Getting off the Wheel: A Conceptual History of the New Age Concept of Enlightenment

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Although many new agers believe that enlightenment is the end goal of spiritual development, the importance of this concept has largely been overlooked by scholars until now. This article contextualizes the concept of enlightenment historically. After a detailed description of what the new age concept of enlightenment entails, it traces the origin of the concept to the late 19th-century “Oriental reaction” to Theosophy, when “missionaries from the East” like Vivekananda and Suzuki drew on transcendentalism, Theosophy, and recent innovations in psychology to articulate a paradigmatic expression of Asian soteriology. It highlights the importance of models of enlightenment in the transmission of Asian ideas and follows the trajectory that starts with Vivekananda and Suzuki to figures and currents like Aldous Huxley, 1960s counterculture, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and neo-advaita. Thereby, it provides an account of the formation of the new age concept of enlightenment.

What is enlightenment? In January 1992, spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen (b. 1955) published a journal dedicated to clearing up the confusion surrounding the concept — appropriately titled What is Enlightenment? — and in the first issue he tried to answer that very question. He tells us that

Enlightenment is a condition in which there is a conscious knowing that one has come to the end of becoming. To be fully Enlightened means to come to the end of evolution, the end of the possibility of any evolution. Even people who glimpse what Enlightenment is for a brief period have intimation of the kind of finality that I’m speaking about. It is the element of finality that makes that kind of knowing that I am speaking about so extraordinary and so difficult to describe to people who haven’t tasted it … It is Absolute.

A. Cohen 1992: 

What will be apparent to anyone who frequently visits new age settings is how important the concept of enlightenment is to the new age.1 Many new agers believe that enlightenment is the end goal of spiritual progress. They believe that specific individuals have attained enlightenment and that an association with these individuals is desirable, beneficial, and inspiring. Most have a vague notion that practices such as meditation, in addition to the worldly benefits they offer, aim at enlightenment. A small subgroup will actively seek to attain enlightenment, a process for which the association with an enlightened “master” (who is not only enlightened but also guides others to enlightenment) is essential.2 Many new agers will keep a few pictures of masters they feel a special connection to in their living spaces, and they will own at least a few books with teachings from enlightened masters procured from a local esoteric book store, a spiritual center, or, nowadays, the internet. Although these enlightened masters will often belong to specific lineages and religious traditions, the specifics rarely concern the new ager, who draws inspiration from masters of different traditions.

Enlightenment is described as a final release — a state rather than an (necessarily finite) experience. It is the be-all and end-all: the goal of spiritual practice and the completion of spiritual growth and progress. It is the end of all striving and a release from reincarnation and cyclic existence. Often, practices that provisionally aim at physical or psychological healing are seen as part of a path that culminates in enlightenment. Of course, some schools argue that there is no path and that you are already there — the trick is knowing that you are. The latter view is mainly found in the neo-advaita movement (Frisk 2002: 66).

(2) Enlightenment is available to all, and is not the exclusive territory of the religious specialist. Techniques that aim at bringing about enlightenment — among which “meditation” always figures prominently — can be learned from courses, seminars, books, audio, and video recordings.4

(3) Enlightenment is described as the end of an evolutionary development.

 Enlightenment in Transcendentalism and Theosophy

There is no denying the importance of transcendentalism for the new age. The transcendentalists were the first popular movement to treat non-Christian scriptures as genuine revelation and they were the first to treat the founders of non-Christian religions as genuine prophets. Transcendentalism embraced mysticism as the heart of religion. All prophets were thought to have the same direct and unmediated experience of what Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) called the “Oversoul.” With transcendentalism, perennialism can in some ways be said to start.

or as everyone knows, total emancipation from authority of the one all pervading power or law called God by the Theists — Buddha, Divine Wisdom and Enlightenment or Theosophy by the philosophers of all ages — means also the emancipation from that of human law. Once unfettered [and] delivered from their dead weight of dogmatic interpretations, personal names, anthropomorphic conceptions and salaried priests, the fundamental doctrines of all religions will be proved identical in their esoteric meaning. Osiris, Chrishna [Kṛṣṇa], Buddha, Christ, will be shown as different means for one and [the] same royal highway to final bliss, Nirvana.

Chin 1998: 

Here we are very close to what I have described as enlightenment perennialism. Nirvāṇa is conceived as the goal of all religion, which is contrasted with the secondary accretions of dogma and salaried priests. Nevertheless, nirvāṇa is only “an exalted and glorious selfishness” and, in the opinion of the Master, the true Theosophist is marked by his or her desire to help others (Chin 1998: 477). Here, Theosophy adopts a Mahāyāna (great vehicle) Buddhist polemic against the individual attainment valorized by what from its perspective is a Hīnayāna (small vehicle) Buddhism.23

Sinnett further expands on nirvāṇa in his Esoteric Buddhism of 1883, which, together with his earlier The Occult World (1881), introduced audiences to the teachings of the Masters. The goal of Theosophy (or “Esoteric Buddhism”) is to bring about a kind of collective nirvāṇa, or a state very close to it, in the seventh round of humanity (Sinnet 1883: 160–170).24 This collective nirvāṇa comes at the end of an evolutionary development, but it does not come easily or naturally. It is the result of sustained effort on the part of more developed individuals, who attempt to lift humanity to a higher level. To remain in contact with struggling humanity, these individuals have attained but renounced nirvāṇa: “The great end of the whole stupendous evolution of humanity, is to cultivate souls so that they shall be ultimately fit for that as yet inconceivable condition” (167). The ideas introduced by Sinnett were further explored in H. P. Blavatsky’s The Voice of the Silence of 1889: “To reach Nirvana’s bliss but to renounce it, is the supreme, the final step — the highest on Renunciation’s Path” (Blavatsky 1889: 33). Theosophy, in other words, is taking up the bodhisattva ideal (Williams 2009: 55–62).

Models of Enlightenment

Enlightenment is admittedly a vague term. What gives it currency is not the presence of a transparent definition, but its concrete embodiment in individuals who are said to be enlightened, practices that are said to aim at enlightenment, and experiences that are said to be representative of enlightenment. It is relatively easy to make sense of enlightenment if you live in a culture that tells stories about enlightened holy men and women and their quest — men and women whose statues you pass on the way to work, and whose contemporary representatives are still around. What was needed to introduce the concept of enlightenment in Europe and the USA more than anything were models of enlightenment; these begin to appear by the late 19th century.

Vivekananda’s first major work, his Râja Yoga of 1896, contains all the elements of a new age concept of enlightenment. Vivekananda emphasizes the transformative quality of samādhi, which he contrasts with deep sleep:

When a man goes into deep sleep he enters a plane beneath consciousness. He works the body all the time, he breathes, he moves the body, perhaps, in his sleep, without any accompanying feeling of ego; he is unconscious, and when he returns from his sleep he is the same man who went into it. The sum-total of the knowledge which he had before he went into the sleep remains the same; it has not increased at all. No enlightenment has come. But if a man goes into Samadhi, if he goes into it a fool, he comes out a sage.

Vivekananda 1896: 

Effortlessly Enlightened

Another development became especially prominent in the 1990s: the notion of spontaneous or effortless “instantaneous” enlightenment. Suzuki had already introduced the distinction between a sudden realization and a gradual path.39 In 1927, for example, he had written that “The preparatory course may occupy a long stretch of time, but the crisis breaks out at a point instantaneously” (Suzuki 1949 [1927]: 67). Suzuki’s suggestions were elaborated by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (a.k.a. Osho, 1931–1990), an iconoclastic spiritual teacher whose orange or maroon robed followers were a visible presence in many major European and North American cities in the late 1970s and early 1980s.40 In his daily lectures, Rajneesh commented on a wealth of mystical literature that he believed represented the teaching of enlightened masters — an interpretation that made him an important proponent of enlightenment perennialism. These lectures were collected in almost 200 books that remain popular with new age audiences. Versluis correctly excludes Osho from the immediatist stream, probably because of his emphasis on therapy and meditation practice, but overlooks the fact that Osho would comment appreciatively on sudden enlightenment as well (Versluis 2014: 228). In a particularly clear statement, Osho said that “there is a tradition which says that enlightenment is gradual, but that tradition is not really the truth. It is just a half-truth uttered in compassion for human minds. Enlightenment is sudden, and it cannot be otherwise” (Osho 1972–1973: I, 559).

Conclusion

The trajectories of perennialism and enlightenment perennialism largely overlap. Every enlightenment perennialist (Vivekananda, Suzuki, Huxley, Osho) subscribes to the notion of a common core, but not every perennialist subscribes to the notion of a final release. Although Vivekananda, Suzuki, and James were equally inspired by the transcendentalists’ understanding of religion, one of the key characteristics of mystical experience, as James understood it, was transiency (James 1902: 381). Enlightenment, however, is not transient, it is final. The notion of a final liberation was imported into the rapidly secularizing Christian cultural sphere by “missionaries from the East.” These missionaries had much in common with perennialists like James — they shared a pietistic sensibility, drew inspiration from transcendentalism, and had uneasy relationships with Theosophy — but they introduced a distinctly Asian idea, which they fused with “Western” notions of mystical experience, evolution, and psychology.41 What made this fusion possible?