Knowledge, meditation, surrender: The addicted academic

This paper offers a critically reflexive autoethnographic inquiry into how academic knowledge production can become an idolatrous practice that obscures, displaces, or suppresses experiential forms of spirituality. Drawing on Vedantic and Buddhist accounts of surrender, Aristotelian formation, Augustine’s ordo amoris, Eckhartian apophasis, Theodor W. Adorno’s critical theory, Jiddu Krishnamurti’s dialogues and contemporary spirituality scholarship, the article argues that the modern academy fosters an addictive orientation to knowledge that functions as a surrogate Absolute. Integrating insights from addiction studies and embodied affect theory, the analysis reframes academic overwork as a form of addictive embodiment shaped by neoliberal norms of productivity and self-surveillance. The article explores how spiritual insight may emerge through a destabilisation of the academic ego. The study contributes to interdisciplinary spirituality research by illuminating how spiritual experience, critique, and transformation can arise within ostensibly secular professional contexts.