2.0 Considering Social Justice and Spiritual Renewal Movements
Doug Hamilton
Spiritual Movements and their Relationship to Social Justice,
Discerning Social Justice or Spiritual Renewal Movement.
Paper
Abstract:
A spiritual renewal movement that aligns itself with, or allows itself to be aligned with, particular social positions both alters itself in so doing but is drawn away from its initial stance, at least in the eyes of potential adherents, and thus both attracts those interested in the social policy position rather than the spiritual aspect or repels people who would otherwise have been attracted to the spiritual aspect but can’t “cotton to “ the policy position.
This paper looks at life-cycles in missions of institutional spiritual practice movements that have been founded by mystics and how their memberships may change in time.
As a benchmark for critique consider this :
"When religion grows in age,
faith turns into dogma, and
experience is replaced by book-
knowledge, virtue by adherence
to rules, devotion by ritual,
meditation by metaphysical
speculation. The time is then
ripe for a rediscovery of truth
and a fresh attempt to give it
expression in life."
(Lama Govinda)
Social Justice and Spiritual Movements
People have complex lives..
(david-rockefeller-philanthropist-banker-and-collector-dies-at-101)
"And there are other things which I think can bring much greater satisfaction — and that's doing things for others." -David Rockefeller
Spiritual community and political activism often walks a line, for instance, between promulgating inner spirituality practice and outer activism of pacifism, or anti-slavery, anti-war, penal reform, or anti-Genetically Modified Food (Anti-GMO) as social causes.
Like, for example the Society of Friends (Quakers) founded by a mystic as a spiritual practice movement through successive generations has become more commonly identified for its work in anti-slavery, anti-war, and pacifism.
One way or another a communal group being identified for holding specific social action positions, like for organic and non-GMO food, or being known for its spiritual practice, is the TM movement a social justice group or is it a spiritual renewal movement?
This dissonance has surfaced periodically within the TM group as members may broach what could be considered mundane social positions as activism that could redefine the larger group differently from its origins of being a spiritual regeneration movement, a movement that more specifically is promulgating Transcendentalism through a meditationist practice.
With an active anti-GMO and organic food stance by the Transcendental Meditation meditating movement, one could ask, ‘..what is the TM movement doing aggravating its farm neighbors and farmers generally provoking the anti-GMO controversy where the TM movement’s primary mission purpose as a spiritual regeneration movement has been advocating for people to learn and practice meditation?’ As the TM community moves currently from a founding first generation towards second and third generation members, Is the TM group’s founding mission becoming something else?
Culturing Spirituality in Spiritual Practice, the Anti-war movement, and the Draft..
During the Vietnam war years as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was traveling the world giving spiritual talks and teaching meditation, in the West he would refrain generally from particular advice or partisan consultations about the Vietnam war as to whether young people should be drafted or not go into the armies to fight in the Southeast Asia war by seeking conscientious objection status in pacifism as a deferment from the war.
Initially Society of Friends (Quaker) founders facilitated a spiritual practice movement of meditation and, for instance, were neither a movement for abolitionism or pacifism as they have later become well known for in their narrative. Partly for their own safety within a larger society an early consideration within their fledgling group was a policy position that it was not necessarily their place as a spiritual practice movement to be advocating social, political or worldly position but that they were primarily a spiritual practice group, of ‘Friends’. In a pragmatism given their circumstances the early Friends adopted pacifism as a means to defending against suspicions that they were insurrectionists and a seditious group to church and government of the time.
For some time of the Quaker founding generation the Society of Friends was cautiously conservative in policy positions to not be needlessly antagonizing to the world around them by necessarily mixing secular advocacy with their primary work of regenerating spiritual practice. This was weighed with practical expediency and conscience within their coming to work as a broader public teaching organization. The workings of social conscience that Quakers are now more readily known for came subsequently into the being of their movement to become very much part of their current spiritual-religious practice. These encroachments would come to their movement in time.
An example within this is what became a separating conflict in 19th Century American Quakerism particularly over the primacy of their facilitating spiritual practice of quietist group meditation as the ‘Quaker Meeting for Worship’ versus attempts to use the facility of Quaker Meetings by anti-slavery and abolition activists.
The particular narrative then was that, in the 1840’s there were three divergent views at that time on anti-slavery in the larger community of Friends. There was work on the Colonization Society, the Anti-Slavery Abolitionist Movement,and the Underground Railroad. The Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends jurisdiction at that time took proscriptive action against their own membership who were most active in the Underground Railroad, and outspoken in the anti-slavery issue. Those members were ‘complained against’ for being “Out of unity with Friends and writing slanderously against them.” Complaints for “spending meeting hour in vain and unbecoming manner and identifying himself with those who have separated from us”.
..The number of complaints increased rapidly and were soon shortened in recorded minutes to “non-attendance and out of unity”.
Disowned and separated Friends then met and organized a Monthly and then Yearly Meeting of Anti-Slavery Friends building their own Quaker Meeting houses and organization. Through years of time new attitudes intervened and healed the Anti-Slavery Friends schism after the Civil War and emancipation. The reign and rule of the long dictatorial presiding clerk came to an end in the Indiana Yearly Meeting and his son was appointed the new presiding clerk of meeting who invited to welcome back the Anti-Slavery Friends. By time and in feelings a portion had moved on by the end of the schism and the Indiana Yearly Meeting of The Society of Friends evidently was not renewed to the next generation to the same collective strength of membership and resource as before.
More recently in the early decades of the 2000’s at the meditating university of Maharishi University of Management a small group of non-meditating students came to be admitted to the school for what was then a very successful sustainable living degree program. Some small group of incoming students at that time arrived unaware that daily meditation was part of the academic life of the school . ‘Sustainable Living’ as a design and way of living has been an enduring theme that can be readily found within the long-term settlement of the Fairfield meditating community, a culture and people interested in sustainable living has certainly found home in the community also alongside less sustainable and even ostentatious living by other meditators of the community .
However, a few of the non-meditating students who arrived for study in ‘Sustainable Living’ chafed under and then challenged meditation practice as being an integral part of their academic experience. The school academic administration sharpened their clarity in this conflict by reference to founding missions determining that these students were “out of harmony with the group”and “Not a good fit” for the University and directed the students to consider study programs elsewhere. Most of the students did subsequently graduate from the university’s degree program, though disgruntled. The University’s admission policies were then better clarified for incoming
students to the various academic programs of the meditating university. The discord created by these particular students in the sustainable living program was then re-tuned into a rebranded “Regenerative Organic Agricultural” program on campus with new students who in coming to the program have learned and practice meditation prior to arrival on campus. Hence, the integrity of the spiritual practice movement is maintained in primacy.
The 2016 election cycle also brought a review of communal mission and organizational policy with cautionary e-mail memos from founding generation leadership for the TM movement. Memos sent to the meditating community exhorting members to gather in groups to practice meditation during the election cycle included these disclaimers: “We want to make it absolutely clear that neither Maharishi Foundation nor MUM takes any position on national politics.”
The TM community like early first-generation Quakers, early Shakers, and Amana Colonists as spiritual practice groups could cleave the fundamental mission of their spiritual practice and worldly matters pragmatically.
Generational-wisdom
These examples of spiritual practice movements encountering social activism portray a dynamic between missions within founding experiences and what may come subsequently into institutional missions by the narrative of communal life.
Surfacing in these examples of communal groups dealing with partisan issues it is useful to note how these communal groups may look at members who would like to take their groups in other directions of movement.
Group self-descriptions of those memberships who may ‘fall away’ becomes another index into this dynamic within separations from communal foundations of mission.
Recognizing variance within group values by generational-wisdom within continuing developmental processes of communalism the 1966 Introduction by Mark Holloway to the Dover edition of, History Of American Socialisms, by John Humphrey Noyes, first published in 1869, identifies processes of generational wisdom that may play in consolidations away from founding values. In both Noyes’ and Holloway’s discernments between what are spiritual and social groups one can note how communal groups starting off as spiritual practice groups can transition in time to something else more institutional, as Lama Govinda’s benchmark described earlier, as a matter of experience.
-Doug Hamilton
Fairfield, Iowa
Additional examples of dissonance in generational-wisdom where formative values of a founding first generation are challenged by second and third generation-wisdom. Either outgrown or newcomers disturbing into communal groups, and those who fell away to surrounding margins:
Icaria, as secular example. Fragmentation by latecomers to the formative first generation group.
Zion City: Holly Folk’s CS Journal Paper, First Generation wisdom endures and removes a narcissistic disordered founder and also a next overseer of the group.
see link for Zion City, Transitioning Movements from Founders to Following Generations
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/communal-studies-forum/xb1LciUvLiU
Amana Colony: in losing its last living mystics and the entanglement of subsequent generations with progressive materialism of modernism of late 19th and early 20th Century, the 3rd-Generation-wisdom goes off to town..
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Gathered Notes...
Quakers Struggle and ‘Separate’ over Slavery in the United States..
http://www.icelandichorse.info/salemantislaveryfriends.html
Initially Quakers were more strictly a spiritual practice group of meditationism and their social actions of conscience identifying them as a people have come along to be adopted in a sequence.
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Of necessity in spiritual regeneration movements a position of organizational policy rooted in methodical abstinence from mundane political opinion on social issues is not without example. For instance, In an initial concern for personal safety Mother Ann and the Shakers within their forming spiritual group initially withdrew from broader society, including conscription, and thereby incubated their early meditationist movement at a time on their arrival in America.
“..From their foundation, the early eastern Shakers lived in a physical fear of the broader world and of the realities of persecution. Persecution was deeply embedded in their history and their narrative. ..The most direct evidence of the eastern Shaker mindset is the account of Ann Lee’s experience. Her encounter with the outside world, first in England and then in America, is portrayed in one of the earliest printed Shaker texts, .. , as a litany of sufferings and persecutions. ..The reality of religious persecution in early America was undeniable. It was therefore logical and legitimate for the early Shakers, for fear of the world’s reaction, to avoid the world or keep it at a distance.
Beginning in America in 1774, Ann Lee and her followers chose to settle in Waterviliet, New York, in “an obscure place in the wilderness, remote from the public eye”. Later as recounted.. , “The testimony was withdrawn from the world about the year 1785 and was rarely open to any until about the year 1797. During this 12-year period of isolation from the world, the early eastern Shakers consolidated their religious practice. ..The chosen strategy was to act, in terms of presence, according to what the world could accept.” -Chavance, The Emancipation of Shakerism, Communal Societies, Journal of the Communal Studies Association, V35,1. P52-54, 2016.
Similarly, a careful attempt at clarification in the placement of the Transcendental Meditationist movement with regard to mundane partisan socio/political contentiousness in the world was decisively drawn out for the 2016 US elections by memo.
Quoting pre-election (2016) e-mail memoranda sent around to the TM meditating community, excerpts..
“..The current elections are crucial to the future of our nation in many ways. It is not just the executive; it is all three branches of government which hang in the balance. Let’s use the powerful technology of group program that Maharishi gave us to ensure the best possible outcome for the whole country.
The evidence for the Maharishi Effect continues to mount up. Another compelling, new study came out in February of this year, again based on publicly available statistics. This is a scientific breakthrough that outstrips all others in its power to do good for ourselves, our nation, and our world.
Jai Guru Dev
Raja John Hagelin
”]
Additional e-mails..
[“..
P.S. Once again, we want to be clear that as a non-profit organization, we do not support any one candidate over any other candidate. Natural Law, when enlivened by our group practice, will support the best outcome for the nation. This does not mean that we, as individuals, do not support specific candidates. We do. And we should be sure to exercise our civic duty and vote for the candidates we believe will serve the nation in the most evolutionary way.
P.P.S. This does not mean that we, as individuals, do not support specific candidates. We do. And we should be sure to exercise our civic duty and vote for the candidates we believe will serve the nation in the most evolutionary way.”
Jai Guru Dev
Raja John Hagelin and the
Ideal Community Group “]
Those of you that have been going to the Domes recently will be aware that many of our friends from across the country have joined us here in Fairfield over the last week or so, and they have helped boost the overall attendance in evening program to over 750 people.
As really wonderful as this is, it falls significantly short of what we need to create truly indomitable coherence for the nation. We therefore urge you to come to as many group programs as you possibly can over the next few days to maximize the coherence creating effect, and help us get as close to the ideal super-radiance number as we possibly can. May we particularly urge you to attend both group programs tomorrow — election day! Let’s see if we can double the numbers we are getting at the moment, and shoot for even higher!
[From an additional e-mail memo,
Peer-reviewed, published, replicated, honest-to-goodness, gold-standard scientific research leads us to make this heartfelt request of you: Come and join us for meditation in Fairfield, Iowa for this post-election period of time.
“.. Jai Guru Dev,
Ideal Community Group
* We want to make it absolutely clear that neither Maharishi Foundation nor MUM takes any position on national politics. “]
[..end reference.]
As with the early Quaker movement, moving on from a more narrow spiritual regeneration promulgated in collective meditation practice what once began in time as a spiritual regenerative movement has notably transformed over towards facilitating social reform. Current TM organizations (21st Century) within a reforming post-founder (20th Century) TM movement foster a relevance for themselves through advocacies in revolutionary education, health, food safety, agricultural, architectural, and GMO public policy reform. As this happens in spiritual revival groups, is this transformation a formula in dilution of what was originally gathered?
Life-cycle within Communal Spiritual Groups:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/communal-studies-forum/ChNcesJm1Cs
https://sites.google.com/site/primitivequakers/
“Maybe you are searching among the branches for what only appears in the roots.” -Rumi
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other notes,,
With the Shakers struggling towards the end of the 19th Century as they were well along on their road to dwindle they cast about thinking to join/sponsor peace conferences as a means towards regaining some relevance after having lost the spirituality of their founding generation to spiritism in the period of manifestations.
More recently here there was a little wave that came through communal ™ in Fairfield, Iowa like the Shaker period of manifestation. One could see how a quietist spiritual regeneration movement could be swayed and rolled over by an enthusiasm for phenomena of spiritism if there is not better discernment over what the meditation group is about at core. Shakers are a real good example of that occurring. That is another idea for a particular paper. There are really great cases here recently of some folks putting themselves up as special like in the period of Shaker manifestation with those little girls. It got figured out and suppressed here real quick within the direction of the group. Also sort of like, somewhat after Maharishi died there has been some claiming some authority in seeing or hearing from Maharishi. Something like someone finding Jesus out on the road to Damascus after being put dead in the tomb, or cremated as in Maharishi’s case. The person is either endowed with ‘gifts’ or nuts. That has been weathered more recently in TM.
environmentalism and sustainability,
Meditating, Environmental Activism, and Social Change
Meditating, Environmental Activism and Social Change
http://www.mum.edu/assets/achievements/2017_04_30.html