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I. INTRODUCTION
This is the first of a 2-part series on the so-called “New Age”
so-called “Movement” and, if you sense some ambivalence on my part
to the whole matter, you’re right. First of all, it is not a “movement”
in the usual sense of that word; secondly, “New Age” is such an
amorphous term it’s become almost meaningless; and, lastly, as we’ll
see, there is little new in the New Age, anyway. If it is anything, it
is a different way of looking at life, personally and societally, and
then attempting to act, accordingly...and that’s something.
So, the first part of this series will be an introduction to what the
so-called “New Age” is all about, with a look at its influence on us as
individuals and on our world; the second part--next week--will focus on
the why (that is, its philosophical principles) and on some of the who
(looking at the spiritual traditions that have influenced it) as well as
on the how (its ethical principles).
As you probably already know, there are a myriad of techniques and
approaches that have been called “New Age.” It is not my intent (or
desire) to touch them all or endorse any. Rather, this series will be an
exploration of the underpinnings--what supports and sustains--the whole
breadth of experiences that, willingly or not, are now labeled “New
Age.” Any starting point of discussion on anything “New Age” is doomed
to confusion, even for many who would consider themselves squarely in
the midst of whatever it is. David Spangler, one of the founders of the
mystical community of Findhorn on the Scottish coast, says: “The place I
start is to say there isn’t one ‘New Age.’ There is no single concept
that defines it all except something really general: that is, it’s a way
of thinking about, and looking toward, the future.”
It’s unfortunate that there is such confusion over such a basic human
instinct for “thinking about and looking toward the future.” What we’ve
been told about the New Age likely comes from those with not even a
superficial understanding of its history or its principles, so we read
about “healing crystals” and harmonic convergences and the channeling of
insights from a 35,000 year old “ascended master” or, to minimize the
sensationalism, we put the New Age label on a type of music or, even,
socially-committed investment firms.
In the popular lexicon, “New Age” has become a convenient catch-all term
that has lost its descriptive power, much as the word “Republican”, for
instance, when it acknowledges the differences say, between Tom DeLay or
either George Bush, or the term “Christian” when applied to the varied
likes of Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham or Pope John Paul II. Actually, I
probably should not be using those analogies because, while the New Age
movement has both political and religious dimensions, it is not a
political movement (although its thinking has helped spawn a political
party) nor is it an organized religion (although a few religions have
emerged from its roots). Basically, it is an amorphous, hoped-for
cultural transition in process, which has no specific creed, no fixed
focus, and no absolute leaders (much like our own religion, come to
think of it).
In its fullest sense, New Age thinking can be characterized as
“utopian,” a desire to create a better world, a “new age” in which
humankind lives in harmony with itself and with nature. At the core of
the New Age is an emergence of a new paradigm, a new way of
understanding reality and our place in it, developing a new set of
insights and values about ourselves, our world, and our place in it.
This has come about from the belief that our institutions have not only
betrayed the faith of the citizens but have betrayed Nature, as well,
and from this comes a spiritual focus on the communion between humankind
and the natural world.
This helps explain the ties between New Age thinking and a variety of
movements attempting to bring human life more in line with nature’s
patterns and cycles: these movements include environmentalism (seeking
to end our destructive exploitation of resources that sustain us);
holistic health (treating patients as persons, not symptoms);
appropriate technologies (such as solar, hydro, or geo-thermal power);
diets based on whole, chemically-free, organic foods; political
movements supporting feminist, gay and lesbian, homeless and disabled
causes; and spiritual/brain/consciousness studies which suggest that
there is much more to existence than has so far been measured by
traditional science.
Now, such a wide variety of interests might seem to make the New Age
so-called movement hopelessly disjointed, but all of them share a common
value system: they emphasize a decentralization of power (placing more
control in the hands of individuals at the grass-roots); their
underlying philosophy is holistic (seeing the interrelationship of
things rather than viewing each problem separately, symptomatically);
and all are global in consciousness (meaning that they keep in mind the
long-range interests of the planet as well as the immediate interests of
the person). Finally, and most importantly, all—at their deepest
levels—have a spiritual foundation.
I’m going to take a break, here--let you ruminate on what I’ve said so
far--but I call your attention to the insert, below: the foundation of
New Age thought rests on two not-so-new central beliefs; first, that the
health of the individual and the health of society are completely
interrelated (that everything is connected to everything else, our
personal well-being and the well-being of the world); and, second, the
power of the mind to achieve such health--individually and
collectively--is limitless. (The Roman Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, in the
2nd century, wrote: “Our life is what our thoughts make it.”) These two
beliefs are the basis for all New Age ideals and activities, and we’ll
explore the first belief next.
Part I: WHAT IS THE ‘NEW AGE’ “MOVEMENT”?
(THE CONTEXT…THE WHAT; ITS ROOTS AND ACTIVITIES)
FOUNDATIONAL BELIEF #1 (today):
The health of the individual and the health of the world are completely
interconnected; EVERYTHING is connected!
Health is not just the absence of disease (as peace is not just the
absence of war): Health is energy and enthusiasm, hope and happiness,
access and opportunity, esteem and self-respect, peace and justice,
abundance and prosperity (We each have the power to create deep changes
in our lives, personally and societally)
Part II (next week): PHILOSOPHY, PRINCIPLES & PRACTICES of THE ‘NEW
AGE’ (THE WHY, SOME OF THE WHO, AND THE HOW)
II. ROOTS
Actually, much of today’s New Age ideas and actions began in the middle
of the 19th century as a reaction against the exploding industrial
revolution. Visionary social reformers like Emerson, Thoreau and other
New England Transcendentalists tried to get people to see that, for all
the gains in material well-being resulting from the creation and
expansion of new job markets far removed from our agricultural economy,
we were rapidly losing our soul, our spiritual roots, as we lost touch
with the earth, with nature. We would see this same vision and message
revisited in the “counter-culture” of the 1960s.
Probably the most influential ideas shaping today’s New Age, however,
were those that grew out of the human potential movement and humanistic
psychology in the 1960s and ‘70s, especially with respect to Abraham
Maslow’s concept of self-actualization which came, after our lower-level
needs were met, with individuals striving to develop themselves to their
highest potential. From this, growth centers all over the world offered
programs concerned with expanding the boundaries of human creativity,
enhancing our ability to live harmoniously with each other, and
clarifying our responsibilities to society and nature.
As with the concept of holistic health, this holistic educational model
looked to the whole person; it recognized and affirmed that humans are
more than their minds and their talents; that they have bodies, as well,
and even faculties not yet fully understood. This model derived its
vision of health from the same core values that energize other aspects
of the New Age; accordingly, mind, body, and spirit are inseparably
intertwined and health is seen as being much more than merely ridding
the body of disease.
Rather, our health and wellness reflect the extent to which we have
achieved a balance among our emotional states of mind, our lifestyles’
affects on our body and spirit, and the environment in which we live and
work and play. When our body-mind-spirit are out of balance, we are
(literally) dis-eased, opening ourselves to the likelihood of pain and
other symptoms of some basic disorder. So countless holistic health
approaches have emerged in the past decades, all aimed at getting the
body (and, thereby, the mind, the spirit, and the society) back in
balance, in alignment with structure, self and nature....all having, at
their core, this principle: as we are in our bodies, so we are in the
world; as we move in our bodies, so we move through the world.
All of these “bodywork” approaches owe their origin to one person,
Wilhelm Reich. A protégé of Freud, Reich’s reputation suffered from some
later outrageousous endeavors, but it turns out he had the right idea:
he was the first to look beyond the psychoanalytic couch to see what the
patient’s bodies had to say. What he discovered was that
psycho-emotional conflicts (or blocks) tend to house themselves in the
body’s muscular tissue, forming what he called “body armor.” He started
to work on breaking down that “armor” through manipulation and breathing
exercises, finding that it was much easier to treat the client’s
neuroses. Actually, he had re-discovered what Asian medicine had known
for thousands of years (and what even Western medicine had known before
turning to Descartes’ separating dualism): that the mind and the body
are one. A growing number of studies in psychoneuroimmunology verify
that the links between mind and body are real and strong and that
changes in psychological attitude can have measurable effects on at
least some of the body’s illnesses (such as cancer, asthma, arthritis,
hypertension, etc.)
To this point, I’ve been examining the New Age movement from the
perspective of the personal: individuals raising their consciousnesses,
actualizing themselves, achieving health and wellness through balancing
their lives. Unfortunately, criticism of New Age thought and action
usually focuses on individuals being solely concerned with raising their
physical and mental abilities to their highest, most self-centered
levels. While too much anecdotal evidence suggests that this criticism
has validity, such an attitude does not reflect the origins or the
deepest implications of New Age vision and values: the whole point of
the first foundational belief (the absolute connection between the
health of the individual and the health of the world) requires that we
must heal ourselves and we must heal our world; the one does not
automatically lead to the other, but you cannot have one without the
other.
Obviously, one cannot find self-fulfillment in a world destroyed by
nuclear war. One cannot find renewal and inspiration while venturing
into a wilderness area where ecological systems are dying because of
human-made pollution, exploitation and mismanagement. It is difficult to
celebrate creativity and self-actualization when any one person suffers
poverty or discrimination. And so it is that any attempt to expand our
human potential must carry a simultaneous commitment to societal
change...or, as a first step, a spiritually-based sensibility and
sensitivity to our world. In broad terms, this requires a reverence for
the earth and all its diverse life-forms, an acute awareness of the
interconnectedness of all living things, and a deep belief in--and
commitment to--the inherent creativity of the human mind to solve the
messes we created in the first place by our own ignorance, insensitivity
and greed.
On the other hand, a New Age perspective reminds us that politics,
alone, are not enough any more than personal transformation, by itself,
is enough. When we fail to connect the values we seek to promote in
society with those same values by which we live, personally, we end up
replacing one set of oppressive policies or institutions or leaders with
a whole set of other oppressors. So, the real challenge presented to us
by New Age vision and values is for us, as individuals, to make of our
personal lives a model for our world, and to make of our world a haven
for all persons wishing to live more fully.
III. PRACTICES
The question still to be asked, of course, is to what extent has the New
Age movement practiced what it preaches? Besides the countless
educational growth centers and the numerous approaches to holistic
health now available for our self-actualization and wellness, what would
indicate that this global movement cares about our globe?
Let’s start with the environment: not only in ecological renewal but in
basic awareness, steady advances are being made, slowly but surely. In
fact, if anything, we need to re-awaken many who got the message but who
have been lulled back to complacency on global warming, the demise of
the rainforests, toxic waste cleanup, protecting endangered species, the
ecological and economic value of recycling, etc.
Consumers have continued to be increasingly aware of the importance of
healthy eating habits, annually increasing the number of natural food
stores (now in the multi-thousands) with sales in the multi-billions of
$. Then there’s the field of ethical purchasing and investing, buying a
company’s product or stock on the basis of its positive contribution to
society, and the annual amount of “socially responsible investing” is
now in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Once considered taboo by the health establishment, the study of
consciousness is now seen as a valid frontier, its benefits ranging from
stress reduction to enhanced creativity and thinking skills, and its
influence increases: The American Holistic Medical Association (that’s
not the A.M.A. but the A.H.M.A.) estimates that there are tens of
thousands of doctors now practicing some form of holistic medicine, and
the National Institutes of Health sponsors millions of $ worth of
research on such approaches as biofeedback, relaxation training,
consciousness enhancement, etc.
And, politically, an entire movement has emerged with some impressive
results in Europe and with the beginnings of a foothold established here
in America. I’m referring to the anti-nuclear, pro-environment Green
Party that, at one point, held the leadership in the German parliament
and still wields considerable power there. While there are now well-over
100 Greens holding local public offices in this country, the Greens
elected their first candidate to a statewide office in California: a
woman who had never been elected to any office since high school beat a
long-time Assemblyman who outspent her by close-to 20-to-1.
Here’s another example, also from California: in the 1980s, the
Legislature there established a State Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem
and Personal and Social Responsibility. Its mandate was to investigate
the role that self-esteem plays in social problems such as drug abuse,
crime, teenage pregnancy, and family dissolution. One of the bill’s
sponsors gave this rationale: “To me,” he said, “it is stupid, narrow,
and cynical not to go to the root of any problem, personally or
societally. To throw billions of dollars after-the-fact into prisons or
mental health systems or welfare programs or armaments and not go
forward to unlocking the cause and designing preventive measures is just
terribly shortsighted and downright wasteful.”
But such an approach is really not an “only in California” example:
concerning the dramatic decrease in violence in their cities, police
chiefs in Ft. Worth, Boston and Winston-Salem all concurred that a
primary reason was the involvement of community representatives, making
crime reduction a community responsibility and not just a police task.
While many in Congress argue that crime reduction is basically a matter
of locking up the bad guys and keeping them there longer--and recent
statistics show the federal, state and local prison population recently
reached around 2 million, up almost 50% in the past decade--one of the
chiefs said: “We can go on locking people up, but we have to start
looking at the front end of the problem. We’re fast becoming the #1
country for detention, but we better start looking at the kids. If you
intervene at the earliest possible moment, you can reduce the number of
people who wind up in the criminal justice system. It’s not the electric
chair but the high chair that is the answer.” (What that police chief is
talking about is grass-roots, decentralized, holistic: New Age.)
Examples of New Age influence are increasing in scope and significance.
But if you asked the individuals involved if they were activists in some
“New Age movement,” the vast majority would say that they’d never even
heard of a “New Age anything.” There is no great conspiracy conceived in
any smoke-
filled (or, more appropriately, smokeless) back room, there is no master
plan manipulating anyone from any high ivory tower...and, yet, there is
a growing pattern of change in our midst and in our world, supported and
energized by common, underlying principles. So...why is this happening?
I will explore the answers to that question next week, but let me give
you a brief glimpse of an answer. This morning we’ve looked at the first
of the two foundational beliefs at the core of the “New Age”: that is,
the health of the individual and the health of the world are completely
interconnected, with “health” being defined in its broadest sense. It is
the notion of inter-connectedness that is the key, here, the belief that
“everything is connected to everything else."
But any explanation as to “why such change is happening” starts with the
second central belief: that the power of the mind to achieve such health
-- personally and societally -- is limitless. There is a growing
emphasis on achieving peace and wellness -- wholeness -- through
developing a holistic vision--a mindset--influenced by the principles of
harmony and growth. Instead of trying to transform ourselves by
emphasizing the material and attempting to take more from others, the
transformation is coming from within, in cooperation with others (other
humans and other life forms); instead of thinking that society can be
transformed by violence, deceit, and coercion, society is transformed by
healing it, by making ourselves and our world whole. As that renowned
philosopher, the late Mr. Rogers (of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” on
children’s-TV) said: “There’s no greater way we have of helping people
to care about their world than to show that we care, first.”
It’s not just that the power of the mind to achieve wellness and
wholeness is limitless; it’s that all minds are joined, all minds are
one, all minds--all of us--are a part of a great Idea that continues and
grows and inspires and transforms...as we align ourselves, our minds,
with it. And that is what--and why--the “New Age” is all about...and
that’s what we’ll explore in greater detail next Sunday.
CLOSING: (from a statement by a Socially Responsible Investment firm
on one of its Mutual Funds)
When you buy stocks, you are placing a bet on the future. We believe
that the world is entering a period of rapid transition to higher levels
of “connectedness.” Civilization went through a similar change at the
turn of the (last) century with the rise of the automobile and the
telephone and, before that, with the advent of the steam engine. Some
call this a “phase shift.”
We expect new, complex behaviors to result from this phase shift. One
example of such emergent behavior is honey bees shifting from solitary
to hive behavior when a critical mass is attained. Another is the
emergence of consciousness with some critical mass of neurons. We
believe that extensive, broadband connectedness in our civilization has
attained such a (critical mass), a momentum that makes similar emergent
behavior in humans inevitable.
We believe that classical economics (and many investment assumptions
that derive from it) are based on a fatally flawed model, that of
Newtonian mechanics, that assumes a universe where things are static and
predictable. We believe that an organic model is far more appropriate;
we see economics as an ecological system. The history of living
organisms shows long periods of relative stability interrupted by short
periods of drastic change and the evolution of new, more complex
organisms and ecosystems. Our economic ecosystem is predicting new,
complex, evolving systems with multiple, interdependent feedback
loops...a period of rapid transition in a world that must develop a
higher level of “connectedness”.
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