Bloomsbury, London 2000; UL copy. AJM
January 2001
Hopelessly syncretistic and wonderfully fascinating. It’s effectively
the popularisation of the most recent neurological research.
300pp.
1. Introducing SQ
Early C20 – IQ
(rational intelligence) the big idea. Mid 1990s, Daniel Goleman popularised
research from neuroscientists and psychologists which demonstrated existence of
EQ (emotional intelligence). EQ (feeling) is a basic requirement for use of IQ
(thinking).
Now: further research shows there is a 3rd Q. Spiritual
intelligence or SQ. This is the intelligence with which we address and solve
problems of meaning and value, the intelligence with which we place our actions
and 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. SQ is the necessary foundation for both IQ and EQ; it
is our ultimate intelligence. It allows us to be creative, change the rules,
alter situations; to dream, aspire, see the uses and limits of both
understanding and compassion. EQ allows me to judge a situation and behave
appropriately within it; SQ allows me to ask if I want to be in it at al, or
would I rather change it, create a new one?
IQ, EQ and SQ correspond to 3 distinct neural arrangements in the brain.
In knowing only IQ and EQ, Western psychology effectively places a hole
at the centre of the self. Models have had 2 layers: outer, rational, conscious
personality, and the inner, unconscious one. Now we have found a third layer, a
central core. Conscious personalities can be described with the standard
personality profiles. She uses Holland (vocational choices), Jung (Myers
Briggs) and Cattell (motivation). Gives 6 personality types, and discusses ways
to be spiritually stunted or spiritually intelligent for each.
SQ not connected to religion; can be religious and spiritually stunted
or vv. More people have religious exp outside the confines of mainstream
religious institutions than within them. SQ is the soul’s intelligence, the one
with which we make ourselves whole.
Evidence. Has been demonstrated in 90s that there is a ‘God spot’ in the
brain, located among neural connections in the temporal lobes; activated during
discussion of spiritual topics. Also that there is a neural process in the
brain devoted to unifying and giving meaning to our experience – the ‘binding
problem’. Singer found synchronous neural oscillations across the whole brain.
Previously we only knew 2 forms of brain neural organisation: serial neural
connections which allow rational thought, and neural networks in which bundles
of up to 100,000 neural connections are connected to other bundles – these form
basis of EQ, our emotion-driven, pattern-recognising, habit-building
intelligence.
Using SQ. Creativity, spontaneity, vision. We use it to deal with
existential problems. Fully developed in those who have known the possibility
of despair, pain, suffering, loss, and made peace with them.
Indications of high SQ:
v
Flexibility
v
Self-awareness
v
Capacity to face and use suffering
v
Capacity to face and transcend pain
v
Quality of being inspired by vision and values
v
Reluctance to cause unnecessary harm
v
Tendency to see connection between diverse things
v
Tendency to ask why, what if, and to seek answers
v
Facility to work against convention
v
Servant leader
Collective SQ is low in modern society – we live in a spiritually dumb
culture characterised by materialism, expediency, narrow self-centredness, lack
of meaning and dearth of commitment. But we can raise SQ as individuals.
2. The crisis of meaning
Search for meaning is the primary motivation in our lives. When it goes
unmet our lives feel shallow or empty. For many today this need is not met; and
so the fundamental crisis of our times is a spiritual one. People living in
earlier societies would not even have asked questions about meaning. Their
lives were culturally embedded in a set framework. They had living traditions,
living gods, living communities, functioning moral codes, problems that had
known boundaries and fixed goals. We’ve lost this, and are left with
existential problems and the need to cultivate a kind of intelligence that can
deal with them.
History
She contrasts US with Nepal. Middle Ages – few medieval peasants had to
consider the meaning of life or of their work because these were embedded in
the necessities and traditions of daily life. Just as when we drive a car or
ride a bike we don’t think consciously what we are doing, so in societies with
a healty middle layer, people rely on spiritual values, webs of meaning and
habits of relationship that are skills of the community. Most urban people
today lack that. All went wrong from C17 scientific revolution and the
Enlightenment, with its erosion of the religious beliefs and philosophical
outlook that had underpinned society.
Symptoms of a
meaning-deprived society
Obsession with health. Fear of death. Diseases of meaning – cancer,
heart disease, dementias, depression, fatigue, addictions.
Threats of extinction – holocaust and similar, so painful we refuse to
think about them
Search for immediate pleasure and satisfaction, due to loss of capacity
of imagination
Sense of a job as a vocation
Solution – we must all, through our own deepest resources and through
the use of our spiritual intelligence, access the deepest layer of our true
selves and bring up from that source the unique music that each human being has
the potential to contribute.
PART II: THE
SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FOR SQ
3. Three kinds of thinking, 3 kinds of intelligence
3 kinds of neural
organisation in the brain which allow 3 different kinds of thinking,
corresponding to the 3 kinds of intelligence.
We now know we
grow neural connections throughout our lives; not the case that we start off
with a fixed number and then lose them. Hence growth in children’s intellectual
capacities.
We think in
different ways with different parts of the brain. We think with our heads but
also with our emotions/bodies, and also with our spirits. Brain contains
10-100,000,000,000 neurones; there are c 100 different sorts. Each cell has
roots, cell body, trunk, branches. Sensory inputs arrive at the roots, reach
cell body if strong enough, fire along axon like a lit fuse, reach terminals,
and jump over synapses to neighbouring neurones. Synapses work by chemical
signalling; and use over a dozen different chemicals to do the job.
Serial
thinking: IQ
Done along neural
tracts – like phone cables, or chain of Christmas tree lights wired serially.
Serial processing. This is what we use for rational thought processes, and this
is what IQ tests measure. Examples are mental arithmetic, strategic planning.
Associative
thinking: EQ
This kind of
thinking helps us form associations between things like hunger and food, mother
and love, dogs and danger. It underlies EQ. Enables us to recognise patterns
like faces, smells; learn skills like bike riding, piano playing. It is
thinking with the heart/body. Done in neural networks. Each contains bundles of
up to 100,000 neurones, and each neurone may be connected to as many as 1000
others. Neural networks have ability to rewire selves with experience. Each
time I see a pattern, the network connections which recognise it grow stronger.
Ones that fire together become more strongly interconnected – eg as we learn to
drive a car (touch type?!). Associative learning is done by trial and error.
Most emotions are trial and error; once I learn to feel angry at a certain
stimulus, it is hard to react differently next time. Psychotherapy helps people
break longstanding but inappropriate emotional association. Associative
intelligence, inc emotions, are not immediately verbal; hard to talk about
them.
We have 2 memory
systems, one based on precise neural wiring in the hippocampus, one based on
associative neural networks located throughout the brain. First one subject to
decay with age; second not. So hard to teach an older person serially wired
skills, but not motor skills. Recent memory is in the first; long term memory,
inc emotions, based in the second. Emotional reactions have an associative
base.
Associative
thinking learns as it goes; but it tends to be habit bound. Hard to relearn an
emotional response. And hard to share associative thinking with others.
Co-operation
between IQ and EQ: ordinary chess players use IQ, serial thinking, only.
Grandmasters use IQ and EQ – associative thinking, pattern recognition, too.
Unitive
thinking: SQ
Computers can do
both serial and associative thinking. But they aren’t conscious. We have a
third kind of thinking, which is creative, insightful, intuitive. We learn and
understand with IQ and EQ, but we invent and create with SQ. Neuroscientists
have long been occupied with what they call the ‘binding problem’ – how do we
put everything we take in through tracts and networks into a single coherent
whole? Singer and Gray have now isolated sychronous oscillations which pass
over specific areas of the brain, ie electrical signals oscillating at various frequencies.
ECGs of people meditating show coherent brain waves across large areas o fthe
brain. Magneto-encephalography is a new technology which has enabled detection
of oscillations at 40 Hz over the whole brain. It is postulated that these
enable information processing beween the serial and parallel neural systems in
the brain; provide a neural basis for consciousness itself; and are the neural
basis for SQ.
4. More
about 40 Hz neural oscillations, consciousness and SQ
Pare and Llinas:
consciousness not dependent on sensory input, but on internal activity. Their
research on 40 Hz neural oscillations overturns conventional view of
consciousness by suggesting it is an intrinsic property of the brain. EEG
measures electrical activity in brain; MEG measures associated magnetic
activity and enables picture of whole brain. 40 Hz oscillations are among the
fastest, and occur all over the brain. They aren’t present in patients in coma,
or under anaesthetic, or in dreamless sleep, but they are in dreams. They form
a means by which experience can be bound together and placed in a frame of
wider meaning. Chalmers suggests something called proto-consciousness is a
property of all matter; form of the philosophical view (Whitehead et al) that
consciousness pervades the universe. If neural oscillations in the brain wer ea
coherent version of a fundamental property pervading the whole universe, then
SQ roots us a the very heart of the universe. And SQ becomes an expression of
sth that most W people have usually called God. She wonders whether the
oscillations are quantum oscillations, ie with characteristics of both waves
and particles.
5. The ‘God
spot’ in the brain
In all cultures people communicate with God and with spirits, good or
evil. Neuro-psychologist called Persinger experienced God for first time when
he set a device to stimulate tissue in his temporal lobes (the bit under the
temples). Epileptics, who have seizures there, have above average tendency to
report profound spiritual experiences. Temporal lobe activity in normal people
increases sharply during spiritual activity / conversation. So neurologists
call this the God spot in the brain. Gives examples of experiences of God
involving the sense of a presence. Research links mystical experiences with
greater capacity for creativity; both go with increased temporal lobe activity.
Also a correlation with madness! Schizophrenic and manic depressive patients
experience increased temporal lobe activity, with visions, voices, presences,
instructions – but usually negative. It seems that mystics are closer to their
unconscious minds than others; and more vulnerable to mental instability. 90%
of writers suffer from mental instability!! 74% of intellectuals. 42%
scientists. Link between creative genius and mental instability. Close link
between manic depression and the artistic personality.
God spot contributes to spiritual experience, but not to SQ. To have
high SQ is to be able to use the spiritual to bring greater context and meaning
to living a richer and more meaningful life, to achieve sense of personal
wholeness, purpose, direction.
III: A NEW MODEL
OF THE SELF
Interlude: a
brief history of humanity
(!!) Creation
stories from various religious traditions.
6. The lotus of the self I: the ego layer
She organises the
self into a central bud (SQ), inner petals of the associative unconscious (EQ),
and outer petals of the ego (IQ). We know ourselves first from the conscious
ego, rational asociated with serial neural tracts. Next we become aware of the
personal and collective unconscious, pool of motives, energies, images,
associations and archetypes that influence thought, personality and behaviour
from within. This is the associative middle of the self, part associated with
parallel neural networks in the brain. 50% of Westerners have had a mystical
experience of unification, a deep sense of being at one with reality; they may
have had a brief awareness of the self’s centre. This centre is assoicated with
the synchronous 40 Hz neural oscillations across the brain.
She identifies 6 outer petals, or 6 personality types,
based on Holland (vocational guidance test):
v Conventional
v Social
v Investigative
v Artistic
v Realistic
v Enterprising
Paired in
opposites, so an artistic person displays very different characteristics from a
conventional one, and so on. But a person may score highly in 2/3/4 different
traits. Tendency to display characteristics from different traits goes with
high SQ.
Conventional personality
Extroverted
perception. Careful, conforming, methodical. Unimaginative. Receptionists,
computer operators, accountants. Value tradition and order.
Social personality
Extroverted
feeling. Friendly, gregarious, kind, empathetic, persuasive, idealistic,
tactful, warm, responsible; therapists, ministers, management consultants, homemakers,
teachers.
Investigative personality
Introverted
thinking. Ideas, intellectual, analytical, complex, needs periods of own
company, independent, introspective, retiring, unemotional. University
teachers, translators, doctors.
Artistic personality
Introverted
perception. Often at odds with artistic type, and sometimes within the same
personality. Complicated, untidy, emotional, idealistic, independent,
introspective, imaginative, nonconformist, intuitive, sensitive. Writers,
artists, musicians, designers, photographers, architects.
Realistic personality
Introverted
feeling. Down to earth, practical, not intimate, conformist, persistent.
Farmers, pilots, engineers. Often married to social personality type.
Enterprising personality
Extroverted
thinking. Ambitious, adventurous, domineering, optimistic, sociable.
Politicians, managers.
Average person is blend of 2 or more types. Person with developing SQ
will grow to include a balance of all 6. Most people however produce same
results tested as young then mature adult.
7. The lotus of the self II: the associative middle and the deeper roots
of personality
Motivational SQ links the conscious IQ with th unconscious EQ. IQ is how
we perceive situations, EQ how we feel about them, and SQ what we want to do
about them. Why does the artist want to create sth that doesn’t exist; the
enterprising type want to climb a high mountain or communicate a bold idea; the
investigative type so deeply need to know? Understanding motives is crucial to
exercising SQ. [ie there is link between SQ and calling/gifting??]. We are
always partly strangers to ourselves because we are always more than our
conscious selves. Cattell isolates motivations, of which she chooses 6, to
correspond to the 6 personality types:
v
Gregariousness – the conventional personality : Saturn – stability,
balance
v
Intimacy (parental) – the social: Venus – nurturing, helping, intimacy
v
Curiosity – the investigative : Mercury – achievement and conquest
v
Creativity – the artistic : Diana/Artemis – healing and transformation
v
Construction – the realistic : Mars - persevering
v
Self-assertion – the enterprising : Jupiter – leadership, authority
Then she links them with Hindu chakras and the planets and even the
sacraments.
8. The lotus of the self III: the centre
Modern W culture could be described as the culture of the absent centre.
Neurologically.. the brain’s intuitive experience emanates from
synchronous 40Hz neural oscillations that travel across the whole brain. They
provide a ‘pond’ or ‘background’ on which more excited brain waves can
‘ripple’, to generate the rich panoply of our conscious and unconscious mental
experience. These oscillations are the ‘centre’ of the self, the neurological
source from which ‘I’ emerge. They are the neurological ground of our unifying,
contextualizing, transforming spiritual intelligence. It is through these
oscillations that we place our experience within a framework of meaning and
value, and determine a purpose for our lives. They are a unifying source of
psychic enegergy running through all our disparate mental experience.
If the petals/personality types exist in isolation, the result is a
spiritually stunted person.
IV: USING SQ
9. How we become spiritually stunted
3 main ways: not
to have developed some side of the self at all; to have developed some side out
of proportion, or in a negative/destructive way; to have a conflicting/absent
relationship between different sides. Schizophrenia originates from problems
with low SQ. Schizophrenics cannot integrate selves or their world. it is an
extreme form of schizoid conditions, in which a normal person feels
disconnected, isolated from meaning by a glass cage; this is associated with
raised activity in the brain’s temporal lobes. This often linked to creativity.
Most common form of spiritual stuntedness in W is
because we are too rational, cut off from the body and its energies, from
dreams and imagination. When we have high SQ our personalities express a little
of the leader, artist, intellectual, mountaineer, nurturing parent, etc.
Low SQ in the various personality types looks like
this:
v Conventional:
fanaticism
v Social:
addiction, sociopathic tendencies, sadism
v Investigative:
obsession, hysteria, phobia, repression
v Artistic:
mania, depression
v Realistic:
self indulgence, self-hatred
v Enterprising:
misuse of power, paranoia
Possession, evil
and despair result from low SQ. Low SQ is inability to see beyond the moment or
place things in a wider framework of meaning and value.
10. Healing ourselves with SQ
Spiritual illness
is a condition of fragmentation, spiritual health one of wholeness. SQ is the
means by which we move from one to the other. Key activity is recollection. Her
own personal background of resolving alcoholic father and suicidal mother.
Children show high SQ – always asking why. Any time we step outside our
assumptions or habitual way of seeing things, any time we break through into
some new insight that places our behaviour in a larger, meaning-giving context,
any time we transcend ego and act from our centre, any time we experience the
thrill of beautyr or truth larger than ourselves, hear the sublimity in a piece
of music, see the majesty in mountain
surise, feel the profound simplicity of a new idea, feel the depths of
meditation or the wonder of prayer, we are experiencing our SQ and using it to
heal ourselves.
I think I am
conversing with God when I do this. She thinks I am in fact conversing with my
own SQ, my own deepest self.
11. Our
compass at the edge: using SQ to build a new ethic
1997 Sunday Times
ran 2 Gallup polls. First found 10% people go to church on Sunday. Second found
80% believe in God. p 202.
Being at the edge
– an expression from chaos theory; the meeting point between order and chaos,
the known and the unknown. When we use SQ, our minds stand at the edge. It
makes our lives and creativity possible, but also adds an element of fear.
Today we all live at the edge. Nietsche has image of tightrope walker walking
between the towers of certainty. SQ sees with the eyes of the heart. We may
fall off the tightrope, but trying brings deep joy.
12. What
personality type am I?
12 questions for
each: 5 on preferred occupations, 2 on preferred leisure activities, 5 on
likes/dislikes.
I score 3 on
conventional, 6 on social, 7/8 on investigative, 9 on artistic, 6 on realistic,
2 on enterprising.
Average adult
will score 6 or more on 3 types.
13. Six
paths towards greater spiritual intelligence
In the course of
a lifetime a person’s main spiritual path changes, gradually or abruptly, eg in
40s. If it is a genuine energy shift we are likely to remain on good terms with
our previous path while adding other dimensions.
Obvious error is
to try and solve the problems associated with one spiritual path by methods
appropriate to another. An artistic/realistic type cannot solve his problem of
deep loneliness by joining a conventional tribe/group. An introverted
investigative type cannot become an outgoing public speaker by joining a
committee. Marital problems (4-5) cannot be solved by simple nurturing (2). We
get stuck like this because we know no better alternatives.
v
Conventional:
the path of duty; motivation is belonging; religious emphasis is observance.
Means commitment to my community; not self-indulgence, or following the rules
from fear. Means wanting to understand self and lead a more creative life;
making every action and attitude a celebration of how duty serves the centre
and source of existence.
v
Social: the
path of nurturing; motivation is intimacy/parental; religious emphasis is love;
myth is the Great Mother; practice is nurturing, protecting, healing. Means not
suffocating love, do it for you love, animal rights type love. Deepest
motivation is intimacy, deepest value is nurturing. 1 Cor 13. Love high in SQ
is transformative, releasing self and others; about potential.
v
Investigative:
the path of knowledge; motivation is understanding, myth is Plato’s cave,
practice is study. Means not becoming cold pedant preoccupied with isolated
intellectual problem, not isolating knowledge from a wider knowledge of people,
processes and life in general. Means reflection, understanding, wisdom.
v
Artistic: the
path of personal transformation; motivation is about creativity, eros;
religious emphasis is wholeness; practice is dreams/dialogue, myth is journey
to underworld. Means exploring the heights and depths of ourselves, welding the
disparate parts of our fragmented selves into an independent, whole person. Is
the most closely associated with the God spot activity, with personalities open
to mystical experiences, extreme emotions, those who are eccentric, those who
battle to keep sanity. Dante. The journeys produce personal healing, yielding
everyday art; or transpersonal healing, yielding great art. Motivating energy
of the path is Eros, order out of chaos. Spiritually dumb ways include
destructiveness, sterility, mess. Artistic people are particularly
conflict-ridden; capacity to know extremes of light and darkness, elation and
despair. Needs not to fear them; to be willing to reflect on dreams, enter into
creative dialogue with self/others, place one’s head in the jaws of the demon.
Needs to be anchored in daily reality.
v
Realistic: the
path of brotherhood. Motivation is construction, religious emphasis is
sacrifice, justice.
v
Enterprising:
the path of servant leadership. Motivation is power, redemption, service;
religious empahsis is priesthood, practice is self knowledge. Leader evokes in
his followers the kind of meaning he himself is led by; central energy is
power; shadow form misuses it. Most spiritually intelligent form is servant
leadership.
7 practical steps to better SQ:
1.
become aware
of where I am now
2.
feel strongly
what I want to change
3.
reflect on
what my own centre is and on my deepest motivations
4.
discover and
dissolve obstacles
5.
explore many
possibilities to go forward
6.
commit myself
to a path
7.
remain aware
there are many paths
The mystics of
every great tradition speak of a place within the self, of light, a feeling of
holiness in everyday objects and events, the sense of the sacred in the act of
loving, the ecstasy in understanding something for the first time, the elation
of bringing sth new into the world, the satisfaction of seeing justice, the
peace of serving God. All 6 paths lead to the centre, and also back to the
world.
14.
Assessing my SQ
Duty: what groups have you belonged to; become
estranged from; would like to belong to; what is your moral code; how do you
feel about these things
Nurturing: are there people to whom you happily give
more than receive; from whom you receive more than give; any who you
neglect/resent; want to help but can’t; can you have close friends if they
don’t need your help/advice; can you in intimate relships be open about
difficult topics; do people find you easy to talk to?
Understanding: do you take interest in lifestyles of
those around you; do you get bogged down in problems or find ways of making
progress; can you see both sides of an argument; are you intellectgually
seeking sth and can you define it?
Personal
transformation: do you have
passion; evaluate a person/dream that filled you with longing but did not reach
a completely happy conclusion, and how you feel about it now – write a poem.
Identify with a writer you respect, see that pain can become a contribution to
others. Look at egs of behaviour that moves you.
Brotherhood: would you like to have a conversation with
just anybody; reverse roles; are there some people with whom you can’t feel at
ease and why; is justice important to you; is death a hard subject?
Servant
leadership: have you been
accepted as leader of any group; had visions of the way an ideal group cd live;
made hasty decisions when stressed; do you give up if your vision is
challenged; become assertive; debate democratically; are you willing to stand
up and be counted?
The centre
Have you felt
self to be in the presence of a powerful spiritual force; do you have
nightmares; dislike being alone; how would you deal with it if you disagreed
with your associates even after long discussion; do you have moments not just
of pleasure but of deep contentment, and what were you doing at the time; if
you were to die tonight wd you feel your life had been worthwhile?
15. Being
spiritually intelligent in a spiritually dumb culture
We must know our
deepest motives; most don’t. Look for the reality behind any surface desire. We
have programmed responses – want it, do it / buy it. We don’t ask what deeper
need lies behind the desire. Nothing in W education encourages us to reflect on
ourselves, our inner lives and motives; to imagine. We are uncomfortable with
empty time or silence.
How to improve
your communication with yourself:
- meditation
- poetry
- going for a
walk in the woods
- really
listening to music and examining the mental/emotional associations that result
- noticing some
scene or event from the day and going over it later
- keeping diary
- reviewing each
day at the end.
The modern
collective unconscious resonates to the beat of consumer advertising, and to
the sex and violence of immediate gratification. Very few of us are noursihed
by a living spiritual vision that places our lives in that deeper and wider
context within which the centre of the self is anchored.
Our culture is a
crowd culture; high SQ knows how to be ‘field independent’ – hold its own
opinion. Our culture is atomistic; high SQ knows how to love. Our culture is
unable to deal with death; high SQ understands life, and so puts death in a
larger perspective of meaning and value.