Is Intellect essential for fellings?

I personally feel that The Cold Intellect is not the way human should go. We have hearts, we have emotions. We cannot explain them as some kind of bi-product of the Intellect! This book places the Intellect above the heart, which I do not agree.

Ludmil

Heart is a pump. Feelings and emotions are functions of Intellect. To experience ANY feeling or emotion - you need to be intelligent.

Who is capable to experience a wider range of Higher Feelings (such as True Love) - a person who is highly intelligent and is capable to understand or a person who is extremely primitive? Most likely a primitive person will follow instincts and will not be even capable to comprehend any need for "higher feelings".

Hence, we can say that Intellect is the ESSENTIAL condition for anyone conscious to experience feelings.

How much Intellect is needed? The higher is the capacity of the Individual Intellect to Understand - the wider the range of feelings it can experience. There is no limit...

In the other extreme - no Intellect - no feelings. You can take a brick as an example.

Tom

Exactly. The more we experience new , higher levels of feelings, the more importance we place on them and the more we miss them when they are absent. [ZD]

Hi Tom, There is an interesting distinction made in psychological theory between feelings and emotions that supports your idea. It is only after we connect a thought to a feeling that we have an emotion. That is to say it is only when we use our intellect that we can actually say 'I am feeling sad, happy etc). Without a thought we could never ever experience a single emotion because we would have no way of distinguishing or understanding each of the different sensations we have in our bodies. If you can't even think about this, than you will always have sensations you won't understand. As far as I am concerned a huge part of spiritual learning and the study of the self is to separate/distinguish and understand each of our different feelings and place them into a broad context called our set of emotions. Only then will we know which are the major emotions we feel each day, why we feel these emotions and how we can change them if we desire. The more advanced the intellect, the easier this difficult task is. The less advanced the intellect, the more a person is controlled by their feelings and moods rather than the other way around.

paul

Don't forget that the more advanced the intellect - the wider range of feelings (and associated thoughts) become possible. Hence, the task of controlling emotions becomes more complex and not necesarily any easier.

Tom