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.
“Fanaticism is never true, but it takes the place of truth and becomes bigger than truth.”
– Manly P. Hall
Five Mistakes That Can Lead to Tragedy
The New Age teachings that are mostly based on Law of Attraction is a distortion of the ancient Philosophies and Theosophical wisdom. Often the New Age Teachings of this kind are aimed at acquiring temporal benefits. Money, comfort, possessions, fame, luxury etc. In other words whitewashing of Black Magic. The original Philosophies and Theosophical teachings have warned us against using our spiritual powers in this manner.
““Beneficent Magic”, so-called, is divine magic, devoid of selfishness, love of power, of ambition, or lucre, and bent only on doing good to the world in general, and one’s neighbour in particular. The smallest attempt to use one’s abnormal powers for the gratification of self, makes of these powers sorcery or black magic.”
– H.P Blavatsky
The Theosophical Glossary
Any Philosophy which has it’s primary aim as acquiring comfort, money, fame, riches is not a very Sublime Philosophy. Any human being who attempts to take a selfish advantage over his brothers and sisters using spiritual powers is not an honest and upright person. This fact is very simple. So undoubtedly New Age spirituality thrives under the shade of deceptive misuse of spirituality. A selfish or perverted use of spiritual principles aimed at serving self-seeking ends. Any true occultist would stay away from the temptations that New Age Spirituality provides. The spiritual path is tread with selflessness, sacrifice, self-abnegation and self denying service to others. It is not tread with feel good notions of self-love, building castles in the air through creative visualizations and giving gratitude to the universe in order to get some self-seeking return out of it. This matter is simple and is the very foundation of all genuine Spiritual Philosophies.
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.
“This world is filled with great idealistic notions of bringing peace, joy, the end of suffering to the world. Yet every day we have suffering, we have war and starvation in the world. So what about the idealism? It is glamour. It is unreal. . . There is a particular glamour of a particular ray, which for the moment will be nameless, which assumes that if you can name a thing, you have it in your pocket. Let’s name the most blessed state for humanity: peace, love, brotherhood, wholeness, unity. As soon as you can see it or name it, you have it. All the world needs is to see that it needs peace, love, freedom, unity, etc. This glamour imagines that if you have the vision of a thing you have the thing itself. That is the major New Age glamour, I believe. It is, of course, total self-deception, a purely astral idea.
The vision is seen on the astral plane, imagined as a vision of love and light and peace, and just having the ability to envision that is deeply satisfying. You don’t have to do anything more. That is glamour. Glamour is taking the unreal for the real; the vision for the reality. Of course you have to have the vision. If you don’t have the vision, you can’t create the reality. But you have to make the vision real on the physical plane. Otherwise it is glamour.”
~ Benjamin Creme
Students on the spiritual path must be absolutely cautious of the deception and glamour of New Age Spirituality. And, it is very tempting because New Age spirituality sells. The authors and instructors of New Age Spirituality have made millions and millions of dollars out of other people’s ignorance and suffering. They continue to do so today. Because in this world there is no shortage of desperate people who are ready to go at extreme lengths to solve their problems. Often these new age writers become very famous to the point their books become bestsellers. Then they start creating courses through which they make even more money, double or triple or fifteen fold the amount they made from the books. And people who are gullible enough show up.
The Aquarian Age is the coming age of synthesis in spirituality. Every age has it’s pitfalls. Just like the Age of Pisces had it’s pitfalls in authoritarianism and seperatism. Today the Aquarian age is faced with this glamorous deception of New Age spiritual teachings. Every student must guard themselves from such deception through the study and practice of deeper and genuine spiritual teachings like that of Bhagavad Gita, Theosophy, various Philosophies of Kant, Socrates, Plato and esotericism in general. Only those who know little can be deceived. But, if we train ourselves in philosophical living and rise above human selfishness, we will soon find, no one can deceive us anymore,
“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."
