Why love is the next step in human intelligence
During the final hearing for my Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Chicago, my advisor, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi pulled me aside and whispered to me: “NEVER use the word heart in a job talk.”
My Ph.D. dissertation was on how adults learn in everyday life and I’d mentioned the heart too many times. Mihaly could tell I was making the stodgy professors on my committee uncomfortable.
At the time I felt he was criticizing me. But looking back so many years later, I understand that Mihaly was speaking from his own experience. He was trying to protect me from the derision he’d experienced at the U of Chicago. (He soon left the U of C for greater academic freedom at Montclair Graduate School in California.)
I believe it’s becoming more obvious that the heart is the source of our greatest intelligence. And scientists’ research on the “heart field” is beginning to prove it.
“To ancient cultures, the heart was a sophisticated organ capable of both perception and a unique form of analytical thought,” said Stephen Harrod Buhner in his book, Ensouling Language
“Love is the next step of intelligence,” said Hazrat Inayat Khan. While Mozart said, “Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”
And Nishida Kitaro, one of the most significant and influential Japanese philosophers of the 20th century stated, “Love is the power by which we grasp the ultimate reality. Love is the deepest knowledge of things.”
