Spiritual Authority
A common narrative about the Enlightenment in the West is that before the Enlightenment we deferred to religious and political authority, but after the Enlightenment, we became sovereign rational beings who were critical of authority and instead sought truth directly and used it to govern life. This is understood as transition from religion to science as the basis of society. Before the Enlightenment, society was run by those with inherited aristocratic privileges and priests who appealed to unfalsifiable doctrines, and after that society transitioned to an age where we sought the right way to live through the use of reason.
Like many such narratives, there is some degree of truth to this, and it serves a function of simplifying things to give us a grasp on interpreting the world, but it also sweeps many things under the rug. While it is true that rational inquiry has prestige that it did not have 400 years ago, authority is still an important part of our society. We continue to delegate our rational sovereignty to those with the right expertise. Without specialized training, we would not be able to speak to the composition of Sirius, the folds of RNA, or even give a proof of whether the earth is round rather than flat. Instead, we trust in the system of science because it has delivered reliable benefit in so many domains and trust the testimony of the scientific community. This gives the scientific community a certain amount of authority in society at large. The testimonies of scientists are thus able to influence organizations, institutions, government bodies, and to some extent even the opinion of the general public.
Religion may once have had a broad authority over life and even in some cases political affairs, but these days it only has authority for those who voluntarily submit to its guidance, which is a rapidly shrinking number in our secular society. Still, religion remains a force in society, and religious leaders have sway within their organizations and a limited amount of authority outside that organization; just as a successful CEO might have a great deal of sway inside their organization, a moderate amount of sway when speaking on their industry to the general public, and a negligible amount of sway when speaking outside of their domain like on political matters.
The process of social authority controls who is taken seriously about what matters in what contexts. The Enlightenment did not obviate the role of authority in society because even if our reason is sovereign, we do not automatically become all knowing beings; we still have limited access to the world and have to determine who to trust about what. Authority, especially in a knowledge-driven society such as modern industrial society, controls who is taken seriously about what matters.
Is this important for our spiritual lives? In principle, after the Enlightenment we became not just rationally sovereign but spiritually sovereign as well, able to attain to whatever spiritual knowledge we need to on our own. But just as with the case of rational truth, spiritual authority still plays a role. Spiritually advanced beings have left us testimonies, guidelines, and spiritual knowledge which demand to be taken seriously by aspirants. When we find ourselves facing dilemmas, unfamiliar and novel situations, many of us seek to draw guidance and strength from sources outside us. Lastly, the complex philosophies and cosmologies that many spiritual worldviews espouse simply wouldn't be possible without building on the testimonies of multiple people over generations. If one was thrust into the world with no knowledge at all, it wouldn't be clear at all what should be done to advance spiritually.
It should be clear that the knowledge and testimony of spiritual teachers, forebears, and others is a useful part of spiritual life. At the same time, we are living at a time when there is no way to scientifically ratify spiritual knowledge, where traditional institutions from the domain of spirituality like churches are no longer recognized, and where different and conflicting information is presented to us on all sides in the attention war from social media. How do we make sense of the landscape of spiritual authority in this day and age? It may have been simpler in the days when the local monastery was the only source of spiritual knowledge, and the head monk was the only person in sight to listen to on those matters. But today we have the entire contents of dozens of spiritual traditions downloadable with a few clicks, and hundreds of talking heads promoting their own truths all over social media.
Social theorist Samo Burja identifies four sources of intellectual authority: 1. Bureaucratically issued, meaning granted by a pre-existing authoritative institution 2. Great feats, meaning demonstrating authority by performing new impressive feats 3. Third party endorsement 4. First-person intellectual authority. These can be simplified further into two categories: granting authority based on extending existing authority, and on the other hand by impressing it on the audience through a new demonstration.
In today's post-religious spiritual landscape, there aren't trusted institutions at the scale of previous religious institutions to gain authority from, which largely rules out the first category. In the heyday of the Catholic Church, to gain religious authority over the population one would have to gain authority first within the institutional confines of the Church, which would then grant you authority over society at large. But there aren't spiritual institutions that rise to that level of power and influence at this point. There are, indeed, some influential institutions: Hay House publishing which publishes such famous spiritual authors as Louise Hay and Wayne Dyer; the California Insitute of Integral Studies, which grants degrees in "integral" philosophy and psychology; and Harvard Divinity School, which is the spiritual/religious branch of the world's most prestigious university.
But it's difficult to argue that any of these institutions make or break the authority of any given spiritual leader. Consider several of the most prominent spiritual leaders in the world today: Teal Swan, Eckhart Tolle, and Deepak Chopra. These three didn't rise through any of those institutions. Swan is published on Hay House, but arguably that was only a consequent result of what really drove her fame, which was her successful YouTube channel. Tolle and Chopra were both broadcast by influential media personality Oprah, which allowed them to gain credibility. But how did they gain enough prominence to get on the Oprah show, and sustain themselves after it?
My thesis is that the main way that spiritual authority is built today is through demonstrations of authority rather than institutional authority. But how is authority demonstrated? After all, there is no equivalent objective test to spiritual authority like inventing a drug that objectively cures a disease, or launching a rocket and re-landing it on a small pad, or even creating a profitable widget firm; these are the feats that are demonstrated to gain authority in other fields. Nor is there a rigorous intellectual process through which spiritual truths are debated in a structured dialectic which would allow the judgment of a true intellectual victor to emerge, as in the rarefied fields of academic philosophy today.
Instead, spiritual authority is demonstrated mostly based on three factors beyond basic ethics. (Ethical factors can indeed be decisive, but mostly on the negative side: teachers may rapidly lose credibility when ethical scandals come out.) The first is through appeal to other acceptable forms of spiritual authority—which today means not previous religious scriptures but the authority of scientific psychology. This falls under the category of bureaucratic authority Burja identified, but the next two fall properly under newly demonstrated authority. Second, whether the individual provides a truth that the audience finds useful in their lives. And third, charisma, or "vibes."
Regarding the first point, the fact is that previous religious forms have lost their prestige, and in its place scientific psychology has gained prestige. Because the two domains deal with similar realms of experience, what could be seen from a spiritual perspective as the domain of the human spirit, or from a secular spirit the human psyche, many who might have been called to the domain of religion in a previous time are called to scientific psychology now. A famous example is CG Jung, who was technically a scientific psychiatrist but in some ways essentially a religious scholar, tracing the myths and symbols of many spiritual traditions and applying them to solve his patients' psychological issues. A contemporary example is Tara Brach, who studied clinical psychology as well as Buddhist meditation. The possibility of credentials in scientific psychology allows people to gain authority over the human psyche through the system of recognition of scientific expertise that governs the mainstream of secular society.
But the system of expertise of the secular scientific world is unable to fully govern the life of the spiritual world, which leads to the second point. The test of spiritual insight is ultimately whether it's useful to the listener's spiritual growth, not whether justifies a PhD thesis. If someone generates enough spiritual insight for another person, the recipient will award the speaker with spiritual authority. If the speaker does it for multiple people, then they may generate a following. This truth may rely on references to previous traditions—in quasi-institutional traditions like that of Sri Aurobindo's following, the ability to reference Sri Aurobindo's work is part of the marker of authority for several prominent leaders. But ultimately the truth provided has to stand alone and appeal to the audience's inner sense of spiritual truth.
The second basis of spiritual authority, charisma, may make us uneasy. After all, even if the story we tell about the Enlightenment doesn't hold in its strongest form, we are still children of the Enlightenment, and cling to the idea that we are persuaded only by solid rational arguments and not by superficial and potentially dangerous psychological forces like charisma. As much as we would like to view ourselves as rational, the phenomenon of social media demonstrates to us that charisma is a foundational force at work in human society at this juncture. Charisma may have been treated as an externality before, as a sort of deciding factor once the rational-bureaucratic factors had been tallied up. But the social media age has made it apparent that charisma is a huge factor for which social media creators we follow. And in a world where spiritual teachers disseminate their message via social media, the fact is that the teachers who gain prominence are going to be the charismatic ones, the ones who draw us to them by some force of their personality, whether it be humor, authenticity, gravitas, or any number of other qualities. As charisma is becoming a greater force in society at large, so will it be a significant part of who ends up in positions of spiritual authority.
Even though we may not like the fact that we are subject to the charisma of teachers, there is actually a legitimate spiritual reason for admitting charisma as a consideration in assessing spiritual authority. And that is the fact that there is no real way for a layperson to determine the spiritual attainment of a teacher. One must therefore rely on the outer signs of that attainment to be manifest, and such outward signs will manifest as charisma. It is true that certain traditions like Buddhism and Hinduism have instituted criteria for assessing the level of spiritual realization of potential leaders, not signing off on them as it were until they have reached a certain specified level of meditative realization. In traditional societies, trust in the institution of one's tradition (whether chosen or determined by birth) would lead one to trust in the institutionally endorsed authority figure and trust that they have the attainment the institution claimed them to have.
However, there are no such institutions in the contemporary spiritual landscape that we trust, with the possible exception of someone like the Dalai Lama (and its not clear the extent to whether the current Dalai Lama's international media stature will translate to the next Dalai Lama). There are hardcore meditators who continue to rely on lineage markers of meditation teachers in the same way one might read consumer reports before making a major purchase. But it's almost certain that they would not take a lineage marker over their gut psychological feeling of "fit," which is still dependent on charisma. Also, this culture of hardcore meditation is not necessarily shared by the broad mainstream of the "spiritual but not religious" movement, who would mostly be looking for a teacher who suits them, influenced by charisma.
Different forms of charisma are appropriate for different endeavors. In the search for a CEO, charisma is termed "executive presence," signifying a sort of gravitas and power. In a schoolteacher, the charisma needed might be on the one hand, a fun enthusiasm, or on the other hand, an iron strictness; a mass of children needs to either be entertained or disciplined into compliance. What is the charisma needed from a spiritual leader? There are not one but many kinds of spiritual realizations. And while one cannot guarantee that any given inner realization will manifest in an outward way, it is at least possible for any given realization to have an outward sign. One classic realization is the realization of a deep peace, and the sign of an inward realization of peace will often be an outward peacefulness, a stillness, or a distinct lack of neurotic frenzy and worry. Another classic spiritual realization is love, and that might register outwardly by a deep compassion and care for other people. Yet another realization is that of the true inner self, and the outward sign of that is a palpable sense of authenticity.
Of course, it is possible to have various charismatic personality traits regardless of whether they correspond to a legitimately "spiritual" realization, in the sense of a realization that goes beyond standard human psychological experience. What if someone is just charismatic in a certain way but not "really" spiritual? One level of answer is that all charisma can be seen as a grace or gift from God, as was the original understanding of the term. Another level of answer is that in today's decentralized spiritual environment, one simply has to develop one's own spiritual taste and discernment. For some, that may mean sticking to the classic certified authors—Jesus, Ramakrishna—and not straying too far. Others may stick to the teachers endorsed by current institutions. Others may simply trust their own taste and what seems interesting. And unfortunately, this means that some people will fall into ideas and movements which are not beneficial for their development.
Personally, I find value in what many contemporary teachers have to say, including Jeff Carreira, Teal Swan, and Alok Pandey, all representing very different lines of thought and spiritual traditions. In a video by Maharishikaa (I haven't been able to track down which of her many videos she shares this in) she talks about how the search for truth in the spiritual life is essentially anarchic; that there is ultimately no credential one can trust and it might be that any given teacher who stands at the front of a stage may give a truth that is valid for you; the only test is whether they have a truth that resonates with your soul. It might be nice to have some assurance of spiritual "quality," but ultimately the spiritual life is a matter of the soul and can't be run like a bureaucracy, beyond the basic ethical tests of the sort that law and journalism do their part in enforcing.
In the field of contemporary spirituality, all of this means that social authority, which is being taken "seriously" by society, will accrue to different spiritual teachers in a way that may seem counterintuitive or even frustrating, as outward signs of charisma and popularity influence greater or lesser numbers of people. At earlier stages of the spiritual life, it is natural that we may be spiritually influenced by those with social authority claims. But in the flowering of the spiritual life, we will trust our own soul over any social and spiritual authority claims, or only assign our own spiritual trust to those who directly resonate with our soul. To bring it back around to the main point of the essay, this perhaps means that spiritual authority is most interesting as a sociological question, but for our own individual spiritual lives the important question is rather how to develop the taste and discernment of our own soul in deciding what to listen to.