Hinduísmo transnacional: tradição e brasilidade no método do Caminho do Coração de Sri Prem Baba

Abstract

This work reflects about the dynamics of the transnationalization of religious life in a globalized world, observing the cultural context of postmodernity. For that, it considers the case of Sri Prem Baba, a Brazilian guru who became the leader of the Hindu lineage Sachcha after the death of his Indian master, Sri Hans Raj Maharaj. Today, the man from São Paulo attracts disciples throughout the world, including in India, where he spends two months a year speeching and promoting celebrations in the spiritual community inherited from his master. According to his own words, his mission is to build bridges between worlds – “between the West and the East, between the Amazon Forest and the Himalayans, between science and spirituality” – and he does so through a psycho-spiritual method of his own, developed more than 20 years ago, in a completely different context: a Therapeutic Centre founded in São Paulo during the 1990s, influenced by ‘New Age’ thoughts and by Amazonian shamanic traditions. Thus, this work also maps the characteristics of the Indian and Brazilian religious cultural fields, identifying the openings and ‘inclusivisms’ which are present in both, as well as similarities between these apparently distant cultures, which however are connected by the interstices of spiritual experience. It is central here the role played by spiritual methods, observing them from two possible perspectives: as individually tailored “pedagogies for human transformation” and, in a broader sense, as elements which bring a contemporary flavour to the religious traditions which gurus claim to be preserving.