Finding Auroville

Over the past few decades the term “emotional intelligence” has become popular in the general lexicon to denote a form of intelligence that is different from the regularly understood mental intelligence. Emotional intelligence is linked with levels of emotional understanding, maturity and empathy. In this post I will make connections between the concept of emotional intelligence and the process of the dissolution of the ego or self-realization that is at the core of Yoga and Integral Yoga. This process includes the understanding of, coming to terms with and gaining control over our vital emotions – our desires, attachments, fears and insecurities, so that their influence over our actions is diminished. In this way there are similarities and overlaps between increased emotional intelligence and spiritual progress on the path of self-realization. Emotional intelligence and emotional maturity are therefore useful general terms to use for an understanding of the aspect of the process of self-realization that relates to gaining control over our vital emotions, even though self-realization of course ultimately goes much beyond just emotional intelligence.

In previous posts we have seen how in the philosophy of Integral Yoga, humans in their current stage in the evolutionary process are mental beings, with a highly developed mental faculty. It is this mental faculty that has created the complex world that humanity exists in, with its science, technology, art, philosophy etc. However, as developed as this mental faculty is, it is still under the control of the animal part of our being, which is our vital emotions. It is because of this control of humanity’s mental faculty by our vital ego that even though human civilization has advanced so much over the millennia, we are still embroiled to such an extent in war, division, conflict, competition, inequality and strife. Despite all this, the mental faculty is also the one that aspires to a higher way of life, aspires to harmony, egalitarianism, peace, love, compassion and unity. It is the vessel for humanity’s sattwic attributes, and the bridge that will deliver humanity from being under the control of the vital ego to the influence and guidance of the Divine presence that resides in each of us and that is a part of the universal and transcendent Divine consciousness.

For now though our mental faculty is under the influence and control of our vital ego. This influence is often very subtle and veiled. It is even able to give the illusion of being altruistic when in actuality its motivations are extremely self-centered. Under such powerful influence, even people who would be considered to have extremely high mental and intellectual acuity fall victim to their vital urges, cravings, fears and insecurities. They use their mental acuity for selfish and self-centered aims. And even though social morality currently exists in a highly imperfect and hypocritical state, it sometimes requires a display or veneer of altruistic action, looking down or pretending to look down on self-centered acts. Because of this, the mental faculty of the individual works overtime to cover up its self-centered acts and presents them as altruistic. So the mental faculty acts in a selfish manner, and is sophisticated enough to be deceptive and presents its selfish action as a morally acceptable one. Such is the potency of the vital ego and its grasp over the human mind and intellectual faculty, that this type of deception goes on unabated all over the world, all the time, both in extremely subtle as well as completely overt ways. And this will continue to go on till individuals and collectives move sincerely towards self-realization.

So we have here a model of a highly developed mental faculty acting in very selfish and self-centered ways, partaking in acts that might be extremely damaging and hurtful to others, displaying gross arrogance and carelessness, as long as those acts are materially beneficial to them, or even just seemingly so. The mental faculty under the control of the vital ego even engages in actions that are ultimately damaging to the persons engaging in the acts themselves, as long as it temporarily satiates one or other craving, urge or defense mechanism of the vital ego. This is how mental intelligence diverges from emotional intelligence and emotional maturity. A mentally acute person can act in a way that is damaging and hurtful to others or even to themself. And such a person can act in ways that are very obviously self-centered and arrogant, without them realizing that that is what they are doing, and even making excuses for their actions. In these ways, a mentally intelligent person can simultaneously be very emotionally immature, and thus have “low” emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is generally defined as the ability to understand and manage one’s emotions, and the ability to understand the emotions of others and empathize with them. This is very similar to what happens in the process of self-realization with jnana yoga (the yoga of knowledge), where we observe ourselves and others with the aim of comprehending the root motivations for our actions. These root motivations always reside in our vital emotions, which is why and how the vital controls our being. The reason why a person is prompted to undertake this task of observation is usually because they have reached a recognition of the unhappiness and suffering in themselves and in the world at large, the fact that the vital ego is the source of this suffering as well as the cause of all the strife, conflict and inequality in the world, and they have become determined to find a solution to this unhappiness. The path of self-realization leads to the cessation of this unhappiness and suffering in the individual as well as the collective. A good way to frame all this is with the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, the first of which is the identification and acknowledgement of suffering in the self and the world, and the second is the understanding that the source of this suffering is the emotions of the vital ego. Once the vital emotions have been identified as the source of all suffering, the diminishing and negation of the control that these emotions have over the being can be understood as the path away from suffering and towards ananda.

The more emotional intelligence or emotional maturity a person has, the more understanding they have of their emotions and the emotions of others, and the more control they have over their emotions. This runs in parallel, to an extent, with the deepening understanding of the self in the process of self-realization. So the tropes of emotional intelligence and emotional maturity have a usefulness in framing this aspect of the process of self-realization. However, in Yoga the observation of the self and of others that is undertaken has to be completely objective. What this means is that the motivation for this observation has to be completely selfless. The aim is to better understand ourselves and others in order to gain a deep awareness of the motivations of human action, so that we can then rise above the vital emotions that keep us tethered to the material self and material nature. If instead of this, our aim for better understanding ourselves and others is to gain some material advantage in our dealings with others in material nature, we are once again succumbing to our vital emotions and remain emotionally embroiled in material nature. So in Yoga our motivations for self-observation have to be completely objective and selfless. The trope of emotional intelligence by itself does not include this aspect of transcending material nature, and ultimately remains within the confines of our vital emotions even as it signifies gaining control over these emotions to an extent. In this way it falls prey to the same limitation that all philosophy, scholarship and social and psychological analysis have because they do not aim to transcend material nature. Human scholarship in all its glory is part of the mental sophistication that humanity has reached, but it does not go beyond the mental towards the Divine through the process of the dissolution of the ego.

So a deepening of emotional intelligence is the beginning stage of the process of self-realization. We can say that it tracks the movement of the domination of the rajasic and tamasic qualities of the vital and the physical in an individual to the domination of the sattwic qualities that are connected with the mind trying to move away from the vital and towards true altruism. So ultimately, it is the mind itself, through self-observation, that takes the mind and the being from being controlled by the vital emotions towards the Divine consciousness (or the thing beyond material nature, however one wants to define it). Therefore emotional intelligence is just a deepening and widening of mental intelligence, or of a facet of mental intelligence, so that the mind moves beyond thinking just about itself and begins to think about acting for the benefit of others and ultimately humanity as a whole. Initially this wider thinking still has self-benefit as its aim in one way or another, but once the path of the dissolution of the ego is embarked upon, this wider thinking becomes truly more and more selfless. During the time that this movement of the mind is still happening within the realm of material nature, it still does allow the individual to gain a higher vantage point in observing the functioning of the self and of humanity. As the mind then comprehends the benefits of completely snapping the hold that our vital emotions have over our being and we begin to move beyond material nature completely, our vantage point rises higher and higher, and we are able to view and comprehend our self and humanity more and more holistically.

In this way, the phrase emotional intelligence is useful since it gives us a general term to understand the initial stages of the movement towards self-realization, during which the mind is moving away from rajasic and tamasic actions towards sattwic actions.