The late Jiddu Krishnamurti once said that religion is frozen thought, and that out of it one builds temples. The implication is that a place is needed for this solidified belief. One may thus pray, meditate or do whatever in large social structures such as cathedrals, tabernacles, shrines or mosques, or in smaller spaces that one has discovered or created for oneself.
Though public prayer, as in a church, is said to have declined in some countries, it is arguable that private prayer has increased. That, at any rate, is the argument of this collection of photographs of retreats that have been contrived in Britain and the United States.
Despite "the commercial and materialistic thrust of our world today," religion is thriving in that it has been, as it were, privatized. That is the belief of the author of this book, and one might add that, if that is true, it is not despite this thrust but because of it.
Here text and photos discover that "a significant number of people are now searching for peace, solace or inspiration in a private place" and offer an illustrated investigation of some of the results.
There is a full-scale tea house in Manhattan, and a yoga room in Beverly Hills. Actor Richard Gere has arranged a Tibet House in New York, and writer Peter Mathiessen has devised a "Zen-do" on Long Island.
Designer Diane Von Furstenberg has run herself up a meditation tent. This is because "her first urge on waking is to mediate . . . without it she feels deprived and is prone to tension headaches."
Uri Geller, paranormalist and spoon-bender extraordinaire, has concocted an "extrasensory garden," strewn with crystals and amethysts and featuring the "Star Gazebo, where Geller stood when he famously stopped the clock of Big Ben, London's famous landmark."
Nor are the contributors limited to the rich and famous. There is a democratic-sounding "Shrine Room for Corporate Use," and some traveling altars -- several of them quite bulky -- for those to whom sacred space is "spirit in action." One "osteokinetics" practitioner has built a surfboard into his shrine.
"I'd rather surf than anything else, because if I'm not using my body, then it feels as if part of my inner medicine is missing."
No matter the varied results, however, the aim is based on an identical premise: The swiftest pathway to the "soul" is through the senses. Color, texture, sound and smell are all thought to help clear the way. One new devotee burns sage to urge himself on by dissipating "stagnant energy."
Such an allotment of the senses also allows one of the participants (illustrated by text rather than picture) to create sprays designed to instantly transform any part of one's room into a sacred space. Another, an "interfaith minister," has painted the meditation room purple -- a color "beautiful to me because I see beauty as an attribute of Spirit."
All of this sensual overload has a restoring purpose. There is much talk of medicine, of remedies, of sights, of sounds and of smells that heal. Inescapable is the implication that we are all walking-wounded, and with this comes the whine of the would-be victimized.
This reliance on the senses of those inhabiting these "spaces for silence" indeed postulates something different from a basic tenet of at least some religions -- that the senses are unreliable and ought to be stilled, and certainly not be so promiscuously encouraged. In real life it is perhaps privation that truly invites meditation, just as it is deprivation that indubitably encourages religion in the first place.
Dedicated to views, sounds, tastes and smells of the spiritual, this publication is suitably beautiful -- big full-color juicy photographs pleasingly arranged on the page and accompanied by hearty calorie-filled prose. Even to glance at it makes you feel better. It is the perfect palliative.
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