In plain words
What have you understood intelligence to mean? If we read a poem in a book and learn it by heart in two minutes, we think that is fine intelligence. This is not real intelligence. We put what is in the book into the head, and from the head we bring it out through speech. No, no. We must grasp the inner meaning and the inner feeling of what we read, and by that, act in our own life in keeping with it. When we eat, only when the food we have eaten goes in, is well digested, and its digested essence reaches every limb, does our body stay strong and content. If instead we throw out everything we eat by vomiting, how will this body get strength? So we keep in memory everything someone else has made, eat that very thing, and try to digest that very thing. These are the marks of petty learning. It is a dog that eats again what has been vomited, not a human being. So we must put into practice the sacred feelings that come from the heart and try to give them to society. We must not learn by heart the contents of some books or other and take that itself to be education. Ninety-nine percent of all today's students are doing just this. We must take a textbook and try to understand well what is in that book. First of all, we must understand. What we have understood we must bring into our experience to some extent. Only then can we shape it within our experience as we wish. When the matter is not understood, they merely learn by heart a śloka they have read, a poem they have read, a sentence they have read, and write it in the examination. Today many children learn whole textbooks by heart. Learning a textbook by heart is of no use. We must understand well the matter and the inner meaning in it. So this is the right study. A student must first of all understand his learning. Today he bears the name of student, a seeker of learning, and is turning into a seeker of sense objects. In the time of studentship we must not let sense objects into our heads at all. With a broad outlook we must form a steady judgement on the power of this learning. So what is education? Merely reading books, writing in the examination what one has read, getting an ‘O’ grade or an ‘A’ grade by it, and then trying to teach it to someone else. Learning that passes on in this way from guru to disciple cannot become learning lived out in action. These are only occupations set up to earn a living. Our learning must be of use to life itself. We must share it in our society. They build dams across flowing rivers and store the water. The stored water must be made to flow through canals to grow crops.