Reason is learned from the ever changing world, but true knowledge comes from the essence of life.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Knowledge and heart quality must be developed together. … Without a developed love quality, people are incapable of having that knowledge. There are fine lights and shades in one’s life that cannot be perceived and fully understood without having touched the deeper side of life, which is the devotional side. Those who have never in their lives been wholly grateful cannot know what it is. Those who have not experienced humility in life do not know its beauty. Those who have not known gentleness or modesty cannot appreciate its beauty or recognize it. … The heart must be open too. A very intellectual person went to Jami and asked him to take them as his pupil and give them initiation. Jami looked at them and said, ‘Have you ever loved anybody?’ The person said, ‘No, I have not loved.’ Then Jami said, ‘Go and love first, then come to me and I will show you the way.’
Wisdom is that which is learned from within, and intellect is that which is acquired from without. The source of wisdom is above, the source of intellect is below. And therefore it is not the same method, it is not the same process one adopts in order to attain wisdom as that which one adopts in order to acquire intellect.
There are people who look at life through their brain, their head, and there are others who look at life through their heart. Between these two points of view there is a vast difference; so much difference that something that one person can see on the earth the other sees in heaven, something that one sees as small the other sees as great, of something that one sees as limited the other sees the unlimitedness. These two persons become opposite poles; it is as if one is looking at the sky, the other at the earth.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
The rational faculty is dependent upon something which is not in and of the mind itself. Either it accepts a priori concepts or intuitions or else it produces a posteriori conclusions drawn from external observations. The idea of a priori conclusions — that is to say, conclusions drawn prior to experience — is good when they are founded upon faith, that is to say, the attunement of heart. But even intuition is of no value unless it is put into practice in life.
So far as the mind depending on the senses, not even the scientists do this. Some philosophers have falsely drawn conclusions by this method, but when philosophers’ reasoning is examined, it is generally found that they have assumed a priori that conclusions must be a posteriori. In other words, it has been something other than reason which has proclaimed the value and supremacy of reason. This is the fallacy and dilemma of all worldly thinkers.