The New Age Vision
The book manuscript The New Age Vision is now complete. It stands at 280 pages. I am actively seeking publication for it.
Below you will find the Contents and also the Preface, Basic Themes, Orientation, and the first chapter. Hopefully this is enough to whet your appetite for reading more of The New Age Vision and learning more about the New Age philosophy that I am unfolding.
Contents
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The New Age I Sing (poem) |
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Basic Themes for the New Age |
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Orientation: Welcome to the New Age |
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I Celebrate the Lightworker (poem) |
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2 An Age of Crisis—and Transition: Postmodernism |
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The Transformer (poem) |
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13 The Emerging New Story of Us |
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We, The Aquarians (poem) |
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14 We Pour Forth |
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A New Age Prayer |
273 |
Notes |
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Note: The poems above are all taken from my collection Advent.
Preface
It is curious that at this juncture in the New Age Story the question What is the New Age? still has not been adequately addressed. With all the New Age leaders and teachers active today, we would have thought that this question would have been clearly answered by now. It is still a stumbling block, in fact, to many in the New Age movement itself. We find in the movement that confusion continues as to what the New Age actually means. What we too often get is guessing, misconceptions, partial answers, general statements that hang in mid-air, a certain hedging, and a constant beating-around-the-bush: What we don’t get is an in-depth exposition of what, indeed, this New Age we are entering is all about. We might well have wondered, Where are the New Age philosophers? Or would this question have been premature—until now?
I hope to address this question about the New Age in as complete and satisfactory a manner as is possible today. Not that this work is a full explication of a New Age philosophy, which is still to come, or an in-depth exploration of all of its many aspects, which would be a work more rigorous and much lengthier than this, but is in essential outline an attempt to at least satisfy my own observation of a lack. The New Age Vision is complex in its themes and requires a gradual unfolding. The following work proceeds in a sort of spiral fashion as these themes are developed in stages, where what was hidden in a seed is slowly revealed as a tree. New concepts and transformations of traditional concepts are branches of the tree. Some of this may be startling to those who might have thought that the New Age had already wrapped itself up, and had essentially come to nothing. Whereas those expecting to read here what so many feel are simply wild, airy-fairy New Age claims may perhaps find themselves disappointed. I do believe, though, that some extraordinary lines of thought will be developed. Extraordinary enough, perhaps, to even convince those who see in the New Age nothing more than the pipe dream of spiritual escapism that there may actually be something significant afoot in it after all.
This is not then a pep talk book about how New Age ideas might present some wonderful, new, utopian vision filled with peace and love. I do not wear rose-colored glasses about the New Age or the condition of today’s world. The world today appears to be spiraling to some disaster or another, and so I will call it as I see it. It would be a mere, wishful, pipe dream to think that the New Age we are entering makes any sort of promise that everyone “gets out alive.”
This, I hope, is a work that will help to bridge the New Age movement to traditional thought and ground it in its historical context. What I offer, however, is not meant to be a scholarly history of the New Age movement, nor a stand back and observe academic exercise: What I attempt is to literally present and define the New Age Vision by having lived squarely within it, by seeing firsthand.
Basic Themes for the New Age
The Aquarian dispensation: Spirit dispenses a new evolutionary lesson (a new World Age).
Enough of Postmodernism: The overcoming, transformation, of Postmodernism.
Reality is more than what it appears: We are beginning to enter the worlds of the Invisible.
To know firsthand: To know for oneself: A return to gnosis: “I know for myself.”
Openness as the Aquarian existential attunement involving a new relationship to Being.
All that is hidden is to be revealed: No more secrets.
We pour forth: We pour forth into the open Air for all: The Water Bearer.
Reconnecting with soul via Spirit coming-to-us anew in the guise of soul: Psyche.
Discovering the Higher Self: Key to the Aquarian dispensation.
Psyche: Spirit of soul as the Living Image of the Higher Self: The liberation of soul.
Psyche as Mythos, the new Word, of the New Age: Psyche as The Water Bearer.
Developing a relationship with the Higher Self that is direct, ongoing, co-creative.
The integration of heart and mind / soul and Spirit.
Being a Transformer: Transforming all that has been: Transforming the Traditions.
Our psychospiritual evolution: A bi-transformational process: An interactive inner & outer process.
Conscious evolution: We are now collectively in the position of consciously evolving ourselves.
Our encounter with The Other: Recognition of Other Intelligence: ETs are real: The return of the Gods.
Aquarius: Opening up to the higher mind of intuition beyond the rational.
Aquarian communication as being long-distant, invisible, instantaneous, collective.
The integration of Technos & Psyche: The needful integration of technology and spirituality.
A new understanding of Energy involving recognition of new and alternative energies.
Gaia: The Web of all life on Earth: Our stewardship of Earth.
The Aquarius/Leo dynamic: Endless Revealing/Unlimited Creativity.
The Living Fountain: The new super-creativity.
Aquarius as the sign of androgyny: Psyche the Divine Androgyne.
The Self as our supreme creative project.
Mythmaking as the supreme New Age art: A return to Mythos.
Uranus, planetary ruler of Aquarius, as the Awakener, the Liberator.
The Next Level coming through: The astral-psychic.
Networking as an Aquarian social form.
Realizing and fulfilling our individuality within community.
We are all members of the universal human family.
Orientation:
Welcome to the New Age
We find many today speaking about their Visions and strange visitations. We find many sharing their extraordinary, paranormal experiences and encounters; many being addressed by what they claim to be otherworldly sources; and in one way or another, many more are finding themselves awakening to a new spiritual life. Indeed, there are many today realizing that they do have a higher purpose in this life. The Call of a New Age is coming through in a multitude of ways.
Thirty years ago, upon arriving in Santa Cruz , California , I knew almost nothing about the New Age. When I did begin to hear talk about it, soon after my arrival, as I met the early New Agers of that late 1970s time, I was its intellectual critic. With an academic background in the sciences and in traditional Western philosophy, I was impatient with what I pushed aside as so much nebulous fluff, pretension, and delusion. But, in my own way, like the Apostle Paul, who had, before his Vision and subsequent conversion to the Christ message, persecuted the first Christians of his time, I was soon to receive a Vision.* As I began the long process of assimilating this Vision, I was slowly, year by year, won over to the New Age message. Eventually I came to embrace it completely. I am now the first to admit, an openness to the Call of a New Age, or the direct experience of a Vision announcing it, makes it contagious. By that I mean, a new dispensation of Spirit is happening today, in our midst, and it is finding in every individual who is open to it the opportunity to awaken that individual to that dispensation more and more. It is no coincidence that this parallels exactly what happened in the ancient world at the time of the birth of Christianity.
In our early youth, there were those of us who were assured by our teachers and the society around us that science would soon provide us the Truth, most importantly, the Truth about our existence, since no religion, according to Modern and Postmodern critique, could any longer pretend to do so. That promise, of course, failed to materialize. To those, however, who still might suggest that we have not waited long enough, that science will eventually—someday—reveal to us all that we wish to know, I can only reply, I am not waiting around for that someday. I am not going to wait for something that undoubtedly will never arrive, when what I need to do is live now. Science, as many others have said, does not provide us the existential meaning we are in so great a need of today. Science alone cannot provide the Big Picture of who we are, where we belong in the cosmos, and where we are going. So where does that leave us? Where did it leave me? In a state of existential disorientation. For there was no returning for me into the arms of traditional religion—there was no turning in repose to any traditional religion. I underwent the Postmodern experience, and it became time to move beyond it—a Vision of a New Age was opening before me…
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A Preliminary Discussion:
Objections to the New Age
I thought it best that we begin our exploration of the New Age by first considering the objections to it that we are most apt to hear. Why the objections? What is it that people say about the New Age movement that has given it such a poor image among so many? Is it still, in fact, even an active, a viable, movement at all? Already years ago I remember occasionally being warned about associating myself with the New Age movement. The usual implication was that the movement was just too airy-fairy, composed primarily of mushy-headed individuals who didn’t appear to have any capacity for critical thinking, and so it had hardly established for itself anything resembling credibility. Why, then, would I want to identify myself with that? But now and then someone would imply something more troubling—that there was in fact a danger involved in such an association, coming especially from Fundamentalists. Waving the New Age flag around was likened to making oneself a target of hatred. I couldn’t help but note that if the persecution of New Agers had any basis whatsoever—as far as I knew, I hadn’t heard of any specific incidents of it, but for the dismissive slights—, that it would curiously echo, however faintly, the blatant, murderous persecution of early Christians during the New Age phase of the ancient dawn of the Age of Pisces.
Today,
despite all the impressions to the contrary, there is, yes, still talk about
a New Age: The Age of Aquarius.
The phrases “New Age” and “Age of Aquarius” have
certainly been around for quite a number of years now. For many, though,
all this New Age talk is passé already, or is merely another example
of the kind of California hype that the rest of
First of all, whatever one might think, the New Age was not and is not a cultural fad. We have all heard references to the New Age of Aquarius as having been some 1960s “thing.” Didn’t the Age of Aquarius go out with the Sixties? we are sure to have heard. Some, apparently, have gotten the impression that it did; more accurately, however, there is something to be said that it might have gone out with the 1980s, when it appeared to have peaked as a fad, or, at least by the 1990s. Yet, if the phrase is indeed still currently in use, then obviously it hadn’t ended with the Sixties, or the Eighties or Nineties. I have heard it said that years ago the general notion in the media was that the New Age was some offbeat fad having primarily to do with angels and crystals. Now there is no doubt about it, we live in a society of fads—we find all sorts of youth fads, music fads, commercial fads, clothing fads (fashion), even artistic fads. Fads can last anywhere from under a year—long enough for a commercial season—to a couple, three, years, maybe even five years. Even if we stretch the time frame of a cultural fad to ten years—for example, the Me Decade of the Seventies—the New Age movement has been around much longer than that, and continues to develop. The first references to a New Age actually started appearing probably as early as the 19th Century—poet William Blake called out for a New Age in the early part of that century—, with theosophist H. P. Blavatsky initiating and anchoring the idea in the metaphysical community going into the early 20th Century, in addition to some years later of the work of Alice Bailey. Carl Jung in the mid-20th Century clearly saw a New Age dawning with his psychological interpretation of the Christian Piscean Age and his claim that it had played itself out and was coming to an end. He, in fact, even based this on astrology, so the coming Age of Aquarius made perfect sense to him. We should make no mistake about it: The New Age is not a passing cultural fad.
For somewhat similar reasons, the New Age is not a cult. To begin with, a cult, by definition, is not something that can be applied to an “Age.” But what about the New Age as a movement, or the so-called New Age religions that have popped up in recent years, aren’t there cults here? First, even as a movement—a movement, again, that is worldwide—, we do not see any central cult figure, no one cult center, no cult doctrines or beliefs, no cultists under one common banner called the “New Age.” Certainly there may be any number of little cults within the New Age movement—as Christianity itself certainly has—, but such cults are an anachronism that do not genuinely represent the global reach of the new Aquarian Age. It is questionable, as a matter of fact, whether the New Age, at this time, can be considered any kind of unified movement at all. A loose-knit movement comprising diverse groups, yes, but a movement still lacking, up to now, at least, its unifying Vision.
The same can be said for any references regarding a New Age religion. Though claims might be made by various groups that they represent the New Age religion—there are indeed many varieties of religion under the umbrella of New Age—, there is as of yet, though, no one generally accepted New Age religion that everyone can point to; however, that is not to say that there is not increasingly a need for such a religion. To start with, it should be made abundantly clear that none of the world’s traditional religions can be considered the religion for the New Age. But the New Age religion that is coming will definitely be a transformation of them all. The genuine New Age religion that is coming will have the fundamental characteristic of being a universal religion because it will emerge in a “global village” context. Keeping in mind that our thinking today must be global and comprehensive of all that has gone before us, the New Age religion would subsume all other major religions as earlier cultural forms of the Piscean and other previous World Ages.
We should fully realize that the New Age universal religion to come is not one that we can somehow intellectually design and then will into existence. It is not as if we can take the so-called best of all current religions and somehow blend them together in a syncretic sort of stew and expect that it will speak to us in our soul. That might be an interesting scholar’s exercise, but it is certainly not how a genuine religion is born. We can be sure then that the New Age universal religion to come is not going to be established by a committee of scholars based on a comparative study of the world’s great religions. This would be, for one thing, to utterly misunderstand the meaning of transformation: Transformation in this regard involves an originary Vision, a Revelation, an emergent spiritual Form, that over time makes new previous cultural forms by assimilating them into itself and thereby giving them new life. Religion, in essence, still requires such a Revelation.
Those who are active in the New Age movement are all, in one way or another, preparing for this new, universal religion, whether they fully realize it or not. I, myself, prefer to be conscious about it, and openly honest about what I see as my life work. Indeed, a New Age Aquarian stance is that of being more genuinely honest about ourselves and what it is we are about.
It must already be apparent that I am not afraid of the word ‘religion.’ There are many today, and within the New Age movement itself, who strongly dislike this word ‘religion.’ They will emphasize a distinction between religion and spirituality. No, I am not religious, but I am spiritual, we have certainly all heard someone say. The usual implication is that religion is an outdated, divisive, dangerous, restricting, exclusionary institutionalized system, whereas spirituality is directly experiential and liberating, totally open to all that Spirit might reveal. It is a new spirituality that they advocate, not another new “religion.” The last thing we need is another religion, I’m sure we have also heard someone say. I clearly understand the distinction they are trying to make, but I do not see “religion” and one’s “spirituality” as mutually exclusive, or necessarily in permanent conflict. I think of religion in its original, fundamental sense, and that is, of a tying back to the Source, to Spirit, and that tying back taking cultural form. In other words, religion becomes the cultural embodiment of—the symbolic—mythic—form, the Great Story, for holding—the spiritual life. How often when I do hear those who insist on this distinction, after disposing of religion and proclaiming how spiritual they are, that it turns out that by “spiritual” is meant something utterly vague, abstract, nebulous, some mystical “feeling,” that scarcely has any embodiment in form. Spirituality, in other words, is left floating in the clouds as a feeling of a great “Something,” or perhaps of how we are all interconnected as one, but, then, that’s as far as it goes—nothing tangible is really made of it. Of course, there are concrete spiritual practices—as many who turn to the East readily find them there—that are very clearly defined, laid out in specific, definite forms, that one becomes practiced at, such as the scores of meditation techniques, yoga paths, mantra practices, tantra, tai chi, martial arts, etc. (The one danger here is that one’s “spirituality” gets caught up in techniques, and one then loses sight of that greater “Something.”) What I am suggesting is that the new, universal religion I speak of will unfold as a natural, cultural development—ultimately as the new Great Story to be told—of the experience of New Age spirituality.
Let us consider now the claim that might be made by someone who is loyal to one of the traditional religions. We meet someone who appears to be savvy about spiritual matters who will say, for example, that Buddhism has all the answers we need, and that it is spiritually superior to the other traditions. He or she finds it completely satisfactory and fulfilling. Now that may well be the case for any given individual. I honestly do not see, however, our society turning en masse to Buddhism as the one religion we all need. Christians, of course, are quick to jump in with their claim. But taking Buddhism as our example, it cannot be the religion of the New Age because it comes with its own cultural baggage. To be a Buddhist seriously involves borrowing its mythology, its culture, its voluminous texts, its doctrines, and usually implies spending at least some period of time in a monastery. To be a Buddhist means accepting its age-old doctrines as though the world has not changed since ancient times. It must be stressed that the New Age is not about simply borrowing other people’s culture, or religion, no matter how enlightened it might be; it is about opening to Spirit anew on our own soil. Certainly we are challenged to absorb and assimilate all the religious traditions that have been passed down to us to the extent that we are able, but the New Age Vision foresees a transformation of them all. There are important realities today that any New Age religion must confront. Where in the Buddhist texts is there mention of the new physics and new biology, of all the new technologies—the cyberworld, for example, of ecological issues in a technological world, or of how a contemporary world should handle the impact of ET contact? For that matter, where in Buddhism is there mention of Christ’s mission, and then vice versa—where in Christianity is there serious acceptance of Buddha? Though any of the world’s religions can satisfy multitudes in their respective societies—and billions today are of course still loyal to their religious traditions—, I do not find Buddhism, as only one example here, satisfying the New Age requirement of contemporary universality.
Fundamentalist Christianity presents another issue for us. Many Fundamentalist Christian leaders have expressed their fear of the New Age. They write books warning the Christian world of the New Age threat to their Truth, and they often consider it a more dangerous threat to Christianity, in fact, than any of the other traditions. What they fundamentally fear about the New Age is change. The main lesson for them is that, as with all tradition and culture, religions, too, must change with the changing of the times—“the times” symbolically meant here is the changing of the Ages, not measured by anything like a few years, decades, or even centuries. Whereas the arts have gone through quite rapid changes in the Modern, and now Postmodern, world, and science, though traditionally conservative, has its revolutions and paradigm shifts, religions have adamantly resisted change. The reason is, as Fundamentalists of any Tradition claim, is that their religion has already embodied the Truth. (All of what is being said here applies equally as importantly to Fundamentalist Islam.) Why change what is Truth? they say. Or, better yet, we have no right to change what is Truth. The misunderstanding is to think that we, the ego-self collective, can change the “Truth”; rather, it is the “Truth” that changes itself through us. Religions, too, must change as Revelation is given to us anew. This does not imply, then, by any means, that the Traditions are rejected out of hand; no, not at all—they are to be absorbed, assimilated, and transformed. Fundamentalist Christians of today may yet live to see the New Age Vision transforming their Truth. It is the intention at the very heart of our psychospiritual evolution.
We are well aware that there are some, even within the loose-knit New Age movement itself, who are simply tired of hearing the phrase ‘New Age,’ and often feel quite strongly that the phrase should be dropped. I am sorry they feel that way, but to suggest that the phrase ‘New Age’ has somehow been used up like some commodity of contemporary commercialism is rather premature. True, someday it will have exhausted its relevant meaningfulness, but that someday is still many years away—30, perhaps 50, perhaps even a hundred years away. (As long as scholars continue to tell us that we live in a Postmodern world, we know that we have not yet even collectively entered the New Age.) Interestingly, the words ‘Christianity’ and ‘Buddhism’ have not been worn out yet. We don’t hear people too often complaining about the overuse of the word ‘Christian,’ for example. I never really hear anyone saying they are tired of hearing the word ‘Christian,’ or ‘Buddhist,’ or ‘Muslim,’ and yet, ‘New Age’ will provoke such strong, negative reactions in some people.
Again, among those tired of hearing ‘New Age’ are surprisingly some who are firmly planted within the “New Age movement” itself, however awkwardly they attempt to squirm out from being identified with it. They will say, for example, It’s time to come up with a different word now, it’s that time to coin a different phrase. And so we watch as they ingeniously try to coin the new phrase, some neologism that can capture the essence of what is happening today. So we hear of “the new consciousness,” “the new spirituality,” “new thought,” “wholistic thought,” “the new paradigm,” (all phrases that are, of course, rather vague and general), or others, such as “the Awakening,” “the Quickening,” “the Shift.” They all do sound simply like variants of “New Age,” but without the profound implication already packed into the growing momentum of the whole notion of a ‘New Age.’ For ‘New Age,’ I claim, is the perfectly appropriate phrase that expresses what this transition period, this shift, we are entering is all about, and we should be courageous in our continued use of it. I challenge anyone to suggest a better term than ‘New Age’ at this juncture in our Story; it, in fact, easily absorbs the meaning of the various other terms that are currently being offered. Those who feel they must come up with a new catch phrase every few years are only falling prey to our society’s mania for using up and throwing away faddish things. And coining new phrases to replace ‘New Age’ only muddies the water. Of course, there will always be those—for whatever reason—who want to muddy the water. (Again, lest I be misunderstood at this point—I will explain further later—I am not saying our current historical time, globally, can yet be called New Age. No, not yet. Our current historical time is still characterized by almost all scholars as Postmodern. I am implying by this then that spiritually, Postmodern and New Age are utterly distinct. Obviously, though, the New Age movement is occurring in a Postmodern context.)
In my twenties, I myself went through a phase where I felt disgusted every time I heard the word ‘new.’ We were being deluged by new this, new that, everything new, new, new; it was a disease started by Modernism that was still spreading into and infecting every aspect of life. My first resistance to the notion of a New Age was clearly because of the use of the word ‘new.’ It took some time for me to swallow my distaste for the word and to turn around and realize the profound implication of what a new World Age really meant, and to accept the fact that the New Age movement was what I was indeed in search of, that here was where my thinking and my experience were leading me.
We should mention that there are those who are uncomfortable with any label whatsoever—they want to carry on their life work independent of labels. Why does it need a label? they ask. And they can be quite bullheaded about it; they don’t want to belong to anything that might limit them, or pigeonhole them, in any way. They don’t want to be identified in a cultural context, to be historically situated, by the use of any label. But the reality is that we are all historically situated, there is really no escape from that. They are also neglecting the fact that all past historical figures participated in some cultural movement, period, era, though they may not have always seen themselves in such a context in their lifetime. (The one, positive contribution of Postmodernism is to see such a context, that we are always in a context.) Or, perhaps, we can look at it this way: It is as if a Christian or a Buddhist were to say, Don’t label me a Christian! or, Don’t label me a Buddhist! Again, we must have the courage for acknowledging who we are in the greater cultural context. And in today’s hyper-self-conscious world, it is hardly possible to be unreflective about our historical self-image. It is actually disingenuous.
Then we are hit with the retort, There’s really nothing new about the New Age at all. It’s all old stuff rehashed. It has all been said before. True, there is nothing new about mysticism or occult practices, meditation, yoga, astrology, crystals, psychics and psychic healing, Earth spirits, shamanism, even channeling. We can find all of it already in mystical Christianity, Sufism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, the occult tradition, paganism, and in Native American traditions. True, there is nothing really new about any of this; there is plenty of old Tradition under the umbrella “New Age.” But the mistake is to think that the New Age is reducible to any of the above, or to all of them somehow blended together. The current resurgence of interest in metaphysics, in the occult, in ancient wisdom, or the turning of Westerners to the East for existential, spiritual answers, is not, in its essence, the New Age. One is not New Age, in the profound sense, simply because one meditates, eats health foods, practices yoga, astrology or new alchemy, or works with crystals or herbs, or is into channeling. All of these occult and spiritual practices and areas of study—and we must include all the psychotherapies available today—are only a preparation, a mulch for the cultural soil from which the tree called “New Age” will rise. In essence, the New Age is a new spiritual dispensation, and the tree of this dispensation will transform the very soil in which it grows. Those who claim not to see anything new yet are only indirectly pointing to the fact that the New Age has barely begun, that the new collective spiritual inspiration of Aquarius has yet to be dispensed. But the New Age Vision is definitely here. And there are some few of us who are already receiving that dispensation.
Even among “New Agers” we find this needless arguing about the newness of the New Age. We will hear, Haven’t we gone through this cycle before? Didn’t the ancient so-and-so civilization know all this already? Instead of arguing about how “new” the New Age really is, the essential point is to understand that we are entering a new World Age—we are moving into another astrological Age which will bring to the fore a different set of grand themes, a whole different global context, resulting in a profound shift in consciousness, unlike anything we have known in recent centuries of civilization.
As for Eastern religious traditions going back thousands of years, true enough, but that was obviously in the East. The Eastern spiritual influence has only in recent decades burgeoned in the West, helping to create a “new” spiritual context. But this is still not the new in New Age. The same can be said for the occult arts. They had largely been practiced by an underground minority throughout the long history of Christianity. The Church had suppressed occultism—all of paganism, for that matter—for its own dogmatic and political reasons. Under this suppression, occult “secrets” were meant only for the few, those who sought them out for their own spiritual growth, and who knew the importance of keeping the ancient occult tradition alive. In recent centuries, modern science, too, has helped to suppress these arts, by criticizing them as so much archaic superstition. But here, too, the situation is changing as the growth of interest in spiritual/occult matters continues, openly, in the general public. Today, there is no longer, by and large, a political necessity for such secrecy. Greater numbers are taking active interest in alternative approaches to the spiritual life; the old Sunday religion, for many, is no longer good enough. There are those who want more. Specifically, they want actual, firsthand, spiritual experience, not mere beliefs, and not mere lip service. Occult “secrets” to the spiritual life are now being shared with all. Consider the hundreds, no, thousands, of books that have come out in recent years on every conceivable aspect of spirituality and occultism. The New Age does sound the note of an eventual spiritual awakening in the masses. Yet, this alone still does not encapsulate the New Age. Again, the New Age is not simply a borrowing from the past or other cultures. All that we might assimilate from the past or from other cultures is but, again, preparing the mulch for the soil in which the New Age, like a tree, can take root and grow.
Another criticism we often hear regarding the New Age movement is its notorious commercial aspect. It is cynically contended that the “New Age” label is but a clever marketing ploy for the new therapeutic and spiritual supermarket—the “consciousness industry”—that has emerged since the Sixties, and is often affordable only for the well-to-do. Through “New Age” churches, temples, study centers, workshops, conferences, expos, lectures, bookstores, with all their books, tapes, videos, and magazines, every sort of religious, spiritual, occult fare has been laid out on the table for our consumption. And it’s all hyped up, we hear, so that it sells. We all know people—especially in the younger generation—who are turned off to the idea of the New Age because of this commercial aspect to it. (As if no one has ever heard of a Christian bookstore!) I was cynical about it myself at one time because of it. Why is it that everything costs money—and so much money? We should not confuse the essence of the New Age, however, with the commercial packaging often done in its name. At the same time, we must be willing to put “New Age” in its current social context. We now live in a totally commercial society; it would be a bit too much to assume that those in the New Age community would not want to sell their wares in the marketplace, as any craftsperson or professional would expect to be able to do. Exploiting New Age trends simply to make loads of money, however, is not exactly commendable. (Some have even gotten the impression that the New Age is only about manifesting prosperity, since that seems to be the major motivation of a certain percentage of those in the movement. It makes it all sound rather like another new, catchy, spiritually sneaky way of advocating capitalism.) But none of the above observations takes away from the New Age dispensation. Make no mistake about it: The New Age is far larger than any commercial packaging. The New Age is not a smorgasbord where we get to pick and choose different dishes of spirituality. (I call those who indulge exclusively in that way the “Eclectics.”) Eventually, I see that the New Age—it probably will have taken on a different name by then—will be in much the same position as the Christian churches are today when it comes to them providing free religious services, spiritual counseling, and being active in community and charity work.
Then we hear the criticism that the New Age, for all its presumption of new spirituality, is actually quite superficial, being merely all fluff and phony sweetness and light with no substance, promoted by airy-fairy, wishful-thinking people who hanker for an empty transcendence, being only another form of escapism from the real world. We hear it said that New Agers will simply believe anything, no matter how outrageous, as they seem to have no critical faculties whatsoever. True, that may indeed be how so many New Agers do come across. But there is no argument here. It is no different than with anything else. For this in no way diminishes the profound meaning of the New Age Vision that is still to unfold and still to be shared.
For those who may still protest, But I don’t want to be lumped in with New Age, it’s passé and outdated, the fact is, as I have stated at the beginning, despite what the media or certain critics may want us to believe, the New Age has not yet even been adequately defined. That is what I find most disturbing: There are those who want to give up on it before the New Age Vision has even been fully laid out. So it is incumbent upon us, the New Age thinkers, to do just that. That is the one thing I do hope to get across: The challenge is there to take this Vision into our own hands and co-creatively mold it into new forms of living, spiritual culture.
Sometimes we hear talk that the New Age of Aquarius will mean a time of universal enlightenment for all humanity. What exactly is meant by enlightenment here is usually, though, left unclear. (Especially when we consider that cybertechnology, for example, is now part of the equation in our further evolution.) If the assumption is that everyone will be Buddha enlightened, then it is easy to brush aside any New Age aspirations as so many pipe dreams. C’mon, we can hear the critic say, you must be dreaming. But if we are more modest and suggest that humanity will become more enlightened about our origins, our place in the universe, about the Next Level of consciousness opening up to us, about our Higher Self, then that may very well be a better answer to what the dawning New Age is about.
Likewise,
many have had the impression that the New Age was supposed to have inaugurated
a utopian Peace and Love and Light on this Earth; everything was going to
be all better in the world. Now looking at the world today, this is of course
nowhere evident. On the contrary, current events highlight global tensions,
conflicts, terrorism, a quagmire of a war in
Similar to the simplistic assumptions regarding Peace and Love, there are the so-called simplistically-expressed New Age beliefs; for example, We create our own reality, We are all one, We are responsible for everything that happens to us, or, for that matter, for everything that happens anywhere on the planet. This is not the moment to engage these particular notions; but that the New Age came to be conceptually limited to such simplistic, generalized notions is unfortunate. We must somehow undue the damage and present a more comprehensive and substantial view.
Before we go any further, I should make a distinction so as not to create too much confusion, as I am aware that some misunderstanding here is probably unavoidable. The New Age, as we will see, does refer to the new World Age of Aquarius that we are entering, a roughly 2,000 year period. Obviously, considering the pace of change today, we cannot know what unimaginable transformations will occur for humanity in that extensive time frame. Those who talk about a coming, but still far off, universal enlightenment for all humanity may be right about the Age of Aquarius after all when we take into consideration such a lengthy period. But when I refer to ‘New Age,’ I am referring primarily to a more limited time frame, that of our entry into the Aquarian Age, after which time the newness of the Age will have passed. By ‘New Age,’ then, I am signifying primarily these next few decades, perhaps even the next hundred years, however long the “newness” of the Age of Aquarius may apply. In tow with this time frame will be the growing New Age movement. We will see in our discussion of Postmodernism, however, that, despite all the signs of a New Age movement, we are still not in a New Age-defined world. The New Age in a collectively spiritual, global sense is still barely on the radar screen. (There are some who believe, for reasons regarding Mayan prophecy, that the year 2012 may be the tipping point.)
Another attempt at undermining any allegiance to the New Age as a movement is the claim, usually made by right wing Fundamentalists, that it is being orchestrated by Secret Controllers, the Illuminati, the Secret Government; in other words, that some conspiracy is manipulating it and using it as a front movement. As if this should somehow frighten us from fulfilling our life work as New Age lightworkers! We should be wary of giving our power away to those who talk conspiracy in order to sidetrack us and make us confused. As if there were no Secret Controllers—secret societies or secret governments—behind the Church, behind elected governments, the Federal Reserve, the world banking system, NASA, international alliances, multinational corporations, behind all aspects of the military-industrial complex. We could just as easily talk about the apparent conspiracy of the right wing neoconservative agenda to take over our government. The thing is, claims of secret conspiracies to control and manipulate can be made concerning just about anything. And don’t get me wrong, I am not denying the validity of conspiracy research. But we have to be on our toes here at all times, for a conspiracy certainly goes on to keep these waters continuously muddied. Yes, the notion of Secret Controllers behind the scenes of our everyday world is very real. But to single out the New Age movement as somehow being the front movement for a One World Order is not exactly offering an accurate Big Picture; it is almost beside the point. We usually discover that those who make this claim are in fact Christians of a certain political bent. Obviously, they are out to promote their brand of religion.
So the New Age, a critic will say, is actually about a new, so-called World Age. An immediate question is then shot at us: According to whom? Astrologers? But I don’t believe in astrology. And does something like a so-called World Age even mean anything? Indeed, it could all be, according to our hardcore Postmodern critic, a grand fabrication created by certain characteristic types of individual. The fact that the world is rapidly changing today may only happen to coincide with a New Age subculture in our midst. Yet, we might ask, Only happens to coincide? Or is the fact that the world is rapidly changing not exactly what the New Age entails? Actually, the more pointed and helpful question would initially be, Who is in a position to adequately interpret this rapidly changing world? Now the purpose of this book is to show that there is something more going on with the notion of a New Age than what our critic might think.
Indeed, mention should be made that there are whole aspects to the New Age that are neglected or not even thought of as belonging to it. Let us be clear about it: The New Age is not limited to being some newfangled, narrowly-defined, spiritual movement or offbeat religion; no, it is unfolding in a multitude of ways, on a multitude of fronts. We could say to our critic, Do you mean to say there is nothing new about the high-tech world, about artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, cybertechnology? There is nothing new about Internet global communications and today’s instantaneous media? They definitely will play a role in the New Age, as we will see. And why is science increasingly moving into realms of the Invisible? Is science finally catching up to what the occult traditions have always known (but could only hint at secretly through symbols)? There is a clue to the New Age here, too. And is there nothing new about UFOs and ET contact? Though they may have always been with us behind the scenes since the dawn of history and before, they are certainly something profoundly new for our civilization today. In fact, the UFO phenomenon and the ET presence is something so radical, so disturbing, so reality-shattering, that a heavy-handed cover-up has been in place since the late 1940s to keep the public blind-sighted about it. And will someone say that we have not through the centuries developed—I would say evolved—a whole new civilization that is changing the face of Earth, and that this process has somehow stopped? This process has not stopped, we continue to evolve, even now, today, more rapidly than ever before, more rapidly than we can even fully realize, even with our eyes wide open. As we will see, in the futuristic, high-tech arena, there are those who speak about the coming globally definitive event of singularity. There are plenty of surprises coming for those who think the human species has gone stagnant, that nothing new is waiting for us upon the horizon.