Spiritual Intelligence

 

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) is arguably the most influential American Catholic author of the twentieth century. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, has sold over one million copies and has been translated into over fifteen languages. He wrote over sixty other books and hundreds of poems and articles on topics ranging from monastic spirituality to civil rights, nonviolence, and the nuclear arms race. Writing in 1965, three years before his tragic death, at the start of the age of ecology, he made the point that neither ancient wisdoms nor modern sciences are complete in themselves. Science without spiritual intelligence leaves man enslaved to a world of unrelated objects in which there is no way of discovering (or creating) order and deep significance in man's own pointless existence. He saw the West was entering the post-modern era in total disunity and confusion because it had not been able to listen to the East, to Africa, and to the now practically extinct voice of primitive America. As a result of this the ancient wisdoms had themselves fallen into disrepute and in particular Asia, under the influence of Western consumerism, no longer dared listen to herself !

L. L. Whyte, writing two decades earlier, at the outbreak of the Second World War, saw Europeans caught in the "fundamental division between deliberate activity organized by static concepts, and the instinctive and spontaneous life." This dissociation, which was fruitful for art and individual feedoms in the Renaissance, had now reached a point of mad development, of "behavior patterns unrelated to organic needs" and a "relentless passion for quantity" . . . "uncontrolled industrialism and excess of analytical thought" ... "without the catharsis of rhythmic relaxation or satisfying achievement."

Ananda Coomaraswamy, writing about the same time as L. L. Whyte, viewed the sickness of civilization in more spiritual terms. The problem of the whole world was the problem of Western man: for everywhere a spiritual illness was now rampant, and malignancies, which in the West were perhaps endemic, were proliferating in the most alarming fashion in the East and in Africa.

"East and West," Coomaraswamy wrote, "are at cross purposes only because the West is determined, i.e., at once resolved and economically 'determined,' to keep on going it knows not where, and it calls the rudderless voyage `Progress.'" "We are at war with ourselves," said Coomaraswamy, "and therefore at war with one another. Western man is unbalanced, and the question, Can he recover himself? is a very real one."

Both wrote before the days of Red China, postwar Japan, and the now widespread industrialisation of India, three Eastern nations which today lead scores of other countries in carrying the logic of the Western split to its most extreme dissociation. It is not only the West that is "determined" on its rudderless voyage; all, down to the smallest Polynesian island state are in the same centrifugal flight from spirituality.

Whyte was specifically occupied with the regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. He believed that their "short" reign of Antichrist would soon give way to a realm of light, peace, harmony, and reconstruction. The end of the war against fascism would begin a better era. Or at least so he hoped, though not without reservations, for he added: "One more dark decade would disprove my judgment, revealing a rot deeper than I have seen." We are now in the seventh dark decade since his words were written facing the question of how to cope with the coming catastrophe of climate change, set against a terrorists bent on mass murder, both of which many be traced to a global economy organised in Merton's spirit of pointless existence. The question of 'spiritual intelligence' is all the more urgent now that it concerns not only Western man but everybody.

The essence of the question remains the same. It is a crisis of sanity first of all. The problems of the nations are the problems of mentally deranged people, but magnified a thousand times because they have the full, straight-faced approbation of a schizoid society, schizoid national structures, schizoid military and business complexes, and schizoid religious sects. Spiritual intelligence is necessary to bring science into a balanced alliance with society because it is the ultimate intelligence which we address and solve problems of meaning and value, the intelligence with which we can place our actions and our lives in a wider, richer, meaning-giving context, the intelligence with which we can assess that one course of action or one life path is more meaningful than another.

Spiritual Intelligence is not necessarily religious or even dependent upon religion as its foundation. It can be defined against or observed through some telling criteria such as: truthfulness, compassion, respect for all levels of consciousness, constructive empathy, a sense of being a player in a large whole, generosity of spirit and action, a seeking of being 'in tune' with or 'in synch' with nature of the universe, and being comfortable with being alone without being lonely. Those who have Spiritual Intelligence: have the capacity for transcendence; have heightened consciousness; have the capacity to endow everyday activity with a sense of the sacred; use spiritual resources on practical problems; engage in virtuous behaviour (forgiveness, gratitude, humility, compassion and wisdom.

The characteristics of Spiritual Intelligence are: awareness of others; wonder, awe, a sense of the numinous (astronomy, microbiology, cosmology); wisdom (proverbs, sages); perspective, ability to listen: "Be still and know that I am God"; comfort with chaos, dichotomy, paradox; commitment, dedication, faith; holds the promise or hope fulfilment. Spiritual Intelligence is the ultimate way of knowing. We use it to envision unrealized possibilities and to transcend the methodical plod of life. We use it also to understand pain, to answer the basic philosophical questions about life and to find meaning both temporally and existentially.  The field of applied spiritual intelligence is being developed to understand creativity in the arts and corporate strategies of sutainable development.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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