The Glamour of New Age Spirituality
The most distorted form of spirituality today is New Age Spirituality. While the word “New Age” originally came from two great pioneers of modern Occultism, Madame Blavatsky and Alice Baliey, one can imagine how even the most sublime philosophies are not immune to distortion and misinterpretation. The greatest danger to a doctrine of teaching is the habit of cherry-picking from the teaching. Through the means of cherry-picking all forms of distortion takes place.
One might say New Age is good, it only speaks about love and Light. Perhaps that is actually the crux of the problem. We live in a world of duality. There is both good and bad, light and darkness, yang and yin. To say only one exists is perhaps the most spectacular form of imbalance one can observe in the human mind. Evil does not cease to exist by the very denial of it. Those who do so only allow evil to flourish without any resistance.
New Age spiritual teachings are often based on the mechanism of only focusing on the good parts. This leads to denial and many forms of imbalance. A good that assists evil to flourish and rule over is not good. A good that denies evil is not good. It is good at serving evil. Many New agers have taken the concept of Love and light to a fanatical extreme allowing all sorts of negligence to take place.
It is an act of great irresponsibility to speak about love and light when the house next door is on fire, when there is suffering in this world, when there is great chaos and destruction going on all around us. To imagine love and light only under such circumstances is not fruitful. A love that doesn’t act is no love at all. To speak only about love and light and not do anyting about the problems of humanity is a product of glamour and fanaticism.
Among the ranks of new age spiritualists, there are various kinds of people. Especially those who are fixated with a particular belief and a dogma. These beliefs they have blindly absorbed from the Law of attraction books have now become more important than reality in their life. Many of them are under the imaginative impression that they are people full of love and light and totally good and pure. But, in reality it is their BELIEF they they are full of love and nothing else. Through belief one can imagine many things but that doesn’t mean it’s real. The Greatest Glamour of New Age Spirituality is this idea that one “already” has love, one “already” is beautiful, one “already” is full of light. Through this premature presumption that, “One is already,.”, one remains under the veils of glamour and maya. One believes one has already crossed the other shore. Through this imagination one’s consciousness becomes stagnant. And there are many who are inside this coffin of “one is already perfect, beautiful, loving, radiant, divine” etc etc etc.
“In the West and in the East, spiritual imbalance is a common phenomenon. It appears in those who, without preparation and readiness, climb the mountains of the Teaching to a high altitude and feel fascinated by the beauty and magnitude of heights. And they force themselves to stay on the summit. When they come back to their daily routine, they lose their balance. They cannot find a point of equilibrium between the summit and their daily life, and their mind and emotions enter into a state of imbalance. When they come to the valley, they live in the summit and when they go to the summit, they live in the valley. In the valley of daily routine and labor they say, “Life is transient; nothing is real. Be indifferent about everything, forget about responsibilities and duties, and live a life that is not limited by laws and rules and regulations.”
When they are on the summit, they talk about their pain and suffering, their desires, possessions, families, friends. They feel the pain of their past loves, divorces, and marriages. They do not fit in the valley nor in the summit. Imbalanced people go to the streets and stages and shout, “Do not think that you exist. It is all vain, all shadows — all is emptiness.” They do not have any knowledge about anything that is real, so they live an unreal life between their dreams and daily facts. When people notice such behavior, they say that these people are philosophers. Sometimes they say, “They are nothing.” Other times the say, “They are important people.”
Reality is the balance between spirit and matter, between the abstract and concrete.
Imbalanced people say, “Do not listen to all the wise words you hear; just experience life. Let life flow through you.” But if you ask them about life, they do not have any concept about it. They talk and talk, always contradicting themselves. They want people to listen to them, but they give them only confusion. They say, “Go deeper into yourself and you will find nothing – no self. There is only emptiness there.” This is the state when they lose their balance. WHO is really going deep and experiencing if there is no one there? It is just at this point that they lose contact with their sanity. Such distorted minds say, “There is only nothingness in you.” But how can one know that there is nothingness in himself if he is a nothing?
They say, “There is no soul, no individuality. There is no me; there is no you.” When then did life create you and me and others? Why are you denying the existence of all things that exist that can be proven by our senses? Multiplicity is as real as unity. Multiplicity has its time and unity has its time. Both are real. Unity cannot deny multiplicity and multiplicity cannot deny unity.
Some of these people are very engaged in concepts of the Teaching such as voidness, emptiness. Because emptiness and voidness for them are physical phenomena, they do not see the fact that emptiness in reality refers to fullness, reality, objectivity. Such people advise us and say, “Do nothing.” It means to lie down in your spiritual and physical grave.
Striving is a process to remove all hindrances against your growth and expansion. It takes action, effort, struggle, and patience. Not a single atom is static. All is active. All is going to its destination. To have destination and to strive toward it bring sanity.
The real Teaching does not cause confusion, but step by step expands the consciousness and makes people sense the reality on their own plane. There is only reality. Unreality does not exist. The Teaching helps people to live in reality wherever they are. Having reality makes people real.”
-Torkom Saraydarian
Human Nature
"Listening to differences of opinion is usually productive. It is part of the process of "harmonising conflicting factors" in order to achieve a more balanced and effective decision. Tunnel vision, fanatical views and ignoring important factors are a recipe for disaster."
- Master Choa Kok Sui, Achieve The Impossible