This article is the result of anthropological research on the spiritual quest of travelers to India, which I carried out during my doctorate in social sciences (PPCIS/UERJ) and continue to pursue during my postdoctoral studies in social anthropology (MN/PPGAS/UFRJ). My empirical object consists of two pilgrimage journeys that a group of Vedanta students1 and yoga practitioners from Rio de Janeiro made to India; the main questions are to understand the meanings these journeys take on and the sense of devotion felt by some members of the group. The aim of this article is to investigate the sense that interviewees attribute to what they understand as devotion and conversion, considering the complex ways in which the construction of beliefs, lifestyles, and spiritual practices become intertwined.
In order to better understand the pilgrims' actions and representations regarding the meaning attributed to devotion, it was essential, through participant observation, to become part of this group as a student in the Bhagavad Gita2 course, among other Vedanta courses. Although the group's Vedanta teacher considers it a "teaching tradition" of "knowledge about a nature free of the limitation of the self," it was based on learning about karma yoga, taught in the Bhagavad Gita, that I chose to refer to the teaching and practice of Vedanta as a philosophy of life, since I consider this knowledge to be incorporated into the student's ethos. In trying to understand the meaning of the group's philosophy of life, in which meditation and yoga practices are recurrent and run parallel to the study of Hindu sacred texts, I seek to understand the "incorporation" of Vedanta as a philosophical-mystical-spiritual, yet also rational, system — not only in relation to their lifestyles but, above all, to their worldviews.
In order to understand the context of this teaching tradition, Advaita Vedanta (non-dualist philosophy), the anthropological perspective seemed to be the one with the greatest resources for interpreting the multiplicity of constructions of the meaning of devotion and for highlighting the diversity of interests, interpretations, and meanings that intersect in each person's personal experiences. I decided, then, to leave some of the interpretations of my informants' discourse to the reader. As in Malinowski's work, both in the Argonauts and in Coral Gardens, a multiplicity of voices is also found here, which can be read as an "open text," as James Clifford (1983) puts it, in which there is room for a variety of possible readings and multiple interpretations. This was done out of a concern not to "homogenize" the discourses, whose multiplicity of voices opens up a space for the emergence of their complexity. I believe, in keeping with several anthropologists, that there are no "integrated" cultural worlds, that is, any attempt to construct a unity within these often discrepant discourses should be rejected.
Important authors who have sought to think about religion and spirituality in recent decades claim that "Western" civilization is undergoing an individualizing cultural revolution, with the 1960s having been the decisive moment for a generalization of "expressive" individualism (Taylor 2002:80), a type of orientation of the self in which individuals interpret their religious experiences without concerning themselves with how they "fit" (Taylor 2002:111). Based on an analysis of the religious experiences of yoga and meditation practitioners in India, I problematize the notion that spirituality should be thought of through the lens of this individualizing "revolution," since I see that the phenomenon of spirituality can, in a certain way, constitute a response to this individualist configuration of society, particularly in those strands or segments that seek to integrate dualities such as that of the self and the other.
Within religious studies — and the social sciences as a whole — it is assumed that organized religions are restrictive and coercive, whereas spirituality, by contrast, is authentic and free, a "private" expression of the search for the sacred, in which the personal and intimate aspect of the relationship between the divine and the human is emphasized. Authors such as Bellah et al. (1996), Luckmann (1967), and Taylor (2002), for example, argue that spirituality represents a shift toward individualism3 and that, unlike traditional religiosity, spirituality would not emphasize communal practices, since these would dilute social commitments (Oh & Saarkisian 2012). For Alter (2011:21), practices such as yoga would not be "social," and for Campbell (2013), this is not a social theodicy but an individualistic one, which tends to disregard both society and history, since it connects the self directly to the cosmos.4
From this, I seek to question the tendency to project the model of religious individualism that presupposes an individual believer operating according to the logic of autonomy and free choice as an analysis of the phenomenon of spirituality. From this perspective, I understand that insisting on the individualism model as the prevailing ideology may conceal differences and nuances of the phenomenon of spirituality, which appears to consolidate more entangled conceptions of subjectivation that presuppose diverse forms of mediation and sacred presence, and, therefore, more expanded regimes of the self (Viotti 2018:35; Duarte & Aisengart 2017). Based on this, I propose that the manifestations of religious or spiritual practices of certain neo-Hindu groups or movements are socially constructed, aligning themselves with social imperatives, such as being accepted, cultivating ethical behaviors, and controlling emotions. I find that various expressions and narratives are elaborated in the process of constructing a way of seeing that is socially organized and systematized. I show, through the interviewees' accounts, that they agree with a collective discourse encouraged and shared with the group's teacher or guru. This means that their religious individualities do not imply merely an isolated development of consciousness turning inward, but rather a process of socialization based on collective practices and values.
In previous texts, I contextualized the research among the Vedantins, presenting background information, the group's profile, and the conditions of the journeys undertaken, through a methodological reflection on my personal research process (Bastos 2016a, 2023a). I discussed concepts of religious tourism in dialogue with the scholarship on religion and pilgrimage (Bastos 2017a, 2021). I considered distinctions between religion, religiosity, and spirituality, while investing in a reflection on devotion and conversion, considering the possibilities of perceiving practices within the scope of religiosity and the idiosyncratic experience of this spirituality (Bastos 2019a, 2019b). In still other texts, I addressed the encounter with India based on a reflection on Western and Christian society, the starting point of the study and of the interviewees, drawing on authors who questioned, with great repercussions in world thought, Western views of the East (Bastos 2016c). I also engaged with references and studies that point to the complexity of what is now called the New Age (Bastos 2016b, 2022), its relations with different universes of beliefs and lifestyles (Bastos 2017b, 2023c), contextualizing the dimensions of the body, emotions, and mental health of yoga and meditation practitioners (Bastos 2020, 2023b), as well as problematizing identity references, such as being a Vedantin and "seeing oneself as Hindu" (Bastos 2018; Bastos & Assis 2023). For this reason, these questions are not considered in depth here.
In this article, I reflect on the concepts of spirituality, individualism, and religion based on an analysis of the meanings of the pilgrimage journeys of a group of yoga practitioners and Vedanta students. They were in India to experience ashram culture — "monastery"-type schools where one learns about the philosophy of yoga5 while immersed in Indian culture. They thus formed a group of about twenty people who were there guided by the group's Vedanta teacher, Gloria Arieira. These journeys were undertaken, in the teacher's words, "with the very specific goal of pilgrimage, really." They planned to visit the four main pilgrimage sites in northern India, known as the Char Dhams,6 namely Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, and Yamunotri, which are located near the sources of sacred rivers, three of which flow into the Ganges, with one of them (the Yamuna) running through Delhi. The journeys were organized by the teacher herself together with her students, with the aim of deepening the experience and the incorporation of the teachings, and for that reason the main activities carried out in India were visits to temples, treks to the Char Dhams, and life in ashrams made up of yoga, Vedanta, and meditation classes (the group spent much of the trip at the ashram of Swami Dayananda,7 teacher Gloria's own master).
I clarify that the meanings of the journeys are apprehended through the travelers' accounts and memories; this means that, on different occasions, I mention having "observed" devotion and conversion to Hinduism on the part of some group members, referring to more than ten years of coexistence and participant observation studying Vedanta with them weekly at a cultural association called Vidya Mandir, in Rio de Janeiro.8 For this reason, I make clear that when I "observe" their experience in India, this refers to the doctoral and postdoctoral research in which I carried out an analysis of their accounts and the construction of narratives about how the feeling of devotion was, for them, spurred by contact with Indian culture and (life) philosophy.
To analyze the category of "devotion," I draw on the activities of the Anthropology of Devotion research group (PPGAS/MN), whose publications, supervised by Professor Renata de Castro Menezes, were considered as references for prioritizing experiences that analyze devotions as narrative plots; in this article, I investigate how devotions can be narrated and performed according to the experiences and accounts of pilgrims, reshaping themselves into diversified and polyphonic expressive forms (Menezes & Bártolo 2019:117). Although this involves a context of memory reactivation, discursive articulation, and narrative performance in the face of certain stimuli, including the research itself, I consider narrative ability within this spiritual path to be a datum for analysis, since the interlocutors observed appear to be endowed with this ability. It is important to make clear that there are two privileged interlocutors: Felipe and Luiz, both teachers in the field of yoga. While yoga "practitioners" have very different profiles, Felipe and Luiz do not speak as "mere" practitioners, but as intellectuals of the field, since they positioned themselves as teaching me. Their view therefore differs from that of the other research interlocutors, and this also delimits the analytical focus prioritized here: how these yoga teachers/intellectuals formulate their understandings of "devotion" and how to address the individualism-collectivism gradient according to the yoga they postulate.
During the journeys I describe here, made to India in 2007 and 2010 — the last two times the group made a pilgrimage to the country — I understand that the feeling of devotion of some interlocutors was mobilized, most of the time, when they came across Hindu temples and symbols. I show that, despite many of them seeing themselves as Hindus in Brazil, India proved to be a place conducive to negotiating the meaning of "being Hindu" and provided a moment in which their beliefs could be manifested and renegotiated.
Verônica, a Vedantin interviewed for this research, clearly illustrates this contact when she reports that, the first time she visited India and came across the Ganges River, she had the most significant experience of her life; it was there, on the banks of that river, that she understood the meaning of "god":
At that moment, I said: "ah, yes, so that's what god is." That diversity of things happening in the same place, with that manifestation of faith — you see cremation, a child playing, a goat eating, a dog barking, a sadhu9 praying, a cow being run over, people washing clothes, bathing, brushing their teeth, all at the same time. And I said, "it can only be this, this coming together of all these things — that's what it is."
She reflects on the importance of this river which, besides carrying the meaning of a deity, "Ganga," is the place Hindus choose to die, since there is a belief that when a person dies there, they are "freed" from samsara.10 Although it is a place described as "chaotic" (or even "disgusting"), it was there that Verônica went through a "mystical" or "spiritual" experience, in which the feeling of culture shock and chaos offered, in that case, a new perspective from which to look at the world (Dann 1999; Graburn 1989; Hutnyk 1996).
Hugo, another interviewee, explains that he has "a great appreciation" for Indian culture: "I feel at home in India, I feel good, I feel part of this culture, I really see myself as a Hindu." One of the reasons for this identification relates to the fact that Hinduism is thought of as a "fundamentally cultural" phenomenon, in which a person need not be religious to be accepted as Hindu by Hindus, or to describe themselves as Hindu; according to the Cambridge University professor, "she can be a polytheist or a monotheist, a monist or a pantheist, even an agnostic, a humanist or an atheist, and still be considered 'Hindu'" (Lipner 1994:8). In light of this, according to Hugo, Indian culture does not "exclude" anyone, since there would be total "openness" and "welcome" toward outside people and views. Like Hugo, others also state that they see themselves as Hindus.
In her account of an experience she had in a temple, whose walls seemed "loving," it is interesting to note the highly sensory manner in which interviewee Luana expresses devotion:11
And you're in the place, and everyone who was there had the same intention, which was to express their devotion, so the place was a loving place, the walls are loving. We went to a temple at the southern tip, in Kanyakumari. I walked into that temple and said, "wow, what a beautiful place, how wonderful!" And the women were making those jasmine garlands and I put jasmine in my hair, you know? I loved that. It was very intimate, I felt super at ease, super relaxed. And that temple was the most beautiful one I've ever entered in my whole life, I've never seen anything so beautiful, the whole place smelled of ghee [butter, in Hindi], it made your mouth water. And it had a Shiva with a golden head, like that, at the end of a corridor. So beautiful!
For her, being in that temple seems to have imbued her life with meaning (Steil 2003; Carneiro 2007), which relates, according to the theoretical field of pilgrimage studies, to the notion of an elective center — a cultural reference center outside one's culture of origin, chosen by the traveler as the place (or culture) that gives meaning to their life, as proposed by Cohen (1979).12 Her experience in that temple carries a deeply internalized meaning, as does her relationship with the deity.
Dumont explains that, in Hinduism, the divine is no longer understood in the sense of a "multitude of gods" as in "ordinary" religion, but rather as a "single, personal God, the Lord Içvara [or Ishvara] with whom the faithful can identify, and in whom they can participate." From this perspective, the term "participation" carries the fundamental meaning of the word devotion, bhakti, and involves the devotee's identification with "the one whose fullness opens itself to participation" (1992:332).13 The author, drawing an analogy between the lifestyle of the renouncer in India and the Western individual, states that total devotion, or love, is sufficient for liberation. According to Dumont, devotion, which he calls "the religion of love," was an invention of the renouncer, since it "presupposes two perfectly individualized terms, and, in order to conceive of the personal Lord, a believer who also sees themself as an individual was required" (1992:332). I underscore that, if in the past Indian renouncers isolated themselves high in the mountains or inside caves in order to seek liberation, Dumont (1970) explains that, more recently, the renouncer reconfigured the meaning of renunciation, which then comes to be "transcended" by being "internalized."14 That is, in order to be free from samsara (from the ignorance of the self), detachment becomes sufficient, since the individual can "leave the world" internally. In this way, devotion became the path to liberation: "by transferring his achievements from the plane of knowledge to that of affectivity, the renouncer gave everyone a gift; through the submission of love and the identification of all with the lord, everyone can become free individuals" (Dumont 1970:56).
Individualism in the West shares, together with the Indian renouncer, an appreciation for autonomy and subjectivity, merging with notions of personal fulfillment and self-improvement — a process in which individuals dissociate themselves from external regulations and discover their own personal truth. But there is here a modern myth in which the rhetoric of transformation takes on ideological value, that is, there is a presumption that the individual has not yet achieved their maximum fulfillment and still needs to "discover" themselves and free themselves from social constraints. This tension between the demand for personal freedom and a reality that allows only a small margin for maneuvering toward such freedom privileges free time and the private sphere as the locus of personal fulfillment. However, we will see below that, although the journeys constitute a symbol of personal choice, thereby representing the ideal moment of this fulfillment, I problematize the idea that they demand few obligations and social restrictions, in addition to questioning the notion of spirituality as an ally of individualism and opposed to the notion of religion.
Felipe is a pilgrim who considers himself devout, and his trajectory, initially academic, deserves to be examined here. He encountered Vedanta through an elective course he took, together with his wife, at IFCS (Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences) at UFRJ, called "History of Eastern Thought I," taught by Professor Raquel Movschowitz. According to him, the subject matter she was teaching was "precisely chapter two of the [Bhagavad] Gita, and it was amazing, because we were full of doubts, well, various questions that had no answers, and the Gita not only answered our questions but also introduced new things we had never thought of." He thus reports having continued studying with this teacher in the course "History of Eastern Thought II," in which chapters three and four of the Gita were taught. After completing these two courses, they wanted to know where they could continue studying more on this subject. That was when Raquel Movschowitz mentioned she was a student of Gloria Arieira (the group's Vedanta teacher) and suggested they seek out Vidya Mandir.15
They then went to study at Vidya Mandir, and after spending some time studying Sanskrit and Vedanta, Felipe began working there. This was a great opportunity, in his view, since it kept him "very close to the knowledge," allowing him to attend all the classes held there. Felipe says he began to feel "a very strong urge to teach"; he wished to dedicate himself to teaching Vedanta full-time, because this knowledge "was so good that I wanted to pass it on to someone." At the end of 2006, encouraged by Gloria Arieira, he began teaching symbolism, and over time the number of these classes increased. He explains that his symbolism classes obviously drew on Vedanta knowledge, and so he went on to teach Sanskrit, chanting, and, after a while, Vedanta itself, which was "something natural" for him.
According to Felipe, the greater purpose of pilgrimage is to come into contact with "the divine" Ishvara,16 or with "the order," with the aim of emphasizing the identity of the individual with the whole. If the ultimate goal of pilgrimage was to be in harmony with the cosmic order or consciousness, another goal of his journeys, Felipe says, was to achieve the suspension of the ego. On a pilgrimage to India — he continues — a person visits a place that has an image of a deity that will leave them "enraptured," because it is a place with symbolic meaning, and when they arrive there, that meaning as it were "steals or suspends their ego" — that is, when the person arrives and "has this symbolic contact" with the deity, they suspend their ego upon understanding that they are part of "something greater."
As I have been showing throughout this text, interlocutors' narratives about the suspension of the ego and connection with the other and the cosmos problematize what most social scientists understand as constitutive of new religious movements, namely, the understanding of spirituality, or religions of the self, as individualized forms of religiosity, in which the concept of an individual free of ties predominates in their practices (Bellah et al. 1996; Giordan 2009; Heelas 2008; Luckmann 1967; Maluf 2007; Newcombe 2005; Wuthnow 2003).
Regarding the emphasis placed on the notion of individualism in research on spirituality, Toniol underscores the contradiction inherent in the paradox of holism, since it constitutes a principle that connects and that makes "the interiorization of being also an opening toward that which transcends it" (Toniol 2017:31-2). I therefore consider the Dumontian methodological proposal that advocates the predominance of the totality over the parts, which does not consist in the prevalence of a pre-given and evident totality (Duarte 2017:744). In this way, I understand that the devotion of the Vedantins is permeated by an attempt at engagement with the other, as well as by the attempt to overcome the dualist matrix (good versus evil, spirit versus matter). In line with Carvalho and Steil (2008), I think of the experience of new religious movements or of the search for spirituality as involving the collapse of the "mind-body, mind-environment, inside-outside, subject-object dichotomies without denying otherness," a notion Bateson relates to the idea of god (2008:301-2). With this in mind, in the experience of this spirituality, I seek to discuss in greater depth the context of contact with otherness which, although composed of apparently individualized subjects, is grounded in an interiorization shaped by ethical transformation in relation to the other — here, this "other" encompasses everything from the fellow pilgrim to the Indian, the deities, and the cosmic order.
Felipe reports that, in India, "everything is seen as a deity, because, after all, everything is the order itself, and so you can understand each thing as being a representation of that order in the specific form of what you are looking at." Pilgrimage becomes an instrument of devotion, Felipe explains, because during that moment, suspending the ego is something inevitable, especially in the situation in which they found themselves — from his point of view, "in total dependence on Ishvara."
Robert Bellah explains that, in order to be maximally effective, devotion must provide not only a symbolic reordering of experience but also an element of consummation and fulfillment: the experience of devotion must produce an influx of life and power, a feeling of completeness; he says that, if this happens, a change may occur in the definition of the boundary of the self, an identification with all that lives, but, above all, a transformation of motivation, commitment, and value that can engage not only individuals but equally the collectivity of devotees. It is in this sense that Bellah sees devotion as involving a partial regression of the ego's normal defensive functioning until there is a greater openness to internal and external reality (1976:210-11).
It is from the perspective of this "opening to reality" resulting from devotion that I understand Felipe's statement that, when he arrived in India, he soon felt "at home" for having identified so strongly with the culture — for having seen that the tradition he was studying in Brazil, and with which he identified, was alive in India. Visits to temples were the most significant moments, since that was where he could express his devotion: "every day we would wake up and, ten minutes' walk away, we'd be at the temple of Shiva. This was the first Hindu temple I really entered; and you feel that the temple is alive, in some way, you feel that everything is alive. It's really a unique place." Felipe emphasizes his devotional experience in India:
You see people walking around and doing the same things you're doing; depending on the mantra you're chanting, you hear the person next to you chanting the same mantra, or at least making the same gesture, and this is a kind of life that's incredible, and everyone has the same purpose, making the same bows, in the same way you learned, and everyone is doing it together. On the other hand, the whole structure of the temple seems alive, because there are several altars around it, and the main temple is inside, and as soon as you enter, you already feel there's a different atmosphere, those stones forming the walls and floor are witnesses to so much that has already happened, so it feels alive. [...] And starting the day like that is incredible. The purpose of all the devotional disciplines is to bring you to this understanding of the devotee, so you can stay with this vision of Ishvara all day long. When you go to the temple, this becomes very clear, because if you go to the temple every morning, that vision really does come, and it's very powerful.
This pilgrim reveals that the feeling he had was as if, in India, devotion "pulsed" in every direction, because wherever a person looked, there was no way not to be reminded of Ishvara. Devotional discipline serves this function, which is to remind the devotee that there is an order that governs everything; and it is with this thought in mind that the devotee performs the morning ritual and prayers throughout the day, that is, they practice these actions in order to remember Ishvara. Here in Brazil, he explains, these disciplines are applied at certain moments of the day, whereas, "when you're 'thrown into' India, you don't even have a choice, because wherever you look there's a temple, there's a color, there are Hindus with the mark on their forehead, and a sadhu walks by and blesses you — it's really incredible, the living tradition there is indescribable." Being in India, then, would mean that the person was reminded of Ishvara at every moment.
Another point he emphasized concerned the senses becoming more "heightened," due to the experience of new information in terms "of color, sound, and smells." Felipe indicates that a person returns "mentally" tired from so much information they take in; this is information that is part of the culture and the Vedic tradition, and that gradually leads them to begin assimilating "this vision of Ishvara." It is in this sense that, after some time experiencing Hindu culture, the "identification" factor would become immediate. He adds: "there comes a time when it's automatic, you'd already be at the temple and know what to do, you didn't need to keep thinking about it. On the first day, I just watched to see how they did it; from the second day on, I started doing it myself, and by the third day it was over — until the end of the month, we would go in and already do what needed to be done, it was already part of the routine." In this account, the native category of the incorporation of knowledge, so highly valued by the devotee, becomes apparent. At first, one is taught that the mind is necessary to understand the philosophy of Vedanta, that is, it is through rationality that this knowledge is assimilated, but after a while, the mind becomes dispensable (and even "gets in the way" of understanding), which is when the knowledge becomes something "natural."
In the interviewees' accounts, I observe that, through pilgrimage, they are taught to reinterpret events and experiences, and are thereby socialized into the collective norms of the tradition, so as to learn how practices should be carried out, as well as the efficacy of certain attitudes and the need to improve the self. In this way, I understand that each of these elements presents a fluid boundary, as Capelini (2017) puts it, which does not prevent the continuous movement of incorporation and re-creation of a living tradition — one that is reinterpreted with each practice, according to the style of each teacher, but also through the uses and meanings given by practitioners within this relationship.
Let us consider the following interpretation offered by Felipe who, in distinguishing between what constitutes Hindu culture and Vedanta knowledge, notes that such knowledge, in India in general, is quite restricted, meaning that if a person seeks this knowledge in India, they may not find it, unless they go "to the right place" — to a specific ashram, for instance. Nonetheless, he shows that, although Vedanta is quite restricted, the culture that "reflects" this tradition is "very much alive":
Just going [to the temple] out of devotion is already incredible, but as you go on studying and learning more, you start seeing the foundation of each thing, and then it becomes much more special. [...] So, for me, it was very special, because wherever I looked, it was there. In a way, the living tradition was there, shining, so there was a lot to take in from it.
By relating his Vedanta knowledge to every object he came across, Felipe indicates that it was the "expression" of Vedanta, since, in fact, all of Hindu culture would reflect the expression of that knowledge. It is in this sense that it would be easy, for someone who studies and knows Vedanta, to draw the connection between Hindu culture and Vedic tradition, since, knowing it, they would be able to look in the right place and "see" the tradition. Observing devotion in temples and understanding it as the foundation of Vedic tradition, during the journey, was what made the difference for some, that is, seeing Vedic philosophy embodied in India in a "cultural and social way" was what set their pilgrimages apart.
Like Felipe, Luiz is an interviewee who wished to deepen his understanding of this knowledge and also became a Vedanta teacher. He reports having encountered yoga through a Vedanta teacher (an Indian who was living in Brazil). Gradually he came to understand the differences between yoga, Hinduism, and Vedanta and felt drawn to this tradition and its "ritualistic" component. As he became increasingly involved, he naturally began teaching, and it was in this way that he ended up going to study at Swami Dayananda's ashram in India, in the three-year intensive Vedanta course.
Luiz explains that, behind all Vedic rituals, there is something that points to the notion that there is no separation between the individual and Ishvara, meaning that the very quest a person is on, in order to become complete, would be an inconsistency to be discovered. This important factor, which is the foundation of Vedanta, means that a person, even unconsciously, when following a ritualistic protocol, may come to understand that religion is not to be understood as an end but as a temporary means whose purpose is to understand the "meaning of spirituality." He asks himself what changes in a person's life when they know they are "the truth of the universe" and need nothing else to feel full and complete. From an intellectual standpoint, according to him, this understanding occurs in the mind of a character in a dream, and even after that character has acquired this understanding and continues relating to people and situations, what is transformed is the expression of this knowledge from the standpoint of devotion — that is, when a person understands that they are "the truth of the whole," they become devout. If they understand that the entire universe is "a single reality" and that there is no division between people, the relationships they establish are preceded by the vision of the whole. For someone who holds the vision "I am the truth of the universe," they perceive "the whole" of the universe before perceiving any other factor:
The moment something happens in my life, before saying, "why me?," I have a perception that there is an order in the universe and that this is happening for me. It's a whole attitude that changes, so this is true devotion; the heart of devotion is the relationship with the whole in my day-to-day life. But this relationship isn't always possible at first, because it's something very contrary to what we're used to, so we use things like a temple or certain images, as if I were practicing this vision at a certain special moment in my day (in the morning, when I wake up and, for five minutes, say a prayer); but the goal is for this moment to expand throughout the entire day, not with the image of a specific god, but with the vision of the whole. The religious dimension is very important from the standpoint of Vedanta, because otherwise this "leap" isn't possible; the mind is very used to having a form.
Ishvara is knowledge, Luiz reveals, which he understands as "that which makes things happen the way they are" and also as "the cause of everything that exists here." For interviewee Carlos, devotion is knowledge, that is, devotion would come as a response from a mind that possesses knowledge. Carlos reports that he is always seeking to recognize Ishvara in every situation and circumstance. It is in keeping with this sense described above, of Ishvara understood as knowledge, that I note Dumont's statement (1992:333): "The bhakti [devotion] of the Gita is speculative, as intellectual as the climate in which it was born; effusion in it is restrained, delirium is absent from it." Although this may seem contradictory given the compatibility between emotion and reason, the Indian devotee — much like the Western one, I would add — appears to be someone who has gone through a rather "rational," or "speculative" and "intellectual" process, according to Dumont, and their devotion — as observed, while never failing to express feeling — also appears to be "rationalized" or "restrained," without "delirium."
Following Vedantin logic, Luiz proposes that the order of the universe is always present, however much a person may disregard it, and that the difference between the devotee and the non-devotee lies in the view each holds of the order that pervades all actions — that is, what causes satisfaction or suffering is related to the way situations occurring in a person's life are viewed, rather than to the situations themselves. However uncomfortable the situation may be, if the devotee understands that what is happening to them is the result of an action they performed in the past (karma), according to Luiz, there is no feeling of injustice or suffering, nor "of feeling small and threatened by this whole gigantic universe."
In Luiz's account, I observe a certain nuance that complexifies the notion of individualism, arising from the awareness, embedded in metaphysics, that the subject is the very universe itself, as Mauss (2003:384) reminds us regarding the notion of the person in India, or as subjectivity conceived as a microcosm of the universe, as presented by Geertz in his discussion of the Hindu-Javanese worldview, in which, in the depths of the fluid inner world of thought-and-emotion, they see reflected ultimate reality itself (2000:134).
If the practices of the Vedantins to which I refer constitute an individual, private, and introspective variety, along the same lines as qualitative individualism (Simmel 2005; Elias 1994), it was in seeking to understand the contradictions involved in their perceptions of self that I observe a notion of "cosmic communion" inherent to this makeup. I see in their experiences of devotion an attempt to escape radical individualism, inherited for the most part from the Romantic movement, which assumes that "deep down" in each person there would be a fundamental spiritual harmony connecting them not only to other people but also to the cosmos as a whole; it is in this sense that I consider the pilgrims' process of constructing the self, taking into account their attempt to "become one" with the universe (Bastos 2023a).
The devotee's vision, according to Luiz, involves the understanding that the self is not only part of the whole but the whole in the form of consciousness. He considers that the feeling of oppression exists due to an "alienation" in relation to the order of the universe; when the devotee introduces into their daily life the vision of the self that is consciousness, however much discomfort there may be, there is no alienation (in the sense of feeling "small" or "limited"). Luiz explains that the "vision" of this order is not achieved solely through understanding Vedanta as something merely "rational"; the mind would have to understand what is being said as true, which means that, even though the person understands this intellectually, at the same time this vision does not feel "real" in their mind. This happens, according to him, because the intellect is always "ahead of the mind," that is, the intellect "understands various things, but for the mind to see them as true, for it to take them as its own, it takes some time." It is for this purpose that various disciplines and ritual practices exist: so that the mind can "keep up" with the intellect.
Joe Dispenza, in his book Evolve Your Brain, explains that in order to transform mental health, patterns in the way one thinks need to be changed, since they create a state of being that is directly connected to the body. By changing these attitudes, individuals begin to pay attention to their thoughts, consciously making an effort to observe thought processes that are generally negative. Dispenza infers that most thoughts are ideas we invent and come to believe, and this believing ends up becoming a habit. All of his interviewees, people who overcame a physical disability (such as paralysis) resulting from an accident, had to fight against the notion that their thoughts were uncontrollable and, instead, chose to gain more control over them. They were able to command their thoughts and steer away from modes of thinking that did not benefit them, which led Dispenza to conclude that conscious thoughts, repeated frequently, become unconscious thoughts.
Just as thoughts trigger chemical reactions that drive behavior, it is said that our repetitive, unconscious thoughts produce automatic behavior patterns that are nearly involuntary. These patterns would be habits that become neurologically wired into the brain, so it would take awareness and effort to break the cycle of a thought process that has become unconscious, requiring us to step out of routine and look at life. Thus, through contemplation and self-reflexivity, it would be possible to become aware of unconscious roles. Regarding this awareness, Dispenza (2008:46) states that we should observe these thoughts without responding to them in a way that triggers the automatic chemical responses that produce habitual behavior, so that, in this way, we can learn to gain mastery over them.
This notion of habit involves thinking about what the consequences would be when not only our behavior, but also belief, value, attitude, and mood fall into the same completely predictable and unconscious pattern. It is said that we must halt our most natural way of thinking and feeling in order to reprogram our brain, which requires mental effort and determination, since in this "protected" state of mind we would be prepared to react with a certain set of programmed responses meant to protect the "self" (which we identify with the body). From this perspective, we no longer think or ponder, we merely react — a state in which the unknown always threatens "equilibrium" (in the sense of our actions becoming automatic, routine, and unconscious), and in which we would be conditioned to desire comfort, familiarity, and predictability.
Dispenza states that our emotional attitudes, which we believe are caused by agents external to us, are the result of how we perceive reality based on our habitual patterns of how we want to feel. As adults, if we do not learn anything new or have new experiences that will change the brain and the mind, we will use the same neurological machinery activated by the same physical and mental genetic conditions. To change this condition, the author emphasizes that we need to change our attitudes so that a new signal can reach the cells, and it is in this sense that our attitudes and the way we manage our thoughts are directly related to the action of improving our ability to use the mind in order to selectively choose where we place our attention.
Based on this notion of the choice to act consciously and to behave in a non-"reactive" manner, valued by the research interlocutors and supported by Dispenza, I call attention to the rational character of the Vedantin ethos. This rationality, according to Weber (1958:170), would be merely an instrument for achieving the goal of meditation or contemplation; this does not necessarily become a passive surrender to dreams or mere self-hypnosis (although it may reach such states in practice); rather, the specific path to contemplation would be a highly energetic concentration on certain truths, which come to assume a central position internally and to exert an integrating influence over one's total worldview. On the other hand, the yogi, whom Weber calls the "contemplative mystic," does not perceive the essential meaning of the world and thus comprehends it rationally, for the very same reason that he has already conceived of the essential meaning of the world as a unity beyond all empirical reality. It is in this way that contemplation has not always resulted in an abandonment of the social world in the sense of avoiding any contact with it; rather, on the contrary, this individual may demand of themselves the maintenance of their full state against every pressure of the mundane order, as an index of the permanent character of this state (Weber 1958).
Weber (1958:184) regards the yoga adept as an observer of their own actions and of all psychic processes within their own consciousness, and thereby becomes "emancipated from the world" — that is, the yogi is one who, in performing an action, becomes free from the action and also free from samsara. What Weber (1958:185) wishes to show is that someone who has once "lifted the veil of ignorance" and knows that they are "one with Brahman"17 can continue to live in the world of illusory action without jeopardizing their liberation. This liberation would be achieved through a complete synthesis of mind and matter in the integral person of the yogi — when a complete dissolution of the self into the ultimate reality of consciousness is achieved (Alter 1992:324).
With the aim of achieving freedom (from samsara), I note that devotion arises, for the interviewees, from an initial moment that is entirely "rational," in which they seek knowledge as a (life) philosophy grounded in self-reflexivity, and when this knowledge somehow becomes "embodied" — insofar as they seek to bring conscious attention to changing habits and behavior patterns — they come to understand the "inner self" in its dimension of "sacredness." It is in this sense that I understand what Weber (1958:187) meant regarding devotion in Hinduism, which involves the "orientation of the person's entire life" and unconditional "trust" and "obedience" toward a "redeemer."
In the past, many interviewees said they had experienced some form of disillusionment and a certain disenchantment with the values of their societies of origin. Something perceptible in their trajectories was the offering of a new meaning provided by Vedanta, culminating in the pilgrimage. If Vedanta and the pilgrimage did in fact offer a new meaning to their lives, this can be understood from the perspective of how Simmel describes the person who feels religiosity "within" themselves and who has the need "to complete fragmentary existence; to reconcile conflicts within the individual and between men; to find a fixed point amid the instability around them, a justice within and behind the cruelties of life," thus seeking a unity within and above the bewildering multiplicity of life (Simmel 2010:26).
Based on this search for a "unity," I consider that the attitudes and practices analyzed here can be seen as dissolving the individuality of the devotee through conformity with an external model, such as that of the tradition or of the relationship with the master, as well as through the performance of disciplinary intentions that interiorize and naturalize certain types of behavior and emotion; these attitudes and practices also seem effective precisely because of the type of subjectivity that can be cultivated in the devotee's appropriation of this tradition, as well as in the intensification of embodied ethical and aesthetic meanings (Valantasis 2002). In contrast to most studies that differentiate spirituality from religion, I find that the Vedantins, while going through an individual process of spiritual seeking, tend to submit themselves to religious dogmas and to an external authority, in the form of the highly respected guru, and, moreover, to develop this search in groups, through social practices. In addition to accepting the dogmas of the Vedic tradition, I observe that the interviewees adapt to these principles while, at the same time, putting their individuality on the line as they become part of this tradition, both as transmitters and receivers, thereby expressing its most significant values and meanings.
In this article, I sought to understand the meanings attributed to the experiences of people who, in their spiritual quests, end up producing new personal identities. By basing themselves on frameworks that are consonant with Vedanta, interviewees come to adopt practices and values that guide their conduct and insert them into this new social environment. These creative identity constructions are the product of new ways of understanding the world and inspire a singular form of religiosity, which implies identification with social imperatives, such as being accepted, controlling emotions, and cultivating — and being adaptable to — certain "moral dispositions" (Altglas 2018). From this perspective, I demonstrate that the analysis of my interlocutors' narratives points not only to the notion of individualism as a value, but also to a more complex and subtle notion of involvement and belonging, since their spiritual practices are transmitted through a process of socialization integrated into their social environment.18
I believe that identification with Eastern traditions comes, for "Western" adepts, primarily from the valuing and cultivation of the self — a product of romantic individualism centered on the defense of interiority and the personal path. Unlike the quantitative individualism characteristic of Enlightenment thought, qualitative individualism centers on the cultivation of the self, on the idea of bildung, and on the existence of an inner self. Duarte argues that this romantic individualism embodies, in the terms of Dumont's model, "the hierarchical, holistic dimension of human thought, opposed to the ideology of individualism" (2004:08). I emphasize, however, that in Hinduism there is no notion of movement, cultivation, and construction, but rather that the self is immutable. Based on this, I understand that the Western pursuit of singularity and interiority had a certain influence from Eastern religiosities, in the sense of opening a dialogue with these worldviews (Barroso 1999), due to the existence, in both, of an essential self. "Dumont (1992) made a similar association when comparing the Indian renouncer to the modern individual. Both are concerned with themselves in their pursuit of fulfillment" (Nunes 2008:20).
From this pursuit, I suggest that, allied with a critique of the modern way of life, an identification with the East emerges, understood as a value linked to the notion of holism and to the preservation of traditions, values, and an ethic of coexistence with others and with the cosmos. If we take the individual value presented by Dumont as the starting point of the Vedantins' trajectories, individualism-outside-the-world, present since Roman Stoicism, constitutes a clue for understanding the worldview to which the interviewees adhere — one whose notion of the individual would be subordinate to holist ideology and to hierarchy. Although Dumont divides his analysis into two poles — holism and individualism — Duarte (2017) understands that neither Western nor Indian society is defined in linear terms as either holist or individualist. The empirical analysis of the Vedantins shows the intensity with which the predominant ideology presents itself. If Gilberto Velho (2004) already noted that a central problem in Dumont's work was its "high level of generality and abstraction," I understand that Dumont recognized that, even in totalizing cultures such as India's, there is an openness to the possibility of choice, of individualization, which provides a clue toward understanding not the tension but the association between individualized and totalizing identity. Based on this, I understand that, although the Vedantins set out from a pursuit of self-cultivation and interiority, their trajectories show that they seek, through yoga and meditation practices — and also through the pilgrimage journey — to adhere to the Hindu worldview, which advocates the notion of the collective person and belonging to a social group. With this, I attempt to think of my interlocutors from within this dialectic between holism and individualism, which represents a configuration of ideas-values, not consisting of a concrete, immediate, and uniform lived reality — holism here refers to a relational value that encompasses the others in terms of level, a perception of the "bidimensionality" of the hierarchical relationship that manifests the principle of "the encompassing of the contrary" (Duarte 2017:744). If, on one hand, the Dumontian scheme points to the idea that a value, such as that of individualism, is never entirely dominant but is found in combination with other values, the neo-Romantic perspective, on the other hand, comes closer to the interpretation of current movements opposed to the rationalist, Enlightenment, and hegemonic tradition — in favor of a reactive disposition toward the recomposition of holist values and in the name of singularity, intensity, and experience.
I observe, in the case of the pilgrims analyzed, that there is a shared existential field that involves the intensification of subjectivity while simultaneously transcending individuality. The Vedantin self, which seeks to be dissolved, creates an interiority that connects the self and the cosmos, inner experience and the world. I understand, from this, that the notion that the self would be individual and separate constitutes an illusion for the pilgrims, such that they come to perceive that attachment to this self leads to pain and the same suffering as adherence to any other fixed category of thought. The yoga lifestyle involves being attentive to one's attitudes, acting consciously, and accepting what consciousness or the cosmic order brings.
I draw an ethnographic comparison to highlight what is particular to this field of study, since there are connections between what is presented in the text and the notion of the self addressed by Geertz (2000). The author argues that people in Bali are directly and profoundly connected to the lives of others, since they feel that their world was shaped by the actions of those who came before, and they also guide their own actions so as to shape the world of those who will come after. However, this is not the symbolically emphasized aspect, Geertz clarifies, but rather their social positioning, their particular location within a persistent, in truth eternal, metaphysical order, which causes formulations of personality to be, in our terms, "depersonalizing" (Geertz 2000:390). Based on this, I explored the pilgrims' discourse in order to grasp the way in which it can encourage certain types of attitudes and practices, weighing what the discipline of constant observation, evaluation of emotions, behaviors and thoughts, and the regulation of the self described by them entail. At the same time, I understood that the Vedantins learn to keep their attention focused on how the cosmic order reveals itself to them, in the sense of looking at the world and at the other based on a broader vision — one in which what the person wants loses importance in relation to what the cosmic order brings.
In critiquing the understanding of spirituality on the part of social scientists who see it as opposed to religion and grounded in the concept of individualism as a value, I showed, based on the Hinduism practiced by Brazilians who go on pilgrimages to India, how they adhere to an authority and submit to social norms and, moreover, how they experience their devotion through practices that dissolve individuality by means of conformity with tradition or with the relationship with the master. I also showed how the performance of such practices naturalizes certain types of behavior and emotion, but also how this performance is effective in the appropriation of this tradition. With this, I consider that the person of the devotee frees themselves from a certain fragmented, individualizing notion of identity by becoming part of the expression of the significant values and meanings of this tradition, within the creative process of constructing a way of seeing that is socially organized and systematized.
1 The following principles of Vedanta (a highly complex tradition with many strands and diverse interpretations) were summarized by Goldberg (2010:10-11) as follows: ultimate reality is both immanent and transcendent; "god" (or consciousness) can be conceived both in personal and non-personal terms; it can also be conceived as the formless absolute or in diverse forms and manifestations. Atma is Brahman, consciousness, but our unity with the divine, which is obscured by ignorance, causes us to identify with the ego. Individuals can be awakened to their divine nature through countless paths and practices. Fully realizing the true nature of the self brings an end to suffering and the beginning of a state of liberation, called moksha. These principles are further accompanied by the Vedic concepts of karma (every action has a reaction) and reincarnation.
2 A Hindu religious text from the epic Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita is considered one of the main sacred scriptures of India. This work recounts the dialogue between Krishna (one of Vishnu's incarnations) and Arjuna (his warrior disciple) in the midst of a battlefield. In this text, important points of Indian philosophy are set out, chiefly the knowledge of the nature of the self and its eternal relationship with all creation and with that which transcends it.
3 Individualism is an ideology and does not mean that it manifests fully in social practice. In a certain sense, we are all dividuals (Robbins 2004): none of us can do without relationships and complementarity in relation to the other. At a certain level, we need some "other" dimension, ideals, teachers, saints, orixás — we need complementation — even in the segments closest to the ideology of individualism. This means that we are merely inspired by this ideology, while living as dividuals.
4 According to Campbell, "it would seem that this theodicy, unlike those described by Berger (or indeed Weber), would not appear to be based in either history or society. It is not, in the strict sense, a social theodicy, that is one that links individuals and generations in common rituals or through common institutions. This is an acutely individualistic theodicy, one that in linking the self directly with the cosmos, tends to bypass both society and history" (2013:83). By contrast, I show that yogis take part in a theodicy grounded in both history and tradition, and one that links individuals to institutions and shared rituals, whose practices are highly social (chiefly classes, but also retreats, sociability networks, gatherings, and pilgrimages).
5 The modality of yoga present in the group should not be defined solely by focusing on postural aspects, since I find that there is a scale of involvement among yoga practitioners, as Newcombe (2013:71) defines it, ranging from "purely physical" all the way to intensely religious.
6 According to Vedic tradition, a person who makes a pilgrimage to these four places gains merit (punyam).
7 Swami Dayananda was teacher Gloria Arieira's own master. He taught Vedanta for more than five decades, and his deep assimilation of this knowledge reaches students the world over.
8 I continued attending other Vedanta courses after finishing the Bhagavad Gita course, such as the Tattvabodha, the Upadesasaram, the Atmabodhah, the Katha Upanishad, the Mundaka Upanishad, and the Taittiriya Upanishad.
9 A holy man who withdraws from life in society and becomes a kind of prophet. Many Indians to this day do what has been done for centuries: they leave their families and the comfort of their homes to become renouncers — they are the sadhus, yogis, or rishis.
10 According to Peter Berger (1985:77), "in the ingenious combination of the concepts of karma (the inexorable law of cause and effect that governs all actions, human or otherwise, in the universe) and samsara (the wheel of rebirths), every conceivable anomie is integrated into an entirely rational interpretation of limited scope of the universe. Nothing is left out, so to speak." He emphasizes that every human action has its necessary consequences, and every human situation is the necessary consequence of past human actions. Thus, the life of the individual would be merely an "ephemeral link in a concatenation of causes that extends infinitely into the past and the future. It follows that the individual has no one to blame for their own misfortunes but themself — and, reciprocally, may attribute their good fortune solely to their own merits" (Berger 1985:77).
11 Regarding the theme of "devotion" as an analytical category, one can clearly see, in the interlocutors' speech, how they position themselves on the subject, but I clarify that I did not ask them direct questions about devotion unless they themselves brought up the topic during the interview, and on those occasions I limited myself to always asking: "in what sense." "Devotion," therefore, is a category that arises from the interlocutors' spontaneous speech.
12 See also Cohen (1985, 1988) and Eliade (1992).
13 I see here an analogy between the meaning of the term participation and the understanding of the Vedantin cosmic order. Participation can be represented, in this context, when people, groups, animals, places, and natural phenomena are in a relationship of contiguity, and translate this relationship into one of existential immediacy and of shared contact and affinities. Tambiah (1990:107-8) uses the Indian concept of darshan (having the vision of the deity) as an example of participation — the connection between people, the feeling of being part of a group of relationships that constitute bridges to the reality of participation; and it is in this sense of participation that I attempt to understand the devotee's relationship with the order, or Ishvara.
14 Renunciation here does not mean the physical annihilation of the self, but rather of the will of the subject.
15 Vidya Mandir, whose meaning is "temple of knowledge," is a nonprofit cultural association located in the Copacabana neighborhood, Rio de Janeiro.
16 Ishvara is understood as "that which governs," the cosmic order itself, or the projection of human attributes onto the Absolute (Brahman). Ishvara is what we might call "God" as understood in Christianity, since Brahman would carry a broader meaning: it would be eternal, formless, and infinite; everything that exists would emanate from it and would ultimately return to it, since it symbolizes the essence of all existence.
17 Brahman is understood as the absolute and immutable — consciousness.
18 I agree with Woodhead and Heelas when they point out that, for every adept seeking to discover their inner divinity or come into contact with their true self, there is another who is just as concerned, or more so, with relationships, with the lives of human beings, animals, and the planet as a whole (2001:60).
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The present article analyzes the meanings attributed by Vedanta students and yoga practitioners from Rio de Janeiro who have made two pilgrimages to India to what they understand as devotion and conversion to a "Neo-Hindu" group. My main concerns are to understand the meanings these journeys represent and in which sense devotion is felt by certain members of the group. I observe that devotion was frequently triggered when coming across Hindu temples and symbols; therefore, despite seeing themselves as "Hindus" in Brazil, India itself has been revealed as a place conducive to the manifestation and renegotiation of the creeds and meanings of "being Hindu" in the Brazilian context. From this, I critically reflect upon the individualism inherent in these actors' understandings of spirituality, as opposed to religion, showing how my interlocutors adhere to authority and tradition and how they adapt to social norms in the process of building a worldview that is socially organized and systematized.
Keywords: Neo-Hinduism; devotion; pilgrimage; individualism; spirituality.
Este artigo investiga o sentido que estudantes de Vedanta e praticantes de yoga do Rio de Janeiro, que realizaram duas viagens de peregrinação à Índia, atribuem ao que entendem por devoção e conversão a um grupo "neo-hindu". As questões principais são entender os significados que assumem essas viagens e o sentido de devoção por parte de alguns integrantes do grupo. Observo que a devoção foi frequentemente mobilizada ao se depararem com templos e símbolos da cultura hindu — uma vivência propícia para a manifestação e renegociação de suas crenças e do significado de "ser hindu" naquele contexto. Faço, a partir disso, uma reflexão crítica do individualismo inerente ao entendimento da espiritualidade como oposta à religião, mostrando como os interlocutores aderem à autoridade e à tradição e se adaptam às normas sociais no processo da construção de um olhar que é socialmente organizado e sistematizado.
Palavras-chave: Neo-hinduísmo; Devoção; Peregrinação; Individualismo; Espiritualidade.
Este artículo indaga sobre el significado que los estudiantes de Vedanta y practicantes de yoga de Río de Janeiro, que hicieron dos viajes de peregrinaje a la India, atribuyen a lo que entienden por devoción y conversión a un grupo "neo-hindú". Las cuestiones principales son comprender los significados que asumen estos viajes y el sentido de devoción por parte de algunos miembros del grupo. Observo que la devoción se desencadenaba a menudo cuando se encuentran frente a templos y símbolos de la cultura hindú —una experiencia propicia para la manifestación y renegociación de sus creencias y el significado de "ser hindú" en ese contexto. A partir de allí, realizo una reflexión crítica del individualismo inherente a la comprensión de la espiritualidad frente a la religión, mostrando cómo los interlocutores se adhieren a la autoridad y la tradición y se adaptan a las normas sociales en el marco de un proceso de construcción de una mirada socialmente organizada y sistematizada.
Palabras clave: Neo-Hinduismo; devoción; peregrinación; individualismo; espiritualidad.
Cecilia dos Guimarães Bastos. Researcher at the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology of the National Museum/UFRJ. PhD in Social Sciences from the Graduate Program in Social Sciences at UERJ, and author of the book: Em busca de espiritualidade na Índia: os significados de uma moderna peregrinação, published by Editora Prismas in 2016. She conducts research in the anthropology of complex societies, with an emphasis on the social construction of the person, covering topics such as individualism, subjectivity, pilgrimage, embodiment, emotion, spirituality, and behavior.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2506-3302
E-mail: ceciliagbastos@gmail.com
I declare, for all due purposes, that this work is my own.
The author declares no conflicts of interest in this submission.
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions, the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) for the scholarship granted during my doctorate, and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) for the scholarship granted during my postdoctoral research.
Editor-in-Chief: María Elvira Díaz Benítez
Associate Editor: John Comerford
Associate Editor: Adriana Vianna
Received on December 17, 2020
Approved on January 4, 2023