I have gathered some excellent sources of information about New Age
spirituality for you. I'm posting just brief excerpts here; for more
detail, you may want to read each article in its entirety. Not all of
these articles are without bias, but I believe the portions that I
have quoted are accurate in describing the New Age movement.
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WHAT IS 'NEW AGE'?
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"New Age describes a broad movement characterized by alternative
approaches to traditional Western culture. This New Age movement is
particularly concerned with spiritual exploration, holistic medicine,
and mysticism, yet no rigid boundaries actually exist, making the term
point to its own perspective on history, philosophy, religion,
spirituality, medicine, music, science, and lifestyle.
The term 'New Age' at one time, perhaps in the late 1960s, referred to
a movement started by the followers of Alice Bailey's ideas concerning
the coming New Age. Since then New Age has broadened into its current
meaning. No longer a single belief system, it is an aggregate of
beliefs and practices (syncretism) which are drawn from earlier myths
and religions. Inside this movement are individuals using a
'do-it-yourself' approach, while other groups formulate coherent
belief systems resembling traditional religion."
Wikipedia: New Age
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_age
"The New Age is definitely a heterogeneous movement of individuals;
most graft some new age beliefs onto their regular religious
affiliation. Recent surveys of US adults (2) indicate that many
Americans hold at least some new age beliefs:
8% believe in astrology as a method of foretelling the future
7% believe that crystals are a source of healing or energizing power
9% believe that Tarot Cards are a reliable base for life decisions
about 1 in 4 believe in a non-traditional concept of the nature of God
which are often associated with New Age thinking:
11% believe that God is 'a state of higher consciousness that a person may reach'
8% define God as 'the total realization of personal, human potential'
3% believe that each person is God
The group of surveys cited above (2) classify religious beliefs into 7
faith groups. Starting with the largest, they are: Cultural (Christmas
& Easter) Christianity, Conventional Christianity, New Age
Practitioner, Biblical (Fundamentalist, Evangelical) Christianity,
Atheist/Agnostic, Other, and Jewish, A longitudinal study from 1991 to
1995 shows that New Agers represent a steady 20% of the population,
and are consistently the third largest religious group."
ReligiousTolerance.org: New Age Spirituality
http://www.religioustolerance.org/newage.htm
"The New Age Movement (NAM) is... a multi-focused, multi-faceted
synthesis, in varying degrees, of the Far Eastern, mystical religions,
mainly Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Western Occultism, adapted to
and influenced by Western, materialistic culture. It sometimes appears
in secularized forms.
Prominent expressions of the NAM were carried on into more modern
times in Europe and America by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772),
transcendentalists like Thoreau, Emerson, and Wordsworth (early
1800s), and Theosophy introduced by Madame Helena Blavatsky
(1831-1891) (The New Age Rage, pp. 22-24). The decade of the sixties
witnessed a revival of Eastern mysticism as traditional values were
being challenged. Zen, Carlos Castaņada, the Beatles, Transcendental
Meditation, and yoga all became popular...
Six distinctives of New Age thinking: (1) all is one; (2) all is God;
(3) humanity is God; (4) a change in consciousness; (5) all religions
are one; and (6) cosmic evolutionary optimism... The New Age also
encompasses a wide array of notions: spiritualism, astrology,
bioenergy, Chi energy, chakras, nirvana, Christ-consciousness, Native
American Spirituality, Prajna, out-of-body/near-death experiences,
reincarnation, and the occult disciplines, as well as unorthodox
psychotherapeutic techniques and pseudoscientific applications of the
'healing powers' of crystals and pyramids. Some commonly used New Age
terms are: guided imagery, reincarnation; positive thinking; human
potential; holistic; holographic; synergistic; unity; oneness;
transformation; awakening; networking; communal sharing;
one-world/globalism/new world order (i.e., one language, one
government, one currency, one religion); cosmic consciousness; etc."
Biblical Discernment Ministries: New Age Movement
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Cults/newage.htm
"No one speaks for the entire New Age community. Within the movement,
there is no agreement on how to define it or even that it is
sufficiently cohesive to be called a movement; although there does
seem to be more and more people moving in the same direction...
The term New Age is a metaphor for the process of striving for
personal growth through which people are trying to become more fully
awake to their inherent capacities and to use their energy for a
greater good.
The New Age is the condition that emerges when life is lived in a
creative, empowering, compassionate manner. It manifests when we
recognize and honor both the intrinsic wholeness of the world and the
value of everything within it. It arises when we honor each person,
animal, plant or object as unique yet also as a part of ourselves...
Often the New Age is seen as only the pursuit of Eastern philosophies
or the occult, or involvement with channeling, crystals, reincarnation
and psychic phenomena. Indeed this is a part of the movement, however,
to equate the New Age with psychic phenomena is a limited and
distorting view.
For New Age activities take many forms that are not only involved with
the paranormal or the religious. They include such things as
ecological restoration and balance, new understandings of education
and of the capabilities of the human intellect; citizen diplomacy
missions to Russia; the exploration of empowerment politics and
holistic thought and activity in areas such as science, the arts,
music, business and health.
The New Age deals with issues of planetarization and the emergence of
an awareness that we are all one people living on one world that share
a common destiny."
The Door Opener: What Is New Age?
http://www.anopendoor.com/TDO/newage.htm
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HOW DID 'NEW AGE' BEGIN?
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"When did the New Age movement begin? It's really hard to say. The New
Age movement is really 'old' age in the sense that it borrows from
many ancient Eastern traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism.
However, there are also influences from Gnostic traditions, mystical
sects of Christianity and Sufism, Theosophy, and even Paganism. The
New Age movement is a spiritual buffet where you can take what works
for you, and leave that which doesn't.
It seems that the New Age movement became popular in the 1970's when
people were looking for answers to slake their spiritual thirst.
Perhaps it was a result of the 60's counter-culture in America who
were not finding answers within traditional Christianity or secular
humanism. Instead of choosing one or the other, some chose neither,
and set out for new spiritual territories and experiences that weren't
on the proverbial menu. Thus, an 'alternative' spiritual movement
began to gain momentum."
BellaOnline: The New Age - History And Philosophy
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art1359.asp
"New Age teachings became popular during the 1970's as a reaction
against what some perceived as the failure of Christianity and the
failure of Secular Humanism to provide spiritual and ethical guidance
for the future. Its roots are traceable to many sources: Astrology,
Channeling, Hinduism, Gnostic traditions, Neo-paganism, Spiritualism,
Theosophy, Wicca, etc. The movement started in England in the 1960's
where many of these elements were well established. Small groups, such
as the Findhorn Community in Inverness and the Wrekin Trust formed.
The movement quickly became international. Early New Age mileposts in
North America were a 'New Age Seminar' ran by the Association for
Research and Enlightenment, and the establishment of the East-West
Journal in 1971. Actress Shirley MacLaine is perhaps their most famous
current figure.
During the 1980's and 90's, the movement came under criticism from a
variety of groups. Channeling was ridiculed; seminar and group leaders
were criticized for the fortunes that they made from New Agers. Their
uncritical belief in the 'scientific' properties of crystals was
exposed as groundless. But the movement has become established and
become a stable, major force in North American religion during the
past generation."
ReligiousTolerance.org: New Age Spirituality
http://www.religioustolerance.org/newage.htm
"The New Age is a utopian vision, an era of harmony and progress with
mother earth an nature. Comprising individuals, activist groups,
businesses, professional groups, and spiritual leaders and followers,
the movement brought feminist, ecological, spiritual, and
human-potential concerns into the mainstream in the 1980s, creating a
large market in the United States and other countries for books,
magazines, audio and videotapes, workshops, retreats, and expositions
on the subject, as well as for natural foods, crystals, and meditation
and healing aids.
Often seen as resurgent paganism or Gnosticism, the modern movement
has more recent roots in 19th-century spiritualism and in the 1960s
counter culture, which rejected materialism in favor of Eastern
mysticism and preferred direct spiritual experience to organized
religion. Techniques for self-improvement and the idea that the
individual is responsible for and capable of everything from
self-healing to creating the world, have found applications in health
care and counseling as well as in sports, the armed forces, and
corporations and have provoked debate in religious and other circles.
Holistic thinking has influenced attitudes about medicine, the
environment, the family, work, regional planning, and world peace,
among others. Ideas frequently associated with the NewAge movement
include anthroposophical teachings, inner transformation,
reincarnation, extraterrestrial life, biofeedback, chanting, alchemy,
yoga, transpersonal psychology, shamanism, martial arts, the occult,
astrology, psychic healing, extrasensory perception, divination,
astral travel, acupuncture, massage, tarot, Zen, mythology, and
visualization."
JesusIsSavior.com: What is New Age?
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/New%20Age/what_is_new_age.htm
"The New Age movement emerged as a disorganized coalition out of the
1960s counter-culture movement or 'happening' in North America and
Europe, perhaps only tangentially informed by Alice Bailey's
neo-theosophy. In a manner similar to the grass-roots political and
life-style movements of that time, New Agers dissatisfied with the
then widely-accepted norms and beliefs of western society offered new
interpretations from a spiritual viewpoint of science, history, and
the religion of the Judeo-Christian establishment. An important center
for the New Age movement during the twentieth century was the Findhorn
Foundation in northern Scotland. These recent populist origins may
indeed help characterize the New Age approach, which emphasizes an
individual's choice in spiritual matters; the role of personal
intuition and experience over societally sanctioned expert opinion;
and an experiential, rather than primarily empirical, definition of
reality. Thus, reality is considered to be illuminated by the infinite
number of spectral hues emanating from an experiential, faith-driven,
and subjective viewpoint; which leads us, finally, to a general
principle: the New Age coexists and correlates within each
individual's fundamental paradigm shift."
Wikipedia: New Age
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_age
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WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM 'NEW AGE'?
-------------------------------------------
Although the term "the new age" has been in use for more than a
century, the specific use of "New Age" as a name for the human
consciousness movement was popularized by an artist and mystic named
Walter Russell:
"So far as I can discover, the term 'New Age' was coined by Walter
Russell, a 20th century American artist and philosopher (dates approx.
1872-1965). Russell lived in New York and later Virginia. He was a
founder and president of a group called the American Society of Arts
and Sciences...
Walter Russell was a mystic and visionary of the type described in Dr.
Richard Maurice Bucke's classic 1901 work, 'Cosmic Consciousness.'
Russell accepted Bucke's premise that not only the human body, but
also human consciousness, has evolved in stages. Human consciousness
periodically makes progressive leaps, such as that from animal
awareness to rational self-awareness many millennia ago. Russell
believed with Dr. Bucke that humankind is now on the brink of making
another such extraordinary -- yet evolutionary -- leap in
consciousness...
The 'New Age' was Russell's term for the era that he said began in
1946 when humanity was to become more receptive to the idea that every
person has transcendent potential."
The New Age Site: Origins of the Term "New Age"
http://www.thenewagesite.com/articles/newage.php
====================
ADDITIONAL READING
====================
RealMagick: What Is the New Age?
http://realmagick.com/articles/31/1031.html
Personal Pages of Bill Latura: What Do New Agers Believe?
http://home.xnet.com/~blatura/skep_7.html
PHILTAR: The New Age
http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/europe/newage.html
Christian Research Institute: The New Age Movement - What Is It?
http://www.equip.org/free/DN050.htm
About.com: New Age Index
http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/skepticism/blfaq_newage_index.htm
Much information about New Age beliefs, and about specific New Age
teachings and movements, may be found with the assistance of the
Google Directory:
Google Director: Society > Religion and Spirituality > New Age
http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/New_Age/
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Google search strategy:
Google Web Search: "what is new age"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22what+is+new+age
Google Web Search: "the term new age"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22the+term+new+age
Google Web Search: "new age is OR means"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22new+age+is+OR+means
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I hope this helps! If anything is unclear or incomplete, please don't
hesitate to ask for clarification.
Best regards,
pinkfreud |
