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The New Age Movement is older than it looks

by Desmond Ford

""wo years ago I was in a healthI ;ood store in Toronto, Can-ada, looking for some good bread. Icame across a thirty-two pagemagazine called Dimensions-Toronto: New Age Monthly.

Other New Age MagazinesAt home in California, I later

found in our mail box anothermagazine, Evolving Times-Resourcesfor Human potential. The Torontopaper had advertised on its frontpage the following: corporate cults,health and fitness, New Age espio-nage, palmistry, sidereal astrology,tarot, and wiccan flame. The Sacra-mento paper listed healing, holistichealth, intuitive arts, jewelry, meta-physics, New Age music, psychol-ogy and therapy, and success andmeditation.

Across the sea, ten thousandmiles, I picked up Earth Mother andCrystal Consciousness. This was justa few weeks ago in Adelaide, Aus-

tralia. Page one of Earth Mothermentioned a "broad range of alter-native issues, including a 'Directoryof Catalyst Therapies and Practitio-ners.' The magazine covers any-thing natural."

The last line made me think ofAdam and Eve working on their fig-leaf garments.

Gullible or SkepticalI wished Carl Sagan were at my

side. Carl's philosophy and minedo not agree in all areas. But I am100 percent in accord with his insis-tence that in the modern age wehave to be efficient skeptics to sur-vive. He wrote a magnificent article'in Parade (February I, 1987) entitledliThe Fine Art of Baloney Detec-tion." He said there are manythings in the modern world mas-querading as fact which are pure (oralmost pure) fiction. In his retinueof examples were many holistichealth practices, and spiritistic phe-

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nomena such as channeling.

The New Age MovementPerhaps you have not yet heard

of the New Age Movement (NAM).Then you must have been in hiding.Whether or not you have heard, youare certainly influenced by it. NewAge has permeated business, reli-gion, philosophy, the media (for ex-ample, the Star Wars trilogy, and theproliferation of New Age radio sta-tions), and your neighbor's life-style. Possibly even your life-style!

New Age is actually MadamBlavatsky reincarnate and dressedup again. Helena Petrovna Blavat-sky [1831-91] was a Russian oc-cultist who founded the Theosophi-cal Society in New York in 1875.She was a chain-smoker whoclaimed virginity after marriage.She wrote two famous books. Theywere patchworks of many otherbooks and palmed off on a gulliblespiritualfamily. They were Isis Un-

veiled [1887]and Secret Doctrine. Theyproved to be the entering wedge forancient Hinduism into western cul-ture, and the forerunner of the NewAge.

Madam Blavatsky harnessed An-nie Besant (of irreverent memory) toher bandwagon, and Annie took onKrishnamurti as the new Messiah.

I remember the stadium just out-side Sydney where two generationsago, millionaires paid to see the Mes-siah come through Sydney HarbourHeads. In vain.

Yes, New Age is amany-pronged attack onJudeo-Christian cultureby an up-to-date Hindu-ism. Ancient karma, pan-theism, reincarnation,and esoteric wisdom arerevived. They are tinc-tured with many things,such as might be found inthe witches' cauldron inMacbeth.

Cumbey's ConspiracyHowever, the New

Age is no human conspir-acy despite famed authorConstance Cumbey's TheHidden Dangers of theRainbow. Attorney Cum-bey says the protagonistsof the New Age have fordecades been followingtheosophist Alice Bailey(who died in 1949).Cumbey claims H.G.Wells was a major sourceof the conspiracy (he diedin 1946).

Cumbey's theory is that practi-cally everything important sinceWorld War II has been promoted bylithe Aquarian Conspiracy." Sheteaches, for example, that the nuclearfreeze movement and the influence ofeastern religions are the result of theAquarian Conspiracy. (She claims"Aquarian Conspiracy" is anothername for revived Nazism or the NewAge.) All of these things will ulti-mately lead to the Antichrist.

Many skimpy researchers haveclimbed on this bandwagon. TexeMarrs wrote Dark Secrets of the NewAge and Mystery Mark of the New Age.

The first was a best-seller for peoplewho love to be scared to death.

It is true that Bailey had much todo with the present New Age move-ment. It is also true that Wells fos-tered the world-state idea. But it isnot true that the multitudes of NewAge schools-of-thought have all con-sciously conspired with MotherBailey to capture the world for thenew era. Wells was emphatic that themysticism of eastern faiths wouldhave no place in the Great WorldState he envisaged. Wells was a ra-

tionalist, not a religious mystic.

What the NAM IsThe NAM is not so much a school

as an army. Armies can include de-tachments from various nations. Sowith the NAM. It is an eruption ofeastern mysticism linked with west-ern sales expertise and science. It isnot a human conspiracy (though nodoubt it is a satanic one).

Don't misunderstand me. Con-stance Cumbey is not all wrong. Shehas won many from the N AM toChristianity. But her books are a re-minder that books are like shops: welike to view all that's on display but

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have no intention of buying every-thing.

Coming back to where you live.You know of Bahaiism, Christian Sci-ence, Rosicrucianism, spiritism, the-osophy, and Unity. These are allprongs of New Age teaching in the1990s. Add to these various mind-in-fluencing procedures, such things as:astrology, EST, holistic health prac-tices, yoga, many meditation prac-tices and esoteric approaches to de-velopment of human potential, andUFOs. Then you are sailing in New

Age waters or very nearby.

NAM Thought Leaders(and Shirley MacLaine)

The voice now heardmost is that of movie starShirley Mac Laine. Herclaims are mind-stretch-ing and mind-boggling.You can also hear thevoice of MarilynFerguson. Edgar Cayce'svoice is still discerniblefrom older books. Theseare the sirens that call youto sail in New Age seas.In Elliot Millers' excellentA Crash Course on the NewAge Movement and WalterMartin's The New Age Cultyou find the followingpersons named as spokes-persons for the NAM.

Significant thinkers: fu-turist Alvin Toffler; thelate economist E.F. Schu-macher; cultural historian

Theodore Roszak; social historianWilliam Irwin Thompson; biolo-gist Jonas Salk; former SaturdayReview editor Norman Cousins;psychologist Jean Houston; con-sciousness researcher Ken Wil-ber; physicist Fritjof Capra; thelate anthropologist MargaretMead; the late futurist Buckmin-ster Fuller.

Political figures and activists:retired U.N. Assistant SecretaryGeneral Robert Muller; PlanetaryCitizens president and co-founder Donald Keys; futuristsBarbara Marx Hubbard and Ha-zel Henderson; organizer and

New Age Politics author MarkSatin.

Spiritual leaders: Author andformer Findhorn leaders DavidSpangler; medicine man SunBear; erstwhile Harvard psychol-ogy professor, now popularspeaker Richard Alpert (a.k.a.Baba Ram Dass); "channel" JachPursel ("Lazaris"); Sufi Order inthe West leader Pir Vilayat InayatKhan.

Other influential spokes-people: Death-and-dying re-searcher and hospicepioneer ElizabethKubler-Ross; actressShirley Mac Laine;motivational speakerRev. Terry-Cole Whit-taker; EST founderWerner Erhard.

Last but not leastis lay consciousnessresearcher MarilynFerguson [author ofThe Aquarian Con-spiracy, 1980].1

Teachings of NAM andComments

The New Age title is amisnomer. There is littlenew about New Ageteachings. The essence oftheir teachings is found inthe first brainwashingever accomplished (readGenesis 3:1-7).

Notice that at the be-ginning of human sin wehave the errors that pre-cipitated evil, loss, and (ultimately)death. These errors continue toweave their web of mischief, and willdo so into the future. These errorsare:1.You will be as God2.Your eyes will be opened3.You shall experience good and evil4.You shall surely not die.

Bible Reveals Truth About NAMWhat a great book the Bible is! If

the New Age could produce a qualitybook like it, some of us would bemightily impressed. In Genesis 3, theChristian guidebook warns us againstthe chief errors of all time: the prom-

ise of divine power and nature; thepromise to plumb the heights anddepths of available experience with-out loss; to find esoteric knowledge;and exemption from death. What in-sight!

Remember, people prefer to be-lieve what they prefer to be true.Sadly, the truth can be cruel-for atime at least. And error can be con-soling-again, for a time. Only a mi-nority really decides issues from thefacts. Most decide from desire andprejudice.

President John F. Kennedy said,"The great enemy of the truth is veryoften not the lie-deliberate, con-trived, and dishonest-but themyth-persistent and persuasive andunrealistic. Too often ... we subjectall facts to a prefabricated set of inter-pretation. We enjoy the comfort ofopinion without the discomfort ofthought." [Yalecommencement, June11,1962.]

The FactsThe facts are these:

* We are gods only in the sense thatwe can be born into the divine familyand be granted delegated privileges

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suitable for created beings.* Mixing the experience of evil withgood never profits. "Evil" is "live"spelled backwards, and life will notrun well backwards. To have oureyes opened to evil by partaking ofthe forbidden fruit brings death, notlife.* Safety, joy, and eternal fruitfulnessdo not come from following the liesof the promised New Age spoken bythe first medium (Gen 3:1, 4-5).Safety, joy, and eternal fruitfulnesscome from faithful adherence to him

who declared, "1 am theway and the truth andthe life. No one comes tothe Father except throughme" (In 14:6).

Someone, knowingwell the fragili ty of ourfallen nature and ourproneness for error, said:

"Love offers the eter-nal, we want the immedi-ate. Love offers deep joy,we want thrills. Love of-fers freedom, we want li-cense. Love offers com-munion with God him-self, we want to worshipat the shrine of our ownminds. Love offers peace,we want approval for ourwars."

Therefore, choose theeverlasting gospel ratherthan what seems to be ev-erlasting lies. .:.

Footnotes1. Elliot Miller, A Crash

Course on the New Age, p. 33. You willfind another useful list in WalterMartin's The New Age Cult, pp. 110-118.

[Personal note: 1am stronglyop-posed to the NAM. Yet NAM the-ory is a mingling of good and evil.1 have found good things taught bysome of these thought-leaders.Some have a right to speak as a re-sult of real research and experi-ence. As for the others: it wouldhave been good for them and theworld had they been struck speech-less whenever they ventured intothe murky waters of esotericism.]