Abstract
It is often claimed that we are the victims of the gradual collapse of communal, embedded or public identity. The self, that is to say, has been de-traditionalised. The traditional — that which is announced in terms of the sustained voice of ‘external’, or institutionalised authority — no longer plays a significant role in the construction and regulation of what it is to be a person. People have become ‘genuinely’ autonomous, heeding the ‘voice’ of their own subjectivity (desires, aspirations, hopes, and expectations); and attempt to create their own identities in self-reflexive fashion whilst resisting anything (external, or supra-individual) which stands in their way. Unwilling, or unable, to rely on established authority structures, such selves, the portrayal goes, are ‘homeless’ or ‘disembedded’, and, at least according to some commentators — for example Berger et al. (1974) — suffer accordingly.
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Although it has become customary to refer to the New Age as a ‘movement’, this term should be used with caution. The expression is valid in that the New Age advocates progress towards a better way of being; it is not a ‘movement’ in the sense of being organised by some central authority. The ‘paths’ or ‘experiential teachings’ which largely comprise what is going on, have much in common, and ‘network’, but many emphasise their distinctiveness, and there is a fair degree of rivalry.
I have explored most of the issues raised in this chapter, in particular the interface with capitalism, in a number of other publications (see bibliography). Two useful works - Drury (1989) and Perry (1992) - introduce the movement as a whole. Thompson and Heelas (1986) and Tipton (1982), it can be observed, discuss particular movements, respectively Rajneeshism and est.
A song by the Waterboys, a leading band, graphically portrays the virtues of New Age spirituality: “Man gets tired/Spirit don’t/Man surrenders/Spirit won’t/Man crawls/Spirit flies/Spirit lives when Man dies. Man seems, Spirit is/Man dreams/Spirit lives/Man is tethered/Spirit is free/What Spirit is man can be”.
Concerning evidence from participant testimonies, a research student of mine, studying The Life training, reports “a very strong belief [among graduates] that they believed that they had found their ‘real self’, one respondent reporting, for instance, that “I have come to know myself and who I really am”. Literature on the New Age as a whole provides countless examples of positive and forceful - apparently secure - identity-talk following involvement. My own, as yet largely unpublished, questionnaire findings of Exegesis and Programmes Ltd shows the same pattern of fundamentals being acquired (cf. the studies reported by Finkelstein et. al. (1982)). Berger et. al. (1974) provide a detailed account of the “homeless” condition and how “secondary institutions” (including what are designated “mystical religions”) provide “compensation”. See also Heelas (1982) on the theme of ‘socialising the subjective’.
The numerical significance of the New Age is considerably greater if non-western countries are taken into account. Indeed, India is the most important home of ‘traditional’ Self-spirituality. Currently being influenced by the ‘western’ formation, which owes so much to India in the first place, indigenous monistic spirituality provides a fertile setting for ‘Californian’ developments. A typical illustration is provided by Vas (1991), a volume based on the work of his Bombay-based Human Potential Institute. (see also note 9.)
Publications by Shirley MacLaine, including Going Within (1990), serve to exemplify the nature of a (particular) ‘fully-fledged’ new ager.
Although it is not possible to document the point here, it is easy to demonstrate that the great Romantics (as cited by Taylor (1989) and Abrams (1973), for example) and contemporary new agers make virtually identical claims. The Romantics, it is true, tended to adopt a less individuated form of Self-spirituality, emphasising “nature as source” (Taylor, ibid: 461) rather than the (human) Self. But they by no means neglected the inner world of the person: “The original Romantic belief in nature held for nature within us as well. The spiritual reality which emanated in the world which surrounds us was also within” (ibid).
As well as exploring the role played by conversion processes, a more sustained examination of the development of the New Age would have to take into account a number of other factors. There is much to be said, for example, about how Romantic/expressivist responses to the mainstream have been fuelled by alienation, due to various structural and cultural conditions of modernity (cf. Berger et al., 1974). Another interesting thesis, which has not received the attention that it deserves, concerns the role played by the liberal ethic. Brought up to respect ‘the other’, people are quite naturally inclined to seek value in what the other has to offer. Advocating a “perennial philosophy” (to use Huxley’s (1946) term) - that a global spirituality lies at the heart of apparently diverse religions - the New Age caters for the value attached to ‘equality’ whilst avoiding that unsettling relativism which is generally associated with the liberal ethic (cf. Bloom, 1987: 21, 25–7 ). Yet another interesting thesis has to do with the role played by factors associated with the ideology of individualism. The individualistic emphasis found in much of the contemporary New Age, as opposed to the more holistic orientation of Romantic precursors, is surely bound up with capitalistic ideals of autonomous agency (cf. Abercrombie et al.,1986). Consumer culture values would also appear to play a role, being bound up with notions of perfectibility (see Campbell, 1987; Heelas, 1994 ).
Additional material and references on New Age applications in the west is provided by Heelas (1991, 1992(a)), Johnson (1992), Kirp and Rice (1988), Main (1987), Rupert (1992) and Storm (1991(a),1991(d)). Applications elsewhere yet to be adequately documented, although in India, for example, it is clear that Hindu monism (often re-worked, Californian-style) is being put to the service of business. Trainings have titles like ‘Vedanta for Management’; bookshops are stocked with relevant literature; and great importance is attached to developing inner spirituality for business purposes (for example, a recent, high-profile seminar, held in Madras, explored the ‘Divine sources of human resource development’). For the situation in Nigeria, see Hackett (1992); and for Brasil, see Heelas and Amaral (forthcoming).
Whether or not seemingly world-enhancing movements should be called ‘New Age’ is something of a moot point. On the one hand central components of Self-spirituality, in particular the counter-cultural emphasis on ‘liberation’ from the mainstream together with the emphasis on (‘inner’) spiritual experiences, drop from the picture. But even in teachings of a quite obviously world-enhancing orientation, such as offered by Alexander et. al. (1992), with their promise of “peak performance and astounding business success” for those “using the U.S. Military’s most advanced mind-training techniques”, there is much to please the ‘spiritual’ new ager: familiar references (to Jung, shamans, etc.); claims concerning the limiting nature of “beliefs” and the extraordinary capacities of the “self” or “God” (ibid: 105), for example.
A good illustration of value-laden discourse is provided by Mick Crews (Director, Cunard Ellerman) and Charles Smith (Management Consultant and Licensed Affiliate of est-inspired Transformational Technologies). Citing Chiang (a character from Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingstone Seagull) - “The trick was for [Jonathan] to know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number, everywhere at once across space and time” - they continue, “In Cunard Ellerman, managers needed to discover for themselves that coaching dealth with their own unique ability to suddenly make something possible in the face of contrary evidence and circumstance” (unpublished manuscript: 15; my emphasis). See also the material here referred to in notes (4) and (12) for more on the value-discourse of the ‘transformed’.
See Heelas (1991, 1992(a), 1992(b)) for more on the ‘transformation of business’, including the nature of the self-work ethic. Evans and Russell portray the nature of the “creative manager”, in particular the role played by “inner knowing” (1989: 153). Pender (1987) provides useful information on the transformational teaching of Krone (see for example Kirp and Douglas, 1988: 81). It should be borne in mind that the attribution of spiritual value or significance to work takes a variety of forms, two of the most common being work as “meditation”, and work as bound up with the “manifestation” of spirituality.
Visits to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry (south east India) suggest that it serves as an excellent illustration of how ‘small is beautiful’ industries can function: in the words of an Ashram document, they serve as a “means whereby to express onself [and] develop one’s capacities and possibilities”.
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Heelas, P. (1995). The New Age: Values and Modern Times. In: van Vucht Tijssen, L., Berting, J., Lechner, F. (eds) The Search for Fundamentals. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8500-2_9
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