Spiritual Materialism, coined by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and defined as “a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality” where we “deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.” It relates to getting “addicted” to spiritual teachings and practices, with people continuously looking for the next workshop, the next teaching, the newest guru in town, going from one seminar to the next, traveling all over the world to find “truth”, going from healer to healer, “master” to “master”, in the hopes of someone healing them or bringing them “enlightenment”. Spiritual Materialism also shows itself by building a library of spiritual techniques that their ego likes to “show off” to prove their worthiness – to reveal how much of a “properly spiritual person they are, and how much they have read, “know”, and practice.
“Most human beings may go out of their minds; others will go beyond mind.”