Praying interaction rituals: Prayer,ritual,and spiritual capital in a contemporary neo-Guru movement

Abstract

In this article, I contribute to the development of the sociology of prayer focusing on the practice of bhaktiyoga, or yoga of devotion, within the largely influential, although substantially understudied, Mooji’s neo-Guru movement. Methodologically, I rely on the tools of reflexive sociology, autoethnography, and discourse analysis while theoretically I advance a preliminary theorization of praying interaction rituals through a coupled reading of Mauss’ early insights, Randal Collins’ Interaction Ritual Chain Theory (IRC), and the concept of spiritual capital. The article conceptualizes collective prayer as an interaction ritual chain through which the collective identity of the community is continuously reconstituted around shared rituals, and which is in turn aimed at the acquisition of spiritual capital, the most valued type of capital within Mooji’s community of devotees. Within this framework, prayer becomes essential also in the process of becoming a ‘good devotee’.

Introduction

Prayer, in its multiple and differentiated forms, is a foundational component of most religious and spiritual traditions. As such, I caution against using prayer as a universal, monolithic category that might reproduce Christian biases regarding what the individual’s relationship with the divine ought to be. As aptly argued by Giordan (2011: 78), prayer is a

structural component’ across religions and can be defined as ‘(…) the dialogical act between humanity and divinity, and such a dialogic act can take the most diverse forms: from sacrifice to magic, from festivities to rituals, from different forms of formal recitation to mysticism.

Despite the centrality of prayer in the social organization, ritual structure, and teleological orientation of religious and spiritual groups, the sociological literature on the subject remains, to date, surprisingly scarce. ¹ In his commentary to Mauss (2003 [1968]) seminal theory of prayer, Pickering (2003: 1) emphasizes that ‘[i]t is a remarkable fact that prayer as a subject on its own has scarcely been studied by sociologists’, while philosophers and theologists, alongside anthropologists and more recently psychologists, ‘have (…) dedicated considerable attention to this theme’ (Giordan, 2011: 77). More specifically, as highlighted by Fuist (2015: 523), ‘[w]hile prayer has been widely studied in the social sciences […], it has predominantly been examined as individual behavior, leaving us with little analysis of prayer in the context of group interaction’. The theorization of prayer as an individual phenomenon, and the substantial lack of sociological studies on prayer, is as due to the traditional disciplinary lenses through which prayer has been studied (e.g. theology, philosophy, anthropology, and later also psychology), as it is due to the presupposed intimate, private, and personal character that prayer retains.

In this article, I start from a social understanding of prayer and interpret it through the lenses of social theory. This signifies that I pay particular attention to theommunal character of this ritual while agreeing with Orsi (1996: 186) that:

Prayer is not an innocent social or psychological activity. It is always situated in specific and discrepant environments of social power, and it derives its meanings, implications, and consequences in relation to these configurations. Indeed, praying is one of the most implicating social historical practices because it is in and through prayer that the self comes into intimate and extended contact with the contradictions and constraints of the social world.

In this article, I focus on the practice of bhaktiyoga, or yoga of devotion, within the largely influential, although substantially understudied Mooji neo-Guru movement (for exceptions see Di Placido, 2018, 2022). In so doing, I contend that by bridging sociological theorizing with the growing literature on neo-Guru and neo-Hindu movements (Altglas, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2014; Goldman, 2005; Lucia, 2014; Srinivas, 2008, 2010; Squarcini, 2000, 2002; Squarcini and Fizzotti, 2004; Urban, 2005, 2012; Williamson, 2010), for example, an ad hoc framework to understand the social deployments, disciplining dynamics, and collective role of prayer in the social and discursive construction of the identity of the communities in question, can be formed.

In a classical Durkhemian fashion, therefore, religious rituals such as group prayers function as the basic component of, and evolutionary force behind, the birth of specific social groups and their continued social cohesion.

Relying on the tools of reflexive sociology, autoethnography, and discourse and video analysis of texts written by Mooji and relevant video material produced by the ashram, I investigate the discursive and social construction of the ‘good devotee’ within the context of bhaktiyoga, a type of yoga that, through prayer, chants, music, and other group devotional practices, encourages the devotees’ total commitment and surrender to his or her love for the guru. Building on this empirical and methodological base, and through a coupled reading of Mauss’ (2003) early insights, Collins’ (2004) Interaction Ritual Chain theory (hereafter IRC), and the concept of ‘spiritual capital’ (e.g. McDonald and Hallinan, 2005; Verter, 2003; Wortham and Wortham, 2007), I then argue that collective prayer is an example of IRC that builds spiritual capital, and constitutes andaintainsollectivedentity. Read through these lenses, prayer becomes essential in the process of becoming a ‘good devotee’, that is, a devotee who is disciplined and earnestly subjectivised to the life of the ashram and does what the guru teaches her or him to do in order to embody the knowledge he conveys.

This article is structured as follows: first, I unpack in some more detail, the building blocks of the approach mentioned above, clarifying how it sheds light on a plethora of other religious and spiritual groups where the collective dimension of praying is pivotal to the group ethos; second, I briefly introduce the main methodological facets of the research, moving from a discussion of reflexive sociology to discourse analysis; third, present and discuss the conceptualization of prayer and devotion in Mooji’s writings presenting ethnographic vignettes of aarti, bhajans sessions, and fire ceremonies (homa or yajna), ² showing how besides strengthening the collective representation of the ashram, they also contribute to the social and discursive construction of the ‘good devotee’. I end by emphasizing the contributions that this type of critical and micro-sociological research agenda may have within the broader landscape of the sociology of religion.

Toward a formulation of praying interaction rituals

Collins’ (2004) IRC has been successfully applied to different religious congregations by other scholars in the recent past (e.g. Baker, 2010; Draper, 2019; Ferguson, 2020; Wellman et al., 2014; Wollschleger, 2012), usually to measure and explain religious participation among believers. However, departing slightly from this legitimate and productive usage, here I want to merge Mauss’ formulation of prayer as a social phenomenon and religious ritual with Collins’ IRC insights, to arrive at the concept of spiritual capital, the last facet of the praying interaction rituals chain I want to discuss.

Building on the aforementioned, in this section, I introduce a preliminary theorization of praying interaction rituals, that is, praying as a specific form of interaction ritual where devotees’ relationship with the divine is collectively performed. This framework starts from the assumption that prayer is a ‘social phenomenon’ (Mauss, 2003: 37) amenable to sociological scrutiny and not merely an individual act only accessible through introspection or firsthand experience. Mauss (2003: 37) expresses this point with great lucidity in this passage:

when we say that prayer is a social phenomenon, we do not mean that it is in no way an individual phenomenon (…) But we do believe that, while it takes place in the mind of the individual, prayer is above all a social reality outside the individual and in the sphere of ritual and religious convention (…) Instead of seeing in individual prayer the principle behind collective prayer, we are making the latter the principle behind the former.

As Collins (2004: 7) explains, a ritual is ‘a mechanism of mutually focused emotion and attention producing a momentarily shared reality, which thereby generates solidarity and symbols of group membership’. However, ‘[t]he rites of religion differ on account of the exclusively sacred character of the forces to which they are addressed’ and can be defined as efficacious traditional actions which have bearing on things that are called sacred (Mauss, 2003: 54, emphasis in original). Collins’ micro-sociology postulates that long-lasting social structures are the outcome of repeated encounters between two or more people, bounded together by a shared symbolic repertoire and powerful emotional energy. Briefly put, ‘bodily copresence’, ‘barriers to outsiders’, ‘mutual focus’, and a ‘shared mood’ (Collins, 2004: 48) constitute the foundations of interaction rituals and long-lasting social structures. As I will show in the article, Mooji’s neo-Guru movement is similarly organized around collective moments of prayer (e.g. aarti, bhajans, fire ceremonies) where devotees’ bodies are gathered together, focus on the same actions (e.g. group dancing and chanting), and partake in the social reproduction of agreed moods and collective symbolic representations. When successfully enacted, religious rituals promote a heightened mood that consecrates the actions performed by both the individual and the whole group. These elements, according to Collins’ theory, have the potential to generate four outcomes: first, emotional energy, (substantially a re-reading of Durkheim’s (2001 [1912]) ‘collective effervescence’); second, membership feelings and group solidarity; third, ‘emblems or other representations (visual icons, words, gestures) that members feel are associated with themselves collectively’; and fourth: ‘feelings of morality: the sense of righteousness in adhering to the group, respecting its symbols, and defending both against transgressors’ (Collins, 2004: 49).

Following previous research on the notion of ‘spiritual capital’ (McDonald and Hallinan, 2005; Verter, 2003; Wortham and Wortham, 2007), a particular type of symbolic capital signifying social actors’ recognition and group legitimization of spiritual proficiency, I contend that the religious ritual repertoire of Mooji’s ashram is an interaction rituals chain (IRC) that Mooji’s devotees enact in order to align to the ashram’s social and discursive construction of the ‘good devotee.’ In this sense, the notion of spiritual capital is consistent with what Wellman et al. (2014: 654) call ‘heightened spirituality’, that is, a fifth outcome they add to Collins’s IRC and that they define as ‘an affective experience of the ultimate or divine’.

Methodological remarks: from reflexive sociology to discourse analysis

In this article, I make use of a larger participatory ethnographic project on the pedagogies of modern forms of yoga (2017–2021) of which Mooji’s teachings and his Portuguese community were one of the main case studies. The ethnographic component of this project was guided by insights from ‘reflexive sociology’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992) and ‘autoethnography’ (e.g. Anderson, 2006; Wall, 2016), in that I relied on my own participation in Mooji’s community, triangulated with ethnographic observations of the ashram’s everyday life, and a continuous dialogue with social theory. When I started the research in November 2017, I was a full-fledged member of the Mooji community: I lived in the ashram, participated in its everyday activities as everybody else there, and helped with the organization of retreats (largely preparing the site, welcoming guests, and doing simultaneous interpretations of Mooji’s teachings from English to Italianuringatsangs). ³ Because of this, I acknowledged and relied on my positioning in the field as a ‘scholar-practitioner’ (Newcombe, 2009; Singleton and Byrne, 2008; Singleton and Larios, 2021), agreeing with Salmenniemi et al., (2020: 6) that ‘[w]hile emotional detachment and absence of the researcher’s body and affect have often been adopted in pursuit of objectivity, the embodied researcher experiences a different landscape for analytical insight’. My insider status, rather than being a hindrance to research objectivity, proved instrumental in exploring the social life of prayer, where heightened emotional energy, coordinated actions, group focus, exclusivity, and shared symbolic representations are mobilized in embodied forms of social conduct. However, it also proved challenging, and by April 2019, due to my progressive critical take on religious and spiritual ‘truths’, the proliferating accusations of abuse (spiritual, physical, and sexual) and exposé against Mooji by ex-members, and the ashram’s opposition to having some of their members interviewed, I finally decided to disengage from my previous involvement with the community. The tools of reflexive sociology here proved foundational in navigating the intricacies of my shifting positionality all the while allowing me to rely on my firsthand experiences as insightful sources of sociological understanding.

The empirical material displayed in this article is thus constituted by self-reflexive extracts from my field diary (May 2017–September 2018), discourse analysis of Mooji’s own writing on prayer and devotion, and videos issued by the ashram and freely available on YouTube. In this context, discourse analysis, defined as a specific approach to the study of texts and video material, allows tracing the correspondences that exist between Mooji’s textual and video production and the practical repertoire engaged with by his devotees on a day-to-day basis. More precisely, in the analytical part of the article, I weave together Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology, autoethnographic remarks, and discourse analysis to acknowledge the embodied and experiential dimensions of collective prayers.

Praying interaction rituals applied

Mooji (born Anthony Moo-Young in 1954) is a neo-Advaita, Jamaican-born teacher actively teaching since the early 1990s. As I argued elsewhere, Mooji ‘resides in his Portuguese ashram, Monte Sahaja, structured following a neo-Vedantic rendition of the tripartite model of yoga advocated in the Bhagavadgita (III B.C.E. – I C.E.)’ where ‘his devotees are immersed in a quasi-monastic lifestyle organised around three imperatives: work, contemplation, and prayer’ (Di Placido, 2022: 462). Mooji’s core teachings postulate that a practitioner’s ‘true self’ (atman) is the same as ultimate reality (brahman) and that the purpose of existence is to realize one’s own ‘god-self’ (brahmajñāna, literally ‘god-realization’). Within this overall metaphysical and teleological framework, moments of collective prayer constitute one of the privileged avenues through which devotees can awaken to their true nature.

In the following sub-sections, I first introduce Mooji’s conceptualization of prayer and devotion as discussed in his own writings; second, I present three different instances drawn from my own field diary and from a selected reading of Mooji’s extensive videography, representing, respectively, one aarti, one bhajan session, and one fire ceremony; and finally, I discuss how this specific ritual repertoire is instrumental to the social reproduction of the collective symbolic universe of the ashram as well as the social and discursive construction of the ‘good devotee’.

Mooji’s discourse on prayer and devotion

Prayer and devotion are objects of lengthy discussion within Mooji’s textual production and are informed by multiple religious sources across religious traditions. Despite the syncretic mixture of Christian and Advaita undertones, prayer and devotion, in Mooji’s writings, are largely presented in spiritual but not religious terms so as to appeal to the religiously diverse audience that constitute his following. I here focus on two recently published sources, namely Mooji’s Vaster Than Sky Greater Than Space: What You Are Before You Became (2016) and The Mala of God (2017), next to The Sahaja Precepts (2019), a list of fifteen rules that ought to guide devotees’ everyday life at Monte Sahaja. In Vaster Than Sky Greater Than Space Mooji clarifies the role of prayer within his system of teachings as a powerful support to self-inquiry, also known as jnana or atma-vichara, a contemplative practice thought to have the power to grant instant enlightenment. He argues that ‘from the place of pure, prayers and hymns to the Supreme are no different from nondual contemplation’ and that ‘[e]ven nonbelievers may find themselves praying to a higher power in times of desperation and need, for it is an instinct in human beings to acknowledge this power’ (Mooji, 2016: 29). According to these statements, prayer and meditative introspection are ‘two wings of the same bird’, and more than that, prayer is conceptualized as somehow instinctual, that is, ingrained in the very psycho-physiological constitution of human beings (Mooji, 2016: 29). The Mala of God, in turn, is described as ‘a celebration of the living God, a blessing made tangible to be absorbed inside the Heart’ (Mooji, 2017: 8). The preface of the text continues underlining that ‘the power of true prayer is to be in direct communion with the One’ (Mooji, 2017: 8). This is an important statement as within non-dual circles: ‘(…) it may sound like a contradiction that one who has realised the Truth, the God-Self, would utter any such thing as a prayer, or speak of God as his Father when he is the very essence himself. But it is not a contradiction; the prayer of an awakened being is a true prayer, for it never leaves the One (Mooji, 2017: 8).

The preface of the text, which contains ‘over 100 powerful prayers and blessings’, as its back cover recites, evocatively concludes by urging the reader to:

Drink from his [read Mooji’s] chalice of love and wisdom stirred by the finger of God. Even one prayer fully swallowed is enough to set your heart free in the infinity of Being. Be so drunk that you will find your way home without a map. Enter this temple of emptiness (Mooji, 2017: 9).

Taken together, these statements reveal ‘true prayer’ to be pivotal to the acknowledgment, celebration, and discovery of the divine, an essential aid to one’s self-realization.

Concluding this examination of the role of prayer in Mooji’s writings, it is worth quoting the closure of ‘The Sahaja Precepts’ where Mooji (2019: 1) argues the following:

Let your hearts be filled with gratitude to God. Know that grace produces the fruits of wisdom, kindness, humility and self-surrender; these quicken the journey Home. Know also that a life of discipline, Self-contemplation and prayer dissolves the ego-identity. Be open and compassionate towards all, knowing that every action expressed with love, wisdom and devotion to the Supreme One is in service to your own Liberation and to the happiness and spiritual upliftment of all beings.

Paraphrasing, devotional yoga (bhaktiyoga) serves the purpose of entrusting the divine – seen here as a metaphysical entity as well as in the form of a guru – with the power of shaping and guiding one’s own life.is surrender relegates the workings of the ego to a momentary inconvenience that ought to be overcome by ‘gratitude to God’, knowing that ‘grace produces the fruits of wisdom, kindness, humility and self-surrender’. Self-realization,n short, follows naturally one’s surrender to the guru.

As these three examples testify, Mooji’s take on prayer and devotion is not merely a sharing of his personal relationship with the divine but also an expression of the legitimate institutional discourse used in the ashram with the broader community of devotees. Particularly important, in this regard, is the circular relationship between Mooji’s discourses about prayer and devotion, and the practices of collective prayer that constellate the everyday life of Monte Sahaja where this legitimate discourse is brought into practice to first, contribute to the social reproduction of the symbolic universe of Mooji’s teachings; and second, to contribute to the processes of formation of the desired type of subjectivity that Mooji’s devotees ought to train and attain in order to gainpiritualapitalndchieve the status of ‘good devotee’.

Performing prayer: Aarti, Bhajans, and fire ceremony

Praying, here epically defined as that specific set of rituals where devotees cultivate their relationship with the divine, dictates the pace of life at Monte Sahaja and is also a central element of the social organization of Mooji’s retreats. At 6 a.m. devotees meet in the main contemplative space, the Mooji Mandir, for the recitation of a mantra dedicated to the guru. The mantra is Om Sat Guru Sri Mooji Baba Namaha, which translates from Sanskrit as salutations and reverences to the true guru Sri Mooji Baba. Its repetitive and syncopated recitation lasts for approximately half an hour, after which the aarti, the light offering ritual to the deity which in Monte Sahaja is always performed accompanied by music and devotional chanting, begins. In the following field note, I recount a moment of direct participation dating back to my first few weeks in the ashram. In this passage, I use my own experience and intimate account as a starting point to provide an informed ethnographic description and analysis of the devotees’ immersion in this collective praying ritual:

Outside everything is silent and dark, covered by the early morning dew. I sit cross legged in one of the cushions at the center of the hall. I put the beige blanket that I picked up at the door around my back so that it also covers my legs, cold in the short trousers I use for work. There is a slight turmoil of people entering the Mandir while finally the bell rings and the recording with the mantra starts uttering the mantra Om Sat Guru Sri Mooji Baba Namaha. Eyes closed, hands folded on each other and focused on the vibrations that the mantra generates in my body I begin to recite: ‘Om Sat Guru Sri Mooji Baba Namaha. Om Sat Guru Sri Mooji Baba Namaha. Om Sat Guru Sri Mooji Baba Namaha’. Other devotees all around me chant in unison. Before I know it, my head space, until short ago still clouded by the impressions of a short and rather disturbed sleep, is cleared up (…) The feeling of expanse generated by the vibrations feels like a warm embrace, the metaphysical correspondence of the blanket that surrounds my body. As we cease chanting, after countless recitations, I realize how transformational this practice is. Now I sit there, vibrating but motionless, grounded and uplifted at the same time.

Life in the ashram is organized around collective prayers and rituals, one of the manners in which the ashram’s ‘collective consciousness’ (Durkheim, 1984 [1933], 2001 [1912], 2013) is continuously re-actualized. The earliest of these rituals implicitly sustaining different forms of solidarity among Mooji’s devotees, is the recitation of Mooji’s mantra, an invocation to the divine power of the guru. Its rationale is to prepare the mind for the following aarti and contemplation but is also perceived by devotees as highly transformative. I contend, together with Meintel, that in occurrences such as the one described earlier, ‘for ephemeral but meaningful moments, participants are linked in communion through their common connection to a transcendent reality, this last being activated through shared prayer and ritual’ (2014: 200). These kinds of social interactions, in turn, facilitate what Meintel calls ‘embodied authenticity’, namely, ‘the authenticity founded in lived, embodied experience’ (Meintel, 2014: 200) where self-discovery and self-transformation occur in relation to a transcendental reality shared by a group via its ritual orthopraxis. These considerations are important because they point our sociological gaze toward the pervasive role of the social in characterizing – and postulating as legitimate – even seemingly private moments of prayer and introspection. Else said, the authenticity that is embodied by devotees in these moments of collective prayer is the authenticity advocated for by the guru and socially reproduced by the group at large. In this way, even the extremely personal feeling of expanse generated by the vibrations of the mantra should not merely be read as an individual outcome of praying but as the result of a specific pedagogical dispose it offered to modify the subjectivity of the devotee and favor the recognition of his or her ‘true self’, a powerful symbolic glue around which the whole community organizes its conduct.

In the following extracts ⁵ , we delve deeper into the communal character of prayer, through the examination of a bhajan session, traditional devotional songs that within the ashram are usually played for the celebrations of specific occasions and at least once or twice in each retreat. A typical bhajan session starts with the ‘salutations’ to the divine performed by one of the leading artists of the session, normally also one of Mooji’s closest devotees:

‘Om! Salutations to the Supreme Being, the Spirit of Truth. Salutation to Sri Arunachala, and to Sri Ramana Maharshi, Salutation to Sri Papaji. And salutation to our beloved Master, Sri Mooji Baba, the embodiment of love and grace, and wisdom. The light that is guiding us home, that is dispelling our ignorance. Glory to you, to uplift our hearts, to liberate from the heaviness of personal identity. May we honor you and may we honor what you have showed us. Salutations to all the saints, all the sages who have walked before us. And glory to them. Om!

A few moments of silence pass by, as the hall where the bhajans are about to start is absurdly silent and everyone, Mooji included, listens to this preamble with the collected attention given to les choses sacrées. Another devotee then, this time a young lady, takes the floor:

‘Beloved Master, beloved Master, beloved sangha [community of truth seekers], everyone here in the room and everyone watching from home, [you are] very welcome! So beautiful to see you all! This is a great opportunity, bhajans is a great opportunity to sing all the praises to the lord, praises to your very own heart, praises to our most beloved Master. We are singing the names of different gods and goddesses but it’s all pointing back to the same One, the One Mooji Baba is revealing within us. And we fully encourage you to enjoy, to dance, clap hands, sing along! Feel fully free, fully relaxed. It’ s very beautiful when you sing and you enjoy, you dance from every part of your Being. Don’t hold back, don’t think too much, just enjoy, just enjoy, so (…) thank you’.

As the video continues, the bhajans session delivers what it promises: an admixture of praises, cries, laughs, shouts, devotional exhilaration, bodies moving to the hectic rhythm of the music, the emergence of a unified field of emotional energy, and the fusion of different subjectivities into one single devotional body. As Collins rightly argues, ‘[i]t is the big, intense, religious gatherings that bring forth the emotion and the shift in membership attachment’ (2004: 61). Judging from the images, the crowd gathered for the bhajans session, at least a few hundred people, facilitate ‘more tacit interaction’, ‘give a sense of social atmosphere’, and make participants feel like they are ‘where the action is’ (Collins, 2004: 82). Here, emotional energy, ‘a longer-lasting feeling that individuals take with them from the group, giving them confidence, enthusiasm, and initiative’ (Collins, 2014: 300), emerges out of the peaks of expressed bodily engagement with prayer through movement, singing, and emotional expressions such as crying, smiling, or shouting out loud praises to god. Body movements and utterances, both collectively performed, reinforce the feeling of belonging to the same sacred communities of worshippers organized around the blessing of being physically close to the guru and in tune with the vibration of god(s)’ names. Freely borrowing from Alexander (2004), we can then add that the specific cultural pragmatics of bhajans is first and foremost to produce, and in turn elicit, the dramatic effectiveness of the collective representation of praying and praising god and/or the guru.

Before introducing the last empirical evidence of this article, I would like to briefly emphasize that the effective production and circulation of high emotional energy is closely related to what Collins calls ‘energy stars’, that is, ‘individuals who are able to increase the EE level of others’ and ‘create a mutual focus of attention for all involved, which, in turn, supports a shared emotional mood’. ‘Energy stars’ have ‘an EE-halo that makes them easy to admire’ (Collins, 2004: 132). Because of their charismatic role, largely due to their closeness to the guru, both in physical and symbolic terms, other devotees ‘can get a certain amount of rise in one’s own EE by following them, becoming part of their entourage, taking orders from them, or even viewing them from afar’ (Collins, 2004: 132). Else said, energy stars are those devotees that successfully, and in a recognized manner (e.g. public comments of appreciation and/or displays of affect and admiration by the guru), carry with them the highest amount of spiritual capital, the most valuable type of capital within the symbolic economy of Mooji’s ashram.

Fire ceremonies, in turn, are performed at the end of every silent retreat, usually the night before the closure. They foresee the delivery of a piece of camphor to each and every devotee and a brief explanation where Mooji underlines the similitude between camphor and the ego: As the former, swallowed by the sacrificial fire, does not leave any trace of its previous existence, so the latter, proved illusory by Mooji’s non-dual teachings, dissolves in pure awareness. Before the actual ceremony, Mooji collects a few handfuls of camphor and reassures the online retreat participants that he will throw a piece into the sacrificial fire on their behalf. Most importantly, Mooji also formulates a collective intention for the self-realization and spiritual uplifting of all those truly eager to transcend their ego-identity. By then the crowd is thrilled, a few devotees are lightening the fire outside of the hall, and musicians get ready to intone the final bhajan session of the retreat. The ceremony ought to start:

‘The atmosphere is electric, everybody dances and sings, following the lead of the musicians on stage, all gathered around Mooji Baba which happily sings and wave his hands in the air. One ordered row of devotees is guided by some attendances from the center of the hall to pass in front of the stage to pay homage to their guru before exiting the hall on the other side and throwing their camphor into the fire. Mooji’s dances and smiles to everybody as they parade in front of him, intoning a classic of the genre, Shiva Shiva Shiva shambooooo, Shiva Shiva Shiva shambo’(…) I am one of the last to pass in front of Mooji and bow down to him as team members usually go last and when I finally leave the hall and approach the ceremonial fire I am struck by the radically different atmosphere that I find here: contrary to the hectic excitement that accompanies devotees parading, singing, and chanting inside the hall, outside everybody is collected in him or herself and the music reaches out only as a distant echo. A few devotees look at the fire from a close distance, hands in prayer positions, other eyes closed. It is finally my turn to dissolve my resistances to self-transcendence into this sacred fire (…) the feeling of witnessing something tremendous and unique pervades me, and as I can sense looking at the other devotees, this is a common experience (…)’

As Collins rightfully observes, ‘[e]motions are not only social, in that they are predictable responses to particular kinds of social interactions; but also, they are often collective – they are strengthened by being shared with others’ (2014: 299). Religious emotions, such as devotion, bewilderment, and wonder, among others, are not different in these regards, as the previous field note testifies. More specifically, I agree with Fuist that there is ‘something qualitatively distinctive’ to collective prayer than it being ‘merely an aggregate of individual prayers’ (2015: 533). In fact, moments of collective prayer, such as aarti, bhajans, and fire ceremonies, are ‘where members of the observed groups created special times and spaces for the expression of who they are as a community, helping to define what kind of group a particular faith community is’ (Fuist, 2015: 533). In ‘the collective experience the object of shared attention’, such as the guru mantra, the bhajans chanted, and the tension toward the purifying power of the fire, ‘becomes the intentional object of collective emotion’ (Knottnerus, 2014: 315). This collective attention toward les choses sacrées, indeed, the true stake of the ritualized moments of collective prayers here investigated, proves fully successful when ‘bodily copresence’, ‘barriers to outsiders’, ‘mutual focus’, and a ‘shared mood’ (Collins, 2004: 48) are simultaneously enacted. These in turn, generate heightened emotional energy, group solidarity, the social reproduction of the core symbolic universe of the group, and a feeling of membership and belonging (Collins, 2004: 49). In so doing, prayer interaction rituals are particularly successful when they are able to convince their participants that they are effective means to the acquisition of spiritual capital. Here, the promise, as much as the actual and recognized acquisition of spiritual capital by some of the devotees involved in these rituals, is what grants the devotees’ legitimization and proximity to the guru, positively sanctioning their spiritual efforts. In other words, cohesion and solidarity are as important to these praying rituals as the possibility of distinction that they grant: the possibility to excel in the embodiment of the teachings of their guru and the moral and symbolic universe of their group.

The social and discursive construction of the good devotee

As argued before, the ‘good devotee’ is the one who earnestly listens and does what the guru teaches her or him to do in order to transcend his or her own self. Good devotees not only willfully regard the domination that stems from the guru’s authority as legitimate, but they also confirm the effectiveness and the truthfulness of his teachings. The devotee’s immersion into the collective praying rituals of the ashram is a privileged avenue through which devotees transform their subjectivity in compliance with the guru’s desires and thus achieve self-transcendence.

As aptly argued by Alexander, ‘[r]itual performance not only symbolizes a social relationship or change; it also actualizes it. There is a direct effect, without mediation’ (2004: 538). Applying this insight to the social and discursive construction of the ‘good devotee’, I claim that in order to become one, that is, accomplish all the inner transformations required and thus comply to the guru’s teachings, devotees have to take part, wholeheartedly, in the ritual prayers here discussed. Another way to see this, following Collins, is to note how ‘successful IRs make people into sincere believers’, or in the lexicon of this paper, ‘good devotees’ (2014: 303). Here, as Topal (2017: 588) posits, ritualized behavior such as collective prayer ‘can be considered ‘one among a continuum of practices that serve as the necessary means to the realization of a pious self’ and be ‘regarded as the critical instruments in a teleological program of self- formation’ (Mahmood, 2005: 128).

Finally, the early mantra chanting, together with the subsequent aarti and the more occasional bhajans and fire ceremonies, represent the main institutionalized manners in which collective prayers and devotional practices instruct devotees to the cultivation of a ‘devotional disposition’ (Di Placido, 2018). This disposition can be defined as the specific scheme of perception, appreciation, and action organized around surrender, veneration, and faith in the guru, god, and the Self, which is ‘deposited’ in its ‘incorporated state, in every member of the group’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 18). The eager, and reiterated, cultivation of this disposition, in turn, facilitates devotees’ acquisition of spiritual capital, and as a consequence also his or her chances to occupy a more central position within the ashram and come closer to god and the guru himself.

Srinivas (2010: 167) labels this drive towards proximity as ‘proxemic desire’ (Srinivas, 2010: 167), that is, devotees’ desire to be physically close to their guru. Amanda Lucia (2018: 692) elaborates further on this concept in terms of ‘disciplinary logics that govern physical relations between guru and disciple’ (Lucia, 2018: 962), arguing that these logics are fertile grounds for unequal power relationships to flourish and in some cases also for actual abuses to occur. According to this analysis, then, the good devotee is the one that: first, eagerly partakes in all the praying collective rituals of the ashram; second, in so doing he or she obeys the prescriptions regarding devotion put forth by his or her guru; third, he or she engages in acquiring more spiritual capital; and fourth, as a good devotee, he or she can climb the hierarchies of the ashram and gain more proximity to the guru himself. In this ascending trajectory, these ‘good devotees’ are also bound to become, in the eyes of other devotees, energy stars, and as such, through their ability to generate and circulate more emotional energy, they are also instrumental to the social reproduction of the symbolic universe and collective representation of the group at large.

Conclusion

In this article, building on Mauss, Collins, and previous theorizations of spiritual capital, I have introduced a preliminary formulation of the Praying Interaction Rituals, that is, specific forms of interaction ritual where devotees’ relationship with the divine is collectively performed in the pursuit of spiritual capital. This article contributes to the contemporary sociological study of prayer by dismissing the idea of inaccessibility often found in the study of individuals engaged with the transcendent. By placing the sociological significance of this act at the center instead, prayer becomes a legitimate, and manageable, object of scholarly scrutiny and not an impossible topic for sociologists. Moreover, the formulation of the Praying Interaction Rituals demonstrates how the reiterated ritual performance of collective prayers fuels group cohesion and collective consciousness, while disciplining and subjectivizing the desired types of subjects that specific communities and their traditions of reference envision as amenable to legitimate membership and praise within the group. In other words, the conceptual framework proposed here has the merit to direct our gaze toward the social and discursive construction of the ‘good devotee.’

Synthesizing a well-known trope of the contemporary sociology of religion, contemporary forms of spiritual and religious lives are usually depicted as inherently self-centered, devoid of authoritarian dynamics, and freely consumable in opposition with traditional religions and their reliance on sacred text, authority figures, and normative injunctions (Di Placido, 2022). This article, in line with a critical approach to the study of religion (e.g. Altglas, 2014; Altglas and Wood, 2018; Bourdieu, 1971; Goldstein et al., 2014, 2016; Guizzardi, 1979; Wood and Altglas, 2010; Wood and Bunn, 2009), proves that this is an over-simplistic view. In so doing, it urges us to take a more cautious approach. For instance, as masterfully shown by Veronique Altglas (2014), it suggests problematizing social actors’ narratives of self-actualization in light of textual traditions, shared practices, and discursive references of their groups and communities. Revealing how these narratives have more to do with the ethos of a given group and its normative conceptualization of subjectivity, than with an actual disappearance of the dimensions of power and authority, apprises the contemporary spiritual/religious field. Although it is true that today’ spiritual seekers are free to look for the sacred outside of the boundaries of traditional religions and, in principle, can leave and enter many groups at will (e.g. Wuthnow’s (1998) notion of ‘seeking spirituality’), or assemble bits and pieces from different religious and cultural resources without much hassle (e.g. bricolage), it is also true that each community or group they explore, even if tangentially or for a short period of time, is animated by specific logics of practice where power and authority are materially, emotionally, and symbolically continually re-enacted. In thisense, it is my hope that this article may not only contribute to the neglected sociological significance of prayer at large but also pinpoint to the socially constructed nature of even the most seemingly free and autonomously pursued religious experiences.

Finally, I would like to conclude by urging further studies on the collective and ritualized nature of prayer across spiritual communities and religious traditions, with a particular emphasis on praying interaction rituals ‘gone wrong’ and their detrimental effect on individual’s membership and group cohesion. This, I contend, would be extremely useful in revealing how the same religious and ritual phenomena can, in practice, lead to drastically different social and discursive constructions when enacted differently and in some cases also influence changes and re-interpretations of specific rituals so as to reaffirm their efficacy.