Spiritual intelligence is the idea that some people are more able than others in matters of the spirit: in thinking about life’s deepest questions, in finding meaning, in being aware of something greater than themselves, and in entering expanded states of consciousness at will. The psychologist Howard Gardner declined to add it to his list of multiple intelligences, but others have proposed it as a set of abilities, not beliefs. In Therapeutic Shamanism the spiritual is found in two realms, the Lower-World as well as the Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer, and shamanic journeying can be seen as a training of spiritual intelligence that has to stay rooted in the body and in ordinary life.
What is spiritual intelligence? #
A proposed family of abilities to do with the spiritual side of life. Once Gardner had put forward the idea that intelligence comes in several kinds, it was not long before people asked whether there might be a spiritual one. The psychologist Robert Emmons set out an influential case for it in 2000, using Gardner’s own criteria and naming abilities such as transcendent awareness, entering spiritual states of consciousness, finding the sacred in everyday experience, and using spirituality to solve problems. Others, including the writers Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, added the ability to ask existential questions and to make meaning.1
The psychologists David King and Teresa DeCicco drew these strands together in 2009 into four core abilities:2
– Critical existential thinking: thinking deeply about meaning, purpose, death and the nature of reality. – Personal meaning production: finding meaning and purpose in all of one’s experiences. – Transcendental awareness: sensing the transcendent in oneself, in others and in the world, in an ordinary waking state, including a sense of interconnectedness. – Conscious state expansion: entering spiritual states of consciousness at one’s own discretion.
They are clear that spiritual intelligence is not the same as being religious. They define it as a set of mental capacities, not a set of beliefs, so it may or may not fit any particular religion.
Why did Howard Gardner not add it to his list? #
He took the question seriously and then held back. Gardner thought it no more justified to rule out a spiritual intelligence in advance than to admit one on faith, and pointed out that if the abstract realm of mathematics counts, there is no obvious reason why the abstract realm of the spiritual should not. He accepted that some people are simply more skilled than others at meditating, entering trance or being in touch with what they experience as spiritual, and even suggested that controlling one’s state of mind might belong to the bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. See What is embodied (bodily) intelligence?
What stopped him was the word’s sprawl, which seemed to him to cover everything from mind and body to nature and the supernatural, and above all the claim, made by some, that the spiritual path leads to a special truth that only some can reach. At that point, in his words, “we have left the realm of intelligence and moved to the sphere of dogma.” He chose instead to carve out the part of the spiritual that seemed most clearly a kind of thinking, and called it existential intelligence.3 See What is existential intelligence?
What does “spiritual” mean in Therapeutic Shamanism? #
Something that takes us beyond the everyday and beyond the ego, and awakens us to a deeper and more mysterious reality, far greater than the self. Part of the purpose of spiritual practice is to re-form the ego so that it can serve and express that greater reality in everyday life, not to serve the ego.4
Where Therapeutic Shamanism differs from most of the culture is in where the spiritual is found. The sky religionsSky-religion. The vertical, hierarchical reordering of the sacred that the Fall installed, governed by the spell ‘up is good, down is bad’: transcend the body, escape matter, purify upward. The conditioning Therapeutic Shamanism works to undo. More about this see only one realm as spiritual, the one above. In shamanism there are two transcendent realms, the Upper-World and the Lower-World, and they are equally spiritual, just in different ways. Roughly speaking, the Upper-World is the realm of Spirit and of Father Sky, and the Lower-World the realm of Soul and of Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this. From what is known of hunter-gatherer cultures, there seems to have been no idea that the Lower-World and the earth were somehow lesser than the Upper-World; that kind of ranking belongs to the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer.5 See How are the realms related to Soul, Spirit and the middle-world self?
So a balanced spiritual practice works with both. Upper-World practices help us move beyond a sense of separation, see the bigger picture and gain perspective on the ego’s stories, and cultivate qualities such as detachment, discernment, compassion and serenity. Lower-World practices take us down to discover the true nature of our Soul, our unique place in the web of life, and how to actually be in the world.6 Spiritual intelligence, seen this way, is not one capacity pointing upwards but the ability to grow in both directions at once, like a plant that ascends rooted.
Is shamanic journeying a training of spiritual intelligence? #
It can be seen that way. King and DeCicco note that merely having an expanded state of consciousness, which can happen to anyone unbidden, is not an ability; what counts as an ability is being able to enter such states at one’s own discretion.7 That is very close to the shaman: someone who can go into a trance state, travel in the shamanic realms, and come back to ordinary reality at will.
It is also something learnt. Anyone with a right side to their brain can imagine, and so can journey, and like painting or playing an instrument the skill grows with practice.8 What deepens with the years is not only the ease of going in and out but how true to what is really there a journey becomes. A journey is meant to be Spirit-led: the shaman tries to become the ‘hollow bone’ through which Spirit acts, stepping aside from their own agendas, beliefs and preconceptions so that their GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this can lead.9 The depth to which someone can hollow out sets the depth of their journeying, and it is a lifelong process, never a state that is arrived at. See What is hollowing-out?
Gardner’s worry was about claims to a spiritual truth reserved for the few. Therapeutic Shamanism makes no such claim for journeys. Journeys are co-created between us and Spirit, given form by our own imagery, and are never objectively true: they are mythosMythos. Metaphorical, symbolic, felt truth: the truth of art, poetry and shamanic journeys. Shamanic reality is mythologically true, not literally true, which is why journeys are interpreted, never taken at face value. More about this, not logosLogos. Literal, factual, analytical truth: the truth of facts you can check. One of the two modes of truth, alongside mythos. More about this, closer to great paintings, music or poems that try to convey something mysterious than to a report of facts.10 What journeying trains is a capacity, tested in experience, not a doctrine to be accepted. See What is shamanic journeying?
Can spirituality be unintelligent? #
Yes, when it is used to get away from life instead of into it. In 1984 the psychologist John Welwood coined the term ‘spiritual bypassing’ for using spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid painful feelings and unresolved wounds. Like any painkiller, the numbing it brings has costs, both for the person and for the world: a spirituality that says the middle-world just needs to be transcended ends up turning its back on the suffering in it.11 See What is spiritual bypassing, and how can psychotherapy help prevent it?
Trying to rise above both the middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer and the Soul by focusing mainly on Spirit often leaves people over-detached, otherworldly and ungrounded. Shamanism teaches instead that we need to rise, but rise rooted.12 Without Spirit, Soul lacks perspective and discernment; without Soul and the body, Spirit becomes abstract and unhealthily detached from the living world. A spiritually intelligent life, in this approach, is one in which all the parts of us, Body, middle-world self, Soul and Spirit, are brought into a balanced, non-hierarchical relationship. See What are Soul, Spirit, the middle-world self and the body?
Gardner adds a point of his own that sits well with this: no intelligence is moral in itself, and any intelligence can be used well or badly.13 Skill at entering altered states says nothing on its own about whether a person is kind, grounded or wise.
Is spiritual intelligence the same as existential intelligence? #
They overlap, and writers draw the line in different places. For Gardner, the concern with life’s ultimate questions is the most clearly intellectual strand of the spiritual, so he kept that and called it existential intelligence. King and DeCicco include existential thinking as one of their four abilities, alongside meaning, transcendent awareness and expanded states.14 Therapeutic Shamanism has its own view of existential intelligence, which runs it across the other Peoples as well as humans; see What is existential intelligence? and What are the different kinds of intelligence, and how has the list grown?
