SQ and EQ: Spiritual Wisdom vs Emotional Fulfilment
Questioner: Good Evening Sir. Because I remember something called Spiritual Quotient, and that being discussed once. So, I think what you were just talking about was related to that. Could you expand please on what is Spiritual Quotient, and how can one develop that.
Acharya Prashant: Spiritual Quotient, I do not honestly remember how I had explained it or defined it the last time. So, what I will say now will totally be different or even at odds with the previous thing. But let’s still go ahead because…
To me Spiritual Quotient is simply your intention to remain honest. Spiritual Quotient is simply your courage to live your love. Spiritual Quotient is your willingness to face ugliness when you look at yourself.
There is no SQ without self-knowledge, right? And why is self-knowledge so difficult? One could say, “One does not have knowledge of psychology because one did not have access to a university or a library.” But why must self-knowledge be difficult? Self-knowledge means knowing oneself. You are not a far-off library. You don’t have to seek admission in some external university to know yourself. You are available, you are accessible. Why do you still not know yourself? Because you will not bear to admit what you come across when you look at yourself. So, that’s SQ.
The willingness to not be dishonest to oneself, the love towards truth. What is the price I am prepared to pay? That’s SQ. SQ is not about the number of scriptures that you have read. It’s not about the verses that you have memorized. Nor is it about the rituals that you practice. It’s not about how disciplined you are with your religious practices, no. SQ is none of these.
SQ is love, honesty, courage. Love towards the truth, honesty in terms of acknowledging the truth, and courage to admit that you have been a liar. Ah! Worse than a liar, you have been a lie all along. If you have that then you have a high SQ. Love, honesty, courage.
Questioner: And how does one progress or is it something that one can develop or increase or enhance in oneself.
Acharya Prashant: If one wants to. So how does one develop SQ by having love, honesty and courage, it’s a choice, it’s a choice. When something is a matter of choice, it need not be developed. One does not develop when it comes to a choice. One exercises a choice. One exercises it. See, if you do not have muscles, you develop them. The problem with people is not that they do not have a spiritual muscle, the problem is that they do not exercise it. That’s a choice. Having a muscle is one thing. Having it and still not exercising it, is another thing. What’s funny is that when you exercise it, you develop it. So, how do you develop love, courage and honesty? By being loving, courageous and honest. How do you develop a muscle. By exercising it.
Questioner: As opposed to something like an Intelligent Quotient, which supposedly...
Acharya Prashant: Yes , it’s not a matter of practice, it’s not a matter of practice. You could say it is a matter of practice but much before the practice, comes the choice. Developing the muscle by way of exercising it involves repetitions and practice, we agree, but all that is a choice. Because the muscle pains, when you stretch it, when you pull it, when you lift that weight, it pains. There has to be a willingness to bear the pain. There has to be a love for strength. There has to be a honesty to admit that you are responsible for your own weakness, if you do not exercise it. If you do not exercise your muscle then who are who are the one who is choosing to remain weak. So, it’s about just taking a decision.
I decide to not to be afraid. A lot of people will say this is simplistic or utopian or impractical. But it’s after a lot of consideration, I am saying that this is the only practical and possible way. There has to be a decision. Nothing else works. A moment comes when you simply say, “I drop all the nonsense.” And that moment is very possible might not come after thousands of years of practice. Practice does not lead you there. You can keep practicing and yet never decide to drop it. And you can drop it right now. So, all things kept aside it’s a matter of choice. SQ is choice.
Questioner: Sir, has grace got anything to do with Spiritual Quotient.
Acharya Prashant: Even grace is choice you see, and that choice is not made by grace. The Sun is shining bright, one chooses to crawl under a rock. Grace will not rain on you. It’s a choice to come out to the Sun. It’s a choice to receive the brightness right in your eye, it’s a choice. Grace is not conditional. The condition is imposed by the recipient of grace, not by grace. The Sun is not saying, “I do not want to illuminate everybody.” The Sun is equally available to everybody. If you are still in the dark, it’s your choice. So, grace is not something you can blame situations for. Else grace sounds so much like luck and the entire discussion becomes fatalistic. You say, “Oh! You know, grace shown so abundantly over him, that’s the reason he could develop his IQ and grace was a little partial here, in my case. I didn’t have a good measure of favor from grace. And that’s the reason why I am Spiritually underdeveloped. One could say things like that, right? No, no, no, grace in unconditional. The condition is from our side. That’s the choice I am talking of.
Questioner: Thank you sir!
Questioner: If one is trying to learn something but is not getting emotional fulfillment, it becomes difficult to learn. Then, how to tackle that.
Acharya Prashant: It’s not a very difficult thing to learn. What if it’s about fighting cancer and you have third stage cancer, survival chances are slim? You don’t want to give up. One round of chemotherapy, one kind treatment. Then another round, another kind, this, that. A thousand things you are trying and it’s not if as if you are seeing very visible progress but you still continue to fight, right?
So, it’s not necessarily progress that keeps you going. It’s an appreciation of the importance of the project, that keeps you going, or at least do not let you buckle down.
What I am doing is very, very important and because it is important, so it has to be done irrespective of whether there is clear progress or not. That does not mean that I do not bother for success. Obviously if I see success, that’s wonderful but even if I do not see success, now I cannot retreat. The option to drop the project has been dropped.
Are you getting it?
And that’s how one proceeds in life. Not on the basis of emotional fulfillment but on the basis of an appreciation, an acknowledgement of the importance of what you are doing. These are two very different things, Emotion vs Importance. You can be emotional about something very unimportant, right? If you look at emotional people, mostly they are emotional about very trivial things, are they not? Somebody is emotional about his handkerchief and that happens. People argue and then they get emotional and the argument was over something very flimsy. So, it’s not your emotion that can really take you through the trivials of life. You must know what is really, really, important and for that you need attention.
You need to have an honesty, a love, that does not allow self-delusion. You cannot tolerate to keep yourself in the dark. You say, “Fine! even if I lie to others, even if I misrepresent to others, at least let me know for myself what the reality is like.” And when you know that then you come upon the real importance of something, anything. And that’s when your, your, commitment and your real energy is activated. Emotional attachment or emotional fulfillment, all this is all right, but it cannot take you far. You cannot spend an entire life on an emotional upsurge.
If you want to unflinchingly remain with something, then you must know who you are and why that thing is important to you. Emotion mostly arises from blind physical tendencies. It’s an upsurge, it’s a balloon, it’s a tide and the tide has both ebb and flow. There is nobody who remains or can remain in an aroused emotional state for too long. Can you? So even if emotion does unleash energy, it is short-lived. Anger for example, opens up a lot of energy within, Adrenaline. But how long can you afford to remain angry? You will die of high BP. You’ll get a cardiac arrest if you are continuously angry for a week. A week is probably too much. Two days, maybe six hours. You’re gone.
People want sexual arousal, they consume Aphrodisiacs and then they die. Because the body cannot tolerate that level of arousal for too long. That’s emotion. But consciousness, not only can It tolerate a heightened state, it actually craves for the continuity of a heightened state. That’s the difference. Heightened emotion is drain of energy. Emotion is temporal. Heightened consciousness is the best use of energy. Heightened consciousness is the discipline of energy.
So, you require understanding rather than emotion and when you understand, a beautiful thing happens — Emotion tows the line. If you really understand you will find a great change in your life. Your emotion will become a follower of your understanding. And there’s no better state you can aspire for as a conscious being. Now emotion is not your enemy. Now emotion is not a blind lead. Now emotion is not even a blind master leading you into dark forests. Now you are indeed still emotional, you do experience emotion but the quality of experience has changed, the quality has sublimated.
Its a experience of a scientist, it’s the emotion of a scientist, when he sees something extraordinary in his laboratory for the first time. It is the emotion of a saint when he looks at all the suffering and ignorance widespread in the world. The scientist, you can find his face laced with tears, the saint too is crying. Obviously there is emotion, but this emotion has a totally different quality because it is arising from your understanding.
Are you getting it?
And when you stay put, skill is something that you gradually or sometimes rapidly do learn. Sooner than later skill is inevitable, if you have given your heart to something. And even if the project that you have taken up is so difficult, that it’s difficult, that it’s a tedious thing to be skilled at it, you still don’t give up. You say, “Fine, I might not be an expert at this thing skill wise. I might not be very proficient, but the thing is so important, I cannot give up on it. So, I will continue to be at it.”
Questioner: So my question is how we can find balance between these two social and spiritual life .The time that I spent socializing , I find myself moving away from my spiritual interest.
Acharya Prashant: So, socialize with spiritual people. That’s the answer. Then there will no division, no exclusivity. Right now, it is spiritual or social. Let It Be social and spiritual.
Questioner: But sir you cannot find like-minded people whenever we want.
Acharya Prashant: Are you so unique and special, seriously?
Questioner: No, no.
Acharya Prashant: So, there are others, there are others. It’s just that we are slave to our past and habits. So, we carry some friends from the past or from coincidence and then we stick to those people. There is no need. Find out the right people, you can socialize with and if you cannot find them in college, find them online. If you can’t find them online, find them in books. If you cannot find them anywhere, then stay with yourself. But for sure you can find them. It’s not that the world is so bereft of spiritual people. You will find them right in your college.
