha asked. “How many leaves are there in these trees, in this forest?” He said. “How many more forests like this are there in this world?” He said. “Of all the leaves in the forests in this world, you have found out only as much as these leaves I have taken in My fist. Of all the leaves on the trees grown in the forests in this world, as small a part as this fistful of leaves is, so much only have you found out,” He said.
So the attitude called today's intellectuals is only a kind of weakness.