Other examples are the Political Science Committee of the Institute for the New Age and New Age Feminism, New Age education groups, the Hunger Project, Planetary Citizens, Movement for a New Society, and many others in a long list. Much of the strength and effectiveness of the New Age Movement lies in its informal, low profile networks.
New Age movement, movement that spread through the occult and metaphysical religious communities in the 1970s and ʾ80s. It looked forward to a “New Age” of love and light and offered a foretaste of the coming era through personal transformation and healing. The movement’s strongest supporters were followers of modern esotericism, ...
Study the New Age. When dealing with New Agers, we must be sure that we have at least a basic understanding of what their teachings are, who are their leaders, what are New Age groups, the goals of the Movement, and other relevant data.
Alice Bailey, Education in the New Age (New York, Lucis, 1954) p. 122. Quoted by Amano and Geisler, p. 90. 15. Douglas Groothuis, “Politics: Building an International Platform,” The New Age Rage, ed. by Karen Hoyt and J. Isamu Yamanoto (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1987), p. 104. Quoted by Martin pp. 72-73. 16.
The New Age Movement consists of an eclectic range of beliefs and practices based on Buddhism and Taoism, psychology, and psycho-therapy; paganism, clairvoyance, tarot and magic.
Examples of New Age Beliefs and Practices. These are many and varied, but they include…. A belief in the power of natural healing and ‘spiritual energy’… as found within Tai Chi and Reiki. The belief that nature is sacred, as found in beliefs in Gaia and Paganism. A belief in the idea that individuals have a ‘deeper’ inner potential ...
The self is seen as the final authority in the New Age Movement – rather than accepting the truth of an external god, one needs to find the god or goddess within and find one’s own path to perfection.
A focus on ‘self-improvement’ – many New Age practices are about ‘perfecting oneself’ – going on a journey of self-improvement, or even self-transcendence. Often this means going beyond one’s ‘socialised self’ and getting in touch with one’s ‘true self’ or ones ‘inner self’ through practices such as meditation.
A Pick and Mix approach to religion – New Age practitioners generally accept that there are diverse paths to ‘spiritual fulfillment’.
The New Age movement has been centered around rebuilding a sense of community to counter social disintegration; this has been attempted through the formation of intentional communities, where individuals come together to live and work in a communal lifestyle. Bruce argued that in seeking to “denying the validity of externally imposed controls and privileging the divine within”, the New Age sought to dismantle pre-existing social order, but that it failed to present anything adequate in its place. Heelas however cautioned that Bruce had arrived at this conclusion based on “flimsy evidence”.
While many commentators have focused on the spiritual and cultural aspects of the New Age movement, it also has a political component. The New Age political movement became visible in the 1970s, peaked in the 1980s, and continued into the 1990s.The sociologist of religion Steven Bruce noted that the New Age provides ideas on how to deal with “our socio-psychological problems”. Scholar of religion James R. Lewis observed that, despite the common caricature of New Agers as narcissistic, “significant numbers” of them were “trying to make the planet a better place on which to live,” and scholar J. Gordon Melton’s New Age Encyclopedia (1990) included an entry called “New Age politics”. Some New Agers have entered the political system in an attempt to advocate for the societal transformation that the New Age promotes.
“Neopagan practices highlight the centrality of the relationship between humans and nature and reinvent religions of the past, while New Agers are more interested in transforming individual consciousness and shaping the future.”
New Age is a term applied to a range of spiritual or religious beliefs and practices that developed in Western nations during the 1970s . Precise scholarly definitions of the New Age differ in their emphasis, largely as a result of its highly eclectic structure. Although analytically often considered to be religious, those involved in it typically prefer the designation of spiritual or Mind, Body, Spirit and rarely use the term “ New Age ” themselves. Many scholars of the subject refer to it as the New Age movement, although others contest this term and suggest that it is better seen as a milieu or zeitgeist.
“In the case of New Age, its solipsism, coupled with its advocacy of free market principles, opens the world’s spiritual arena as an opportunity for spiritual exploitation and even capitalistic imperialism. Not only does it encourage a paradoxical homogenizing to the cultural standards of North Atlantic civilization, exemplified in its affirmation that ‘we are all one’, but it also carries an implicit judgement of inferior status for non-hegemonic cultures, inasmuch as they are not considered to be the ones who decide what is to be shared and what is not.”
The term “ New Age music ” is applied, sometimes in a derogative manner, to forms of ambient music, a genre that developed in the 1960s and was popularised in the 1970s, particularly with the work of Brian Eno. The genre’s relaxing nature resulted in it becoming popular within New Age circles, with some forms of the genre having a specifically New Age orientation. Studies have determined that new-age music can be an effective component of stress management.
A belief in divinity is integral to New Age ideas, although understandings of this divinity vary. New Age theology exhibits an inclusive and universalistic approach that accepts all personal perspectives on the divine as equally valid. This intentional vagueness as to the nature of divinity also reflects the New Age idea that divinity cannot be comprehended by the human mind or language. New Age literature nevertheless displays recurring traits in its depiction of the divine: the first is the idea that it is holistic, thus frequently being described with such terms as an “Ocean of Oneness”, “Infinite Spirit”, “Primal Stream”, “One Essence”, and “Universal Principle”. A second trait is the characterisation of divinity as “Mind”, “Consciousness”, and “Intelligence”, while a third is the description of divinity as a form of “energy”. A fourth trait is the characterisation of divinity as a “life force”, the essence of which is creativity, while a fifth is the concept that divinity consists of love.
The New Age movement united a body of diverse believers with two simple ideas. First, it predicted that a New Age of heightened spiritual consciousness and international peace would arrive and bring an end to racism, poverty, sickness, hunger, and war. This social transformation would result from the massive spiritual awakening of the general population during the next generation. Second, individuals could obtain a foretaste of the New Age through their own spiritual transformation. Initial changes would put the believer on the sadhana, a new path of continual growth and transformation.
Birth of the movement. In 1970 American theosophist David Spangler moved to the Findhorn Foundation, where he developed the fundamental idea of the New Age movement. He believed that the release of new waves of spiritual energy, signaled by certain astrological changes (e.g., the movement of the Earth into a new cycle known as the Age of Aquarius), ...
In the early 20th century the Theosophical Society was hurt again , this time by a series of sex scandals involving its leaders, and Besant was personally embarrassed by the defection of Krishnamurti in 1929.
Ancient Gnosticism was succeeded by various esoteric movements through the centuries, including Rosicrucianism in the 17th century and Freemasonry, theosophy, and ritual magic in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Returning to the United States in the mid-1970s, Spangler became the major architect of the movement. He presented his ideas in a set of popular books beginning with Revelation: The Birth of a New Age (1976) and attracted many leaders from older occult and metaphysical organizations to the growing movement.
Spangler’s view was in stark contrast to that of Bailey and her followers, who believed that the new era would arrive independent of human actions. Spangler’s perspective demanded an active response and shifted the responsibility for the coming of the New Age to those who believed in it. Returning to the United States in the mid-1970s, ...
The New Age movement is an umbrella term referring to a variety of people, organizations, events, practices and ideas. Sociologically speaking, it is not a centrally organized movement with one human leader. Although it includes cults, sects, and even denominations, it is not restricted to any one of these.
The New Age Cult is really the transplantation of the Hindu philosophy through the Theosophical Society that was founded by Helen Blavatsky in 1875 AD in the United States. Madame Blavatsky promoted spiritism, seances, and basic Hindu philosophy.
The new global consciousness is based upon the experience of “unity consciousness” that comes through drugs or Transcendental Meditation (TM) and other forms of Yoga and Eastern meditation, and leads to the Hindu belief that atman (individual soul) is identical with Brahma (universal soul).
A loose confederation of people who believe the world is on the verge of a transformation where people will reject Judeo-Christian values and enter a time of peace and one-world government with the aid of Oriental philosophies and practices.3. According to Basilea Schlink.
Like evangelicalism, the New Age movement is not tied to any particular organization; has no overarching hierarchical structure; is diverse in both practice and belief; and though it has prominent spokesmen, it has no official leadership.