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New Age |
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The New Age movement is difficult to characterize because it includes so many things. Catalogs of New Age products offer a dazzling array of gods, goddesses, shamans, devas, witches, and wizards from Hindu, Buddhist, Egyptian, Viking, Native American, and other cultures. Tarot, astrology, witchcraft, magic, homeopathy, reflexology, aromatherapy, palmistry, visualization, ESP, near-death and out-of-body experiences, Tai Chi, yoga, Taoist, Zen and Edgar Cayce-style meditations, self-empowerment, consciousness-raising, and inner-child therapies all find a home under this umbrella, as do a broad array of objects such as pyramids, crystals, pentacles, unicorns, wolves, rainbows, medicine wheels, Runic wheels, earth drums, magic potions, sacred stones, lava lamps, wizard walking sticks, goddess wands, totems, and rainsticks, all of which are designed to enable the individual to experience, as one catalog puts it, “personal growth and exploration.” Nor are Christian religious symbols entirely ignored by New Age. The cross has been adopted as one symbol among many interchangeable symbols (Yin-Yang, Om, and Pentagram are others) of the “spiritual totality.” Even more have angels and Gregorian chant been embraced by New Agers as apt expressions of this “new” spiritual movement: the former because they can be identified with devas, “a Sanskrit word for angelic beings-of-light who seek their kindred spirits here on earth,” the latter because it has been found consonant with other varieties of “New Age music.” Nothing, perhaps, demonstrates more the syncretic character of this movement than a New Age composition, Gregorian Waves, characterized as a “musical homage to the Earth Goddess Gaia, paid in the tradition of the Gregorian chant.” The movement also spans a variety of other movements, including feminism, the ecology movement, a variety of self-help and self-healing movements, and movements for global peace and a global world order. In short, there are few places, in modern societies at least, that have not felt the influence of New Age “spirituality.” Many Christians are under the impression that New Age and Christianity are compatible, if not two sides of the same coin. In point of fact, however, nothing could be further removed from Christianity than New Age spirituality. This is apparent from a brief examination of four major tenets of this movement. Unity. The defining belief of New Age is unity. All things are thought to be ultimately the same thing. The belief that “all is one” lies at the core of New Age. This of course supposes that in the final analysis everything is “God.” In short, New Age is monist, because it supposes that God is undifferentiated oneness in his own being. It is also pantheistic, since in this view of things God and the world are identical. Pure Spirit. This movement also takes the view that only spirit is real. Time, space, materiality, limits – all are illusions, according to New Age. This follows of course from the belief that all is God. For this reason, near-death and out-of-body experiences and reincarnation are thought to be truly spiritual, inasmuch as they allow a person to transcend the limits imposed by time, space, and materiality. The Self. The New Age movement is ultimately concerned solely with the individual human self, since the self is God. This self is a spirit that is capable of unlimited existence by transcending the illusions of space, time, and materiality. It is perfect in itself, because evil is nothing more than its ignorance of its own divinity. The self is also unrelated to other selves, since all selves are one (“all is one”). Salvation. According to New Age, the only sin or evil in the world is the false belief that space, time, materiality, and limits are real, not illusory. Salvation, therefore, or “enlightenment,” as New Agers are wont to call it, comes about through realizing that “all is one” and all is spirit. This being the case, the self must turn back in upon itself to discover there the divine (cosmic) consciousness that it shares with all other selves and that will allow it to transcend all the false limits imposed by the illusions of space, time, and matter. The Om Namaha Shivaya is a popular mantra in New Age, because it means “I honor the Divine within.” Ultimately, salvation consists in awakening from the “dream of separation,” in which we suppose ourselves to be other than God, in order to know and act upon our own divinity. Rejection of Christianity • In the final analysis, we have here a wholesale rejection of the Christian faith. The Trinity is rejected, because God is absolute unity, not triunity. Creation is rejected, because the world is identical to God, not different from and created by him. Man as the image of God is rejected, because man is God. The Fall is rejected, because sin and evil are illusions. Jesus Christ is rejected on several grounds. He cannot be both divine and human, because there is no difference between the two. He cannot be God incarnate, because materiality is an illusion. He cannot be the savior, because we save ourselves. His death on the cross cannot be salvific, because only knowledge (enlightenment) can save us. He cannot be resurrected, because not only the body but death also is an illusion. Repentance is rejected, for we are already perfect and just need to see that we are. Church and sacraments are rejected, not only because materiality is an illusion but also because we cannot be a community but only a unity. The Bible, Tradition, and the Magisterium are all rejected, because all authority resides with the self, not with anything exterior to the self. Heaven, hell, and judgment are rejected, because all is God. One critic of New Age has pointed out that this movement, which began as “a scattered revolt against Western secularism and traditional Christianity,” has become “an elaborate and full-orbed assault on Western culture” (Douglas R. Groothuis, Unmasking the New Age, p. 46). Far from offering the hope of a real spiritual revival in the West, it has done nothing more than resurrect in new garb the ancient and apparently indestructible heresy of Gnosticism, against which the Church has time and again had to do battle. The belief that spirit is the only reality, that materiality is either evil or an illusion, and that salvation consists in enlightenment or knowledge alone continually reasserts itself in one form or another in every age of human history. Gnosticism has a longer history than the Church and is as old as the human race. Gnosticism must always be the enemy of the Catholic faith in God as triune, in creation (including matter) as good, in Christ as God incarnate, in the self as fallen not through ignorance but through pride and disobedience, in Christ’s life, death, and Resurrection as redemptive, and in the Good News as salvation not from matter but from sin. Thus does Pope John Paul II speak of the “return of ancient gnostic ideas under the guise of the so-called New Age,” which “in the name of a profound knowledge of God, results in distorting His Word and replacing it with purely human words” and is therefore “in distinct, if not declared, conflict with all that is essentially Christian” (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 90). See: Freemasonry; Gnosticism; Magic; Neoplatonism; Theosophy.
Suggested Readings: CCC 285, 2116-2117. G. Danneels, “Christ or Aquarius?” in Catholic International, pp. 480-488. C. Cumby, The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow: The New Age Movement and Our Coming Age of Barbarism. R. England, The Unicorn in the Sanctuary: The Impact of the New Age on the Catholic Church. D. Groothuis, Unmasking the New Age. Joyce A. Little |
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