The south of France at this time of year is awash with seekers of one sort or another, especially in the area I'm in. You've gotcher Cathar seekers, you've gotcher Rennes-le-Chateau Mysterious Pot 'O Money seekers, and you've gotcher Jeezus And Mary Magdalene's Holy Bloodline seekers. There are more New Age crazies per square meter than in Santa Fe, and that's saying something. :-)
However, watching these folks roaming around ruins with glassy eyes hoping for revelation, or pouring over the books being hawked to seeker-tourists such as themselves in the bookstalls, or overhearing them talking about their discoveries in the cafes, there is a trend that seems to be showing up. The French and Spanish seeker-tourists and those from mainland Europe seem to be seeking personal experience or knowledge, with very few preconceptions or expect- ations. Their main "driving force" seems to be curiosity. But the British and the American seeker seem to be questing after "authority," often in the form of some guru or teacher or scholar who tells them "the truth." I find this interesting because I see the same phenom- enon in some of the seekers on FFL. It's like they've taken the normal, everyday "cult of personality" that drives their media and extended it to their spirituality. They want...nay, NEED...a "talking head," a human being who is the personification of the spiritual knowledge they seek, and preferably one who is 1) charismatic and 2) will tell them what to do. The Europeans are looking only for the knowledge. They graciously allow the British and the Americans to look for some guru or teacher to tell them what to do, and then snicker behind their backs. Last night in Mirepoix there were two "New Agey" talks advertised on posters around the town. The first was classic "guruspeak," some fellow whose photo was all over the posters trying to attract followers to his cult by giving a supposed talk about the "real" truth of Rennes-le-Chateau. Another talk in the same town was more of a slide show given by someone who was an actual expert on the area. There was no photo of the speaker on its posters, and no promise of enlightenment. Both talks were to be given in English (not unusual at this time of the tourist year, English being the new lingua franca and all). Out of curiosity I walked by the first talk as people were starting to arrive for it. As expected, they were ALL British and American...not a French or Spanish or German or Dutch person in the crowd. They hung around waiting for the talk to start and chatting about all the gurus and teachers they had met, and playing "guru oneupsmanship" with each other, on the level of, "Yes, I experience darshan from ____, but it was *nothing* compared to the darshan I experienced from _______." I moved along to the other talk, and that crowd was almost entirely Euro. There were no glassy-eyed New Agers, and no pre-lecture "My guru's dick is longer than your guru's dick" talk among the attendees. It was just a bunch of people hoping to learn a little something and then go away and assimilate it into their own lives themselves, choosing what to believe and what not to believe *by* themselves. No one at the second talk was looking for a "guru" or "authority" or anyone to tell them how to think or what to think or what to do with their lives. It should be obvious which talk I attended. :-) Many regulars on Fairfield Life would have gone for the "guru" talk, hoping to find an "authority figure" or snag a little free darshan. Me, I was just curious to see whether the guy giving the talk had uncovered a few facts in his research that I hadn't in mine. And he had; I came away happy to have learned a little something. At the cafe afterwards, a few of the people from the talk I went to ran into a few of the people who went to the other talk. Over coffee, it became obvious that the nearby chateau of Puivert had been mentioned in both talks, and someone brought up a question about it. One of the people who had attended the "guru talk" said, "We'll ask __________ that question when we see him next...he'll tell us." One of the women from the talk I glanced through one of the free bro- chures that had been given away at our talk, looked the answer up herself, and read it aloud to the folks in the cafe. I cracked up. It was a perfect commentary on the trends I had been noticing. One group went to see a "guru" so that he would tell them "the truth," and all they learned was that the next time they wanted to know something, they had to run to him and ask for "the truth" again. The other group learned how to figure out answers for themselves.
