Why Realization Doesn’t Make You a Genius?

Ramana, under whose lotus feet the greatest scholars were sitting

Why Realization Doesn’t Make You a Genius —and why God doesn’t turn fools into poets overnight?

Vira Chandra: I’ve often asked myself something strange.

If the Self is the source of all intelligence—

if it is the womb of music, mathematics, poetry, physics, all forms—

then why doesn’t realization of the Self make everyone speak like Rumi?

Why doesn’t someone, after tasting the Divine, erupt into śāstra like Abhinavagupta or Rūpa Goswami?

Why are there almost no examples of people who were dull, forgettable, or intellectually unremarkable— but who, after realization, suddenly became luminous sages with piercing words and world-shaping vision?

Shouldn’t becoming one with the Infinite mean that the intellect, too, shines like a thousand suns?

And yet it doesn’t.

Why?

Let’s be honest: many of those who attained Self-realization have lived quiet, ordinary lives.

Some never wrote a word. Some barely spoke. Some radiated love but not poetry, clarity but not composition.

Ramana Maharshi realized the Self at 16.

He didn’t become a philosopher in the usual sense.

He didn’t produce massive commentaries.

But what he did write—Upadeśa Sāram, Ulladu Nārpadu, Forty Verses on Reality—is like lightning sealed in verse.

No ornament. No showing off. Just distilled fire.

He became śāstra without excess.

Now look at Abhinavagupta.

He was likely one of the greatest minds ever to walk the earth—poet, dramatist, tantric master, logician, aesthetic theorist, and a realized yogi.

His Tantrāloka isn’t just scripture—it’s a cosmos.

But here’s what matters: he was already a genius before realization.

His family lineage was soaked in Sanskrit learning.

He was composing complex works as a teenager.

The moment Grace struck him, it wasn’t creating genius from scratch—it was emptying out the ego from a temple already built with precision.

The same is true of Rūpa Goswami.

Before meeting Chaitanya, he was a brilliant statesman, a master of Sanskrit prosody and poetics.

His realization didn’t make him a genius—it redirected that genius toward divine love.

From the political court to the court of Vrindavan.

And Guruji Amritananda?

A nuclear physicist, trained to probe the subatomic realm with razor-like intelligence.

Long before the Goddess overtook him, his mind was honed to precision.

After realization, that same scientific clarity manifested as yantra, ritual systems, and deeply structured instruction—offered with the tenderness of a saint and the mind of a physicist.

Realization didn’t invent his brilliance. It redirected it.

And Rumi?

Before Shams came into his life, Rumi was already a celebrated scholar, jurist, and theologian.

Shams didn’t give him language.

Shams set fire to it.

Yes, there are those whose realization poured out in poetry despite little formal learning—Lallā Ded in Kashmir, Kabir the weaver, Tukaram the grocer, Namdev the tailor, and Nisargadatta Maharaj the cigarette-seller.

Their verses ring with truth, and some became scripture.

But even they don’t break the rule.

Their words were flame, not form—raw, heartfelt, luminous—but not systems, not śāstra.

They didn’t suddenly become architects of logic or philosophy.

They spoke as they were shaped to speak.

Their genius was in bhakti, not blueprint.

The vessel did not change overnight. It simply caught fire.

So the question remains:

Why doesn’t realization of the Infinite give everyone this genius?

Here’s the naked answer:

Because God is not here to impress you.

The Divine has no interest in performance.

No desire to prove anything.

Grace doesn’t bypass the vessel.

It flows according to the shape of what is already there.

If a being has refined their speech, sharpened their intellect, honed their perception over lifetimes,

then Grace may speak through them in ślokas or in thunder.

But if not—Grace still shines.

It may come through silence.

Through a smile.

Through a gaze that doesn’t blink.

“But wait,” a deeper voice asks,

“doesn’t realization burn away all karma? Doesn’t awakening reshape the mind?”

Yes. But not by turning it into something it never was.

Realization doesn’t fabricate. It reveals.

If the flute was crude, the wind still flows—but the notes won’t be intricate.

And that is not a flaw. It is a form.

We want lightning shows.

But the Divine prefers a single, still flame.

Because if fools became poets overnight, we would chase the poem, not the Presence.

We would mistake the firework for the fire.

True realization doesn’t inflate you.

It empties you.

Less performance. Less possession. Less self.

And when nothing remains—sometimes, a verse emerges.

Sometimes, it doesn’t.

Either way, the Light is not absent.

You don’t need to become Abhinavagupta.

You don’t need to write like Rumi.

But if your intelligence is sharp—if you have been given the gift of rare perception—

then perhaps this is your tapas:

To offer it back.

To burn it at the feet of the Goddess.

To speak not because you must—

but because silence itself wishes to be heard through you.

And if no words come, let that be the scripture too.

Because the Self is not here to decorate you.

It is here to dissolve you.

And when all ornament is gone—

what remains is Light.

Unspoken, or sung.