“Vivekananda, clever enough to understand his audience, invented it. As Dworschak puts it in Der Spiegel, Vivekananda created a pure ethereal spirituality that existed only in his imagination: a product tailor-made for Chicago, for the West. The enthusiasm of his audience agreed.”
“Peter van der Veer published, in the journal Social Research, an article devoted to explaining the origins of modern spirituality. Committed to Talal Asad’s call for an “anthropology of secularism” and riding on the coattails of Charles Taylor’s Secular Age, van der Veer argued that modern spirituality first emerged in the West during the second half of the nineteenth-century, as an alternative to traditional religion fueled by the “secularization of the western mind.” In search of alternatives to institutionalized Christianity, the nineteenth-century witnessed the rise of various movements—Transcendentalism, Christian Science, Theosophy—hoping to discover a universal spirituality agreeable to the modern intellectual palate.”
“These were eventually reimagined and transformed to go beyond the dogmatism of Christianity. Engendered by the interaction between metropole and colony, the oppressed and the oppressor both played a part in the creation of a new spirituality—thus van der Veer’s startling conclusion that modern spirituality is incomprehensible apart from the expansion of European power.”
“A recent Der Spiegel piece by Manfred Dworschak, entitled “Salvation Without a Savior” (Erlösung ohne Erlöser), nicely illustrates how van der Veer has recently applied these insights to the history of yoga in North America and Europe. The first half of the article centers on the significance of Swami Vivekananda’s speech at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago.”
“Vivekananda made it his life mission to tout the religious ideas and practices of his wildly popular guru Ramakrishna (a practitioner of tantric yoga). The challenge in doing so involved Vivekananda’s attempt to moderate the message of an illiterate priest serving in a temple dedicated to the Goddess Kali by whom he regularly became possessed. As a member of the westernized elite, Vivekananda thus hoped to soften the highly eroticized tantra of his guru for the modernizing, middle class in Calcutta.”
“Vivekananda denounced sectarians and fanatics who for far too long had dominated world. His faith, however, taught humanity-embracing tolerance. For the Hindu, all religions are true—like all streams flowing into the sea, to God. Vivekananda proclaimed that he was “proud to belong to a religion which had taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance.””
“They were drawn to Hinduism because it offered the prospect of salvation without the need of a savior. “That was the great promise of Hinduism,” observes der Veer. “You can be a different person through experiments with the body.” Vivekananda espoused an enlightened yoga. “He saw yoga as the Indian science of higher consciousness,” writes van der Veer, “a kind of spiritual light.””
“It was actually Eugen Sandow, a native of East Prussia typically viewed as the inventor of modern bodybuilding, who played a pivotal role in the development of contemporary Yoga practices. Sandow’s attraction to Yoga led him to visit India in 1905, where his chiseled physique impressed and influenced the emaciated yogis he encountered. His body sculpting techniques were soon being emulated by yogis everywhere.”
“In India itself, the new spirituality was greeted with ambivalence. “Ordinary Indians had nothing to do with it,” says van der Veer. “They always stuck to their old gods.” This was not the case for the middle class, who believed that Vivekananda’s teachings had conquered the world. “They said to themselves: If the rich West is enthusiastic about Indian spirituality, then we can well be proud of it.” In this way, Indians rediscovered their “ancient tradition”: as a re-import from the West.”
“A recent study has revealed that 15 million Americans now practice Yoga (mostly college educated women) and that almost half of them earn at least $75,000 annually. If you are looking to make money off of spirituality, Yoga perhaps now offers the best chance. Last year $27 billion dollars were spent in the U.S. alone on Yoga products. Yoga has truly become America’s next great prosperity gospel.”
“Europeans decisively influenced the practice of Yoga in India, and how the resulting spiritual bricolage made its way to the States”
“Dworschak suggests that the Swede, Pehr Henrik Ling (1776-1839) must be considered a pivotal figure in the development of modern Yoga. Ling is perhaps most known for being the father of the “Swedish massage.” But his biggest accomplishment was founding the Royal Gymnastic Central Institute for the training of gymnastic instructors in 1813. Ling’s philosophy of bodily enhancement focused not on weight lifting or the use of gymnastics equipment but rather massage and healing techniques. “Swedish gymnastics,” according to Dworschak, were eventually embraced by the British army – since they could easily be transported – who in turn dispersed Ling’s techniques to their colonial subjects in India.”
“By the 1880s YMCAs could be found throughout the country. At the time, of course, the YMCA was a missionary organization that linked physical exercise with spiritual well-being. The major goal of its “fitness apostles” involved the physical education of the colonial people. Dworschak’s suggestion is that the YMCA provided the material site for the cross pollination of Ling’s medical gymnastics, local yoga techniques and the YMCA’s underlying theology that exercise constitutes a means of spiritual sanctification. It is at this point, observes the Indologist Axel Michaels, that Yoga and the gym came in contact with one another.”
“Perhaps the difference between the old guard of Yoga practitioners in the U.S. and their younger, more trendy counterparts involves not a question of authenticity, but of motives: in rebellion against the conventional religion of their parents, Baby Boomers embraced Yoga as an ersatz spirituality with an imagined golden past; Yipsters use it to feel healthy or as a way to keep their dogs in shape (i.e. Doga).”