Epilogue

Abstract

In the first part of Spiritual Empires, we traced the diffusion of cosmopolitan spiritual affinities across Europe and India among innovative religious factions during the long fin-de-siècle. Their doctrinal congruity became manifest in their anti-materialism—the degradation of human spirituality—their generation of a historiographical model based on spiritual science and evolution, and their tenet of universal spirituality, which was purportedly attainable by all who exhibited worthy merit-based karma. Yet, as reviewed in the second part of this monograph, these factions consistently extrapolated their spiritual precepts to the social, cultural, and political spheres in each of their domestic settings. Their common spiritual taxonomy became articulated and applied idiosyncratically in each domestic social and political locality; their common cosmopolitan spiritual tenets evolved into unique assertions in each domestic location, which were linked to national and even imperial designs. Congruous religious precepts among these factions became articulated in a worldview that foresaw the generation of a new world order, in which a “-centric” spiritual empire would be led by a class of meritorious religious pundits, who were divinely ordained. They championed inventive spiritual empires that proclaimed the cultural ascendancy of each civilization—Anglocentric, Francocentric, Germanocentric, and Indocentric—intended to fulfill a sacred social and political blueprint for the world.