“When spirituality becomes a business, it is not only its content that is lost, nor even a practice consistent with its origins: the breath that sustained it as an unconditional experience is extinguished. What disappears is not a doctrine, a technique, a methodology, or a ritual, but a form of presence that cannot be quantified: an attention that does not expect anything in return, a relationship without preconditions, a word spoken without an agenda. Where the bond between master and disciple was once asymmetrical, vertical, non-commercial, the logic of equivalence now takes hold: service and reward, service and fee, merchandise and remuneration. What was once time outside of time—a non-instrumental experience—becomes a program, a course, an experience with a date and a value. Transmission becomes a package. Teaching becomes a catalog. And the path becomes an offer that promises to “awaken” without anyone having to lose sleep.
When the master needs to cover expenses, sustain a structure, maintain visibility, their practice can no longer be guided by the truth that founded it. They inevitably begin to depend not on what they teach, but on the number of attendees. Not on the mystery they transmit, but on the flow of income that sustains them. In this context, the disciple ceases to be someone seeking transformation and becomes a customer who must return. The discourse adapts, softens, becomes functional. It does not aim at rupture, but at return. It does not propose the emptiness of ego collapse, but rather comfort, entertainment, and well-being. Because inviting someone to let go is risky when one depends on them staying. The pedagogy of detachment thus becomes a retention strategy. This is where the adulteration begins. The disciple stops listening and starts consuming. The master abandons his initiatory function to become a symbolic operator of a personal brand. What was once an austere, discontinuous path, full of detours and dangers, becomes an accessible aesthetic of mysticism. Silence becomes “retreat for reconnection.” Demandingness becomes “wellness coaching.” Renunciation dissolves into exercises in gratitude and visualization. Nothing hurts, nothing unsettles, nothing makes you uncomfortable, nothing bothers you. The strange becomes fashionable. What used to require years of maturation is now packaged into instantly downloadable modules.
This market-adapted spirituality no longer teaches us to die to the self: it respects it, adorns it, beautifies it, nourishes it. It speaks of freedom while sustaining itself on the fear of vacancy. It pronounces emptiness, but cannot bear an empty room. It invokes the eternal, but organizes itself according to editorial calendars. It calculates followers, engagement, visibility, and turns the soul into a KPI. Even devotional language is colonized by the lexicon of performance and marketing: “manifest,” “vibrate,” “raise your frequency,” “expand.” And yet, the sacred—if that word can still be used without cynicism—does not allow discounts or installments. It has no financing plan. It does not produce satisfaction or comfort. It is rupture, fracture, a tear that cannot be included as an “additional benefit.” It can be vertigo, sometimes emptiness, sometimes unbearable silence. It is always something that cannot be controlled. That is why not everyone crosses that border. Many prefer to pay for the illusion of having crossed it, without really risking anything. Refusing this simulacrum is not to despise the material. Nor is it idealizing precariousness. It is rejecting the way the market neutralizes all otherness. It is opposing the reduction of the invisible to a fungible good. It is affirming that the true master does not capitalize on their teaching, and that the authentic disciple does not seek comfort, personal improvement, or emotional management techniques. They seek, if they truly seek, that which takes the ground from under their feet. And that loss cannot be sold.
Spirituality offered as an experience is, at best, a pleasant form of distraction. At worst, it is an operation to legitimize the ego that it claims to want to dissolve. The highest cost is not borne by those who pay to attend a retreat. It is borne by those who believe that payment has opened a path. There is no wisdom where everything is designed to avoid conflict. There is no transformation where no internal price is demanded. And there is no freedom where everything can be bought without renunciation.
The soul, if one still wants to talk about it, does not grow in the warmth of comfort. It is not awakened by gentle formulas or cheap therapies. It only responds to that which tears it away from its habits, its safe zones, its instant promises. And that—precisely that—cannot be sold. Because it does not belong to the order of exchange. And because its value, even if it is priceless, demands everything.”
Prabhuji
