Back to the Future
Back to the Future
The meditative techniques that were introduced to the West four decades ago were a hybrid of automation and stagnation: If only this spiritual secret could be transmitted through the utterance of some words of empowerment by a teacher who has already attained this nirvanic bliss, what peace would ensue individually and cosmically! There was a time in the West—not so long ago—when words like mantra, chakra, tantra, moksha, and nirvana needed explanation. They are still not generally understood, even by most of those who use them regularly, but they make for an intellectual veneer in a subculture. The ensuing patent wars that have emerged over which theory or guru owns the rights to yoga are a bizarre twist in these spiritual schemes that are purported to release stress and induce peace.
One medical practitioner with an avocation in spiritual apologetics for Hinduism is on a crusade “to give credit where credit is due,” insisting that the world owes a debt to Hinduism for these techniques. Meanwhile, Deepak Chopra, also a medical practitioner whose primary practice is writing on spiritual themes, challenges that claim and declares that yoga, among other practices, is part of a universal religion and not the private possession of just one: Sanatan Dharma, he brands it… the “Eternal Religion”… essential and pure spirituality that goes beyond any “ism.” The inescapable conclusion of all this is that whether meditating or awake, ancient or new, depravity is the constant. Stay tuned! We will fight one another verbally or legally for the right to preach a stress-free life, and do so with material means for material gains, all for the glories of a nonmaterial transcendence.
I was pondering the other day how much in our lives has to do with boxes: We give gifts in boxes, we buy our food in boxes, we drive in boxes, we live in boxes, we sleep in boxes, and we ultimately leave this world in a box. But this brand of spirituality hates to be boxed in by absolutes, so the edges of reason are erased and spirituality oozes into another realm like a vapor or a cloud. As boundaries have been erased our world has changed, and the means by which we now share this world are not necessarily that far removed from planting ideas in a mind that is half asleep. The resulting inability or even desire to reason and think through an idea logically is demonstrated by one-liners such as “I’m not into ‘isms.’ ”
Existentialists don’t want to be boxed into an “ism” either; nor do postmodernists. The person who isn’t into “isms” gives himself the liberty to conveniently dismiss anything he doesn’t like or agree with as an “ism,” which by his definition does not deserve to be taken seriously, while his own beliefs are defended against being considered an “ism.” Giving yourself the privilege of destroying other positions while parking your own position in an unidentifiable location is a form of linguistic terrorism.
In the world of non-isms, you are introduced to terminology that seems to have magic powers. You make an appointment for a massage and are told that they will work on your chakras so that you will reach the tantric stage and ultimately nirvana. I shall resist further comment on this right now. This form of spiritual communication has unfortunately hijacked reality and holds truth hostage, never to be released until one is willing to pay the price of relativism. Couched in jellylike terminology, reality reshapes itself, and rather than being a constant, it can become whatever you want it to be. But like the actors who still have to leave the set and live in the real world, we all now have to return from the escape of a story to the harsh questions of our private worlds.
Where can we find reality the way it was meant to be? Allowing ourselves to be beguiled by foreign terms is not consolation for reality. The greatest and most notable casualty of our times in which we are inundated with spiritual terminology is, unquestionably, truth. As Malcolm Muggeridge would have stated it, “The lie is stuck like a fishbone in the throat of the microphone.” I would add that today it is not so much the microphone as the camera and the vocabulary of the verbal magician.
Some years ago I sat in as a visitor on a trial in London at the Old Bailey. It was the trial of a man accused of raping two minor girls. I was there for the opening arguments, watching from the gallery. I remember the defense lawyer’s plea so clearly. He looked intently into the faces of the two minor girls separately and said to each of them, “I am interested in only one thing: one thing and nothing more—the truth. Do you understand me?” he asked. “All I want is the truth. If you have the answers, give them to me. If you don’t know the answers, tell me you don’t know. I want the truth. That’s all.”
Here is my question: If the truth is so important in one isolated courtroom case, how much more important is it in the search for the spiritual answers to our deepest hungers?
“The most valuable thing in the world is the truth,” said Winston Churchill. “The most powerful weapon in the world is the truth,” said Andrei Sakharov, the man who gave the Soviets the atomic bomb. “God is Truth and Truth is God,” said Mahatma Gandhi. From its value, to its power, to its deification, even as an abstract category truth becomes the final question in any conflict. Yet, again and again we find ourselves uncertain as to what truth means and why it matters. “What is truth?” asked Pontius Pilate impatiently… and walked away, without waiting for an answer. The irony is that he was standing in front of the one Person who, as the personification and embodiment of Truth, could have given him the answer.
In the musical play by Andrew Lloyd Webber The Phantom of the Opera, the Phantom sings a beautiful piece titled “The Music of the Night.” One of the lines intimates that under the cover of darkness it is easy to pretend that the truth is what each one of us wants it to be. When there is no light held to our version of truth to call our bluff, we confuse what is with what we think ought to be, and infuse “the ought” with our own ideas to make it what we want it to be. Truth is that foundational reality we often resist but that, ultimately, we cannot escape. Nothing is so destructive as running from the truth, even as we know it will always outdistance us.
Tragically, we seem to be at a time in our cultural history when we no longer care about this question whatsoever. Seduced by terminology carried by a media that distorts, we willingly, it seems, buy into a lie. From the news to the weather to advertising to entertainment, we are sold feelings, not truth. I have often pondered the vast terrain of uncertainties that surround us: mystery—we love mysteries and are held in their grip; manipulation—we dabble with the mind and find it fascinating; money—we all fear it, yet we all live immersed in it; more—we all spend most of our lives either earning it or desiring it, hardwired, it seems, to keep adding to what we have already accumulated. When mystery, the manipulation of the mind, and the accumulation of wealth are offered to us all tied up in one neat package, our dreams are being tapped into and we have become the dream-givers, having our dreams taken from us. Add to this the dimension of music or chanting, and we have the beat to which we can lull ourselves into other consciousnesses.
Mystery, the manipulation of the mind, the desire for money and accumulation of wealth, music—what a recipe for feeling! One practioner of Ayurvedic medicine sums it up by saying that you can create your own universe out of desire; that when you empty your mind and focus on the thing you want, the distance between you and your desire disappears, your brain cells rejuvenate, and you become open to all possibilities.
The truth is that if you repeat this kind of self-inducement often enough, you begin not only to believe it, but to smile in pity on those who don’t. You begin to feel a sense of security in a world that has become like jelly because you don’t really have to make sense of it all. It is somewhat like being a college student who doesn’t have to be an earning member of the family or lead an orderly life because he has not yet finished his preparations for life. A disheveled room and appearance are acceptable in a college student… after all, that’s a license that dorm life gives you.
Such is the vocabulary and narrative of the New Spirituality, which has leveraged and thrived on a privatized logic while claiming the ultimate strength of philosophy wedded to science. But how did we get here? How did we reach such an incredible way of reasoning? Who stole the fire of reason from us?
As an easterner, raised in the East, I see such irony in all this. A short time ago I was asked to address a small group of the entertainment elite in the East. They sat listening with courtesy and concentration as I reminded them that they were the icons of our time, the envy of the masses, while they themselves knew that inside each of them was a big vacuum. By the end of the talk, some were in tears and after the talk there was a lineup of these successful people, asking for time alone and the opportunity to open up the depths of their own struggles. I admired their candor and transparency.
As I left that setting, I thought to myself, Why are we always beguiled by something foreign? In the West, Eastern mysticism is “in”—chants, sounds, and practices with foreign words have made an appeal of culture-shifting proportions—while in the East, where these very same techniques have been tried for centuries, many are disillusioned and are seeking solace somewhere else. Before me the entertainment elite of the East gave their full attention to a talk on “Why Jesus Is the Ultimate Fulfillment,” while in the West, entertainers are looking toward the East for their answers.
The movies of the East have been played out in an artificial dream world interwoven with the spiritual long enough. The lyrics of their music often speak of disappointment. The setting for a very popular song in the Hindi language is a man standing in front of a sage, asking his advice. He sings that he has been to the holy river and to the holy sites, but his heart is still searching for fulfillment. It is not gold or silver that he is seeking; it is the fulfillment of his soul.
Pilgrims go to the sacred sites of India by the millions, in search of inner liberation. The devout of every religion embark on spiritual journeys in the hope of finding God. Thus, in the final analysis, it is actually to God himself that we go, asking, “Where is the answer?” That’s the irony, as I see it.
In the 1960s there was a song made famous by Tom Jones titled “The Green, Green Grass of Home.” Hearing it for the first time is a thrill that dies by the last verse. The song describes the thrill of touching the green, green grass of home and seeing loved ones long missed. But as the story progresses, we get to the last verse.
Yes, those who know the song know the ending. The singer is on death row, and the morning brings the harsh reality of his last steps to the grave, a different green, green grass than that with which the song begins.
We all have yearnings and longings. We all dream of hope and peace. We all long to align our hearts with ultimate reality. We need to be grateful for at least one thing that the New Spiritualists have done: They have awakened us to a place of our need. We all search for deep fulfillment and yearn for answers that are satisfying at the level of our feelings, not just at the philosophical level of truth and logic. Is there somewhere that the two existences align? Stay with me as we endeavor to broach this subject in the pages ahead and find some life-transforming answers.