STUDENTS of metaphysics and Theosophy are sometimes called to task for being too ‘intellectual.’
Some prefer the force of thought to hammer out truth, dismissing feelings and emotions as emanating from the ‘lower nature.’
But as W. Q. Judge wrote in the Ocean of Theosophy, “intellect alone is cold, heartless and selfish.” This is shown today by studies of neurological correlates in the brain.
Materialistic, intellectual data are stored in the brain, but do not stimulate areas such as the pineal gland — known by occultists to host spiritual impulses like feelings of compassion.
We are spiritual beings at our core, but our behaviors on this physical plane — just like the actions of rider and horse — are solely governed by how we have entrained our psychic and physical instrument.
“There are persons,” H. P. Blavatsky writes, “who never think with the higher faculties of their minds at all.”
“This is why it is so very difficult for a materialist — the metaphysical portion of whose brain is almost atrophied — to raise himself,”
“Or for one who is naturally spiritually-minded to descend to the level of the matter-of-fact vulgar thought,” she says. “Optimism and pessimism depend on it also in a great measure.”
