The Dying Out Faith that was the Psychedelic Baba movement

Frances Carr, the last person to be raised as a Shaker, died on January 2nd of this year.

Frances Carr, last lifelong Shaker

In Sabbathday Lake as in other former Shaker villages, Friends of the Shakers raise money to preserve archives and buildings. Many Friends attend Sunday services, but few opt to join the faith. . . In the meantime, the Shakers continue to look for recruits. Over the past 40 years, a few dozen have joined, but only a handful stayed. A decade ago there was a fourth Shaker at Sabbathday Lake, but he left when he fell in love with a visiting journalist. More recently, a young man joined, but left after a year. The Shakers pray for new movers. (source)

Cults and sects die out when the ideas that spawned them are no longer in vogue. The American Baba movement was an offshoot of the counter-cultural psychedelic movement of the nineteen-sixties and early nineteen-seventies. Psychedelic drugs were your ticket in in those heady days, drugs which members gave up (usually) as a sign of their inclusion.  

Yet times are changing. Drugs are no longer associated with 'search,' but with selfishness, lack of control, and mental illness. What's left of the counterculture, Burning Man, has morphed into mannerisms of CIA-established social memes and pseudo-spirituality.

But the smart young are becoming more conservative. They are getting red-pilled. They have never seen a world where traditional values were forced on them, but quite the opposite. And conservatism, meaning clean living, is now the new cool.

The Baba movement did not keep up. It still caters to nineteen-sixties anti-western audiences, thus is more tuned to Reformed Neo-Buddhists and Sathya Sai Baba followers than the young.

As of this year 90% of Baba followers in America are senior citizens, 65 or over. About 3000 born 1952 or earlier, while the remaining under-65 group number only about 300 strong Baba lovers nation-wide. There are even fewer younger ones in Europe. Hence the Baba followers have now entered their geriatric period.

Aging Baba followers in their geriatric period

The death of the movement will be slow. Women especially now live into their 90s. Click the statistical chart for women's aging below to enlarge it.

Current life expectancy for women in the US

So we oldies will be around for quite a while still, as we fade from history.

So what is the cause of this loss of interest? It has to do with change in trends. The anti-culture movement of the 70s was so successful that people have grown up since with no idea what they are opposing. The Baba movement was initially part of that oppositional movement, i.e. anti-Christian, anti-socially-Conservative, anti-Western, anti-History. But without anything to be against -- as those things are effectively destroyed for the young -- there is no energy.

Also the lack of philosophical thinkers in the Baba movement, due to being anti-Intellectual, led to it having nothing to say or add to postmodern fabricated memes. What sounded trendy fifty years ago just rings hollow and thin today.

Baba is still being sold as an option to Western cultural norms, which are no longer cultural norms. So it makes no sense. It has nothing to offer that relates to our current world. All its notions such as reincarnation can be found in countless groups nationwide. Also, its deep paranoia about American Christianity, and especially southern Christianity, makes the Baba movement simply seem stuck in a previous era. Many of the things they are paranoid about no longer exist. Down with America and down with Western Judeo-Christian values and traditions is just not a message that intelligent young people want to hear right now. It's incredibly out-of-touch.

All this is a good and natural thing, however. Baba often stressed that the old had to be moved aside to make room for the new and for rebuilding. Even the cultural destruction of the twentieth-century served a valuable part in paving a path for something to come, though it has not yet arrived.

See also, Death of the Meher Baba movement, and why it's a good thing