The "Cults" Debate Seen from Québec: Eugénie Francoeur's CICNS Interview

At the time of this CICNS interview Eugénie Francoeur was working on a long-term documentary project, Les gourous des temps modernes (“The gurus of modern times”), examining the contemporary spiritual teachers to whom Western audiences are turning. Speaking as a Québécoise journalist, she compares how the new spiritualities are received in Québec, Great Britain and France, and says she finds the French position hard to understand.

CICNS interview. (English translation of the interview published on the CICNS YouTube channel on 11 November 2006. The French transcript was machine-transcribed from the video and cleaned before translation; passages the machine could not reliably hear are marked [inaudible].)

[Interviewer]: Eugénie Francoeur is a journalist and consultant in integrated health. Since the age of 16, she has been interested in the different faces of health. Her career as a journalist for CBC and Radio-Canada led her to study spiritual movements and to encounter her own spiritual dimension. She presents here her view of the new spiritualities and gives us points of comparison between Canada, England and France.

[Francoeur]: I began working on a documentary about spirituality. In fact, it is called Les gourous des temps modernes — “The gurus of modern times”. It is a long-term project. It is what I call my very own baby. And it is truly the result of my research, my reading and my encounters with people.

The idea behind the documentary is that in Québec, in Canada, in English Canada, in Great Britain — in France I know it less, but probably there too — people are moving further and further away from the great religions. Especially in Canada, away from everything Christian. Truly, a shock of the past. And they are turning more and more, precisely, toward the new spiritualities, toward the new gurus.

So what interests me in all this is to see who these people are. Are they offering us a discourse that makes sense? So I really selected a range of some fifteen, or eighteen people — eighteen spiritual leaders from Great Britain, India, Australia, the United States, Canada — precisely to try to explore their discourse and to see why people travel by the millions in the case of someone like Deepak Chopra. Why has the Power of Now — Eckhart Tolle’s “power of the present moment” — met with such success? Because it touches a sensitive chord in people.

And the idea I have at the back of my mind in this documentary is really to bring the general public a demystification of spirituality. Really to bring them certain basic principles that these people have more or less all in common. Of course, each has his own specificities, each his approach, each his methods. But the basic discourse, in the end, comes down to “know thyself”.

In Québec, people come to spirituality for two main reasons. At home, we have an excellent quality of life compared with many places on the planet. Social services that work relatively well — it is far from perfect. We have space, and we do have money. We have amenities that are, after all, accessible to ordinary mortals. So it is not a spirituality of survival. It is more a spirituality, I would say, of personal healing.

Often, where people have the most difficulty is in their relations with others. So people often come seeking, trying to find, answers about their relationships. Relationships that are sometimes tumultuous in the family, at work, in society. So relationships — healing relationships. And also trying to find a deeper meaning. People will have money, material comfort, a family, cars, a cottage in the country. There is still an inner emptiness, which is very, very present — you can feel it.

I would say that in Québec, generally, people are free to choose, to think, to practise, to choose the spirituality they want. There are probably exceptions. So it is not all black or all white. In Québec, as elsewhere, we have had a few scandals of a spiritual order. But I do not think scandals are limited to the spiritual domain. There are scandals in companies, in families, everywhere. But generally, I would say that spirituality is lived rather well. And there is a feeling of freedom. When I am in Montréal, at home, in my own house, I do not have to hide. At work either, I do not have to pretend that I do not meditate. I do not have to hide my spiritual allegiances or my spiritual beliefs.

Take the whole question of alternative medicine and health, for example: in Great Britain there is a discourse, there is space in the newspapers. If you open the Times of London or the Guardian, or the great British newspapers, there is forward-looking reporting being done. Whereas in Québec, I find we are still very, very cautious. We tend to put on white gloves. And we also tend to content ourselves with the discourse of officials — official people, official spokespersons, governments, well-established organizations.

When you address a subject like spirituality, it is never black and white. It is not science, it is not data, it is not facts. It is more lived experience, more a personal search. How can one speak of spirituality in a superficial way without having experienced it oneself? So it is a little paradoxical that journalists who have no spiritual experience can allow themselves to be critics of spirituality. In the same way, would we send someone — a political neophyte — to cover a major political convention? No. And yet in spirituality, we do that. We ask people who have no spiritual approach or spiritual knowledge to be at once judge and party in a spiritual life.

Personally, I do not understand what is happening in France. I find it unacceptable. Nor do I understand the motive for such a strong stance. Because I think spirituality matters for personal well-being, and for the well-being of the planet as well. Spirituality has an interest in being demystified. I would like to understand what justifies such a stance. I would also like to understand how people who are trying to do good on the planet, people who are trying to give, to share, people who are not seeking money, who want — or are worth — nothing from you [inaudible ?], can be categorized as potentially dangerous people.

But it is possible, from a special point of view [inaudible ?]. [inaudible]