Religions > Atheism > Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
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Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1432395/posts
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
The New Oxford Review ^ | July-August 2000 | Lee Penn
Posted on 06/28/2005 9:59:54 AM PDT by kjvail
In recent years the New Age movement has come out of the closet in the
Church and in the world. The New Age movement is made up of those who
follow a potpourri of beliefs and practices that fall outside the
boundaries of traditional Christianity. Its manifestations are protean.
Some Catholic nuns walk on labyrinths to contact the "Divine
Feminine." Increasing numbers of health insurance companies have
heeded consumers' demands to cover offbeat treatments, ranging from
Ayurvedic herbal medicine to "therapeutic touch" - in which a
"healer's" hands manipulate "energy fields" but never touch
the patient's body. Hillary Clinton has contacted the spirit of
Eleanor Roosevelt under the guidance of Jean Houston - a New
York-based avatar who runs a "Mystery School," and who inspired the
current fad of walking on labyrinths. Millions of Americans with more
money than commonsense are buying into this trendy, feel-good style of
spirituality; they have helped to keep Neale Donald Walsch's
Conversations with God on the best-seller lists since 1997. These are
the people who proudly say, "I'm spiritual, but not religious."
Many Christians view the New Age movement as merely self-indulgent
silliness. Unfortunately, there's far more to the movement than
astrology, crystals, weird workshops, and psychobabble. New Age
spiritual leaders have a firmly entrenched anti-Christian worldview,
and many of them harbor a special hatred for the Catholic Church. Many
believe that the Fall was really man's ascent into knowledge,
assisted by Lucifer - whom they hail as the bringer of light and
wisdom. Many expect an imminent, apocalyptic transformation that will
lead humanity into the New Age. By acts of men or by an act of
"spirit," earth will be cleansed of those who refuse to evolve. In
the New Age, there will be world government; the economy will be remade
to promote "sharing." Traditional morality and traditional families
will disappear. Orthodox religions - especially Christianity and
Judaism - are considered "separative" and "obsolete"; in the
New Age, they too will vanish.
For the last 125 years, New Age leaders worldwide have followed the
false light of Theosophy; they now whisper into the itching ears of the
powerful - politicians, media moguls, UN officials, foundation
grant-makers, and Anglican bishops. As the West moves into a
post-Christian era, the influence of the New Age movement grows.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky blended Eastern religion with Western
occultism, establishing the Theosophical movement in 1875 in New York
City. Theosophy has influenced occult, spiritualist, "New Thought,"
and New Age movements around the world ever since. For Blavatsky, the
LORD is not God; mankind is. She says, "Man is truly the manifested
deity in both its aspects - good and evil." Since mankind is god,
it follows that "mankind will become freed from its false gods, and
find itself finally - SELF-REDEEMED." Or rather, some of mankind is
"god-informed" and capable of self-redemption - namely, "the
Aryan and other civilized nations." Others, "such human specimens
as the Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some African tribes" are
"lower human creatures," "inferior races" that are "now
happily...dying out. Verily mankind is 'of one blood,' but not of
the same essence."1
In the early 1900s Alice A. Bailey carried forward the teachings of
Theosophy in the U.S. She founded the Lucifer [yes!] Publishing Company
in New York City in 1922, renaming it the Lucis Publishing Company in
1923. Between 1922 and 1949, Bailey published 24 books of
"revelations" that she claimed to have channeled from the Tibetan
ascended "spiritual master" Djwhal Khul. All these books remain in
print, and are widely available.
The influence of Theosophy continues to grow a half-century after her
death. Robert Muller, former assistant Secretary General of the United
Nations, won the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education in 1989 for his World
Core Curriculum. He says, "The underlying philosophy upon which The
Robert Muller School is based will be found in the teachings set forth
in the books of Alice A. Bailey by the Tibetan teacher, Djwhal Khul."
Like Muller, Neale Donald Walsch praises Theosophy. James Parks Morton,
the Dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York
City until his 1997 retirement, praises Theosophist David Spangler, as
"a genuine mystic."
Muller, Walsch, and Morton's Temple of Understanding all actively
support the United Religions Initiative (URI), a well-funded venture in
religious syncretism led by Episcopal Bishop William Swing of San
Francisco. (Other Theosophists are lining up to support the URI. The
Rudolf Steiner Foundation has recently made a grant to the URI, and the
Lucis Trust newsletter, World Goodwill, has praised the URI twice in
1999.) Laurance S. Rockefeller and his Fund for the Enhancement of the
Human Spirit have financed New Agers Matthew Fox, Barbara Marx Hubbard,
and Bishop Swing's Grace Cathedral. Morton has friends in high
places; he is on the Council of Advisers for Global Green, USA (an
affiliate of Mikhail Gorbachev's Green Cross International, an
environmentalist organization), and was co-chairman of UN conferences
on the environment in 1992 and 1997.
Another of Gorbachev's organizations, the San Francisco-based State
of the World Forum, draws funding from a galaxy of corporations and
foundations, ranging from Archer Daniels Midland, CNN, Hewlett-Packard,
and Occidental Petroleum to the Carnegie Corporation, the Kellogg
Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The State of the World
Forum attracts almost 1,000 VIPs to San Francisco each year, and
encourages them to believe that they will be the ones to shape the
emerging "new civilization." Not all participants are eggheads and
political has-beens; the 1998 Forum included Georges Berthoin,
President of the Trilateral Commission, James Michel, the chairman of
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and other
power brokers. Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu is one of the 22
co-chairs of the Forum, along with Gorbachev, Ted Turner, Federico
Mayor (Director General of UNESCO), and other high UN officials.
Neither orthodox Christian nor Orthodox Jewish leaders have spoken at
any Forum sessions. Instead, the assembled dignitaries have heard New
Age-style preaching from such people as Andrew Weil, Michael Lerner,
Barbara Marx Hubbard, Michael Murphy and Steven Donovan (leaders of the
Esalen Institute), Fritjof Capra, Jean Houston, Sam Keen, Ram Dass,
Matthew Fox, Deepak Chopra, and Tony Robbins.
In short, promoters of New Age and Theosophical ideals are not social
outcasts. On the contrary, these followers of the Spirit of the Age get
attention and money from the rich and the powerful.
What, then, do the New Age prophets teach? Let Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky, Alice Bailey, Robert Muller, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Neale
Donald Walsch, David Spangler, and Matthew Fox speak for themselves -
and for the motley crew of "spirit guides," "ascended masters,"
and "cosmic Christs" whom they serve.
The avatars of the New Age say that humanity is God, and that there is
no death. Hubbard states the creed of the Serpent succinctly: "We are
immortal. We are not bound by the limits of the body" and "We can
create new life forms and new worlds. We are gods!" Walsch, who
claims in his best-selling book to converse directly with "God"
says the same: "Trust God. Or if you wish, trust yourself, for Thou
Art God." The "God" with whom Walsch converses denies death,
saying, "There is no 'death.' Life goes on forever and ever. Life
Is. You simply change form." Bailey said, "We are all Gods...."
These avatars repeat the lies that the Devil told in Eden: "You will
not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened
and you will be like God..." (Gen. 3:4-5). As a devotee of Walsch's
recently told the Washington Post, "We discovered the God within....
That's why we need God. Because we are God."
Since we are gods, there is no need for Christ to save us. Instead, as
Hubbard says, "Multitudes of self-saviors is what we are, for those
who have eyes to see." New Age teachers invert Christian doctrine
about sin, the Devil, and the Fall. Hubbard says, "The serpent
symbolizes an irresistable [sic] energy that is leading us toward life
ever-evolving. First the serpent tempted Eve to eat of the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil.... Then self-awareness came." She adds,
"Evil - the devil - is evolution's selection process that
constantly weeds out the weaker from the stronger." A spirit that
identified itself to Hubbard as "Jesus" told her to "love Satan,
my fallen brother."2 Walsch's "God" says that Adam and Eve
"are said to have committed Original Sin. I tell you this: it was the
Original Blessing. For without this event, the partaking of the
knowledge of good and evil, you would not even know the two
possibilities existed!" Blavatsky spoke most plainly: "The Fall was
the result of man's knowledge, for his 'eyes were opened.'
Indeed, he was taught Wisdom and the hidden knowledge by the 'Fallen
Angel.'"
These New Age teachings lead inexorably to the praise of Darkness.
Walsch's statement that God is "the Darkness that creates the
Light, and makes it possible" mirrors Blavatsky's dictum that
"According to the tenets of Eastern Occultism, DARKNESS is the one
true actuality, the basis and the root of light.... Light is matter,
and DARKNESS, pure Spirit."3 Alice Bailey likewise says that those
who learn to meditate will see that "darkness is pure spirit."
Followers of Bailey's New Age path will find, she says, that "each
contact with the Initiator leads the initiate closer to the centre of
pure darkness...a centre or point of such intense brilliance that
everything fades out and...at that darkest point...[is seen] a point of
clear cold fire."4 Perhaps Dante was right when he described the
center of Hell as ice.
Theosophists make it clear that in the contest between God and the
Devil, they side with the Devil. Blavatsky says, "It is but
natural...to view Satan, the Serpent of Genesis, as the real creator
and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual mankind. For it is he who was
the 'Harbinger of Light,' bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the
eyes of the automaton created by Jehovah."5 According to Alice
Bailey, the fallen angels "descended from their sinless and free
state of existence in order to develop full divine awareness upon
earth." Spangler, like Blavatsky, praises Lucifer as "the angel of
man's evolution. He is the angel of man's inner light."6 G.K.
Chesterton warns those who wander after this will-o'-the-wisp: "Of
all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people
call the Inner Light. Of all the horrible religions the most horrible
is the worship of the god within.... That Jones shall worship the god
within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship
Jones."
Alice Bailey denies Hell and Christ's atonement for man's sin;
instead, "the concept of hell" will be replaced by "an
understanding of the law which makes each man work out his salvation
upon the physical plane, which leads him to right the wrongs which he
may have perpetrated in his lives on Earth, and which enables him
eventually to 'clean his own slate.'" What a rotten deal Bailey
offers! Instead of being saved and forgiven through Christ's death
and Resurrection, we are left with the unforgiving law of karma and the
requirement to right all the wrongs of all our past lives ourselves.
As might be expected from a man who has channeled "a disembodied
entity" for 20 years, Spangler says, "Christ is the perfect balance
to Lucifer." 7 Like Matthew Fox, Spangler proposes to replace Jesus
with the "cosmic Christ"; "any old Christ will not do, not if we
need to show that we have something better than the mainstream
Christian traditions. It must be a cosmic Christ, a universal Christ, a
New Age Christ.... The Christ is universal. It is cosmic. It always has
been." Note the pronoun: Spangler calls Christ "it."
New Age writers follow the Gnostic tradition, denying that birth, life,
and the body are good. Walsch says, "Birth itself is a death, and
death a birth. For in birth, the soul finds itself constricted within
the awful limitations of a body, and at death escapes those
constrictions again." This is, almost word for word, what Alice
Bailey wrote: "Birth establishes the soul in the true prison, and
physical death is only the first step toward liberation."
Denial of the goodness of the body leads to giving a "get out of Hell
free" card to Hitler. As Walsch says, "Hitler went to heaven,"
and "There is no hell, so there is no place else for him to go."
After all, according to Walsch's "God," Hitler was doing his
victims a favor by killing them; his deeds were "mistakes," not
crimes: "The mistakes Hitler made did no harm or damage to those
whose deaths he caused. Those souls were released from their earthly
bondage, like butterflies emerging from a cocoon.... When you see the
utter perfection in everything - not just in those things with which
you agree, but (and perhaps especially) those things with which you
disagree - you achieve mastery." The price of "mastery" is to
see "utter perfection" in Auschwitz and Treblinka. "John," the
disembodied spirit which Spangler has channeled for over 20 years,
likewise said, "We naturally do not identify life with the physical
body, consequently, to us, the loss of your physical form is not a
tragedy.... The death of millions of people in itself is not a tragedy
for us, for it simply means their birth into our domains."
Walsch's "God" says that Hitler does not deserve blame for his
acts - the rest of humanity is responsible for allowing them to
happen: "The purpose of the Hitler Experience was to show humanity to
itself." Walsch's "God" repeats what Bailey said in 1939, as
World War II began: "Blame not the personalities involved.... They
are only the product of the past and the victims of the present. At the
same time, they are the agents of destiny, the creators of the new
order and the initiators of the new civilisation; they are the
destroyers of what must be destroyed before humanity can go forward
along the Lighted Way. They are the embodiment of the personality of
humanity. Blame yourselves, therefore, for what is today
transpiring." A similar argument has been common for a generation in
American courtrooms: The criminal is not accountable for his evil
deeds; instead "society" - everybody else - is guilty.
The New Age philosophers define evil as matter, selfishness, and the
refusal to embrace change. Bailey says, "The domination of spirit
(and its reflection, soul) by matter is what constitutes evil"; at
the human level "the true nature of cosmic evil finds its major
expression" in "materialistic selfishness and the sense of isolated
separativeness." Spangler has a similar definition of evil. It
"cannot abide change" or "complexity," is "fixated upon its
sense of particularity," "is the dimension of separation," and
"abhors diversity and seeks conformity and sameness." This is the
way liberals in politics and the churches describe those who are not
"PC."
For New Age teachers, spiritual growth is not the fruit of taking up
the Cross and following Christ. Instead, as Hubbard says, "Your
highest spiritual beings, even now, are telling you that each of you
has access to an inner teacher.... They tell you that through a process
called 'initiation,' you can transform yourself into an 'ascended
master.'" Perhaps "initiation" is more dangerous than Hubbard
lets on, for Bailey says, "each contact with the Initiator leads the
initiate closer to the centre of pure darkness." Walsch's "God"
does not favor obedience to the Christian God's will: "Obedience is
not growth, and growth is what I desire." Walsch's "God" told
him: "There's no such thing as the Ten Commandments.... God's Law
is No Law." Instead, this alternative is offered: "If you are to
evolve, it will not be because you've been able to successfully deny
yourself things you know 'feel good,' but because you've granted
yourself these pleasures...." As a result, Walsch's "God"
approves of sexual activity by children and teenagers. Hubbard says,
"The break-up of the 20th century procreative family structure is
..=2E.needed...." For the sake of the Divine Self, Walsch denounces
fidelity and marriage vows: "Betrayal of yourself in order not to
betray another is Betrayal nonetheless. It is the Highest Betrayal."
Indeed, family members who won't move into the New Age should be left
behind. Hubbard says, "if members of our family choose to remain
where they are, we have no moral obligation to suppress our own
potential on their behalf. In fact the suppression of potential
is...'immoral'...." And once our bodies, minds, and souls are
drained dry by free sex and trafficking with the spirit world, we ought
to choose to die. As Hubbard says, "When we feel that our creativity
has run its course, we gracefully choose to die. In fact, it seems
unethical and foolish to live on."
Hubbard rewrites the Lord's Prayer, making it a hymn to the Divine
Self: "Our Father/Mother God... Which Art In Heaven... Hallowed Be
Our Name... Our Kingdom Is Come... Our Will Is Done...," and ending
with, "For Ours Is The Kingdom, Ours The Power, Ours The Glory, For
Ever And Ever. Amen."
For mankind to enter the New Age, we must abandon the traditional
religions, especially the monotheistic faiths. Judaism was one of
Bailey's targets - before, during, and after the Holocaust. Bailey
wrote that the Jews' sufferings were "the working out of the
retributive aspect of the Law of Cause and Effect.... Much that has
happened to the Jews originated in their past history and in their
pronounced attitude of separativeness and nonassimilability, and in
their emphasis upon material good...." Bailey's accusations are
serious, since she says "the true nature of cosmic evil" is "the
supreme evil of materialistic selfishness and the sense of isolated
separativeness."
New Age writers disdain orthodox Christians, whom they denounce as
"fundamentalists." Robert Muller said at the 1996 URI summit
conference that the United Religions must tame "fundamentalism" and
profess faithfulness "only to the global spirituality and to the
health of this planet." Recently he added an anti-Catholic twist:
"Two of the worst principles and words still used on planet Earth
are: fundamentalism and infallibility." Muller also said, "the
French Revolution abolished religions as troublemakers. Even today,
many regard religions as troublemakers." Muller seems to pose two
alternatives for us: Worship Gaia or face the Jacobins' response to
religious "troublemakers."
Matthew Fox concluded The Coming of the Cosmic Christ with a vision of
"Vatican III," to be called by Pope John XXIV to define the
doctrine of the Cosmic Christ as intrinsic to faith. The future Pope
has replaced the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith with a board
of grandmothers. "Still another action taken by this pope has been to
gather all the Opus Dei bishops of the world on one island where, it is
said, they are undergoing a two-year spiritual retreat that includes a
critique of the history of fascism and Christianity on the one hand and
an inculcation of creation spirituality on the other. It is said these
bishops do body prayer three times daily and art as meditation four
hours per day. The native people of the island are the instructors for
the art as meditation classes. Women have assumed the office of bishop
in their respective diocesan sees." There is literary precedent for
sending undesirables to islands. In Brave New World those who do not
fit into society are sent to islands of their choice, and left to
manage their own affairs. Fox's utopia is harsher than Aldous
Huxley's dystopia, where World Controller Mustapha Mond leaves the
misfits to themselves and does not force them to change; "John
XXIV" will subject his opponents to brainwashing. Perhaps Fox has
already picked the island to which orthodox Catholics, evangelical
Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox will go for mandatory
"re-education."
Nature abhors a vacuum, and no throne long remains vacant. If the New
Age movement were to dethrone Christ the King, who would take His
place? If Gorbachev has his way, the god of the New Religion will be
nature. He has said, "Nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred.
Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals." Muller has also
hailed the Earth as God: "Hindus call our earth Brahma, or God, for
they rightly see no difference between our earth and the divine."
New Age writers say that we will accept the New Religion when we
understand that all religions have the same source and the same end.
Bailey said, "The day is dawning when all religions will be regarded
as emanating from one great spiritual source; all will be seen as
unitedly providing the one root out of which the universal world
religion will inevitably emerge." Likewise, Episcopal Bishop William
Swing believes that all religions "come together at the apex, in the
Divine." Their affirmation of religious unity echoes Blavatsky, who
said that all religions have "been derived from one primitive
source," and that separate religions are "but shades of human error
and the signs of imperfection." Blavatsky's turgid writings of 1877
have become the received truth for religious liberals in 2000.
Bailey expected the New Religion, which she called the "Church
Universal," to emerge by the close of the 20th century - in other
words, now. Bailey said, "Only those will remain as guides and
leaders of the human spirit who speak from living experience, and who
know no creedal barriers; they will recognise the onward march of
revelation and the new emerging truths." Thus, liberal Protestants
and heretical Catholics will have a happy place in the New Religion.
Bailey believed that the New Religion would work closely with the UN:
"Thus the expressed aims and efforts of the United Nations will be
eventually brought to fruition and a new church of God, gathered out of
all religions and spiritual groups, will unitedly bring to an end the
great heresy of separateness." Muller has gone further, proposing to
deify the United Nations: "At the beginning the UN was only a hope.
Today it is a political reality. Tomorrow it will be the world's
religion."
The New Religion will bring spiritual totalitarianism. New Age leaders
agree that the last 2,000 years - the Age of Pisces - were a time
for development of individual identity and personality. In the coming
Age of Aquarius, people will happily let go of individuality and merge
their personal goals and identity into that of the whole race. As
Bailey said, "the will of the individual will voluntarily be blended
into the group will." The existence of separate persons is an
illusion; we are all really part of "The One."
In language that foreshadows Bishop Swing's blather about the
emergence of a "global soul," Teilhard de Chardin, whom New Age
writers hail as a prophet, said, "The organization of human energy...
is directed and pushes us towards the ultimate formation, over and
above each personal element, of a common soul of humanity." (Are you
aware that you are only a "personal element"?) The goal of human
evolution, for Teilhard, is for people to "acquire the consciousness,
without losing themselves, of becoming one and the same person." If
we understand things rightly, we will "love the preordained forces
that unite" us. As Orwell said of his protagonist, Winston, at the
end of 1984, "He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big
Brother."
The New Age avatars proclaim their commitment to democracy and
tolerance. However, they propose totalitarian solutions to mankind's
problems. The sacrifice of freedom and the acceptance of unlimited
government power will be for our own good; necessity will be the excuse
of tyrants. The New Age movement uses the theory of evolution - a
theory of inevitable and desirable Progress - as a justification for
whatever policies are needed to drive humanity and the planet to the
next great leap upward.
Bailey and her followers at the Lucis Trust have repeatedly praised
revolutions and dictatorships as part of the workings of "the
Plan." In 1939 she said, "The men who inspired the initiating
French revolution; the great conqueror, Napoleon; Bismarck, creator of
a nation; Mussolini, the regenerator of his people; Hitler, who lifted
a distressed people upon his shoulders; Lenin, the idealist, Stalin and
Franco" were "all expressions of the Shamballa force" - a force
which Bailey extolled. She viewed the dictatorships of her time as a
positive part of human evolution, fostering a person's "power to
regard himself as part of a whole." Bailey did criticize the
Stalinist regime, but said that "The true communistic platform is
sound; it is brotherhood in action and it does not - in its original
platform - run counter to the spirit of Christ."
Foster Bailey carried on Alice Bailey's work after her death in 1949.
In a 1972 book called Running God's Plan, he wrote that the Russian
Revolution had been "an outstanding hierarchical success. It has been
demonstrated that hopeless, illiterate peasants when stimulated and
given a chance become industrial workers." Historians describe these
same events as forced industrialization, forced collectivization, and
man-made famine. Foster Bailey's "Hierarchy," a supernatural
group of ascended masters and spirit guides whose mission is to direct
human evolution, also approved of the Chinese Cultural Revolution:
"The cultural revolution in China.... is an hierarchical project.
Amazing changes have been achieved...." According to the Black Book
of Communism, approximately 20 million deaths can be attributed to
Soviet Communism, and 65 million to the Chinese version. Evidently, the
Theosophists' spiritual Hierarchy condones mass bloodshed to achieve
its goals.
The implosion of the Soviet Empire has not dampened the enthusiasm of
today's New Age writers for world government and socialism. Robert
Muller favors using the European Union as the basis for "World
Union." Then, "since Russia reaches into the North of Asia, the old
dream of Eurasia can be implemented. The plan of Robert Schuman who
dreamt of integrating the African countries into Eurafrica can be
implemented.... In the meantime, the US can organize the Americas from
Alaska to the Tierra del Fuego and the two unions can be integrated
into a World Union." This ought to be interesting news for the Latin
Americans who cherish independence from the Yankees. Projects for the
world government would include global prohibition of alcohol, a global
ID card for all, global police and military forces under the control of
"the Ministry of Peace" (the same term that Orwell used in 1984 for
Big Brother's military force), a global secret service, "world
penal legislation," a global property register similar to "what the
young French revolutionaries did for France," a global income tax,
and a global computer database to house "all data on our planet, on
its environment, and on humanity."
If this sounds like world communism, Muller says that might not be
altogether bad: "We should ask an honest man like Mikhail Gorbachev
to tell us what was good in certain cases in communism and which would
be useful for humanity." To achieve his goals, Muller favors
abolition of "nationalism" and "the big, multinational
companies," to be achieved either by a "people's revolution or a
revolution of the scientists, thinkers, visionaries, prophets,
globalists, futurologists and synthesizers of this planet."
Walsch's "God" says that highly evolved extra-terrestrials
practice pure communism: "They share everything. With everyone....
All the natural resources of their world, of their environment, are
divided equally, and distributed to everyone." Along with global
communism, there must be world government, backed up by a World Court
and a world "peacekeeping force." Each nation would have two
representatives in the Congress of Nations, and "representation in
direct proportion to a nation's population" in the People's
Assembly. Under this plan, the U.S. would have as many votes in the
Congress of Nations as the Sudan, where Christians are sold into
slavery or executed. The U.S. would have about one-fourth as many votes
in the People's Assembly as the People's Republic of China, which
persecutes Christians and enforces a one-child policy on families.
Would anyone care to guess how long our constitutional protections of
freedom of religion and freedom of speech would survive?
Spangler likewise points toward a totalitarian future. He says: "From
the depths of the race a call is rising for the emergence of a saviour,
an avatar...who can be for the race what the ancient priest-kings were
in the dawn of human history." The priest-kings of Sodom, Egypt, and
Babylon will return to rule us. Spangler describes "true democracy"
in terms reminiscent of Rousseau's General Will: "All spiritual
societies are hierarchical.... It is not the will of the majority that
is important. It is the will of the whole.... Democracy as we know it
is a quantitative form of government. True democracy, however, is
qualitative, and that is what we must return to." Spangler says
"theocratic democracy" is "what we are moving towards for
humankind." ("Theocratic democracy"? Quick, call the ACLU! Or
does it only oppose Christian theocracy?)
Spangler says that today's "new gurus" are "accepting their
divinity"; they are "forming the basis for the government of the
future. This will be a government that is authoritarian...in the same
way that the laws of thermodynamics or of gravity are authoritarian."
The authority of the New Regime will be as omnipresent and inexorable
as the authority of the laws of Nature; each subject will say, "I can
only follow this rhythm, this pattern," for we will be "at one with
the currents of life." One might reply that the only beings that
always move "at one with the currents" are dead.
Teilhard de Chardin explicitly and repeatedly favored totalitarianism.
In 1939 Teilhard wrote that the time for "egotistical autonomy" had
passed; "the modern totalitarian regimes, whatever their initial
defects, are neither heresies nor biological regressions: they are in
line with the essential trend of 'cosmic' movement." On another
occasion he said, "A progressive democrat is not fundamentally
different from a really progressive totalitarian."
The teachings of Alice Bailey, Teilhard de Chardin, Robert Muller,
Barbara Marx Hubbard, Neale Donald Walsch, and David Spangler provide
the theory of totalitarian New Age government and economics; the
programs of Gorbachev's State of the World Forum and the Earth
Charter Campaign describe the proposed practice.
The mission of the State of the World Forum is to mobilize "creative
minorities" who will set the agenda for the "new phase of human
development." Gorbachev considers those who participate in the Forum
to be members of a "global brain trust" for a new civilization. He
believes world government is needed.
The Earth Charter is the brainchild of Gorbachev (acting as chairman of
Green Cross International) and Maurice Strong, an adviser to the World
Bank, a leader at UN environmental meetings, and a wealthy proponent of
world government. (Ted Turner is also involved, as a member of the
Green Cross International Board.) Gorbachev views the proposed Earth
Charter as "a kind of Ten Commandments, a 'Sermon on the Mount,'
that provides a guide for human behavior toward the environment in the
next century and beyond." Strong says, "The real goal of the Earth
Charter is that it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments, like
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." Gorbachev and Strong seem
to view themselves as the lawgivers of the future, successors to Moses
and Jesus.
Gorbachev and Strong hope to gain UN adoption of the Earth Charter in
2002. Once adopted, the Charter would be the basis for new global,
national, and even local law. Steven Rockefeller, chairman of the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund, is coordinating the drafting of the Earth
Charter, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund is supporting Earth Charter
activities in 10 Third World countries. Global Education Associates and
the Temple of Understanding - interfaith organizations that actively
support the URI - also promote the Earth Charter.
The basis of the Earth Charter is the belief that "Earth, our home,
is alive with a unique community of life" - the Gaia hypothesis.
The Charter states that "A dramatic rise in population has increased
the pressures on ecological systems and has overburdened social
systems" - the "Population Bomb" argument. For Charter writers,
socialism and feminism are the order of the day; they want to promote
"equitable distribution of wealth" and to "promote gender
equality." We are called to "treat all living beings with
compassion and protect them from cruelty and wanton destruction."
However, unborn children are excluded from this compassion.
"The Green Cross Earth Charter Philosophy," a document on the Earth
Charter web site, takes a hard line about what the Earth Charter will
mean for us. First comes the call for immediate "fundamental
economic, social and cultural changes that address the root causes of
poverty and environmental degradation." Then comes the call for
"Stabilization of the World's Population," and "Zero-Growth of
Material Economy"; the needs of the world's poor will be met by
"reducing material over-consumption by the rich minority." To
enforce all this, there must be "Global Sovereignty" with total
power and universal jurisdiction: "The protection of the Biosphere,
as the Common Interest of Humanity, must not be subservient to the
rules of state sovereignty, demands of the free market or individual
rights.... An international body for the Sustainability of Human Life
on the Earth...must have the independence and power to facilitate
agreement between all societal actors...." Democratic institutions
must not delay the Earth Charter revolution; at the 1995 State of the
World Forum, Strong said, "We shouldn't wait until political
democracy paves the way. We must act now."
When Maurice Strong says such things, we must pay attention; he has
powerful friends. Strong, Chairman of the Earth Council, is on the
board of the World Economic Forum (WEF); Klaus Schwab, president and
founder of the WEF, is a member of the Earth Council. The WEF, which
meets annually in Switzerland, describes itself as "the most
significant global business summit bringing together close to 2,000
business and political leaders, experts, academics, and members of the
media, to set the global agenda for the coming year." Top executives
of billion-dollar companies pay fees and travel costs of $30,000 to
$250,000 each year for the privilege of schmoozing with presidents of
many countries and of the world's largest corporations - including
President Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bill Gates, Kofi
Annan (UN Secretary General), the CEO of General Motors, the Chairman
of Goldman Sachs, the Chairman of Daewoo Corporation, the Chairman of
Daimler-Benz, and George Soros.
In their pride, the New Age teachers and their financiers plan for a
global utopia. The greater the pride of people or movements, the
greater their rage when they encounter opposition. Pride and rage are
the spiritual precursors of cruelty and murder. To understand this, we
need to take another look at the Theosophist prophets of New Age
teachers. These prophets believed that the two World Wars were
necessary for human evolution, and that the birth pangs of the New Age
began with the atomic explosions in 1945. They advocated sending those
who are unwilling to enter the New Age into oblivion. Such is the blood
lust of the compassionate.
The New Age avatars have embraced a brutal version of spiritual
Darwinism, rooted in the Gnostic belief expressed by Alice Bailey:
"Death is not a disaster to be feared; the work of the Destroyer is
not really cruel or undesirable." As Hubbard says, "Nature is less
concerned about individual survival, than with the evolution of the
whole...." Spangler's channeled spirit "John" says that
suffering is merely part of "a world of form" that "has little
meaning"; the spirit is "concerned with that which is the eternal
life of you, the Divine Presence which I nourish and embrace. If forms
must be destroyed that this Presence be released, then so be it."
This spirit speaks like someone in charge of targeting nuclear weapons.
From the start of World War II until her death, Bailey wrote that the
war was necessary for the New Age to come. She believed that the New
Age would be preceded by a "destructive cycle, wherein the old order
passes away" and "human civilization with its accompanying
institutions - is destroyed." She gave credit to the
"Hierarchy" of ascended spiritual masters for "their decision,
taken early in this century, which precipitated...that major
destructive agency, the world war (1914-1945)." In 1943 Bailey said,
"One of the purposes lying behind the present holocaust [World War
II] has been the necessity for the destruction of inadequate forms....
The Law of destruction was permitted to work through humanity itself,
and men are now destroying the forms through which many masses of men
are functioning." ("Destroying forms" does not mean shredding IRS
paperwork; it is the Theosophist code word for death.) After the war,
Bailey wrote that "the Custodians of God's Plan" viewed World War
II as a "major surgical operation" that had been "largely
successful" in removing "a violent streptococcic germ" that had
"menaced the life of humanity." She warned that this would be only
the beginning of sorrows: "The germ, to be sure, is not eradicated
and makes its presence felt in infected areas of the body of humanity.
Another surgical operation may be necessary."
Bailey viewed the atomic incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an
"inevitable and desirable" manifestation of the "saving force,"
since "the wrecking and disappearance of that which is bad and
undesirable must ever precede the building of the good and
desirable." For Hubbard, the nuclear explosions of 1945 were a
turning point for humanity, "the beginning of our collective labor
pains. It was the signal that the Cosmic Child, humanity, could either
kill itself by remaining in self-centered consciousness in the womb of
Earth, or instead emancipate itself for universal consciousness." The
spirit that spoke to Spangler in "the transmissions of limitless love
and truth" said, "Should nuclear devices be used, the energies will
be the revelation of me. All that will remain is of what I am and all
that is not of me shall disappear, to follow another law and another
destiny." In 1946, after the U.S. nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean,
Teilhard closed a paean to the Bomb by saying, "For all their
military trappings, the recent explosions at Bikini herald the birth
into the world of a Mankind both inwardly and outwardly pacified. They
proclaim the coming of the Spirit of the Earth."
For the New Age soothsayers, the "end times" are now. Bailey,
Hubbard, Spangler, and Walsch have predicted that the transition to the
New Age would happen between 2000 and 2010. As Walsch's "God"
said, "Yours is a race awakening. Your time of fulfillment is at
hand." Gordon Davidson, the Theosophist who praised the URI as an
example of the emergence of the "Avatar of Synthesis," says that in
the year 2000, humanity faces "the impending descent of the Shamballa
energy." This would not be a joyful event; Davidson's mentor, Alice
Bailey, said that the European dictators of the 1930s were "all
expressions of the Shamballa force." New Age fortunetellers whose
writings span the last sixty years all agree that the arrival of the
New Age is imminent and will be apocalyptic. We can expect New Age
devotees to be busy with mischief, doing their utmost to fulfill their
own prophecies.
Other New Age avatars view the possibility of human extinction with
Earth-centered, reptilian calm. Jean Houston, spiritual mentor of
Lauren Artress (the Episcopal priestess who runs the Labyrinth Project
at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco) announces the choice facing
humanity: "It could be that the human race will end as a vast, failed
experiment.... And the planet will shake its shoulders, let 'em slide
off and the dolphins will inherit the earth." William Irwin Thompson,
a New Age associate of Morton and Spangler, said: "We might even end
it for human beings and not be able to keep the experiment going, but
the biosphere will not cease to evolve. If you're mystical, you
don't necessarily identify just with a momentary piece of meat called
hominoids." Muller also thinks that we may become extinct: "The
Earth will take revenge against her most advanced species which has
begun to destroy her.... God will not allow us to destroy His Creation
and to put an end to the Earth's careful, miraculous evolution over
billions of years. He is more likely to let humanity be destroyed."
As part of the imminent global transformation, New Age leaders look
forward to a "selection" among the human race. The elect of
humanity will survive to enter the New Age. Many others will die - a
prospect that these gurus view with cold equanimity. Since war and mass
murder are inevitable, it's reasonable to ask whether those who
foretell a "selection process" intend to kill their opponents.
For several decades Barbara Marx Hubbard has predicted "personal
extinction" for people who will not get with the New Age program:
"A Quantum Transformation is the time of selection.... The species
known as self-centered humanity will become extinct. The species known
as whole-centered humanity will evolve." At this time, "humans
capable of cooperating to self-transcend will do so"; "elements"
who maintain "the illusion of separation will become extinct...just
as Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal humans became extinct." In referring to
undesirable people as "elements," she follows the example of the
Nazis, the Communists, and others who dehumanize their opponents to
justify destroying them. Hubbard warns that if the selection comes, it
will be violent: "Either the good will prevail...or the violent
selection of the self-centered will begin." For her, Satan is "part
of the selection process...that will bring forth the self-elected from
the self-rejected, so that...only those connected to the whole
survive." Muller agrees that persons "who hold contrary beliefs"
to those favored in the "next phase of evolution" will disappear;
opponents of the UN and other "anti-evolutionary, blind, self-serving
people" will have their souls "parked in a special corral of the
universe for having been retarding forces, true aberrations in the
evolution and ascent of humanity," a banishment to a spiritual
Siberia.
Nick Bunick, the self-proclaimed reincarnation of the Apostle Paul,
sets the date for the selection between 2000 and 2010, when "those
people who are not living according to the laws of God" will be "no
longer participating in our world." They'll be sent to "a
different vibrational plane" to improve their karma. Hubbard says
that survivors of the selection will go with the flow of evolution,
will love "choice, diversity, flexibility, ambiguity, uncertainty,
responsibility, and response-ability." The inheritors of Hubbard's
new kingdom will pass all the current tests for political correctness.
The leaders of the New Age movement argue that the earth is
overpopulated, and that radical measures are needed to defuse the
"population bomb." In the 1940s - when world population was less
than half what it is today - Bailey said, "certain physical
restrictions should be imposed, because it is now evident that beyond a
certain point the planet cannot support humanity." Ex-Catholic
Matthew Fox has said, "Excessive human population is a grave
danger...it's one of the reasons I joined the Episcopal Church,
because of its open-minded and pragmatic view of birth control." In
1997 Gorbachev said, "for a certain transitional period families
should limit themselves to one child."
Some of these compassionate people want to reduce Earth's population
to two billion or less. In a November 1991 interview with The UNESCO
Courier, Jacques-Yves Cousteau said: "World population must be
stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day."
That works out to 127,750,000 people per year, and 1.27 billion people
to "eliminate" per decade. The eco-feminist theologian Rosemary
Radford Ruether told those who attended a May 1998 ecological
conference that "We need to seek the most compassionate way of
weeding out people.... In place of the pro-life movement we need to
develop the 'spirituality of recycling'...a spirituality that
includes ourselves in the renewal of earth and self. We need to compost
ourselves." Several months later Ruether told a national conference
of Call to Action, a dissident Catholic organization, how many people
must go onto the compost pile: "We must return to the population
level of 1930" - about two billion people. What is discreetly
unannounced is what to do with the 4 billion "surplus" people. Once
again, the liberal death wish rears its head.
Taken together, the works of people such as Robert Muller, Barbara Marx
Hubbard, Neale Donald Walsch, Alice Bailey, and Helena Blavatsky are an
anti-Catechism: a comprehensive anti-Gospel, a revival of the Gnostic
heresy, and an inversion of Christian morality and doctrine. I have not
pulled a few "smoking gun" quotes from otherwise innocent writings.
The adepts of the New Age have provided an arsenal full of smoking
guns, all pointed in the same direction. Those who can stand to read
New Age and Theosophical books will find that these writers make clear
their intentions for us all - just as Hitler did with Mein Kampf.
This time, let us pay attention!
Is the New Age movement a conspiracy? No. Conspiracies are usually
secretive associations with illegal objectives. New Age leaders and
their utopian, globalist allies are open about their aims, and their
activities are legal. The goals of the millennial crop of New Agers and
utopians match what radicals have sought since the French Revolution.
Their project reveals the permanent vulnerability of mankind to
temptation and sin. Consider: God remains forever, and does not change.
Human nature does not change. The Devil does not change, and the
temptations he offers mankind do not change. From the Garden of Eden to
the s=E9ances of the Theosophists, the message is the same: You will be
a god. Human response to temptation does not change either; apart from
God's grace, we sin. Therefore, human rebellion against God will
follow a consistent pattern. Those who wish to rebel against God will
find collaborators and mentors to confirm and assist them in their
choices. What some fevered observers see as multi-generational,
international conspiracies are really just successive groups of fallen
men following temptation to its logical conclusion. If New Age and
utopian movements show unity and consistent purpose internationally or
historically, it arises from the dark spirit they follow rather than
from any conspiratorial skills.
The Vatican has spoken against the false teachings of the New Age
movement and the utopians. The Church rejects notions of a man-made
paradise on earth. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
"The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the
world every time the claim is made to realize within history that
messianic hope which can be only realized beyond history through the
eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of
this falsification of the kingdom...under the name of millenarianism,
especially the 'intrinsically perverse' political form of a secular
messianism" (#676; also see #675). As for the spiritual practices
that are common in the New Age movement, the Catechism states: "All
forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons,
conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to
'unveil' the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm
reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of
clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power
over time, history, and in the last analysis, other human beings, as
well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor,
respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone" (#2116; also see
#2117).
The deluded and spiritually starved souls who follow New Age teachers
are, each and all, people for whom Christ died and rose again. It is a
spiritual work of mercy to loudly warn them that they are rushing
heedlessly toward the edge of a spiritual cliff.
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| User: "Doc Smartass" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
19 Jun 2006 02:24:49 PM |
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"Sound of Trumpet" <soundoftrumpet@fastmail.fm> wrote in
news:1150735426.500175.69250@r2g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
Subject: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent
Silliness
....It pisses the christers off. Bonus!
--
Doc Smartass
"I am George W. Fudd, Miwwionaire. I own a mansion, a yacht, and your phone
number."
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| User: "Doc Smartass" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
19 Jun 2006 02:24:16 PM |
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"Sound of Trumpet" <soundoftrumpet@fastmail.fm> wrote in
news:1150735426.500175.69250@r2g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
Subject: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent
Silliness
It pisses the christers off. Bonus!
--
Doc Smartass
"I am George W. Fudd, Miwwionaire. I own a mansion, a yacht, and your phone
number."
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| User: "Hotel Charlie One" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
19 Jun 2006 01:32:45 PM |
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"Sound of Trumpet" <soundoftrumpet@fastmail.fm> wrote in
news:1150735426.500175.69250@r2g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
In recent years the New Age movement has come out of the closet in the
Church and in the world. The New Age movement is made up of those who
follow a potpourri of beliefs and practices that fall outside the
boundaries of traditional Christianity
Sound bite translation; Someone is horning in on our "fool the Bubbas"
schtick and we don't like it.
--
The actions of the disgraceful Clinton and Bush administrations
make it possible for me to say without shame that I deeply regret
the day I put the uniform of my country. The freedoms that I was
willing to protect with my life are gone. The America of our founders
is dead. All we are waiting for now is rigor mortis.
HotelCharlieOne
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| User: "*nemo*" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
19 Jun 2006 05:30:37 PM |
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In article <1150735426.500175.69250@r2g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
"Sound of Trumpet" <soundoftrumpet@fastmail.fm> wrote:
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
Idiot. ALL religions have self-indulgent silliness in them. And so far
as I know, they all have dangerous insanity in them as well. Beware
indeed.
--
Nemo - EAC Commissioner for Bible Belt Underwater Operations.
Atheist #1331 (the Palindrome of doom!)
BAAWA Knight! - One of those warm Southern Knights, y'all!
Charter member, SMASH!!
http://home.earthlink.net/~jehdjh/Relpg.html
Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus
Quotemeister since March 2002
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| User: "johac" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
20 Jun 2006 01:10:48 AM |
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In article <1150735426.500175.69250@r2g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
"Sound of Trumpet" <soundoftrumpet@fastmail.fm> wrote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1432395/posts
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
And why is it anymore sillier and self-indulgent than any other
religion, including yours?
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
Contact - Throw a .net over the .com
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| User: "John Baker" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
21 Jun 2006 08:32:54 AM |
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On 19 Jun 2006 09:43:46 -0700, "Sound of Trumpet"
<soundoftrumpet@fastmail.fm> wrote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1432395/posts
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
Umm...no, it isn't.
Try again.
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| User: "satyr" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
20 Jun 2006 07:18:04 PM |
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On 19 Jun 2006 09:43:46 -0700, "Sound of Trumpet"
<soundoftrumpet@fastmail.fm> wrote:
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
The New Oxford Review ^ | July-August 2000 | Lee Penn
Posted on 06/28/2005 9:59:54 AM PDT by kjvail
<mercy snipping>
I looked up 'screed' in the dictionary and they had this article.
--
satyr #1953
Chairman, EAC Church Taxation Subcommittee
Director, Gideon Bible Alternative Fuel Project
Supervisor, EAC Fossil Casting Lab
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| User: "Barnabas Collins" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
19 Jun 2006 01:39:51 PM |
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On 19 Jun 2006 09:43:46 -0700, "Sound of Trumpet"
<soundoftrumpet@fastmail.fm> wrote:
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
I would point out much of the new age movement is not "new" but
is based on stuff like Chinese/oriental customs that have been
in use for thousands of years. Also some of it is based on
Native American customs which have also been practiced for
thousands of years.
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| User: "Chris H. Fleming" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
19 Jun 2006 11:55:21 PM |
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Barnabas Collins wrote:
On 19 Jun 2006 09:43:46 -0700, "Sound of Trumpet"
<soundoftrumpet@fastmail.fm> wrote:
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
I would point out much of the new age movement is not "new" but
is based on stuff like Chinese/oriental customs that have been
in use for thousands of years. Also some of it is based on
Native American customs which have also been practiced for
thousands of years.
I have some New Age books that are over a hundred years old. They were
written by a Yogi Ramacharaka a.k.a William Walker Atkinson. They seem
to be from the perspective of Advaita Vedanta Hinduism and are filled
with mystical mumbojumbo like psychics and astral projection, feel good
spirituality stuff like the immortal soul and karma, and some more
practical knowledge like how to flush out your sinuses by snorting
water.
The formula for New Age doesn't seem to have changed in a hundred
years. Only today the white guy will refer to himself as Rinpoche
Yabadabado because Tibetan buddhism is more in style than hinduism.
They all draw on ancient occultism/religion/philosophy to spread a
fruity but feel good message to people repressed by a dogmatic
religion/culture.
He also attempted to do the same thing from a Hermetic (ancient
Egyptian and Greek stuff) perspective. I didn't read that book in it's
entirety but it appeared to follow the exact same formula. And he also
wrote a book from a garbled Gnostic Christian perspective. That someone
would also use Native American culture would not suprise me in the
least.
The only thing that bothers me about New Agers is their susceptibility
to psychics like John Edwards and Sylvia Browne. But to be fair the
Christians are already susceptible to televangelists like Jerry Falwell
and Pat Robertson. The psychics might seem harmless now (I would debate
that because they are fucking up people's grieving), but it's only a
matter of time before we get a Sai Baba palming watches and molesting
little boys.
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| User: "Johnny Asia poki_pongo AT yahoo.com" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
20 Jun 2006 08:06:51 AM |
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Sai Baba palming watches and molesting
little boys.
See for yourself, videos of baba's "miracles".
Even little kids wouldn't be fooled by such an amaterish
magician:
http://home.hetnet.nl/~ex-baba/engels/movies.html
http://www.exbaba.com/
--
+
Johnny Asia, Guitarist from the Future
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=78840
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
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| User: "Chris H. Fleming" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
20 Jun 2006 08:18:58 PM |
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Johnny Asia wrote:
Sai Baba palming watches and molesting
little boys.
See for yourself, videos of baba's "miracles".
Even little kids wouldn't be fooled by such an amaterish
magician:
http://home.hetnet.nl/~ex-baba/engels/movies.html
http://www.exbaba.com/
And to think, you too can assert that you are a living god with no more
than few weeks of training in stage magic. And people will believe you.
For my next trick^H^H^H^H^Hmiracle, I shall make 1 bologna sandwich
into 3.
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| User: "Uncle Clover" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
19 Jun 2006 01:42:21 PM |
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On Mon, 19 Jun 2006 14:39:51 -0400, Barnabas Collins
<BarnabasCollinsonSF@gmail.com> wrote:
On 19 Jun 2006 09:43:46 -0700, "Sound of Trumpet"
<soundoftrumpet@fastmail.fm> wrote:
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
I would point out much of the new age movement is not "new" but
is based on stuff like Chinese/oriental customs that have been
in use for thousands of years. Also some of it is based on
Native American customs which have also been practiced for
thousands of years.
----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----
Hi Barnabas - love the moniker. I've never seen the full series of "Dark
Shadows", but it's definitely on my "to see" list. :-)
That said... The "New" in "New Age" isn't supposed to imply any originality or
novelty, only that the "Age of the Modern Norm" as we know it is supposed to be
on its way out. It could just as easily be called the "Strange Age" or the
"Fresh Age", or the "New Leaf Age". :-)
--
L8r,
Uncle Clover
************************************************
The true mark of a civilized society is when its
citizens know how to hate each other peacefully.
************************************************
"A disappearance is when someone has vanished.
A tragedy is when they were photogenic."
- a.t-c's Bo Raxo, paraphrased.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"If you look at the whole life of the planet,
man has only been around for a few blinks of an
eye. So if the infection wipes us all out,
that _is_ a return to normality..."
- Sergeant Farrell, "28 Days Later"
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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| User: "jcon" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
22 Jun 2006 03:08:04 PM |
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Uncle Clover wrote:
On Mon, 19 Jun 2006 14:39:51 -0400, Barnabas Collins
<BarnabasCollinsonSF@gmail.com> wrote:
On 19 Jun 2006 09:43:46 -0700, "Sound of Trumpet"
<soundoftrumpet@fastmail.fm> wrote:
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
I would point out much of the new age movement is not "new" but
is based on stuff like Chinese/oriental customs that have been
in use for thousands of years. Also some of it is based on
Native American customs which have also been practiced for
thousands of years.
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Hi Barnabas - love the moniker. I've never seen the full series of "Dark
Shadows", but it's definitely on my "to see" list. :-)
That said... The "New" in "New Age" isn't supposed to imply any originality or
novelty, only that the "Age of the Modern Norm" as we know it is supposed to be
on its way out. It could just as easily be called the "Strange Age" or the
"Fresh Age", or the "New Leaf Age". :-)
You forgot the "Age of Aquarius".
The New Age movement is just another of those
annoying cases where people reject the "dogma"
of traditional religion only to gobble up other
dogmas like they were bunch of snickerdoodles.
Just trade in your crucifix for a healing crystal and
the Holy Spirit for a few chakras.
-jc
--
L8r,
Uncle Clover
************************************************
The true mark of a civilized society is when its
citizens know how to hate each other peacefully.
************************************************
"A disappearance is when someone has vanished.
A tragedy is when they were photogenic."
- a.t-c's Bo Raxo, paraphrased.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"If you look at the whole life of the planet,
man has only been around for a few blinks of an
eye. So if the infection wipes us all out,
that _is_ a return to normality..."
- Sergeant Farrell, "28 Days Later"
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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| User: "raven1" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
19 Jun 2006 05:08:02 PM |
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On 19 Jun 2006 09:43:46 -0700, "Sound of Trumpet"
<soundoftrumpet@fastmail.fm> wrote:
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
Quite true: a large portion of it is a scam to relieve the gullible of
large sums of money.
--
"O Sybilli, si ergo
Fortibus es in ero
O Nobili! Themis trux
Sivat sinem? Causen Dux"
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| User: "Alexandra Ceelie" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-IndulgentSilliness |
19 Jun 2006 05:02:57 PM |
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On 6/19/06 12:43 PM, in article
1150735426.500175.69250@r2g2000cwb.googlegroups.com, "Sound of Trumpet"
<soundoftrumpet@fastmail.fm> wrote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1432395/posts
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
Zzzzzzzz....
=^..^=
The NetKitten
Alexandra Ceelie
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
19 Jun 2006 06:30:20 PM |
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Previously, on alt.atheism, Sound of Trumpet in episode
<1150735426.500175.69250@r2g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>...
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
It's an offshoot of Christianity!
(That makes it dangerous)
--
Mark K. Bilbo
--------------------------------------------------
"As hip as it is for outsiders to blame New Orleans
for everything bad that happened during and after
Hurricane Katrina, the truth is that the people
who lived here were much more prepared for a big
storm than the federal government that promised
us flood protection." [Jarvis DeBerry]
http://makeashorterlink.com/?V180525DC
"Everything New Orleans"
http://www.nola.com
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| User: "Johnny Asia poki_pongo AT yahoo.com" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
19 Jun 2006 09:39:57 PM |
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"Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-atheism@org.webmaster> wrote in message
news:iOSdndqCu4kQrgrZnZ2dnUVZ_vmdnZ2d@megapath.net...
Previously, on alt.atheism, Sound of Trumpet in episode
<1150735426.500175.69250@r2g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>...
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
It's an offshoot of Christianity!
(That makes it dangerous)
It's a mixture of christianity and narcissism.
--
+
Johnny Asia, Guitarist from the Future
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=78840
"I say play your own way. Don't play what the public wants. You play what
you want and let the public pick up on what you're doing even if it does
take
them fifteen, twenty years." - Thelonious Monk
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
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| User: "wbarwell" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
20 Jun 2006 07:38:22 AM |
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Mark K. Bilbo wrote:
Previously, on alt.atheism, Sound of Trumpet in episode
<1150735426.500175.69250@r2g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>...
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
It's an offshoot of Christianity!
(That makes it dangerous)
Many years ago I worried at the rising tide of newage mindrot.
I need not havem it does relativlely little damage as compared to
politicized far right evangelical Christianity.
I Put RRR as America's number 1 threat, newage
drivel is down there at about 9, with flouridation
and backwards masking in popular music.
Inner city gangs is a far bigger threat than newage drivel.
Gansta Rap is a far more indulgent and evil idea
that has fools killing themselves to live up to its credo
of violent nihilism. Evolution in action.
--
Reason is the Devil's greatest *****; by nature and
manner of being she is a noxious *****; she is a
prostitute, the Devil's appointed *****; ***** eaten
by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot
and destroyed, she and her wisdom ... Throw dung in her
face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be
drowned in baptism... She would deserve, the wretch, to
be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the
closets."
- Martin Luther, Erlangen Edition v. 16, pp. 142-148
Cheerful Charlie
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| User: "Seamus" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
19 Jun 2006 12:08:48 PM |
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Sound of Trumpet rose from the depths of R'lyeh, and spewed the
following all over Usenet:
<snip a whole LOAD of Right-Wing anti-freedom *****>
Cut the bias, do some *real* research, and get a CLUE.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
19 Jun 2006 12:33:06 PM |
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Sound of Trumpet wrote:
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than
Self-Indulgent Silliness
Beware! The Christian Right-Wing Is More Than Money
And Political Power
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| User: "JessHC" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
19 Jun 2006 12:11:16 PM |
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Sound of Trumpet wrote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1432395/posts
Beware!
Complaint filed, although I'm sure nothing will happen.
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| User: "Nevermore" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
20 Jun 2006 07:48:55 AM |
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In <1150737076.610995.91780@h76g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> JessHC wrote:
Sound of Trumpet wrote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1432395/posts
Beware!
Complaint filed, although I'm sure nothing will happen.
That sort of sums up religion right there.
Nevermore
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| User: "jcon" |
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| Title: Re: Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness |
19 Jun 2006 03:29:45 PM |
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Sound of Trumpet wrote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1432395/posts
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
The New Oxford Review ^ | July-August 2000 | Lee Penn
Posted on 06/28/2005 9:59:54 AM PDT by kjvail
In recent years the New Age movement has come out of the closet in the
Church and in the world.
"Recent years"??? In addition to being incredibly silly, isn't
this article about 20 years behind the times? New age stock
has been falling ever since the Moronic Convergence.
Maybe it took them that long to get the spelling right.
-jc
The New Age movement is made up of those who
follow a potpourri of beliefs and practices that fall outside the
boundaries of traditional Christianity. Its manifestations are protean.
Some Catholic nuns walk on labyrinths to contact the "Divine
Feminine." Increasing numbers of health insurance companies have
heeded consumers' demands to cover offbeat treatments, ranging from
Ayurvedic herbal medicine to "therapeutic touch" - in which a
"healer's" hands manipulate "energy fields" but never touch
the patient's body. Hillary Clinton has contacted the spirit of
Eleanor Roosevelt under the guidance of Jean Houston - a New
York-based avatar who runs a "Mystery School," and who inspired the
current fad of walking on labyrinths. Millions of Americans with more
money than commonsense are buying into this trendy, feel-good style of
spirituality; they have helped to keep Neale Donald Walsch's
Conversations with God on the best-seller lists since 1997. These are
the people who proudly say, "I'm spiritual, but not religious."
Many Christians view the New Age movement as merely self-indulgent
silliness. Unfortunately, there's far more to the movement than
astrology, crystals, weird workshops, and psychobabble. New Age
spiritual leaders have a firmly entrenched anti-Christian worldview,
and many of them harbor a special hatred for the Catholic Church. Many
believe that the Fall was really man's ascent into knowledge,
assisted by Lucifer - whom they hail as the bringer of light and
wisdom. Many expect an imminent, apocalyptic transformation that will
lead humanity into the New Age. By acts of men or by an act of
"spirit," earth will be cleansed of those who refuse to evolve. In
the New Age, there will be world government; the economy will be remade
to promote "sharing." Traditional morality and traditional families
will disappear. Orthodox religions - especially Christianity and
Judaism - are considered "separative" and "obsolete"; in the
New Age, they too will vanish.
For the last 125 years, New Age leaders worldwide have followed the
false light of Theosophy; they now whisper into the itching ears of the
powerful - politicians, media moguls, UN officials, foundation
grant-makers, and Anglican bishops. As the West moves into a
post-Christian era, the influence of the New Age movement grows.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky blended Eastern religion with Western
occultism, establishing the Theosophical movement in 1875 in New York
City. Theosophy has influenced occult, spiritualist, "New Thought,"
and New Age movements around the world ever since. For Blavatsky, the
LORD is not God; mankind is. She says, "Man is truly the manifested
deity in both its aspects - good and evil." Since mankind is god,
it follows that "mankind will become freed from its false gods, and
find itself finally - SELF-REDEEMED." Or rather, some of mankind is
"god-informed" and capable of self-redemption - namely, "the
Aryan and other civilized nations." Others, "such human specimens
as the Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some African tribes" are
"lower human creatures," "inferior races" that are "now
happily...dying out. Verily mankind is 'of one blood,' but not of
the same essence."1
In the early 1900s Alice A. Bailey carried forward the teachings of
Theosophy in the U.S. She founded the Lucifer [yes!] Publishing Company
in New York City in 1922, renaming it the Lucis Publishing Company in
1923. Between 1922 and 1949, Bailey published 24 books of
"revelations" that she claimed to have channeled from the Tibetan
ascended "spiritual master" Djwhal Khul. All these books remain in
print, and are widely available.
The influence of Theosophy continues to grow a half-century after her
death. Robert Muller, former assistant Secretary General of the United
Nations, won the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education in 1989 for his World
Core Curriculum. He says, "The underlying philosophy upon which The
Robert Muller School is based will be found in the teachings set forth
in the books of Alice A. Bailey by the Tibetan teacher, Djwhal Khul."
Like Muller, Neale Donald Walsch praises Theosophy. James Parks Morton,
the Dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York
City until his 1997 retirement, praises Theosophist David Spangler, as
"a genuine mystic."
Muller, Walsch, and Morton's Temple of Understanding all actively
support the United Religions Initiative (URI), a well-funded venture in
religious syncretism led by Episcopal Bishop William Swing of San
Francisco. (Other Theosophists are lining up to support the URI. The
Rudolf Steiner Foundation has recently made a grant to the URI, and the
Lucis Trust newsletter, World Goodwill, has praised the URI twice in
1999.) Laurance S. Rockefeller and his Fund for the Enhancement of the
Human Spirit have financed New Agers Matthew Fox, Barbara Marx Hubbard,
and Bishop Swing's Grace Cathedral. Morton has friends in high
places; he is on the Council of Advisers for Global Green, USA (an
affiliate of Mikhail Gorbachev's Green Cross International, an
environmentalist organization), and was co-chairman of UN conferences
on the environment in 1992 and 1997.
Another of Gorbachev's organizations, the San Francisco-based State
of the World Forum, draws funding from a galaxy of corporations and
foundations, ranging from Archer Daniels Midland, CNN, Hewlett-Packard,
and Occidental Petroleum to the Carnegie Corporation, the Kellogg
Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The State of the World
Forum attracts almost 1,000 VIPs to San Francisco each year, and
encourages them to believe that they will be the ones to shape the
emerging "new civilization." Not all participants are eggheads and
political has-beens; the 1998 Forum included Georges Berthoin,
President of the Trilateral Commission, James Michel, the chairman of
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and other
power brokers. Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu is one of the 22
co-chairs of the Forum, along with Gorbachev, Ted Turner, Federico
Mayor (Director General of UNESCO), and other high UN officials.
Neither orthodox Christian nor Orthodox Jewish leaders have spoken at
any Forum sessions. Instead, the assembled dignitaries have heard New
Age-style preaching from such people as Andrew Weil, Michael Lerner,
Barbara Marx Hubbard, Michael Murphy and Steven Donovan (leaders of the
Esalen Institute), Fritjof Capra, Jean Houston, Sam Keen, Ram Dass,
Matthew Fox, Deepak Chopra, and Tony Robbins.
In short, promoters of New Age and Theosophical ideals are not social
outcasts. On the contrary, these followers of the Spirit of the Age get
attention and money from the rich and the powerful.
What, then, do the New Age prophets teach? Let Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky, Alice Bailey, Robert Muller, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Neale
Donald Walsch, David Spangler, and Matthew Fox speak for themselves -
and for the motley crew of "spirit guides," "ascended masters,"
and "cosmic Christs" whom they serve.
The avatars of the New Age say that humanity is God, and that there is
no death. Hubbard states the creed of the Serpent succinctly: "We are
immortal. We are not bound by the limits of the body" and "We can
create new life forms and new worlds. We are gods!" Walsch, who
claims in his best-selling book to converse directly with "God"
says the same: "Trust God. Or if you wish, trust yourself, for Thou
Art God." The "God" with whom Walsch converses denies death,
saying, "There is no 'death.' Life goes on forever and ever. Life
Is. You simply change form." Bailey said, "We are all Gods...."
These avatars repeat the lies that the Devil told in Eden: "You will
not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened
and you will be like God..." (Gen. 3:4-5). As a devotee of Walsch's
recently told the Washington Post, "We discovered the God within....
That's why we need God. Because we are God."
Since we are gods, there is no need for Christ to save us. Instead, as
Hubbard says, "Multitudes of self-saviors is what we are, for those
who have eyes to see." New Age teachers invert Christian doctrine
about sin, the Devil, and the Fall. Hubbard says, "The serpent
symbolizes an irresistable [sic] energy that is leading us toward life
ever-evolving. First the serpent tempted Eve to eat of the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil.... Then self-awareness came." She adds,
"Evil - the devil - is evolution's selection process that
constantly weeds out the weaker from the stronger." A spirit that
identified itself to Hubbard as "Jesus" told her to "love Satan,
my fallen brother."2 Walsch's "God" says that Adam and Eve
"are said to have committed Original Sin. I tell you this: it was the
Original Blessing. For without this event, the partaking of the
knowledge of good and evil, you would not even know the two
possibilities existed!" Blavatsky spoke most plainly: "The Fall was
the result of man's knowledge, for his 'eyes were opened.'
Indeed, he was taught Wisdom and the hidden knowledge by the 'Fallen
Angel.'"
These New Age teachings lead inexorably to the praise of Darkness.
Walsch's statement that God is "the Darkness that creates the
Light, and makes it possible" mirrors Blavatsky's dictum that
"According to the tenets of Eastern Occultism, DARKNESS is the one
true actuality, the basis and the root of light.... Light is matter,
and DARKNESS, pure Spirit."3 Alice Bailey likewise says that those
who learn to meditate will see that "darkness is pure spirit."
Followers of Bailey's New Age path will find, she says, that "each
contact with the Initiator leads the initiate closer to the centre of
pure darkness...a centre or point of such intense brilliance that
everything fades out and...at that darkest point...[is seen] a point of
clear cold fire."4 Perhaps Dante was right when he described the
center of Hell as ice.
Theosophists make it clear that in the contest between God and the
Devil, they side with the Devil. Blavatsky says, "It is but
natural...to view Satan, the Serpent of Genesis, as the real creator
and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual mankind. For it is he who was
the 'Harbinger of Light,' bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the
eyes of the automaton created by Jehovah."5 According to Alice
Bailey, the fallen angels "descended from their sinless and free
state of existence in order to develop full divine awareness upon
earth." Spangler, like Blavatsky, praises Lucifer as "the angel of
man's evolution. He is the angel of man's inner light."6 G.K.
Chesterton warns those who wander after this will-o'-the-wisp: "Of
all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people
call the Inner Light. Of all the horrible religions the most horrible
is the worship of the god within.... That Jones shall worship the god
within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship
Jones."
Alice Bailey denies Hell and Christ's atonement for man's sin;
instead, "the concept of hell" will be replaced by "an
understanding of the law which makes each man work out his salvation
upon the physical plane, which leads him to right the wrongs which he
may have perpetrated in his lives on Earth, and which enables him
eventually to 'clean his own slate.'" What a rotten deal Bailey
offers! Instead of being saved and forgiven through Christ's death
and Resurrection, we are left with the unforgiving law of karma and the
requirement to right all the wrongs of all our past lives ourselves.
As might be expected from a man who has channeled "a disembodied
entity" for 20 years, Spangler says, "Christ is the perfect balance
to Lucifer." 7 Like Matthew Fox, Spangler proposes to replace Jesus
with the "cosmic Christ"; "any old Christ will not do, not if we
need to show that we have something better than the mainstream
Christian traditions. It must be a cosmic Christ, a universal Christ, a
New Age Christ.... The Christ is universal. It is cosmic. It always has
been." Note the pronoun: Spangler calls Christ "it."
New Age writers follow the Gnostic tradition, denying that birth, life,
and the body are good. Walsch says, "Birth itself is a death, and
death a birth. For in birth, the soul finds itself constricted within
the awful limitations of a body, and at death escapes those
constrictions again." This is, almost word for word, what Alice
Bailey wrote: "Birth establishes the soul in the true prison, and
physical death is only the first step toward liberation."
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