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New Age Garbage
Andrew Paterson—04/2002 |
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99% of the New Age is just "old age" thinking
dressed up with a new and expanded vocabulary.
At its core, New Ageism is just as limiting to
true spiritual growth, which can only be found
by facing reality in the raw. |
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 IVING
IN THE NEW AGE can
be very stressful — after all, there is so much
to do: from aura cleansing and creative visualisation,
to Merkaba meditation and linking to the Pleiadian
Brotherhood. It would seem that a New Ager's work is
never done. Like going to the gym or learning to be
super productive at work, spirituality has become a
goal on the endless path of self-improvement — endorsed
by celebrities and trendsetters — the icing on
the cake that seems to sweeten our vacuous lives, and
perhaps gives us a competitive edge on our business
colleagues and in the mating game. |
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| And so we have our high priests who peddle positive
thinking and perfect health, usually at expensive weekend
workshops. We are taught about the imminent arrival
of an alien race, learn to journey to the core of our
emotions and attend Tantric evenings for explosive
orgasms. Anyone who has dabbled in the New Age movement
will be aware of the countless different therapies,
channellers, psychics, masters, gurus, cults, healers
and snake oils wanting your attention (and your money).
You just have to look at the back of a New Age newspaper
or magazine to see thousands of angelic smiles enticing
your business (the less attractive ones use strange
symbols or pictures of mountains). |
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| Channelling has exploded since the days of Jane Roberts
back in the 70s. Everyone now seems to be channelling
some master or alien entity. And gradually, a whole
mythology of cosmic happenings and predictions is building
up — the New Testament for the terminally gullible.
From the photon belt theory to the imminent mass landings
of the White brotherhood, they create and recycle every
modern myth that is going around the "West Coast" circuit.
I know individuals who won't make a life decision without
asking a disincarnate entity what they should do. It
is unfortunate that the channellers, many of whom are
highly imaginative and creative, are unable or unwilling
to personally stand behind their ideas. It diminishes
the value of the human being, and escalates the need
to invent more and more outrageous claims and authorships
in order to get attention. |
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| There are groups of immortalists in Arizona who genuinely
believe that somehow death will not happen to them
because their belief in immortality is strong enough
to stop the ageing process. After all, a central dictum
of the New Age movement is that we create our realities — we
are all powerful — so why can't we decide not
to die! And all the while, the leaders of these groups
grow older and more jaded, their faces betraying their
bravado. (One trio wrote a book Together Forever, but
they were only together for a few years before they
split.) |
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| Have you found your soulmate yet? We just love the
idea that there is someone out there who is perfect
for us. I know a lady who is 80 years old who is still
looking for her soulmate. A great deal of the soulmate
fervour was inspired by Richard Bach's book "A
Bridge Across Forever". Richard and his soulmate
Leslie Parrish did "find your soulmate" workshops
throughout the US, presenting themselves as living
proof of the existence of soulmates. After reading
this book, I was looking everywhere for my Leslie!
But I never did find her, although I did have relationships
with some amazing human beings from whom I learned
a great deal. The only trouble with the soulmate theory
is that it is fundamentally based upon a lie — the
lie that someone else can meet our psychological projections
permanently. If you entertain the concept of a soulmate,
then you have very high standards and expectations
for your match. Anyone with that level of expectation
is setting themselves up for disappointment, which
is why the only relationships that seem to last are
those that have low levels of expectation. Hardly soulmate
material! This is why "soulmates" invariably
moved on, either physically or psychologically. (Even Richard Bach and Leslie Parrish went their separate ways and are now with other partners — so much for "Forever".) |
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| Of course many are not after a soulmate but just
casual relationships. There are cults which have extremely
liberal and indulgent sex cults (the famous ones are
the Osho organisation founded by the Bagwan Rashnish — the
guru who had 100 Rolls Royces — and more recently
the Raelian movement to welcome to the planet our UFO
brethren). |
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| New Age technologies abound! Machines with dials
and knobs, brain enhancers, water remodulators, free
energy machines, ionisers, crystal wands with copper
wires, and electromagnetic blockers — the list
is endless. Some appear to "work", some do
not. The problem is that, in most cases, nobody has
taken the time to do the proper scientific tests. It
is all very well bucking the scientific establishment,
labelling every orthodox scientist as closed minded,
but if we then start to use scientific terminology
for our new technology, we only mislead others into
thinking that we have followed the scientific method.
(Science itself is NOT closed-minded, only many scientists.)
It would be more honest to admit ignorance instead
of offering some pseudo scientific mechanism. Richard
Feynman, the physics Nobel laureate, used to say how
science had taught him how difficult it is to really
know something. Few outside the scientific establishment
appreciate the care that goes into scientific experimentation.
And yet, nowadays, it is so easy for those working
in non-orthodox science to spout forth theories and
conjectures as if they were based on the same level
of care and investigation. |
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| For example, the New Age high priest, Drunvalo Melchezidek,
has recently described new forms of water, structured
and super-ionised, which can miraculously clear polluted
lakes and rivers. Structure and super-ionised water
does exist, and the claims for them may or may not
be true, but what is incomprehensible is that a man
as smart as Melchezidek would use scientific terminology
to try to justify something that clearly hasn't been
properly scientifically tested. Because, if it had,
something so remarkable is going on that is likely
to invalidate the very science he is using to justify
it in the first place! My criticism is not with the
new technologies themselves (which do hint that our
current science is severely limited at best), but in
the way that they are presented. By putting forward
pseudo science, you only impress those who are scientifically
illiterate and alienate those who are not. |
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| The New Age movement is also replete with conspiracy
theories. Governments have sold out their citizens
to alien races; reptile flesh-eating humanoids run
the upper echelons of society; chemicals are being
put into the water supply; EM waves are being beamed
at us to program us; and small electronic devises are
being placed in our brains to control us. Just because
something is a conspiracy theory, of course, doesn't
mean that it is necessarily false (or true, as the
diehards seem to believe). But if there is nothing
directly we can do about it, introducing more fear
and paranoia into society only serves to bind us further
in psychological chains, further disempowering the
individual. The solution can only be to empower individuals
and diminish the psychological hold of those who wish
to control us. That was the lesson of Gandhi — the
most important battles are for the control of our minds. |
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| So why are so many hundreds of thousands worldwide
being drawn into New Ageism? People are motivated by
many things. Some want the power of another identity — so
they might channel; some want to heal themselves of
physical diseases — so they go to or become healers;
some want to express their feelings of alienation
to society — so they become ETs or follow alien
cults; some want to compensate for their feelings of
powerlessness — so
they invent cosmic roles for themselves and make pacts
with powerful entities; some are terrified of death
and growing old — so they become immortalists
or accept some other eternalist dogma; some want to
justify their feelings of paranoia — so they
peddle conspiracy theories; some what free love — so
they do sex workshops or join sex cults; some just
hate the establishment — so
they join any cause that opposes it, sometimes seeding
violent protest. |
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| However, there is another reason why many of us are
drawn to New Ageism, something much deeper and much
more real: the desire for an authentic life. We feel,
at the core of our being, the urge to make a real connection
to life and the cosmos (but not through the traditional
avenues of organised religion with its track record
of control, abuse, hypocrisy and dogma). We are tired
of the artificiality of society and the artificial
selves that we have to create to function in that society.
We want to feel a part of spirit, feel that we are
anchored in something deeper than that the two-dimensionality
of modern existence. And so we are enticed into the
New Age movement, with its lure of depth. |
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| But if we spend time in that movement, we soon feel
the same restless dissatisfaction concomitant with
our old lives. The problem with the New Age is that
it not only presents itself as the very antidote to
this sort of dissatisfaction, with its endless pantheon
of teachers and therapies that we can always move on
to, but mixed in with its own dogmas and spiritual
materialism are elements of truth (a standard disinformation
tactic). So we find fleeting satisfaction and glimpses
of truth, often believing that it is our lack of commitment
or experience that prevents us from having a deeper
connection to that truth. And so we continue for years
on the dead-end path of New Ageism, lured by the image
of finding our true selves sitting on the grand throne
of realisation. |
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| Ironically, the place we are actually yearning for
is not a grand throne, but a humble space on the ground
of our being. And from that place, with the full acceptance
of our mortality and our insignificance in cosmos,
we find true empowerment — the sort that does not
need to fight for change because it is the embodiment
of that change. And in the knowing of stillness, we
find that so much of our "seeking" is actually
the false self or ego trying to establish itself in
the very area of our lives which require us, if we
wish to be whole, to let go and trust. |
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| We have sought to build a safe refuge from the world,
but we discover that it is in the true acknowledgement
of our vulnerability that we find invincibility. We
have sought to find the bliss of inner freedom, but
discover that it is only through inner discipline that
we can break the shackles that have bound us. We have
sought to find the meaning of life, but discover that
it is in letting go of meaning that we find true knowledge.
And we have sought to find eternal life, but discover
that it is only in the context of our mortality that
we find within us that which is truly immortal. |
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| It seems that paradox lies at the heart of existence,
which is why so few through the ages, have been able
to find true contentment and realization. For paradox
is anathema to the mind — only the heart is able
to embrace what appears as contradiction. Much of the
New Age movement is actually an attempt by the mind
to maintain an "old age" paradox-free belief
system by merely replace a powerless, frightened, foolish,
tormented, frustrated, inauthentic self with a free,
immortal, all-powerful, all-knowing, loving, sensitive
and equally inauthentic self. But self is self, mind
is mind, and delusion is delusion. We have to ultimately
let go of "self" and face these paradoxes of
existence. And for most of us, that is a very uncomfortable
position because we are forced to give up the reference
point of our core identity. |
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| Most of the evils and pathologies in this world spring
from inappropriate reference points of self. From the
cruelty of hate to the excesses of greed, from the
possessiveness of romantic love to the amorality of
the intellect, all of it springs from a pathological
self-image. We act in accordance to those internal
images constantly trying to validate them in the external
world. After all, to have no internal image to express
would mean that we would have to relate to each person
and each situation with openness and emptiness, forcing
ourselves into the present moment where we can have
no expectations, and where our very identity is secondary
to our perception. All that we would have worked for,
our status (secular and non secular), our wealth, our
expertise, our profession, our realisation, our experience,
our education, our looks, our awards, our titles, and
perhaps even our enlightenment. ALL of it would have
to be thrown out, but not just from the vantage point
of the bigger picture (which we all intuitively know),
but more importantly in the fine detail of life, the
detail of the present moment of our existence. We would
have to give up these things forevermore! That for
most people is, as yet, unacceptable. |
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| And so we dillydally in New Age concepts that cut
corners, which allow us to keep much of the baggage
of our ego to which we are so attached. Whilst this
might appear a good intermediate position — after
all, enlightenment tends to be a process of gradual
letting go — by mixing ego gratification with
spiritual understanding, our path becomes perverted,
entrapping us in the illusion of spiritual growth.
Nothing in this world, not even old age materialism,
is more insidious to the unfolding of our true nature.
(At least old age materialism never pretends to be
anything that it isn't — except to delude us into
thinking that through it we can find contentment.) |
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For us to be whole, the reference point of our identity,
of our existence, has to be grounded in emptiness;
in non-form. This applies not only to the individual
but to society as a whole. We need to face reality
in the raw — which can at first appear quite
painful and very boring! (The New Age is just so exciting
by comparison — as mesmerizing as a television
screen!) There are often more tears on the path of
true enlightenment than smiles — a simple fact
of life, for which of us would not suffer as we have
to reluctantly give up everything that we love in order
to find true love. We have to dice with non-existence
to arrive at authentic existence. |
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| Addendum |
| 29 May 05: Thank you Michael B.
for your excellent feedback with regards to some of
the points made in this article. Just for the clairifcation
of future readers, I would like to state that the
raw experience that I refer to at the end is not the
raw data of science/materialism but the raw experience
of a living and breathing human being that may well
include both physical data and psychic/spiritual communication — basically
the whole lot. |
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| Want nothing
with all your heart. |
| The Buddha |
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| Andrew Paterson is an independent writer currently living in London. He has no affiliation to any religious or political organisation. To contact him, please email . |
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