Topic: Spirituality At Workplace

Date: September 04, 2010

Speaker Profile:

Dr. Sahoo is a Research Professor at Xavier Institute of Management. He has also been a Professor in Center of Advance Study in Psychology, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar. Dr. Fakir Mohan Sahoo is a specialist in Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior. Prof. Sahoo is cross-cultural Psychologist of rich academic and research experience having guided approximately 40 research scholars. He has written several books and a large number of research papers in National and International journals. He is the recipient of University Grants Commission’s Career Award in Humanities and Social Sciences, also the Received Commonwealth Scholarship, Fellowship offered by Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, and Professional Associate-ship offered by the East-West Center, Honolulu, USA. He has chaired sessions of International Congress of Psychology held in Brussels Belgium. He has visited countries such as Canada, USA, France, Japan, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey for various seminars and expert talks. He is also a member of editorial board in Indian Journal of Clinical Psychology and Vilakshana (Journal of XIMB). He is also a member of APA, International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, National Association of Psychologists, and the State Coordinator of Indian School Psychology Association.

Details:

Spirituality is the process of discovery. There are two types of religiosity: external and internal. External religiosity is associated with the number of times a person does rituals or visits the temples.

Internal Religiosity implies the spiritual values with which the person is involved.

According to Victor Frankl, there are three values of spirituality, namely-

• Emperical values
• Creating values
• Attitudinal values.

The three types of intelligence possessed by human beings are:

Rational Intelligence which is linked with the left hemisphere of the brain

Emotional intelligence which is linked with the right hemisphere of the brain

Spiritual Intelligence linked with the brain’s third neural system, the synchronous neural oscillations that unify data across the whole brain.

It is said that 50% of uncertainty is accounted by intelligence. Limbic system takes care of our emotions. It was found out by Nobel Laureate Roger Speri that humans have two minds-the feeling brain older than the thinking brain, the left brain( associated with logic and language) bigger than the right brain(associated with emotion, pattern and creativity),the left ear more adaptive and the left eye more productive.

About Spiritual Intelligence the following works are noteworthy:

• Michael Persinger (1990) work on temporal lobe
• V.Ramachandran (University of California) work on existence of “God Spot” in the temporal lobe of the brain.
• Austrian Neurologist Wolf Singer (1990) work on “the binding problem”

God Spot is the centre in the brain that lights up when people are exposed to spiritual and religious discussions.

The behavioral indicators of Spiritual Intelligence are:

• A Capacity to be flexible
• A High degree of self-awareness
• A Capacity to face and use suffering
• A Capacity to transcend pain
• The quality of being inspired by vision and values.
• A reluctance to cause unnecessary harm
• A tendency to see connection between diverse things.
• A marked tendency to ask ‘why’ or ‘what if’ questions and seek ‘fundamental answer’

‘Unity in diversity’ is the basic message of Indian spirituality.

So we need to:

• Articulate values
• Match people with the mission.
• Devote time, attention and personnel to task.
• Create specific strategy and process.
• Have a clearly held spiritual view of life.
• Explore spirituality from the inside out.
• See spirituality as the basis of business success.
• Engage in revolutionary activities.