Consuming the afterlife: spirituality, neo-spiritualism and continuity of the self

Abstract

Late-modern consumer society materially supports the self’s spiritual goals. Yet the lack of fulfilment in consumption has produced ambivalence in these goals. A consideration of the continuation and intensification of afterlife beliefs suggests that these goals have not been shaped solely by consumptive trends but are implicitly tied to a deep concern with death and the quest for the inner self. Popular fascination with psychics and mediums, after-death communication and the near-death experience attests to the emergence of a new spiritualism that reaffirms the philosophy of the afterlife as a type of late-modern didacticism on self-continuity. At the same time, the rise of spirituality as a de-traditionalised and inner-directed approach to self-exploration suggests a convergence with neo-spiritualism in the attempt to gauge the transcendental-future of the self. Although this convergence provides a convenient platform for the marketability of afterlife beliefs, the late-modern preoccupation with the self may eventually redirect mystified consumption into personalised projects of self-discovery.

Keywords:

• afterlife
• consumption
• death
• neo-spiritualism
• self
• spirituality

Notes

1 Dawson (2011a, p. 311) defines commodicy as worldly things becoming both a medium for and a barometer of spiritual well-being.

2 Proliferation of movies and TV shows on ghosts and spirit manifestations also suggests media capitalisation on the popular interest in after-death communication (e.g. TV shows such as Ghost Whisperer and movies such as Paranormal Activity).

3 The meaning of charisma as a source of extraordinary power has a conceptual history going back to Sohm who wrote about it in the context of the early Christian church. It was Weber, however, who reused the concept to discuss varieties of authority and to hint at its recurring role in the annals of religious change (see Lee, 2010). My purpose is not to elaborate on the concept, but to treat it as a special means for understanding the claim of power in spiritualism for enacting the journeys to and connections with worlds beyond death. In this sense, spirituality per se may not be totally devoid of charisma but only less obvious in its expression.

4 As a life-transforming inner experience, Dr Alexander inferred from his NDE that the spirit is eternal and that ‘no one has one sentence worth of hard evidence that it isn’t’ (Kaufman, 2012). However, there is no scarcity of sceptics who are only too ready to dismiss his NDE as illusory, e.g. online articles by Shermer (2013) and Habib (2013).

5 In Western culture, secularisation has undermined the literal meanings associated with heaven and hell (Le Goff, 1984; McDannell & Lang, 2001; Segal, 2004; Walker, 1964). Although these concepts still circulate in popular and religious literatures, they no longer have the currency for regulating moral conduct in the public sphere. Indeed, in some secularised populations, the idea of after-death destinations is shrugged off as irrelevant to the concerns of being in the present (see Zuckerman, 2008, pp. 57–75). However, there is also the tendency to treat both terms as referring to different states of the mind rather than to after-death destinations (see Lee, 2013).

6 Bauman (2007, 2008) has poignantly raised questions concerning the alienating effects of consumption. For a recent report on the pervasion of loneliness in contemporary society, see Mental Health Foundation (2010).