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.”
This post is revised and republished at:
Your Brain on God
There are unsung individuals all around us, silently and cheerfully doing their duty or giving a helping hand to a struggling soul; keeping the balance. And there are those retarding the progress of human souls and reveling in it.The sacred nature of the Universe as indicated by ancient scriptures such as the Vedas, show the individual human being as containing the entire universe in his or her deepest consciousness.
Sufism is at the heart of Islam and the Sufis also see that the human being is potentially a microcosm of the balanced unity of the Universe. Love and justice guide the cosmos and by tuning into the rhythms of the Universe; we can learn to co-operate with nature’s healing capacity. Yes real Theosophy is Altruism.
Our Intellect is for discrimination too; an unerring sense of right and wrong influencing our decisions. According to the Ancient Wisdom outlined in the Bhagavad Gita; the three-fold distinctions of intellect is that of in the modes of sattwic (goodness), rajasic (passion) and tamasic (darkness or ignorance); the latter of course leading to more harm and distress.
That emotions actually help us make decisions is very interesting indeed. Only pure motives and a mind turned in the direction of brotherhood and love will lead surely to taking right decisions and right actions.
Another interesting findings are that of Antonio Damasio, a well-known researcher in several areas of neurology and neuroscience. His most influential contribution to date is in the demonstration that emotions play a critical role in high-level cognition and that in order to behave rationally we need emotions. Damasio(1994) drew this finding from patients with specific brain lesions. Some patients who had suffered damage in their frontal lobes became emotionally flat and lost their ability to make decisions, while still retaining other cognitive functions.
From analysis of these patients Damasio(1994) concluded that their defective decision-making capacity or inability to make decision, was due to their lack of emotions. He has described vivid examples of this lack of rationality in his book “Descartes Error: Emotion,Reason and the Human Brain.”
He argues that emotions actually promote rational behaviour in situation of indeterminacy and claims that not only that person (who suppresses emotions while making decisions) would make irrational decision but also, in many situations, this person would make no decision at all, or might delay it for very long.
Thank you Grace, wonderful comments and insights. Compassion we should remember is also a “feeling” — emotions again. You are right about altruism, another elevated emotional relative. H. P. Blavatsky gives it the highest rating (in the Key to Theosophy, p. 238), where she writes:
“Altruism is an integral part of self-development.”