What is the greatest thing that mankind has ever owned? You might say the human mind. The sharper the mind, the more effective and accurate is your decision making. Intelligence Quotient (IQ) denotes your mental capability to grasp and understand, and apply the learned information and skills to new situations in a purposeful way.
Another benchmark is Emotional Quotient (EQ), the ability to understand and handle various emotions of people. The core difference between IQ and EQ is that one deals with information and the other with emotion. A person with higher IQ can logically understand information whereas a person with higher EQ is able to feel the emotions of others.
In recent times, spiritual quotient (SQ) has caught the attention of people, especially the intellectual brains in the West. SQ is the measure of a person’s spiritual intelligence in the same manner as IQ assesses cognitive intelligence and EQ emotional intelligence.
This may sound fancy but spirituality is really a simple thing. Spiritual Quotient lies in Awareness rather than thinking or feeling. It denotes a person’s ability to acknowledge that the phenomenal Supreme Intelligence lies beyond the six senses of man.
Albert Einstein was once asked what lies beyond the human brain, and he answered: ‘I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts. The rest are details’.
This human curiosity to fathom the secrets of creation and how it works so flawlessly under direction of the Cosmic Intelligence could be the measure of Spiritual Quotient in a person. The concept of SQ is therefore much broader than IQ or EQ and has none of their limitations. Spiritual Quotient is more about open–ended enquiry than answers. It is about unlearning what the world has taught you and seeing situations from a larger perspective, by removing all judgement and definitions.
American educator Stephen Covey calls Spiritual Intelligence the central and most fundamental of all the intelligences, because it becomes the source of guidance for others. You become spiritually intelligent when you have realised your true self. Once the connection with the Universe is established, then comes the awakening of wisdom, empathy, intuition and compassion. No longer are you involved with the mundane body and trivial human concerns. Knowing yourself to be present everywhere and in everything, you are happy to guide others.
The higher your Spiritual Quotient, the greater your ability to transcend the conception of physical world and experience the higher tastes of consciousness. Viewing things and situations from a different dimension, you develop self-awareness, creativity and gratitude. At that point, you have the resources to solve every problem and live a far more meaningful life full of awareness and joy of being.
