August 18, 2010

This past Friday night, I donned my reporter hat and joined the estrogen-fueled pilgrimage to the theater for opening night of Eat Pray Love. After all, when an Oprah-endorsed, best-selling author named one of Time magazine's "100 most influential people in the world" headlines at the box office, it is worthwhile to see what she stands for. Spoiler alert #1—the self is god.

The audience included a variety of ages and degrees of weepiness. Sony Pictures made sure to target beyond the largely thirty-plus bastion of staunch Eat Pray Love fans by selling aggressively to twenty-something and teenaged audiences, running trailers with Sex and the City II and the latest installment of the Twilight saga.

The preternaturally beautiful Julia Roberts plays New York authoress Elizabeth Gilbert, putting her famous smile into full effect. Despite Roberts' natural appeal, a sizable and ever-expanding streak of narcissism shines through our heroine's character. Dissatisfied with her dedicated husband, whose mere existence appears to be an unwelcome hindrance to her wanderlust and self-discovery, our wistful protagonist breaks her vows, along with her husband's heart, and falls in lust with a young raffish actor named David played by the irresistibly scruffy James Franco. The self-described "crunchy", angsty and seductive David takes Liz to a guru-worship meeting where a group of New Yorkers seek refuge from the "ordinary" by chanting to a small portrait of their Hindu guru in India. When the David fling falls flat, Liz devises a three-pronged self-help tour that falls nicely into place: eat in Italy, pray in India, love in Bali.

In Italy, undeniably svelt Roberts makes 'carbicidal' eating vicariously enjoyable, especially to a diet-crazy American audience ridden with suppressed desires to dive into a tantalizing pile of pasta. Some Catholic detractors rightly point out that it is somewhat curious for a "spiritual seeker" like Liz Gilbert to ignore the history and significance of the Vatican and opt instead to study an Italian language tutor (ahem, study some Italian language) and work on growing into a pair of "big-lady pants". Ironically enough, during a series of convivial gatherings with a local family of a large clan sort, she seems particularly touched by the enduring and selfless love she observes—perhaps she views it as a quaint old-world relic? It becomes clear that the time-honored values of faith and family have little lasting appeal for Gilbert.

Cut abruptly to destination number two: the ashram in India. In a humorous twist, the guru is not present as she is on a trip to enlighten her New York fan club. The India compound is colonized by a transient and colorful group—most notably a salty and regret-ridden Texan who calls Liz "groceries" on account of her Tuscan-trained appetite. The dwellers seem content to go about their business seeking private peace and enthroning their imperial inner selves. Elizabeth Gilbert explains:

One of my guru's most helpful instructions is to 'become a scientist of your own experience,' which I take as an invitation to explore every possible line of human spiritual thinking. The world has been blessed with some extraordinary teachers over history—use them! That said, studying can only take you so far. At some point you have to lay aside the books, hope that your mind has actually absorbed some wisdom, and just sit there in silence, letting your soul ascend to its own leadership.

As for Gilbert's own afternoon of enlightenment in India:

Simply put, I got pulled through the wormhole of the Absolute, and in the rush I suddenly understood the workings of the universe completely. I left my body, I left the room, I left the planet, I stepped through time and entered the void. I was inside the void, but I also was the void, all at the same time. The void was a place of limitless peace and wisdom. The void was conscious and intelligent. The void was God, which means that I was inside God. But not in a gross, physical way—not like I was Liz Gilbert stuck inside a chunk of God's thigh muscle. I was just part of God. In addition to being God, I was both a tiny piece of the universe and exactly the same size of the universe.

Wow! Complete understanding of the universe along with limitless peace and wisdom? It sounds like we all should start praying to Liz Gilbert. Maybe Liz can be our guru and we should follow her? Spoiler alert #2—that's coming next.

Gurus claiming to be channels and other embodiments of divinity garner sizable followings of spiritually hungry and ungrounded people. Liz herself fell into this category before her pilgrimage to India and her profitable realization that she was the god she was seeking to find. There is an ample supply of possible customers with strong spiritual inclination and weak spiritual knowledge—the perfect market for a clever, charismatic, opportunistic, up-and-coming spiritual celebrity. Even Julia Roberts claims to have taken up a spun-off rendition of 'Hindu' practice after filming this movie. Oscar winner Julia Roberts is an Elizabeth Gilbert convert! See how easy this can be?

Cut once more to act three: Bali, dubbed the place where "everyone has a love affair." Our newly enlightened Liz lands in paradise for an icing-on-the-cake experience that belongs in a fairy tale or romance novel. She runs into the passionate-yet-reliable Brazilian, or rather he runs into her bike with his car, and they fall in love. For a moment, she is ready to sacrifice her new love for the sake of her personal balance, but is set right by the charming wisdom of Ketut, the sweet, toothless medicine man who gives her good-natured advice: smile with your mind, smile with your face, and smile with your liver.

While this story hardly seems to be original, the book Eat Pray Love took America by storm. Since its 2006 release, devotees have fallen over themselves to replicate the Gilbert pilgrimage to self-fulfillment. The New York Post article, "Eat Pray Zilch" tracks stories of enlightenment seekers who have been taken for a ride - financially and otherwise. The article cites Gita Mehta, author of the 1979 journalistic expose "Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East," in which she chronicles the first big wave of naive Westerners seeking instant enlightenment. "People who are coming to us, by and large, think the guru is the whole idea of India…That's where it gets dangerous. If your guru is a con man and you think of him as a father figure, then you're certainly going to be in trouble." Horror stories of disillusionment, financial ruination, and worse forms of harm abound.

How can this guru-driven, 60's throwback of a fad hold today? Perhaps we can find a clue in Christian Smith's description of American de-facto mainstream religion dominated by Moralistic Therapeutic Deism—a creed that recognizes a god who wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught by the Bible and by most world religions; and sets happiness and feeling good as the central goals of life.

Such a bland, knowledge-bereft version of Christianity, depicted in Christian Century's August article "Faith Nice and Easy," is a close cousin to Liz Gilbert's self-worshipping search for peace and happiness. Moralistic Therapeutic Deism's pink-crayon version of faith lacks the wherewithal to resist a slide toward the self-centered happy-feeling-chasing proselytized in Eat Pray Love. What is left when subjectivity becomes god? Eat without guilt, Pray to yourself as god, and Love without commitment--not a hard sell in our hyper-individualized modern culture.

Eat Pray Love's final dénouement, after the credits have run and the royalty checks have been cashed? Liz has mostly abandoned her spiritual gig, although she still enjoys biweekly yoga. It seems that her wormhole experience was more of a subjective high than a truth, and now she has followed the feeling tunnel to a new topic--marriage, of all things!

Response to: De-throning the Imperial Inner Self

I know this is a little off topic. I was expecting to see something written to address what's happened to Christopher Hitchens (battle with Cancer). Would it be wise to send out an article asking the readership to pray for Mr. Hitchens and let him know how much we love him because the Creator loves him? It's not us vs. them, it's us loving them. Even if Mr. Hitchens doesn't appreciate it, others may take notice that it's not about us (the Imperial Inner Self), but rather about others. I've been trying to remember Christopher during my times of prayer and thought I'd raise the issue. With God's Agape Love, - J.M.

One of the most noteworthy thing about American civilization is the felt permission given, even the encouragement, of a strong sense of self in everybody, not just for royalty and the nobility as they used to be constituted in Europe. In the Bad Old Days, the rest of society, the clerks, serfs, and guild member, or whatever, existed only as appendages for the desires and designs of the real decision-makers, those aforementioned members of royalty and the nobility. This American difference is in of itself a huge gain for humanity. I'm not a Randian, (I'm a Hayekian) but I do agree with Ayn Rand when she blasts those who urge us to give up our dreams, our desires, our experiences, and give our selves over to some king or god or party or whatever. Becoming existential doormats, as it were. She really let Kant have it on this issue, and he deserved the licking he got. We are human beings. We are forever cut off from fully experiencing and empathizing with one another because we only can manage full contact with our own brains and whatever reasonably competent (or not) mental models we make of the world and other human beings therein. We don't do Vulcan Mind-Melding. Sorry, Spock. But, we also live together in groups, large and small. This apparent contradiction isn't a problem; this is our human condition. We must face it instead of dodging it with anarchistic dreams of truly being alone, or with socialist or Christian dreams of merging with one another and giving up our sense of self, imperial or otherwise. - S.M.

Instead of ridiculing Clinton, look at the ratio of Democrats to Republicans spouting off about family values, while violating the same principles they claim to espouse. By the way, if you are waiting for a God to save your silly but after doing everything you can to destroy the earth for profit, you're going to be very disappointed !!! - R.V.