New Age/Revised

New Age describes a loose network of alternative (with respect to Western culture) spiritual and lifestyle practices, books, ideas, teachers, and groups. The question of which elements ought to be considered part of the "New Age" is highly vexed.

"New Age" activity typically takes the form of book sales, spiritual counseling or fortune-telling, study or meditation group participation, patronage of holistic health practitioners, and attendance at lectures or fairs. Participants are predominantly older, female, well-to-do, and politically liberal. Jews seem to be disproportionately represented. New Age music is another important area of activity.

Most New Age activity may be characterized as a form of alternative spirituality. Even apparent exceptions (such as alternative health practices) often turn out to have some spiritual dimension (for example, the integration of mind, body, and spirit).

"Alternative" here means, with respect to the dominant Western Judeo-Christian culture. It is no accident that most New Age ideas and practices seem to contain implicit critiques of mainstream Christianity in particular. An emphasis on meditation suggests that ordinary prayer is insufficient; belief in reincarnation (which not all New Agers accept)challenges familiar Christian doctrines of the afterlife.

At the same time, not every form of alternative spirituality fits within the New Age rubric--the label is used of a particular (if still very broad) subculture. Pentecostalism for example would definitely not fit; while the relationship of witchcraft and neo-paganism to the New Age remains a point of controversy, even among practitioners of these various movements. Organized Satanism plays no part in the New Age movement, though fundamentalist Christians often consider New Age activities to be Satanic in inspiration.

By the late 1980's, American media reported a burgeoning interest within certain circles in such things as channeling, crystals, astrology, reincarnation, UFO's, psychic phenomena or ESP, and meditation. At this time the "New Age" label entered popular usage, as a name for this subculture. Key moments include the broadcast of Shirley MacLaine's television miniseries "Out On a Limb," and the media attention given to the "Harmonic Convergence" organized by Jose Arguelles in Arizona, 1987.

Many individuals are responsible for the recent popularity of New Age spirituality, especially in the United States. James Redfield, author of The Celestine Prophecy and other New Age books, provides an open-ended, spirituality-based, life system derived from his own macrocosmic philosophy concerning mankind's state of spiritual evolution. Marianne Williamson updated A Course in Miracles when she penned her work A Return to Love. Another overview of the New Age is provided by Michael Sharp in The Book of Life: Ascension and the Divine World Order.

Most elements of this subculture existed long before the 1980's. The "New Age" may be traced to the 1960's counterculture; or to even earlier moments in the history of Spiritualism, the metaphysical movement (including Christian Science and the Unity School of Christianity ), and the Theosophical Society--all of which date back to the nineteenth century. It has been argued that "channeling," for example, is only a new name for what earlier generations termed "mediumship ."

Some of these older groups and figures such as those Alice Bailey or Edgar Cayce in the English-speaking world, Rudolf Steiner in the German-speaking world, or Nicholas Roerich and Helena Roerich in Russia, have clearly influenced later generations of spiritual seekers, that came to prominence in the 1970's and 1980's. In Brazil, Allen Kardec groups blend with Africanized folk religions to form a unique spiritual subculture (cf. Candomblé, Umbanda).

The name "New Age" suggests some sort of millennarian doctrine, perhaps of a glorious new era which is about to occur. As such one could conceivably date the idea back to the time of Zarathustra (Zoroaster), or more directly, to biblical apocalypticism. This language entered the "New Age" movement via Alice Bailey (who spoke rather of a "New Era"), and became an actual name for this subculture as a whole sometime between the 1960's and 1980's, possibly through the intermediary of the Findhorn Foundation Community, an intentional community in northern Scotland.

Actual millennarian doctrines, such as the "dawning of the Age of Aquarius," have however not been the main focus of New Age activity, which (with a few exceptions) tends to be mystical rather than apocalyptic. New Agers have therefore particularly welcomed such religious traditions as gnosticism, hermeticism, kabbalah, other forms of ancient and medieval Western esotericism, yoga, Vedanta, Tibetan Buddhism, Zen, Taoism, Sufism, shamanism, and "mystical" forms of Christianity. One widespread expectation is that society will experience a paradigm shift, here meaning a profound change of worldview.

Typically, each individual will "mix and match" beliefs and practices that suit him or her. The New Age approach 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.

Major critiques of the New Age have emerged from evangelical Christians who reject all forms of occultism; from skeptics suspicious of paranormal claims and wooly beliefs in general; and from New Agers themselves. Some members of this subculture have expressed discomfort with the name "New Age," either because of the media hoopla, or out of unwillingness to be seen as endorsing everything that other members of the subculture have done. Channeling, for example, has proven particularly controversial. To some, the name "New Age" carries a negative connotation.

Some typical--but by no means universal--New Age beliefs include:

• There exists a largely unseen spiritual world all around us, which interacts with us and guides us, if we are willing to turn to it.

• Spiritual beings (angels, elementals, ascended masters, UFO occupants, and/or ghosts) exist.

• All people--all life, indeed the entire universe--are interconnected, part of one common energy. "God" is one name for this.

• There are no coincidences. Everything around you has spiritual meaning, and spiritual lessons to teach you. You are meant to be here.

• Death is not the end. Our souls are eternal, and will continue to be guided lovingly through the afterlife state.

• Certain spiritual laws exist, for example the law of action and reaction, which says that your attitude toward others will ultimately be reflected back at you.

• There exists a mystical core of truth within all religions, Eastern and Western. Dogma and group identity are largely irrelevent.

• Truth is within. Meditation is one way to tap into that which our souls already know.

• Previous eras of patriarchal values are now giving way to a more balanced society, with respect for women and the divine feminine.

• Harmony is possible between science and spirituality. New scientific discoveries, such as quantum mechanics, point toward spiritual truths.

• Evolution is not blind, or purely materialistic, but has a spiritual purpose. The human race is being guided.

• The mind has hidden powers and abilities, which have spiritual significance. Dreams and psychic experiences are ways in which our souls express themselves.

• Certain advanced civilizations unknown to historians, such as Atlantis, once existed. Their stories, and surviving monuments (e.g. the Great Pyramid, Stonehenge) contain spiritual lessons for those on the earth today.

• The Bible leaves out many things about the life and teachings of Jesus, or else records them very obliquely. Some say that Jesus was an Essene, or that he traveled to India in his youth to study Eastern religions.

• Meditation, yoga, t'ai chi, and other Eastern practices are valuable and worthwhile. They contain many secrets presently not understood by mainstream science.

Language and underlying philosophy

Many adherents of belief systems characterised as New Age rely heavily on the use of metaphors to describe experiences deemed to be beyond the empirical. Consciously or unconsciously, New Agers tend to redefine vocabulary borrowed from various belief systems, which can cause some confusion as well as increase opposition from skeptics and the traditional religions. In particular, the adoption of terms from the parlance of science such as "energy", "energy fields", and various terms borrowed from quantum physics and psychology but not then applied to any of their subject matter, have served to confuse the dialog between science and spirituality, leading to derisive labels such as pseudoscience and psycho-babble.

Globalisation was and still is an important social phenomenon of the 20th and early 21st centuries, with religious syncretism inevitably being one consequence. New Age religious developments are eclectic, hence multifarious. However, in keeping with its relativist stance, New Agers believe they do not contradict traditional belief systems, but rather some of them say that they are concerned with the ultimate truths contained within them, separating these truths from false tradition and dogma.

Though many New Age concepts are associated with Eastern religions, they should not be considered as being identical with the concepts and practices of those religions. Ancient traditions such as Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism can hardly be referred to as New Age religions; it just so happens that the New Age set has 'adopted' many of the ideas of these religions and incorporated them into their own beliefs and practices. Many adherents of traditional disciplines from cultures such as India, China, and elsewhere; a number of orthodox schools of Yoga, Qigong, Chinese Medicine, and martial arts (the traditional Taijiquan families, for example), groups with histories reaching back many centuries in some cases, eschew the Western label New Age, seeing the movement it represents as either not fully understanding or deliberately trivializing their disciplines.

The difficulty of clarifying New Age language is compounded by the propensity of some New Agers to pretend to esoteric meanings for familiar terms; the New Age meaning of the esoteric term is typically quite different from the common use, and is often described as intentionally inaccessible to those not sufficiently trained in the area of their use. This is usually intended as a means of protection for the uninitiated against the danger inherent in the power of the underlying idea (as noted below).

In keeping with its roots as a counter-cultural phenomenon and its syncretic nature, New Age adherents tend to emphasize a relativist approach to truth, often referring to the Vedic statement of "one truth, but many paths," the mainstay of Hinduism, which idea is also found in the later Zen Buddhist spiritual dictum of "many paths, one mountain". This belief is not only an assertion of personal choice in spiritual matters, but also an assertion that truth itself is defined by the individual and his or her experience of it.

This relativism is not merely a spiritual relativism, but also extends to physical theories. Reality is considered largely from an experiential and subjective mode. Many New Age phenomena are not expected to be repeatable in the scientific sense, since they are presumed to be apparent only to the receptive mind; for example, telepathy may not be achievable by a skeptical mind, since a skeptical mind is not pre-conditioned to expect the phenomenon to exist.

New Agers typically adopt a mysticism-based (rather than experiment-and-theory-based) view of describing and controlling the external world; for example, one might believe that tarot card reading works because of the "interconnectedness principle", rather than regarding the success (or failure) of tarot card reading as evidence of the interconnectedness principle. The various New Age vitalist theories of health and disease provide further examples.

In contrast to the scientific method, the failure of some practice to achieve expected results is not considered as a failure of the underlying theory, but as a lack of knowledge about (hidden) extenuating circumstances. This stance has led some skeptics to pronounce the New Age movement to be primarily anti-intellectual in nature.

The emphasis on subjective knowledge and experience is a link between New Age beliefs and postmodernism. In addition, some New Age practices and beliefs could make use of what British anthropologist Sir James George Frazer termed magical thinking, in The Golden Bough(1890). Common examples are the principle that objects once in contact maintain a practical link, or that objects that have similar properties exert an effect on each other.

Within this context of relativism, one still finds many commonalities regarding the nature of the world:

• Forces. It is commonly held that there exist certain forces, independent of spiritual beings or agencies, and also distinct from forces as defined by science (e.g., gravitation, electro-magnetism, etc.). These forces are elemental in nature; and are held to operate in an automatic fashion as part of the natural order (for example, the force which causes seeds to sprout, grow, and bloom).

• Power. The "forces", and everything else, are energized by a mystical power that exists in varying degrees in all things. Power is transferable, through physical contact, sensory perception, or mere proximity. Power may be accumulated or depleted in a person or object through a variety of mechanisms, including fate and esoteric practices. This power is held to be physically observable as "auras" and "psi energy"; and when encountered in great concentration, may even be dangerous.

• Energy. In some belief systems, "forces" and "power" may seem to merge; e.g., in the concept of "vital force" that exists in so many traditional belief systems, and finds its expression in New Age concepts such as the alleged "energies" in Therapeutic Touch and Reiki, and ideas of flowing streams of power in Earth, like "leylines" in Britain and Europe and earth energies addressed in the Chinese geomantic system of feng shui. The New Age use of the word "energy" should obviously not be confused with the scientific one.

• Spirit. All beings (particularly sentient beings) are accompanied by a specific, intentional "energy" which corresponds to their consciousness, but is in some way independent of their corporeal existence. This energy typically is more primary than the physical entity, in the sense that it remains in some form after the physical death of that being.

• Holism. A coherent, interconnected cosmos. Everything in the cosmos is actually or potentially interconnected, as if by invisible threads, not only in space but also across time. Further, it is held that every thing and every event that has happened, is happening, or will happen leaves a detectable record of itself in the cosmic "medium" such as the Akashic Records or the morphogenic field.

• Cosmic goal. There is typically a belief that all entities are (willingly or unwillingly) cooperating in some cosmic goal of achieving a "higher" or more complete coherence with a cosmic "consciousness" (or some other goal state of "goodness"), often described as an evolutionary process or simply to learn. This underlying cosmic goal gives direction to all events, reducing the concept of coincidence to one of ignorance of hidden meaning.

Major attempts to present the New Age as a values-based sociopolitical movement included Mark Satin's New Age Politics (orig. 1976), Theodore Roszak's Person/Planet (1978), and Marilyn Ferguson's Aquarian Conspiracy (1980).

See also

Note: An anonymous author made extensive changes to the long standing(4 years) edition of the New Age article, which was quickly restored back to its previous form. This revision is preserved for various reasons, here.