While preparing for the next stop on the trip around the
worldviews, I needed to consult my guidebook more frequently. I have spent a lot of time mentally chewing
on the differences between the Christian and secular worldviews, but have
limited exposure to new age spirituality.
Although difficult to exactly pinpoint, by new age spirituality I am
referring to both modern new age movements and Eastern religious traditions, such
as Hinduism and Buddhism, which share similar foundations. Like all the worldviews that we will explore,
the answers to life’s big questions must be consistent with the foundational
beliefs.
The
Foundation
While there are variations in beliefs and practices, new
age spirituality is broadly based on the following premises1:
1) Everything
is consciousness
Consciousness is an often
vaguely defined energy and impersonal force that binds the universe together
and unites everything within it. That
may sound oddly similar to Obi Wan Kenobi’s description of “the force” to Luke
Skywalker: “The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living
things. It surrounds us and penetrates
us; it binds the galaxy together.”
Popular spiritual teacher, Eckhard Tolle puts it this way, “The whole is
made up of the existence and Being, the manifested and the unmanifested, the
whole and God. So when you become
aligned with the whole, you become a conscious part of the interconnectedness
of the whole and its purpose; the emergence of consciousness into this world.”2
2) Every
person is God
People are not separate,
distinct physical realities but part of the consciousness that composes the
universe. The Dalai Lama explains it
this way, “Each of the physical and mental parts of which I am composed is
similarly empty of any identifiable existence…Our initial reaction to recognize
that things do not possess objective or inherent existence is understandably
one of surprise. We are discovering that
the actual way things exist is so very contrary to how we naturally relate to
them.”3
In this view, God is also not
a distinctive being with thoughts and a will, but consciousness itself. Since all things, including ourselves, are
ultimately consciousness, then we ourselves are ultimately God. Meher Baba asserts, “There is only one
question. And once you know the answer to that question there is only one
answer – I am God!”4
3) Consciousness
can be harnessed to achieve personal perfection
Since everything is energy,
part of the consciousness that binds and unites the universe, our thoughts are
also energy and have the power to alter to world. This power of consciousness is called the law
of attraction and endorsed in Rhonda Byrne’s international best-seller, The Secret: “Your thoughts become the
things in your life…Your transmission creates your life and it creates your
world.”5
4) The
purpose of life is overcoming “self”
Contrary to the secular
worldview in which the “self” is an autonomous individual and the basic unit of
life, there is no “self” in new age spirituality. Self is an illusion that we must break free
of in order to join the “universal self” through a series of
reincarnations. After a cycle of lives,
deaths, and re-births, the goal is to reach an enlightened state that will
enable us to completely break free from individuality and melt into the stream
of consciousness, a state called nirvana.
These foundational beliefs can
be very mind-boggling when viewed from a Western perspective, but it is
essential to wrestle with them to better understand how new age spirituality
answers life’s big questions.
Origin - How did we get
here?
Despite scientific
evidence that indicates that the universe began 13.7 billion years ago, new age
spiritual teachers teach that consciousness, which is the ultimate reality, is
eternal. The Dalai Lama explains, “From
a Buddhist point of view, the continuum of substantial causes preceding our
conception can be traced back to before the Big Bang, to when the universe was
a void. Actually, if we follow the line
of reasoning by which we trace our continuum back to before the Big Bang, we
would have to acknowledge that there could not be a first moment to the
continuum of substantial causes of any conditioned phenomenon.”6 In other words, the universe is
actually eternal.
Likewise, the true
nature of human beings is not as either created or evolved individual beings
but as part of the same eternal consciousness that preceded the physical
universe. According to Gary Zukav, “All
that I am can form itself into individual droplets of consciousness. Because you are part of all that is, you have
literally always been, yet there was the instant when that individual energy
current that is you was formed. Consider
that the ocean is God. It has always
been. Now reach in and grab a cup full
of water. In that instant, the cup
becomes individual, but it has always been, has it not? This is the case with your soul. There was an instant when you became a cup of
energy, but it was of an immortal original Being. You have always been because what it is that
you are is God, or Divine Intelligence, but God takes on individual forms,
droplets, reducing its power to small particles of individual consciousness.”7
Identity – What does it
mean to be human?
As part of the great
universal consciousness, the answer to this question is both exalting and
humbling. Shirley McClain encourages
people to affirm their divinity: “You can use I am God or I am that I am as
Christ often did, or you can extend the affirmation to fit your own needs.”8 Yet, everything else in our world is also
part of the same consciousness – every person, every animal, every plant – and
is also divine. This sense of
interconnectedness has provided a spiritual basis for radical ecological
movements, such as deep ecology, which the idea that all living things should
have legal rights.
While interconnectedness
taught by new age spirituality would seem to provide fertile ground for
compassion towards fellow man, belief in consciousness and karmic cycles has
historically produced the opposite effect.
Each person is not uniquely created in God’s image, but is an energy
wave temporarily separated from the universal consciousness. Furthermore, the trials and challenges that a
person faces in life are the result of karmic debts that are preparing them for
final enlightenment and freedom from individuality. To lend aid to a suffering person is seen as
disrupting the karmic cycle and, instead of helping the individual, would
actually impede their progress towards joining the universal self. Biblical teachings regarding compassion for
the poor and the service of Christian missionaries, “awakened in [Mahatma
Gandhi] a revulsion for the caste system and for the maltreatment of outcastes”9
and led him to act inconsistently with his Hindu foundations to incorporate a
Biblical system of ethics.
Morality – How
should we live?
Moral obligations do not
come from a divine law-giver or from societal expectations, but from the
“truth” that resides within. Eckhart Tolle
teaches that moral truth cannot be found in “doctrines, ideologies, sets of
rules, or stories,”10 but, “The Truth is inseparable from who you
are. Yes, you are the Truth. If you look for it elsewhere, you will be
deceived every time.”11 From
the new age perspective, this is a proper response to the realization that we
are God. Shirley McClain agrees that our
God-likeness grants us freedom to act in accordance with our personal
understanding of the truth, claiming, “Free will is simply the enactment of the
realization that you are God, a realization that you are divine: free will is
making everything accessible to you.”12
Older Eastern religions
do not follow the brazen individuality of the American new age. Buddhism teaches followers to refrain from
the ten non-virtuous acts – killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying,
divisive speech, harsh speech, idle gossip, covetousness, malice, and wrong
view. In the Bhagavad Gita, one of Hinduism’s sacred texts, Krishna condemns
“hypocrisy, insolence, anger, cruelty, ignorance, [and] conceit.”13 These actions are wrong because they cause
separation instead of promoting universal oneness.
In new age spirituality,
moral accountability is provided by the system of karma in which the
consequences of what each person does for good or evil will inevitably return
to them, either in this life or in future reincarnations. Shirley McClain explains, “Whatever action
one takes will ultimately return to that person – good and bad – maybe not in
this life embodiment, but in the future.
And no one is exempt…For every act, for every indifference, for every
misuse of life, we are finally held accountable. And it is up to use to understand what those
accounts might be.”14 One has
to wonder how she defines “indifference” and “misuse of life” when “the
realization that you are God…is making everything accessible to you.” This raises a dilemma for the new
spiritualist. How can karma exist apart
from objective, absolute standards of right and wrong? If such standards exist, how do we justify
their source if reality is non-personal consciousness? However, if such standards do not exist, how
can karma ever guide our actions, since we can never really know whether our
actions are right or wrong? At this
point, morality in the new age worldview deteriorates into nebulous and
incoherent moral relativism.
To resolve the dilemma,
new age spiritualists muddy the water further by insisting that since
everything is part of one consciousness, differences between good and evil are
simply illusory. Marilyn Ferguson
insists, “This wholeness unites opposites…In these spiritual traditions there
is neither good nor evil. There is only
light and absence of light…wholeness and brokenness…flow and struggle.”15
Yet, we live in the real
world and a worldview must provide a basis for answering basic moral
questions. If morality is based on
following our inner truth, is there a time that we should persuade others to
behave differently? If so, on what basis
to we make this assertion? Were the villains
of history expressing a wrong morality or were they choosing a life path that
helped them on their journey toward enlightenment? I am afraid that new age spirituality cannot
provide coherent, intellectually satisfying answers to these questions.
Meaning – Why are we
here?
The purpose of live in
new age spirituality is to achieve enlightenment, completely detaching oneself
from any sense of self and entering into a transcendent state of ultimate peace
known as nirvana. The Dalai Lama
explains, “Our pursuit of this peaceful state of nirvana is a quest for
protection from the misery of samsara [the cycle of rebirths], and particularly
from the afflictions such as attachment and aversion that bind us within the
viscous cycle of rebirths.”16
In other words the goal is to completely detach ourselves from any
desires, known as attachments, and fears, known as aversions, that we might
achieve complete freedom and melt into the universal self.
The new age goal of
losing all desire stands in contrast to the Christian worldview, which does not
condemn our desires in general, but exhorts us to rightly place our delight in
God. “Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires
of your heart (Psalm 37:4).
Destiny – What happens
to us when we die?
According to new age
spirituality, death is not the end of the road.
Remembering that everything is ultimately consciousness each “person”
will return to Earth through reincarnation, unless they have already reached an
enlightened state. In this return they
may take the form of another human or a completely different form of life in
which they will pay-off karmic debts from previous incarnations as they
progress towards freedom from self and complete enlightenment.
Ultimately, there will
be a happy ending in the new age view as the human species spiritually evolves
towards collective consciousness.
Prominent new age teacher Deepak Chopra says, “Spirituality can be seen
as a higher form of evolution, best described as ‘metabiological’ – beyond
biology.”17 While human
physical evolution is driven by random mutation and natural selection, new age
teachers emphasize that evolution is psychological. Peter Russell states, “Evolutionary trends
and patterns…suggest a further planetary consciousness or Supermind: a completely
new level of evolution, as different from consciousness as consciousness is
from life, and life is from matter.”18 Even people who do not embrace new age
spirituality will be caught up into this evolutionary leap into a collective
higher consciousness in which oneness, collective godhood, and unity will be
achieved.
Summary
I have three major
questions and concerns related to the new age worldview. First, new age beliefs often seem to be
vaguely defined and drawn from the minds of humankind. Although some ancient writings are held in
high regard, truth does not come from divine revelation, but through awareness
of the universe. Rhonda Byrne writes,
“Trust the Universe. Trust and believe
and have faith. The truth is that the
Universe has been answering you all of your life, but you cannot receive the
answers unless you are aware.”19
How do we achieve this awareness?
How can we test this awareness and know that we are not merely
deceived? From my vantage point, it doesn’t
seem that the new age offers any answers other than to trust and believe. For those who think the Christian worldview
suffers from the same fault, I plan to address such questions in a series of
posts on the reasonableness of Biblical faith later this year.
Which leads to my next
concern – What if my awareness leads to me different moral truths than another
person reaches through their awareness?
New age spirituality seems hopelessly relativistic when it comes to
morality. In a worldview that teaches
that truth comes from within, how do we discover the objective moral truths on
which a karmic cycle must be based? If
we are all ultimately on a path towards enlightenment, how do we coherently
respond to those who are pursuing a path that seems objectively evil and
immoral? I don’t see satisfying answers
in new age spirituality.
Finally, if one fully
follows the new age worldview, they should be seeking to empty themselves of
all attachments to this world. This
includes the love that we feel for family members, the compassion that we feel
when we see someone in need, and the desire for justice that we experience when
we see a world of inequality. I don’t
think these are attachments that we want to abandon in the name of seeking
detachment from self.
I would agree that there
is a spiritual hole in our lives that the secular and materialistic worldview
cannot, but would disagree that new age spirituality provides coherent,
objectively true answers to life’s big questions. I will admit that my experience with new age
ideas is less than some other worldviews, so if I misrepresented new age
spirituality’s core beliefs and answers to life’s big questions, I’d love to
hear from you and continue the discussion.
Sources
1. Myers, Jeff and Noebel, David A. Understanding the Times: A Survey of
Competing Worldviews. Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2015. 128-132.
2. Tolle,
Eckhart. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. New York: Plume,
2005. 277
3. The
Dalai Lama. A Profound Mind. New
York: Three Rivers, 2011. 93-94.
4. Cohen,
Allan Y. “Meher Baba and the Quest for
Consciousness.”
5. Bryne,
Rhonda. The Secret. New York: Atria
Books, 2006
6. The
Dalai Lama. A Profound Mind. New
York: Three Rivers, 2011. 45.
7. Zukav,
Gary. Seat of the Soul. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.
85-86.
8. Smith,
LaGard F. Out on a Broken Limb.
Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1986. 181.
9. Myers,
Jeff and Noebel, David A. Understanding
the Times: A Survey of Competing Worldviews. Colorado Springs: David C.
Cook, 2015. 139.
10. Tolle, Eckhart. A New Earth. New York: Plume, 2005. 70
11. Ibid. 71
12. Goldstein, William. “Life on the Astral
Plane.” Publishers Weekly, March 18,
1983. 46.
13. Mitchell, Stephen (translated). Bhagavad Gita. New York: Three Rivers,
2000. 170.
14. MacLaine, Shirley. Out on a Limb. Toronto: Bantam, 1984. 96, 111.
15. Ferguson, Marilyn. Aquarian Conspiracy. Los
Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1981. 381.
16. Spangler, David. Reflections on the Christ. Forres, Scotland: Findhorn Publications,
1982. 73.
17. Chopra, Deepak and Mlodinow, Leonard. War of the Worldviews: Where Science and
Spirituality Meet – and Do Not. New York: Three Rivers, 2011. 54.
18. Russell, Peter. The Global Brain. Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1983. 99.
19. Byrne, Rhonda. The Secret. New York: Atria Books, 2006. 57, 172.
