Mensa Member: It's very subjective. The Buddhist point of view in general seems to be very much that of the nineteenth century English rationalist, the agnostic, in its visual sense.
Dr. Ware: That's why I say the Unitarian comes closest to it.
Śyāmasundara: What is that?
Mensa Member: Well, the fact that a Godhead is . . . is impossible to comprehend. It maybe or may not be in very brief terms.
Dr. Ware: But if you accept its existence, then it's present in everybody. Which is exactly what you're saying. Whether they utilize it, whether, as you call it, uncovered, or to the degree of which they are conscious of it, is a different thing.
Prabhupāda: Yes. It is a question of consciousness, development of consciousness.
Dr. Ware: That's where your line, I think, is so very good in saying that the real evolution of man's mind has been his ability to produce more and more of the functions of whatever the mind may be. But the mind is just as indefinable as God. We know what the brain is, but we don't know what the mind is. Yet more and more of it under conscious control instead of being irrationally eruptive.
Prabhupāda: But there is a summum bonum of that realization. That is explained in Bhagavad-gītā: bahūnāṁ janmanām ante, jñānavān māṁ prapadyate (BG 7.19). After many, many births of this mental evolutionary process, when actually he becomes wise, he becomes God conscious and surrenders to God. That is real evolution. That is real evolution. That evolution will go on. But when it comes to this summit, that is God realization. Vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti (BG 7.19). God is the cause of all causes. That is the final realization. Unless one comes to that point, he has not come to the perfection of evolutionary process of the mind and intelligence.
Śyāmasundara: How does our philosophy define mind and intelligence?
Prabhupāda: Mind is instrument. The mind's position is accepting and rejecting. And intellect helps the mind what to reject and what to accept. And that intelligence is of the soul. That ground of intelligence is the soul. First of all bodily concept is gross life, ordinary, like animals, they do not know except the body. Higher than bodily concept of life, the exercise of the mind, mental speculation. And that mental speculation is adjusted by intelligence, and that intelligence belongs to the soul. Therefore soul is the ultimate, and soul is the part and parcel of God. Therefore God is the supreme.
So the mental speculation or the evolution of mental exercise, when it comes to the summit, that is God realization. Vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti, sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ (BG 7.19). When one realizes, "God is everything," that mahātmā, that great soul, is very rare. That is the statement in Bhagavad-gītā. Mahātmā means whose mind is great. The mind is great. He's not thinking ordinary things; he's thinking of greater subject matter. They are called mahātmā, broader minded, broad-minded.