A Study of the Movement of Spiritual Awareness

Religious Innovation and Cultural Change

D. Tumminia, J. Lewis

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137374196
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology of Religion
• Index: Social Sciences

MSIA, the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, has been called the Cadillac of cults. Those interested in new religions may only know of MSIA from these kinds of labels. However, when looked at from a qualitative sociological perspective, a more complex story of religious innovation and cultural change can be told.

1

What Is MSIA?

Called “the Movement” by its members, the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (MSIA) teaches soul travel and spiritual transcendence. Soul travel can be loosely defined as the ability of an individual’s consciousness to experience other realms of existence through certain meditative practices. The ultimate goal of soul travel is to awaken the God within oneself by riding the stream of Light and sound energy that emanates from the Supreme Being. The church recognizes the existence of the Mystical Traveler, a loving consciousness that shows one the way home to God. In the early twenty-first century, MSIA maintained about 5,000 active followers, although by 2012 its ranks thinned to about 3,918.¹ Active Soul Flight subscriptions for children were 58. For purposes of tabulation, followers or members are counted by the number of discourse subscribers, those who received monthly lessons.

The former high school teacher Roger Hinkins (John-Roger, whose nickname is J-R) founded MSIA in 1968 by giving impromptu talks called seminars and later by incorporating his fledgling group into a church in 1971. At a turning point in 1988, John-Roger passed the “keys” to that consciousness onto John Morton, a former park ranger and prominent minister in MSIA, who now heads the church and continues to work alongside his mentor (Anonymous 1999a). As an educational arm, Peace Theological Seminary and College of Philosophy (PTS) offer various courses along with workshops in MSIA theology in addition to a master’s and doctoral program in spiritual science. Two charitable organizations, the Institute for Individual and World Peace (IIWP) and the Heartfelt Foundation, implement the group’s compassionate service orientation. The Institute for Individual and World Peace and the Heartfelt Foundation are now legal subsidiaries of MSIA. Insight Seminars, a separate institution for secular conscious-raising, was established in 1978. In 2011, Insight Seminars became a continuing educational division of the newly formed Insight University, which is in the process of granting graduate degrees in transformational educational leadership. Insight University operates independently as does the University of Santa Monica. With the assistance of close followers, John-Roger established all of these organizations, and they are networked together as part of the MSIA culture. John-Roger is pictured in figure 1.1.

Members refer to themselves as “people in the Movement” or students of the Traveler. They also call themselves Movement people, and occasionally the term, votaries, is used. MSIA usually capitalizes the word, Light, meaning the Light of the Supreme Being that is present in everyone. MSIA identifies itself an ecumenical church referring to its use of eclectic metaphysical narratives; however, many members bristle at the term “church” preferring to define it differently, for example, as a mystery school, a spiritual journey, or an inner experience. Some of this discomfort with the definition comes from members who were raised Jewish, rigidly Christian, or from believers who prefer an approach that breaks with former conceptions of spirituality. As one minister indicated, he did not think of MSIA as a religion, but rather as way to experience “God as a living presence.” Many members convey dissatisfaction with conventional religion; as one member put it, he wanted a un-religion, if possible. While MSIA members recognize the necessity of the legal status of the church, many find the term too constraining for their experiences in the organization. Various followers say they joined because of the loving expressed in the Movement, evidenced in part by the typical MSIA greeting, the hug.

Figure 1.1 During the early 1970s, John-Roger traveled to the Acropolis to place Light Columns. In 1995, John-Roger returned with a PAT IV group of over 300 people.

Practices

MSIA practices present a blend of Eastern mysticism with Western pragmatism. The organization does not require any special clothing or dietary restrictions, like vegetarianism. However, those people physically closest to John-Roger (e.g., MSIA staff) do not eat onions or garlic because he is allergic to those foods and the smell of those foods. The church strongly suggests that its supporters not eat pork due to its low energy, even though there is no absolute restriction against it. MSIA also asks its members not to use illicit drugs, including marijuana, amphetamines, cocaine, and psychedelics. The group retains a modernized Western orientation toward gender and women’s rights, and it makes no pronouncements about sexual orientation or lifestyle. MSIA ordains women and gays as ministers in line with its notion of universality and its commitment to minister to “all regardless of circumstance.” According to an earlier study (Lewis 1998b), about two-thirds of MSIA members were women, and approximately 74 percent were baby boomers. In 2011, Lewis found that 66 percent of his sample comprised women, and again, 66 percent were baby boomers. In 2011, the MSIA presidency stated that the average age in MSIA is 60, and the ratio of one man to two women still existed.

MSIA requests that members daily perform at least 15 minutes or ideally two hours of meditation, called simran or spiritual exercises (John-Roger 1997). Spiritual exercises are often called s. e.’s for short. Typical members attend talks given by John-Roger and John Morton (called seminars); in the absence of “live” seminars, adherents listen to recordings of past talks. Commonly, MSIA members call in the Light, and then they meditate on the Sound of God. Participants chant “Hu” (an ancient name for God) and “Ani Hu” (empathy for God’s people) in public gatherings. After they become initiated (to the spiritual realms, not the group), the adherents silently chant secret “tones” (spiritually charged words given to them during the initiation process). At home, they do not normally set up altars as some groups do; even so, they often display pictures of their spiritual teachers. Some followers fashion special spots for meditation at home, while others do not put effort into making a designated space for s. e.’s. The Movement participants are encouraged to live from their hearts and to express loving feelings believed to be the true expressions of their souls. They frequently engage in charitable service projects as part of their spiritual practice. The group highlights the significance of compassionate service and love as part of a higher calling.

In a spiritual exercise, one chants a tone or tones. Chanting of one’s initiatory tones facilitates attunement to the inner sound, which is the manifestation in consciousness of the Sound Current. John-Roger teaches that spiritual exercises work more actively than meditation in the strict sense. More important than the duration of spiritual exercises, however, is the student’s intention to connect him/herself in devotion to God and to bond with the Divine. On this matter of inner divinity, John-Roger (1994: 35) writes, “You don’t have to understand something that is already within you; you just have to awaken to your experience of it.”

Members write “tone reports” one or more times after each initiation in which they describe their experiences in meditation and in any pertinent dreams and other relevant experiences. Experiences acquired through meditation and dreams comprise part of the process of knowledge acquisition. Followers also convey questions about their spiritual practice and include queries about their personal lives in tone reports or general letters. In what some students of the Movement consider the shedding of the ego, they can unburden themselves about the most intimate details of their lives in the hope of receiving guidance and releasing their karma. While not all letters receive “physical” answers due to the great volume of mail, members usually find the process of letter writing therapeutic. They are told to look inwardly for answers. Sometimes, members burn the letters without ever sending them, because they know the answers will be received spiritually.

The practice of spiritual exercises enables students to turn their attention away from mind and emotional chatter within, as well as the distractions of the outer world, and into the inner realms of the Spirit. This redirection of consciousness is the source of MSIA’s name, the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. Soul Transcendence involves becoming aware of oneself as a Soul and even more than that, aware of oneness with God; this is the ultimate goal of MSIA spiritual practices because it releases one from the cycle of death and rebirth in which one is trapped. MSIA also teaches that when a person dies, he/she can return to the soul realm or higher. The Traveler will meet the votary at the time of death in order to show the way home to God.

Core Beliefs

The church professes a belief in karma and reincarnation within a modified Westernized context unbound by the Eastern implications of caste and gender inferiority (John-Roger 1975). Despite its emphasis on karma, MSIA also promotes a philosophy of life choices and self-accountability, saying in effect, “It is not what happens to you, but how you handle it that is important.” References to the existence of karma come up frequently as a topic in conversations, granted that MSIA’s view of it may differ somewhat from other groups. Their concept connotes a karmic debt held within a multidimensional concept of the self, as well as in the positive or negative events that happen in one’s life. Despite this belief, they generally express a modicum of interest in past lives or seeking past-life information as it might be conducive to healing or “clearing.” An antidote for karma exists in the form of doing spiritual exercises. Another antidote would be living in grace provided by the Spirit.

Generally, in line with its emphasis on tolerance and flexibility, MSIA makes suggestions and guidelines as opposed to rules and restrictions. According to the church, the central teachings (Peace Theological Seminary 2000) are as follows:

• God loves all of its creation.

• Not one Soul will be lost.

• Don’t hurt yourself, and don’t hurt others.

• Take care of yourself, so you might take care of others.

• Use everything for your upliftment.

The teaching posits the existence of spiritual realms. MSIA’s understanding of the nature of reality is rooted in a traditional worldview that perceives the physical world of our everyday experience to be but one facet, a lower level, so to speak, of multidimensional realities. Within this worldview, the universe is understood to be intrinsically purposeful and human life ultimately meaningful. The notion of a multilayered reality is not unique to MSIA. Though differing in many details, this view of the inner cosmos as a hierarchy of different levels of being was basic to many societies.

This calls to mind various metaphors for this vision of reality: a ladder (e.g., Jacob’s Ladder) or a spiral staircase. This ladder-like image serves traditional worldviews in a manner comparable with the role performed by the image of ocean waves for the wave theory of light. It is a pictorial analogy that clarifies the theory by translating it into an image familiar to our sensory experience. As with a scientific paradigm, problems can be created by interpreting a metaphysical model too literally. In some more archaic notions of other realms, for example, higher levels of reality were actually thought of as being located in the sky. Many cultures have linked access to other realms to certain mystical states acquired through austerities or to drug ingestion (not allowed in MSIA).

During spiritual exercises, one experiences an alteration of awareness that can be expressed, and which frequently is expressed, as an elevation of consciousness. Spiritual exercises clear karma. Because these states of awareness vary in intensity or “elevation,” the model of a hierarchy of levels is a useful conceptual tool for picturing these states of consciousness in relation to each other. This psychological model becomes a metaphysical paradigm by postulating that each state of consciousness corresponds with a different plane or level of being. It should be fairly easy to see both the usefulness of a ladder-like model in this context and the nonliteral meaning of rising or sinking in consciousness.

Rather than literally being above or below, the other levels are conceptualized as coexisting with the physical plane, being separated from the physical by what some traditions refer to as a different rate of vibration. These various levels remain distinct from each other in much the same way that different radio waves coexist in the same space without interfering with each other. Correspondingly, the human self can be viewed as a series of concentric circles. The soul, which is the deepest and most real part of the individual, is situated at the center, metaphorically speaking, of a series of bodies or sheaths that correspond with the various levels of being. Even if the source of consciousness is rooted in the soul level, it is normally focused outward, away from the soul, and into one or more of the outer sheaths/lower bodies. In terms of this model, the goal of the spiritual life is to turn one’s attention away from the outer layers and lead it back to the soul.

Shabdism views these various levels as being linked by their spiritual vibrations that together constitute the Sound Current. By connecting to the Sound Current through MSIA spiritual exercises, the individual places her/himself on a roadway that leads back up through the various planes to the soul level. MSIA also teaches that there are realms beyond the soul level and that a person can transcend the initial level of soul and move in consciousness into these even higher levels of the soul realm of God. This, in essence, is the goal of MSIA—for the soul to transcend its bondage to the psychic-material worlds.

Intermediate between the physical realm and the soul realm are four planes, giving one a schema of six levels. In MSIA, these six realms are designated as follows:

• soul (relating to the reality of self; the true self);

• etheric (relating to the unconscious);

• mental (relating to the mind);

• causal (relating to the emotions);

• astral (relating to the imagination); and

• physical (relating to our everyday lives).

The names of the Lords of the realms are usually not talked about. The names are similar to the Radha Saomi tradition but unalike. The names only have power when they are spiritually charged during initiation, and afterward they are not to be said out loud by initiates. Suffice it to say, that each realm has a God in charge of it who has power that can only be approached with sincere spiritual exercises and the protection of the spiritual teacher. When a person’s karma clears on each realm, the soul lives without the fetters of the lower worlds.

This terminology can be rather confusing to people who have studied other systems, such as Theosophy or Yoga. In these alternate traditions, the order of the planes might be quite different, such as soul, causal, mental, astral, etheric, and the physical. As someone more than a little familiar with these other traditions, it still took some effort for Lewis (1998b) to adjust to MSIA’s terminology. Terminology aside, however, the basic idea is essentially the same. Each level, from the physical to the soul, is increasingly refined or subtle.

The temptation is to think of the realms as lateral planes. The realms are vibrations. Yet another analogy of notes on a musical scale would better suffice. Each note gives off a different vibratory essence. The notes represent a spectrum of vibratory rates as do all the realms below and above the soul.

MSIA refers to a hierarchy of initiations on these levels of beingness. We live our everyday lives in the physical realm; accordingly, we require no formal physical initiation per se except birth. John-Roger teaches that when one comes in touch with MSIA or with the Mystical Traveler, one experiences an initiation referred to as the astral initiation, which takes place in the dream state. Most people who become active in MSIA begin their involvement with a series of monthly lessons referred to as Soul Awareness Discourses. Discourses represent more than simply information. MSIA teaches that through studying the monthly lessons, the reader is spiritually linked to the Mystical Traveler Consciousness. The person holding the Traveler Consciousness agrees to assist the reader in clearing karma, which can be released while reading the discourses. This is a one-to-one agreement made between the Traveler and the discourse reader. For this reason, MSIA recommends that discourses be strictly confidential and not shared with other persons.

After studying discourses for two years, one may apply for the first, formal initiation, referred to as the causal initiation. Thereafter, the aspirant may apply for each of the subsequent initiations—mental, etheric, and soul—contingent upon the individual’s maintaining an active involvement in discourses. At the causal initiation, the MSIA student is given a “tone” to utilize in her or his spiritual exercise and receives a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1 What Is MSIA?
• 2 Entrance into the Field
• 3 Beginnings
• 4 Prana
• 5 How They Came into the Movement
• 6 Being a Minister
• 7 Charisma: John-Roger and John Morton
• 8 In Your Dreams
• 9 Survey and Comparative Demographics
• 10 Stereotypes and Social Conflict
• 11 Conclusion
• Appendix
• Notes
• Glossary
• References
• Index