American gurus : from American transcendentalism to new age religion

321 Pages·2014·0.87 MB·English

by  Arthur Versluis

American Gurus

AmericAn
GUrUS
From American Transcendentalism to
New Age Religion
z
ArthUr VerSlUiS
1
3
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© Arthur Versluis 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Versluis, Arthur, 1959-
American gurus : from American transcendentalism to new age religion / Arthur Versluis.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978–0–19–936813–6 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978–0–19–936814–3
(ebook) 1. United states—Religion—History. 2. Religious leaders—United
States. I. Title.
BL2525.V465 2014
206’.10973—dc23
2013033755
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
[Ours] is such a resumption of power, as if a ban-
ished king should buy his territories inch by inch,
instead of vaulting at once into his throne.. . . [For
we can experience] Reason’s momentary grasp
of the sceptre; the exertions of a power which
exists not in time or space, but an instantaneous
in-streaming causing power.
—Ralph Waldo EmERson
Americans want the fruit of religion, but not its
obligations.
—GEoRGE Gallup, JR.

Contents
1. Introduction 1
PART ONE: Nineteenth-Century Enlightenments
2. Revivalism, Romanticism, and the Protestant Principle 17
3. The Sage of Concord 26
4. Emerson and Platonism 35
5. The Concord School of Philosophy and American Platonism 52
6. Walt Whitman’s Cosmic Consciousness 71
PART TWO: Enlightened Literature
7. American (Literary) Spiritual Teachers 81
8. Beat Religion and the Choice 92
9. Enter Psychedelics 109
10. Dogmas, Catmas, and Spiritual Anarchism 122
11. Oh, Ho, Ho, It’s Magic. . . 130
12. Spiritual Anarchy, Tantra, and Islamic Heterodoxy 139
13. On the Counterculture 147
viii Contents
PART THREE: American Gurus
14. From Europe to America 159
15. Varieties of Modern American Mysticism 175
16. The Sage on the Stage 188
17. The American Guru Enters, Stage Left 202
18. The Immediatist Wave 227
19. Conclusions 237
Notes 251
Index 293
1
Introduction
By thE EaRly twenty-first century, a phenomenon that once was inconceiv-
able had become nearly commonplace in American society. Symbolizing
this development was the appearance of Eckhart Tolle on The Oprah Winfrey
Show, as well as the selection of his work for Oprah’s Book Club. Tolle is a
German-born mystic whose books, including The Power of Now and A New
Earth, represent no particular religious tradition, though his work owes
more than a little to the long-standing current of Christian mysticism
that can be traced back not only to Tolle’s namesake, Meister Eckhart, the
great medieval Christian mystic, but also back to early Christianity.1 And
his work also owes something to Buddhist meditation practices. Tolle, a
diminutive bearded figure, was catapulted to “bestseller-dom” by the phe-
nomenally popular daytime talk show host Oprah Winfrey’s enthusiastic
endorsement of his work. It might seem that a figure like Tolle comes
more or less from nowhere, and in fact his works to some extent support
this impression. At the same time, Tolle also represents a much larger
phenomenon, which I am terming the “contemporary North American
guru.”2
After all, Tolle is not the only such North American public spiritual
teacher who does not belong to, or at least is not authorized by, a major
religious tradition. In fact, there are so many such independent spiritual
teachers that already before the end of the twentieth century, Andrew
Rawlinson had published a still invaluable encyclopedia titled The Book
of Enlightened Masters: Western Teachers in Asian Traditions.3 Some of the
most famous other American guru-figures include Ram Dass, Andrew
Cohen, Franklin Jones [Adi Da], and numerous others, some of whom
claim to be enlightened, while others do not. Many of these figures have
in common a Hindu background—often a meeting with a charismatic
guru—though that is by no means always the case.