Devotion in the Desert: Religion and Emotion on the Margins of Hindu and Hippie
Drew Thomases reports from Bhakti Fest, an annual yoga, sacred music, and personal growth festival in Joshua Tree. Continue Reading →
Tag: yoga
In the News: Satanism, Sacred Music, Shasta Seekers, and more!
A round-up of the week’s religion news. Continue Reading →
In the News: Candles, Kombucha, Crocodiles, and more!
A round-up of the week’s religion news. Continue Reading →
In the News: Paris, Witches, the CNN Apocalypse, and more!
A round-up of recent religion and media stories in the news. Continue Reading →
Me and My Mat
Naturalized as an integral part of practice, the mass produced yoga mat is an illustrative example of niche commoditization and the way entrepreneurs savvily build microeconomies around emergent lifestyle trends. Continue Reading →
Getting There Too Quickly:Aldous Huxley and Mescaline
By Peter Bebergal
Between his 1932 vision of a sterile dystopia in Brave New World and the 1962 novel Island about a spiritual utopia, the author Aldous Huxley experienced two things; the Hindu religious philosophy known as Vedanta and psychedelic drugs. In Brave New World, people are addicted to Soma, a hallucinogenic that artificially simulates a kind of dull transcendent state, and so makes religion irrelevant. In Island, the Palanese (residents of Pala where the book takes place) ritually use the drug moksha for spiritual and mystical insights. It wasn’t that by the time he was writing Island Huxley no longer believed that civilization was potentially doomed to a homogenized over-indulgent consumer culture, but rather that there was another possibility for human destiny. Soon after writing Brave New World Huxley saw this other opportunity but believed it would take work, a disciplined and rigorous adherence to a spiritual ideal. By the time he got around to writing Island he was convinced there was a faster, less strenuous way to find the higher purpose of human consciousness: mescaline.
Huxley had long been interested in the hallucinogenic properties of certain plants but it wasn’t until 1953 that he encountered the work of Humphry Osmond. Continue Reading →
Merry Christmas to Me!
Mary Valle: All I really want for Christmas is to watch “The Exorcist” with Fr. Gabriele Amorth. I also want to thank him profusely for pointing out a few things that actually are kind of true. Who hasn’t been in a yoga class and “breathing” into some pose and thought “This shit is EVIL!” I know I sure have. Yoga is great, don’t get me wrong. But come on. It’s kinda evil. Who expected us to get into stretch-jersey bellbottoms and point our asses skyward in public en masse, before our current era? Excuse me, the current year of Our Lord? Yoga is optional, you might say. Is it, now. Is it really? Uh-huh. Didn’t think so. “Try doing it in a cassock!” said Fr. Amorth, in an interview I didn’t have with him. “That **** is *****.”
And Harry Potter! As someone who has listened to the entire series and is now making her way through the movies with a younger associate, it’s kinda evil too. Not Harry, of course. But Voldemort and all his friends and associates. Evil as they come, Fr. Armorth. In fact, Valdemort is so evil a lot of the characters won’t even say his name. Take that, Satan/Lucifer/Beezebub/etc.! Where do you stand on Twilight, sir? I think you might find it is also….evil, if you don’t like magical powers or supernatural creatures or immortal stalkers who prey on teenage girls. Oh wait. Continue Reading →
Yoga's Bondage
Amy Levin: For most of us, it’s hard to wrap our heads around yoga – yes, this thing everyone is talking about, but also the details about how it got here, where it came from, and what the big deal is. Yoga has become such a part of our vernacular, and yet we seem to stumble over describing it.
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Yoga’s Bondage
Amy Levin: For most of us, it’s hard to wrap our heads around yoga – yes, this thing everyone is talking about, but also the details about how it got here, where it came from, and what the big deal is. Yoga has become such a part of our vernacular, and yet we seem to stumble over describing it.
Continue Reading →
May the Truth Force Be With You
India’s yoga guru, Baba Ramdev, is on a hunger strike starting yesterday, along with 100,000 of his followers including some in Houston, Texas (click on the prior link to catch the Houston Chronicle‘s Kate Shellnut comparing Ramdev’s popularity to that of Oprah or Joel Osteen!). He’ll fast to the death, Ramdev says, if he has to. His demands? Continue Reading →