At certain junctures in history, a culture's dominant values may fail to resonate with part of the population, leading people to go in search of new values. The most famous example of this phenomenon in our historical memory was in the 1960s. This was the time of the "hippies", the young people who rebelled against the established order, refusing to participate in existing societal forms and experimenting with new ones. During this period there were uprisings at universities, mass protests against the Vietnam War draft, giant music festivals, experimentation with sexuality and drug use, and encounters with new systems of thought and philosophy. All of this ran counter to the mainstream ethos of 1950s America which, though it had alternative currents, was on the whole more straight-laced.
For the spiritual seeker in the America, this time period has a special importance, because it had the greatest influx of spiritual ideas. There were, of course, waves of spiritual ideas during other time periods as well, such as esoteric knowledge being passed down in alternative medicine circles in the 19 and 20th centuries, the new thought movement with roots in the 19th century, and Swami Vivekananda's visit to the Parliament of the World's Religions in 1893 which brought contact with Indian spirituality. But it was the 1960s when those ideas saw mass adoption by large groups of people. In questioning the tenets of life in America, the hippies were open to ideas from other places. In Long Quiet Highway, writer and spiritual teacher Natalie Goldberg describes her experience at a center at the height of the hippie years: "All through that summer, I met different religious teachers. An American Indian came to work with us, a Sufi, a Catholic monk. All these teachers were different from the ones I had met in public school and college. They did not make a weekly salary, keep regular daily school work hours, wear suits, teach from books, have us sit at desks. What they taught was their way of life." Goldberg continues to be an influential spiritual teacher to this day, and serves of a concrete example of how spiritual ideas that took root in the 1960s still permeate the culture.
We see that spirituality made its way to mass adoption in the West during a time when it was questioning its own culture. But does that mean that spirituality is inherently countercultural? The young people of the 60s were rebelling against the previous societal structures, and in spirituality they found new ideas that resonated with their lives. But does spirituality always mean rebellion? Is there something inherent to spirituality that means it goes against the established order? Or is its association with the 1960s a historically contingent coincidence?
One possibility is that spiritual values could influence the mainstream culture so that spirituality becomes part of the mainstream and is no longer countercultural. This happened with the values of the 1960s counterculture itself, so a similar process could happen with spiritual values generally. In his book Bobos in Paradise, David Brooks discusses how the values of the 1960s counterculture such as authenticity and self-expression merged with the values of the bourgeois to become the values of a new upper class. Even though universal peace and love have not descended, the 1960s have had a permanent impact on the nation's culture. Similarly, spiritual values could become more mainstream; in fact, the process is quite a ways along, with meditation and yoga already ubiquitous and growing in popularity. One could imagine a day when there is nothing at all that is countercultural about spirituality.
And yet, the core of spirituality retains something countercultural. Even in ancient India, a culture which venerated spirituality, it was still a controversial decision for a young person to join a monastery or become a renunciate. This is because the decision to give one's life to God interferes with what is commonly understood as the social fabric. Even though they provided the mainstream culture with its religion, spiritual institutions were still countercultural in a sense; joining a spiritual institution ran counter to the expected norms, or dharmas, of the community. Someone who devotes their life to God will not be able to raise children or have a profession in the way that was socially expected.
Despite the fact that there is a larger awareness of some spiritual possibilities like yoga and meditation today, the choice to devote one's life to God is still a countercultural decision. It has impacts on many facets of one's life, such as social relationships, lifestyle choices such as diet and sexuality, being able to devote oneself fully to a career, and most of all, spending large amounts of time in spiritual practice, which is seen to take away from the obligations to society. Luckily for the spiritual seeker in western society, the seeker is able to appeal to the cherished virtue of freedom which allows them to live a lifestyle as long as it doesn't hurt any others. But this doesn't take away from the fact that there can be resistance to the seeker's choices which flout expectations, even though they are technically allowed under the regime.
There is an argument to be made that the radically individual nature of spirituality will always be at odds with the demands of any mainstream culture, no matter how much it is influenced by spirituality. There are no examples of universal adoption of spiritual values in any known society, and there is no way to prove or disprove whether it is possible at this point. But there is a set of prophesies in various spiritual teachings today, including those of my guru Sri Aurobindo, pertaining to the idea of the "New Age": the idea that the current age is a special time during which things that were once thought not to be possible could be possible. I believe that in the past, spirituality had to be contained in countercultures like the monastery, but the current era may be the time that truly spiritual mainstream cultures can be created. In these cultures, spirituality would be held as the highest virtue, and it would not be at odds with the social principle; in fact, social life would be made a reflection of the inner spirit just as much as any individual spiritual perfection would be. There would be no need of a counterculture, not because of any enforced mainstream monoculture, but because each person would be free to follow the dictates of their inner light. To bring that state of affairs about, spiritual seekers must bring their spiritual life beyond spiritual countercultures and subcultures into the light of mainstream culture so that mainstream culture can be perfected and transformed.
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