Shadow culture: psychology and spirituality in America

Abstract

Shadow Culture traces the lineage of the contemporary New Age movement through three centuries of American spirituality.. Writing a modern Varieties of Religious Experience , Eugene Taylor traces the lineage of the contemporary New Age movement through three centuries of American spirituality as sustained in a continuous shadow culture outside the religious mainstream.Americans are witnessing a third Great Awakening, an explosion of interest in esoteric and mystical religious experience. Often referred to as New Age or pop psychology--especially by its detractors--this third Great Awakening is profoundly psychological, stressing the alteration of consciousness, the integration of mind and body, and the connection between physical and mental health. Its practitioners comprise a shadow culture of seekers, whose experiences are best understood in the context of three centuries of the American search for the sacred. Taylor begins his story with Americas first generation of visionaries, Jonathan Edwards, who rescued a declining Calvinism, and his lesser-known peer, Conrad Beissel, who led the Ephrata mystics, a monastic community that became the model for many utopian social experiments to come. Together they spearheaded the first Great Awakening, spanning the years 1720 to 1750. Trance states, ecstatic whirling, automatic utterances, and falling down in the spirit became common occurrences sanctioned by many of the governing church bodies, particularly the Shakers, for whom altered consciousness served as a primary source of spiritual inspiration. The second Great Awakening blossomed during the westward expansion of the early nineteenth century and was characterized by utopian experiments in Christian socialism. Taylor paints fresh portraits of that eras towering visionaries--Emerson, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. In the folk psychology of that era, ties between spiritualism and mental healing likewise burgeoned in the diverse practices of homeopathy, phrenology, and mesmerism. Like todays Great Awakening, with its roots in the experimentalism of the 1960s, each of the two previous was propelled by a shadow culture.Today, that shadow culture can be found flourishing in every region and sector of American society--the Christian practitioners of Hindu yoga or zen meditation, the Jewish psychologists attaining the rank of Moslem Sufi masters, the American-born Buddhist nuns. Though outside the mainstream of religious and psychological institutions, these recombinant pilgrims have paradoxically come to play a dominant role in our popular culture. For it is through awakenings that a nation explores wisdom, gains respect for itself, and comes into more harmonious relations with the physical universe. A brilliant work of historical and cultural synthesis, Shadow Culture will appeal to anyone seeking an accessible history of the resurgence of spiritualism in America, from New Age seekers to Gnostics, from agnostics to Unitarians, from Swedenborgians to practicing Buddhists. Since the 1960s Americans have embarked on a third Great Awakening, best understood in the context of three centuries of the American search for the sacred. The first Great Awakening took place in 17201750 as a reaction against the strictures of Calvinism. Trance states, ecstatic whirling, automatic utterances, and falling down in the spirit became common occurrences fully sanctioned by the governing church bodies. The second blossomed during the westward expansion of the early nineteenth century and was characterized by utopian experiments in Christian socialism. William James first explored these movements from the perspective of the thenrelatively new science of psychology, concluding that these experiences, while ephemeral, carried a sense of a deeper knowledge than obtainable through rational intellect.Each of the three Great Awakenings has been propelled by a shadow culture outside the mainstream of Judeo-Christian Protestantism. Today, its inhabitants are the white men and women who have lived successfully among native American Indians, the Christian and Jewish practitioners of Hindu yoga and meditation, the Caucasian musicians who have mastered the African drums, the Jewish psychology professors who have attained the rank of Moslem Sufi masters, and the American women who have become Buddhist nuns. Taylor argues that through awakenings a nation grows in wisdom, in respect for itself, and into more harmonious relations with other people and the physical universe.