Below you will find the table of Contents, Forward, Preface, Basic Themes for the New Age, Orientation, and Chapter 1 of my book-length work The New Age Vision. I will make the manuscript available in January 2009, either as a hard copy or on CD. I will eventually see it through to publication, to be available in bookstores.
The New Age
Vision
2008
Ron Lampi
Contents
5 |
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6 |
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The New Age I Sing (poem) |
8 |
Basic Themes for the New Age |
9 |
Orientation: Welcome to the New Age |
11 |
I Celebrate the Lightworker (poem) |
13 |
15 |
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2 An Age of Crisis—and Transition: Postmodernity |
32 |
50 |
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52
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63 |
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65
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89 |
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112 |
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130 |
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The Transformer (poem) |
132 |
134 |
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152 |
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173 |
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192 |
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212 |
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240 |
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242 |
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13 The Emerging New Story of Us |
260 |
We, The Aquarians (poem) |
281 |
14 We Pour Forth |
286 |
A New Age Prayer |
293 |
Addendum 1: New Age Music |
294 |
Addendum 2: The MYTHOS Project |
295 |
Notes |
296 |
Note: The poems above are all taken from my collection Advent.
Forward
I must say something here at the start about the title of this book. It was not uncommon for me to be asked by others while working on it that if only I could change the title. Why don’t you consider changing the title? they always recommended. Little did those who made this comment without having read any of the work itself realize that the title is an integral phrase that is woven throughout the work’s entirety. Read any bit of it to be convinced. It was almost as if they were asking me, disconcertingly, not to write the book itself. Why waste your time? (The negative objections to the New Age movement I’ve attempted to address in Chapter 1.) At issue then was really the question, what relevance did such a book about the New Age have today? But that is exactly what the book in its entirety addresses—is the New Age Vision not the Vision that we need today?
The challenge for me as I worked on the manuscript of this book was to keep it as up-to-date as possible amidst the change that is happening so fast all around us. Inevitably new developments and trends threatened to outstrip some of the more topical sections of it. Hopefully, though, its philosophical drift will survive as a true Vision of what this new World Age we are entering is all about.
Preface
There are those who might contend that
this book comes too late, that the New Age movement had already come and gone
in the latter years of the 20th Century. I contend otherwise. I would suggest
that such a view—that the New Age has already played itself out—comes too
early, and that, though New Age advocates might not have been as vocal in
recent years as they previously had been, the movement is still alive and well,
and growing. One purpose of this book
is to correct that impression of demise.
It is curious, though, 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 who have been
active over the years, we would have thought that this question would have been
clearly answered by now. It remains a stumbling block, in fact, to many in the
New Age movement itself. We find in the movement that there is still confusion as
to what the New Age should actually mean. 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 a
clear 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
meaning of 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 it is, I hope,
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 come as a surprise 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 directions of
speculation 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 simply 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 heading into 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 will escape unscathed the
changes that are coming.
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 and
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 The 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: A dynamic, 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 long-distant, invisible,
instantaneous, collective: the Internet & the psychic.
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 talking about their Visions and strange
visitations. We find many sharing 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 life. The Call of a New Age is coming through in a multitude
of ways.
Thirty
years ago, upon arriving in
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 then, later, 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 to live now. Science, as many others have said,
cannot provide us the existential meaning we are in so great a need of today.
Science alone—that is, the science we know today—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…
( 1 )
A Preliminary Discussion:
Objections to the New Age
I thought it best that we begin our
exploration of the meaning of the New Age by first considering the objections
to it that we are most apt to hear. Why are there 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 anything New Age. 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
First of all, whatever one might have
thought about it, 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. There are many, apparently, who have gotten the impression
that it did; more accurately, however, it might be said that it had gone out
with the 1980s, when it appeared to have actually 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 the 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 two or three years, maybe even five years. Even if we
might stretch the time frame of a cultural fad to ten years—for example, the
so-called Me Decade of the Seventies—the New Age movement has been around much
longer than that, and only continues to grow. 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, the work of Alice Bailey.
(John Lash’s book The Seeker’s Handbook
provides a good general overview of early New Age influences.) 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 the Piscean
dispensation had exhausted its archetypal force 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 a whole “Age.” But what
about the New Age as a cultural 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 find 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 is born of novelty, 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 might 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 or mythic form, the Great
Story, for holding—the spiritual life. How often when I do hear those who
insist on this distinction, after they dispose of religion and proclaim 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” then gets caught
up in techniques, and one loses sight of that greater “Something.”) What I am
suggesting is that the new, universal religion I speak of will unfold as an
organic, cultural development—ultimately as the new Great Story to be told, The Mythos—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 appear to 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. We often find Fundamentalist leaders expressing their
fear of the New Age. In their books we will often find warnings to 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 must fundamentally fear about the New Age then 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, I believe, 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.) Isn’t it interesting that
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 quite a number of 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 look on as they ingeniously try to coin the new phrase, some
neologism perhaps that can somehow 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
meanings 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 have only fallen
prey to our society’s mania for using up and throwing away faddish things. To
assume that a new phrase must be coined 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 when it
comes to spirituality, 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 was being marketed as new, new, new;
it was almost a disease, it seemed, 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 then 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 moving in
the direction 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 they feel 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 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. (One of the positive contributions of
Postmodernist thought is to alert us to such a context, that we are always
living within 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! You don’t find shame associated with being a Christian or a
Buddhist, yet, curiously, admitting that you are New Age is almost something
you are expected to be ashamed of. Why is that? 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 that
are 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
sometimes 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 or legendary 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, and 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
anything New Age myself at one time because of this too. 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 the label “New Age” in
its current cultural context. We clearly live in a totally commercialized
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. Do New Age
practitioners and artists not have a right to make a living? 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, in its essence, 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 those who identify with 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 global 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, which is nothing other but
another vain attempt to escape 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. You find that this is no different than with
anything else. How many Christians, for example, are well-educated, critical
thinkers? This criticism then 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, to explain what this New Age Vision is all about. That is the
one thing I do hope to accomplish here. The further challenge then is 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 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, about 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 is supposed to inaugurate a utopian Peace and Love and Light
on Earth; everything, it was assumed, was supposed to be getting 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 simplistically-expressed, so-called New
Age beliefs. For example, we find: 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. And then there’s the big Secret: You can attract anything you want to you.
(Usually implying material things, wealth, love, power—all so boringly and
crassly typical of our Postmodern world.) Now this is not
the moment to engage these particular beliefs; but that the New Age was thought
to be conceptually limited to such simplistic, generalized notions is
unfortunate. We must make an attempt to undue the damage and present a more
comprehensive and substantial view of what this New Age we are entering is all about.
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 turn out to be right about the Age of
Aquarius after all when we take into consideration such a lengthy period of
time. 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 Postmodernity, 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 of the New Age clearly beginning.)
Another
attempt at undermining any allegiance to the Vision of a New Age is the claim,
usually made by right wing Fundamentalists, that the New Age movement is being
orchestrated by Secret Controllers, the Illuminati, a secret global elite; in
other words, that some conspiracy is manipulating it and using it as a front
movement. As if this allegation 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 doubt our own
life Path. As if there were no Secret Controllers—secret societies, secret
governments, puppet masters that are a global elite—behind the Church, behind
elected governments, the Federal Reserve, the world banking system, The
Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, international alliances, multinational
corporations, behind all our intelligence agencies, behind NASA and all aspects
of the corporate-military-industrial complex. We could just as easily talk about
the apparent conspiracy of the right wing neoconservative agenda to take over
our American government. The thing is, claims of secret conspiracies to control
and manipulate are being made concerning just about anything. And don’t get me
wrong, I am not denying the importance of conspiracy research. But we have to
be on our toes here at all times, for a conspiracy certainly is in place to
keep the general public confused and in the dark about quite a number of
things; the lack of truth and honesty in “official” announcements is a given.
Yes, the reality of Secret Controllers scheming behind the scenes of our world is quite apparent; not to see this is to
be naïve. But to single out the New Age movement as somehow being the front
movement for a New World Order, 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 and politics. Fundamentalists who go so far as to see the New Age
movement as the work of “Satan” or “Lucifer” are asking us to accept an
outmoded, simplistic, mythic interpretation that does extreme injustice to a
complex world. They have to wind up lumping every one
who is not in their narrowly defined camp as part of the “Conspiracy.”
So the New Age, a critic will say, is apparently 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, a civilization in which
“officialdom” still denies that there is any evidence for Other Intelligence.
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 completely
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 evolutionary event they call the Singularity.
There are certainly plenty of surprises coming for those who think the human
species has gone stagnant, that nothing new is waiting for us upon the horizon.