New era

The term New age or New age refers to a series of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs that grew rapidly in the Western world during the 1970s. Precise academic definitions of New Age differ in their emphasis, largely as a result of its highly eclectic structure. Although analytically it is often considered religious, those who participate in it often prefer a designation in terms such as Mind, Body, Spirit or "spiritual" and they rarely use the term New Age themselves. Many academics on the subject refer to it as the New Age Movement or New Age Movement, although others reject this term and suggest that it is better seen as a social community or zeitgeist..

As a form of Western esotericism, New Age drew heavily on a number of older esoteric traditions, particularly those that grew out of occultism that developed in the 18th and 19th centuries. Prominent occult influences include the works of Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer, as well as ideas from Spiritualism, New Thought, and Theosophy. A number of mid-20th century influences, such as the UFO religions of the 1950s, the counterculture of the The 1960s and the Human Potential Movement also exerted a strong influence on the early development of the New Age. The exact origins of the phenomenon remain controversial, but there is general agreement that it became a major movement in the 1970s, by which time it was largely UK-focused. It expanded and grew greatly in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly in the United States. By the early 21st century, the term New Age was increasingly rejected within this setting, and some scholars argue that the term New Age phenomenon ended at that time.

Despite its highly eclectic nature, a number of beliefs have been identified as commonly found within this movement. From a theological point of view, New Age beliefs tend to believe in a holistic form of divinity that permeates the entire universe, including human beings themselves. Therefore, there is a strong emphasis on the spiritual authority of the self. This is accompanied by a common belief in a wide variety of non-human semi-divine entities, such as angels and teachers, with whom human beings can communicate, especially through the form of channeling. A common belief within the New Age movement is that, although humanity lived in a time of great technological advancement and spiritual wisdom, it has entered a period of spiritual degeneration that will be remedied with the establishment of the next Age of Aquarius, of the that the medium gets its name. There is also a strong focus on healing, particularly using forms of alternative medicine, and an emphasis on the notion that spirituality and science can be unified.

Primarily focused on Western countries, believers involved in the New Age movement have been predominantly among the middle and upper-middle class. The degree of involvement of members of the New Agers varies considerably, from those who adopt a series of ideas and practices to those who fully embrace it and dedicate their lives to it. This move has drawn criticism from established Christian organizations, as well as neopaganism and indigenous communities. Beginning in the 1990s, the New Age movement became the subject of research by religious studies scholars.

Conception

Several scholars of this phenomenon have rejected the use of traditional terminological labels to define a current such as the New Age. According to Vicente Merlo, the term "movement" would be the most appropriate, since it lacks the connotations of an institutional, dogmatic or cultural nature that are commonly associated with other terms such as "church", "sect" or "cult". Although it is difficult to delimit the concept of "religion", it would be preferable to describe New Age as one among various "new spiritual movements" that have emerged in recent times. For his part, Paul Heelas argues that the word "movement" is not adequate since it implies an organization and administration that New Age lacks.

The revitalization today of the interest in witchcraft, magic and occult in general, is all part of the arrival of the Aquarius Age.

Doreen Valiente

The New Age promotes a return of the occult, sorcery and superstitions, giving new names to ancestral practices.

New Age propagandists try to persuade people to engage in practices such as divination, astrology, telepathy, and spirit communication.

Beliefs

Buddha

Their belief system is not unified but rather an aggregate of beliefs —syncretism— and sometimes mutually contradictory practices. The ideas reformulated by its supporters are usually related to spiritual exploration, mysticism and health maintenance, hygienicism of the early twentieth century XX, shamanism and animism, and modern mystical currents such as anthroposophy.

Some of these beliefs are reinterpretations of myths and religions, not being consistent with either. Thus, there are individuals who use a do-it-yourself approach, other groups with established belief systems that collect religions, and still other fixed belief systems, such as clubs or fraternal organizations. For example, they can make the Christian dogma of the divinity of Jesus Christ compatible with karma as a mechanism of justice, and at the same time deny the existence of hell. It is common for the sets of beliefs thus adopted to reject the most negative aspects of the mythologies or religions on which they are based, adopting the most pleasant ones. Due to the variety of à la carte beliefs, any coherent category may seem restrictive or incomplete.

Some believers of sects attributed to the New Age, such as neopagans, reject the label as diffuse, and criticize that it can link them with other creeds and practices.

Other common practices related to the New Age movement are reiki, yoga, Kabbalah, veganism, transcendental meditation, acupuncture, superstition, sessions with supposed angels (angeology), astrology, cards or tarot, spiritualism, divination, environmentalism based on pantheism (mother earth Gaia), ayurveda, cabal, esotericism, hermeticism and occultism.

In practice, many people immerse themselves or are immersed in the new age movement without even realizing it, due to its nature: syncretism, informality and decentralization; and due to the lack of solid information and training in science, history and religion. Other notable factors may be personal and social crisis.

History

Russian occultist Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891).

Background

Some New Agers claim that their beliefs derive from Judeo-Christian or Middle Eastern religious and philosophical traditions, such as the occult, Hermeticism, and other Eastern traditions, present in religions such as Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism. For example, the Theosophical Society (from the mid-nineteenth century), or the works of Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) and Alice Bailey (1880-1949), set forth principles that can be considered as precedents for some of the current ideas of the New Was:

• Gnostic approaches—actually, neognostic—to spiritual subjects.
• Spiritual readings and mediumships.
• Modern clarity and remoteness.
• Mesmerism.
• Belief in healing powers of certain metals and crystals.
• Use of prayer and meditation as paths to enlightenment.
• Yoga

Over time, the degree of acceptance in society of these beliefs and practices has changed.

In the United States of America there is the first record of this socio-cultural phenomenon, since the Theosophical Society, which can be considered as the initiator of this movement, arises in that country, founded mostly by Masonic members.

The expression New Age is attributed to an English occultist named Alice Anne Bailey (1880-1949), who used it in some of his works as Discipleship in the New Age or Education in the New Age and that in 1932 he founded an association called Goodwill in order to prepare humanity for radical change

Geographically speaking, there are two centers that stand out from the beginning of the New Age movement, the “Woman Findhorn Community”, located in Big South in the northeast of Scotland and the “Development Center for the Human Potential of Esalen”, in California, USA.

Beginning

The historians of the James Lewis religion and J. Gordon Melton (1992) define the New Age as a decentralized religious subculture that originates in the counterculture of the 1960s and whose inspiration comes from different sources of the Judeo-Christian tradition

The new movement began in the 1960s in the United States and Europe for political motivations, and today it is very in force in hundreds of nations, including Mexico.

Evolution

People practicing yoga

...in the United States, in the 1970s, who concentrated the attention was the Eastern spiritual teachers, in the 1980s the interest focused on the channeling of spiritual entities, and in the nineties are the chamanism and spirituality of the American indigenous who seem to be in fashion.

Figures that stood out as spiritual teachers, most of whom migrated from the East to the West are Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (for a time guru of the Beatles and also related to Deepak Chopra), Sathya Sai Baba, Osho, Paramahansa Yogananda, Sri Sri Ravishankar, Swami Chidvilasananda, Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada etc. Some of them have had legal problems, including sexual abuse. After a period of fascination with gurus, mainly in the United States among people from the artistic and political milieu, the practice of yoga has expanded in the West and there are voices that point to some possible health benefits that this practice generates, however, Yoga practiced in the West does not always have a nuance of spirituality, and there are those who highlight the Western influences that this practice has suffered throughout its history since its introduction to Western culture. Today, locals are more visible where this practice is carried out, even being promoted or practiced within schools, television and gyms. Centers for reiki, alternative medicine, acupuncture, divination, transcendental meditation, homeopathy, etc. have also expanded. The phenomenon in general of the new era has already filtered into several Latin American countries and also into Spain.

Terapeuta reiki

The advance of the new age phenomenon has as one of its factors the crisis of postmodernity and postmaterialism, in addition to the personal crisis; as well as the lack of information and solid training in science, history and religion by the population.

Because the phenomenon has spread in spheres of the traditional Churches, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Mexico alerted its faithful about some of the supposed risks that the new age phenomenon implies.

The phenomenon has also seeped into literature, with Sirio publishing house and Hay House Inc. being some of the publishers that publish related, mixed, or proper New Age literature. The founder of Hay House Inc. Louise Hay, has been considered by the New York Times Magazine as the queen of the new age, in her article The Queen of the New Age. Hay House Publishing is one of the leading publishers for New Age authors; thus propagating the phenomenon and pseudoscience in general.

Companies such as IBM, AT&T and General Motors even adopted new age seminars to try to increase the productivity and efficiency of their employees, which in several cases resulted in employees suing their employers alleging that these seminars harmed psychological health or violated their religious beliefs. This practice has infiltrated some network marketing organizations.

Criticism, Harm and risks

The currents of the new age are criticized for distorting the ancient beliefs and/or traditions coming mainly from the East, among them we can name for example Tantra, which in the West is popularly considered as a form of sexual esotericism, or Kundalini yoga, which has come to be only considered as an esoteric practice; without, for example, the concepts of Indian philosophy and other facets present in them.

Likewise, several oriental gurus who have risen with the new age movement have had incidents for sexual issues or faced charges for sexual crimes, prosecutors, homicide, drugs or prostitution.

"Yes, there was a great shock about when he (Maharishi) tried to rape Mia Farrow or tried to date Mia Farrow and several other women, things like that." He wrote John Lennon of the Beatles. ("Yeah, there was a big hullabaloo about him trying to rape Mia Farrow or trying to get off with Mia Farrow and a few other women, things like that").

.

"A growing number of followers claim that he (Sathya Sai Baba) sexually abused them or their families." ("increasing numbers of former followers are alleging he has sexually abused them or their families").

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Sanniasins financed stays at the Osho ashram through prostitution and drug trafficking.

In Mexico, most places where yoga is taught are not certified by the Instituto Mexicano de Yoga. All these irregularities in the operation of the places where various practices related to the new era are carried out, added to the characteristics of decentralization, syncretism and informality of the phenomenon, put people at risk of suffering scam, fraud, or some other type of problem or unfavorable situation.

Thought

Deepak Chopra, author of books with quantum mysticism issues

New Agers tend to redefine vocabulary borrowed from various belief systems. By adopting terms taken from various branches of science, such as quantum physics and psychology, adapting or redefining them to try to support their hypotheses about supernatural healing, New Age has come to be considered a pseudoscience.

Like the occult movements of past centuries, many groups that identify with New Age postulates tend to use particular jargon, which is cryptic to those unfamiliar with the doctrine. The New Age meaning of a term is often quite different from common usage, and it is often described as "intentionally inaccessible." Language can be used to hear that information should not be given excessively to someone who presumably would not understand it. As has already been commented before, this behavior is not intrinsic to the basic doctrine of the New Age.

Others believe that although in the past there may have been a need for intentionally inaccessible vocabulary and secrecy due to persecution, inquisition, etc. currently, due to freedom of expression, knowledge is accessible to everyone, followers or not, of each movement, ideology or current. For example, yoga techniques that were secret or confidential for millennia are now described in numerous books written by yogis and non-yogis, and naturally on the Internet.

Among the variety of creeds and practices, certain modes of thought are recurrent:

• The primacy of subjective experience. According to their roots of countercultural phenomena and their synchrotic nature, the followers of the New Age intend to seek a relativistic approach to the truth, frequently referring to the Vedic declaration of "a truth, but many paths" which is also found in the spiritual affirmation of Zen Buddhism of "many paths, a mountain". This belief is not only an assertion of personal choice in religious matters, but also an assertion that the truth itself is defined by the individual and his experience of it.

This relativism is not merely a spiritual relativism, but also extends to physical theories. Reality is considered in an experimental and subjective way. Many phenomena are not claimed to be repeatable in the scientific sense, as they are presumed to be apparent only to the receiving mind; for example, it is claimed that a skeptical mind cannot achieve telepathy, as it is conditioned to shut itself off from the phenomenon. This is another point of criticism of New Age: its inability to produce falsifiable results, despite making statements that intersect in the field of science and not only of spirituality.

• Rejecting "orthodox" science, considering it as a scientificism: There is a typical vision based on mysticism (more than in theory and experience) to describe and control the external world. For example, tarot reading is believed to work because of the principle of interconnectivity, rather than seeing the success (or failure) of such reading as evidence of the principle of interconnectivity. The various vitalist theories of health and disease supported by New Age supporters constitute many other examples.

Unlike the scientific method, the failure of some practices to achieve the expected response is not considered as a failure of the underlying theory, but is attributed to the interference of subtle factors, difficult to take into account and that are still unknown.

In this context of relativism, several common concepts can be found:

• Forces. It is commonly claimed that there are subtle forces or agents, able to interact and produce changes on the spiritual world (in emotions for example) and the physical world (making different phenomena happen). These forces would be agents of change of nature, but unknown to science; and it remains operating according to rules such as physical forces. The concept can be matched to the traditional magic.
  

  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

• Power. If forces are agents of change, power would be the accumulation of such forces or the ability to produce changes by paranormal means, it is usually considered concentrated in an object, place or person. Many believe this power is transferable through physical contact or mere proximity to power sources. Some believe that it can be accumulated or exhausted in a person or object through a variety of mechanisms, as well as the way of life and the proclivity to esoteric practices that “gastan” or “recover” power. It is argued that this power is observable by certain endowed individuals, in the form of "auras" or energy; and when it is in great concentration, there are those who believe it can be dangerous.

• Spirit: Belief in a subtle and transcendent entity in self-conscious beings is shared on all aspects of the New Age.

• An interconnected cosmos. The idea that the entities are united to a fundamental level, and that such union is sometimes manifested in the form of synchronisms or miracles, is also recurring.

Additionally, many New Age practices and beliefs resort to what can be described as magical thinking, as defined by James Frazer in his monumental work The golden bough (The golden branch). Common examples are the principle that objects, once in contact, maintain a practical link, or that objects having similar properties exert effects on one another; and the law of attraction.

Religion

New Agers believe that they do not contradict many traditional belief systems, but rather complete the ultimate truths contained within them, separating these truths from false tradition and dogma.

On the other hand, members of other religions often point out that the New Age movement misunderstands these religious concepts, and that its attempts at religious syncretism are vague and contradictory, a point on which skeptics and atheists agree., who suggest that all religion is the misinterpretation that man gives to natural causes, adding supernatural elements of his own superstition.

Spirituality

Many individuals are responsible for the recent popularity of New Age spirituality, especially in the United States. James Redfield, author of The Celestine Prophecy (The Nine Revelations) and other related New Age books present an open, spirit-based life system derived from his own macrocosmic doctrine referring to the state of evolution of the consciousness of humanity. Marianne Williamson wrote her A return to love when she finished working personally on A Course in Miracles . New Age spirituality coexists with and correlates with each individual's fundamental paradigm shift.

The Gnostic approach of experiential insight and truth-revealing may be close to the methodologies of prayer and spirituality used by New Agers. Due to the individualistic personal nature of revealed truth, some critical authors identify New Age as a neognostic movement akin to ancient gnosis with elements of modern eclecticism. In Experiential spirituality and contemporary gnosis, Diane Brandon writes:

And this emphasis on spirituality and consciousness reflects a recognition that we are, in essence, spiritual beings—and beings of pure energy, since consciousness is a form of energy—although we believe to be in the body.

Diane Brandon

We are spiritual beings who have a human experience.

Neale Donald Walsch

Our bodies are contained inside of our consciousness, and our consciousness is not contained within our body.

Deepak Chopra

Blood witch

Many have theorized that the current interest in spirituality can be seen in part as a reaction against rationalism and an excessive emphasis on the strictly material and empirical: there is a desire for spiritual transcendence, rather than feeling stuck in an immersion physically strict. For example, after a couple of centuries of emphasis on the empirically probable and concrete, there is a desire for the spiritual as an antidote or antithesis.

It is surprising, then, that New Agers want to experience their spirituality, so that they can feel it, rather than just think about it, and that they want to have some control over your practice or manifestation, rather than going strictly through an outside intermediary. This shift to a feeling of control over one's own spiritual expression also reflects the trend toward personal responsibility, as well as personal empowerment.

Books

• Gonzalo Len (2014). New Age. The challenge. Stella Maris. ISBN 978-84-16128-00-6.
• Raúl Berzosa Martínez (1998). New era and Christianity: between dialogue and rupture. BAC. ISBN 9788479143763.
• Marilyn Ferguson (1987). The conspiracy of Aquarius. Kairos. ISBN 8472451550.
• Paul Heelas (1996). The New Age Movement. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0631193324.
• Vicente Merlo (2007). The Call (from the) New Age. Kairos. ISBN 9788472456426.
• Miguel Ángel Sánchez Carrión (1999). The New Age: sacralization of the profane or desecration of the sacred?. Universidad Iberoamericana. ISBN 9789688593578.