137. DANAH ZOHAR
Danah Zohar is a popular author and speaker who bridges physics, philosophy, psychology and religion. In this interview published in the Spirituality in Higher Education Newsletter, “Zohar shares how encouraging service and true education of our students is critical, especially given our current global economic crisis. By asking fundamental questions and having a spirit of creativity and critical thinking, Zohar argues that educators can develop the next generation of engaged citizens.”
Zohar shared her personal journey. “My first crisis of meaning came at age five with the divorce of my parents when I was sent away to live with my grandparents. This transition made me question all sorts of things at a very young age. My grandparents were very devout Methodists in a small town in the Midwest, and as a child I was a passionate Christian. After my grandfather died when I was nine, I moved back to the city with my mother. The combination of a sense that God had betrayed me in allowing my grandfather to die along with the narrow point of view expressed in the city Methodist church my mother attended made me lose my faith in Christianity by the age of 11.
“But because I was always a child looking for the meaning of things and trying to make sense of my life within a broader context of understanding, I immediately began looking for things to replace the role Christianity had played in my life. At the age of 13, I turned passionately to quantum physics. It was magical and exciting, and seemed to offer answers to the kind of big questions that adolescents ask: ‘Why was I born?’ ‘Why do I have to die?’ ‘How do I fit into the larger scheme of things?’ ‘What is the universe made of?’ This magic — the awe inspired by great science — and the conceptual approach of science that focuses on open-ended inquiry and analyzing anomalies for their significance, shaped how I made sense of the world.
“As I continued to grow in my spiritual understanding, I went on a personal odyssey through the world’s great religions, lasting until I was nearly 40. I became a Unitarian in my mid-teens and then converted to Judaism while I was at Harvard, living in Israel for four years from 1967–72. While my children were growing up, we traveled to Asia several times and became increasingly interested in Buddhism. And then the obvious questions came from my young children: ‘Mommy which is true?’ This made me think very deeply about my own personal journey, and how best to answer my children. That was really the beginning of my insights of bringing quantum physics and spiritual intelligence together.
“The open-ended questioning called for by great science, with its conviction that ‘there’s always more to know,’ along with the conviction that asking good questions is of greater importance than trying to come up with the ‘right’ answers, played an important role in this process and helped to shape my attitude toward education overall.”
“I now see spiritual intelligence as emerging from our most basic and primary need for and experience of deep meaning, essential purpose, and our most significant values and how these lead to a deeper, wiser, more questioning life and affect our decisions and experiences. My own spiritual position today is perhaps closest to Buddhism, but I feel equally at home in a mosque, synagogue, church, or a temple; I find them all sacred places to sit and contemplate and experience the energies, the longings, and the aspirations that people have taken to these places.”
“My formal work in the area of spiritual intelligence began when I was speaking at a conference in Malaysia. As we were discussing emotional intelligence and rational intelligence, I also mentioned spiritual intelligence; afterward people rushed up to me and wanted to learn more about this ‘spiritual intelligence.’”
“I define spiritual capital as the wealth, the power, and the influence that we gain by acting from a deep sense of meaning, our deepest values, and a sense of higher purpose, and all of these are best expressed through a life devoted to service. Based on this definition, spiritual intelligence is the intelligence by which we build spiritual capital. It is by seeking meaning in our lives and acting in accordance with our deepest values that we can commit ourselves to lives of service based on the capacity that we are best suited to, whatever we choose to do personally or professionally. I feel that service is one of the highest motivations that drives us to create spiritual capital that can empower our lives, practices, and projects.”
“Psychologists reckon that 94% of us, most of the time, are driven by the negative motivations of fear, greed/craving, anger, and self-assertion; such negative motivations lead to negative and destructive behavior. It is the role of spiritual intelligence to raise our motivations to the higher ones of exploration, cooperation, self- and situational-mastery, creativity, and service. I passionately believe that a motivation to serve something larger than ourselves — our families, communities, students, employees, customers, humanity, the environment, future generations, and life itself — is the highest form our spirituality can take. … Through it, we literally become servants, or ‘agents’ of God in this world, the spirit incarnate.”
“If you ask someone ‘what is business about?’ the majority will say ‘making money,’ which is far too narrow and reductive. When we focus solely on material wealth and possessions, grasping for more and more money, we stoke the greed and ruthlessness that has destroyed the world’s economy. Similarly, our current higher education system is too frequently biased towards training merely to get a job, rather than educating to become a good person and an effective citizen.”
“I see going into business as an act of higher service. One must ask ‘Why am I founding this company? What can I do with this company?’ Our businesses need to be serving more than just our employees and shareholders — they need to serve our communities and future generations and to generate wealth that we can live by. Research shows that companies with a sense of higher mission and service provide their employees with a greater sense of meaning. This, in turn, leads to higher productivity, less employee turnover, greater customer loyalty, and of course better profits. It’s good business to be good!
“As educators, we need to encourage students to think about the broader implications of why and how they are motivated to contribute to society in substantial and ethical ways that add value to our communities. I think the purpose of education — which we have lost largely in our society today — is fully to develop human beings who are good people, good citizens, good parents, and good servants to whatever they choose to pursue.”
“‘Instruction’ comes from the Latin word meaning ‘to put into’ or stuffing students full with facts and values. On the other hand, ‘education’ comes from the Latin word educare, meaning ‘to draw out.’ It acts on the premise that students have within them a great deal of innate knowledge and potential, and that it is the purpose of educators to draw this out by encouraging the students to ask good questions and to become critical thinkers.”
“Thomas Kuhn (1962), in his classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, did the ground-breaking work on the damaging effects of ‘paradigm paralysis’ — getting our minds stuck in the boxes we create. Great science, he points out, blows these boxes open. It questions the assumptions with which they have been constructed, and gives us a fresh perspective on the data being offered to our brains.”
“The Socratic Method is very powerful in getting students to engage in the process of questioning and digging deeper to discover what they really believe. When I was at MIT for my undergraduate education, the Dean of Students shared at induction day that ‘We’re not going to teach you a lot of facts here because they’ll be out of date by the time you graduate. So, what we’re going to teach you to do while you’re here is to think, because that is a skill you can take with you anywhere to assimilate new facts.’”
“Students should use their time at University to learn as much as they can, question as much as they can, create as much as they can, and change as much as they can. This is their time to grow themselves as human beings and to ask themselves big questions like ‘What constitutes a good life?’ and ‘What makes a good human being?’ … Educators need to encourage this process. … In his autobiography, Henry Adams shares, ‘A teacher affects eternity. He can never tell where his influence stops.’ This is the deep meaning, the deep purpose, and the deep reward of teaching — that we are affecting eternity.”
Q: What do you think of Zohar’s “spiritual intelligence” and “spiritual capital”?
