I embarked on an exercise to look for connections between the New Age or “new” spiritual thinking and those groups that we sometimes think of as decrying progressivism, e.g. “Patriots,” “Truthers,” the “alt-right.” I was thinking about the champions of conservatism, new young Republicans, who happened to live homosexual lifestyles, and yes, I was even thinking about 6 January 2021 and the Q-Anon Shaman and indeed the whole strange culture of Q, waiting for their messiah, trusting a plan.
I was surprised to learn was that many others have noted these connections. I discovered a paper from 2011 entitled “The Emergence of Conspirituality” by Charlotte Ward and Prof. David Voas. This is from the abstract of that paper:
“The female-dominated New Age (with its positive focus on self) and the male-dominated realm of conspiracy theory (with its negative focus on global politics) may seem antithetical. There is a synthesis of the two, however, that we call ‘conspirituality’. We define, describe, and analyse this hybrid system of belief; it has been noticed before without receiving much scholarly attention. Conspirituality is a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fuelled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldviews. It has international celebrities, bestsellers, radio and TV stations. It offers a broad politico-spiritual philosophy based on two core convictions, the first traditional to conspiracy theory, the second rooted in the New Age: 1) a secret group covertly controls, or is trying to control, the political and social order, and 2) humanity is undergoing a ‘paradigm shift’ in consciousness. Proponents believe that the best strategy for dealing with the threat of a totalitarian ‘new world order’ is to act in accordance with an awakened ‘new paradigm’ worldview.”
We are living through an epic struggle and those of us who have chose to participate in some small way do well to have a thorough knowledge of the topography of the battlefield.
Can a loud guttural scream damage your throat chakra?
The term “New Age” has been around so long now, warned of by Christians, swallowed up by Positive Thinking and Self-Empowerment, subsumed by Spirituality, made more palatable for moderns so that any residual Hippy association is forgotten. For the purposes of this series, I am sometimes going to call it New Religion because I’ve discovered that it is very much here and indeed its tenets have infiltrated Seventh-day Adventism.
New Religion has crystals, vegetarianism, yoga, chakras and meditation but it has expanded to include “green”, “sustainable”, “global” (as in “think globally, act locally”), “mindfulness”, “eco-friendly”, “responsibly and ethically sourced”, “plant-based lifestyle”, “reduced carbon footprint”, “tiny houses”, “equity, diversity and inclusion”, “transgender equality”, “Black Lives Matter”, “gender-based violence”, “White privilege”, “micro-loans for women”, “gender neutrality”, “visualization”, “wellness”, “climate change science”, “climate change denial”, “anti-vaxxer”, “transformative”, “Pride”, “higher frequency”, “social justice warrior”, “quantum”, “collective consciousness”, “woke”, “positive attitude”, “gluten-free”, “prosperity”, “infinite spirit”, “toxic masculinity”. The new terminology goes on and on.
The New Religion also has a new liturgy, the public worship that accompanies it. The ceremonial rites include wearing masks when asked. Holier people can easily be recognized because they wear masks even when they are not required to, such as when they are alone in their cars. You can recognize acolytes by the cloth bags they carry into supermarkets, their scrupulous attention to social distancing markers on the ground, the care with which they examine something that purports to be vegan, and avoiding the use of cisgender pronouns.
Some of us have been woefully slow in our catechesis. A food magazine from 2014 was already ahead of the curve in discussing “gastrodiplomacy” to ensure that cuisine is not culturally appropriated. Evidently there is a nasty caste system in the way that “ethnic” food is categorized. There is a general assumption amongst the fully catechized that when the word “ethnic” is used, it is describing the gastronomy of more “Brown” people. We would be unlikely to use that word (if we are light-skinned) in describing Swedish or Italian cuisine. I became confused in my attempt to find the correct terminology. It may be that “exotic” should not be the word used but rather “authentic”. I was trying to describe a meal that I had which was reminiscent of the kinds of food that I have read is consumed by some people who inhabit a country which is just south of the United States of America. The meal was good, but trying to describe it in an inclusive and non-appropriating way gave me heartburn.
If I could just cleanse and detox my physical body, I’m sure it would be a more sympathetic home for my soul as it yearns to throw off the negative influences of its past and journey to my true authentic self. I could try Beyond Quantum Healing hypnosis through a company called Awake and Align, and it looks like I can book a one-hour session in mid-July for £320 ($385 USD). But I’d prefer to jump start my initiation into this New Religion. Last week while researching CON-Spirituality I found an interview between Jules Evans, a “practical philosopher in the U.K.,” and Stephen Dinan, founder and CEO of The Shift Network and a member of the Transformational Leadership Council and Evolutionary Leaders.
Mr. Dinan’s credentials are stellar. He’s a graduate of Stanford University and California Institute of Integral Studies (East-West Psychology). He is also a member of the Transformational Leadership Council (TLC), which was founded so leaders of personal and organizational transformation could support each other in their contributions to the world. Members of the TLC are leaders in their field and are composed of CEOs, trainers, facilitators, thought leaders, authors, movie producers and directors, and coaches. They are focused on transformational leadership and deliver their work in the world through workshops, “trainings” (as opposed to the old-fashioned singular “training”), seminars, books, films, speaking engagements, coaching sessions, TV and radio shows, and special events.
An event took place at a Massachusetts retreat called Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. In a delicious bit of irony, I read that the center was a former Jesuit facility built in 1957. Talk about the New Religion replacing the old religion—or maybe the old religion in a new container—or the new-old religion in a new-old container. A $15 million, six-story housing annex with 80 guest rooms, was completed in 2010. Designed by architect Peter Rose, the annex incorporates sustainable design elements and is designed to consume forty percent less energy than a conventional building. Rose said it was designed to be "a model of environmental responsibility". I can book three nights at the center for $2,000. My room will not have a view and no classes or workshops are included in the price. Enlightenment will be worth the price though.
But wait! I wanted to attend Mr. Dinan’s Shift Network retreat in the San Francisco area of California. I can “Access the Best Transformational Education, Media, and Events on the Planet”. They offer more than 230 teachers, boast 175,000 customers and a community of more than two million people. But I don’t want to give them my email address to find out the cost of their events. Hmmm. What to do? They advertise the Sacred Feminine with Sufi Dance but I can’t see the price. Perhaps I can just refer back to Rhonda Byrne’s 2006 self-help book, The Secret and visualize that the money I need for the event, however much it is, it will manifest. The Shift Network advertises Ram Dass as one of their teachers. Dass aka Richard Alpert passed away in 2019. I guess he’ll just be there in spirit?
Ahhh! This is what I’m looking for. Mr. Dinan and his wife Devaa Haley Mitchell offer a mentorship program. That’s more like it. I can be empowered to step into “full-spectrum leadership”, work on my emotional intelligence and “become a respected leader who is heart-centered and effective, philanthropic and abundant, spiritually based and practical”. What’s this going to set me back? An “activation” retreat, group mentoring, six individual mentoring sessions, group teaching and masterminds.
This all takes place at the “Jewel”, Stephen and Devaa’s gorgeous 30-acre sanctuary. Faculty includes Marianne Williamson — The Call to Feminine Leadership Spiritual Teacher, New York Times Bestselling Author. Ms. Williamson wrote the introduction to Stephen’s book Sacred America, Sacred World: Fulfilling Our Mission in Service to All. Her notoriety arose from her work with A Course in Miracles, you know, the 1976 book by Helen Shucman. Ms. Shucman channeled everything Jesus forgot to say when he was alive.
Other teachers include Deepak Chopra, THE guru of our generation who can often be found doing meditation workshops with Oprah Winfrey. From the ever-reliable Wiki, “Chopra is a prominent figure in the New Age movement, his books and videos have made him one of the best-known and wealthiest figures in alternative medicine. His discussions of quantum healing have been characterized as technobabble – ‘incoherent babbling strewn with scientific terms’ which drives those who actually understand physics crazy.”
This whole retreat is a “phenomenal” experience and Stephen and Devaa place its value at $33,000. However, if you pay in full in advance, the whole package is yours for $17,000. It seems a fair price for a “quantum leap” in my leadership capacity. I can “gain access to the latest science, theory, and best leadership practices”. Personally, I think that simply by putting the word “quantum” in front of anything, it adds several thousands of dollars worth of value.
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Every major player in this agenda has talked about the need to create a new religion, since religion has always been used to control and direct into the next part of the future. Mikhail Gorbachev said that the new religion the elite would bring us would be a form of Earth Worship - pantheistic, feminine, Mother Earth. Gorbachev, who passed away on August 30, 2022, was the last leader of the Soviet Union. We often think of him on the world stage along with Ronald Reagan and perhaps think favorably of him as his role in ending the Cold War. But I think of him for his substantial “contributions” to the Green Agenda. He started Green Cross International and was committed to “Sustainability,” which is Marxism under another name. (Perhaps Gorbachev was secretly a Trotskyite, since Leon Trotsky’s theory was permanent revolution.)
Long before the Beatles went to India and traded their Chelsea boots and skinny ties for Nehru jackets and paisley scarves, we had Madame Blavatsky, who was given a Freemasonic charter to bring Rosicrucianism and the New Age to the West. She brought us Theosophy to popularize the occult and, in particular, Hinduism and Buddhism.
Essential viewing is Gods of the New Age, a 1985 documentary film based on the book by the late Caryl Mastrisciana. This is coming from a Christian perspective, and it is well worth watching. What we are shown is that nearly forty years ago, the beliefs of the New Age were being embraced by Westerners in large numbers. Yoga had already been adopted as a healthy lifestyle choice, a way to keep limber and lean. What was not acknowledged is that Yoga in all its many forms is a religion. Yoga is meant to help the practitioner bypass a few reincarnations, and reach Nirvana a lifetime or two quicker.
Gods of the New Age reveals that each asana (or pose) within Yoga is calling down the god or demon associated with that specific movement. Further, some of the extreme breathing techniques have been known to cause a permanent state of psychosis. The overt Eastern religion was muted when “exercise” Yoga was initially introduced to the West, but now all of us know many people who recognize that Yoga is more than a fitness routine. Today, its religious component is not seen as problematic, so long as it is called not religious but rather a spiritual practice.
Yoga is now institutionalized. It is ubiquitous. When this Gods of the New Age was made in the 1980s, the filmmakers talked about how companies such as IBM were using it, and various branches of the military were promoting the practice. All these decades later, there is hardly any part of the Western world that hasn’t embraced it. Everyone you meet is quick to tell you that they aren’t religious, but they consider themselves to be spiritual. Whatever that means.
Anyone wishing to embrace “New Age” theology should first pay a visit to India, where old age Eastern religion is still very much in evidence. They should thoroughly understand the caste system and the evil results of the doctrine of karma: Do not help someone because they are in the situation that they find themselves because of their karma. They are paying for shortcomings in their previous lives. To aid them in their misery prolongs their cycle of reincarnation. Charity only adds to their suffering.
Counter this harsh idea of never-ending karma with Jesus’ commandment to “love one another”, that there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your brother. If someone is hungry or thirsty, feed them, give them drink. If you have two coats, give one away. Yes, there’s the oft-mentioned text where Jesus accepts the expensive perfumed ointment and says, “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.” He was not excusing the injustices of the fallen, sin-sick world; rather he was saying that the woman’s gesture of gratitude to Him should be allowed and recognized as good. But contrast a bit of essential oil rubbed on Jesus’ feet with the Bhagwan Rajneesh’s collection of ninety-three Rolls-Royces. Any guru that pushes sexual experimentation and erotic encounters between devotees is bound to rake in the big bucks.
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Barbara Ehrenreich, who recently passed away, wrote a book entitled “Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”. This 2008 book does an excellent job of showing how pervasive the idea has become that our thoughts can, in some mysterious way, affect the physical world. This is where the quantum, as in quantum physics, comes in. It is magical thinking. It takes an awful lot of “self-hypnosis”, “thought control”, “mind control” and “elimination of all negative thoughts” to bring about the desired affect. Do not associate with negative people even if they’re family.
Anger is never okay. Even if you are battling cancer, or lose your job or a loved one, anger is not an appropriate response. You must “get out of the problem and into the solution.” Ehrenreich wrote of a woman who sent a letter to Deepak Chopra to tell him that the breast cancer had spread to her bones and lungs:
“Even though I follow the treatments, have come a long way in unburdening myself of toxic feelings, have forgiven everyone, changed my lifestyle to include meditation, prayer, proper diet, exercise, and supplements, the cancer keeps coming back. Am I missing a lesson here that it keeps reoccurring? I am positive I am going to beat it, yet it does get harder with each diagnosis to keep a positive attitude.”
Ehrenreich writes that this poor woman was “working as hard as she could – meditating, praying, forgiving – but apparently not hard enough.” Chopra’s response:
“As far as I can tell, you are doing all the right things to recover. You just have to continue doing them until the cancer is gone for good. I know it is discouraging to make great progress only to have it come back again, but sometimes cancer is simply very pernicious and requires the utmost diligence and persistence to eventually overcome it.”
What psychotic rubbish! Still selling his program to a woman whose cancer has entered her bones and lungs. I can’t credit him for having the decency not to suggest that her mental gymnastics were somehow lacking. He’s a huckster. What Chopra is selling is a religion that has been imported for us to follow. There is no real reward, just a nebulous hope that if you don’t get it right in this life, your soul can transmigrate on to the next one.
I know a woman who had a lump removed from her breast and then several years later another lump grew. A friend of hers suggested that perhaps it was her inability to elevate her thinking to a higher level that had caused these lumps to grow. That was the end of that friendship.
Ehrenreich details an interesting history of a uniquely American brand of optimism and shows how it has sprung up new industries of motivation for big business and corporate leaders and shaped a new branch of psychology known as Positive Psychology. In her chapter entitled “God Wants You to Be Rich” she shows how New Age Positive Thinking has created the corporate megachurches and prosperity theology. God wants to “prosper” you. There is very little of the old Christianity here.
Ehrenreich writes of megachurch pastor Joel Osteen and his wife Victoria:
“Even God plays only a supporting role, and by no means an indispensable one, in the Osteens’ universe. Gone is the mystery and awe; he has been reduced to a kind of major domo or personal assistant. He fixeth my speeding tickets, he secureth me a good table in the restaurant, he leadeth me to book contracts. Even in these minor tasks, the invocation of God seems more of courtesy than a necessity. Once you have accepted the law of attraction – that the mind acts as a magnet attracting whatever it visualizes – you have granted humans omnipotence.”
In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus encounters a man possessed by a demon. He demands to know the name of the demon, and the demon replies “My name is Legion, for we are many.” I think about that every time I hear someone in the LGBTQ/Trans world say their preferred pronoun is “they”. Someone who appears to the world to be one person (male or female) in that they have two arms, two legs and one head would like to be called “they”. Adherents of the New Religion comply.
Transcendental Meditation or TM is a form of silent mantra meditation. Refer to Gods of the New Age to gain a better understanding of what is at work in both by the use of silence and mantra. This was developed and popularized by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who gained fame as the guru of the Beatles. “Yogic Flying” isn’t really a higher state of consciousness. It’s barely a higher state of one’s bum. Evidently after years of practice one can sort of bounce one’s bottom off the ground. Wow! A virtual god!
Yet TM has never been laughed off the stage of the New Age. Rather it has been promoted by people such as David Lynch whose commitment to it resulted in the creation of the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace. The actress Goldie Hawn is another practitioner of the technique whose self-named Hawn Foundation has supported research studies conducted by external researchers to evaluate the effectiveness of its educational program for children, called MindUP. “We are more than a program. We are a way of Life”. This is Transcendental Meditation and Mindfulness for children.
Reading about the Kripalu Center and some of the money spent on these programs, one thinks of the word “hedonism”. At the heart of the New Age, of the karmic hell of Hinduism, is the “I’m okay, Jack” notion. Ego. The world revolves around me and my needs.
As a Hindu concept, Brahman, “cosmic soul” (as well the Atman, “immortal”, “eternal”) is the sole reality, the eternal, self-born, unlimited, innately free, blissful Absolute. Knowing one's own self is knowing the god inside oneself. The Brahmans are the highest ranking of the Hindu Indian’s social caste system. They are the priest class. They traditionally have served as spiritual guides and teachers. They are vegetarian. [I am certainly not impugning the vegetarian lifestyle, just making some historical connections.]
The caste system is based on Varna, which is color. There are Arya elite which are the light skinned minority (“Us”) and the dark skinned Dasyu majority (“Them”). Over the centuries the fair-skinned mixed with the darker skinned and so distinctions based on skin color alone became difficult. A system based on profession was introduced with Brahmans at the top of the heap; they enjoyed almost divine status. At the bottom were the darker skinned or the Untouchables. They do the work no one else will. They skin dead animals; they execute criminals and cremate dead bodies. They are one fifth of India’s population. Though some constitutional safeguards against discrimination have been on the books since the 1950s, the dehumanization still exists. This is an ancient system based on the ideas of karma and reincarnation, and it excuses much that is inhumane.
If you are thinking that the “New Age” is being imported to the West to perform the same function of excusing injustice and exploitation of the lower classes it performs in India, you are not wrong.
Barbara Ehrenreich wrote Bright-Sided after the economic “downturn” of 2007. The ugliest aspects of America’s optimism were on display. She wrote, “If optimism is the key to material success, and if you can achieve an optimistic outlook through the discipline of positive thinking, then there is no excuse for failure.” Do you recall that middle class families lost their homes and were reduced to living in their cars or in tents while Wall Street bankers were bailed out and took home fat bonuses?
When you lose your small business because of Covid madness, when you become aware that those who claim to want to help us are forcing experimental, toxic “therapies” upon us, when our food is genetically modified and, we are now told, soon to be scarce, is the appropriate defense positive thinking? Should we open our Heart Chakras and send out Love on a High Frequency? Should we accept that this is our Karma, and we are being punished for the shortcomings of a previous life? Or are we allowed to acknowledge that they are doing this to us on purpose, and be angry about it?