Eternal Anima: The New Wellness Trend That's Just Dissociation…

There's a new app called Eternal Anima that's raised $40 million in Series A funding to help you "discover the infinite self beneath your finite ego." Translation: it's a meditation app with a subscription fee and a god complex. And America, being America, has already downloaded it 2 million times. Eternal Anima launched last month promising users a path to what it calls "soul-level consciousness optimization." For $19.99 a month, you get guided sessions where a soothing voice tells you that your anxiety isn't real because "the self is an illusion." Which is technically true, but so is your 401(k) after you spend $240 a year on this. The app's founder, a former tech executive named Brent Halloway who now goes by "Aum Brent," told TechCrunch that Eternal Anima is "not a product, it's a portal." Brent, buddy, it's an app. I can see the App Store rating. It's 4.2 stars, mostly from people who forgot to cancel the free trial. Here's how it works: you open the app, it scans your face to determine your "anima signature," then feeds you personalized mantras based on your "karmic debt profile." My karmic debt profile apparently says I owe $19.99 a month forever, which tracks with my student loans. Users report feeling "profoundly detached" after three weeks of use. One reviewer wrote, "I no longer feel anger, sadness, or joy. I just am. Five stars." Another said, "I think I accidentally achieved enlightenment during my lunch break and now I can't taste food." That's not enlightenment, Karen. That's long COVID. The wellness industry is eating this up. Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop already released a competing product called "Eternal Anima Plus" that costs $49.99 a month and comes with a crystal that does absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, Elon Musk tweeted that he's launching "Eternal Anima X" which will be "the most based version of your immortal soul." Nobody knows what that means, including him. Psychologists are concerned. Dr. Rebecca Liu of Stanford told NPR that Eternal Anima's techniques are "basically dissociation with a UI." She added, "If you feel like you're floating outside your body, that's not spiritual awakening. That's a panic attack. Please see a real doctor, not an app that calls you 'starseed.'" But the app's defenders say critics just don't understand. "You have to be on a higher vibration to get it," said one Reddit user in r/EternalAnima, a subreddit with 400,000 members. The same subreddit also has a pinned post titled "How to explain to your landlord that rent is an illusion." Good luck with that, my dude. The real genius of Eternal Anima isn't the spirituality. It's the business model. You pay to feel nothing, then you pay again to feel something, then you pay a third time to feel guilty about paying twice. It's the circle of life, if the circle of life were a subscription service with a 30-day cancellation window. And here's the kicker: Eternal Anima recently announced a "lifetime" plan for $1,999. Because nothing says "infinite consciousness" like a one-time payment that expires when the company goes bankrupt in 18 months. **Closing opinion:** Eternal Anima is just another Silicon Valley grift wrapped in incense smoke, selling the same emptiness you can get for free by staring at a wall. But hey, if paying $20 a month to pretend your problems aren't real helps you sleep at night, who am I to judge? Just don't come crying to me when your "anima signature" gets leaked in a data breach and your karmic debt profile ends up on the dark web.