Another big picture topic that emerged in our readings was that of the three verities. “The Eternal Verities of Truth, Beauty and Goodness are readily identifiable as the three great and lofty ideals which have inspired leading figures in succeeding civilizations over the millennia” (Childs, 1999). Integral philosopher Steve McIntosh (2007) calls the verities the three primary values, from which all other values spring.
The ideals of beauty, truth, and goodness represent philosophy’s finest hour—these are the concepts by which philosophy makes contact with the spiritual and helps to define the way forward from a middle ground in between science and religion. Indeed, it is in the pursuit of beauty, truth, and goodness that we find the pinnacle of human life. Beauty, truth, and goodness are truly sacred in the way they name and describe the “eternal forms” by which the persuasive influences of evolution enact the universe’s essential motion of consciousness seeking its source (p. 137).
The correlation between the verities and our compass became apparent. The “True”, often represented by Science, was a good fit with the mind or cognitive intelligence. The “Good” or Morals went well with the heart or emotional intelligence. And we also liked the connection of the “Beautiful” or art and aesthetics with the body or physical intelligence. Even though there is a good argument that art or beauty affects the soul, the spirit and the heart, it is also a very visceral connection. Beauty resonates on a very physical plane as well. The problem came when we sought to link the spiritual direction. Was it a combination of the three or was there more of a connection with one particular verity? In his book If Aristotle Ran General Motors (1997), philosopher Tom Morris suggests that the most important factor for dealing with the problems we face in business as well as our personal lives is “our ability to look within and examine the inner foundations of our own business practices and business relationships” (p. xii). He claims that “corporate spirit needs to be reinvented” and that “we face a spiritual crisis that is only recently beginning to be recognized as such” (p. xiii). The book promotes the pursuit of happiness on a personal as well as corporate level as a way towards regaining spirit and draws from the verities to look at four dimensions of human experience: intellectual, which aims at truth; aesthetic which aims at beauty; moral which aims at goodness; and then a fourth dimension—the spiritual, which aims at unity. Unity, or the spiritual dimension, is ultimately about connectedness. Morris argues that this dimension is “the proper culmination of the other three, both undergirding and overarching them” (p. 173). This correlates with the ideas and understanding of spiritual intelligence we encountered in our research and other readings (Zohar, 2001; Covey, 2004; Wigglesworth, 2006).
In the next post, we describe further connections that expand the foundation of our research.
Paul R. Scheele and Rick Warm
