Spirituality and the New Age
1. What is the New Age?
If I go to my Internet server and type in Go Spirit I am immediately taken to a web site called New Age Spirituality.
Its a pretty dull and turgid site mostly taken up with messages about forthcoming tarot card readings, astrology and psychic gatherings. There is nothing “new” in the library section since about 1998 and the group discussions seem confined to a handful of people seeking to deal with their searching for god and truth - the blind leading the blind.
Nothing much to get excited about.
New Age thinking has always been a smorgasbord (references to Danish Club experience) of ideas and concepts much of which has become so mainstream over the last 10 years or so that few people bat an eyelid about it.
The roots of New Age thinking can, of course be traced back right through the last century (most notably to Theosophy) but I guess they began to come to the fore in the sixties - after the musical Hair we had all heard of the dawning of the age of Aquarius and we were getting pretty accustomed to being told that the age of Pisces was giving way to the wonderful exploratory age of that of the waterbearer.
Intriguingly of course the astrological age of Pisces does date back to the start of the Christian era. Not surprising therefore that some would link the age of Pisces (the fish) with the symbol of Icthus, used since Roman times by the followers of the Way, and to declare that the Kingdom age was at an end, God was dead and a New age of truth and reality had dawned.
And so, the New Age movement gathered momentum, except of course that it never really was a movement. More a coming together of those with a common interest in finding a new way forward to save the future of the planet - rejecting the Christian era and seeking a time of peace, harmony, wholeness and restoration. And the chosen route is frequently derived from a blend of eastern religions and beliefs, notably monism (all is One) and pantheism (All is God), with occult concepts - an awareness of the supernatural and a rejection of materialism.
A people development consultant contact of mine recently gave me her very personal definition of New Age:
I am not sure what New age means - but to me it is something other - other than earning a living in the mainstream / being part of the establishment/ worrying about paying the mortgage - being involved in May day demonstrations, Newbury, Greenham Common at one end of the continuum to trying to reduce use of petrol, growing our own food, treading more lightly on the earth at the other.
She expressed her own New Age interests through involvement in environmental issues - in particular, Permaculture.
There can be no doubt that the proliferation of New Age thought has run hand in hand with a huge resurgence of interest in spirituality both in the United States and in Europe.
Nowadays I find few people in the business community who outwardly describe themselves or their thinking as New Age - far less do they see themselves as part of a movement. For our purposes today I prefer to use New Age simply as an umbrella term - a convenient description but rather bewildering as it is so difficult to pin it down specifically.
As Graham mentioned last night New Age is always changing, always on the move, always difficult to pin down because to a large extent it sums up the search, the quest, the reaching for......What?
As St Augustine said “we are restless until we find our rest in Thee”
If New Age is a constant state of searching what hope is there if the search rules out the Holy Spirit - the one and true answer?
2. New Age thinking by any other Name - how New Age concepts present themselves in the workplace.
For much of the last century the psychology of management and much of the bedrock of modern management principles was rooted in the philosophy of Jung and Freud.
Over the last 25 years or so - during my working life - it seems to me that the one over-riding concept which has had more effect on work place training and development than any other has been that of the Power of Positive Thinking and the emphasis on self-awareness and self-fulfilment. This concept of Personal Mastery resonates for me with James 4: 13-16 - the “alazonia” or swaggering self-confidence of the merchant who is confident he has complete self control.
There is only a short step from this to concepts of self-enlightenment , self-actualisation and so forth. In short, there was open door for all sorts of different thinking and methods to be put into practise in the workplace laboratory.
Whilst much of the worst excesses were confined to fairly bizarre training or “executive development” programmes there is no doubt that many employees were vulnerable to abuse simply because we are so often encouraged and often more than willing to “open up” when we go on a training course.
During the seventies and eighties there were lots of reports on both sides of the Atlantic of strange goings on, including mind-manipulation by practitioners of est (Erhard Seminar Training) or participants in the Human Potential Movement associated with the Peak Performance Institute.
Such excesses rightly received adverse publicity and were treated with much scepticism by the majority but at the same time many trainers and developers developed an interest in alternative therapies, mysticism, meditation, channelling etc. and began to introduce such concepts into regular programmes.
The belief that with positive thinking all things become possible has become almost standard in sales training technique and those who extol the concepts of the unlimited potential of the human to succeed are often given celebrity status on the after dinner speaker circuit.
But its not only in the training room. For example, the New Age smorgasbord has extended in the last few years to include the Chinese art of Feng Shui itself an intriguing mix of mythology , legend and superstition.
The extent to which this superstitious thinking has entered western living is breath-taking. Not only is it practised by Linda Snell in the Archers but nearly everyone I am across in the business community tells me that their offices have been Feng Shui’d.
The basic concept is wise and appealing - bringing our living and working spaces into alignment with the created order of things - but the underlying connections with I Ching, astrology and numerology must ring alarm bells. At its heart is the creation myth of the Yin Yang - not the order created by Almighty God, Creator of the Universe.
Lest there should be any doubt that the proponents of Feng Shui are New Agers a quick look at the writings of Richard Webster prolific author of Feng Shui for the Workplace includes, Astral travel for beginners, Spirit Guides and Guardian Angels, Aura Reading for Beginners, Omens, Oghams and Oracles among others.
Feng Shui seems to have achieved popularity in the workplace because of the sheer desperation of leaders and managers to find “a better way” of achieving success. That otherwise very serious and shrewd business people should be drawn to a blend of superstition and psycho-science gives us a pretty clear indication as to how desperate executives and directors are becoming. They literally appear willing to try anything.
The need to be able to be highly flexible and adaptive in order to be successful, get ahead and stay ahead has meant that a great deal of interest, time and money is expended in seeking to learn the art of managing change and this has spawned a thriving industry looking at Organisation change and more fundamentally Organisation transformation. I, myself, am involved in consulting in this area.
One thing that has intrigued me for some time is to what extent this way of thinking is tied up with New Age philosophy or whether it stands apart. Whilst many peddlers of New Age thinking are involved in management of change activity the basic concepts of change and transformation are inherently biblical - the whole created order is based on change - day and night - the seasons - birth death and resurrection - and transformation lies at the very heart of the gospel.
(The management consultant, Christian Schumacher, has perhaps come closer than anybody to putting together a whole theology of work and organisation transformation with his work structuring principles.)
So perhaps it isn’t so surprising that when we begin to talk about change and transformation the idea that we are touching on things spiritual as well as practical begins to creep in. Whilst the links to the concept of the created order are veiled or hidden from the non-believer perhaps we should not be surprised if they sense that they are close to something “other” and begin to search for answers through a range of “New Age” approaches.
And there are thinkers out there who seem to be putting forward some very kingdom like approaches. Notable amongst these is Peter Block. In Stewardship - Choosing Service over Self-Interest he takes Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership notions a great deal further when he says:
“The revolution (in the workplace) is about the belief that spiritual values and the desire for economic success can be simultaneously fulfilled” .
He claims that stewardship is not just about economic success, productivity or the market place -
“It is also an answer to the spirit calling out - Spirituality is the process of living out a set of deeply held personal values, of honouring forces or a presence greater than ourselves. It expresses our desire to find meaning in, and to treat as an offering, what we do”
He talks about the way we compartmentalise and fragment our lives - “this is my work life”, “this is my personal life”, “this is my spiritual life”.
This rings clear bells with me to what Graham was saying in his paper on post-modernism about “the flexible self” - a different person in every compartment of my life.
Mark Green of the London institute for Contemporary Christianity gives this condition another name SSD syndrome - the sacred / secular divide.
(For more information see article in Christianity+Renewal June 2001)
Peter Block suggests that this fragmentation is also reflected in our organisations and proposes a whole new approach to corporate governance involving reintegration, reformation and reconciliation.
So here we have both ends of the New Age spectrum - on the one hand every aspect of the bizarre, obscure and sometimes desperate New Age thinking hanging on to the coat tails of modern industrial psychology has become endemic in the training room, the sales room and almost in every corner of the workplace.
On the other hand the genuine quest for truth and meaning in the working world leads many to seek a more satisfactory and more spiritual - less mundane and materialistic - solution.
3. New Age - a form of spirituality or an expression of 21st Century thinking, morals, attitudes?
Much has been written about the growth of New Age thinking. There is no doubt in my mind that one of its greatest appeals stems from a deep yearning for a sense of meaning and purpose coupled with the sad failure of organised religion to “deliver”.
Bruce Nixon in his recent book Global Forces cites one of the key global forces as:
“Higher expectations of work, life and the search for meaning and balance; the hungry spirit.”
Pause to look at slide - especially last 5 trends
Larry Dossey in Healing Words (a book about the power of prayer which I picked up in my chiropractor’s library) quotes the poet Kathlene Raine “our society has lost the dimensions of meaning and values- one could say the sacred - not only in the arts but in life itself”.
He also quotes Andre Malraux “ The 21st century will be religious or it will not be at all”.
In her book Spiritual Intelligence Danar Zohar says:
“As a culture we are going mad. Why?.............. the reasons are mainly spiritual, that our personal and collective instability follows on from the peculiar form of alienation from the centre - alienation from meaning, value, purpose and vision; alienation from the roots and the reason for our humanity.”
None of these writers is Christian although all three have a Christian background and are happy to quote from scripture and refer to the teachings of Jesus and the church.
All three enjoy high levels of respect in their respective fields - Nixon as an Organisation Consultant, Dossey as an Alternative Medical Practitioner in Dallas (restoring the spiritual art of healing to the science of medicine and appearing on the Oprah show in the process) and Zohar on the faculty of Cranfield School of Management and Oxford Brookes University.
None of these writers would describe themselves as New Age. Indeed Dossey disparages the New Age concept of believing in an invariable relationship between physical health and spiritual attainment. A very different stance to that taken by Zohar.
He quotes Jesus “who did sin, neither this man or his parents” to make his case and in quite a hard-hitting way suggests that John 9vv 1-3 should be emblazoned on every New Age book dealing with consciousness and healing.
But he has rejected conventional Christian belief and appears to embrace a concept of the Divine within. He attacks much New Age naivety and prefers to go back to the philosophy of Jung. He believes in the power of prayer but rules out the place of a Supreme Being. We would probably say that his beliefs were New Age but clearly there are many aspects of New Age thinking which he questions and which we would also.
Zohar is a complex personality and her blend of quantum theory, conscious/ unconscious exploration, mysticism, Jungian psychology and chakra yogic practise leading to her theory of SQ (Spiritual Intelligence) is all essentially about her quest to achieve spiritual fulfilment - she sees spiritual illness as being cut off from the deep centre of self and SQ as the means of healing ourselves to be in touch with the centre of all being - again the Divine within. Interestingly she sees Servant Leadership, “as exemplified in the “myth” of Jesus Christ dying on the cross so that all may know eternal life” as “the highest of spiritual paths”.
So near but so far. But her analysis of the current state of the western world is highly astute:
“We are under stress today about questions of right and wrong, about how to keep ourselves on a straight path and how to guide our children. Formal religion and its ethics no longer hold sway, family structures are fluid and constantly changing, and our sense of community and tradition has broken down Someone has moved all the moral goalposts and we don’t know any longer what game we are playing, never mind what constitutes the rules.”
So, what can we conclude from this?
There are certainly a lot of people out there who are disillusioned with the concept of “Church” as they perceive it - or as we present it!
They do not see the same divide between faith and work as conventional rational thinking appears to do. They are much more inclined to think holistically and to see no problem in carrying their personal concepts and ideas into the workplace.
Whilst there is a clear rebellion against organised religion there is not a rejection of the concept of God or an interest in spiritual things - various surveys have given high percentages of people answering positively to the question “do you believe in god” or “have you had some form of spiritual experience”.
An underlying common thread which runs through the smorgasbord of currently held beliefs and spiritual concepts is that of moral relativism.
The rejection of the concept of absolute truths means that anyone trying to introduce concepts in the workplace based on absolutes is going to have a hard time. Across Europe young men and women who outwardly appear very reasonable and rational can become instantly quite aggressive when presented with the notion that there could be absolute truth as found in the gospels - even when the ideas are not presented directly but, say, through the writings of the Mormon management consultant Stephen Covey. I know - I have unwittingly tested it out in the workplace myself when presenting to young graduate employees in a large international publishing house!!
On the other hand a spirituality which has a pick and mix basis and can be tailored to suite each individual - “following my own path” - is not seen as at all unreasonable.
Rational thinking has given way to uncertainty principles which in turn lead in one direction to quantum theories and in another to moral relativism. Whilst some of these new ways of thinking can be very exciting, freeing and emancipating one does not have to look very far to find stories of people who, in desperation about their own lives, their health, their moral status, their work / life balance have followed the cycle of chasing one new age concept after another only to end up being utterly disillusioned - they find the quest is hopeless and the road leads nowhere in the end until perhaps they hit upon a truth or a certainty which they can hold onto.
4. So - are New Agers seekers after truth or are they false prophets?
The answer is some of each.
I have to say that most of the so-called New Age practitioners which I have come across in the Training and Development and organisation Development worlds are genuine seekers after truth. They are genuine, lovely people who want to add value to the world and help individuals and businesses succeed in frighteningly rapidly changing world. They are often prophets in their own time and wise beings who see the dangers of ignoring environmental issues, not treating people with dignity or following short term rather than long term options. They truly believe that given the right insight, wisdom and perception individuals, teams and organisations can achieve their true potential and they will use a wide range of methodologies to achieve this.
Their ideals are extremely high but there may well be dangers if their philosophy runs along the lines “if I can put my own house in order - and pursue certain measures aggressively to achieve this - then I can transform my life, my workplace and all will be well - the problems will disappear”. The downside of course can be the sense of personal blame and failure if that hoped for transformation is not achieved.
However there are some practitioners out there who are not only exploring the dark side they seem bent on encouraging others in that direction. For example its only one short step from New Age self-transformation, human potential thinking to what Jungian psychologist James Hillman calls the “rainmaker fantasy” - the shamanic idea that once the rainmaker puts himself in order the rain falls.
I have been present at an Annual conference of a highly respected management organisation where one of the leaders - Holding a senior post in a major high street retailer and also a self-confessed shaman - has been taking a group through a ritualistic process. It produced in me a distinct feeling of unease which was echoed by other Christians present at the same event.
So we can find at the same event both the genuine seekers after truth and the deceptive false prophets. And the dangers are - where might all this lead to next? Given that the shaman in the workplace appears harmless - cheerful and benign wouldn’t it be curious to explore further?
But how far? NLP workshops one day and mind-manipulation the next? Shaman rituals one day, voodoo-type hexing the next? Casual meddling with ouija one day and deeper delving into Polynesian death prayers the next?
It seems clear that many are not aware of the depth of the powers with which they are meddling. Uri Geller was reportedly physically shaken when, some 10 years ago, one of his experiments caused actual harm to a life-form. Stage hypnotists can easily get out of their depth (as a recent court case demonstrated). Those delving into meta-physics and new consciousness can quickly find themselves “operating at a deep level, whether they know it or not”.
Sadly, one of the pernicious side-effects of the current populism of moral relativism is that it is very easy to pick and mix from eastern religion, native Indian occultism, paganism and anything else and very quickly to get out of ones depth without realising it. There is often no one around to call “halt!”
There is no place for scare-mongering but there is a place for identifying those who peddle false hope, false ideas and false prophesies. In many ways the renewed interest in, and open-ness to spirituality is to be applauded, welcomed even. But we need to ask the questions “what spirit and what is its source”. We need to warn that there is a darker side and that there is a very real spiritual minefield out there.
5 Looking within - “a room swept clean............”
As referred to earlier, a significant feature of much New Age thinking is the concept of “looking within”. Some of this has to do with the softy, touchy, feely stuff of being in touch with your own inner self and could be seen as similar to Jesus extolling us to “love others as ourselves” i.e. we need to take time and care to nurture ourselves if we are to be in a position to love each other. Often though it is taken a stage further to encompass the concept of “the divine within” which, being interpreted, is God isn’t to be found anywhere else, out there or whatever, he/she is to be found within me - to be in touch with my inner self is to be in touch with God. To bible believing Christians there is a subtle deceit in this message especially because Jesus’ own words (the kingdom of God is within you) are often taken in vain to substantiate this kind of thinking.
A popular strand of New Age spirituality in the workplace is the place of meditation - often proposed in stress management sessions. Unlike Christian meditation where one would dwell on the person of Christ or a passage of scripture the form espoused is often that of mind-emptying. In Luke 11:24-26 Jesus warned specifically about this in connection with demonic forces. The mind may be apparently swept clean and put in order but the vacuum left behind will be quickly filled (by seven other spirits more wicked than itself) such that “the final condition of the man is worse than the first”. In his timely article (cautionary remarks on workplace spirituality) in Faith in Business last year (Vol. 4 No1) David Murray challenges us to ask the question seriously and carefully, “What Spirit?”. New Agers often aren’t that fussed - until they get out of their depth. The challenge to us is to be more discerning - and that involves not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
There is enormous pressure in the workplace today to be successful. More than ever before that pressure falls on people at all layers of organisation life - from the executives to the line managers to the shop floor. In the worlds of commerce, health and education. In both the private and public sectors. People are under pressure to perform, to succeed, to change and to transform themselves and their enterprises. From crystals to astral projection; from transcendental meditation to feng shui; from neuro-linguistic programming to new consciousness; from positive thinking to a search for inner peace it is not surprising that the busy and the hard-pressed will grasp at each and every potential saviour to be had. That people today are prepared to look at potential personal and spiritual solutions - not just financial and practical ones is hugely encouraging.
However if the truth is that we should seek to live in God’s world God’s way the sad reality is that many of these journeys will only lead people to find half truths and to miss the real gems. Moreover if the espoused philosophy is “you have only to put yourself right and then all this will be yours” that is strangely reminiscent of the deceptive thinking with which Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness.
So, the dangers are real.
6. Living in the real world - how do /should we react to New Agers?
There is no doubt in my mind that God reveals Himself in his world in many and various ways and such revelations are by no minds confined to fully paid-up and baptised believers.
We have only to look at the story of Cornelius in Acts10. Cornelius is described as devout, God-fearing, a cheerful giver and prayed to God regularly - but at that stage he was neither Jew nor Christian. Nonetheless his searching touched the heart of God who spoke to him directly - he was a working man, a responsible leader of 100 men and he immediately shared his spiritual revelation with some of his key team players and got them involved directly with his quest. He was undoubtedly a searcher after the truth and shortly afterwards through the direct working of the Holy Spirit and through the involvement of Peter he came to full faith in a most dramatic and exciting outpouring of the Spirit.
There are some serious searchers after truth out there who may be currently embracing certain New Age concepts on their spiritual journey. Often they demonstrate amazing perception and insight which God has been gracious enough to reveal to them - the challenge to us is to help direct them towards the kingdom.
These people are unlikely to be found in our churches - we may encounter them as we go about our daily business - in the shops at the gym , next to us in the art class but we are most likely to meet with them in the workplace.
We may rightly be hesitant about the latest “fad” which they are embracing but we need to look beyond the “fad”, value and acknowledge the wisdom they display, and look to the person themselves and seek to introduce them to the kingdom.
Sadly there are others out there who have another, darker agenda - they are not searchers but deceivers or the deceived. We need wisdom and discernment as we approach such people but should never forget that, in Christ, we have the victory. Jesus told us in Matthew 10 that he was sending us out as sheep amongst wolves - the advice he gave then is just as valid now: We are told to be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves.
Bibliography & Further Related Reading
John Drane What is the New Age Still saying to the Church (Marshall Pickering 1999)
Larry Dossey Healing Words (Harper Collins 1993)
Danah Zohar & Ian Marshall SQ - Spiritual Intelligence (Bloomsbury Publishing 2000)
Bruce Nixon Global Forces (Management Books 2000 - 2000)
Peter Block Stewardship - Choosing Service over Self-Interest (Berrett Koehler - 1993)
Richard Webster Feng Shui for the Workplace (Llewellyn Publications 1998)
Christian Schumacher God in Work (Lion 1998)
Christian Schumacher To Live & Work (Marc Europe 1987)
M Scott Peck The Road Less Travelled (Arrow 1990)
M Scott Peck A World Waiting to be Born (the search for civility) (Random House 1993)
Richard Abanes The Less Travelled Road and the Bible (Camp Hill PA: Horizon Books, 1995)
Cole, Graham, Higton & Lewis What is the New Age (Hodder & Stoughton 1990)
Charles Handy The Empty Raincoat; Beyond Certainty (Hutchinson 1994,1995)
Stephen Covey The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Simon & Schuster 1992)
Marvin Weisbord Productive Workplaces (1987)
Marvin Weisbord & Sandra Janoff Future Search (Berrett Koehler 1995)
Laurie Beth Jones Jesus CEO (Hyperion, NY 1995)
Gary Collins The Soul Search (Thomas Nelson 1998)