ਮਾਇਆ ਜੇਵਡੁ ਦੁਖੁ ਨਹੀ ਸਭਿ ਭਵਿ ਥਕੇ ਸੰਸਾਰੁ ॥ माइआ जेवडु दुखु नही सभि भवि थके संसारु
There is no pain as great as the pain of Maya; it drives people to wander all around the world, until they become exhausted. - Guru Amar Das
I. A Reified Spirituality
A recent study conducted by Pew shows that "a quarter of American adults say they attend religious services of a faith other than their own," and that "half of Americans who attend religious services go to more than one place."
It furthermore claims that almost a quarter of American adults believe in reincarnation, yoga as a spiritual practice, and the existence of spiritual energy in physical objects.
If taken at face-value, I believe this data captures a striking (perhaps even comical) phenomenon developing in modern liberal society: the reification (Verdinglichung) of difference—in this case spiritual difference.
Such a bloated (if not arrogant) assertion deserves some unloading. I mean that just as today's market is flooded with over-priced 'exotic' gastronomical and recreational oddities (pita, humus, tortilla, Chinese food, hookah, etc)—that are, despite their faux-exoticness, simply sweeter, crispier, 'Coca-Cola' variants of their counterparts ('flat bread restaurants, healthy humus, taco joints, General Tso's chicken, sex-on-the-beach hookah tobacco, etc.)—today's market, too, is flooded with reified spirituality: gimmicky New Age commodities, self-help tapes, pluralistic mysticism.
Indeed, Hare Krishnas dance on campus, distribute food and collect donations. Yoga is sold (as a kit), as is Jewish mystical Kabbala (e.g. by 'material girl' Madonna). Meanwhile, Doctors and leaders of mystical philosophy like Eckhardt Tolle, Rhonda Byrne and other New Age 'priests' syncretize the mystical concepts of the all-knowing prophets and wise ancients and write best selling books. Truth exotica, the mysticism of the Other, is indeed found in the pastiche: gastronomically in the 'Coca-Cola' cuisine; spiritually in the karma-free prescription that HEALS and ENLIGHTENS.
II. Spirituality As Medicine
But though these spiritual pastiche commodities are typically classified under "Spirituality," "New Age," "Self-Help," their platform is less spiritualistic and more analytic; its scientific (As the Yoga therapist in Video#3 says: "I am trained in kinesiology, anatomy, physiology [therefore I'm a doctor and trustworthy."]); its more of a form of 'therapeutic-spiritual' psychiatry—and critiques against it, then, ought to be approached as such.
Like the psychiatrists Michel Foucault describes in History of Madness, they create the scenarios from which the confession, the positivist cure, quasi-miraculously erupts [1]. At once the spiritualist prescribes and cures, and like Henry Miller explains[2] of the analyst, he has nothing to lose:
Lie down then, on the soft couch which the analyst provides, and try to think up something different. The analyst has endless time and patience...Whether you whine, howl, beg, weep, implore, cajole, pray or curse—he listens. He is just a big ear minus a sympathetic nervous system. He is impervious to everything but truth. If you think it pays to fool him then fool him. Who will be the loser? If you think he can help you, and not yourself, then stick to him until you rot. He has nothing to lose.
Perhaps Nietzsche's divine obituary was written too early, for there are battalions of marketplace Messianics denying Nietzsche's hammer in favor of the psychobabbling pen of profitable propheteering. They dance with Hare Krishnas, clothe the gymnosophists, sell Maya goggles with Yoga mats and tools to ward off the evil eye—and they ground it all in scientific truth as they grow fat off the high of faux liberal tolerance.
↑ Video #1
↑ Video #2
↑ Video #3
III. Pharmakon
The homes of these universalistic spiritual cults are in infinity—they are in the passionate heartfelt books filled with secret prescriptions and the house-club-church-mosque-temple to which, according to the Pew poll, many Americans are flocking.
Today, then, it seems we are able to be spiritual nomads, market nomads, of an odd limitless spiritual totality. Like Tyler Durden from Fight Club, we are able to travel from self-help club to self-help club, from support group to support group, to receive cures and treatments for diseases we do not have—but are able to create merely through attendance and confession. The tonic of truth taken here is at once curative and toxic—it is pharmekon—the remedy-poison, the good-bad, the true-false. It is now possible to find truth in all (the Mosque, the Temple, the Church, etc.) by means of one supplement which itself is ironically denied by its source(s).
But why are these markets so successful? Perhaps it is because they work as potent supplements to any preexisting truth. Perhaps its because the truth that these factories churn out is designed to be an all-encompassing, all-totalizing ether (for truth is modernity's ether) that numbs and also amplifies, for a moment, sights, colors, and sounds, making, for however long, Christianity more Christian, Judaism more Jewish, Islam more Muslim, more plural, more human, etc. Perhaps, moreover, they are so successful because they're designed to be the best of both worlds. In a society obsessed with self-medicating, soul-searching, self-help and enslaving liberation, a truth, a therapy, a cure, that is (affordably) and universally grounded in both science and spirituality is the ultimate commodity.
The modern cult of spirituality, then, driven by market forces, is but a spiritual factory churning out truth, any truth, alongside obscure medicines—a listening ear, a helping hand, some good news—for a nominal fee. This phenomenon, though, should not be judged à la Jesus' "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do;" nor should it be judged à la Marx's "Sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es." (They do not know it, but they are doing it). Both are inadequate.* I think that there is invariably more agency involved in this day and age. Perhaps, then, it is more so "Critique them, for they do it and they know it."
IV. The Marxist's Kuffiyah and Coca Cola Shisha
I think the greater significance of this phenomenon lies in its dynamic nature: it thrives in politics, medicine, and as already mentioned, food and culture.
It is embodied by ideological politicos, especially by the proselytizing Marxist who today on school campuses nomadically dons the mystical paraphernalia of the Native American, the Palestinian, the Rasta, and the Latin American pauper (for in these meaningless [and contextually silly] fetish symbols he roots his politics' truth [just as Tolle does by citing Descartes or Plato or Socrates]).
It is embodied furthermore by the self-medicated, those who see multiple analysts and buy into the whole inner-cleansing culture, those who cup and blood-let and horde sacred Zoroastrian amulets.
It is embodied, lastly, by the Orientalist restaurant regimes with their overpriced pastiches of pauper classics: the Hookah Bar with its 'sex-on-the-beach' and 'Coca Cola' tobacco flavors, expensive pita breads and humus spreads; the Noodle Shop with 12 dollar pho; the Chinese restaurant with its kung pow and bourbon chicken; etc.
V. Parting Words
After all of this critical bitterness we ought to remind ourselves of Albert Camus' sweet parting words in "Helen's Exile:"
Admission of ignorance, rejection of fanaticism, the limits of the world and of man, the beloved face, and finally beauty—this is where we shall be on the side of Greeks. In a certain sense, the direction of history will take is not the one we think. It lies in the struggle between creation and inquisition.
But I believe the struggle in our history (along with the impetus needed for drafting any history of the present) involves as a precondition creative inquisition. Only free, inquisitive, creative spirits, be they atheists or theists, after all, can reject fanaticism and admit the limits of their ignorance and the world.
We need, as Nietzsche romantically argued in Beyond Good and Evil:
...investigators to the point of cruelty, with unhesitating fingers for the intangible, with teeth and stomachs for the most indigestible, ready for any business that requires sagacity and acute senses, ready for every adventure, owing to an excess of "free will", with anterior and posterior souls, into the ultimate intentions of which it is difficult to pry, with foregrounds and backgrounds to the end of which no foot may run, hidden ones under the mantles of light, appropriators, although we resemble heirs and spendthrifts, arrangers and collectors from morning till night, misers of our wealth and our full-crammed drawers, economical in learning and forgetting, inventive in scheming, sometimes proud of tables of categories, sometimes pedants, sometimes night-owls of work even in full day, yea, if necessary, even scarecrows—and it is necessary nowadays, that is to say, inasmuch as we are the born, sworn, jealous friends of SOLITUDE, of our own profoundest midnight and midday solitude—such kind of men are we, we free spirits! And perhaps ye are also something of the same kind, ye coming ones? ye NEW philosophers?
In the end, perhaps it takes the proud hammer of the new philosopher to unhinge the trap doors hiding those spiritual marketeers and all their medicated messages, those witch doctors and analysts, those Tolles and Byrnes, those sellers of the spiritual pharmakon, the spiritual poison-remedy.
interesting thoughts as always...but you misspelled hookah (= sheeshaaaa!)
"...spiritual poison-remedy." Pretty strong statement. I take it that "The Secret" is on your top 3 list of films... I have to say I agree with a lot of what you've expressed. Very interesting stuff. Keep up the good Blog.
It seems perhaps we see here, the fruit of the Enlightenment. Obsessed with the light of reason, we have stripped our lands from the forests of religion and deep culture, in an attempt to escape all shade. The result is all around us, the drought of spirituality, and desertification of society (i.e. secularisation). As you said, the West is now wandering aimlessly, like nomads, from oasis to oasis, while concurrently experiencing the mirages and delusions of "monsters" and "illness" that afflict those too exposed to the heat of reason. Perhaps this is the source of consumerism, as a fundamental aspect of a culture: the destruction of spirituality and deep culture, in favour of efficient life patterns designed to churn out the heights of material fruit? I haven't watched the videos yet, or looked in detail at your post, but I shall award you an "A". It is a well-done post.