The emotional complaints of our time we hear everyday include: emptiness, meaninglessnes, disillusionment about marriage, family and relationship, a loss of values, yearning for personal fulfillment and a hunger for spirituality. As Moore said "..without soul, whatever we find will be unsatisfying, for what we truly long for is the soul in each of these areas. Lacking that soulfulness we attempt to gather these alluring satisfactions to us in great masses thinking apparently that quantity will make up for lack of quality." (Moore, p. xii)
Godlas (2003), describes the intellect as providing people with the ability to see things as they are, to distinguish such attributes as truth and falsehood, beauty and ugliness. However in most humans the intellect is unable to function properly because it is veiled by the ego. If the intellect could go beyond forms to inward meaning, the intellect would discover God in all things. Or as Rumi puts it, "How many words the world contains! But all have one meaning. When you smash the jugs, the water is one" [p. 8 of The Sufi Path of Love].
As an individual's ego "thins out", the intellect becomes better at fulfilling its purpose. In most people, the ego dominates the intellect. However in those individuals who are making spiritual progress, the intellect begins to dominate the ego. When the veil of the ego is altogether eliminated, the human spirit is altogether sanctified. In Rumi's words: The partial intellect is a denier of Love, even if it pretends to know the mysteries. It is clever and knowledgeable, but not naughted -- as long as the angel is not naughted, it is a demon. [p. 223 of The Sufi Path of Love] (Godlas, 2003)
Rumi says:
If a man of intellect should enter, tell him the way is blocked, but if a lover should come, extend him a hundred welcomes! By the time intellect has deliberated and reflected, love has flown to the seventh heaven. (in Murad, 1999).
