Intelligence
Question:-
Can you say something about emotional intelligence? In the West, Intellectuals and others used to think that emotions are something negative. They were called irrational and behaviour based on emotion was seen as something bad and opposite of being rational and good. For example if you do not control your anger and jealousy it can lead to destructive and harmful behaviour.
But these days in modern times, we have the concept of Emotional Intelligence (E.Q) which is now widely acknowledged as being more important in life than I.Q. Can you comment on this? What is the difference between being spiritual and emotional? Where do the "nafs" and the "ruh" fit in the psychological vocabulary. Is there a higher and lower psychology?
Answer:-
Spirit (ruh) is a general term and refers to a fundamental force in the Universe connected with the Word of Allah. It carries the Word of God, Truth, by which all things are created and inspired. The soul (nafs) can be regarded as organised spirit such that each person has his own unique one.
"They will ask you about the Spirit. Say: The Spirit is (or comes) by the command of my Lord, and you are given but a little knowledge (or control) thereof." 17:85
"So when I have fashioned it, and breathed into it of My Spirit, then fall you down before him, prostrating yourselves before him (in obeisance)." 15:29
"He sends down the angels with the Spirit at His command upon whom He will of His servants, saying, "Give warning that there is no God but Me; therefore, fear (do your duty to) Me." 16:2
"Say:, The Holy Spirit brought it (the Message) down from your Lord in truth, that it may confirm (the faith of) those who believe, and for a guidance and glad tidings to those who have Surrendered unto Allah (Muslims)." 16:102
"(Allah) Who made good everything that He has created, and He began the creation of man from dust. Then He made his progeny of an extract, of a fluid held in low esteem. Then He fashioned him and breathed into him of His spirit, and made for you the faculties of hearing, and sight and heart; little is it that you give thanks." 32:7-9
According to 23:7-9, we can divide man into three interacting aspects or levels. But they are malfunctioning. We can also divide into a triad:-
(1) Spirit - Consciousness, conscience, will
(2) Mind - intellect, feeling, action
(3) Body - sensations, processing, reactions
All have intelligence connected with them.
There are several kinds of intelligence and several definitions of intelligence. In my view Intelligence can be regarded as referring to adaptability, which requires a feed back loop: perception (input), processing and activity (output). This implies interaction of an entity with the context or environment in which it exists and some kind of purpose or function such as self-preservation. A simple form of intelligence is elasticity.
The sensations we receive through the senses tend to have three affects and produce three kinds of memory - intellectual, feeling and action. They all constitute different kinds of information that can be processed.
Emotion is only an expression of feeling. i.e. if we are angry we have a feeling of anger and give it expression by attack etc. When this expression is out of control this is regarded as bad because it is destructive, does evil and debilitates the individual so that he cannot solve the problem that causes the anger. It needs to be consciously controlled. Feelings give information but different from those of thoughts in the intellect. Human relationships require feelings. People have emotional intelligence to various degrees. Autistic people and certain kinds of psychopaths or sociopaths have little emotional intelligence. Many highly intellectual intelligent people may be immature and childish emotionally.
Actions are also intelligent to different degrees. One can be very skilful or very clumsy.
Many people mistake feeling, emotion or sentimentality (emotional attachment to something) for spirituality. But from the above schema it can be seen that Spirit is not emotion or feeling. However, a spiritual experience does produce affects on thought, feeling and action and can regarded as a combination of these at a deeper level. This is referred to as the "heart" in the Quran. Though it does not refer to the physical organ directly there is evidence that there is some connection with the functioning of the heart and the Cardiac plexus of nerves in the Autonomic Nervous system.
Different people cultivate these different intelligences to different degrees at expense of the others and become unbalanced. Whole nations and civilisations are unbalanced causing malfunctions. This generally leads to increasing problems and destruction. As these faculties are inter-dependent the exaggerated development of one faculty will obstruct the development of the others.
Islam requires a balanced development of all these faculties.
(Actually body can be divided into 3 main physical systems and when one dominates over the others we get the three types:- ectomorph, endomorph and mesomorph. Or we can divide into Nervous System, Visceral System and Skeletal System. We can divide the Nervous system into Brain, Spinal column and Autonomous Nervous system, and the Brain into Cerebrum, Midbrain and Brain stem. The Visceral system can be divided into the Circulatory, Respiratory and Digestive systems. etc. etc.)
Generally speaking, we can speak of three forms of behaviour:-
(1) Sub-rational behaviour that is not controlled by the higher conscious volitional faculties but is sub-conscious. This includes reflex or automatic reactions, impulsiveness, habits, conditioned reflexes.
(2) Rational behaviour controlled by conscious thought.
(3) Super-rational behaviour that requires higher forms of consciousness such as self-consciousness, objective consciousness and cosmic-consciousness, which are not normally active. These give the possibility of thinking about reality in a selfless manner.
Corresponding to these we also have three psychological systems or aspects:-
(1) The sub-lingual whereby we have (i) direct interaction with the environment or (ii) through the senses or (iii) through associations and conditioned reflexes formed in memory. Though communication does take place through gestures and expressions this is generally an unconscious or sub-conscious interaction.
(2) The lingual system which applies symbols and words to experiences and forms concepts and ideas. This is a social phenomena generally required for conscious communication. Thinking in words or symbols is not the same thing as thinking in terms of the experiences. The system of ideas we have is not the same thing as the system of experiences. But words are also experiences that form association with other experiences. It is, therefore, possible and normally happens that people react to the sound or sight of words in a reflex manner by passing the meaning of the words. Thinking in terms of the meaning is relatively rare. However, language can also be used at a higher level as in the case of symbolism.
(3) The supra-lingual system requires consciousness of the patterns in nature and it is these which, when description is required in order to communicate, are encoded in symbolism. But it is possible that direct transmission of such experiences can take place if the recipient is also conscious of the effects. This requires considerable capacity for empathy.
Question:-
It is supposed by many intellectuals in the West that there is an irreconcilable contradiction between Science and Mysticism and that mysticism should be abandoned as irrational superstition that is incompatible with intelligence. How do science and mysticism fit into the scheme of things, particularly from the Islamic point of view?
Answer:-
Islam recognises three sources of knowledge:- Ayn-ul-Yaqin (102:7), Ilm-ul-Yaqin (102:5), Haqq-ul-Yaqin (69:51) - The senses, reason and insight.
(1) Empirical knowledge obtained by experience through the senses, feelings etc.
(2) Verbal or rational knowledge obtained through the mental processing.
(3) Direct conscious knowledge obtained through insight, inspiration or revelation - knowledge in the heart which may be callled gnosis.
It is necessary to understand that human consciousness is limited and we can speak of the mind as consisting of an unconscious, a sub-conscious and conscious part. We are consciously aware of only a very small part of all the forces coming from our environment that affect us and all the processes taking place within us. Indeed, we are not generally aware of our posture or what we are doing with our arms and feet. There is a part of this we can become aware of if we direct attention to it. For instance, we could observe more closely what others are doing and how we react to them.
We need (a) an input of data, (b) we have to process this by analysis, association and synthesis to provide meaning and (c) we have to produce an output and reach a goal which requires values. The data we receive depends on the environment we are in and the actions we take. We come by data through the ordinary processes of living by interaction with the environment, but we also deliberately seek data and undergo an educational system. The processing takes a direction determined by our values and goals. These are partly inbuilt in us as instincts and drives and partly modified by experiences. There are primary goals and secondary goals that serve the primary and there are tertiary goals that serve the secondary goals. Often the original goals are forgotten and the means become the ends. Apart from raw information or facts and the results of processing that provide meaning, there is the tendency is to form self-consistent systems that give value to facts. But there are usually a number of such systems in the mind that overlap or are mutually exclusive to various degrees.
This processing goes on at the unconscious, sub-conscious and conscious level. The processing at the conscious level deals with a restricted set of facts. It is called reason. But the process may be defective and interfered with (negatively or positively) by sub-conscious and unconscious factors.
The processing at the sub-conscious level deals with a greater number of experiences - e.g. various emotional events that might have been excluded from consciousness and to which fixations have been formed. The processing is personal and subjective. The sub-conscious subjective process is generally regarded as an infra-rational process. But that is because its purpose or function differs from the restricted purposes of the rational process.
The processing at the unconscious level is much more powerful and comprehensive. Consider for instance a game of cricket where a bowler manipulates a ball and sends it to the batsman who hits it and the ball goes flying into the air and a fielder has to catch it. Consider the amount of processing that is going on in all these activities and none of this is done through reason. The organism is concerned with the process of living in connection with the real world and not with thinking about it.
The point to be understood here is that the degree of consciousness varies between people and also in the same person at different times. It is possible occasionally by sensitive persons and others through suitable techniques and disciplines to contact the normally unconscious mind. The result of this is inspiration or revelation. In general, scientists and artists and others arrive at brilliant ideas in this way when they suspend conscious efforts. Most or all students have had the experience of "the penny dropping" - that is, after considerable efforts to understand something without success, there comes a time when a sudden flash of understanding happens. This kind of enlightenment also takes place in dreams. Mysticism refers to this supra-rational process.
Note that reason is only a sub-set of intelligence and that logic which deals with words and mathematics that deals with numbers are small subsets of reason. These three should not be confused.
Human intelligence should be regarded as a subset of Universal Intelligence. The Universe can be regarded as a huge organism, or a huge brain in which data processing is being carried out at a massive scale. Some scientists have compared the Universe to a computer, but computers are rigid and unintelligent in that they differ from brains where apart from the ability to change and use appropriate software, the hardware itself is flexible and adaptable, and it is also the user as well as the programmer.
From this point of view the controversy between Evolution and Intelligent Design as the cause of things is wholly absurd and based on a misunderstanding on both sides of the argument. There is most certainly Design or Order in the Universe and there is no reason to believe that Intelligence is confined to human beings – that is a restricted anthropomorphic view of things. Human beings are also products of nature subject to its laws. When things are seen in a unitary manner as arising from a single original source and, therefore, as belonging to a self-consistent system then it is understood that the whole is more than the sum of the parts and has controlling effects of the parts and parts must adjust to the whole to find equilibrium. Intelligence can be defined as the ability for adjustment and this varies in different things. Systems, however, have subsystems and belong as parts to higher systems. We could speak of Systems of Levels 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 etc. It is possible, therefore, that the forces affecting any particular system, say at level 4 come from several levels from both above and below, and that the system has to react and adjust itself to all of these.
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