vour individual lives are the manifestations of some great intelligence. Proof of this is found in the fact that our lives have no meaning whatsoever apart from the process of acquiring knowledge. And a thoughtful man ceases to feel painfully the absence of meaning in life only when he realizes this and begins to strive consciously in the direction he was unconsciously following before.
Moreover, this acquisition of knowledge, which constitutes our function in the world, is achieved not only by our intellect, but by our whole organism, all our body, all our life and the whole life of the human society, by its organizations, institutions, the whole culture and the whole civilization, by all we know in humankind and even more so by what we do not know. And we get to know that which we deserve to know.
If we say about the intellectual side of man that its purpose is the acquisition of knowledge, this will not evoke any doubt. All are agreed that man’s intellect, with all its subordinate functions, exists for the purpose of acquiring knowledge, although very often the faculty of knowledge is regarded as subordinate. But as regards the emotions: joy, sorrow, anger, fear, love, hate, pride, compassion, jealousy, as regards the sense of beauty, aesthetic sense and artistic creation, as regards moral sense, as regards all religious emotions, faith, hope, veneration and so on, as regards all human activity, things are not so clear. As a rule, we do not see that all emotions and all human activity serve knowledge.
Usually the emotional is opposed to the intellectual: “heart” is opposed to “reason.” Cold reason or intellect is placed on one side, and on the other side: feelings, emotions, artistic sense; then, again quite separately, moral sense, religious feeling, ‘spirituality.’
The misunderstanding here lies in the interpretation of the words intellect and emotion.
Spirituality is not something opposed to “intellectuality” or “emotionality.” It is only their higher flight. Reason has no bounds.
… In a man the growth of reason consists in the growth of the intellect and in the accompanying growth of higher emotions: aesthetic, religious, moral – which, as they grow, become more and more intellectualized; moreover, simultaneously with this the intellect becomes impregnated with emotionality and ceases to be “cold.” Thus, “spirituality” is the merging together of the intellect and the higher emotions; the emotions are spiritualized from the intellect.
… Theoretically all emotions serve knowledge; all emotions arise as a consequence of the cognition of one or another thing. … Undoubtedly there are relations which can be known only through fear. A man who has never experienced fear will never understand many things in life and in nature.
The sign of the growth of emotions is their liberation from the personal element and their transition to higher planes. The liberation from personal elements enhances the cognitive power of emotions, because the more personal elements there are in an emotion, the more capable it is of leading into delusion. A personal emotion is always biased, always unfair, if only for the reason that it opposes itself to everything else.
Thus the problem of right emotional knowledge is to feel in relation to people and the world from a point of view other than the personal. And the wider the circle for which a given person feels, the deeper the knowledge which his emotions give.
