From: "joycelang"
The following story originally appeared in the July/August 2000 issue of New
Oxford Review, an orthodox Catholic magazine. I am sending the story in 2
parts (part 2 will immediately follow this e-mail).
For a longer, illustrated version of this story, with a complete list of
sources (586 footnotes, to be exact), call the Spiritual Counterfeits
Project (SCP) in Berkeley, California, 510-540-0300, and order their Spring
and Fall 2000 issues of the Journal of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project.
The SCP Journals provide greater detail -- and some newer, more ominous
information -- than appears in the New Oxford Review story that I am sending
now.
You may post the following story on the Net, and you may mail (and e-mail)
it to others - as long as you credit me as the author, and give credit to
New Oxford Review as the publisher of this story, and as long as you do not
change any part of the story.
If you wish to abridge or modify this story before re-posting it, contact me
for prior approval.
Lee Penn LeePenn@a...
Part 1 starts below; part 2 will be in your next e-mail from me.
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
Lee Penn
New Oxford Review, July-August 2000, pp. 19-31
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 ...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.
End of part 1; part 2 will follow.
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Review at 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706-2260
Date: Wed Jan 31, 2001 7:13pm
Subject: The Agenda of the New Age Movement Part 1