January 2026
With AI already besting the human brain at some cognitive tasks, and catching up on others, “spiritual intelligence” (SQ), is perhaps our species’ best remaining advantage over machines, a recent Psychology Today blog suggests.
ILLUSTRATION Mindworld / Pixabay
The seismic change brought by AI is making us question our unique place in the world. If machines can analyze, summarize, predict, and even mimic empathy on command, writes Jon Rosemberg in last month’s “A Guide to Thriving” blog in Psychology Today.
“Many of the abilities we once relied on to stand out are no longer exclusively human,” says Rosemberg.
Research shows that Spiritual Intelligence may be our “rising advantage” over AI, Rosemberg says. He defines SQ as, “how people find meaning and direction in their lives,” and its three qualities are: 1) a broad awareness that can discern patterns and interconnectedness; 2) a sense of purpose; and 3) a sense of presence.
One of the best investigations of SQ was a recent three-year study funded by a nearly $1 million Templeton World Charity Foundation grant. The research resulted in the recently published book “Perspectives on Spiritual Intelligence,” containing essays by some of the world’s leading experts.
The project was led by Marius Dorobantu, professor of theology and AI at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and Fraser Watts, a British priest, renowned psychologist, and expert in the field of science and theology. The investigation concluded Spiritual Intelligence is not a separate module of the brain, but a “unusually deep level of processing” information. It produces meaning, purpose, significance, a different understanding of reality rather than access to a different reality. It often goes slow in order to go deep.
“Much everyday intellectual activity is concerned with solving problems, and is very practically oriented. That leads to information processing that is selectively focused on what is needed to solve the problem in hand,” write Dorobantu and Watts in the book’s introduction. “Spiritual Intelligence, in contrast, avoids the narrowing associated with task-oriented intelligence, and is interested in the meaning and significance of things in themselves, beyond any immediate practical tasks.”
Cutting-edge thinkers at the intersection of science and spirituality see links between the “unusually deep level of processing” information of SQ and information physics, the theory that information and information processing is fundamental to the physical universe. Quantum phenomena unbound by time and space are a deep level of information processing. “It from bit,” is the famous phrase of American physicist John Wheeler who helped develop the idea.
For instance, The Science and Religion Forum (SRF) in 2022 in Birmingham, UK, was devoted solely to talks on the topic: “Information and Reality – Questions for Religions and Science.”
These thinkers are beginning to see this cosmic information processing as purposeful. For instance, the keynote speaker of the 2022 SRF, Niels Henrick Gregersen, professor of theology at University of Copenhagen, said quantum events underlying the universe have parallels with the ancient Greek and Christian idea of Logos, or what Gregersen calls “deep incarnation.”
English Cosmologist Jude Currivan says the universe is “in-formed” by consciousness, and planets, people, and everything else are co-creators by “meaningful information flows and processes.”
Information physics could help provide a scientific explanation for aspects of spirituality that defy classical physics, including parapsychological phenomena. Channelers, for instance, say they communicate with non-physical beings.
Helané Wahbeh, director of research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, proposes that trance channeling is actually on a continuum of Spiritual Intelligence which includes intuition. During an appearance on the Dr. Drew Show, she said, “There is growing evidence showing us that we are actually all interconnected and if that’s the case, whether it’s consciousness is fundamental, there is this connection between us that allows us to know information that goes beyond our five senses, that goes beyond space … Quantum entanglement shows that information can travel in a way that doesn’t fit into the material worldview. The phenomenon of an interconnected universe … could explain why we can access information instantaneously, in a realm where ordinary time and space don’t make sense. How? That is yet to discover!”
These scientists’ views generally hold that Spiritual Intelligence is the wisdom of information processing at the deepest level which somehow interfaces with the fundamental ordering dynamics of the cosmos.
Written by Tom Zolper
Edited by Liza Horan
