Growing Spiritual Hunger Widens Clientele of New Age Bookstores

When Alpha Herndon was told she had breast cancer in July, the diagnosis launched her on a spiritual search that she believes contributed to her recovery.

Herndon’s efforts to find meaning in the mastectomy she underwent in November began with psychological counseling offered as part of her treatment.

Her counselor gave her a long list of books that might help her create a positive attitude to fight the disease. Some of the books were as well known as Norman Cousins’ “Anatomy of an Illness.” Others were more obscure, such as “Course of Miracles,” a series of meditations that a New York psychologist, now deceased, claimed were dictated to her by an unseen voice 20 years ago.

Herndon, 45, whose illness caused her to reshape her life and trade a public relations career for one in physical therapy, pauses a moment, afraid that her words will shock.

“I am actually thankful for my cancer. It brought me the opportunity to experience a feeling of inner peace I’d never known before,” she said. “I feel as though my spiritual awareness will take me through whatever I have to face, even if the cancer returned.”

Herndon, who is divorced and the mother of a teen-age son, continues her spiritual journey not through a church or religious organization but in the stacks of a small bookstore in a Point Loma shopping center, where she had found the books that helped her deal with the cancer.

Midway Books is one of several bookstores in the San Diego area that specialize in the esoteric. They are often called metaphysical or New Age bookstores, and there are at least seven of them scattered from Encinitas to National City, three of which have opened in the last five years.

They carry everything from holistic healing methods to accounts of supernatural phenomena. There are books on self-development and psychology, books on astrology and meditation, and books that contain the writings of religious thinkers from St. Augustine to Eastern gurus.

Ten years ago these stores mostly catered to people considered on the fringes of society. Now their clientele has broadened to include yuppies and housewives, physicians and clerics, and people like Herndon who face a crisis in their lives and look for ways to ease their fears and pain.

The bookstores’ owners believe that their steadily enlarging businesses indicate a growing spiritual hunger among people confused by modern complexities and unsatisfied by material security.

“In the past, traditional religions nourished people’s need for transcendent meaning, that sense that there’s more to life than doing the laundry,” said Jim Meadows, owner of Earth Song bookstore in Encinitas, which carries books representing all spiritual traditions. “But the influence of religion waned with the progress of science and technology and now people seem to be searching to satisfy that spiritual dimension in ways that are meaningful to them.”

“This is California, I realize, but this interest is happening in (Texas), too,” said Larry Keyes, a clerk at Midway Books. “This material isn’t saying anything new, it’s just not using ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and preaching hell and damnation.

“Basically, it’s saying that you get what you plant, you alone are responsible for creating the quality of your own life, and a lot of these books try to help you do that.”

He said business doubled when the store converted from a general bookstore nearly two years ago. Midway, like most of the stores, sponsors classes, lectures and forums on metaphysical subjects.

Controversial Bookstore, whose name dates from 20 years ago when it specialized in political literature, is San Diego’s oldest metaphysical bookstore, located in a University Avenue storefront on a busy commercial block of North Park. Like most New Age bookstores, it has a sense of order and peace conveyed by neatly stacked shelves, people reading quietly and soft music playing in the background.

“You can hardly walk through the store on Saturdays, there are so many people here,” one clerk said.

Among the customers on a recent weekday were an accountant on his lunch break studying ways to increase the brain’s capacity to store information, a family therapist reading about meditative yoga, a schoolteacher looking for a book on achieving world peace and a Pacific Bell executive in button-down shirt and tie buying literature on self-motivation to use in the company’s training programs.

“I stayed in the car and made my sister go in when I first came here. I was afraid everyone would be wearing spiked hairdos or something,” said John Gilley, 41, who runs Pacific Bell’s in-house leadership development program, in which workers make management decisions collectively. “I started coming here to find methods of self-development as it relates to better management. That led me to other books . . . and now it has become an extraordinary experience for me to discover the limitlessness and potential of the human consciousness.”

Bob Luker and Doug Kimbal, Controversial Bookstore owners for 10 years, said public figures like Shirley MacLaine and psychologist Leo Buscaglia who are outspoken about their interest in metaphysics have helped make stores like theirs more popular.

Recent discoveries in physics also have helped lend credence to phenomena that previously had been considered supernatural, they added.

“Ramtha has even been on Merv Griffin,” said Luker, referring to an unseen “entity” that “channels” or speaks through another person, a phenomenon demonstrated on the television show. “Things like that cause a lot of people to sit up and take a look at things they had considered flaky before.”

“The ‘Ramtha’ books are selling like hot dogs,” said Ian Bates, manager of Unison Books near the intersection of University and 5th avenues in Hillcrest. “I’ve never seen material generate so much excitement. They cost $19.95 each and the people buying them are well-dressed, professional types who put down their money without thinking twice.”

Bates said he has seen a gradual change in clientele to the yuppie and upscale over the six years he has worked at Unison. Most of them, he said, want books “that are going to tell them how to make their lives work better.”

“People buy books and tapes that help them to deal with stress, or make them function better in their jobs or create a better love life,” Bates said. “But it isn’t purely to sell more stock or whatever that makes them come in, it’s also the need to look beyond dealing only with the pressures of the material world.”

Other popular items are cassette tapes of harmonious New Age music, instrumental arrangements designed to relax and promote restful thoughts. The music, which came out about seven years ago, often reproduces sounds of nature, like bird song, babbling brooks and ocean waves. Some people use the tapes to unwind after a stressful workday.

“Better than a beer with the boys,” said one Controversial Bookstore customer, a restaurant manager. “It’s like that with a lot of this stuff. You come in to get a subliminal persuasion tape to help you get over jet lag and before you know it, you’re looking at a book about astral projection.”

Herndon would agree. She is enthusiastic about her new life, in large part because of the appreciation she has gained for it through her reading. She is equally excited about continuing to make spiritual realizations.

“It’s like peeling an onion; each time you get to one level of awareness, it reveals another,” she said with a broad smile.

“Life is a great adventure. Exploring the spiritual side has helped me live it that way.”

‘Basically, it’s saying that you get what you plant, you alone are responsible for creating the quality of your own life, and a lot of these books try to help you do that.’--Larry Keyes, clerk at Midway