Introduction
INTRODUCTION
I had just walked through one of the newest shopping malls in New Delhi. It is one of those globalized reproductions where you see the same stores whether you are in Hong Kong, Paris, Tokyo, or New York. What’s in a name? A lot of money, depending on whose name it is. But you can also walk into shops in Bangkok or Jakarta and find, in popular jargon, a “knockoff version” of the brand name that looks identical to the original. If it is a Rolex you are looking for, the shopkeeper will tell the person who is wearing an original one, “You’d better put yours in your pocket, because when you place it side by side with my fake one you won’t be able to tell the difference.” The replicas are so identical to the real ones that only an expert can tell the difference. When, out of curiosity, I asked one salesperson how they were even able to manufacture these, he reprimanded me, saying that his fakes were genuine fakes and not the fake fakes that the man around the corner sold. When I asked the man of the “genuine fakes” if his genuine fakes would fail within a little while, he looked me in the eye and said, “So will you in a few years.”
Not only was there the genuine/fake market in this mall, there was the exotic touch to the way products were promoted. The health food stores advertised revolutionary magical slimming and wellness products from America, Switzerland, and points west. I couldn’t help but think of the wellness magazines I have seen in the West, all of which advertise revolutionary products from the East: the juices of Tibetan berries, “age-old” remedies from India, China, Japan, and Indonesia; from the jungles of the Amazon to the mountains of Kashmir, they offer myriad cures. What a world we are living in! The more foreign-sounding a word, the more mystique we attribute to it and endue it with powers to bring about nirvana.
Who doesn’t want to be well? Who doesn’t want a life free from stress? Who, deep in his or her heart, doesn’t want to know God, if he really exists? So the wellness industry and the spiritual centers are thriving, each offering their own version of bliss.
Recently, Deepak Chopra went to Thailand to be ordained as a Buddhist monk, and, according to an article I read in India, Julia Roberts has become a Hindu. She and her family go to a Hindu temple every now and then, to chant and repeat certain sounds that are supposed to help her gain peace. I wonder if Roberts and Chopra realize that Buddha was born a Hindu and turned his back on some of Hinduism’s fundamental teachings in order to begin his own pilgrimage and discover a new path. At least in Buddha’s defense we can say his was a lifelong pursuit. In Chopra’s case, he was a monk for a week.
This book is about the deep, irrepressible spiritual hungers we all have. We long both for an escape from the world around us and for solace within us. Our world extracts too much from us. Where does one find replenishment and ultimate meaning, especially in a world that mass-markets numerous paths to truth? At every turn we are offered special words, sounds, discoveries… genuine fakes, fake fakes… and everything else that is today subsumed under the sweeping category of “spirituality.” Just as sin has gone out of vogue and evil has remained a legitimate category, though limited, religion has gone out of vogue while spirituality remains a valid pursuit.
Over years of careful research and reflection I have given deep, detailed, and extended thought to this subject. More than forty years and numerous countries and conversations later, I have some thoughts to offer that I trust the reader will pay careful attention to. I genuinely and passionately care about this search.
In spiritual matters, too, there is the genuine, the genuine fake, and the fake fake. Tired, in the West, of what C. S. Lewis called “the same old thing,” and having become accustomed to abundance and the bliss of multiple choice, we have now a spiritual supermarket before us from which we may choose whatever form of spirituality we fancy. We think we can follow whichever path we want and still end up with something meaningful. It all boils down to branding and appearance. Questions of truth are hinted at but seldom asked. Life is lived with a smorgasbord of sounds and chants.
Spirituality is writ large in the West as gurus come and go. Perhaps a primary reason for this spread of alternative spiritualities and a key to unlocking much of this puzzle for us is our means of communication today. Cultural shifts do not happen in one giant step. How is it that a culture that once frowned upon certain sexual practices now frowns upon those who frown upon them? How is it that from the normal use of language in public broadcasting and in public discourse, so well tempered that even mild deviations were viewed as serious infractions, we now experience on a daily basis entertainment that has moved from the genius of humor to the crassness of shock and vulgarity? Why is it that the more perverse the story, the greater the audience it draws on television or at the theater? Why do people create false scenarios in order to have their own “reality” shows? Who are these icons created by the media of the visual whose belief in some form of spirituality seems real, even if they are made-up for the sell? Has all this happened because our taboos were wrong or is it that, in a very real sense, we have pushed the Replay button on the saga of Eden and can now look, touch, and taste anything we wish to because we have become gods, determining for ourselves what is right and what is wrong?
There is no greater force in cultivating tastes, legitimizing beliefs, and achieving mass impact than our capacity for visual communication. It is hard to even remember how we lived before its inception. At the same time, it is hard to imagine a culture more gullible than that of America today, priding itself on being a culture that is willing to absorb anything indiscriminately.
Two personalities that typify what we have in the spiritual smorgasbord before us today are Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra. And if they represent two ends of the spectrum, there are hosts of others in between. Their success has demonstrated how easily an idea can be marketed, reshaped, repackaged, and taken at face value by a generation that not only fails to ask the right questions, but doesn’t care enough about truth to even think the right questions. Combine the power of the camera and the power of the Internet with the hungers deep within, and you have a ready mix of spiritual time and space in different dimensions.
This thing we now call “spirituality” has itself evolved as a term over the last few years. People will say that they’re not “into” religion but they are “into” spirituality. That in itself is a sociological phenomenon. And just as existentialists don’t like to be categorized, neither do the advocates of the New Spirituality. Because so much is encompassed by that term, to deal with it in a simplistic manner is unfair to any reader. So, instead, I have looked at the most popular forms of the New Spirituality and then at the marketing of this vast new field. Then I have gone further and looked at those religions and exponents that actually provided the underlying worldviews from which these popular forms of spirituality have emerged.
Finally, I have looked at what it is about the message of Jesus Christ that, if properly understood, still offers the beauty, the power, and the only hope of any future for mankind. So much of the fake has overtaken the depth and breadth of his teaching. He said that he came to give us water to drink that would quench our deepest thirsts. Yet the superficiality with which his message has been presented and manipulated by the media has obscured if not destroyed his message. One ought never to judge a philosophy by its abuse. Yet that is what the message of Jesus has suffered. The same manipulations attend the “new” spiritual movements, but for a different purpose. Should our pursuit be to abuse the message, or should it be to discover what is actually being claimed by these belief systems and test these claims for authenticity? At their core, the worldviews behind these new spiritual movements are completely different from that of Jesus.
There are four key elements that come to the fore in a study of these systems and beliefs. The first is the combination of truth and relevance: How do I know that what I believe is true, and is what I believe in any way relevant to my day-to-day life? The danger here is that we often mistake relevance for truth and make truth so academic that it seems to have become irrelevant. Either we become so rigid and dispassionate about truth that we forget to filter it down to the level of our emotions, or we place such stress on “feeling good” that we forget to ask the basic question of whether what we believe is based in truth.
But there is a second combination, and that is of reason and faith. Every worldview has to bring together reason and faith. Some admit to both, and some like to pretend they have both in the proper order. The naturalist is too proud to admit that a heavy dose of faith is required in order to believe as he or she does. And the religious person can often become smug and say, “I really don’t care what you say, my faith is the most important thing to me.” I have often put it this way: God has put enough into this world to make faith in him a most reasonable thing; but he has left enough out to make it impossible to live by reason alone.
I was born in Chennai, in the south of India, and raised in Delhi, in the North. My ancestors came from the highest caste of the Hindu priesthood, the Nambudiris and the Nairs, from Kerala. Several generations ago, as far as we know, one of them heard the message of Jesus from some German-Swiss missionaries and became a devout follower of Christ. She was ostracized, expelled from her community and family, and paid dearly for her newfound faith. Her descendant was my grandmother, who married into the Zacharias family, which had also been converted from Hinduism several generations back.
However, generations later this newfound faith had become true in name only because, unlike every other religion, being born into a Christian home does not make one a Christian; it is the specific decision on the part of every person to follow Christ that makes that person a Christian. It took my generation, asking the hard questions about belief, to once again study the message of Jesus and respond to its simplicity and sublimity. I became a Christian while on a bed of attempted suicide at the age of seventeen when I cried out to God in prayer, “Lord Jesus, if you are who you claim to be, reveal yourself to me and take me out of my desperate situation and I will leave no stone unturned in my pursuit of truth.” Five days later I walked out of that hospital room a brand-new man, and I have never looked back. Jesus Christ does not only change what you do, he changes what you want to do.
But here is something important: One cannot just grasp the finger of an experience of a moment and assume, therefore, that one has grabbed the fist of reality. I have followed through on my promise to pursue truth and have devoted my life to the study and understanding of all the major religions and systems of belief in the world. It was the right and proper thing to do. Jesus makes an amazing statement. He not only claims to be unique and to have the power to transform anyone who comes to him, but the Bible says that we are “made complete” in him (Colossians 2:10 NASB). What does that mean? I hope that in the pages to follow you will stay with me on this journey to find truth and relevance, faith and reason, and discover that when we have Jesus, we have life. All other hungers for spirituality are a reflection of why it is that he offers himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Even if you disagree with me, please stay the course. Honesty of intent and thinking seriously about the content will make the difference between the genuine and the spurious. Coming to the right conclusion on a matter such as this will define eternity. You may be surprised what your spiritual hungers and God’s self-disclosure might bring to you. At the point of his conversion C. S. Lewis said, “I thought I had come to a place. I found out I had come to a person.” That’s what this book is about: examining the places we wish to be and those we should walk away from until we find the Person for whom we are looking.