55 Western Europe: Self-Religions

P. Heelas

Self-religions offer participants the experience of god. What they experience is themselves, the god within. The self itself is divine. Many will be perplexed by such claims.

But this is not to say that there is nothing new about them. They are Eastern manifestations in a particular Western context. They are new in that they fuse two domains which we have become accustomed to see as antagonistic—the religious and the psychological. The fusion has occurred by virtue of two innovations. On the one hand the self-religions have moved beyond the parameters of religion as established in the West. Participants do not worship and surrender to an externally envisaged theistic being. Instead, they live ‘as’ gods. On the other hand the self-religions have moved beyond the parameters of mainstream psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Participants do not simply engage in psychological activities for reasons of therapy, growth, self-improvement or even to fulfil their human potential. Instead, they use psychological techniques to reveal the god within.

These movements can easily be distinguished from new religions of a theistic nature. Hare Krishna, Transcendental Meditation and Meher Baba’s movement, for example, are not self-religions in that god is attributed an external locus of agency. As new religious movements the self-religions can also be distinguished from those Eastern imports which might be monistic but which have not fused with Western psychological traditions and institutions. Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship, the paths of Sai Baba and Sri Chinmoy, and countless yoga and Buddhist schools are not new in the fashion of the movements under discussion.

The great majority of the self-religions active in Europe owe their immediate ancestry to developments in the United States. Going back a step, however, these developments in turn largely derive from events in Europe. One event, above all others, stands out: Gurdjieff’s estab­lishment, in 1922, of the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. Housed in a chateau on the outskirts of Fontainebleau, Gurdjieff’s Institute paved the way for what was to follow. Gurdjieff taught that we are all capable of obtaining what he called ‘objective consciousness’, namely, the ‘enlight­ened state’. But wedonot know it. We are‘prisoners’. Gurdjieff introduced a model of human nature, a model which both explains why this is so and what can be done about it. Part of the model (reminiscent of behavioural psychol­ogy) is, as he puts it, that, ‘Man is a machine. All his deeds, actions, words, thoughts, feelings, convictions, opinions and habits are the result of external influences, external impressions. Man does not love, hate, desire—all this happens.’ We are trapped by the mechanics of our socialised selves. We are driven by how we have learnt we should present ourselves to win approval, and so on.

The remainder of the model has to do with the techniques which must be used to gain liberation, to awaken spirituality, to reach the ‘real and unchanging “I”’, to come to act, not to react. To use a Sufi term, Gurdjieff was perhaps the first to function as a ‘context-setter’ in the West. He provided the (often) group contexts, complete with rules and techniques, to effect transformation. All the basic ingredients of the self­religions are thus in evidence. And as well as provoking what was to come, Gurdjieff’s ‘The Work’ is still alive and well. Although it is impossible to estimate how many are currently engaged in ‘The Work’ in Europe, if England is anything to go by the numbers are not inconsiderable. Between five and ten thousand attend centres (including the Gurdjieff Ouspensky School), and then there are those attached to such neo-Gurdjieffian move­ments as Arica, the Emin Foundation (700) and the School of Economic Science (5,000).

Other European figures have also contributed to the development of the self-religions. All belong to the psychoanalytical tradi- don. All have made contributions to that spiritualising of psychology which is such an important aspect of that fusion discussed earlier. Mention of the self-religion which I know best, namely London-based Exegesis, serves to introduce one such contributor. D’Aubigny, the leader, has had an office devoid of books, except the collected works of Jung. If for no other reason this is because Jung wrote of‘individuation’, ‘the psychological process that makes of a human being an “individual”—a unique, indivisible unit or “whole man’”. Bearing in mind that individuation involves integrating the ‘ego-consciousness’ and the ‘unconscious’, and that the ‘unconscious’ takes a decidedly mystical form, it is not surprising that Jung, like his contemporary Groddeck, should be on the reading list of contemporary context-setters.

It is also worthy of note that the fusion of psycho­logical techniques and Eastern spirituality, the hallmark of all self-religions, was long ago formulated by Gurdjieff in a way which incorporates psychoanalysis:

Man has become an uprooted creature unable to adapt himself to life and alien to all the circumstances of his present existence.

Developments within the psychological tradition have provided many of the ingredients of the self-religions (see Wallis in this volume for further details). The tendency to spiritualise psychology (as well as to psychologise spirituality) has made specific impact in that the psychotherapeutic tradition itself has generated a considerable number of self-religions. Clare and Thompson, for example, have gone so far as to write of ‘the inexorable thrust which propels every new therapy into a creed of salvation’. As they continue, ‘Reichian massage, Moreno’s psychodrama, Rogerian psychotherapy—they each began as a relatively circumscribed approach to helping the mentally distressed and ill and ended up as a pro­gramme for living, a philosophical statement and a religious message.’ Along similar lines Vitz has written a book with the revealing title Psychology as Religion. The Cult of Self Worship.

Heavily psychologised forms of self-religions are today well in evidence in Western Europe. As well as those already men­tioned, one can think offorms of Transactional Analysis, Primal Therapy and Co-Counselling; of Rebirthing (a movement which is becoming increasingly popular); of various Esalen-like growth movements which have sprung up during the last twenty or so years, such as London’s the Open Centre, the Human Integration Centre and the Constructive Teaching Centre of the Alexandra Technique (there is also, for example, the Skyros Centre in Greece); one can even think of certain drug addiction units, employing the Minnesota model and engendering monistic sentiments. Then there is the International Society of Analytical Triology, with roots in the Freudian tradition but which, in common with all the self-religions, works with a much more optimistic, Pelagian, model of man.

Together with Eastern traditions, Western therapeu­tic thought has also influenced one of the best known self-religions, Scientol­ogy. The movement appears to be enormous, 300,000 in Great Britain, 80,000 in West Germany, 30,000 in Sweden, 10,000 in Switzerland and 8,000 in Holland. These figures can be put in perspective by the admission, reported in The Sunday Times of 28 October 1984, that membership in Britain is actually 1,000. But it is clear that it is one of the larger self-religions. And it is also clear that it is one of the most radical.

A Scientological Operating Thetan, living as a Homo Novus, believes that he has moved beyond the illusory albeit real restrictions imposed by the everyday world. He has become a ‘spiritual agent of infinite creative potential that acts in, but is not part of, the physical universe’. This allows Operating Thetans to communicate telepathically, perform psychokinesis and mentally materialise things. For reasons which will become apparent, such radical claims are not characteristic of the great majority of self-religions, including those which owe much to Scientology.

These are the est-like movements. Erhard of est and D’Aubigny of Exegesis both acknowledge their debt. So too, I imagine, would the leaders of those other est-like movements which are operative in Europe—the Church for the Movement of Inner Spiritual Awareness/ Insight, Self Transformation, the Life Training/the Kairos Foundation, Rela­tionships and the like. Movements of this variety are seminar based. With reference to est, what is offered is ‘a sixty-hour educational experience which creates an opportunity for people to realize their potential to transform their lives’. Drawing on a whole range of techniques or ‘processes’, including many drawn from the ‘therapies’ mentioned earlier, seminars also include lengthy talks and interchange sessions. The aim is to allow each participant to see who he really is; the overall process is one of de-identification.

Unlike Scientology, where there is a clear dualism between the mechanical self and the indwelling spiritual agency, monistic identification of the mechanical and the spiritual means that there is no sui generis god within to exercise ‘magical’ powers. As a trainer says, ‘You’re the source and creator of all you experience, you’re a God, but what you, the individual entity bouncing around inside the big universe you’ve created, what you do is totally out of your control.’ A far cry perhaps from the powers of the Operating Thetan. However, this is not to say that knowledge of mechanicalness is held to be without efficacy. The purpose of the seminar is to ‘transform your ability to experience living so that the situations you have been trying to change or have been putting up with clear up just in the process of life itself’. The machine can come to be experienced as perfect (cf. Rela­tionships and their cry, ‘You are perfect just the way you are’).

Those graduating from est and other est-like semi­nars typically report improvements ranging from physical well-being to such factors as a new sense of responsibility, greater self-esteem and confidence, greater communicative skills, being in control and ‘the experience of personal power’. These results go some way in explaining the popularity of the movements. They are almost certainly the fastest growing form of self­religion in Europe. Some 70,000 have been involved with est in West Ger­many (5,000 are are full time), est is popular in Israel (est-Kibbutzim), and 8,000 have taken the seminar in Britain. These figures are higher if one includes graduates who have become involved in courses since the ‘closure’ of est in December 1984. Another, more direct indication of the growth rate of these movements is provided by the fact that Self Transformation Semi­nars has only been active in Britain since 1982, yet already realistically claims in excess of 7,000 graduates.

Like other self-religions, only perhaps more so, the est-like movements are not simply in the business of transformation. They are equally concerned with the transformation of business. In the United States this is well developed. The Network Review, reporting Erhard’s organ­isation, for example, writes of the fact that ‘Two independent enterprises, “Action Technologies” and “Transformational Technologies”, join “Her- menet” in offering a wide range of new programs that make the technology of transformation widely available within the business and corporate com­munities.’ In Europe it does not appear that things are yet so well organised. However, a number of companies employ est graduates (including Saatchi and Saatchi and Gold Greenlees Trott, reported in Marketing, 14July 1983), a number of Exegesis graduates have decided to work together and so have formed or joined various businesses, and a number of movements put on courses or training for secular companies (Findhorn, whose philosophy is not so very different from that of est, has close ties with the Business Network and The New Initiative Ltd). Many concrete illustrations of how the self­religions as a whole attempt to transform mainstream institutions and life could be given. And these are not limited to business: est/the Network has the World Hunger Project; self-religions are moving into the fields of schooling, social work and so on.

Although the self-religions, especially those of an est-like variety, are expanding, they are not expanding as fast as they are in the United States. No European city comes anywhere near the ‘one out of 34 adults have taken est’ figure provided by this organisation for Boston. It is likely that Europeans are put off by what they perceive as a brash form of American positive thinking and idealism. On the other hand, and this helps explain why these movements are growing, the self-religions are by no means alien to the European sensibility. Gurdjieff, Jung and Frankl, to name but three, worked in this part of the world. To the extent that Erhard, for example, is a latter-day Gurdjieffian (it is surely not a coincidence that he devotes himself to what he calls ‘The Work’), he can appeal to a similar clientele as those attracted to the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. Add to this the ever-increasing ‘therapeutic awareness’ of Europeans and the progress of self-religions hardly stands in need of further explanation. Therapy offers salvation through ‘knowing oneself’; monistic spiritual paths offer a far from dissimilar route to salvation. The paths enhance one another. The desire to fulfil human potential is taken further by the addition of the god within. We have a transformed humanism. Feuerbach’s and Durkheim’s prediction, of religion and god becoming internalised, has in measure been validated. God, one might say, has been put to work by the psychological- therapeutic culture; has been put to use in perfecting a conception of man.

To close here is a list of some of those self-religions which have not already been mentioned: Silva Mind Control, Science of Mind, DMA, CAER (a human potential centre), Self-Formation, Play­world, the I am Institute of Applied Metaphysics, the Taking Risks work­shop, the Emissaries of the Divine Light, the Centre for Psychological Astrology and much of the work of the Wrekin Trust. Many other move­ments have much in common with the self-religions but contain additional ingredients. Rajneeshism, especially active in Germany, and with offshoots such as Focus of Life, is one such instance. It is a self-religion in that there is talk of‘the psychology of the Buddhas’, of the fact that we are all ‘Gods and Goddesses in exile’. But there is also worship, and Rajneesh is more than a context-setter. Much the same goes for the Laughing Man Institute(s). Lifewave (‘Man is the only God’), Eckankar, the ‘I am’ movement (Christian monism) and Inner Light Consciousness also have much in common with the self-religions but, so to speak, go well beyond the human self. Yet more movements are discussed by C.W. Henderson in his excellent survey, Awakening. Ways to Psycho-Spiritual Growth. Mysticism is certainly showing signs of being active in the modern world.

Further Reading

Clare, A. with Thompson, S. Let’s Talk About Me. A Critical Examination of the New Psychotherapies (British Broadcasting Corporation, London, 1981), p. 142

Groddeck, G. The Book of the It (Vision Press, London, 1979), original 1923 Henderson, C.W. Awakening. Ways to Psycho-Spiritual Growth (Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1975)

Rhinehart, L. The Book of est (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1976)

Vitz, P. Psychology as Religion. The Cult of Self Worship (Lion, Hertfordshire, 1977) Wallis, R. The Road to Total Freedom: A Sociological Analysis of Scientology (Heine­mann, London, 1976)

Webb,J. The Harmonious Circle. TheLivesand Work of G.I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, and their Followers (Thames & Hudson, London, 1980)