The New Age Spiritual Life Narrative: New Wine in Old Wineskins?

Abstract

This article sets out to discuss the structure of New Age spiritual memoir as distinct from the Christian spiritual memoir. I look at the notion of spiritual seekership which drives the plots of New Age spiritual memoirs, and the various patterns of seekership that have been identified. Seeing that the major structural difference between New Age and Christian spiritual memoirs lies in the number of turning points (several “awakenings” vs one conversion experience, respectively), I present the most common types of turning points featured in the studied texts (psychedelic-induced and non-dual awakenings, as well as energy-like somatic experiences). The above are illustrated by brief overviews of selected memoirs (by Stanislav Grof, Richard Alpert/Ram Dass, Tony Parsons, Richard Sylvester, and Suzanne Segal).

Keywords

• new age
• new age spiritual memoir
• spiritual memoir turning points
• spiritual awakening
• seekership