On a Ka-Ching and a Prayer

Is nothing sacred? Or, to put it another way, is everything? ''This is kind of a mini-Great Awakening, filtered through the big media machine,'' says novelist and critic Walter Kirn, whose work often deals with religious currents in American life. ''This kind of stuff has been happening all through the century, but the media has finally found a way to standardize the product: angels, near-death experiences, past lives. (The media) is giving it that gloss it never really had.''

Indeed, when asked to make sense of the constantly expanding spiritual boom, folks can conjure up more theories than a Jesuit:

*The millennium approaches. As we hurtle toward the portentous year 2000, people are bracing for some sort of spiritual revelation. ''History would indicate that this happens whenever you come to a significant date — and we're arriving at a pretty big one,'' says Care of the Soul author Thomas Moore. ''It's like when somebody turns 50 and they begin thinking about things that are really important to them.''
*Church is boring, but the ''search for meaning'' is cool. ''This is not religion that we're talking about,'' says Sydny Miner, executive editor of Simon & Schuster's trade paperback division. ''What you're talking about is, 'We don't want to go back to church, but we want the security, and we want to feel like we're being taken care of.' '' James Morrow (whose satirical novel Towing Jehovah tells of a supertanker captain ordered to haul God's body to the Arctic) agrees: ''Mainstream churches no longer seem to answer people's needs. Everybody's flailing about. Some people land in the New Age sector, others turn to fundamentalist Christianity, and others turn to the self-help section and find all these books on angels.''
*It's time to pay for the greed and excess of the last decade.''Now that the '80s are really over, we are all like repentant sinners,'' says author and filmmaker Michael Tolkin, who directed The Rapture and The New Age. ''No one prays to God like someone with a severe hangover.''
*Life sucks. The brave new world of technology — fax machines, interactive TV, information highways — can't cloud the truth: The world's a mess, and daily life is mercilessly drab. Spelling sees the situation in Old Testament terms: ''Can we show something besides the Menendez brothers? The O.J. Simpson thing? The crazy thing with the little girl and Joey Buttafuoco?'' he groans. ''We're quickly approaching Sodom and Gomorrah.''

Whatever the reason, that old-time search for meaning has caught a second wind — or a 200th. ''We are made to have that longing for spiritual experience,'' says author Arianna Huffington, wife of California's GOP Senate candidate Michael Huffington. Once linked to controversial cult leader John-Roger, she proposes in her new book, The Fourth Instinct: The Call of the Soul, that we're on the brink of spiritual revolution. ''It's happening now because we've tried everything else, and it hasn't worked.''

But not everyone is convinced that folks are getting real spiritual nourishment from the current crop of shows, books, and CDs. To some, much of what is being reaped from monks or Gump or Peruvian manuscripts has the sweet, fluffy, and ultimately empty consistency of angel food cake. ''I find it kind of depressing,'' says Morrow. ''It seems to me a rather low point in the history of the word spiritual that people are so willing to buy into Embraced by the Light. I like the words spirit and spiritual, but they're being utterly trivialized by this publishing phenomenon.''

Which doesn't mean the phenomenon shows any signs of slowing down. Angel Records, the label that brought you the Monks, is hoping to repeat its success with a platter of songs by Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th-century nun and mystic. ''Her music is incredible,'' says Angel president Steve Murphy. ''We think it's going to be pretty successful.'' In a feeding frenzy for soul food, publishers are getting used to doing power lunches with psychics, reincarnated spirits, and Hawaiian shamans. ''It's a phenomenon to be reckoned with,'' says Harper's Seaman. ''In all shapes and forms — from Jungian, to mystical, to angels — publishers are really searching for the next blockbusters. We're looking at individuals who we think may have personal spiritual stories to tell.

''I don't think it's crested,'' she adds. ''I don't think we've seen the height of this at all.''

Of course not. There're six years left till the millennium.