The cult of ecstasy: Tantrism, the new age, and the spiritual logic of late capitalism

History of Religions

Volumn 39, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 268-304

  Urban, Hugh B ^a  

^a OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE; ART; ARTICLE; CLASSIFICATION; ECONOMICS; ETHICS; HISTORY; METHODOLOGY; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; RELIGION; SEXUALITY; UNITED STATES; UTILIZATION REVIEW;

HINDUISM; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMAN BODY; RELIGION; SEXUALITY; SPIRITUAL THERAPIES; UNITED STATES;

EID: 0038334406     PISSN: 00182710     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/463593     Document Type: Article

References (126)

1. Paul Ramana Das, "Celebrating Sacred Sexuality: American Tantra (tm)," reprinted on The Church of Tantra website (http://www.tantra.org).
2. Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (London: Heineman, 1976), p. 70.
3. H. H. Wilson, Essays and Lectures, Chiefly on the Religion of the Hindus (1828; reprint, London: Trubner, 1846);
4. cf. Monier Williams, Hinduism (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1894), p. 129.
5. Philip Rawson, The Art of Tantra (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1973), p. 2.
6. The most recent argument for the liberating and empowering nature of Tantra is that of Miranda Shaw, Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994).
7. Nostradamus Virato, "Tantric Sex: A Spiritual Path to Ecstasy," reprinted on The Church of Tantra website. As Tantra: The Magazine defines it, "Tantra is life in balance . . . Tantra is practiced by Native Peoples the world over, through profound respect for All that Is. It is also practiced through the respect of the divine feminine worshipped in her physical form through attending the needs of Mother Earth as our own body" (Tantra: The Magazine, Tara issue, no. 1 [1991]: 3).
8. Hugh B. Urban, "The Extreme Orient: The Construction of 'Tantrism' in the Orientalist Imagination," Religion 29 (1999): 123-46.
9. This is the argument made by Douglas Renfrew Brooks, The Secret of the Three Cities: An Introduction to Hindu Śākta Tantrism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), preface.
10. On Rajneesh, see my article, "Zorba the Buddha: Capitalism, Charisma and the Cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh," Religion 26 (1996): 161-82;
11. on Trungpa, see Stephen T. Butterfield, The Double Mirror: A Skeptical Journey into Tibetan Buddhism (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1994).
12. On Tantra on the Internet, see Nik Douglas, Spiritual Sex: Secrets of Tantra from the Ice Age to the New Millennium (New York: Pocket Books, 1997), pp. 309 ff.
13. On the concept of late capitalism, see Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973);
14. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991);
15. Scott Lash and John Urry, The End of Organized Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity, 1987);
16. William Halal, The New Capitalism (New York: Wiley, 1986);
17. Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism (London: NLB, 1975);
18. Claus Offe, Disorganized Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985);
19. and David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (London: Blackwell, 1989).
20. As Bryan S. Turner argues, "The threat to religious faith is the commodification of everyday life . . . . What makes religious faith . . . problematic in postmodern society is that everyday life has become part of a global system of exchange of commodities which are not easily influenced by . . . religious leaders" (Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism [London: Routledge, 1994], p. 10).
21. "Modernity, with its processes of rationalization, commodification and disenchantment does not lead to the eclipse of religious sentiments, for while formal religions may decline, symbolic classifications and ritual practices . . . live on at the heart of the secular social processes. As Durkheim pointed out, anything can become sacred, so why not the 'profane' goods of capitalism?" (Mike Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism [London: Sage, 1990], p. 121).
22. Mike Featherstone, "The Body in Consumer Culture," in The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, ed. M. Featherstone, M. Hepworth, and B. S. Turner (London: Sage, 1991), p. 172.
23. Here, I am, of course, playing off of Michel Foucault's phrase we "other Victorians" (The History of Sexuality, vol. I, An Introduction [New York: Viking, 1981]).
24. Jacob Needleman, "Tibet in America," in The New Religions (New York: Crossroad, 1970), p. 177.
25. Herbert Guenther, The Life and Teaching of Naropa (New York: Oxford, 1971), p. 102.
26. S. C. Banerji, A Brief History of Tantra Literature (Calcutta: Naya Prokash, 1988), p. 1.
27. For a good discussion of the term in Buddhist studies, see Donald Lopez, "The Heart Sutra as Tantra," in Elaborations of Emptiness: Uses of the Heart Sutra (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996): "Tantra functions as a lamented supplement in the European construction of an original Buddhism . . . tantra is emblematic of the category of the other in Indian religion, that factor in contradistinction from which an orthodoxy is defined by the Western scholar. Tantra, so generally excoriated as non-Buddhist, as popular, as degenerate . . . proves to be the condition for the very possibility of representing an original Buddhism" (pp. 22-23).
28. Banerji, p. 1 (see also Chintaharan Chakravarti, The Tantras: Studies on Their Religion and Literature [Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1963], p. 1).
29. Monier Williams, A Sanskrit English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1899), p. 436.
30. See Banerji, p. 2;
31. cf. Chakravarti, The Tantras, pp. 1 ff.;
32. Lopez, "The Heart Sutra as Tantra," p. 13.
33. André Padoux, "Hindu Tantrism," in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. M. Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1986), p. 273;
34. See John Woodroffe, Shakti and Shakta (New York: Dover, 1978), p. 54.
35. "The word Tantrism assuredly is a Western creation. India traditionally knows only texts called Tantras. These texts . . . fall far short of covering the entire Tantric literature; nor are only Tantric texts called Tantras" (Padoux, "A Survey of Tantric Hinduism for the Historian of Religions," History of Religions 20, no. 4 [1981]: 350).
36. See Sanjukta Gupta, Teun Goudriann, and Dirk Jan Hocns, Hindu Tantrism (Leiden: Brill, 1979), p. 3. This rhetoric of repression and liberation is even more pronounced in New Age discussions of Tantra: "Sex as an art form has yet to mature in the West. Social repression and internalized guilt have prevented Westerners from a frank and joyous exploration of sexuality . . . The Orient did not consider sex apart from spirituality . . . All variations of sexual postures were venerated as ideals . . . The parameters of sexual behavior in the East extend way beyond the West's narrow spectrum of normalcy" (Nik Douglas, "The Kāma Sūtra and the Sixty-Four Arts," on the tantra.com website [www.tantra.com]).
37. Herbert Guenther, Yuganaddha: The Tantric View of Life (Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series, 1969), p. 3.
38. The term "Software of Love" comes from Nik Douglas's website (www.tantraworks .com). Tantric websites include: The Church of Tantra (www.tantra.org), which has subsites and articles such as "Lesbian Sacred Sexuality," "American Tantra," "Sacred Orgasms," and "Sex-Magic Process: The Psychology of Ecstasy"; Tantra.com (www.tantra.com); Oceanic Tantra (www.oceantantra.com); TantraWorks (www.tantraworks.com); Skydancing Tantra (www.skydancing.com); and Hindu Tantrik Home Page (www.hubcom/tantra). For a good bibliography of popular works, see the appendix to Douglas, Spiritual Sex.
39. Rachel McDermott, "Kali's New Frontiers: A Hindu Goddess on the Internet" (paper presented at the conference, "Kali: Goddess of Extremes," Barnard College September 20-22, 1996), pp. 11-12.
40. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, p. 35.
41. See Douglas, Spiritual Sex; Andre Van Lysebeth, Tantra: The Cult of the Feminine (New York: Wiser, 1995), p. 353.
42. Michael York, The Emerging Network: A Sociology of New Age and New Religious Movements (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), p. 34.
43. Gordon Melton, New Age Encyclopedia (Detroit: Gale Research, 1990), p. xiii.
44. Roy Wallis, "Reflections on When Prophecy Fails," Zetetic Scholar 4 (1979): 119-36.
45. Robert Ellwood and Harry Partin, Religious and Spiritual Groups in Modern America (Englewoods, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1988), pp. 14-15.
46. For other definitions, see James Lewis, "Approaches to the Study of the New Age Movement," in Perspectives on the New Age, ed. J. Lewis and J. G. Melton (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1992), pp. 1-12.
47. See Gordon Melton, "A History of the New Age Movement," in Not Necessarily the New Age (New York: Prometheus, 1988), p. 3.
48. Paul Heelas, The New Age Movement: The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. 169.
49. Sandra Ray, How to Be Chic, Fabulous and Live Forever (Berkeley: Celestial Arts, 1986).
50. Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer, Creating Money (New York: Kramer, 1988), p. 18;
51. Leonard Orr and Sondra Ray, Rebirthing the New Age (Berkeley: Inspiration, 1989), p. xiv.
52. As Marvin Harris comments, "Much of the current spiritual thrust . . . constitutes a misunderstood attempt to save America's dream of worldly progress by supernatural meansrather than a reaction to Western materialism . . . The new religious consciousness is directed to the material world" (America Now: Why Nothing Works [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981], pp. 141-43).
53. Heelas, The New Age Movement, p. 68;
54. cf. Heelas, "Cults for Capitalism: Self Religions, Magic and the Empowerment of Business," in Religion and Power: Decline and Growth, ed. J. Fulton (London: British Sociological Association, 1991), pp. 27 ff. As York comments, "Part and parcel of the process of transformation . . . at the heart of the New Age are the facilitating organizations and businesses . . . who have arisen to assist this process. These include those teaching techniques ranging from yoga and meditation, martial arts, and various healing techniques (psychological therapies, alternative medicine), and those marketing . . . New Age products (health foods, vitamins, . . . books, tapes, and incense). . . [M]any New Agers . . . are adamant that the capitalist profit motive is fully compatible with New Age ideals" (p. 40).
55. See Alfred Percy Sinnett, Esoteric Buddhism (London: Chapman & Hall, 1885);
56. H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (Adyar, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1971).
57. For a good discussion of the Theosophical Society's appropriation of Tibetan Buddhism, see Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 48 ff. Interestingly enough, however, we should note that Blavatsky and her disciples did not identify Tibetan Buddhism as "Tantrism," and they in fact went to some pains to distinguish it from the disreputable and scandalous Tantric tradition.
58. "Tantrik Order in America," in J. Gordon Melton, ed., The Encyclopedia of American Religions (Detroit: Gale Research, 1989);
59. and the website devoted to Bernard (http://www.vanderbilt.edu/stringer/ weIcome.htm). Bernard's method included sexual practices and attracted both wealthy clients from New York's powerful elite society and the scrutiny of the police, who suspected him of seducing his pupils.
60. On Woodroffe's moralizing reform of Tantrism, see Jeffrey J. Kripal, "Woodroffe, Sir John," in Encyclopedia of Hinduism and Indian Religions (Charleston: University of South Carolina Press, in press). According to Woodroffe's rather sanitized version, Tantra is ultimately one with the pure, rational monotheistic tradition of the Vedas and the Vedanta: "The Tantra sastra . . . has been for centuries past one of the recognized scriptures of Hinduism, and every form of Hinduism is based on Veda and Vedanta" (p. 63; cf. pp. 385, 587, 589).
61. Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 202-12, 259.
62. Chogyam Trunga, Journey without Goal: The Tantric Wisdom of the Buddha (Boston: Shambhala, 1985), pp. 1, 57-58; my emphasis.
63. For an autobiographical account, see Chogyam Trungpa, Born in Tibet (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971).
64. For a good scholarly critique of Trungpa's work, including the translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, see Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, pp. 76-81.
65. For an analysis of Trungpa's sexual scandals from a feminist perpective, see Rita M. Gross, Soaring and Settling: Buddhist Perspectives on Contemporary Social and Religious Issues (New York: Continuum, 1998), pp. 60 ff.
66. Georg Feuerstein, Holy Madness: The Shock Tactics and Radical Teachings of Crazy-Wise Adepts, Holy Fools and Rascal Gurus (New York: Paragon, 1991), p. 73.
67. Feuerstein, p. 73.
68. Richard Grossinger, Waiting for the Martian Express: Cosmic Visions, Earth Warriors, Luminous Dreams (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1989), p. 19.
69. As Rick Fields comments, "boisterous parties followed long meditation sessions, and students with purist attitudes found themselves swept away like so many autumn leaves into the chaos" (How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America (Boston: Shambhala, 1986), p. 310.
70. Chogyam Trungpa, First Thought, Best Thought: 108 Poems (Boulder, Colo.: Shambhala, 1973), p. 7.
71. Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting through Spiritual Materialism (Boston: Shambhala, 1987) p. 107.
72. Butterfield, p. 7.
73. Butterfield, p. 107.
74. Trungpa, Journey without Goal, pp. 25, 53.
75. Butterfield, p. 140.
76. Merwin's story is told by him to Barry Miles, Ginsberg: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), pp. 466-70.
77. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Tantra: The Supreme Understanding (Poona, India: Rajneesh Foundation, 1974), p. 190.
78. For Rajneesh's biography, see my article, "Zorba the Buddha" (n. 8 above); Lewis Carter, Charisma and Control in Rajneeshpuram: The Role of Shared Values in the Creation of a Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990);
79. Susan J. Palmer, "Charisma and Abdication: A Study of the Leadership of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh," Sociological Analysis 49 (1988): 1-21.
80. More popular accounts by disciples and ex-disciples include: Yati, The Sound of Running Water: A Photobiography of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Poona, India: Rajneesh Foundation, 1980);
81. Hugh Milne, Bhagwan: The God That Failed (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986);
82. James Gordon, The Golden Guru: The Strange Journey of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (New York: Viking, 1987).
83. Feuerstein, p. 65.
84. On the remarkably successful business structure of the Rajneesh movement, which developed into a complicated system of parent companies and subsidiaries, spread out through a range of secular and spiritual enterprises, see my article, "Zorba the Buddha" and Carter, pp. 77 ff.
85. Carter, p. 237.
86. Bob Mullan, Life as Laughter: Following Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Boston: Routledge, 1983), p. 44.
87. Rajneesh, The Art of Dying, cited in Kate Strelley, The Ultimate Game (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987).
88. A Sannyasin informant, cited in Carter, p. 48.
89. Rajneesh, Tantra, p. 157.
90. Rajneesh, Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega (Poona, India: Rajneesh Foundation, 1981), pp. 21, 157.
91. Rajneesh, "Experiment in Dynamic Meditation," in The Mystic Experience (Delhi: Motilal Banarsida, 1977), pp. 72 ff.
92. Feuerstein, p. 70.
93. Rajneesh, The Goose Is Out (Antelope, Oreg.: Rajneesh Foundation International, 1982), p. 286.
94. Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker, Hacking the Future: Stories for the Flesheating 90s (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996), p. 78.
95. The more pessimistic critics warn that the Internet signals the end of communication and even of human bodily experience as we know it, with the dissolution of all reality into the "hyper-real" world of simulations (see Jean Baudrillard, Simulations [New York: Semiotext(e), 1988], pp. 1-20; Kroker, p. 78).
96. As Andrea Slane observes, "The virtual communities formed on the Internet allow people to be whomever they want, freed of the constraints of corporeality, geographical confinement and socially inscribed identities . . . however, this anonymity and fluidity also have a price-the possibility of losing true identity" ("Romancing the System: Women, Narrative Film and the Sexuality of Computers," in Processed Lives: Gender and Technology in Everyday Life, ed. J. Terry and M, Calvert [London: Routledge, 1997], p. 77).
97. Jenny Terry, "Introduction," in Terry and Calvert, p. 7.
98. See Elizabeth Reid, "Text-Based Virtual Realities, Ideology and the Cyborg Body," in High Noon on the Electronic Frontier: Contemporary Issues in Cyberspace, ed. Peter Ludlow (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996): "The player has no constant identity. MUD characters need not be any fixed gender or appearance but may evolve, mutate, morph over time and at the whim of their creator. All of these phenomena place gender, sexuality, identity and corporeality beyond the place of certainty" (p. 327).
99. See Gregory Price Grieve, "Imagining a Virtual Religious Community: Neo-Pagans and the Internet," Chicago Anthropology Exchange 21 (1995): 87-118. There are now a number of on-line temples such as the Kali Mandir (http://www.kalimandir.org/pujashop/index.html), Temples of Tantra (http://www.tantraWorks.com/Shakti.html), Temple of Jvalamukhi (http://www.dakinitantra.com/jvalamukhi), and The Ultimate Temple (http://www. grapho.net/temple).
100. Website, I Am the Bitch from Hell (http://www.ion.com.au/yoni/bitch.html) . For a good discussion of this and other sites, see McDermott, "Kali's New Frontiers," p. 8. Other Tantric Goddess sites include: Mother Kali (http://www.yorkweb.com/mythopoeia Motherkali.html), and English translations from Mahānirvāna tantra by Mike Magee (http://www.hubcom.com/magee. tantra/kali3.html).
101. David Ramsdale and Ellen Ramsdale, "Sexual Energy Ecstasy," reprinted on the Tantra.com website.
102. and Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism or the Cult Logic of Late Capitalism," New Left Review 146 (1984): 53-93.
103. As Harvey summarizes, "modernist" or "organized capitalism," which predominated in the West up to the 1970s, may be characterized as: profit-centered big business; the centralization of industrial banking and regulated national markets; complex managerial hierarchies; a concentration of capitalist relations with relatively few industries; and monopolistic corporate power. Later capitalist or disorganized capitalism, on the other hand, may be characterized as: a deconcentration of corporate power away from national markets; increasing internationalization of capital; increasing independence of large monopolies from state regulation; cultural fragmentation and pluralism, coupled with the undermining of traditional class or national identities; a decline of industrial cities and a deconcentration from city centers to peripheral areas; and entrepreneurial individualism (The Condition of Postmodernity, pp. 291-98).
104. Fredric Jameson, "Post-modernism and Consumer Society," in Postmodern Culture, ed. H. Foster (London: Pluto Press, 1985), p. 99.
105. As Terry Eagleton comments, "We are now in the process of awakening from the nightmare of modernity, with its manipulative reason and fetish of totality, into the laid back pluralism of the postmodernism, that heterogeneous range of . . . language games which has renounced the urge to totalize" ("Awakening from Modernity," Times Literary Supplement, February 20, 1987).
106. cf. Harvey, p. 54.
107. Eagleton, p. 10. As Jameson comments, "there is very little in either the form or content of contemporary art that society finds intolerable or scandalous. The most offensive forms of this art-punk rock or sexually explicit material-are all taken in stride, and they are commercially successful" ("Postmodernism and Consumer Society," in Postmodernism and Its Discontents: Theories, Practices, ed. E. Ann Kaplan [London: Verso, 1988], pp 27-28).
108. Jürgen Habermas, "Legitimation Problems in the Modern State," Communication and the Evolution of Society (Boston: Beacon, 1974).
109. cf. Terry Eagleton, "Capitalism, Modernism, and Postmodernism," New Left Review 152 (1985): 60-73.
110. Bryan S. Turner, Regulating Bodies: Essays in Medical Sociology (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 47. As Featherstone comments, "Images of the body beautiful, openly sexual and associated with hedonism . . . emphasize the importance of appearance . . . Discipline and hedonism are no longer seen as incompatible, indeed the subjugation of the body through body maintenance routines is presented within consumer culture as a precondition for the achievement of an acceptable appearance" ("The Body in Consumer Culture" [n. 12 above], pp. 170-71).
111. Free John, Garbage and the Goddess: The Last Miracles and Final Spiritual Instructions of Bubba Free John (San Rafael, Calif.: Dawn Horse Press, 1974).
112. Free John, The Knee of Listening: The Early Life and Radical Spiritual Teachings of Bubba Free John (San Rafael, Calif.: Dawn Horse Press, 1978), p. 270.
113. Nik Douglas, Tantra Yoga (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1971), p. 93.
114. Francis King, Tantra the Way of Action (Rochester, Vt.: Destiny Books, 1990), pp. 128-29.
115. Free John, Garbage and the Goddess, pp. 106-7.
116. Don Webb, "A Sex Magic Primer," posted on the Church of Tantra website.
117. Fra. Geh Mad, "Developmental Techniques for Tantra/Sex magic" (www.greendome.org/archives/tantra/tantra.html).
118. Peter Rengel, "What Is Spiritual Sex?" from the Tantra.com website.
119. Jeffrey Tye, "Tantra: Sex Magic," reproduced on the Church of Tantra website.
120. Rajneesh, quoted in Vasant Joshi, The Awakened One: The Life and Work of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982), p. 1.
121. Rajneesh, cited in Laurence Grafstein, "Messianic Capitalism," New Republic 20 (February 1984): 14.
122. Rajneesh, Beware of Socialism! (Delhi, 1978), pp. 15, 19.
123. Paul Ramana Das and Mary Ann Silbey, "American Tantra's Top Five Techniques!" from the American Tantra website.
124. See http://www.tantra.com/tantra2/productl.html. For a good list of sources on popular Tantrism, see the bibliography and appendix of Douglas, Spiritual Sex.
125. Jean Baudrillard, Forget Foucault (New York: Semiotext[e], 1987), pp. 23-24.
126. Marianna Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 40, 41.