WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY?
Spirituality has been defined in the psychological literature in numerous ways ( Zinnbauer & Pargament, 2002; Zinnbauer & Pargament, 2005; Zinnbauer, Pargament, & Scott, 1999).
On the basis of the works of a number of authors dealing with spirituality and spiritual well-being, Westgate (1996) identified four components of spirituality: meaning and purpose in life (i.e., the
sense of a search for, or the finding of, meaning and purpose), transcendent beliefs and experiences (i.e., an awareness or experience of something beyond life’s rational aspects), intrinsic values (i.e., values, held by the individual with no ulterior motives, that guide his or her life), and community or relationship aspects (i.e., relationship with others and a willingness to help them). Westgate
pointed out that the first two components were included in all of the writings reviewed concerning spirituality although there was a large degree of variety concerning specific definitions and descriptions of these dimensions.
Almost all researchers appear to agree that spirituality is a multi-dimensional construct (Miller & Thoresen, 2003; Seybold & Hill, 2001; Zinnbauer & Pargament, 2005). The significance of a
multidimensional approach to spirituality is that the various components of
spirituality may be related to other variables in a differential manner. . MacDonald and Holland (2003) used the multidimensional Expressions of Spirituality Inventory (ESI) (MacDonald,
1997, 2000) in order to investigate the relation between spirituality and psychological functioning as operationalized by MMPI-2 scales and found general support for the predicted relation between spirituality and measures of depression and psychopathy. However, these researchers uncovered a pattern of differential correlations between the five ESI dimensions and the MMPI scales. For example, the MMPI Social Introversion scale was related to the Experiential / Phenomenological Dimension but not to the Paranormal Beliefs dimension, whereas the reverse was true for the MMPI Paranoia scale.
One of the few approaches to spirituality that does not include any references to religion – direct or indirect - was put forward by Elkins, Hedstrom, Huges, Leaf, and Saunders (1988). These researchers listed four major assumptions concerning spirituality. One of these assumptions is that spirituality is not identical to religiosity and an individual who is unaffiliated with traditional religion can still be ‘‘spiritual.’’ On the basis of an extensive literature search, Elkins et al. (1988) developed a multidimensional definition of spirituality. According to this definition, spirituality is composed of the following nine components: (a) Transcendent Dimension, (b) Meaning and Purpose in Life, (c) Mission in Life, (d) Sacredness of Life, (e) Material Values, (f) Altruism, (g) Idealism, (h) Awareness of the Tragic, and (i) Fruits of Spirituality. On the basis of this definition, Elkins et al. then developed the Spiritual Orientation Inventory (SOI) whose nine subscales demonstrated acceptable levels of reliability (Elkins, 1988) and which was found to discriminate between groups who were assumed to differ on level of spirituality (Lauri & Elkins, 1988). Later factor analysis of the SOI uncovered two higher order dimensions of spirituality - an experiential dimension and a spiritual value dimension (Zainuddin, 1993).
The SOI has been used in a number of empirical studies as a measure of spirituality (e.g., Smith, 1995; Sherman, 1996; Tloczynski, Knoll, & Fitch, 1997).
EJBO Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies Vol. 13, No. 2 (2008)
61 http://ejbo.jyu.fi/
Spirituality and Ethical Behaviour in the
Workplace: Wishful Thinking or Authentic Reality
Peter McGhee
Patricia Grant
Carrette & King (2005) offer a universal and useful definition of spirituality consisting of four
behavioural characteristics that evidence a specific mindset. The behavioural characteristics of spiritual individuals include:
1. Seeking to transcend their ego (i.e. their own self-interests)
2. Awareness and acceptance of their interconnectedness with others, creation and their Ultimate Concern
3. Understanding the higher significance of their actions while seeking to integrate their lives holistically
4. Believing in something beyond the material universe which ultimately gives value to all else
A brief description of each of these follows. According to Ashforth & Pratt (2003), themes of self–transcendence figure prominently in most definitions of spirituality. What is selftranscendence? It is something that calls us beyond the “self ” (i.e. the ego) to concern for, and relationships with, others and with the ultimate “other”. Torrance (1994) interprets it as “the individual in continuous interaction with a larger reality in which he or she transcends their personal existence” (p.82). Such persons transcend their egoistic self not by floating off to some mystical union or separate realm of existence but by coming to terms with its enlarging and transformative potentiality. Emmons
(1999) echoes this in noting that such a rising may not be limited to rising above our natural world to relate to a divine being but could also include achieving a heightened state of consciousness (Mayer, 2000), having peak experiences (Maslow, 1970) or entering a state of ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).
Spiritual persons seek to live an authentic life sourced in meaningful relationships. The process of self-transcendence, of affirming the spirit and transcending the ego, results in a growing awareness and acceptance of interconnectedness. This also is a general theme in the writing on spirituality (Kale, 2004; Sass, 2000). Spiritual individuals who recognise and imbue the truth of interconnectedness demonstrate the following qualities. First, they connect to the self. Spirituality is an interior journey to find the true self with which the conceited, arrogant, intellectualising, rationalising ego is so easily confused (Weil, 2002). Second, they connect to others. They no longer see themselves as an isolated “atomistic ego-subject” (Yu, 1987, p.143). For such individuals,
spirituality is a state of being, a process towards wholeness that reflects being-in-the-world (Lapierre, 1994) and understands authentic being-in-communion with others and the Ultimate
Other (Buber, 1970).
The importance of a sense of purpose is also apparent in the spirituality literature (Elkins, Hedstrom, Hughes, Leaf, & Saunders, 1988; Emmons, 2000; Wink & Dillion, 2002) Spirituality represents a higher level of understanding that enables the contextualisation of lower levels. It provides answers to the question “why?” and confers individual lives with a sense of integrated wholeness (Mitroff & Denton, 1999) The process of “meaning-making” helps us understand how spiritual individuals revise or reappraise an event or series of events in a manner that gives a higher level of meaning, that is, a spiritual meaning (Baumeister & Vohs, 2005).
Finally, spirituality is the personal expression of an ‘Ultimate Concern’. According to Tillich (1952), ultimate concerns are those ‘God values’ in our lives which have centring power; they are the things with which we are ultimately concerned. Elkins et al. (1988) survey of diverse historical literatures on spirituality supports Tillich’s view. They noted that a spiritual person has an experience-based belief in a transcendent dimension to life. The actual content of this belief may vary from a traditional theistic view of a personal God (e.g. Christianity), a non-theistic view of that infinite potential (e.g. Buddhism), or a humanistic view of the transcendent as being simply a natural extension of the
conscious self into the area of the unconscious or Greater Self. Whatever the content or models used to describe the transcendent, the spiritual person believes in something beyond the material universe (Mitroff & Denton, 1999). Furthermore, he or she believes that contact with this unseen dimension is beneficial (Dierendonck & Mohan, 2006; Emmons, Cheung, & Tehrani, 1998; WHOQOL SRPB Group, 2006).
Transcendence
All of us encounter the transcendent part of life, something that takes us beyond our current way of thinking, feeling, or acting. We master a foreign language, listen
to a new kind of music or learn to pilot a canoe. All these things are examples of
self-transcendence and they are also comprehensible; we can understand the system
of processes, abilities, and decisions behind each of these new activities. We could
refer to these situations as offering a kind of weak transcendence, something that
is beyond us but also within our reach—transcendence “of an internal and human
sort” (Nussbaum, 1990, p. 379). It is something that can be achieved or comprehended,
often without a fundamental change in our way of life or outlook.
There are more radical forms of strong transcendence that defy comprehension, understanding, and control. This happens when we find that life cannot be put into a box or reduced to a set of propositions and rules despite our best efforts. In the words of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1969), we find that our world is not just a settled, controllable “totality” of a clearly understood
system but is an “infinity” that sometimes goes beyond our human control and understanding. This infinity can appear in situations that challenge our settled view of things, as when the death of a loved one makes us realize the finitude of life. The psychiatrist-philosopher Karl Jaspers (1932) referred to these as limit situations or experiences. Strong transcendence also appears in the puzzles and paradoxes of life—things that seem to be simultaneously true but not reconcilable with each
other. For instance, the world seems to have an underlying unity, but at the same
time there is great diversity. Religious people can speak of God as love and at the same time acknowledge the presence of suffering in the world. Finally, it is evident in our human freedom to make choices, pursue goals, react in different ways, and exercise creativity (Theophan, 1995, p. 72). No matter how carefully we study and plan, our own actions and those of others—even the effects of planful modern science and technology—continue to surprise us and defy prediction. In religious traditions, many thinkers speak of spiritual life as involving some kind of ascent and contact with
this transcendence and that after returning from such an encounter we find ourselves changed in important ways.
While most human philosophies and religions embrace at least some form of
weak transcendence, views on strong transcendence vary markedly. Most forms of
humanistic philosophy reject the idea of strong transcendence. A view such as this emphasizes our ability to control the world instead of seeing it as a gift to be received. On the other hand,
many religious systems would argue that while weak transcendence exists and is
good, a view of the world or the human person that stops there is radically incomplete.
We must also take strong transcendence into account. For the majority of religious people in the world, this transcendence is not just an abstraction, but it has a personal quality. The something that is beyond relates to us in love, and we in turn offer it our love. This is known as theism, belief in a God
who is free, transcending both us and the world, but who wishes to relate to us. As transcendent, God can become an object of devotion. Nontheistic religions may acknowledge strong transcendence but
deny its personal quality. This is a traditional stance within Buddhism.
Strong transcendence poses problems for science in general and psychology in particular on a number of fronts. First, scientists generally prefer models that attempt to explain things without reference to transcendence. Second, some scientists have a limited view of logic which conflicts with aspects of transcendence such as paradox. As Wolfhart Pannenberg has noted,
some scientists have a tendency to confuse rationality (something that makes
sense) with rationalism (something that conforms to a rigid understanding of
logic; Tupper, 1973, p. 261), a stance that is quite restrictive and at odds with
how most people—including scientists—actually arrive at knowledge (Watts &
Williams, 1988, p. 56; Polanyi, 1962). Third, freedom also poses problems for many scientific explanations. Like most aspects of strong transcendence, freedom is defined in a negative way as not
chance or not necessity; as such it cannot be directly observed (Macquarrie, 1982,
p. 13). In the words of Levinas it is a trace phenomenon; we can see its effects as in the free response we make to the demands of others (Treanor, 2005), but we can never see the thing itself. You can observe the fact that you are reading this
book and understand how this is different than alternatives that you might have
chosen, but you cannot measure or prove that freedom allowed you to make the
choice. Some scientists assume that since something cannot be directly observed,
it cannot exist. Scholars who accept the presence of strong transcendence argue
that problems like rationalism or freedom show us a natural limitation of science
in its quest to grasp the human being. They suggest that we cannot understand
the human person solely by looking at ourselves from a non-transcendent point
of view. We must also seek other ways of knowing, (Goldsmith, 1994, p. 95;
Howard, Youngs, & Siatczynski, 1989; Powlison, 2003, p. 205; Macquarrie, 1982,
pp. 26, 41–42; Zizioulas, 2006).
Hope for an afterlife is an important part of religion for most theists, and an understanding of this phenomenon must accept that for believers this type of transcendence is entirely real. However, many scientists—including some psychologists—would find this difficult to accept because it is not directly observable. As a science, psychology suffers under limitations and needs to avoid “psychologism,”
the tendency to assume that all of religion can be explained by psychology when it obviously excludes critical aspects of the phenomena (Vergote, 1969, pp. 5–21).
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