The brain itself is only a mechanism; it is a biocomputer. When you purchase a computer it is empty; it has no input, it is new. Then you start putting things into it, whatever you want – history, science, religion, mathematics, anything that you want to feed the computer. It collects it, it has a memory system, just as the brain has a memory system. And whenever you want any information you can ask the computer and it will give you the information.
There is a danger that in the future the computer is going to destroy people’s capacity for memory, because it will be far more accurate, and just a small remote controller that you can keep always with you... Either you can have your own computer in the house or you can be joined with the collective computer in the city, and on your remote controller you can figure out anything. You can even find out on what date Socrates was married! But it can give you only that information which has been fed into it. If you ask it any new question that has not been programmed before, the computer is helpless; no answer will be coming.
The same is the situation of the brain. The brain is a computer, just like a memory system. And all of our education is nothing but feeding the computer. It will be able to answer only that which has been fed into it. If you have not learned physics and some question is asked about it, the mind cannot answer because it is not in your memory. So what you call thinking is just futile: you are just going through the memory system finding some answer for a question it has no answer for. Any new question and it stops; it is helpless.
That’s why you cannot think about truth, you cannot think about enlightenment, you cannot think about love. You cannot think of all great things in life because they cannot be fed into the computer ahead of time. A scholar has a more full computer; his memory is richer. A professor has more. There are people who are respected only for their memory. Our whole education is nothing but a training in memory, it is not an education for intelligence. Intelligence will be a totally different thing. Our education simply tells you what has to be memorized.
In the Soviet Union they realized the fact that the brain is exactly like a computer. Then why torture it and why unnecessarily harass it? Hence in examinations students are allowed to go into the library to consult books or to bring any book they want. All the books that may be needed are available in the examination hall. What is the need to unnecessarily remember something when it is written in the books? But one thing was discovered, and it changed the whole situation: people who were not coming in first started coming in first. People who had been coming in first started losing their grip, started going down – second class, third class. What happened? In order to search for the answer you need intelligence and those books are big and the time is limited – three hours. You have to answer five questions. You have to be very alert and intelligent to find all the relevant facts and figures to give an answer. The people who had always been coming in first started losing ground because they don’t have any intelligence, they have only memory. Now that memory was of no use. This is all so primitive. Each student can be supplied with a small remote controller and he can just check what answer is needed. His intelligence will be in how to use the remote controller – how to use it wisely, how not to get mixed up, how to understand the question intelligently so that he can find the answer intelligently. But it is not a question of memory. A different kind of education will be needed which teaches you intelligence. It is a known fact that people of great intelligence don’t have that great a memory. And there have been people of great memory, but they don’t have any intelligence at all. Their memory is almost miraculous, unbelievable, but it is absolutely mechanical.
When the fountain pen was invented it was found that people started losing their beautiful handwriting. With just a simple old-fashioned pen you can write better than with a fountain pen. The fountain pen is speedy and you need not dip it again and again into the ink; it has ink in it. Because of the speed and the ink supply people started writing fast. The grace that was there in writing slowly, suddenly disappeared. The same is going to happen with computers. It will help you immensely to remember, but it will help also in a negative way – you will not have memory. Even the names of your friends you will have to check on the computer. Even the street number where you live you will have to check on the computer, because now there is no need for your own computer to work – you have a mechanical device.