Historical
Roots
To understand the contemporary New Age movement, we must trace out some of the divergent roots of its origin. By and large, New Age is a modern revival of ancient religious traditions, along with a potpourri of influences: Eastern mysticism, modern philosophy and psychology, science and science fiction, and the counterculture of the '50s and '60s. But underlying all these influences is the New Age understanding of the human mind.
The Zen Buddhist view of reality, for example, is that higher consciousness, or the true self, is none other than the Buddha-Mind. For the Zen practitioner, distinctions are meaningless. There is no "internal" or "external." Nothing exists outside the true self. Things that appear to be external are only stirrings within the Buddha-Mind.
In other words, the mind includes everything. Buddha-Mind is not a thing, but paradoxically, nothing has existence apart from it.1
This is an ancient concept, arising from the life and teachings of a monk named Siddartha Gautama who wandered India 2,500 years ago and came to be known as the Buddha, "the Enlightened One." Today, the way of the Buddha has more than 500 million followers worldwide; most are concentrated in Asia, but significant numbers also inhabit Europe and North America.2
Buddhism, like other major world religions, is not one
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monolithic system of belief and practice; neither, of course, is the New Age philosophy. But Buddhism's influence on New Age thinking is indisputable. So is that of Buddhism's parent religion, Hinduism, which predates Buddhism by at least a thousand years. Both traditions stress reincarnation and karma (we will consider these in detail in a separate chapter).
Hinduism and Buddhism teach that the inevitable birth-death-rebirth cycle can only be broken by accumulating enough good karma, which frees one from the illusions of the material world and makes liberation possible. In Buddhism that state is called nirvana, the cessation of suffering and the enjoyment of perpetual bliss. Belief in evolution of spirits through additional lifetimes is also a tenet of Native American religions; this, too, is incorporated into New Age thought.
Zen (a Japanese word meaning meditation) has also directly shaped New Age thought, and bears the marks of the traditional Chinese religion of Taoism. Fundamental to Taoism is the belief that "in and behind the phenomenal world lies the Tao, the eternal unchanging principle. The Tao is the original source of everything in the universe; it spontaneously produces everything through harmonious interplay of two forces, yin (the principle of passive receptivity) and yang (the principle of activity)."3
Gnostic influence on New Age thought is also unmistakable, as New Age leaders freely acknowledge. Gnosticism, which was branded a heresy by the early Christian church, maintains that humans are destined for reunion with the divine essence from which they sprang. Those "in the know" (the literal meaning of gnosis) "understand that man is divine, that his divine origin and destiny set him apart from the rest of creation and that there is no limit to his powers. Death itself is an illusion," explains noted historian Christopher Lasch.4
Carl A. Raschke has described traditional Gnosticism as a myth of secret illumination "built upon the motif of esoteric wisdom accessible only to the privileged or initiated few. This wisdom, or gnosis, entails an antagonistic struggle with the ruling powers of the material world, a journey into forbidden territory in order to snatch away the elixir of eternal life . . . . The method of salvation for Gnosticism . . . demands an immediate glimpse of the inner workings of the cosmos, a
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decisive clue that deciphers the riddles of heaven and earth."5
Gnosticism emanated from Pythagorean metaphysics, Neoplatonism, and various occult or mystery schools. Modern Gnostic historian Robert Anson Wilson traces "higher intelligence" back through the Rosicrucians, the Renaissance magic societies, "medieval witchcraft, the Knights Templar, European Sufis, etc., to Gnosticism and thence back to the Eleusianian mysteries and Egyptian cults."6
New Age also owes much to the "cosmopolitan paganism used by the ancient Hellenistic rulers and Roman Caesars to weld together a lush diversity of religions and cultures"7 as well as American movements from the last century, when Eastern mysticism first took root on New England shores.
The Transcendental movement (1836-60) was shaped by philosopher-authors like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who were deeply influenced by the wisdom of the East. Emerson's development of the "Over-Soul" expressed a pantheistic worldview, and Thoreau "relaxed with a copy of the Bhagavad Gita" at Walden Pond, observed Jerry Yamamoto.8 The Transcendentalists eclectically borrowed from the Eastern scriptures, molding them to fit American standards of autonomy and individual determination and set the stage for New Age luminaries to take the spotlight 130 years later. (We'll take a closer look at some the key actors of Transcendentalism and New Thought in chapter 22.)
Transcendentalism was the first major religious movement in this country with a substantial Asian component, points out J. Gordon Melton, director of Santa Barbara's Institute for the Study of American Religion. That migration continues, Melton said in an interview, with several hundred thousand Asians "dumping into the United States annually, including tremendous numbers of Hindus and Buddhists."9
Spiritualism was another strand of nineteenth-century American religious consciousness.
The way for Spiritualism had been paved by an Austrian physician named Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), whose disciples brought the "new mental healing movement" to America. Mesmer taught "mesmeric sleep" techniques based on "animal magnetism." Psychic healer Phineas Parkhurst
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Quimby, a New England clockmaker, took notice, and soon he — and one of his pupils, Mary Baker Patterson Eddy — were spreading the teaching that disease was caused by false beliefs and not physical disorders. Out of this came Christian Science, Divine Science, Science of Mind, Religious Science, and the Unity School of Christianity.
Hypnosis "taught people that there are many phenomena people could do in trance they could not do in normal consciousness," noted Martin Katchen, a student of mind-control and hypnosis. "This opened the door to the belief they could do many other things such as clairvoyance and prophecy."10
Rappings allegedly heard by two young sisters in a Hydesville, New York, house in 1848 caught the attention of an entranced population — and set off a movement. The Fox sisters said the knockings, which spelled out messages, were from the spirit of a murdered peddler whose body lay interred in the basement of their home. Whether or not the whole phenomenon was made up (one of the sisters later confessed to causing the noises by cracking her knee joints), a Spiritualist explosion began.
Recounts psychic researcher Colin Wilson: "People discovered that all they had to do was sit in a darkened room, preferably with a 'medium' present — someone who had already established a communication with the spirits — and the manifestation would usually follow immediately. No apparatus was required, except possibly a few musical instruments. In the Rochester [New York] area, more than 100 'mediums' appeared in the year 1850."11
Spiritualism was also the cradle for Theosophy, the creation of Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-91), an eccentric Russian mystic who lived a life of scandal and died amid accusations that she was a fraud. She and her close companion, Colonel Henry S. Olcott (1832-1907), returned to America in 1879 after an extended visit to India. Their imported brand of Hinduism became a part of the Theosophical Society, an occult organization they had formed in 1875.
Nina Easton, writing in the Los Angeles Times magazine, said Blavatsky might well be called "a godmother of the New Age movement" because, in the words of Blavatsky's biographer, Marion Meade, she "paved the way for contemporary
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Transcendental Meditation, Zen, Hare Krishnas; yoga and vegetarianism; karma and reincarnation; swamis, yogis and gurus."12
Blavatsky's successors — Annie Besant (1847-1933), Guy Ballard (1878-1939) of the "I AM" Activity, and Alice Bailey (1880-1949) — continued Theosophy's messianic vision of a coming new world religious teacher, inspired by channeled prophecies from a hierarchy of "ascended masters."
Bailey seems to have coined the phrase, "New Age," which recurs throughout her writings. But the wide popularity of the expression settled in only after "New Age" became associated with the "Age of Aquarius," the title song in the 1960s musical, Hair.13
"Aquarius," remarked New Age pacesetter Marilyn Ferguson, is "the waterbearer in the ancient zodiac, symbolizing flow and the quenching of an ancient thirst. [It] is an appropriate symbol . . . the time of 'the mind's true liberation.' "14
While some seekers went to the East to find wisdom, Eastern purveyors of mysticism were migrating to the West.
In 1893, the first Parliament on World Religions was held in connection with the World's Fair in Chicago. Spiritual masters, swamis, and gurus washed onto American shores en masse for the first time, making Eastern mysticism accessible — and acceptable — to thousands of Americans.
After wowing the crowds at the world religions expo, Indian Swami Vivekananda (1862-1902) remained in this country to form the Vedanta Society. Paramahansa Yogananda arrived in 1920 and later established the Self-Realization Fellowship. And "the silent, self-avowed avatar" Meher Baba came to the United States in the early 1930s to found the Islamic-oriented Friends of Meher Baba group.15
In later chapters we'll consider the roles of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, as well as Albert Einstein and quantum mechanics scientists, for they, too, helped roll out the red carpet for the present New Age movement. Native American religions, neopaganism, and the influence of the feminist "Goddess" movement are also worthy of special attention in subsequent chapters.
Contemporary roots of the New Age can be found in the counterculture movement of recent decades. The beatniks of
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the 1950s were fascinated with Zen; a decade later came the hippies "with their acid dreams and Eastern gurus, their flower power and utopian radicalism," wrote Brooks Alexander. "Next in line was the 'human potential movement' of the 1970s, spearheaded by 'humanistic' therapists of various mystical inclinations. Esalen was the touchy-feely Mecca for the upscale, post-hippie seeker. In the 1980s, all these strands and more came together, mingling in new, fanciful ways."16
Gordon Melton pinpoints 1971 as the galvanization date for the movement in America. It was the year that the national periodical, East-West Journal, was first published, as well as the first representative book, Be Here Now, written by Baba Ram Dass, the Jewish-born Richard Alpert. A former psychology professor, he and colleague Timothy Leary — both were fired from Harvard — extolled "psychedelic mysticism" produced by using LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs.
Alpert, finding his personal guru in India, reemerged as Ram Dass and "preached a new, hybrid message of spiritual ecstasy and 'nowness,' which he committed to print as a crazy pastiche of bold-face words strewn all over the pages in scissors-and-paste fashion," described Raschke.17
Meanwhile, Carlos Castaneda's books about his Mexico desert adventures with a bizarre Yaqui Indian sorcerer, Don Juan, "sold millions of copies and . . . attracted many who followed his path of initiation through the experience of hallucinogenic mushrooms."18
Other prime New Age influences of the 1970s and early 1980s include: Swami Muktananda with his peacock-feather wand and siddha Yoga; Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, onetime hero of the Beatles and father of Transcendental Meditation; and cherubic teenage guru Maharaj Ji, "Lord of the Universe" and overseer of the Divine Light Mission. Each skillfully filtered his own peculiar brand of Eastern mysticism through the American psyche and experience, Robert Ellwood, a scholar of Oriental religions at the University of Southern California, has pointed out.19 And then there were the American gurus: novelist Jack Kerouac, a master of California's "beat Zen" generation; poet Allen Ginsberg, a fellow traveler with Kerouac, and a character in Dharma Bums; and, perhaps most supremely, showman Alan Watts, the erstwhile Episcopal priest and chaplain at Northwestern University.
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Watts, who died in 1973, wrote twenty-four books on Eastern thought, including the influential Way of Zen.
The New Age movement has been "fed by many tributaries, but cannot be reduced to any single one," Robert J. Burrows wrote in The New Age Rage. "The strands of the ancient wisdom . . . are now all aswirl, one virtually indistinguishable from the next, and all drawing on one another."20
But Martin Katchen, an Orthodox Jew and keen analyst of historical currents, sees haunting parallels between the contemporary New Age movement and the social landscape as it existed in America 150 years ago.
"The New Age today," he said, gesturing toward a mountain of books he had brought along to an interview to support his premise, "is a logical continuation of trends existent in American liberalism since the 1830s. The same ideas seem to be in proximity: channelers, Eastern spirituality, political liberalism pointing towards socialism, liberal Christianity, and New Thought.
"The way it was is the way it is."
Chapter 6 || Table of Contents
1. Mark R. Mullins, "The Worldview of Zen," Update: A Quarterly Journal of New Religious Movements 7 (December 1983): 52–53.
2. Robert C. Lester, Buddhism (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987) 84.
3. Mullins, "The Worldview of Zen," 50.
4. Christopher Lasch, "Soul of a New Age," OMNI (October 1987), 84.
5. Carl A. Raschke, Interruption of Eternity: Modern Gnosticism in the Origins of the New Religious Consciousness (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1980, 24, 26.
6. Robert Anton Wilson, The Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati, cited by Lasch, "Soul of a New Age," 85.
7. "New Age Movement and Anti-Semitism," 1987, a white paper prepared by Four Corners Associates, Denver, Colo., 4.
8. Jerry Isamu Yamamoto, "Footprints in the Sand" (reprint), Spiritual Counterfeits Newsletter (October–November 1978).
9. J. Gordon Melton, interview with author, Santa Barbara, Calif., 16 November 1987.
10. Martin Ketchen, interview with author, Denver, Colo., 2 December 1987.
11. Colin Wilson, Afterlife: An Investigation of the Evidence for Life after Death (Garden City, N.Y.: Dolphin/Doubleday & Co., 1987), 88–89.
12. Nina Easton, "Shirley MacLaine's Mysticism for the Masses," Los Angeles Times Magazine, 6 September 1987, 10.
13. Brooks Alexander, interview with author, Berkeley, Calif., 23 November 1987).
14. Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy, Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s (Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1980), 19.
15. Karen Hoyt et al., New Age Rage (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1987), 26.
16. Brooks Alexander, "The New Age Movement Is Nothing New," Eternity Magazine (February 1988): 34.
17. Raschke, Interruption of Eternity, 229–30.
18. Douglas R. Groothuis, Unmasking the New Age (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 39.
19. Cited in Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy, 367.
20. Hoyt et al., New Age Rage, 31.
