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PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR CULTURE JESUS CHRIST A Christian reflection on the
“New Age” TABLE
OF CONTENTS Foreword 1.
What sort of reflection 1.1. Why now? 2. New Age spirituality: an overview 2.1. What is new about New Age? 2.2. What does the New Age claim to offer? 2.3. The fundamental principles of New Age
thinking 2.4. “Inhabitants of myth rather than history”:
New Age and culture 2.5. Why has New Age grown so rapidly
and spread so effectively? 3. New Age and Christian faith 3.1. New Age as spirituality 4. New Age and Christian faith in contrast 5. Jesus Christ offers us the water of life 6. Points to note 6.1. Guidance and sound formation are
needed 7. Appendix 7.1. Some brief formulations of New Age ideas 8. Resources 8.1. Documents of the Catholic Church's Magisterium 9. General bibliography 9.1. Some New Age books NOTES FOREWORD The present study is concerned with the
complex phenomenon of “New Age” which is influencing many aspects of
contemporary culture. The study is a provisional report. It
is the fruit of the common reflection of the Working Group on New Religious Movements,
composed of staff members of different dicasteries of the Holy See: the
Pontifical Councils for Culture and for Interreligious Dialogue (which are
the principal redactors for this project), the Congregation for the
Evangelization of Peoples and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian
Unity. These reflections are offered primarily to
those engaged in pastoral work so that they might be able to explain how the
New Age movement differs from the Christian faith. This study invites
readers to take account of the way that New Age religiosity addresses
the spiritual hunger of contemporary men and women. It should be recognized
that the attraction that New Age religiosity has for some Christians
may be due in part to the lack of serious attention in their own communities
for themes which are actually part of the Catholic synthesis such as the
importance of man' spiritual dimension and its integration with the whole of
life, the search for life's meaning, the link between human beings and the
rest of creation, the desire for personal and social transformation, and the
rejection of a rationalistic and materialistic view of humanity. The present publication calls attention to
the need to know and understand New Age as a cultural current, as well
as the need for Catholics to have an understanding of authentic Catholic
doctrine and spirituality in order to properly assess New Age themes.
The first two chapters present New Age as a multifaceted cultural
tendency, proposing an analysis of the basic foundations of the thought
conveyed in this context. From Chapter Three onwards some indications are
offered for an investigation of New Age in comparison with the
Christian message. Some suggestions of a pastoral nature are also made. Those who wish to go deeper into the study of
New Age will find useful references in the appendices. It is hoped
that this work will in fact provide a stimulus for further studies adapted to
different cultural contexts. Its purpose is also to encourage discernment by
those who are looking for sound reference points for a life of greater
fulness. It is indeed our conviction that through many of our contemporaries
who are searching, we can discover a true thirst for God. As Pope John Paul
II said to a group of bishops from the United States: “Pastors must honestly
ask whether they have paid sufficient attention to the thirst of the human
heart for the true 'living water' which only Christ our Redeemer can give
(cf. Jn 4:7-13)”. Like him, we want to rely “on the perennial
freshness of the Gospel message and its capacity to transform and renew those
who accept it” (AAS 86/4, 330). 1. WHAT SORT OF REFLECTION? The following reflections are meant as a
guide for Catholics involved in preaching the Gospel and teaching the faith
at any level within the Church. This document does not aim at providing a set
of complete answers to the many questions raised by the New Age or
other contemporary signs of the perennial human search for happiness, meaning
and salvation. It is an invitation to understand the New Age and to
engage in a genuine dialogue with those who are influenced by New Age thought.
The document guides those involved in pastoral work in their understanding
and response to New Age spirituality, both illustrating the points
where this spirituality contrasts with the Catholic faith and refuting the
positions espoused by New Age thinkers in opposition to Christian
faith. What is indeed required of Christians is, first and foremost, a solid
grounding in their faith. On this sound base, they can build a life which
responds positively to the invitation in the first letter of Saint Peter:
“always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope
that you all have. But give it with courtesy and respect and a clear
conscience” (1 P 3, 15 f.). 1.1. Why now? The beginning of the Third Millennium comes
not only two thousand years after the birth of Christ, but also at a time
when astrologers believe that the Age of Pisces – known to them as the
Christian age – is drawing to a close. These reflections are about the New
Age, which takes its name from the imminent astrological Age of Aquarius.
The New Age is one of many explanations of the significance of this
moment in history which are bombarding contemporary (particularly western) culture,
and it is hard to see clearly what is and what is not consistent with the
Christian message. So this seems to be the right moment to offer a Christian
assessment of New Age thinking and the New Age movement as a
whole. It has been said, quite correctly, that many
people hover between certainty and uncertainty these days, particularly in
questions relating to their identity.1 Some say that the Christian
religion is patriarchal and authoritarian, that political institutions are
unable to improve the world, and that formal (allopathic) medicine simply
fails to heal people effectively. The fact that what were once central
elements in society are now perceived as untrustworthy or lacking in genuine
authority has created a climate where people look inwards, into themselves,
for meaning and strength. There is also a search for alternative
institutions, which people hope will respond to their deepest needs. The
unstructured or chaotic life of alternative communities of the 1970s has
given way to a search for discipline and structures, which are clearly key
elements in the immensely popular “mystical” movements. New Age is
attractive mainly because so much of what it offers meets hungers often left
unsatisfied by the established institutions. While much of New Age is a reaction to
contemporary culture, there are many ways in which it is that culture's
child. The Renaissance and the Reformation have shaped the modern western
individual, who is not weighed down by external burdens like merely extrinsic
authority and tradition; people feel the need to “belong” to institutions
less and less (and yet loneliness is very much a scourge of modern life), and
are not inclined to rank “official” judgements above their own. With this
cult of humanity, religion is internalised in a way which prepares the ground
for a celebration of the sacredness of the self. This is why New Age shares
many of the values espoused by enterprise culture and the “prosperity Gospel”
(of which more will be said later: section 2.4), and also by the consumer
culture, whose influence is clear from the rapidly-growing numbers of people
who claim that it is possible to blend Christianity and New Age, by
taking what strikes them as the best of both.2 It is worth
remembering that deviations within Christianity have also gone beyond
traditional theism in accepting a unilateral turn to self, and this would
encourage such a blending of approaches. The important thing to note is that
God is reduced in certain New Age practices so as furthering the
advancement of the individual. New Age appeals to people imbued with the values of
modern culture. Freedom, authenticity, self-reliance and the like are all
held to be sacred. It appeals to those who have problems with patriarchy. It
“does not demand any more faith or belief than going to the cinema”,3
and yet it claims to satisfy people's spiritual appetites. But here is a
central question: just what is meant by spirituality in a New Age
context? The answer is the key to unlocking some of the differences between
the Christian tradition and much of what can be called New Age. Some
versions of New Age harness the powers of nature and seek to
communicate with another world to discover the fate of individuals, to help
individuals tune in to the right frequency to make the most of themselves and
their circumstances. In most cases, it is completely fatalistic.
Christianity, on the other hand, is an invitation to look outwards and
beyond, to the “new Advent” 1.2. Communications The technological revolution in
communications over the last few years has brought about a completely new
situation. The ease and speed with which people can now communicate is one of
the reasons why New Age has come to the attention of people of all
ages and backgrounds, and many who follow Christ are not sure what it is all
about. The Internet, in particular, has become enormously influential,
especially with younger people, who find it a congenial and fascinating way
of acquiring information. But it is a volatile vehicle of misinformation on
so many aspects of religion: not all that is labelled “Christian” or
“Catholic” can be trusted to reflect the teachings of the Catholic Church
and, at the same time, there is a remarkable expansion of New Age sources
ranging from the serious to the ridiculous. People need, and have a right to,
reliable information on the differences between Christianity and New Age. 1.3. Cultural background When one examines many New Age
traditions, it soon becomes clear that there is, in fact, little in the
New Age that is new. The name seems to have gained currency through
Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, at the time of the French and American
Revolutions, but the reality it denotes is a contemporary variant of Western
esotericism. This dates back to Gnostic groups which grew up in the early
days of Christianity, and gained momentum at the time of the Reformation in
Europe. It has grown in parallel with scientific world-views, and acquired a
rational justification through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It
has involved a progressive rejection of a personal God and a focus on other
entities which would often figure as intermediaries between God and humanity
in traditional Christianity, with more and more original adaptations of these
or additional ones. A powerful trend in modern Western culture which has
given space to New Age ideas is the general acceptance of Darwinist
evolutionary theory; this, alongside a focus on hidden spiritual powers or
forces in nature, has been the backbone of much of what is now recognised as
New Age theory. Basically, New Age has found a
remarkable level of acceptance because the world-view on which it was based
was already widely accepted. The ground was well prepared by the growth and
spread of relativism, along with an antipathy or indifference towards the
Christian faith. Furthermore, there has been a lively
discussion about whether and in what sense New Age can be described as
a postmodern phenomenon. The existence and fervor of New Age thinking
and practice bear witness to the unquenchable longing of the human spirit for
transcendence and religious meaning, which is not only a contemporary
cultural phenomenon, but was evident in the ancient world, both Christian and
pagan. 1.4. The New Age and Catholic Faith Even if it can be admitted that New Age
religiosity in some way responds to the legitimate spiritual longing of human
nature, it must be acknowledged that its attempts to do so run counter to
Christian revelation. In Western culture in particular, the appeal of
“alternative” approaches to spirituality is very strong. On the one hand, new
forms of psychological affirmation of the individual have be come very popular among Catholics, even in
retreat-houses, seminaries and institutes of formation for religious. At the
same time there is increasing nostalgia and curiosity for the wisdom and
ritual of long ago, which is one of the reasons for the remarkable growth in
the popularity of esotericism and gnosticism. Many people are particularly attracted
to what is known – correctly or otherwise – as “Celtic” spirituality,5
or to the religions of ancient peoples. Books and courses on spirituality and
ancient or Eastern religions are a booming business, and they are frequently
labelled “New Age” for commercial purposes. But the links with those
religions are not always clear. In fact, they are often denied. An adequate Christian discernment of New
Age thought and practice cannot fail to recognize that, like second and
third century gnosticism, it represents something of a compendium of
positions that the Church has identified as heterodox. John Paul II warns
with regard to the “return of ancient gnostic ideas under the guise of the
so-called New Age: We cannot delude ourselves that this will lead toward
a renewal of religion. It is only a new way of practising gnosticism – that
attitude of the spirit that, in the name of a profound knowledge of God,
results in distorting His Word and replacing it with purely human words.
Gnosticism never completely abandoned the realm of Christianity. Instead, it
has always existed side by side with Christianity, sometimes taking the shape
of a philosophical movement, but more often assuming the characteristics of a
religion or a para-religion in distinct, if not declared, conflict with all
that is essentially Christian”.6 An example of this can be seen in
the enneagram, the nine-type tool for character analysis, which when used as
a means of spiritual growth introduces an ambiguity in the doctrine and the
life of the Christian faith. 1.5. A positive challenge The appeal of New Age religiosity
cannot be underestimated. When the understanding of the content of Christian
faith is weak, some mistakenly hold that the Christian religion does not
inspire a profound spirituality and so they seek elsewhere. As a matter of
fact, some say the New Age is already passing us by, and refer to the
“next” age.7 They speak of a crisis that began to manifest itself
in the United States of America in the early 1990s, but admit that, especially
beyond the English-speaking world, such a “crisis” may come later. But
bookshops and radio stations, and the plethora of self-help groups in so many
Western towns and cities, all seem to tell a different story. It seems that,
at least for the moment, the New Age is still very much alive and part
of the current cultural scene. The success of New Age offers the
Church a challenge. People feel the Christian religion no longer offers them
– or perhaps never gave them – something they really need. The search which
often leads people to the New Age is a genuine yearning: for a deeper
spirituality, for something which will touch their hearts, and for a way of
making sense of a confusing and often alienating world. There is a positive
tone in New Age criticisms of “the materialism of daily life, of
philosophy and even of medicine and psychiatry; reductionism, which refuses
to take into consideration religious and supernatural experiences; the
industrial culture of unrestrained individualism, which teaches egoism and
pays no attention to other people, the future and the environment”.8
Any problems there are with New Age are to be found in what it
proposes as alternative answers to life's questions. If the Church is not to
be accused of being deaf to people's longings, her members need to do two
things: to root themselves ever more firmly in the fundamentals of their
faith, and to understand the often-silent cry in people's hearts, which leads
them elsewhere if they are not satisfied by the Church. There is also a call
in all of this to come closer to Jesus Christ and to be ready to follow Him,
since He is the real way to happiness, the truth about God and the fulness of
life for every man and woman who is prepared to respond to his love. 2. NEW AGE SPIRITUALITY: AN OVERVIEW Christians in many Western societies, and
increasingly also in other parts of the world, frequently come into contact
with different aspects of the phenomenon known as New Age. Many of
them feel the need to understand how they can best approach something which
is at once so alluring, complex, elusive and, at times, disturbing. These
reflections are an attempt to help Christians do two things: – to identify elements of the developing New
Age tradition; This is a pastoral response to a current
challenge, which does not even attempt to provide an exhaustive list of
New Age phenomena, since that would result in a very bulky tome, and such
information is readily available elsewhere. It is essential to try to
understand New Age correctly, in order to evaluate it fairly, and
avoid creating a caricature. It would be unwise and untrue to say that
everything connected with the New Age movement is good, or that
everything about it is bad. Nevertheless, given the underlying vision of New
Age religiosity, it is on the whole difficult to reconcile it with
Christian doctrine and spirituality. New Age is not a movement in the sense normally
intended in the term “New Religious Movement”, and it is not what is normally
meant by the terms “cult” and “sect”. Because it is spread across cultures,
in phenomena as varied as music, films, seminars, workshops, retreats,
therapies, and many more activities and events, it is much more diffuse and
informal, though some religious or para-religious groups consciously
incorporate New Age elements, and it has been suggested that New
Age has been a source of ideas for various religious and para-religious
sects.9 New Age is not a single, uniform movement, but
rather a loose network of practitioners whose approach is to think
globally but act locally. People who are part of the network do not
necessarily know each other and rarely, if ever, meet. In an attempt to avoid
the confusion which can arise from using the term “movement”, some refer to New
Age as a “milieu”,10 or an “audience cult”.11
However, it has also been pointed out that “it is a very coherent current of
thought”,12 a deliberate challenge to modern culture. It is a
syncretistic structure incorporating many diverse elements, allowing people
to share interests or connections to very different degrees and on varying
levels of commitment. Many trends, practices and attitudes which are in some
way part of New Age are, indeed, part of a broad and readily
identifiable reaction to mainstream culture, so the word “movement” is not
entirely out of place. It can be applied to New Age in the same sense
as it is to other broad social movements, like the Civil Rights movement or
the Peace Movement; like them, it includes a bewildering array of people
linked to the movement's main aims, but very diverse in the way they are
involved and in their understanding of particular issues. The expression “New Age religion” is
more controversial, so it seems best to avoid it, although New Age is
often a response to people's religious questions and needs, and its appeal is
to people who are trying to discover or rediscover a spiritual dimension in
their life. Avoidance of the term “New Age religion” is not meant in
any way to question the genuine character of people's search for meaning and
sense in life; it respects the fact that many within the New Age Movement
themselves distinguish carefully between “religion” and “spirituality”. Many
have rejected organised religion, because in their judgement it has failed to
answer their needs, and for precisely this reason they have looked elsewhere
to find “spirituality”. Furthermore, at the heart of New Age is the
belief that the time for particular religions is over, so to refer to it as a
religion would run counter to its own self-understanding. However, it is
quite accurate to place New Age in the broader context of esoteric
religiousness, whose appeal continues to grow.13 There is a problem built into the current
text. It is an attempt to understand and evaluate something which is
basically an exaltation of the richness of human experience. It is bound to
draw the criticism that it can never do justice to a cultural movement whose
essence is precisely to break out of what are seen as the constricting limits
of rational discourse. But it is meant as an invitation to Christians to take
the New Age seriously, and as such asks its readers to enter into a
critical dialogue with people approaching the same world from very different perspectives. The pastoral effectiveness of the Church in
the Third Millennium depends to a great extent on the preparation of
effective communicators of the Gospel message. What follows is a response to
the difficulties expressed by many in dealing with the very complex and
elusive phenomenon known as New Age. It is an attempt to understand
what New Age is and to recognise the questions to which it claims to
offer answers and solutions. There are some excellent books and other
resources which survey the whole phenomenon or explain particular aspects in
great detail, and reference will be made to some of these in the appendix.
However they do not always undertake the necessary discernment in the light
of Christian faith. The purpose of this contribution is to help Catholics
find a key to understanding the basic principles behind New Age
thinking, so that they can then make a Christian evaluation of the elements
of New Age they encounter. It is worth saying that many people dislike
the term New Age, and some suggest that “alternative spirituality” may
be more correct and less limiting. It is also true that many of the phenomena
mentioned in this document will probably not bear any particular label, but
it is presumed, for the sake of brevity, that readers will recognise a
phenomenon or set of phenomena that can justifiably at least be linked with
the general cultural movement that is often known as New Age. 2.1. What is new about New Age? For many people, the term New Age clearly
refers to a momentous turning-point in history. According to astrologers, we
live in the Age of Pisces, which has been dominated by Christianity. But the
current age of Pisces is due to be replaced by the New Age of Aquarius
early in the third Millennium.14 The Age of Aquarius has such a
high profile in the New Age movement largely because of the influence
of theosophy, spiritualism and anthroposophy, and their esoteric antecedents.
People who stress the imminent change in the world are often expressing a
wish for such a change, not so much in the world itself as in our
culture, in the way we relate to the world; this is particularly clear in
those who stress the idea of a New Paradigm for living. It is an attractive
approach since, in some of its expressions, people do not watch passively,
but have an active role in changing culture and bringing about a new
spiritual awareness. In other expressions, more power is ascribed to the
inevitable progression of natural cycles. In any case, the Age of Aquarius is
a vision, not a theory. But New Age is a broad tradition, which
incorporates many ideas which have no explicit link with the change from the
Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. There are moderate, but quite
generalised, visions of a future where there will be a planetary spirituality
alongside separate religions, similar planetary political institutions to
complement more local ones, global economic entities which are more
participatory and democratic, greater emphasis on communication and
education, a mixed approach to health combining professional medicine and
self-healing, a more androgynous self-understanding and ways of integrating
science, mysticism, technology and ecology. Again, this is evidence of a deep
desire for a fulfilling and healthy existence for the human race and for the
planet. Some of the traditions which flow into New Age are: ancient
Egyptian occult practices, Cabbalism, early Christian gnosticism, Sufism, the
lore of the Druids, Celtic Christianity, mediaeval alchemy, Renaissance
hermeticism, Zen Buddhism, Yoga and so on.15 Here is what is “new” about New Age.
It is a “syncretism of esoteric and secular elements”.16 They link
into a widely-held perception that the time is ripe for a fundamental change
in individuals, in society and in the world. There are various expressions of
the need for a shift: – from Newtonian mechanistic physics to
quantum physics; In these contexts the term “paradigm shift”
is often used. In some cases it is clearly supposed that this shift is not
simply desirable, but inevitable. The rejection of modernity underlying this
desire for change is not new, but can be described as “a modern revival of
pagan religions with a mixture of influences from both eastern religions and
also from modern psychology, philosophy, science, and the counterculture that
developed in the 1950s and 1960s”.17 New Age is a witness
to nothing less than a cultural revolution, a complex reaction to the
dominant ideas and values in western culture, and yet its idealistic
criticism is itself ironically typical of the culture it criticizes. A word needs to be said on the notion of
paradigm shift. It was made popular by Thomas Kuhn, an American historian
of science, who saw a paradigm as “the entire constellation of beliefs,
values, techniques and so on shared by the members of a given community”.18
When there is a shift from one paradigm to another, it is a question of
wholesale transformation of perspective rather than one of gradual
development. It really is a revolution, and Kuhn emphasised that competing
paradigms are incommensurable and cannot co-exist. So the idea that a
paradigm shift in the area of religion and spirituality is simply a new way
of stating traditional beliefs misses the point. What is actually going on is
a radical change in world- view, which puts into question not only the
content but also the fundamental interpretation of the former vision. Perhaps
the clearest example of this, in terms of the relationship between New Age
and Christianity, is the total recasting of the life and significance of
Jesus Christ. It is impossible to reconcile these two visions.19 Science and technology have clearly failed to
deliver all they once seemed to promise, so in their search for meaning and
liberation people have turned to the spiritual realm. New Age as we
now know it came from a search for something more humane and beautiful than
the oppressive, alienating experience of life in Western society. Its early
exponents were prepared to look far afield in their search, so it has become
a very eclectic approach. It may well be one of the signs of a “return to
religion”, but it is most certainly not a return to orthodox Christian
doctrines and creeds. The first symbols of this “movement” to penetrate
Western culture were the remarkable festival at Woodstock in New York State
in 1969 and the musical Hair, which set forth the main themes of New
Age in the emblematic song “Aquarius”.20 But these were merely
the tip of an iceberg whose dimensions have become clearer only relatively
recently. The idealism of the 1960s and 1970s still survives in some
quarters; but now, it is no longer predominantly adolescents who are
involved. Links with left-wing political ideology have faded, and psychedelic
drugs are by no means as prominent as they once were. So much has happened
since then that all this no longer seems revolutionary; “spiritual” and
“mystical” tendencies formerly restricted to the counterculture are now an
established part of mainstream culture, affecting such diverse facets of life
as medicine, science, art and religion. Western culture is now imbued with a
more general political and ecological awareness, and this whole cultural
shift has had an enormous impact on people's life-styles. It is suggested by
some that the New Age “movement” is precisely this major change to
what is reckoned to be “a significantly better way of life”.21
2.2. What does the New Age claim to
offer? 2.2.1. Enchantment: There Must be an Angel One of the most common elements in New Age
“spirituality” is a fascination with extraordinary manifestations, and in
particular with paranormal entities. People recognised as “mediums” claim
that their personality is taken over by another entity during trances in a
New Age phenomenon known as “channeling”, during which the medium may
lose control over his or her body and faculties. Some people who have
witnessed these events would willingly acknowledge that the manifestations
are indeed spiritual, but are not from God, despite the language of love and
light which is almost always used.... It is probably more correct to refer to
this as a contemporary form of spiritualism, rather than spirituality in a
strict sense. Other friends and counsellors from the spirit world are angels
(which have become the centre of a new industry of books and paintings).
Those who refer to angels in the New Age do so in an unsystematic way;
in fact, distinctions in this area are sometimes described as unhelpful if
they are too precise, since “there are many levels of guides, entities,
energies, and beings in every octave of the universe... They are all there to
pick and choose from in relation to your own attraction/repulsion
mechanisms”.22 These spiritual entities are often invoked
'non-religiously' to help in relaxation aimed at better decision-making and
control of one's life and career. Fusion with some spirits who teach through
particular people is another New Age experience claimed by people who
refer to themselves as 'mystics'. Some nature spirits are described as
powerful energies existing in the natural world and also on the “inner
planes”: i.e. those which are accessible by the use of rituals, drugs and
other techniques for reaching altered states of consciousness. It is clear
that, in theory at least, the New Age often recognizes no spiritual
authority higher than personal inner experience. 2.2.2. Harmony and Understanding: Good
Vibrations Phenomena as diverse as the Findhorn garden
and Feng Shui 23 represent a variety of ways which
illustrate the importance of being in tune with nature or the cosmos. In New
Age there is no distinction between good and evil. Human actions are the
fruit of either illumination or ignorance. Hence we cannot condemn anyone,
and nobody needs forgiveness. Believing in the existence of evil can create
only negativity and fear. The answer to negativity is love. But it is
not the sort which has to be translated into deeds; it is more a question of
attitudes of mind. Love is energy, a high-frequency vibration, and the secret
to happiness and health and success is being able to tune in, to find one's
place in the great chain of being. New Age teachers and therapies
claim to offer the key to finding the correspondences between all the
elements of the universe, so that people may modulate the tone of their lives
and be in absolute harmony with each other and with everything around them,
although there are different theoretical backgrounds.24 2.2.3. Health: Golden living Formal (allopathic) medicine today tends to
limit itself to curing particular, isolated ailments, and fails to look at
the broader picture of a person's health: this has given rise to a fair
amount of understandable dissatisfaction. Alternative therapies have gained
enormously in popularity because they claim to look at the whole person and
are about healing rather than curing. Holistic health, as it is
known, concentrates on the important role that the mind plays in physical
healing. The connection between the spiritual and the physical aspects of the
person is said to be in the immune system or the Indian chakra system. In a New
Age perspective, illness and suffering come from working against nature;
when one is in tune with nature, one can expect a much healthier life, and
even material prosperity; for some New Age healers, there should actually
be no need for us to die. Developing our human potential will put us in touch
with our inner divinity, and with those parts of our selves which have been
alienated and suppressed. This is revealed above all in Altered States of
Consciousness (ASCs), which are induced either by drugs or by various
mind-expanding techniques, particularly in the context of “transpersonal
psychology”. The shaman is often seen as the specialist of altered states of
consciousness, one who is able to mediate between the transpersonal realms of
spirits and gods and the world of humans. There is a remarkable variety of approaches
for promoting holistic health, some derived from ancient cultural traditions,
whether religious or esoteric, others connected with the psychological
theories developed in Esalen during the years 1960-1970. Advertising
connected with New Age covers a wide range of practices as
acupuncture, biofeedback, chiropractic, kinesiology, homeopathy, iridology,
massage and various kinds of “bodywork” (such as orgonomy, Feldenkrais,
reflexology, Rolfing, polarity massage, therapeutic touch etc.), meditation
and visualisation, nutritional therapies, psychic healing, various kinds of
herbal medicine, healing by crystals, metals, music or colours, reincarnation
therapies and, finally, twelve-step programmes and self-help groups.25
The source of healing is said to be within ourselves, something we reach when
we are in touch with our inner energy or cosmic energy. Inasmuch as health includes a prolongation of
life, New Age offers an Eastern formula in Western terms. Originally,
reincarnation was a part of Hindu cyclical thought, based on the atman or
divine kernel of personality (later the concept of jiva), which moved
from body to body in a cycle of suffering (samsara), determined by the
law of karma, linked to behaviour in past lives. Hope lies in the
possibility of being born into a better state, or ultimately in liberation
from the need to be reborn. What is different in most Buddhist traditions is
that what wanders from body to body is not a soul, but a continuum of
consciousness. Present life is embedded in a potentially endless cosmic
process which includes even the gods. In the West, since the time of Lessing,
reincarnation has been understood far more optimistically as a process of
learning and progressive individual fulfilment. Spiritualism, theosophy,
anthroposophy and New Age all see reincarnation as participation in
cosmic evolution. This post-Christian approach to eschatology is said to
answer the unresolved questions of theodicy and dispenses with the notion of
hell. When the soul is separated from the body individuals can look back on
their whole life up to that point, and when the soul is united to its new
body there is a preview of its coming phase of life. People have access to
their former lives through dreams and meditation techniques.26
2.2.4. Wholeness: A Magical Mystery Tour One of the central concerns of the New Age
movement is the search for “wholeness”. There is encouragement to
overcome all forms of “dualism”, as such divisions are an unhealthy product
of a less enlightened past. Divisions which New Age proponents claim
need to be overcome include the real difference between Creator and creation,
the real distinction between man and nature, or spirit and matter, which are
all considered wrongly as forms of dualism. These dualistic tendencies are
often assumed to be ultimately based on the Judaeo-Christian roots of western
civilisation, while it would be more accurate to link them to gnosticism, in
particular to Manichaeism. The scientific revolution and the spirit of modern
rationalism are blamed particularly for the tendency to fragmentation, which
treats organic wholes as mechanisms that can be reduced to their smallest
components and then explained in terms of the latter, and the tendency to
reduce spirit to matter, so that spiritual reality – including the soul –
becomes merely a contingent “epiphenomenon” of essentially material
processes. In all of these areas, the New Age alternatives are called
“holistic”. Holism pervades the New Age movement, from its concern
with holistic health to its quest for unitive consciousness, and from
ecological awareness to the idea of global “networking”. 2.3. The fundamental principles of New Age
thinking 2.3.1. A global response in a time of
crisis “Both the Christian tradition and the secular
faith in an unlimited process of science had to face a severe break first
manifested in the student revolutions around the year 1968”.27 The
wisdom of older generations was suddenly robbed of significance and respect,
while the omnipotence of science evaporated, so that the Church now “has to
face a serious breakdown in the transmission of her faith to the younger
generation”.28 A general loss of faith in these former pillars of
consciousness and social cohesion has been accompanied by the unexpected
return of cosmic religiosity, rituals and beliefs which many believed to have
been supplanted by Christianity; but this perennial esoteric undercurrent
never really went away. The surge in popularity of Asian religion at this
point was something new in the Western context, established late in the
nineteenth century in the theosophical movement, and it “reflects the growing
awareness of a global spirituality, incorporating all existing religious
traditions”.29 The perennial philosophical question of the
one and the many has its modern and contemporary form in the temptation to
overcome not only undue division, but even real difference and distinction,
and the most common expression of this is holism, an essential ingredient in New
Age and one of the principal signs of the times in the last quarter of
the twentieth century. An extraordinary amount of energy has gone into the
effort to overcome the division into compartments characteristic of
mechanistic ideology, but this has led to the sense of obligation to submit
to a global network which assumes quasi-transcendental authority. Its
clearest implications are a process of conscious transformation and the
development of ecology.30 The new vision which is the goal of
conscious transformation has taken time to formulate, and its enactment is
resisted by older forms of thought judged to be entrenched in the status quo.
What has been successful is the generalisation of ecology as a fascination
with nature and resacralisation of the earth, Mother Earth or Gaia,
with the missionary zeal characteristic of Green politics. The Earth's
executive agent is the human race as a whole, and the harmony and
understanding required for responsible governance is increasingly
understood to be a global government, with a global ethical framework. The
warmth of Mother Earth, whose divinity pervades the whole of creation, is
held to bridge the gap between creation and the transcendent Father-God of
Judaism and Christianity, and removes the prospect of being judged by such a
Being. In such a vision of a closed universe that
contains “God” and other spiritual beings along with ourselves, we recognize
here an implicit pantheism. This is a fundamental point which pervades all
New Age thought and practice, and conditions in advance any otherwise
positive assessment where we might be in favor of one or another aspect of
its spirituality. As Christians, we believe on the contrary that “man is
essentially a creature and remains so for all eternity, so that an absorption
of the human I in the divine I will never be possible”.31 2.3.2. The essential matrix of New Age
thinking The essential matrix of New Age
thinking is to be found in the esoteric-theosophical tradition which was
fairly widely accepted in European intellectual circles in the 18th
and 19th centuries. It was particularly strong in freemasonry,
spiritualism, occultism and theosophy, which shared a kind of esoteric
culture. In this world-view, the visible and invisible universes are linked
by a series of correspondences, analogies and influences between microcosm
and macrocosm, between metals and planets, between planets and the various
parts of the human body, between the visible cosmos and the invisible realms
of reality. Nature is a living being, shot through with networks of sympathy
and antipathy, animated by a light and a secret fire which human beings seek
to control. People can contact the upper or lower worlds by means of their
imagination (an organ of the soul or spirit), or by using mediators (angels,
spirits, devils) or rituals. People can be initiated into the mysteries of
the cosmos, God and the self by means of a spiritual itinerary of
transformation. The eventual goal is gnosis, the highest form of
knowledge, the equivalent of salvation. It involves a search for the oldest
and highest tradition in philosophy (what is inappropriately called
philosophia perennis) and religion (primordial theology), a secret
(esoteric) doctrine which is the key to all the “exoteric” traditions which
are accessible to everyone. Esoteric teachings are handed down from master to
disciple in a gradual program of initiation. 19th century esotericism is seen
by some as completely secularised. Alchemy, magic, astrology and other
elements of traditional esotericism had been thoroughly integrated with
aspects of modern culture, including the search for causal laws,
evolutionism, psychology and the study of religions. It reached its clearest
form in the ideas of Helena Blavatsky, a Russian medium who founded the
Theosophical Society with Henry Olcott in New York in 1875. The Society
aimed to fuse elements of Eastern and Western traditions in an evolutionary
type of spiritualism. It had three main aims: 1. “To form a nucleus of the Universal
Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, caste or colour. “The significance of these objectives...
should be clear. The first objective implicitly rejects the 'irrational
bigotry' and 'sectarianism' of traditional Christianity as perceived by
spiritualists and theosophists... It is not immediately obvious from the
objectives themselves that, for theosophists, 'science' meant the occult
sciences and philosophy the occulta philosophia, that the laws of
nature were of an occult or psychic nature, and that comparative religion was
expected to unveil a 'primordial tradition' ultimately modelled on a
Hermeticist philosophia perennis”.32 A prominent component of Mrs. Blavatsky's
writings was the emancipation of women, which involved an attack on the
“male” God of Judaism, of Christianity and of Islam. She urged people to
return to the mother-goddess of Hinduism and to the practice of feminine
virtues. This continued under the guidance of Annie Besant, who was in the
vanguard of the feminist movement. Wicca and “women's spirituality” carry on
this struggle against “patriarchal” Christianity today. Marilyn Ferguson devoted a chapter of The
Aquarian Conspiracy to the precursors of the Age of Aquarius, those who
had woven the threads of a transforming vision based on the expansion of
consciousness and the experience of self-transcendence. Two of those she
mentioned were the American psychologist William James and the Swiss
psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. James defined religion as experience, not
dogma, and he taught that human beings can change their mental attitudes in
such a way that they are able to become architects of their own destiny. Jung
emphasized the transcendent character of consciousness and introduced the
idea of the collective unconscious, a kind of store for symbols and memories
shared with people from various different ages and cultures. According to
Wouter Hanegraaff, both of these men contributed to a “sacralisation of
psychology”, something that has become an important element of New Age
thought and practice. Jung, indeed, “not only psychologized esotericism but
he also sacralized psychology, by filling it with the contents of esoteric
speculation. The result was a body of theories which enabled people to talk
about God while really meaning their own psyche, and about their own psyche
while really meaning the divine. If the psyche is 'mind', and God is 'mind'
as well, then to discuss one must mean to discuss the other”.33
His response to the accusation that he had “psychologised” Christianity was
that “psychology is the modern myth and only in terms of the current myth can
we understand the faith”.34 It is certainly true that Jung's
psychology sheds light on many aspects of the Christian faith, particularly
on the need to face the reality of evil, but his religious convictions are so
different at different stages of his life that one is left with a confused
image of God. A central element in his thought is the cult of the sun, where
God is the vital energy (libido) within a person.35 As he himself
said, “this comparison is no mere play of words”.36 This is “the
god within” to which Jung refers, the essential divinity he believed to be in
every human being. The path to the inner universe is through the unconscious.
The inner world's correspondence to the outer one is in the collective
unconscious. The tendency to interchange psychology and
spirituality was firmly embedded in the Human Potential Movement as it
developed towards the end of the 1960s at the Esalen Institute in California.
Transpersonal psychology, strongly influenced by Eastern religions and by
Jung, offers a contemplative journey where science meets mysticism. The
stress laid on bodiliness, the search for ways of expanding consciousness and
the cultivation of the myths of the collective unconscious were all
encouragements to search for “the God within” oneself. To realise one's
potential, one had to go beyond one's ego in order to become the god
that one is, deep down. This could be done by choosing the appropriate
therapy – meditation, parapsychological experiences, the use of
hallucinogenic drugs. These were all ways of achieving “peak experiences”,
“mystical” experiences of fusion with God and with the cosmos. The symbol of Aquarius was borrowed from
astrological mythology, but later came to signify the desire for a radically
new world. The two centres which were the initial power-houses of the New
Age, and to a certain extent still are, were the Garden community at
Findhorn in North-East Scotland, and the Centre for the development of human
potential at Esalen in Big Sur, California, in the United States of America.
What feeds New Age consistently is a growing global consciousness and
increasing awareness of a looming ecological crisis. 2.3.3. Central themes of the New Age New Age is not, properly speaking, a religion, but it
is interested in what is called “divine”. The essence of New Age is
the loose association of the various activities, ideas and people who might
validly attract the term. So there is no single articulation of anything like
the doctrines of mainstream religions. Despite this, and despite the immense
variety within New Age, there are some common points: – the cosmos is seen as an organic whole 2.3.4. What does New Age say about... 2.3.4.1. ...the human person? New Age involves a fundamental belief in the
perfectibility of the human person by means of a wide variety of techniques
and therapies (as opposed to the Christian view of co-operation with divine
grace). There is a general accord with Nietzsche's idea that Christianity has
prevented the full manifestation of genuine humanity. Perfection, in this
context, means achieving self-fulfilment, according to an order of values
which we ourselves create and which we achieve by our own strength: hence one
can speak of a self- creating self. On this view, there is more difference
between humans as they now are and as they will be when they have fully
realised their potential, than there is between humans and anthropoids. It is useful to distinguish between esotericism,
a search for knowledge, and magic, or the occult: the latter is a
means of obtaining power. Some groups are both esoteric and occult. At the
centre of occultism is a will to power based on the dream of becoming divine. Mind-expanding techniques are meant to reveal
to people their divine power; by using this power, people prepare the way for
the Age of Enlightenment. This exaltation of humanity overturns the correct
relationship between Creator and creature, and one of its extreme forms is
Satanism. Satan becomes the symbol of a rebellion against conventions and
rules, a symbol that often takes aggressive, selfish and violent forms. Some
evangelical groups have expressed concern at the subliminal presence of what
they claim is Satanic symbolism in some varieties of rock music, which have a
powerful influence on young people. This is all far removed from the message
of peace and harmony which is to be found in the New Testament; it is often
one of the consequences of the exaltation of humanity when that involves the
negation of a transcendent God. But it is not only something which affects
young people; the basic themes of esoteric culture are also present in the
realms of politics, education and legislation.37 It is
especially the case with ecology. Deep ecology's emphasis on bio-centrism
denies the anthropological vision of the Bible, in which human beings are at
the centre of the world, since they are considered to be qualitatively superior
to other natural forms. It is very prominent in legislation and education
today, despite the fact that it underrates humanity in this way.. The same
esoteric cultural matrix can be found in the ideological theory underlying
population control policies and experiments in genetic engineering, which
seem to express a dream human beings have of creating themselves afresh. How
do people hope to do this? By deciphering the genetic code, altering the
natural rules of sexuality, defying the limits of death. In what might be termed a classical New
Age account, people are born with a divine spark, in a sense which is
reminiscent of ancient gnosticism; this links them into the unity of the
Whole. So they are seen as essentially divine, although they participate in
this cosmic divinity at different levels of consciousness. We are co-
creators, and we create our own reality. Many New Age authors maintain
that we choose the circumstances of our lives (even our own illness and
health), in a vision where every individual is considered the creative source
of the universe. But we need to make a journey in order fully to understand
where we fit into the unity of the cosmos. The journey is psychotherapy, and
the recognition of universal consciousness is salvation. There is no sin;
there is only imperfect knowledge. The identity of every human being is
diluted in the universal being and in the process of successive incarnations.
People are subject to the determining influences of the stars, but can be
opened to the divinity which lives within them, in their continual search (by
means of appropriate techniques) for an ever greater harmony between the self
and divine cosmic energy. There is no need for Revelation or Salvation which
would come to people from outside themselves, but simply a need to experience
the salvation hidden within themselves (self-salvation), by mastering psycho-
physical techniques which lead to definitive enlightenment. Some stages on the way to self-redemption are
preparatory (meditation, body harmony, releasing self-healing
energies). They are the starting-point for processes of spiritualisation,
perfection and enlightenment which help people to acquire further
self-control and psychic concentration on “transformation” of the individual
self into “cosmic consciousness”. The destiny of the human person is a series
of successive reincarnations of the soul in different bodies. This is
understood not as the cycle of samsara, in the sense of purification
as punishment, but as a gradual ascent towards the perfect development of
one's potential. Psychology is used to explain mind expansion
as “mystical” experiences. Yoga, zen, transcendental meditation and tantric
exercises lead to an experience of self-fulfilment or enlightenment.
Peak-experiences (reliving one's birth, travelling to the gates of death,
biofeedback, dance and even drugs – anything which can provoke an altered
state of consciousness) are believed to lead to unity and enlightenment.
Since there is only one Mind, some people can be channels for higher
beings. Every part of this single universal being has contact with every
other part. The classic approach in New Age is transpersonal
psychology, whose main concepts are the Universal Mind, the Higher Self, the
collective and personal unconscious and the individual ego. The Higher Self
is our real identity, a bridge between God as divine Mind and humanity.
Spiritual development is contact with the Higher Self, which overcomes all
forms of dualism between subject and object, life and death, psyche and soma,
the self and the fragmentary aspects of the self. Our limited personality is
like a shadow or a dream created by the real self. The Higher Self contains
the memories of earlier (re-)incarnations. 2.3.4.2. ...God? New Age has a marked preference for Eastern or
pre-Christian religions, which are reckoned to be uncontaminated by
Judaeo-Christian distorsions. Hence great respect is given to ancient
agricultural rites and to fertility cults. “Gaia”, Mother Earth, is offered
as an alternative to God the Father, whose image is seen to be linked to a
patriarchal conception of male domination of women. There is talk of God, but
it is not a personal God; the God of which New Age speaks is neither
personal nor transcendent. Nor is it the Creator and sustainer of the
universe, but an “impersonal energy” immanent in the world, with which it
forms a “cosmic unity”: “All is one”. This unity is monistic, pantheistic or,
more precisely, panentheistic. God is the “life-principle”, the “spirit or
soul of the world”, the sum total of consciousness existing in the world. In
a sense, everything is God. God's presence is clearest in the spiritual
aspects of reality, so every mind/spirit is, in some sense, God. When it is consciously received by men and
women, “divine energy” is often described as “Christic energy”. There is also
talk of Christ, but this does not mean Jesus of Nazareth. “Christ” is a title
applied to someone who has arrived at a state of consciousness where he or
she perceives him- or herself to be divine and can thus claim to be a
“universal Master”. Jesus of Nazareth was not the Christ, but simply
one among many historical figures in whom this “Christic” nature is revealed,
as is the case with Buddha and others. Every historical realisation of the Christ
shows clearly that all human beings are heavenly and divine, and leads them
towards this realisation. The innermost and most personal (“psychic”)
level on which this “divine cosmic energy” is “heard” by human beings is also
called “Holy Spirit”. 2.3.4.3. ...the world? The move from a mechanistic model of
classical physics to the “holistic” one of modern atomic and sub-atomic
physics, based on the concept of matter as waves or energy rather than
particles, is central to much New Age thinking. The universe is an ocean
of energy, which is a single whole or a network of links. The energy
animating the single organism which is the universe is “spirit”. There is no
alterity between God and the world. The world itself is divine and it
undergoes an evolutionary process which leads from inert matter to “higher
and perfect consciousness”. The world is uncreated, eternal and
self-sufficient The future of the world is based on an inner dynamism which
is necessarily positive and leads to the reconciled (divine) unity of all that
exists. God and the world, soul and body, intelligence and feeling, heaven
and earth are one immense vibration of energy. James Lovelock's book on the Gaia Hypothesis
claims that “the entire range of living matter on earth, from whales to
viruses, and from oaks to algae, could be regarded as constituting a single
living entity, capable of manipulating the Earth's atmosphere to suit its
overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its
constituent parts”.38 To some, the Gaia hypothesis is “a strange
synthesis of individualism and collectivism. It all happens as if New Age,
having plucked people out of fragmentary politics, cannot wait to throw them
into the great cauldron of the global mind”. The global brain needs
institutions with which to rule, in other words, a world government. “To deal
with today's problems New Age dreams of a spiritual aristocracy in the
style of Plato's Republic, run by secret societies...”.39
This may be an exaggerated way of stating the case, but there is much
evidence that gnostic élitism and global governance coincide on many issues
in international politics. Everything in the universe is interelated; in
fact every part is in itself an image of the totality; the whole is in every
thing and every thing is in the whole. In the “great chain of being”, all
beings are intimately linked and form one family with different grades of
evolution. Every human person is a hologram, an image of the whole of
creation, in which every thing vibrates on its own frequency. Every human
being is a neurone in earth's central nervous system, and all individual
entities are in a relationship of complementarity with others. In fact, there
is an inner complementarity or androgyny in the whole of creation.40
One of the recurring themes in New Age writings
and thought is the “new paradigm” which contemporary science has opened up.
“Science has given us insights into wholes and systems, stress and
transformation. We are learning to read tendencies, to recognise the early
signs of another, more promising, paradigm. We create alternative scenarios
of the future. We communicate about the failures of old systems, forcing new
frameworks for problem-solving in every area”.41 Thus far, the
“paradigm shift” is a radical change of perspective, but nothing more. The
question is whether thought and real change are commensurate, and how
effective in the external world an inner transformation can be proved to be.
One is forced to ask, even without expressing a negative judgement, how
scientific a thought-process can be when it involves affirmations like this:
“War is unthinkable in a society of autonomous people who have discovered the
connectedness of all humanity, who are unafraid of alien ideas and alien
cultures, who know that all revolutions begin within and that you cannot
impose your brand of enlightenment on anyone else”.42 It is
illogical to conclude from the fact that something is unthinkable that it
cannot happen. Such reasoning is really gnostic, in the sense of giving too
much power to knowledge and consciousness. This is not to deny the
fundamental and crucial role of developing consciousness in scientific
discovery and creative development, but simply to caution against imposing
upon external reality what is as yet still only in the mind. 2.4. “Inhabitants of myth rather than
history”43?: New Age and culture “Basically, the appeal of the New Age
has to do with the culturally stimulated interest in the self, its value,
capacities and problems. Whereas traditionalised religiosity, with its
hierarchical organization, is well-suited for the community,
detraditionalized spirituality is well-suited for the individual. The New
Age is 'of' the self in that it facilitates celebration of what it is to
be and to become; and 'for' the self in that by differing from much of the
mainstream, it is positioned to handle identity problems generated by
conventional forms of life”.44 The rejection of tradition in the form of
patriarchal, hierarchical social or ecclesial organisation implies the search
for an alternative form of society, one that is clearly inspired by the
modern notion of the self. Many New Age writings argue that one can do
nothing (directly) to change the world, but everything to change oneself;
changing individual consciousness is understood to be the (indirect) way to
change the world. The most important instrument for social change is personal
example. Worldwide recognition of these personal examples will steadily lead
to the transformation of the collective mind and such a transformation will
be the major achievement of our time. This is clearly part of the holistic
paradigm, and a re-statement of the classical philosophical question of the
one and the many. It is also linked to Jung's espousal of the theory of
correspondence and his rejection of causality. Individuals are fragmentary
representations of the planetary hologram; by looking within one not only knows
the universe, but also changes it. But the more one looks within,
the smaller the political arena becomes. Does this really fit in with the
rhetoric of democratic participation in a new planetary order, or is it an
unconscious and subtle disempowerment of people, which could leave them open
to manipulation? Does the current preoccupation with planetary problems
(ecological issues, depletion of resources, over-population, the economic gap
between north and south, the huge nuclear arsenal and political instability)
enable or disable engagement in other, equally real, political and social
questions? The old adage that “charity begins at home” can give a healthy
balance to one's approach to these issues. Some observers of New Age detect
a sinister authoritarianism behind apparent indifference to politics. David
Spangler himself points out that one of the shadows of the New Age is
“a subtle surrender to powerlessness and irresponsibility in the name of
waiting for the New Age to come rather than being an active creator of
wholeness in one's own life”.45 Even though it would hardly be correct to
suggest that quietism is universal in New Age attitudes, one of the
chief criticisms of the New Age Movement is that its privatistic quest
for self-fulfilment may actually work against the possibility of a sound
religious culture. Three points bring this into focus: – it is questionable whether New Age demonstrates
the intellectual cogency to provide a complete picture of the cosmos
in a world view which claims to integrate nature and spiritual reality. The
Western universe is seen as a divided one based on monotheism, transcendence,
alterity and separateness. A fundamental dualism is detected in such
divisions as those between real and ideal, relative and absolute, finite and
infinite, human and divine, sacred and profane, past and present, all
redolent of Hegel's “unhappy consciousness”. This is portrayed as something
tragic. The response from New Age is unity through fusion: it claims
to reconcile soul and body, female and male, spirit and matter, human and
divine, earth and cosmos, transcendent and immanent, religion and science,
differences between religions, Yin and Yang. There is, thus, no more
alterity; what is left in human terms is transpersonality. The New Age
world is unproblematic: there is nothing left to achieve. But the
metaphysical question of the one and the many remains unanswered, perhaps
even unasked, in that there is a great deal of regret at the effects of
disunity and division, but the response is a description of how things would
appear in another vision. – New Age imports Eastern religious
practices piecemeal and re- interprets them to suit Westerners; this
involves a rejection of the language of sin and salvation, replacing it with
the morally neutral language of addiction and recovery. References to
extra-European influences are sometimes merely a “pseudo-Orientalisation” of
Western culture. Furthermore, it is hardly a genuine dialogue; in a context
where Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian influences are suspect, oriental
influences are used precisely because they are alternatives to Western
culture. Traditional science and medicine are felt to be inferior to holistic
approaches, as are patriarchal and particular structures in politics and
religion. All of these will be obstacles to the coming of the Age of
Aquarius; once again, it is clear that what is implied when people opt for
New Age alternatives is a complete break with the tradition that formed
them. Is this as mature and liberated as it is often thought or presumed to
be? – Authentic religious traditions encourage
discipline with the eventual goal of acquiring wisdom, equanimity and
compassion. New Age echoes society's deep, ineradicable yearning for an
integral religious culture, and for something more generic and enlightened
than what politicians generally offer, but it is not clear whether the
benefits of a vision based on the ever-expanding self are for individuals or
for societies. New Age training courses (what used to be known as
“Erhard seminar trainings” [EST] etc.) marry counter-cultural values with the
mainstream need to succeed, inner satisfaction with outer success; Findhorn's
“Spirit of Business” retreat transforms the experience of work while
increasing productivity; some New Age devotees are involved not only
to become more authentic and spontaneous, but also in order to become more
prosperous (through magic etc.). “What makes things even more appealing to
the enterprise-minded businessperson is that New Age trainings also resonate
with somewhat more humanistic ideas abroad in the world of business. The
ideas have to do with the workplace as a 'learning environment', 'bringing
life back to work', 'humanizing work', 'fulfilling the manager', 'people come
first' or 'unlocking potential'. Presented by New Age trainers, they are
likely to appeal to those businesspeople who have already been involved with
more (secular) humanistic trainings and who want to take things further: at
one and the same time for the sake of personal growth, happiness and
enthusiasm, as well as for commercial productivity”.46 So it is
clear that people involved do seek wisdom and equanimity for their own
benefit, but how much do the activities in which they are involved enable
them to work for the common good? Apart from the question of motivation, all
of these phenomena need to be judged by their fruits, and the question to ask
is whether they promote self or solidarity, not only with
whales, trees or like-minded people, but with the whole of creation –
including the whole of humanity. The most pernicious consequences of any
philosophy of egoism which is embraced by institutions or by large numbers of
people are identified by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as a set of “strategies to
reduce the number of those who will eat at humanity's table”.47
This is a key standard by which to evaluate the impact of any philosophy or
theory. Christianity always seeks to measure human endeavours by their
openness to the Creator and to all other creatures, a respect based firmly on
love. 2.5. Why has New Age grown so rapidly
and spread so effectively? Whatever questions and criticisms it may
attract, New Age is an attempt by people who experience the world as
harsh and heartless to bring warmth to that world. As a reaction to
modernity, it operates more often than not on the level of feelings,
instincts and emotions. Anxiety about an apocalyptic future of economic
instability, political uncertainty and climatic change plays a large part in
causing people to look for an alternative, resolutely optimistic relationship
to the cosmos. There is a search for wholeness and happiness, often on an
explicitly spiritual level. But it is significant that New Age has
enjoyed enormous success in an era which can be characterised by the almost
universal exaltation of diversity. Western culture has taken a step
beyond tolerance – in the sense of grudging acceptance or putting up with the
idiosyncrasies of a person or a minority group – to a conscious erosion of
respect for normality. Normality is presented as a morally loaded concept,
linked necessarily with absolute norms. For a growing number of people,
absolute beliefs or norms indicate nothing but an inability to tolerate other
people's views and convictions. In this atmosphere alternative life-styles
and theories have really taken off: it is not only acceptable but positively
good to be diverse.48 It is essential to bear in mind that people
are involved with New Age in very different ways and on many levels.
In most cases it is not really a question of “belonging” to a group or
movement; nor is there much conscious awareness of the principles on which
New Age is built. It seems that, for the most part, people are attracted
to particular therapies or practices, without going into their background,
and others are simply occasional consumers of products which are labelled “New
Age”. People who use aromatherapy or listen to “New Age” music,
for example, are usually interested in the effect they have on their health
or well-being; it is only a minority who go further into the subject, and try
to understand its theoretical (or “mystical”) significance. This fits
perfectly into the patterns of consumption in societies where amusement and
leisure play such an important part. The “movement” has adapted well to the
laws of the market, and it is partly because it is such an attractive
economic proposition that New Age has become so widespread. New Age
has been seen, in some cultures at least, as the label for a product created
by the application of marketing principles to a religious phenomenon.49
There is always going to be a way of profiting from people's perceived
spiritual needs. Like many other things in contemporary economics, New Age
is a global phenomenon held together and fed with information by the mass
media. It is arguable that this global community was created by means of the
mass media, and it is quite clear that popular literature and mass
communications ensure that the common notions held by “believers” and
sympathisers spread almost everywhere very rapidly. However, there is no way
of proving that such a rapid spread of ideas is either by chance or by
design, since this is a very loose form of “community”. Like the
cybercommunities created by the Internet, it is a domain where relationships
between people can be either very impersonal or interpersonal in only a very
selective sense. New Age has become immensely popular as a loose set
of beliefs, therapies and practices, which are often selected and combined at
will, irrespective of the incompatibilities and inconsistencies this may
imply. But this is obviously to be expected in a world- view self-consciously
based on “right-brain” intuitive thinking. And that is precisely why it is
important to discover and recognise the fundamental characteristics of New
Age ideas. What is offered is often described as simply “spiritual”,
rather than belonging to any religion, but there are much closer links to
particular Eastern religions than many “consumers” realise. This is obviously
important in “prayer”-groups to which people choose to belong, but it is also
a real question for management in a growing number of companies, whose
employees are required to practise meditation and adopt mind-expanding
techniques as part of their life at work.50 It is worth saying a brief word about
concerted promotion of New Age as an ideology, but this is a very
complex issue. Some groups have reacted to New Age with sweeping
accusations about conspiracies, but the answer would generally be that we are
witnessing a spontaneous cultural change whose course is fairly determined by
influences beyond human control. However, it is enough to point out that
New Age shares with a number of internationally influential groups the
goal of superseding or transcending particular religions in order to create
space for a universal religion which could unite humanity. Closely related to
this is a very concerted effort on the part of many institutions to invent a Global
Ethic, an ethical framework which would reflect the global nature of
contemporary culture, economics and politics. Further, the politicisation of
ecological questions certainly colours the whole question of the Gaia
hypothesis or worship of mother earth. 3 NEW AGE AND CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY 3.1. New Age as spirituality New Age is often referred to by those who promote it
as a “new spirituality”. It seems ironic to call it “new” when so many of its
ideas have been taken from ancient religions and cultures. But what really is
new is that New Age is a conscious search for an alternative to
Western culture and its Judaeo-Christian religious roots. “Spirituality” in
this way refers to the inner experience of harmony and unity with the whole
of reality, which heals each human person's feelings of imperfection and
finiteness. People discover their profound connectedness with the sacred
universal force or energy which is the nucleus of all life. When they have
made this discovery, men and women can set out on a path to perfection, which
will enable them to sort out their personal lives and their relationship to
the world, and to take their place in the universal process of becoming and
in the New Genesis of a world in constant evolution. The result is a cosmic
mysticism 51 based on people's awareness of a universe
burgeoning with dynamic energies. Thus cosmic energy, vibration, light, God,
love – even the supreme Self – all refer to one and the same reality, the
primal source present in every being. This spirituality consists of two distinct elements, one metaphysical, the other psychological. The metaphysical component comes from New Age's esoteric and theosophical roots, and is basically a new form of gnosis. Access to the divine is by knowledge of hidden mysteries, in each individual's search for “the real behind what is only apparent, the origin beyond time, the transcendent beyond what is merely fleeting, the primordial tradition behind merely ephemeral tradition, the other behind the self, the cosmic divinity beyond the incarnate individual”. Esoteric spirituality “is an investigation of Being beyond the separateness of beings, a sort of nostalgia for lost unity”.52 “Here one can see the gnostic matrix of esoteric spirituality. It is evident when the children of Aquarius search for the Transcendent Unity of religions. They tend to pick out of the historical religions only the esoteric nucleus, whose guardians they claim to be. They somehow deny history and will not accept that spirituality can be rooted in time or in any institution. Jesus of Nazareth is not God, but one of the many historical manifestations of the cosmic and universal Christ”.53 The psychological component of this kind of spirituality comes from the encounter between esoteric culture and psychology (cf. 2.32). New Age thus becomes an experience of personal psycho- spiritual transformation, seen as analogous to religious experience. For some people this transformation takes the form of a deep mystical experience, after a personal crisis or a lengthy spiritual search. For others it comes from the use of meditation or some sort of therapy, or from paranormal experiences which alter states of consciousness and provide insight into the unity of reality.54
3.2. Spiritual narcissism? Several authors see New Age spirituality as a kind of spiritual narcissism or pseudo-mysticism. It is interesting to note that this criticism was put forward even by an important exponent of New Age, David Spangler, who, in his later works, distanced himself from the more esoteric aspects of this current of thought. He wrote that, in the more popular forms of New Age, “individuals and groups are living out their own fantasies of adventure and power, usually of an occult or millenarian form.... The principal characteristic of this level is attachment to a private world of ego-fulfilment and a consequent (though not always apparent) withdrawal from the world. On this level, the New Age has become populated with strange and exotic beings, masters, adepts, extraterrestrials; it is a place of psychic powers and occult mysteries, of conspiracies and hidden teachings”.55 In a later work, David Spangler lists what he sees as the negative elements or “shadows” of the New Age: “alienation from the past in the name of the future; attachment to novelty for its own sake...; indiscriminateness and lack of discernment in the name of wholeness and communion, hence the failure to understand or respect the role of boundaries...; confusion of psychic phenomena with wisdom, of channeling with spirituality, of the New Age perspective with ultimate truth”.56 But, in the end, Spangler is convinced that selfish, irrational narcissism is limited to just a few new-agers. The positive aspects he stresses are the function of New Age as an image of change and as an incarnation of the sacred, a movement in which most people are “very serious seekers after truth”, working in the interest of life and inner growth. The commercial aspect of many products and therapies which bear the New Age label is brought out by David Toolan, an American Jesuit who spent several years in the New Age milieu. He observes that new-agers have discovered the inner life and are fascinated by the prospect of being responsible for the world, but that they are also easily overcome by a tendency to individualism and to viewing everything as an object of consumption. In this sense, while it is not Christian, New Age spirituality is not Buddhist either, inasmuch as it does not involve self-denial. The dream of mystical union seems to lead, in practice, to a merely virtual union, which, in the end, leaves people more alone and unsatisfied.
3.3. The Cosmic Christ In the early days of Christianity, believers in Jesus Christ were forced to face up to the gnostic religions. They did not ignore them, but took the challenge positively and applied the terms used of cosmic deities to Christ himself. The clearest example of this is in the famous hymn to Christ in Saint Paul's letter to the Christians at Colossae: “He is the image of the
unseen God and the first-born of all creation, For these early Christians, there was no new cosmic age to come; what they were celebrating with this hymn was the Fulfilment of all things which had begun in Christ. “Time is indeed fulfilled by the very fact that God, in the Incarnation, came down into human history. Eternity entered into time: what 'fulfilment' could be greater than this? What other 'fulfilment' would be possible?” 57 Gnostic belief in cosmic powers and some obscure kind of destiny withdraws the possibility of a relationship to a personal God revealed in Christ. For Christians, the real cosmic Christ is the one who is present actively in the various members of his body, which is the Church. They do not look to impersonal cosmic powers, but to the loving care of a personal God; for them cosmic bio-centrism has to be transposed into a set of social relationships (in the Church); and they are not locked into a cyclical pattern of cosmic events, but focus on the historical Jesus, in particular on his crucifixion and resurrection. We find in the Letter to the Colossians and in the New Testament a doctrine of God different from that implicit in New Age thought: the Christian conception of God is one of a Trinity of Persons who has created the human race out of a desire to share the communion of Trinitarian life with creaturely persons. Properly understood, this means that authentic spirituality is not so much our search for God but God's search for us. Another, completely different, view of the cosmic significance of Christ has become current in New Age circles. “The Cosmic Christ is the divine pattern that connects in the person of Jesus Christ (but by no means is limited to that person). The divine pattern of connectivity was made flesh and set up its tent among us (John 1:14).... The Cosmic Christ... leads a new exodus from the bondage and pessimistic views of a Newtonian, mechanistic universe so ripe with competition, winners and losers, dualisms, anthropocentrism, and the boredom that comes when our exciting universe is pictured as a machine bereft of mystery and mysticism. The Cosmic Christ is local and historical, indeed intimate to human history. The Cosmic Christ might be living next door or even inside one's deepest and truest self”.58 Although this statement may not satisfy everyone involved in New Age, it does catch the tone very well, and it shows with absolute clarity where the differences between these two views of Christ lie. For New Age the Cosmic Christ is seen as a pattern which can be repeated in many people, places and times; it is the bearer of an enormous paradigm shift; it is ultimately a potential within us. According to Christian belief, Jesus Christ is not a pattern, but a divine person whose human-divine figure reveals the mystery of the Father's love for every person throughout history (Jn 3:16); he lives in us because he shares his life with us, but it is neither imposed nor automatic. All men and women are invited to share his life, to live “in Christ”.
3.4. Christian mysticism and New Age mysticism For Christians, the spiritual life is a relationship with God which gradually through his grace becomes deeper, and in the process also sheds light on our relationship with our fellow men and women, and with the universe. Spirituality in New Age terms means experiencing states of consciousness dominated by a sense of harmony and fusion with the Whole. So “mysticism” refers not to meeting the transcendent God in the fullness of love, but to the experience engendered by turning in on oneself, an exhilarating sense of being at one with the universe, a sense of letting one's individuality sink into the great ocean of Being.59 This fundamental distinction is evident at all levels of comparison between Christian mysticism and New Age mysticism. The New Age way of purification is based on awareness of unease or alienation, which is to be overcome by immersion into the Whole. In order to be converted, a person needs to make use of techniques which lead to the experience of illumination. This transforms a person's consciousness and opens him or her to contact with the divinity, which is understood as the deepest essence of reality. The techniques and methods offered in this immanentist religious system, which has no concept of God as person, proceed 'from below'. Although they involve a descent into the depths of one's own heart or soul, they constitute an essentially human enterprise on the part of a person who seeks to rise towards divinity by his or her own efforts. It is often an “ascent” on the level of consciousness to what is understood to be a liberating awareness of “the god within”. Not everyone has access to these techniques, whose benefits are restricted to a privileged spiritual 'aristocracy'. The essential element in Christian faith, however, is God's descent towards his creatures, particularly towards the humblest, those who are weakest and least gifted according to the values of the “world”. There are spiritual techniques which it is useful to learn, but God is able to by-pass them or do without them. A Christian's “method of getting closer to God is not based on any technique in the strict sense of the word. That would contradict the spirit of childhood called for by the Gospel. The heart of genuine Christian mysticism is not technique: it is always a gift of God; and the one who benefits from it knows himself to be unworthy”.60 For Christians, conversion is turning back to the Father, through the Son, in docility to the power of the Holy Spirit. The more people progress in their relationship with God – which is always and in every way a free gift – the more acute is the need to be converted from sin, spiritual myopia and self-infatuation, all of which obstruct a trusting self-abandonment to God and openness to other men and women. All meditation techniques need to be purged of presumption and pretentiousness. Christian prayer is not an exercise in self-contemplation, stillness and self-emptying, but a dialogue of love, one which “implies an attitude of conversion, a flight from 'self' to the 'You' of God”.61 It leads to an increasingly complete surrender to God's will, whereby we are invited to a deep, genuine solidarity with our brothers and sisters.62
3.5. The “god within“ and “theosis” Here is a key point of contrast between New Age and Christianity. So much New Age literature is shot through with the conviction that there is no divine being “out there”, or in any real way distinct from the rest of reality. From Jung's time onwards there has been a stream of people professing belief in “the god within”. Our problem, in a New Age perspective, is our inability to recognise our own divinity, an inability which can be overcome with the help of guidance and the use of a whole variety of techniques for unlocking our hidden (divine) potential. The fundamental idea is that 'God' is deep within ourselves. We are gods, and we discover the unlimited power within us by peeling off layers of inauthenticity.63 The more this potential is recognised, the more it is realised, and in this sense the New Age has its own idea of theosis, becoming divine or, more precisely, recognising and accepting that we are divine. We are said by some to be living in “an age in which our understanding of God has to be interiorised: from the Almighty God out there to God the dynamic, creative power within the very centre of all being: God as Spirit”.64 In the Preface to Book V of Adversus Haereses, Saint Irenaeus refers to “Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself”. Here theosis, the Christian understanding of divinisation, comes about not through our own efforts alone, but with the assistance of God's grace working in and through us. It inevitably involves an initial awareness of incompleteness and even sinfulness, in no way an exaltation of the self. Furthermore, it unfolds as an introduction into the life of the Trinity, a perfect case of distinction at the heart of unity; it is synergy rather than fusion. This all comes about as the result of a personal encounter, an offer of a new kind of life. Life in Christ is not something so personal and private that it is restricted to the realm of consciousness. Nor is it merely a new level of awareness. It involves being transformed in our soul and in our body by participation in the sacramental life of the Church.
4 NEW AGE AND CHRISTIAN FAITH IN CONTRAST It is difficult to separate the individual elements of New Age religiosity – innocent though they may appear – from the overarching framework which permeates the whole thought-world on the New Age movement. The gnostic nature of this movement calls us to judge it in its entirety. From the point of view of Christian faith, it is not possible to isolate some elements of New Age religiosity as acceptable to Christians, while rejecting others. Since the New Age movement makes much of a communication with nature, of cosmic knowledge of a universal good – thereby negating the revealed contents of Christian faith – it cannot be viewed as positive or innocuous. In a cultural environment, marked by religious relativism, it is necessary to signal a warning against the attempt to place New Age religiosity on the same level as Christian faith, making the difference between faith and belief seem relative, thus creating greater confusion for the unwary. In this regard, it is useful to remember the exhortation of St. Paul “to instruct certain people not to teach false doctrine or to concern themselves with myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the plan of God that is to be received by faith” (1 Tim 1:3-4). Some practices are incorrectly labeled as New Age simply as a marketing strategy to make them sell better, but are not truly associated with its worldview. This only adds to the confusion. It is therefore necessary to accurately identify those elements which belong to the New Age movement, and which cannot be accepted by those who are faithful to Christ and his Church. The following questions may be the easiest key to evaluating some of the central elements of New Age thought and practice from a Christian standpoint. “New Age” refers to the ideas which circulate about God, the human being and the world, the people with whom Christians may have conversations on religious matters, the publicity material for meditation groups, therapies and the like, explicit statements on religion and so on. Some of these questions applied to people and ideas not explicitly labelled New Age would reveal further unnamed or unacknowledged links with the whole New Age atmosphere.
* Is God a being with whom we have a relationship or something to be used or a force to be harnessed? The New Age concept of God is rather diffuse, whereas the Christian concept is a very clear one. The New Age god is an impersonal energy, really a particular extension or component of the cosmos; god in this sense is the life-force or soul of the world. Divinity is to be found in every being, in a gradation “from the lowest crystal of the mineral world up to and beyond the Galactic God himself, about Whom we can say nothing at all. This is not a man but a Great Consciousness”.65 In some “classic” New Age writings, it is clear that human beings are meant to think of themselves as gods: this is more fully developed in some people than in others. God is no longer to be sought beyond the world, but deep within myself.66 Even when “God” is something outside myself, it is there to be manipulated. This is very different from the Christian understanding of God as the maker of heaven and earth and the source of all personal life. God is in himself personal, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who created the universe in order to share the communion of his life with creaturely persons. “God, who 'dwells in unapprochable light', wants to communicate his own divine life to the men he freely created, in order to adopt them as his sons in his only-begotten Son. By revealing himself God wishes to make them capable of responding to him, and of knowing him, and of loving him far beyond their own natural capacity”.67God is not identified with the Life-principle understood as the “Spirit” or “basic energy” of the cosmos, but is that love which is absolutely different from the world, and yet creatively present in everything, and leading human beings to salvation. * Is there just one Jesus Christ, or are there thousands of Christs? Jesus Christ is often presented in New Age literature as one among many wise men, or initiates, or avatars, whereas in Christian tradition He is the Son of God. Here are some common points in New Age approaches: – the personal and individual historical Jesus is distinct from the eternal, impersonal universal Christ; – Jesus is not considered to be the only Christ; – the death of Jesus on the cross is either denied or re-interpreted to exclude the idea that He, as Christ, could have suffered; – extra-biblical documents (like the neo-gnostic gospels) are considered authentic sources for the knowledge of aspects of the life of Jesus which are not to be found in the canon of Scripture. Other revelations about Jesus, made available by entities, spirit guides and ascended masters, or even through the Akasha Chronicles, are basic for New Age christology; – a kind of esoteric exegesis is applied to biblical texts to |
