“Power of Mysticism” and “Mysticism of Power”: Understanding the Sociopolitical History of a Neo-hindu Movement

Abstract

Religious institutions created by the extraordinary efforts of a single founder—like the one examined in this essay—try hard to assure the preservation of charisma, and to guarantee its Weberian “routinization”. But this attempt does not always succeed, and quite often what originally looks like the “power of mysticism”, allowing resolute individual and social transformations, in the gradual collective evolution of a religious field turns to crystallization, stratification, bureaucratization, quickly becoming a “mysticism of power” and losing its former elasticity, dynamism and persuasive capacity.