Insightful Passage About Modern Western Society from Aghora II

Vimalananda wanted his views to be spread to anyone willing to listen because he felt acutely the anguish of the emptiness of the modern world, whose god is Mammon and whose predominant religion is an arrogantly emotionless science which seems bent on suppressing what humanity remains within us. As society disintegrates and meaning dissolves from life, people tend either to descend into despair or to return to their roots. We in the West have for years been cutting ourselves off from our roots, and now, nearly rootless, we are slowly dying from lack of cultural nourishment.

Some Westerners seek to live without roots, hydroponically, through futurism, while others try to reinvent the past via the "men's movement," Goddess Worship, Afrocentrism and the like. Yet others search for roots in such still-living cultures as the Indian, Native American, Tibetan or Chinese, as if perhaps by donning their visages they can somehow assimilate their ways. We have, however, become so superficial that few of us know how to dive deep enough into the cultures we seek to emulate to tap into their roots, and so we usually, as Jung feared, poison ourselves.

Vimalananda had no more faith that mass spiritual movements can save us than he trusted in social programs, political activism or enforced morality to rescue us, since all such solutions are superficial; they change our clothing, not our inner beings. He believed that real change can come only through those individuals who are brave enough to examine all of their reality assumptions and change those which must be changed. The numerous misconceptions about spirituality which permeate our modern world make his teachings on Kundalini valuable for everyone trying to follow a spiritual path.


-Svoboda, Robert E. Aghora II: Kundalini. New Mexico: Brotherhood of Life Publishing, 1993.

Ever since I got back to the states, I've been feeling this overwhelming sense of disillusionment with Western society and its obsession with Mammon. This passage sums up my feeling pretty well.