United States of America: Homeland of the New Gurus

This post is based on a French documentary, I´ve just seen. It is called “The New American Gurus”. View trailer:

So, the following is inspired by this documentary. It is a short follow-up commentary to my article:

United States of America: Homeland of the Matrix Conspiracy

According to the US Constitution, anyone can found a religion and spread its message. Many Americans are doing just that. The range of religious communities is diverse and stretches from sea to shining sea. Religions are given tax exemption and governmental neutrality, so-called “benevolent neutrality” that allows religious organizations to exist without sponsorship and without interference.

As the French narrator, in the documentary, says, then this would never be allowed in France. And there are some good reasons for why you shouldn´t allow anyone to found a religion.

As I myself have experienced through 36 years of working with spiritual crises, I´m amazed over how many psychic ill people who, in New Age, and the implied subjectivism and relativism, have found a way of explaining their psychic illness away as a “spiritual awakening”, whereafter they often start a career as guru, shaman or spiritual teacher. As I write in my article, Nordic Shamanism and Forest Therapy:

I don´t want to call myself a shaman. There are some specific reasons for this. One of the reasons I stopped calling myself a shaman, was due to the many psychic ill people in this environment who, due to New Age subjectivism and relativism, confuse their psychic illness with spiritual constructs, as for example kundalini and shamanic awakening. This is often the case with people who would be diagnosed as skizophrenic, delusional, bipolar, or simply disconnected and untethered from collective reality. Often they even work as shamans, therapists or spiritual healers (see my article: The Faust Syndrome and the End of the Time of Enlightened Masters).

For some years now, the US has in that way been in the midst of a second "New Age" wave. Shamans, life coaches and spiritualists are doing good business thanks to people’s search for meaning.

In the documentary, we learn that one current trend is self-healing using kambo, a highly toxic secretion of the American giant macaque frog, which is administered in group ceremonies. It leads to vomiting, palpitations and dizziness, which adherents regard as a cleansing of the body. If used incorrectly, the substance can lead to cardiac arrest.

One guru’s career is continuing, despite the deaths of his followers. Life-coach James Arthur Ray was sentenced to two years in prison in 2011, after three participants in one of his workshops died in a home-made sauna. In 2019, he celebrated his comeback in Las Vegas, and now sells self-realization seminars for thousands of dollars. For his followers, it’s proof that Ray's strategy works.

The US has given birth to huge sects that survive thanks to the utter financial dedication of their members. In 2019, cult-founder Keith Raniere was convicted in a sensational trial, having exploited and at times abused 15,000 women. One former member shares the barbaric methods that were used to keep women in the cult.

This documentary takes a journey through America’s quest for spiritual fulfillment, shedding light on the questionable practices of self-appointed gurus.

How America became the land of the new gurus (the following passage also appears in my blog post on Oprah Winfrey´s interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry – I apologize for repeating myself, but I find the repetition necessary (click here for Oprah´s interview). The passage goes:

Alfred North Whitehead was a widely influential twentieth century philosopher and mathematician. He is responsible for coining the following celebrated quote about Plato's enduring influence:

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato (Process and Reality, p. 39).

In connection with Platonism, it ought to be mentioned that there is a distinctively American form of Platonism, fostered by the Concord School of Philosophy. The Concord School of Philosophy was a lyceum-like series of summer lectures and discussions of philosophy in Concord, Massachusetts from 1879 to 1888.

Starting the Concord School of Philosophy had long been a goal of founder Amos Bronson Alcott and others in the Transcendental movement. The school was based partly on Plato's Academy. Many of the school's lectures and readings focused on reminiscences of the Transcendentalists: Ralph Waldo Emerson attended some of the school's meetings before his death, and was commemorated after; readings from Henry David Thoreau's then-unpublished journals were among the most popular events. 

This school is fascinating in the way that it, precisely like Plato´s academy, was spoiled by sophists (today evolutionists), and eventually was closed as a result. In his brilliant book American Gurus – From Transcendentalism to New Age Religion, Arthur Versluis writes:

Broadly speaking, there were two primary streams of thought that emerged from American Transcendentalism and, in particular, from Emerson and Alcott. One was the development of distinctively American forms of Platonism, fostered by the Concord School and its consistent inclusion of Platonic subjects. The other was what became known as “New Thought,” later becoming New Age, which Catherine Albanese termed “American metaphysical religion.” The New Age will be part of the context for our final chapters in this book, whereas we must turn now to consider a very different creature, American Platonism as it engaged in battle with materialism and evolutionism (page 55).

What is interesting is that the documentary features two American gurus, which I already have examined: James Arthur Ray and Shaman Durek:

1)  James Arthur Ray and the Sweat Lodge Tragedy

In the end of this article I wrote:

I am not a prophet, but I would guess, that when Ray comes out of prison, he will continue the same teachings, and he will rise to more success than ever. This is namely the typical reaction in religious movements – due to the thought distortion called Cognitive dissonance – see my book A Dictionary of Though Distortions.

This is precisely what we see in the documentary. James Arthur Ray is back with extremely expensive courses, and his old followers are also back (his courses are very similar to Tony Robbins. The main message is how to become a superhuman, get success and earn a lot of money, all mixed with spirituality. The concept of the superhuman, which also Tony Robbins uses, and which are getting more and more mainstream in New Age, reveals how much Nietzsche is influencing the American educational system – see for example Allan Bloom´s book: The Closing of the American Mind – How Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today´s Students. On Nietzsche´s influence on the self-help industry: see my article, A Critique of the Self-help Industry and the Mythology of Authenticity, especially part 1: The Two World-images of the Mythology of Authenticity).

2)  “Shaman Durek”: Yet Another American New Thought Missionary (a Critique)

Related article, which also is based on a documentary on American guru worship:

What is Spiritual Placebo?

This article is inspired by the 2011 documentary film Kūmāré, directed by and starring American filmmaker Vikram Gandhi, who poses as an Indian guru to satirize the New Age movement. 

Gandhi came up with the idea of a fictional guru while recording another documentary film about yogis and their followers. Gandhi transformed himself into "Sri Kumaré", an enlightened guru from a fictional village in India. He adopted a false Indian accent and grew out his hair and beard. In the documentary, Kumaré travels to Arizona to spread his made-up philosophy and gain sincere followers. In the article I show, that the consequences of adopting subjectivism and relativism, and eliminating critical thinking, can make you a victim for any charlatan. And that´s precisely what we see in the United States of America, and how it spreads to the rest of the world.

Here is the trailer:

Here is full movie:

Related Ebooks:

1) Evolutionism - The Red Thread in The Matrix Conspiracy (this ebook explains why New Age is extremely political and activistic in its approach. It also explains why sophism (con artistry) is more important that philosophy (truth-seeking). Finally it shows the central role of transhumanism in the Matrix Conspiracy; the idea that humans ought to melt together with machines).

2) The Tragic New Age Confusion of Eastern Enlightenment and Western Subjective Idealism (explains how New Age is placing enlightenment in the ordinary psychological mind, instead of in a metaphysical/transcendent consciousness, and thereby is creating endless examples of ego-inflation. The documentary explains that New Age is a typical American phenomenon).

3)  The Psychedelic Renaissance and David Jay Brown (the documentary also shows the American cultural appropriation of shamanism in connection with the use of psychedelics. In this booklet we see how David Jay Brown claims that California is above all other countries in evolution and spirituality).

4)  Plastic Shamanism versus the Traditional Shamanic Awakening (more about the American cultural appropriation of shamanism. Both James Arthur Ray´s original concept of the “spiritual warrior retreat” which led to the Sweat Lodge Tragedy, and the newer “Shaman Durek” are examples of plastic shamans).