The Politics of
Mysticism
Just as parapsychology blends with science in New Age thought, so science merges into politics. The New Age belief that the universe is evolving toward total unity is based on the optimistic assumption that, despite setbacks and forces that hinder, humans are becoming ever-better beings in an ever-higher and interconnected order. The old model of power and politics was based on the Newtonian view of a mechanistic, atomistic universe; the New Age paradigm is one of flux — politics' counterpart to modern physics.1
And just as they are key figures in the marriage of New Age science with mysticism, so Teilhard de Chardin and Fritjof Capra are paramount in the unfolding drama of "politicized mysticism."
David Horner, head of Christian Research Associates in Denver and an analyst of Teilhardian thought, sees the basis of human morality for Teilhard as "simply the recognition that man is born into the cosmic stream of evolution and must continue it . . . Specifically, humans must cooperate in the task of racial perfection, or eugenics (which is the process of attempting to improve the human species, generally by controlling heredity through selective breeding and sterilization)."2
The goal of Capra's holistic paradigm, which roots in quantum physics, is to "restore creation and heal humanity's alienation . . . . [W]ith a nurturing goddess as a cultural image of deity, decentralized power and egalitarian social organization will emerge," says New Age critic Robert Burrows.3
Or, to quote New Age interpreter Beverly Rubik: "An emerging worldview of the cosmos is that of a supreme work of divine art, alive and continuously evolving toward richer complexity and intimately dependent on us."4
But how do we know a political paradigm shift when we see one? Heed New Age theorist Marilyn Ferguson: "A political paradigm shift might be said to occur when the new values are assimilated by the dominant society. These values then become social dogma to the members of a new generation, who marvel that anyone could ever have believed otherwise."5
That there is a New Age political agenda, then, should surprise no one. Its influence on the overall political climate of the nation has so far been modest, and its aims are diverse and diffuse. But there are clear signs of growing power and consolidation as the decade moves to a close.
Several observers of the New Age scene, including Brooks Alexander of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project, see "organized activism" in the ecological or environmental realm as a primary vehicle for New Age ideas and concepts to merge into mainline political thinking and to shape public policy.
Carl Raschke, the witty religious studies professor at the University of Denver, says that "closet Aquarian conspirators" are beginning to identify with the movement as it snowballs in a way comparable to the Reaganism of the early 1980s. It is, he said, as we chatted in a small Arabian restaurant a block off campus, "a politicizing, like the new Christian Right."
Then he added: "But there are few Reaganite Republicans or Texas Baptists joining up . . . . New Age political tenets appeal to oldline liberals and militants of the 1960s, peace advocates, those who espouse the unity of all religions, et cetera. Now we are being told this is part of New Age."
Although Raschke doesn't see much impact by openly New Age political candidates, he does see "a lot of political enthusiasms . . . co-opted and incorporated into a kind of mystical social agenda." For example, he says, the Hands
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Across America event of Memorial Day weekend in 1986 was orchestrated by New Age opinion-makers.
Another example, the December 31, 1986, World Instant of Cooperation — also called World Healing Day — was observed on seven continents and involved more than 500 spiritual and peace-oriented groups. The event was one of the first efforts to visibly mobilize an international political constituency for New Age projects and goals.
According to Raschke, the political themes of New Age are becoming more visible: critical rhetoric against the establishment political system . . . bringing in the ideological "heavy cannons" from the past twenty years — New World Order, Planetary Society, global politics. "The ultimate objective of the New Age push is to create a new political set of values and standards — the shaping of a new political global social vision."6
The predominant themes of transformational politics include ecology, feminism, and global order. The latter, says Robert Muller, retired assistant secretary-general of the United Nations, is "planetary civilization . . . [the] Planet of God."7
The New Age ecological consciousness springs from a perception of "universal oneness" and the interconnected web of biological life. It shares many goals of the environmental movement as a whole, and plugs into the heightened national appreciation for Native American culture and its reverence for Nature. Further, New Age participation in peace concerns and opposition to nuclear weapons go hand in hand with causes generally associated with liberal politics and liberal religion. Indeed, the Roman Catholic bishops of the United States have endorsed similar positions in their policy pronouncements.
Other political fallout from New Age ecology includes advocacy of zero population growth, sexual freedom, abortion, and the use of solar, rather than fossil, fuels. However, while New Age advocates typically identify with these positions, obviously not all those who support such causes are associated with the New Age movement or its philosophy. And, as we have noted earlier, there is no litany of commitments one must recite to qualify as a card-carrying New Ager.
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What is distinctive about New Age ecology goes deeper. In fact, Capra calls it "deep ecology."
It is rooted in a perception of reality that goes beyond the scientific framework to an intuitive awareness of all life, the interdependence of its multiple manifestations and its cycles of changes and transformation. When the concept of the human spirit is understood in this sense, as the mode of consciousness in which the individual feels connected to the cosmos as a whole, it becomes clear that ecological awareness is truly spiritual.8
To many New Agers, ecology contains the basic religious truth from which all religions spring. Another way of saying that is, "I am the Earth."
Bob Hunter, writing in Greenpeace Chronicles, described ecology as New Age religion: "Nature is quite obviously the physical totality of God's work. Within it, as part of it, viewing what is Our Self from the individual compartments of our little selves, we become aware that Nature is, in fact, us. The world is Our Body . . . Mother Earth is not passive. To align oneself with Her energies is to liberate at the same time the true animal within."9
Deep ecology asserts that all forms of life have "intrinsic value" apart from any human considerations. It assumes humans have no right to control or reduce the populations of other life forms except to satisfy vital needs. By rejecting the view that nature and its species exist to serve humans, deep ecology gives a clear message that all life has equal value; humans have no superior rights over any other life.10
Taoism, Capra says, forms a good base for the mystical dimensions of deep ecology. The best expression, however, is found in the goddess worship of radical feminism, which Capra and Charlene Spretnak spell out in their book Green Politics: The Global Promise.
To Capra and Spretnak, only a female goddess from the East can deliver humanity from the authoritarianism of an oppressive patriarchal style of religion that has dominated in the West. As we saw in the earlier chapter on goddess worship, a powerful strand of New Age philosophy blames men for the evils of human history, including wars and the suppression of women.
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Petra K. Kelly, cofounder of West Germany's Green Party, expressed the values and commitment of this radical and rapidly growing worldwide political group in a first-person account called "Growing Up Green."
Kelly, a native of Bavaria, said she broke with her childhood Roman Catholic faith "because I am deeply religious and feel whole and equal to men and feel a need for feminist spirituality. I do not need an authoritarian male institution to help me look for my own inner truth or search for gods and goddesses of cosmic energy and love-light."11
There is subtle but sexually potent clout in Kelly's call for women to love only men who are willing to speak out against violence. She also urges women to unite "in changing the world" by being elected to political and economic offices.
We must think in global terms, say New Age political activists. National boundaries are obsolete, yet to most New Agers the notions of top-down bureaucratic government or a one-world global ruler are repugnant because these models shift power from grass-roots individuals. A minority of New Agers, however — particularly those influenced by the writings of Theosophy disciple Alice Bailey — buy into the concept of an elite, ruling hierarchy such as her "New Group of World Servers."12 Carl Raschke calls this "the tradition of genteel occult politics in America."
Major New Age strategists Ferguson, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Mark Satin (rhymes with Latin), and others promote a unified world order and planetary unity while at the same time favoring decentralized civil government — a difficult balancing act.
"Fully local in uniqueness and integrity" but "interconnected with all others in the world community," is the way Earl D. Brewer, director of the Center for Religious Research at Emory University in Atlanta, holds the two together in creative tension.13
Satin has proposed a planetary guidance system, complete with planetary taxation to help redistribute wealth to poorer nations. In his political paradigm, there is neither socialism nor capitalism — "that kind of question would be decided on by the individual communities" — but rather "an economy of life-oriented, mostly human-scale enterprises."14
Satin is editor of a slick monthly political newsletter called
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New Options, which has an advisory board of 100 premier "thinkers and activists" who broadly reflect the New Age movement. This publication covers "post-liberal, post-conservative, post-socialist options in labor, business, economics, feminism, the peace movement, global development, religious and minority activism" for $25 a year — "less if you're poor."15
Declaring that New Options regularly covers the activities of 200 "innovative national groups," Satin boasts an insider's touch: "We know who the 'appropriate technology' sympathizers are at the World Bank. Which foreign service officers are globally responsible. Who spends time at the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future."16
Planetary Citizens, a group founded in 1972 by Donald Keys, a consultant to the United Nations, has attracted New Age heavies such as David Spangler and Peter Caddy (both formerly of the Findhorn community in Scotland), historian William Irwin Thompson, futurist Willis Harman, former astronaut Edgar Mitchell, and Michael Murphy of Esalen Institute. Distinguished members listed by Douglas Groothuis in 1987 included Isaac Asimov, Rene Dubois, and honorary chairman Norman Cousins.17
To Keys and a flotilla of other New Age architects, the United Nations represents the epitome of planetization.
Robert Muller, veteran of nearly forty years of UN service and an ardent admirer of Teilhard's philosophy of global evolution, puts stock in the UN as "the first universal, global instrument humanity has ever had." Survival and further progress will depend largely "on the advent of global vision," he has written.
"The supreme unity of the human family, universal and interdependent, as seen by all great religions must now become a political reality; the hour has struck for the implementation of a spiritual vision of world affairs; the next great task of humanity will be to determine the divine or cosmic laws which must rule our behavior of this planet."18
Muller's mystical and lyrical tones sound low key when compared with adulation reserved for the UN by Hindu meditator Sri Chinmoy, the marathon runner / weight lifter who is also a United Nations chaplain.
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"The United Nations . . . . is the way, the way of oneness, that leads us to the Supreme Oneness. It is like a river flowing toward the source, the Ultimate Source,". . . . "[T]he United Nations becomes for us the answer to world suffering, world darkness and world ignorance. The inner vision of the United Nations is the gift supreme. This vision the world can deny for 10, 20, 30, 40, 100 years. But a day will dawn when the vision of the United Nations will save the world, And when the reality of the United Nations starts bearing fruit, then the breath of immortality will be living reality on Earth.19
Planetary Citizens and World Goodwill — both New Age political lobbying groups — are headquartered at the United Nations Plaza. World Goodwill was founded to unfold Alice Bailey's "plan" for a new world government and world religion. The material for the plan, Bailey said, was revealed to her telepathically by Djwhal Khul, a mysterious Tibetan master.
Other New Age notables espousing political activism include Benjamin Creme, who has widely announced the coming of Bailey's Christ figure, or Maitreya. Creme's newspaper ads have indicated that the Maitreya would end world hunger and war, and usher in a one-world socialist government that would redistribute wealth through the United Nations.20
Singer John Denver's nonprofit organization, Windstar, whose slogan is "In peace there is power," promotes his New Age concept. And M. Scott Peck, author of runaway bestsellers, selectively endorses the New Age political agenda.
In his 1987 book, The Different Drum, Peck proclaims that his call for a "new American Revolution" of community building would facilitate gradual disarmament and the creation of a world government. Such goals are articulated best, he says, by people in a final, advanced stage of spiritual development. This stage is typified by being part of caring communities, a commitment to more than oneself, and "the ability to relish and cope with paradoxical situations."21
New Age ideology has many organizers, but no central political machinery. Several politicians exemplify or promote New Age values, however, and some transformational "planks" were written into the 1982 California Democratic platform.22 Jerry Brown, former California governor and
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erstwhile Democratic presidential hopeful, has New Age leanings, as does Barbara Marx Hubbard, who was active in the 1984 Democratic vice-presidential campaign.
California Assemblyman John Vasconcellos of Santa Clara was instrumental in the 1976 founding of a statewide organization called Self-Determination, designed to promote interaction and empowerment between persons and institutions. Called the "touchy-feely" politician by detractors because of his legislation dealing with human potentials causes, Vasconcellos was treated to headline attention — and a few snickers — when he created a state-supported commission on self-esteem.
"Hold onto your hot-tubs, the California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility is going local. In fact, it may be coming to your county soon," Beth Ann Krier gibed in the lead of her Los Angeles Times article in September 1987. Even before the task force was launched, Krier noted, citizen interest boomed: A full 350 applicants sought the group's 25 slots — more than had ever applied for any task force in state history.23 And after cartoonist Gary Trudeau ribbed the group — along with Harmonic Convergence — in his "Doonesbury" strip, thousands of Californians volunteered to sign up.
New Age agendas seem to spread more effectively by networking than by overarching structure, however.
"Simply stated, " said New Age activist John Naisbitt in his popular Megatrends, "networks are people talking to each other, sharing ideas, information, and resources . . . The important part is not the network, the finished product, but the process of getting there — the communication that creates the linkages between people and clusters of people . . . They are structured to transmit information in a way that is quicker, more high touch, and more energy-efficient than any other process we know.24
Marilyn Ferguson says the network is the tool capable of producing transformation, "poised for reordering . . . plastic, flexible. In effect, each member is the center." The shared assumptions of these New Age networks," she adds, "are the conclusion." And, "Those of like mind can join forces as quickly as you can photocopy a letter, quick-print a flyer, dial a telephone, design a bumper sticker, drive across town, form
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a coalition, paint a poster, fly to a meeting . . . or simply live openly in accordance with your change of heart."25
During an interview early in 1988, I asked Ferguson whether the paradigm shift was on schedule.
"Things are happening in many ways more quickly than I ever expected," she answered, ever the optimist.
"For example?"
"The thaw in U.S.-Soviet relationships . . . . In a way, there is no turning back . . . . We are now moving towards the place where our interdependence is being sealed."26
J. Gordon Melton, veteran analyst of American religious movements, is skeptical about whether networking can catalyze the broad support for New Age shifts that Ferguson blithely projects.
"Networking builds marketing, not movements," he says tersely.27
Carl Raschke responded differently when I interviewed him at the University of Denver: Conglomerates market thousands of products to give the impression of diversity. Just because the New Age movement appears to be spontaneous, loose and diverse doesn't mean that it is. Madison Avenue has created that illusion for years. Why can't we package ideas?"28
Is the New Age movement a conspiracy, then?
"A conspiracy?" Raschke repeated the question, mulling it over as he finished his coffee, fast growing cold in the mile-high city's December air. "We're not talking about men in black robes in a huddle with secret computers . . . or in corporate boardrooms. But take the analogy of the drug cartel or an underground organization with a public front of anonymity yet coherent. There are no Mafia headquarters in Chicago, for example, but there is power and influence. It's decentralized but organized."29
Finally, Robert Burrows had this to say:
The New Age movement's collusion may not be tightly organized, sharply focused, or bent on apocalyptic totalitarianism . . . Its premises are not readily apparent and thus not easily critiqued. It is the New Age movement's unobtrusiveness, its ability to conceal and not offend, that has consolidated its grip and assured its spread. Without formal organization, it is difficult to net. Not bound by any tradition, it freely spins its mystical web in endless variations. Chameleon-like, it
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adapts to its environment and is not easily seen. Vibrantly positive, it is quickly embraced.30
Later we'll return to the conspiratorial aspects of New Age, as well as the overreactions of some Christians who are triggering alarm bells in steeples across the land. But right now let's look at how New Age thought is penetrating religious organizations and churches.
Chapter 22 || Table of Contents
1. Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy, Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s (Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1980), 212.
2. David Horner, "New Age Politics and the Influence of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin" (pt. 2), Apologia, Newsletter of Christian Research Associates, 7, no. 11 (November 1987): 5.
3. Robert Burrows, "Americans Get Religion in the New Age," Christianity Today, 16 May 1986, 19.
4. Beverly Rubik, "Healing the Rift between Science and Spirituality" (audiotape), (Oakland, Calif.: Internode Productions, n.d.).
5. Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy, 197.
6. Carl A. Raschke, interview with author, Denver, Colo., 2 December 1987.
7. Robert Muller, New Genesis: Shaping a Global Spirituality (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1982), 183, 191.
8. Fritjof Capra, Turning Point: Science, Society and the Rising Culture (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), 412.
9. Bob Hunter, "Environmentalism in the 1980s," Greenpeace Chronicles no. 18 (August 1979): 3.
10. Harold Gilliam, "Deep Ecology vs. Environmentalism," Utne Reader (October-November 1985): 66ff.; excerpted from This World (San Francisco Chronicle), 10 March 1985.
11. Petra K. Kelly, "Growing Up Green," New Age Journal (November–December 1987): 73.
12. Alice Bailey, Reappearance of the Christ (New York: Lucis Publishing Co., 1969), 111.
13. Earl D. Brewer, "A Religious Vision for the 21st Century," Futurist (July–August 1986): 15.
14. Mark Satin, New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1978), 22.
15. New Options, P.O. Box 19324, Washington, D.C. 20036.
16. New Options newsletter promotional letter (n.d.).
17. Karen Hoyt et al., New Age Rage (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1987), 94.
18. Muller, New Genesis, 184.
19. Sri Chinmoy, "The United Nations – An Instrument of Unification," Share International Magazine 4, no. 3 (March 1985): 15–16.
20. Advertisement appearing in Los Angeles Times, 25 April 1982.
21. Cited in John Dart, "Spiritual Growth Evangelism: Path to World Peace?" Los Angeles Times, 17 June 1987, pt. 5, 1.
22. Douglas R. Groothuis, Unmasking the New Age (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 122.
23. Beth Ann Krier, "Self-Esteem: Task Force Gets Down to Grass Roots," Los Angeles Times, 18 September 1987, pt. 5, 1.
24. John Naisbitt, Megatrends (New York: Warner Books, 1982), 192–93.
25. Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy, 213, 217, 35.
26. Marilyn Ferguson, interview with author, Los Angeles, Calif., 12 January 1988.
27. J. Gordon Melton, interview with author, Santa Barbara, Calif., 16 November 1987.
28. Carl A. Raschke, interview with author, Denver, Colo., 2 December 1987.
29. Ibid.
30. Robert Burrows, "The New Age Movement: Conspiracy or Chameleon?" Evangelical Newsletter, 11 May 1984, 4.
