Sociology and spirituality: Toward an immanent-transcendent critique of modernity

Abstract

In this paper, I set up three thought experiments that mobilize nonmodern ontologies and epistemologies to explore the possibility of spiritual sociology. These experiments engage with Pierre Bourdieu as a Buddhist quantum physicist, Emile Durkheim as a New Age transpersonal psychologist, and Michel Foucault as a daemon-inspired revolutionary. The three experiments illustrate that, while many worlds (consisting of objective and subjective structures) exist, they tend to collapse into a few through “echo effects” produced by the powerful; these powerful echo effects are counteracted by the evolution of Spirit or Collective Consciousness growing more enlightened; and the more individuals reconnect with Spirit, the more echo effects are transformed into resonances, pointing to the pluriversal future that permits many worlds to co-flourish. This spiritual–sociological experimentation not only articulates an immanent–transcendent critique of modernity (or any society), but also suggests that contemplative practice be incorporated into undergraduate and graduate education because the quality of sociological research depends fundamentally on that of the researcher's mind.