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| Thinking we understand the mechanism behind reality takes away wonder and awe. |
The research today is pointing towards a very complex landscape when it comes to human intelligence. Even though it might not be the case that we possess multiple intelligences, which are completely independent of one another, we can point to different aspects of intelligence. These aspects might be developed to varying degrees in one individual.
One of these lines of intelligence is our spiritual understanding. Our spiritual intelligence is a measure of how we understand our relation to existence/the universe/god itself. If we have a direct experience of god, a so called awakening experience, we might interpret it in a number of different ways. The way we explain such an experience to us is our spiritual intelligence. Someone with a deep believe in christian mythology will interpret the same experience very differently from someone who has a background in buddhism. The problem with religion is that it has stopped it's evolution on the mythical level of spiritual understanding. This was the common understanding of people 2000 years ago.
A person at an integral stage of development on the other hand will arrive at a pantheistic understanding of the same enlightenment experience. His level of spiritual intelligence could be regarded as much higher than the person on the mystical stage.
The critical insight here is that we have to admit that we have no school in western societies that addresses our spiritual intelligence. Since religion has turned it's back on true spiritual practices that lead to waking up, many people have lost faith in it's efficacy or don't even know it's original purpose anymore. In general that leads to a population of people with very low spiritual intelligence. Most people in western societies have very little chance to ever discover the value of an effective spiritual practice. Some people discover eastern traditions, eventually leading to an awakening. But it is a difficult undertaking because these traditions developed from a very different cultural background.
To effectively develop ones spiritual intelligence requires serious effort, which is why very few people are willing to do it. There is no default mechanism build into society that would advance spiritual development, making it a very personal undertaking.
By the nature of the overall process of human development, and because the different intelligences are at least partly interlinked, our spiritual understanding of the cosmos advances slowly over time. It takes hundreds of years until the insights from physics trickle down into our common understanding. We can see how, one hundred years later, the insights from quantum mechanics, that nothing exists independently of anything else, has not made it into our common understanding. Our perceived reality is still such, that we experience ourselves as an independent entity.
"If you have not been shocked by quantum mechanics, it is impossible that you have understood it." - Niels Bohr