Can “Spiritual Intelligence” Explain Mystical Experiences?

Source: Luminas_Art via Pixabay, free photo

A recent study (Bitēna & Mārtinsone, 2021) argued that mystical experience is a spiritual phenomenon associated with mental health rather than something pathological associated with mental illness because it correlates with a measure of “spiritual intelligence.” However, this argument seems tautological because “spiritual intelligence” involves belief in spiritual phenomena associated with having a mystical experience. Additionally, the study found that both mystical experience and “spiritual intelligence” were related to magical thinking, indicating that the former may be associated with irrationality. Both mystical experience and “spiritual intelligence” may share an underlying tendency to blur the boundaries between the inner and outer worlds, so that what is imagined may seem real.

The enduring enigma of mystical experience

Interest in mystical experience in psychology goes back at least as far as William James’ 1902 book The Varieties of Religious Experience. Mystical experiences are typically associated with a sense of transcending the boundaries of self, space, and time and becoming absorbed in something greater than oneself, which some people describe as becoming one with the universe. Those who undergo such experiences often perceive them as utterly profound. For example, one famous study found that experimental volunteers who had undergone a mystical experience induced by psilocybin considered it to be one of the most significant events of their lives, even more than a year later (Griffiths et al., 2006). (I discussed this study in this post.) Furthermore, the same study found that months after this experience, the participants felt they had more positive attitudes to life and themselves, that their relationships had improved, and had a sense of increased spirituality and increased satisfaction with life (Griffiths et al., 2011). On the other hand, some features of mystical experiences resemble those found in psychotic states, such as hallucinations and odd beliefs, and people who have them may become distressed and experience consequent psychological problems. This has produced some debate about whether mystical experiences are pathological in nature or a feature of healthy psychological development (Bitēna & Mārtinsone, 2021).

Mysticism, "spiritual experience," and magical thinking

A recent study (Bitēna & Mārtinsone, 2021) involving 299 Latvian women^[1] attempted to clarify this issue by examining the relationships between mystical experience and a measure of “spiritual intelligence” (I have discussed this concept here, here, and here) as a purported marker of psychological health, as well as with measures of psychopathology, including schizotypy and psychotic symptoms. Schizotypy refers to tendencies that resemble those found in people with schizophrenia, although in a more attenuated form. This study assessed both “positive” schizotypy, including unusual perceptions (e.g. seeing things that others do not) and unusual beliefs (e.g., magical thinking, claiming to have supernatural abilities such as mind reading or telekinesis), and “negative” schizotypy, including social avoidance and lack of normal emotions. Psychotic symptoms assessed in this study included delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized speech, thought, or behavior.

What is "spiritual intelligence"?

“Spiritual intelligence” in this study was defined as “mental capacities that constitute awareness as well as the ability to successfully apply nonmaterial and transcendent elements of one’s existence” (Bitēna & Mārtinsone, 2021). To measure this purported ability, the study used a scale with three dimensions: critical existential thinking (ability to critically contemplate the nature of existence); personal meaning production (ability to construct personal meaning and purpose in everything); and transcendental awareness (capacity to identify transcendent dimensions of the self, of others, and of the physical world during the normal, waking state of consciousness) (King & DeCicco, 2009)^[2]. Mystical experience was assessed using a scale that included representative statements like, “I have had an experience in which something greater than myself seemed to absorb me” and “I have had an experience in which a new view of reality was revealed to me.”

Source: Pxfuel, free photo

In the results, there were quite large positive correlations between the measure of mystical experience and that of “spiritual intelligence” and its three component dimensions. Additionally, mystical experience had moderate positive correlations with measures of positive schizotypy, particularly unusual beliefs and perceptions, and with psychotic symptoms. However, mystical experience was unrelated to measures of negative schizotypy such as social avoidance and lack of emotions. Overall spiritual intelligence and its dimensions had comparable results, as they had modest positive correlations with unusual beliefs and perceptions and to a lesser extent with psychotic symptoms. To assess which factors were most strongly related to mystical experience, the authors conducted a further analysis of several variables at the same time that showed that a very large amount of variance in participants’ scores on mystical experience was accounted for by spiritual intelligence, with considerably smaller contributions from unusual beliefs and perceptions, and an even smaller contribution from psychotic symptoms.

The real deal with "spiritual experience" and mystical experience

Based on their results, the authors concluded that mystical experience can be seen as “a spiritual rather than a pathological phenomenon” (Bitēna & Mārtinsone, 2021). Although the results show some interesting findings, I believe that this conclusion is rather tautological and needs to be looked at more critically.

First, the authors assume that “spiritual intelligence” is both a valid measure of some kind of spiritual ability and of psychological health. However, just because mystical experience is correlated with something claiming to be “spiritual” does not establish anything substantive. One issue is that much of the item content in the “spiritual intelligence” scale presupposes belief in spiritual phenomena that are similar to the kinds of experiences being tapped by the mysticism scale. For example, the transcendental awareness subscale includes items like, “I am highly aware of the nonmaterial aspects of life” while the critical existential thinking subscale includes items like “I have often contemplated the relationship between human beings and the rest of the universe.” Compare these with items from the mysticism scale, like “I have had an experience in which a new view of reality was revealed to me” and "I have had an experience in which all things seemed to be conscious.” These items presuppose a spiritual vision of the world. Hence, the very strong correlations between the measures of mystical experience and spiritual intelligence may reflect that they are measuring highly similar things. To be fair, the personal meaning production dimension of spiritual intelligence is not as overtly spiritual and focuses on adaptive functioning, with items like “I am able to find meaning and purpose in my everyday experiences.” Hence, overlapping content does not seem to be such an issue for this dimension.

In a follow-up post, I discuss the issue of whether mystical experience is pathological and what “spiritual intelligence” might actually represent.

^[1] Only 9 men volunteered to participate in the study, so their results were not analysed to keep the sample more homogeneous.

^[2] The original spiritual intelligence developed by King and DeCicco also included a dimension of “conscious state expansion” related to the ability to enter altered states of consciousness at will. Bitēna & Mārtinsone do not seem to have included this dimension in their study though.