Spirituality Is One for the Books

Here at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore in West Hollywood, an intense search for life wisdom is underway.

Amid the scent of incense and soft, melodious tunes of meditative music, aspiring entertainer Terrence Moore is exploring the esoteric religious texts of the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians. College student Dikla Benjamin is delving into the mysteries of the Jewish Kabbalah. And physician Kurt Woeller is looking for material to help him blend Western medicine with the holistic practices promoted in Eastern spirituality.

These seekers are evidence of an explosive interest in spirituality that is apparent not only in mosques, churches and synagogues, but increasingly in the catalogs of the nation’s publishers as well.

Scrambling to feed that hunger, book companies are leaping into the metaphysical market as they take note of an arresting trend: Books on religion, spirituality and inspiration, once a small and predictable segment of the market, are now outpacing every other category as the new superstars of the publishing industry.

Although no comprehensive, industrywide figures exist, a host of indicators shows phenomenal growth in religious publishing. Sales of religious books skyrocketed 150% from 1991 to 1997, compared to 35% for the rest of the industry, according to a national survey of 16,000 American households by the Book Industry Study Group. Ingram Book Co., the nation’s largest book distributor to retail markets, reported a cumulative growth in religion titles of nearly 500% from June 1994 to the third quarter of 1996, an additional 40% increase in 1997 and a 58% rise in the first quarter of 1998.

“This kind of explosive interest in religion is definitely unique in the American publishing industry,” said Phyllis Tickle, contributing editor of religion for the trade magazine Publishers Weekly. “This kind of growth for any category is unprecedented as far as I know.”

The boom covers a wide range of spiritual material--Bibles and other traditional works, but also volumes on mysticism, Asian traditions, spiritual healing. “The amazing thing is that there seems to be a market for any kind of religious topic,” said Lynn Garrett, Publishers Weekly religion editor.

Analysts say the spiritual book boom is powered by a potent combination of savvy marketing, a receptive audience, a confluence of cultural developments and the global power of the media to take what used to be esoteric knowledge and beam it directly into people’s homes. Some also believe that the encroaching millennium is turning people’s attention to religious themes.

Doctrines Simplified Into How-To Plans

In today’s media-driven marketplace, once-inscrutable religious doctrines are being simplified into clear, how-to programs--Indian physician Deepak Chopra’s “Seven Spiritual Laws of Success,” for instance.

The books are finding a ravenous audience: baby boomers reassessing their lives, an affluent generation searching for meaning beyond materialism, people eager for tools to cope with today’s rapid economic and social dislocations.

“People just want to feel better. They want to deepen their world. They want more practical wisdom,” said Matthew Gilbert of the New Alternatives for Publishers, Retailers and Artists--a nationwide group founded in 1991 to promote books and other products supporting spiritual growth and positive social change.

Some theologians look askance at such trends. The danger of spiritual freelancing without the guidance of a teacher or religious community, they say, can be self-delusion, narcissism, confusion and the lack of moral accountability.

The urge to make spiritual doctrines accessible to a popular market often leads to watering them down and compromising their authenticity, critics say.

“It’s a good thing that people are searching for a deeper spiritual truth, but it always has to be done within the context of a broader religious community,” said Father Gregory Coiro, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. “This helps prevent people from going off into the deep end. A lot of what passes for spirituality these days is navel-gazing.”

But those who eagerly peruse the shelves for the latest spiritual wisdom have little patience for theological orthodoxies. Moore, for example, has devoured books on a range of topics--Hinduism, Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Egyptian mysticism and Sumerian myth. In one conversation, he casually blended astrology, synchronicity, karma and the nuclear physics of energy to explain his spiritual view of the world. This, despite the fact that his Baptist mother and Jehovah’s Witness father sent him to Catholic schools.

Moore, 34, left the Catholic faith as a teenager, disillusioned by what he called the church’s hypocrisy and hierarchical traditions of salvation through male authority figures rather than the inner self.

After years of searching, “I started seeing how everything is universally tied together,” said Moore, who wears an Egyptian ankh, or cross-like symbol of life, under the dress shirts at his job as a fiber optic network support technician. “I just believe in God. I believe in cause and effect: If you put positive energy out there, it comes back.”

Trend Traced Partly to MacLaine Book

Many trace at least part of the origin of today’s spiritual book boom to one figure: actress Shirley MacLaine. In 1983, she began to talk publicly about her spiritual journey, including encounters with psychics and trance channelers, in a memoir, “Out on a Limb.” While some ridiculed her, the book was an international bestseller and reached millions more with a TV adaptation in 1987.

“When she came out that way, she really touched a huge group of people,” said Stan Madson, co-owner of the Bodhi Tree, where MacLaine began her feverish search for knowledge about reincarnation and other metaphysical themes. “People felt it was OK to talk about it and read about it.”

MacLaine represented a new breed of what Tickle calls media “popularizers.”

“For the first time in American history, whatever is happening in religion is being driven by the media instead of ecclesiastical institutions,” she said. “What used to be privileged information has taken to the tube and gone out into America’s living rooms.”

Once Chopra, a physician and spiritual philosopher from India, appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s show to talk about holistic ways to stay young, sales of his “The Ageless Body, Timeless Mind” exploded over the 1 million mark barely two weeks after it hit the bookstores, said Patty Eddy, associate publisher at Harmony Books. A similar phenomenon occurred with James van Praagh, a West Hollywood spiritual medium whose recent book, “Talking to Heaven,” about communicating with those who have “passed over,” took off after an appearance on “Larry King Live,” according to Doug McDonald, religion and spirituality editor for Amazon.com, an online bookstore.

Also experiencing brisk growth is traditional religious material, such as the Bible and a best-selling series of Christian apocalyptic fiction, “Left Behind,” about the end times. But more and more readers seem to be cutting across doctrinal lines to sample a wide range of philosophies.

“They’ve slipped the traces of the old doctrine and are out there looking for other ways to seek the transcendent, or other ways to interpret old religious symbols,” Tickle said.

UCLA anthropology student Benjamin was raised in a Jewish home where, she recalls, she was constantly told: “We don’t believe in Jesus, and there’s one God.” Imbued with a lively curiosity and fondness for puzzling over the mysteries of life, Benjamin, 22, launched a spiritual search four years ago that took her to her faith’s mystical traditions of the Kabbalah, along with Hinduism, astrology and other philosophies. Her spiritual practices include daily meditation and avoiding the partying and drinking that absorb her classmates “to make sure what I’m doing is good for myself.”

“I take what I see from each theory to form my own,” Benjamin said. “I believe in one creator. I believe we’re all pieces of the whole and there is no separation among us.”

Reflecting the nation’s growing ecumenicalism, publishers are also lowering doctrinal walls. Tickle said few, if any, Roman Catholic publishing houses used to attend evangelical Christian trade shows--but now they do, a trend she began noticing in the early 1990s.

Religion editor Garrett said publishers are offering for the fall a range of books across many traditions, including a doubling in the number of prayer books, more spiritual memoirs, biographies of such religious figures as Moses, and tomes on women’s spirituality.

‘Easier Than Going to the Parish Priest’

Tami Simon, founder of Sounds True Audio, a fast-growing Colorado publisher of audiotapes on spirituality, psychology and personal development, sees a growing public desire to integrate spirituality into all aspects of life. There are now books on everything from “The Tao of Parenting” to “Zennis: An Innovative Approach to Changing Your Mind, Your Play, and Your Entire Tennis Experience.”

“I think people have seen that life devoid of religion and spirituality doesn’t really work for human beings,” Garrett said. “There is a search for the less sectarian, less institutional, more individual, more eclectic. The easiest place to take that search is the bookstore. It’s much easier than going to the parish priest or rabbi.”

One spiritual teacher whose book sales have recently taken off is the late Paramahansa Yogananda, the Indian guru of yoga philosophy and meditation who came to the United States in 1920. His Mt. Washington-based organization, the Self-Realization Fellowship, this year released a new line of hand-sized books: “In the Sanctuary of the Soul” offers guidance for effective prayer, and “Enter the Quiet Heart” offers ways to create a rich relationship with God. The new line helped boost the group’s total book sales 140% from April 1997 to the same month this year, said spokeswoman Lauren Landress.

A perusal of the Bodhi Tree’s bestseller list makes clear that similar how-to books offering clear and practical ways to better your life--regardless of religious tradition--are perennial favorites.

For instance, healer Carolyn Myss says every illness corresponds to a pattern of emotional and psychological stress. Her book, “Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing,” has become a national bestseller. Myss presents numerous case studies of patients--one developed heart pains after years of fear and suspicion over a cheating spouse--and offers a model to cultivate physical and spiritual power through what she describes as the body’s seven energy centers and life’s seven stages.

Myss, like many of today’s religious synthesizers, weaves together ancient teachings across different faiths--in her case, the Hindu chakra system, Christian sacraments and the Kabbalah’s Tree of Life.

In a succinct 111 pages, Chopra lays out the “Seven Spiritual Laws of Success”:

* To open yourself to the unlimited potential of the universe

* To give abundantly

* To make choices conscious of their consequences

* To accept things as they occur

* To consciously project your intentions and desires

* But to relinquish attachment to outcomes

* To search for purpose in life--spiritual realization, the expression of unique talents and service to humanity.

In addition, Richard Carlson gives readers homespun advice about staying balanced in “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things From Taking Over Your Life.” Julia Cameron offers teachings on “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.” Mexican shaman Don Miguel Ruiz discloses “Four Agreements: A Practical Guide for Personal Freedom.” And Lama Surya Das offers information about “Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World.”

“People are looking for tools, ideas, teachings on how to have a direct inner sense of meaning,” Simon said.

Coiro, however, called the notion that “you are God” and can create your own reality “asinine.”

“If you don’t have a sense of moral accountability to God, you can justify almost anything,” he said.

As the public hunger for spiritual knowledge has burgeoned, a host of suppliers has flocked to feed the masses.

Mega-retailer Barnes & Noble increased its religious titles an average of 35% per year in 1994 and 1995, while McDonald of Amazon.com said the online giant is now looking more deeply into the market as the company’s sales of religious titles outpace its overall sales.

The Book of the Month Club launched One Spirit, a specialty club offering titles in religion, spirituality and alternative health, in September 1995--and found both revenues and membership doubling each year in what editorial director Robert Welsch calls “the most successful launch in 71 years of BOMC history.”

He said 80% of members are women, averaging age 44; other metaphysical retailers also say more women than men seem drawn to the quest. “Some people say the mystical and its ilk appeal more to the intuitive sense, which is more of a feminine quality,” said Phil Thompson, Bodhi Tree co-owner.

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Spirited Reading and Writing

Sales of books on religion, spirituality and inspiration now outpace every other category. The boom includes the Bible, but also volumes on mysticism, Asian traditions and spiritual healing.

Sales of Religious Books (in thousands)

1991: 36,651

1992: 50,104

1993: 60,449

1994: 70,541

1995: 74,794

1996: 78,022

1997: 91,627

Source: Book Industry Study Group

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Religious Titles Published

1990: 2,285

1991: 2,389

1992: 2,296

1993: 2,633

1994: 2,719

1995: 3,324

1996: 3,803

Sources: R.R. Bowker