12.15.05
Armstrong’s Religious Revolution
What is Enlightenment? magazine, issue 31, has an article on Karen Armstrong and the supposed
‘Second Axial Age’. There is a previous post here on this which includes the full text. Armstrong on Axial Age
ARMSTRONG: At this moment in history, I believe that we need a new spiritual revolution. We need a new faith. Now, you can say, ‘ “Look, give us a break. This is hardly the time to start a new spiritual revolution. At this juncture, we’ve got war. We’ve got the prospect of terrorism. The economy is bad. Let’s have a bit of peace and quiet so that we can go up a mountain, collect ourselves, and then begin this spiritual effort.” But suffering, fear, violence, and despair are the prime conditions for such a renewal.
I think the sages and prophets of the first Axial Age knew very well about our destructive potentials.
Armstrong’s spiritual project deserves some commentary on several points. Time to look at what’s going on with the current guru scene with their claim on the theme of spiritual ‘evolution’.
Three parties are fighting over the control of evolution, science, the Bible Belt, and the gurus. One needs to be wary of this guru phenomenon, since even moderate dissent or critique can result in ‘dark side’ complications (?!). Be wary of these sneaky people. You are under no obligation to submit their authority, none. This point is obvious to most Western secularists, but it is not obvious to immense numbers of people caught in these spiritual traditions, including the Western New Age movement. This is not idle speculation. Once one of these people promotes something, dissent can be dangerous (especially for bookwriters).
There are any number of benign gurus, many harmless idiots, and many quite deadly people. They are all useless finally. You move alone here, gurus will obstruct you. You might find a Friend On The Way.
But a guru, why? What does he want from you? What did he promise you? Did you get it in writing?
This is a response to the legacy of a corrupt tradition. In and of itself the issue of a ‘guru’ is a five thousand year old question, but with too much propaganda. A democratic age needs new instruments.
Never agree to anything, ever. That’s what they want, your consent.
Meanwhile, as to Armstong’s Axial Age nonsense. Armstrong’s model of the Axial Age has degenerated into incoherence with the idea of a ‘Second Axial Age’, which was supposed to be the rise of the modern, but is now some postmodern New Age of religion. The distortion of the Axial Age picture is one of this period being somehow a religious age. At the same time Armstrong has a book on Islam, which is somehow tied into the Axial Age theme.
The Axial Age sages are nothing but goodness and light, and the fact that this period saw the parallel birth of science and democracy in Greece barely gets a mention. So now we need a new spiritual revolution, apparently as a postmodern second Axial Age, although the Axial Age is also the birth of the modern period, which produced secularism.
What we need to do is to study and understand these ancient religions. The Buddhist PR image of humble mendicants meditating in forests may have been true in the India of Buddha, but that portrait is misleading, as is the theme of non-violence. The warfare of Buddhists and Hindus and their respective gurus went on for centuries. And there were no heros in that war. Armstrong is right in thicket of one of these reactionary Hindu formations, disguised with a Western front. Does she know who she is dealing with?
Islam an Axial religion?? The violence in Islam has been censored out of the picture, to say the least, and the current sanitized versions of jihad are a complete distortion of the reality of what was a religion degenerating into empire. And if ever there was a case of Armstrong’s incoherent Axial post-Axial religious revolution, it was Islam, an empire of plunder with a holy book. All these naive postmodern New Agers want to deliver us into another religious Age. Study the Axial Age and then its aftermath. If Socrates had realized what would come after him, I wonder what he would have thought.
In general this wishywashy promotion of postmodern religion to dismantle modernity is pure New Age nonsense, and potentially dangerous.
Ironically, Armstrong proposes this at Enlightenment magazine, in the thicket of the guru land, apparently oblivious to what she has stepped into, these satsang gurus. They have a considerable clout of their own, and must be courting Armstrong as another celebrity windfall, postmodern, promoing a religious revolution, what a catch.
Anyone who steps into that circle had best beware, and scholars need to grasp the tactics of these people before they get turned into propaganda drones.
It is worth looking at the history of these gurus in the past thirty years. Da Free John, now on a Pacific island with his harem, Lozowick with his ’spiritual slavery’, E. J. Gold and the sufi sharks, Muktananda and his scandals, Rajneesh and his scandals, Gurdjieff before that with his gangster game. The past thirty years shows one failed guru after another, an extraordinary development.
These people are not democrats. Do NOT sign you life away. Remember, you are free as long as you wish to be, no longer.
Historically, gurus have just as much been fanatics behind their non-violent promo, and since Blavatsky there has been a conspiracy in some to destroy modern democracy and secularism, destroy the conception, and reality of autonomy. Note the irony, as in Kant’s essay on enlightenment and the theme of autonomy. Kant spoke well for his age, and speaks again for ours.
The leftist postmodernists ought to beat each other over the head for the gift they have handed these people.
The history of guruism has never been told, and is very hard to tell, because few understand who these people are, what they are capable of, and how they do it.
Modern scientism is oblivious to the reality.
This has nothing to do with rejecting out of hand the legacy of Indian religion, but let us note that the Buddhist eightfold way says nothing about gurus. This authoritarian tradition is a complex historical form of domination that arose beside the great traditions. Buddha was from the warrior caste, and then the Brahmins took over the religion business. The Buddhists were not saints, and tried to take over India, as in the Ashoka period, using their sly tactics. The history is complex and confusing, and absent from general histories.
You could not admire gurus once you see that history.