Spirituality is a fast growing and extremely lucrative business. In the capitalist world we live in, everything has a price. There is nothing that hasn’t been commodified, packaged and advertised for sale to people conditioned to shop for their every need, be it food, clothing, recreation, relationships, or God. This might sound simplistically cynical, but increasingly it seems to me to be the case. And it most certainly acts as a powerful driver for people from industrialised western cultures when looking around for that ‘special something’ to meet vague inner feelings of unmet need, disenchanted with the arid materialism of their lives. Many people would never expect to be able to get anything, including enlightenment, without parting with their hard earned cash. There are powerful precedents too, as most of us have heard of the uber rich, rock stars such as the Beatles, parting with significant sums of money to charismatic swamis and guru-led movements of many order.
It doesn’t help that there has been such a proliferation in these spiritual movements in the last generation or two, often based in India, many of which are entirely spurious and exploitative by their nature, cashing in on the lucrative spiritual industries. Certainly there are those which are entirely legitimate, but for many spiritual seekers and especially those from western cultures, it can be impossible to determine from the outside who to trust or by what criteria to judge them. Slick websites, fronted by the spiritual leader him/herself, dressed in saffron or white and sporting the mandatory beatific smile, act as seductive lures to those alienated by the harsh, charmless and secular aridity of life of the global North and desperate for a different way. There is also the ‘charisma trap’, allied to the very human propensity to project the unconscious archetypal numen residing within one onto some exterior person or phenomenon. This especially is the reason why so many people end up falling a literal victim of outrageous cults through the early and fatal failure of their independent critical faculties to save them. Were it not for this, the several high profile and murderous cults such as the Branch Davidians or the Jonestown Peoples’ Temple Agricultural Project would not have been possible.
But, happily, there are other valid ways outside of those offered by standard spiritual movements or gurus. One such is the pathway of ‘aloneness’, also recognised within the Hindu tradition where it’s called Kaivalya, wherein the pursuant commits to the spiritual pathway, but without a formal guru/guide. It is accepted here, as indeed with all mystical traditions, that God/Self communicates directly with the seeker within the intimacy of their heart/soul. There are many accounts of how this is experienced and the definitive work by Evelyn Underhill ‘Mysticism’ is replete with first hand accounts of the experiences of some of the foremost Christian mystics (1). Works by the famous Sufi mystics such as Rūmī and Hafez, or the Hindu mystics Tagore or Kabir amongst many others, contain similar accounts, sometimes expressed in exquisite poetical works of how the Self is experienced by them.
Modern biomedicine of course has a problem with this, loosely articulated by the saying “If you pray to God then you’re a religious person. If you think he answers you, then you have a psychosis.” The nature and authenticity of the mystical experience is a huge and highly controversial subject, which, as academics are won’t to say ‘lies outside of the scope of the present work’. However, and briefly, even modern biomedicine is, if reluctantly, modifying its stance, as evidenced by the DSM 5 and ICD 10 (2; 3) which are prepared to concede that many people do experience mystical states, either within or outside of formal religion, which are not necessarily pathological.
What to make of all this? In the end, I would counsel that this is all merely a part of the journey of Truth that the spiritual aspirant must navigate. Finding authentic sources of and means to apprehend and interpret that Truth is at core what it’s all about. Easy, ‘off the peg’ solutions are most unlikely to be anything but that and not in anyway authentic; at worse they might be downright misleading. You must learn how to navigate and trust (or not) the many and often confusing signs that proliferate and can easily trap the naïve and the unwary. There are no easy ways here, but knowing yourself and trusting yourself, having sound instincts and good critical faculties, as well as a trusted guide and compass for true north, is what you need. As I have said elsewhere, my twin guides have long been the teachings of Jesus and the Bhagavad Gita, which, I would argue, have to be amongst the best. But there are others too.
Navigating this path of spiritual enquiry through the life course with one’s personal sights set always on the end goal (God/Self/Supreme), is what is means to be a pilgrim.
(1) Underhill, Evelyn. (1911) 1930. Mysticism. The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness. Kindle Edition.
(2) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition: DSM-5. 2013. American Psychiatric Association
(3) International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD). 10th Revision. 2019.World Health Organisation.