Heart, Mind, and/or...

I recently gave a little lecture I do every year about this time with the new video students. I talk about communication having to take place on both the intellectual level and on the emotional level in order to have any effect. Pure intellectual data has no effect on someone unless you give them some reason to care about the information. And wild, heart-stirring emotion doesn’t do much good without something significant to say. So you have to have both going on at the same time. I realized this year that I was leaving out something very important – the spiritual.

I have been pondering this a bit and part of me wants to think that the other two modes must be functioning in order for a spiritual connection to be made. But perhaps sometimes it is the opposite; there is no intellectual understanding or emotional caring until after a spiritual connection is made.

I also got to thinking about some experiences my wife has had over the past several years. She has had occasion to deal with a number of children with autism. Unlike some disabilities that leave a person intellectually stunted but emotionally vibrant or others that sap the emotional life but leave a brilliant mind intact, autism can rob from both of these domains at the same time. A child can walk around very much alive, but have extremely low intellectual function and little breadth of emotion save for a few extremes like passivity and rage. The lights are on and somebody is home, but that somebody can do practically nothing and cares even less. It’s a terrible state and when I get to heaven I think I will be curious as to what it was all about, if we will care about such things then. I think if all were known it would be about us and our response and not so much about the people with autism as they really don’t seem to care.

Anyway, I’m not getting to my point. My point is that my wife has experienced what she believed to be spiritual connections with these children. Something quite beyond intellect and even emotion as those things were basically dead. Can spiritual vitality be present in a human being with practically no mind and no emotions? Could it be heightened like hearing seems to be to a blind person? I don’t begin to understand it. I don’t offer any explanation. But I do think I have been leaving out something important in my lecture. I’m hoping to hear some comments to help me fill in the gap.