Connecting Their Selves: The Discourse of Karma, Calling, and Surrendering among Western Spiritual Practitioners in India
This article explores the ways in which long-term western spiritual practitioners settled in Puducherry, India reconstruct their selves as connected to the divine, the guru, and India through notions of karma, calling, and surrendering. Current work on spirituality takes an either/or approac...
| Published in: | Journal of the American Academy of Religion |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
[2018]
|
| In: |
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
|
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
/ Europeans
/ Americans
/ Karma
/ Self
/ Spirituality
/ Religious experience
|
| IxTheo Classification: | AE Psychology of religion AG Religious life; material religion BK Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism KBM Asia |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | This article explores the ways in which long-term western spiritual practitioners settled in Puducherry, India reconstruct their selves as connected to the divine, the guru, and India through notions of karma, calling, and surrendering. Current work on spirituality takes an either/or approach to spirituality and the selfeither the self-oriented quest for metaphysical meaning-making is seen to be consumerist and individualistic, or it is seen to be experiential and ethical. Further, scholars on either side of the divide agree that contemporary spiritualities are primarily self-oriented, with one camp arguing that such self-orientation is consumerist and selfish versus the other arguing that such self-orientation challenges modern consumerism and can be an ethical alternative to consumerism. By contrast, I argue that contemporary spiritualities demonstrate the ways in which individualist, self-oriented experimentation with, and even consumption of, other religious ideas and practices is intertwined with attempts to go beyond the atomistic self. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1477-4585 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: American Academy of Religion, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfy015 |