A New Ager
Review
Copyright 2007 by Jeffrey Stueber, all rights reserved
Around the year 1996 I purchased a very interesting book Unholy Alliance [1] which discussed the pagan religion of Adolf Hitler and his witty band of followers who managed to seduce a whole country and almost conquer a world. I had for a long time been a "fan" - more like an astute observer - of the period of history surrounding World War II. This was mostly because of the turbulence surrounding these times and the great religious, political, and philosophical changes that took place. What a potpourri of literature I had in front of me: a book about Hitler and his religious beliefs which led to an incredible social change, not a quiet one like a feather that disturbs a dusty field. Ideas have consequences for Hitler's certainly did, and I was interested in exactly what Hitler believed. I sought to learn more not only because of my thirst for knowledge but because an atheist I debated had claimed Hitler was a fundamentalist Christian and this supposedly led him to commit many of his devious actions.
I read fast and furious like a coyote chasing roadrunner and found something interesting. Peter Levenda wrote of Hitler's use of runes, alphabetic symbols that could be carved in wood or other material. They supposedly gave credence to the theory that most of Europe was once under an old German empire. Supposedly runes also had mystical powers, and these two cultural properties were exploited in Hitler's day when the theory of the Aryan master race was in vogue. I found it interesting that runes are used in the Nintendo game The 7th Saga and I would only appreciate the connection between the mystical runes and those in the game after playing it for some time. Then it hit me. Does the rest of the world know what I know? I had read numerous books on the New Age movement, those mostly from a Christian perspective, but had not read in depth from New Age or occult sources. I had already attempted to do some serious writing on evolution, but had little success. That was years ago and now have committed myself to serious steadfast writing with some success and have trouble remembering a time when I did not consistently research and write on anything. I had an idea to get my knowledge out to the public and managed to call in sick the day I spent my whole day writing. That day was the birth of my trek in the study of the New Age.
What sparked my interest was occult influences in video games and when I first tried to get my New Age manuscript into top form, I stumbled by trying to manage too much at once. I was trying to combine information on the occult and the New Age with little success. The two are different and it would be an error to try to combine the two. After several years of tearing apart my manuscript I have decided to publish portions of it in the format you are about to read. This study of runes, however, did peak my interest in the New Age movement and led me to research it in depth in numerous other cultural areas.
Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell, a prominent New-Age author, now deceased, is useful to give us the New Age theological approach to Christianity. Tom Snyder [2] has seriously critiqued his theology and philosophy and found it wanting in many instances. Several of his complaints include the fact that Campbell violates the law of noncontradiction, his theology is overtly pantheistic and often illogically so, his idea of mystical experiences is erroneous, he is biased against the Bible, and he accepts tenets of evolution despite serious critiques of it by such writers as Phillip Johnson and Michael Denton who only echo flaws in the evolutionary paradigm which have been known for some time. [3] The problem with his bias against the Bible is not the mere fact he is biased, because we are all biased in some way. Rather, his bias undermines and distorts his approach toward his subject.
Campbell also seeks to portray God as transcendent and therefore beyond our knowledge and understanding. Campbell's idea of transcendence, however, is erroneous. My dictionary defines transcend as to "go outside of the limits of" and "surpass." [4] It says nothing that would tell us that to be transcendent is to be beyond all concepts and categories of thought. Snyder does a better job of refuting his view in saying:
Campbell's
definition of the word transcend is too narrow.
Transcendent does not always mean something that exists "beyond all
concepts" or "beyond all categories of thought." It can simply mean something that exceeds or
surpasses certain limits. For example,
the power of parents to discipline their own children in their own home
transcends that of their neighbors. We
can describe the God of the Bible as being transcendent because he exists
outside the material universe and because he has infinite or unlimited
qualities. [5]
Michael Toms interviewed Campbell over a ten-year period beginning in 1975 and in these interviews Campbell received a chance to express himself. [6] Obviously, despite Bill Moyers' claims Campbell "didn't have an ideology or a theology," [7] Campbell sure has one. To begin, he claims the Bible is untrue. "We know that there was no Garden of Eden; we know that there was no Universal Flood," he says and then suggests we ask what the spiritual meaning of the Garden of Eden was. "Interpreting Biblical texts literally reduces their value; it turns them into newspaper reports," he says. He claims the events that make Christianity what it is were symbolic and later "in the fourth and fifth centuries . . . all those stories which were obviously symbolic were eliminated and what were conceived to be historical documents were retained." And so he finds the virgin birth, Jesus' death, resurrection, ascension to heaven, and other Christian events must be symbolic because - to cite just one explanation of his - Christ could not have gotten out of the galaxy at the speed of light and therefore could not have ever arrived in heaven. This ignores the most likely suggestion that Christ did not go to another domain in our galaxy and our universe but to another dimension or place outside our known realm. On the trinity, he insists "the number three can be read in many ways" and suggests the number is symbolic. There doesn't seem to be much room for truth in the Bible as far as Campbell is concerned.
Then there's his pantheism. When asked about the effects of the influx of Eastern religions in Western culture, Campbell is worth quoting in full.
What the Eastern teachers are telling us is that the important thing is not what happened thousands of years ago when the Buddha was born or when Jesus was crucified: what's important is what's happening in you now. And what's important is not your membership in a religious community: it's what that membership is doing to your psyche. The divine lives within you. Our Western religions tend to put the divine outside of the earthly world and in God, in heaven. But the whole sense of the Oriental is that the kingdom of heaven is within you. Who's in heaven? God is. Where's God? God's within you. And what is God? God is a personification of that world-creative energy and mystery which is beyond thinking and beyond naming.
To go along with this thought, Campbell misinterprets key Biblical passages to believe the realization of the God within you is possible for us to achieve. He misinterprets Matthew chapter twenty-four that says the current generation will not pass away until all things were fulfilled and believes it is symbolic and not predictive – symbolic of the pantheistic union of New Age souls who have goodness in them. He misreads Jesus' Trinitarian statement that He and the Father were, and are, one. Campbell says the ultimate mystical experience is one's identity with the divine power [I'd agree with that] and goes on: "That divinity which you seek outside, and which you first become aware of because you recognize it outside, is actually your inmost being." Again there's Biblical passage hatcheting followed by pantheism.
Campbell tells a story of a guru who tells a young man (a neophyte mystic) that the young man is God. The young mystic walks through a village and is almost run over by an elephant which wraps the student up and tosses him to the side. The young man, puzzled, asks himself, "Should God get out of the way of God" and proceeds to ask his guru this question. The guru reassures the young man he is god and then answers his student's question by asking him why he did not listen to the voice of God shouting from the head of the elephant.
This is supposed to show how different parts of God interact in reality and is the type of reasoning employed in Eastern religions in teaching the law of karma. This logic may get you out of the way of a herd of elephants but is philosophically bankrupt. If God is a composite of all existing components of the universe then he [or "it"] is hardly unchangeable or conceivable as an understandable being - much like a chair or table which is understandable and which, most days, remains the same. God, under Campbell's analogy, is more like a cup of water with substances removed from or added to it at periodical intervals, or which changes into a cup of milk or something else. Under Campbell's theology, God is more like a substance whose existence is not an empirically justified premise. I could just as easily said God was jello or a giant mothball. How would anyone tell the difference whether all reality was God; jello, or some other substance. [8] Despite Campbell's claim that God is "beyond thinking and beyond naming," he seems to be able to say an awful lot about God. I suppose we could take the word of the guru that the boy and elephant are God, but that philosophy that justifies this view doesn’t make sense. Also, if there really is no difference between God and an elephant or a man, then why does Campbell use different words or descriptions for each? If I am jello, there would be no reason to use a separate word to describe me ("Jeff"). I might as well be called "jello" and nothing else. If I, the elephant, and Campbell are all God, then why use separate names for all of us. There would be no point to it. Someone might say we are part of God, but that view suffers from the previous objection I raised. There's a hint of this realization in the change which occurs in this story. Notice in the beginning the man and the elephant are presumed to both be God, and then the young man asks if God should get out of the way of God. That is a smart question because the boy presumes that God would be a homogenous entity capable of being understood like we understand any solid, liquid, or gaseous entity. The boy is asked why he didn't listen to the voice of God in the elephant and suddenly the view shifts. The boy is told he is God, but the voice of God is shouting in the elephant as if the elephant is God. If the boy was God then it would be his voice shouting, which it wasn't. If both the elephant and the boy are god, then the boy would have been trampled by himself, which he wasn't.
There is another philosophical mistake in Campbell's theology. By claiming everything is god, he actually eliminates the concept of god. Normally we define or know what something is by its characteristics which make it differ from what it is not. A chair is defined as a chair because, for instance, it has four legs and is meant to be sat on and other household items (stove, refrigerator, etc.) do not have these characteristics. We may know better what god is by knowing what god is not. Campbell eliminates this possibility and hence eliminates the possibility of knowing god as we know things. But that's not surprising since Campbell believes we can't know anything about god which, oddly enough, is contradicted by his constant theological ruminations about god.
Campbell complains that the neophyte mystic doesn't know how to live on two planes because there are two perspectives in this story. Maybe that's not the problem. Maybe it's not that the mystic is not knowledgeable enough. Perhaps Campbell's view of reality is illogical and contradictory and, dare I say, totally false and inconceivable as Snyder says. Campbell, I think, doesn't really want a union with a God as Christians and Moslems understand God - a conscious entity transcendent to the universe but capable of interacting with it. What Campbell wants is to be god and create his own reality, his own myths, and to have pantheistic power.
Jeane Dixon,
Celebrity Prophetess
Denis Brian is the writer of Jeane Dixon, The Witnesses [9], an anthology of Dixon prophecies and people who have witnessed them. Brian opens by asking the rhetorical question "Is Jeane Dixon a true prophet?" For those of you interested in what a prophet has to do to be a true prophet, let's look at the Biblical test.
But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death.
You may say to yourselves, "How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?" If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him. (Deuteronomy 18:20-22 NIV)
A true prophet's words must come true, or he or she is not a true prophet. We'll later see how well Dixon's prophecies stack up to the results that should happen, but for now let's look at Dixon's religious and mystical beliefs. Dixon, in her introduction to Brian's book, sounds like a Christian when she tells us people ask her what our purpose on earth is and she replies, “I believe man consists of a body, soul, and Holy Spirit. And through that spirit, God achieves his purpose.” In this aspect, Dixon sounds like a Christian, but, like all New Agers, you must filter her talk of god through the skeptical lens of an understanding of New Age beliefs. Later in this book Dixon displays her mystic and pantheistic beliefs.
God achieves his purpose - which is for us to evolve on the upper spiral of human and spiritual progress.
And to fulfill that purpose the spirit may be reincarnated in many bodies.
The soul, which is uniquely ours - and is not reincarnated - I believe to be the interpreter of the Holy Spirit.
Dixon halfway believes in the Bible and attempts to use it to back up her beliefs. Dixon argues for reincarnation by discussing how Elijah returned to earth in the form of John the Baptist. Supposedly "the Lord means us all to evolve in the same way," because John the Baptist was wiser now than he was in his previous form of Elijah. Reincarnation holds this possibility open: man may escape judgment by reincarnation but not really learn anything from life to life or like the idea of continually having to reincarnate. Reincarnation is a good news/bad news joke.
Well, the Bible does not teach reincarnation, and John the Baptist was not the reincarnated Elijah. Dixon, however, believes what she believes either because she does not know her Bible or because her misquoting serves her needs. Dixon perhaps fancies herself as a reincarnated prophet meant to help humans "evolve." Later Brian details a vision Dixon had while meditating in St. Matthew's Cathedral in 1974. Brian describes Dixon's visions as ones that "echo her own intuition." Dixon believes that "she lived before in a mountainous region where the air was cold and thin and her companions were monks" and in a previous life she may have been "a holy man in a Tibetan monastery." Being a modern day prophet is quite a noble virtue, and also an intoxicating one for the person who decides that he or she is that prophet. Dixon certainly wants to believe that, and there is not much that can change her mind.
While reading some of Dixon's comments in her introduction to Brian's book, I suspected that she was involved in the occult. My suspicions were confirmed later in the book in an interview session with Brian. Brian asked her if life after death will ever be proven. Dixon refers him to her book Reincarnation and Prayers to Live By where she told him the answer would be found regarding what happens immediately after death. Brian asks her if mystic Arthur Ford was gifted in bringing back the spirit of someone's dead son. Dixon's answer was quite revealing:
Yes, I do. I really believe that there are spirits all around us. And I believe that when you contact these - and of course the subconscious mind comes into play, too - but the danger lies where you may have evil spirits come through, directly or indirectly, and bring tragedy and heartaches into your life.
That Dixon knows enough about good and bad spirits is fine and well, but the damage has already been done. Dixon is messing with the occult because of her flirtation with spirits, even if they say they're good ones! Dixon likes quoting the Bible. Let me again quote a passage for her consideration:
When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord, and because of these detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you. You must be blameless before the Lord your God. (Deuteronomy 18:9-12 NIV)
I don't know how much of her Bible Dixon has read, but she hasn't obviously read this passage either. Perhaps, as with others who feel privileged to speak to the dead or highly evolved aliens, her fame is blocking her vision.
Dixon is certainly not lacking in predictions of future millennial events. In one of her previous books she details a vision she had when she was a child, a vision of the future Anti-Christ. "He's going to be much more powerful, much greater. He will perform miracles." This antichrist will cure the sick and much more. These are events predicted by the Bible and Dixon could have gleaned all of them by just reading the appropriate verses. By just adding a few of her eccentricities, she could make her prophecies just a little unique, enough for people to take notice. Her prophecies reveal nothing new and her track record shows that she is a bogus prophet using prophecies from the Bible to bolster her own fame.
Now we must explore how well Dixon's predictions stack up. I remember reading many in the various tabloids on the market and finding that many of her prophecies don't come true. In Brian's book I find a short list of prophecies given in 1974 to members of the Northern Palm Beach County Board of Realtors. Two of her prophecies obviously didn't come true. She said that:
1. In 1976, two doctors will get the American Medical Association to accept a cure for cancer - a cure that is in existence now.
2. By the end of the 1970s, not only sources of fuel and energy, but also transportation and communication companies will be under government control. The last to be nationalized will be the steel industry.
3. A serious civil war will start in 1978.
Dixon, in her 1960s book My Life and Prophecies, lists several, among which include:
1. A woman president in the 1980s.
2. The Vietnam war being nothing more than a "bonfire"
3. There will be a natural phenomenon in the 1980s that will interfere with Russia's plans for world conquest. [10]
Well, its 1996 (as of my original writing of this manuscript), and to my knowledge none of the items she listed came true. John Godwin also lists prophecies unfulfilled:
Contrary to her pronouncements, the United States did not go to war with Red China in 1958, Walter Reuther did not make a bid for the White House in 1964, nor did the Berlin Wall come down that year. Presidents Johnson and de Gaulle did not meet in 1966, and that year also failed to come up with the negotiated peace in Vietnam she had promised. [11]
Dixon, like any devoted false prophet, has explained away her unfulfilled prophecies while taking credit for those that do come true. At times, according to Godwin, she said she misinterpreted the signs. At times she made prophecies that are so general that a miracle would have to happen for them not to come true. Many of her prophecies were made to individuals that did not reveal them until they came true. Some were made to individuals who are now dead and cannot validate that she made those prophecies. Some are only made to close friends whose witness to back up her claims cannot be trusted. [12]
Dixon has erred. Perhaps she hasn't realized it or perhaps has ignored the fact that she has prophesied wrongly. If Dixon was as informed about her Bible as she would seem, maybe she would have seen the passage I quoted before about how to distinguish a false prophet from a true one, and would have immediately seen herself as a false prophet. If Dixon would have stood by her own belief in the Bible, she herself would have come to the conclusion that she should have been put to death for claiming to prophecy by God, while not actually doing so. This fact also obviously went unnoticed by her.
Do false prophecies matter to psychics? No, and not too much to their followers either. The fact that at least some of them come true is reason enough to trust them. The mere idea that they are speaking "prophetically" is reason enough for them to be taken seriously. Herbert Greenhouse remarks:
For thousands of years prophets of gloom have been predicting that the world was about to end with a bang, and they would often gather their flocks on mountaintops to await oblivion. Nor are they the least embarrassed if the fatal day passes and the world is still about its business. They merely get out their crystal balls and astrological charts and pick another date for the final curtain. [13]
Colin Wilson also echoes a similar sentiment.
[I]t is clear that we are now in the middle of the most widespread occult revival in history. One of its most significant and encouraging features is that it has captured the interest of a large number of scientists. All over the world universities and other institutions have established laboratories of parapsychology - the scientific investigation of extrasensory perception, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and other psychic phenomena.[14]
So we
have the opinions of at least two experts who are saying the new age of
prophesying is upon us and it matters not that the prophesying is
accurate. Interestingly, this ability is
linked to evolution, something that plays a large part in the New Age
movement. Dr. Harmon Bro characterizes
psychic Edgar Cayce's [a psychic who embraced reincarnation] ability as such:
Psychic
activity was not a phylogenetic remnant from an earlier state in animal
evolution. To be sure, man had once
found psychic ability more readily available to him than now. But man in that dim prehistory was not at
first an early anthropoid. He was,
according to his view, at first that part of creation called a
"soul," given freedom to roam the universe and create playfully with
the rest of the cosmos.
Some souls went their way, glorifying God by
fashioning, through psychic energies, realms of beauty and form which had only
to be intensely thought to be objectified.
Other souls came upon the earth, tumbling its way through the heavens in
its own plan of evolution through "kingdoms" of inanimate and animate
matter; these particular souls used their native psychic force to interrupt and
toy with earth's evolution, fashioning such beings as they wished out of animal
forms, and entering into those forms to enjoy the play of earth's
energies. [15]
Shirley MacLaine
Every religious movement has its founder. Islam had Muhammad, Christianity had Christ, and Mormonism had Joseph Smith (I could go on and on). Nearly every movement has its disciples who spread the gospel of its movement. In the New Age we don't necessarily have a founder although many will saddle numerous New Agers with this responsibility including the Devil himself or post-Christian Gnosticism. Shirley MacLaine certainly could be considered one of the disciples of the New Age and has, along the way, authored so many books - many which will be referred to in this section. And she's had quite an impact. The nationwide B. Dalton book chain reported that sales of books on the occult increased by 95% the week MacLaine's Out on a Limb series aired on ABC (January 1987). Her books have earned her more than $40 million annually. New Age writer Douglas Groothuis estimated that her tours on "Connecting With the Higher Self" earned her $3.8 million. [16] MacLaine is certainly one of the most successful Hollywood stars around and seems to have her life together (money wise), but I wonder just how together her spiritual life is. Her beliefs seem to be a hodgepodge of mysticism, Christianity, and evolution ‑ a combination which has led itself to absurdity. When a person claims or believes that you can so make up your own reality that you can control when you die, I wonder about that person's philosophical approach to life, much less his or her sanity. MacLaine is not the only celebrity to permeate society with New Age thinking and she certainly won't be the last.
As far as New Age theology, MacLaine has been one of the most important New Agers today and I compare the effect she has had on the New Age movement with the effect Darwin had on evolution and Pierre Tielhard Chardin had on the synthesis of religion with evolution (high praise indeed!). MacLaine speaks of the "knotty question" of whether God exists or doesn't exist and says it represents a difference between the Eastern and Western systems of consciousness. The Western search is without while the Eastern search is within. [17] It is MacLaine's job to bring this Eastern philosophy to the West and make it palatable to modern man for, as James Sire has said, Eastern mysticism is too foreign (even Transcendental Meditation requires a radical reorientation of Western values). [18]
Shirley's early life is as good a place to start as any other. She reveals that her parents had much the same religious views as her and recounts how her mother supposedly saw her father’s spirit leave his body when he died. Both her mother and father talked about "communing with nature" and she recalls how her mother "encouraged self‑ reflection and reverence for nature" and remarked that "there's a magical world of nature out there that you're missing. You'll know more about yourself if you allow nature to be your teacher." [19] Her father had a similar pantheistic view of life and this view, unsurprisingly, was wedded closely with Hindu/Buddhist reincarnation concepts. Her father had a near‑death experience earlier in life which affected him dramatically, obviously in a way as to affect his religious views. He had taken many philosophy courses in school and obviously merged his philosophical views and his religious ones into one giant pantheistic world view. MacLaine tells how her father discussed his views and how they related to his death‑bed encounter: “I think we should stay open‑minded about everything there is to learn . . . read your Plato, or Socrates, or your Freud and Jung for that matter. How do we know unless we explore. . . . Most of our great thinkers have professed to have had an intuition or guidance that they couldn't describe, something they ultimately called a force or God or a higher recognition of truth that required a quantum leap of inspired faith.” [20] She now, as an adult, realizes the full potential of their ideas. We ought to see what he views are and I will provide at length her remarks. [21]
Well, if we really never die, if we just leave the body like you [meaning her father] did, and then if we do continually come back or reincarnate into new bodies, then we must have done that many times. If we have done that many times, then we each must have tremendous knowledge and experience from lives we've led before. So maybe the ancients realized that education was just helping people get in touch with what they already knew. And maybe our higher selves already know everything. Isn't that what Plato and Socrates believed?
I'm wondering if all the old masters weren't actually more in touch with the "real" spiritualization of mankind, meaning that they understood that the soul energy of man is eternal and infinite. . . . if the soul is the repositor of all its accumulated knowledge and experience, then education is only the process of drawing out what it already knows.
MacLaine believes in all the New Age tenets that I have mentioned in this book before: reincarnation, karma, godhood of man, and prior predestination of man which is controlled by each individual. She even believes in the occult idea of higher evolved masters who, through eons of reincarnation and evolution, have achieved perfect wisdom.
MacLaine's views come from her cosmology, a cosmology stated succinctly in her book Going Within. [22] If the Big Bang is correct, she tells us, then "the seeds of all things" were present at the origin of creation. Every scrap of energy, every scrap of bone and tissue, could be traced back to the beginning. MacLaine invokes the phrase "We are one," because to her we are literally part of the universe and the universe is part of god. "The evolution of the universe . . . is continuing not only around us but within us. Our thoughts, our dreams, and our awareness are part of that universe, the physical and the spiritual inextricably bound together." Like Marilyn Ferguson, MacLaine would have us expect big things in the future. After all, didn't the whole universe evolve from nothing to what we see today? If we are part of that evolution, who knows what we could accomplish someday?
We can be happy that MacLaine has her science straight although her theology and philosophy are both somewhat strained. She admits, "That first light-time-spark that created the universe was the first cause [her emphasis] creating the effect of expansion." This might sound like Christianity except for the fact that she believes that god and the universe are the same entity. It is here that her philosophy takes an irrational path. A first cause must necessarily not be part of the effect because a cause must be able to create the effect. I cause a frisbee to fly through the air because I am not the frisbee. Christianity boasts a god that is outside of the universe and able to interact with it and its inhabitants. In fact, some Christians go to great lengths to explain this interaction, such as Hugh Ross who argues that we might understand God's interaction with this universe by imagining a computer screen in which someone may stick his hand into the screen to interact with the objects on the screen. The screen represents our reality and our dimensions while god may lie in a reality outside the screen, yet be able to interact with the screen and its beings. [23] Just for good measure, MacLaine cites Christian Thomas Aquinas: "If we could but find the first effect, we would come closer to finding the first cause ... which is God." Yet, MacLaine's pantheistic god is anything but the god of Christianity and Aquinas.
MacLaine puts down the view of the afterlife in "old religions” because they were, in her view, couched in superstition not realizing her religion is based on these (Hinduism and Buddhism) and her religion is as much a part of superstition as anything else she criticizes. So, her reasoning can be used to criticize her own beliefs, not support them. MacLaine does not seem to realize this and does not even seem to explore her own rationale, perhaps because like so many other New Agers she is blinded by her ability to deify herself. Who would want to discount a world view that can allow you to do that? MacLaine obviously doesn't.
This "make your own reality" belief is a clear companion to her acting. MacLaine, since she has worked so hard to create her success, takes this as an example of how you make your own reality. I agree that you can work hard to achieve success and get what you want in life, but I don't take it as far as she does. Here is how she ponders the relationship between the two:
I was still disturbed by my conflict between performing and spirituality. Why couldn't I meld together my spiritual metaphysics and my love for entertaining? . . . Metaphysics and spirituality worked magic. So did the theater. Why couldn't I see that they were compatible? Why was one a trick to me and the other real? . . . The identification with the godhead required a place in which people could congregate to collectively experience the regeneration of their connection to the gods. That place became the theater. . . . The purpose of the theater and its performances then became one of creating uplifting spiritual illusion, which helped me bond the human being with the divine. The audience and the performers could then share in the divinity of each other. . . . I could perform in one way and yet be perceived in the same evening three thousand different ways. And each perception was a metaphysical connection to a chosen illusion. [24]
MacLaine worries that she cannot connect her spirituality with her theater. She feels that one is creating reality, while the other illusion. The theater is about acting and making a false presentation of yourself, so how can reality and fakery be merged? MacLaine comes up with the answer: her acting is allowing people to see what they want. In effect, her acting allows people to see what they want and create their own reality. She finally merges her two loves in life. Has she? Her logic here seems unusual at best, for you can interact with the stage without creating a new and total reality. MacLaine wants so badly to have the ability to define reality, but reality keeps interrupting her theories. I see in her an example of those who covet godly powers to create, even create reality out of nothing.
This philosophy spills over into other areas of her life. She tells of a time when she was being sued by a man who was "unreasonably demanding money" from her (she does not say why this was). Instead of being angry, MacLaine says she used her "new perspective" technique and looked upon the man as a "teacher." She instructed her lawyers to pay the man what he had asked. Surprisingly, her lawyers were now told that the man only demanded a small amount of money. MacLaine chalks this occurrence up to a change in the pantheistic energy of the universe. The shift in her attitude "somehow neutralized the energy creating the conflict between us." Somehow, according to MacLaine, "the fundamental energy in the polarity between us shifted until tugging and war were not possible." [25] Wouldn't this be a great recipe for the rest of us to follow? We just might find a way to eliminate all those lawyers!
We can tell MacLaine is no philosophy major here as she never gives a thought to how falsifiable her view of "neutralizing energy" is. Can a mere decision to cry and give your opponent his cash affect this great cosmic god-energy we are a part of? What of those who submit to the threat of fascists (the murder of Jews by Hitler and the murder of countless victims of Communism come to mind)? Surely their capitulation should have affected some energy between everyone, certainly enough to change the dictators' wicked hearts. Or perhaps there is no cosmic energy to affect and the fascist is as free to do what he pleases just as this man was who sued MacLaine. Perhaps he reduced his claim because of any multitude of reasons outside of pantheistic causes, or perhaps her actions made the man guilty for asking too much. Yet, MacLaine never seems to consider these possibilities.
Could it be impossible for her to be a New
Ager and not mention ufos at all? No,
it's not, for I find references to them also. To MacLaine, ufos are products of
her ability to make your own reality. They are really nothing more than
fantastic psychically‑induced incarnations of higher evolved beings, just
what you would expect a New Ager to believe them to be. She reflects on a talk show where she was a
guest and on this particular show several callers mentioned ufos. She states,
"The ufo contacts were coming up in connection with spiritual searching
because the callers understood that the basis of the knowledge the
extraterrestrials were bringing was both a scientific and a spiritual knowledge
of the God‑force. In other words, the beings behind the craft had learned
to harness the unseen energies in the cosmos and use them in a beneficial
manner. That was how they defied linear time frames. That was how they could
achieve dematerialization and rematerialization. They understood the subatomic
molecular structure of every living thing. That was why they were so curious
about Earth and the human race. And the reason they didn't announce themselves
more publicly was not only because of potential panic . . . but more because mankind would tend to
revere them as gods and abdicate personal responsibility for their own human
growth. The basic lesson the
extraterrestrials were bringing was that each human being was a god, never
separated from the God‑force." [26]
On location in Peru while shooting for a movie, she observed: "My higher self (H.S.) told me it was necessary to shoot in Peru because of the energy there . . . I asked H.S. whether we'd see ufos. It said that was unimportant but would depend on the collective consciousness of the crew, that their individual growth was more significant than seeing ufos. But I asked again: What would it serve if ufos were recorded and the crew freaked out? H.S. replied that some were ready to see them, but many were not, and that the collective consciousness could progress only as fast as its slower members." [27] She has told us that the central message of the space aliens is that we are gods and we only need the right kind of consciousness to see them.
In books that write about the New Age, MacLaine is touted as the woman who is famous for the phrase "I AM." Here is her description of the origination of the "I AM":" The ancient Hindu Vedas claimed that the spoken words I am . . . set up a vibrational frequency in the body and mind which align the individual with his or her higher self and thus with the God‑source. The word God in any language carries the highest vibrational frequency of any word in that language. . . . You can use I am God or I am that I am as Christ often did." [28] I doubt that any linguistics expert has validated her claim that "I AM" carries the highest frequency in any language, but at least MacLaine gives Jesus credit for that remark. However, it does not mean what she thinks it means. A passage in the Old Testament sets up the use of this phrase.
Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, `The Lord God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, `What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?" God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: `I AM has sent me to you.'" God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, `The Lord, the God of your fathers ‑ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob ‑ has send me to you. This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.' " (Exodus 3: 13-15)
Christ was not using that phrase to align himself with his highest self. He used it to show that He was indeed God and not just man. Bruce Tucker reveals that the phrase “I AM” in Hebrew is the present-tense form of the verb “to be” and, in Greek, signifies a continuous action. This form is normally only applied to the divine in contrast to the form “came into being” applied to, for instance, Abraham or mountains. In the above quote from Exodus, God was using the phrase to describe himself as a being that has always existed and continues to exist. Jesus’ use of this phrase to describe himself shows that he believes He is God as well. [29] Her quotation of that phrase is nothing short of saying she is God, something which would seem like rank idolatry and falls right in line with her claim to make her own reality and to be god, a claim supported by the ufo aliens she hopes to see.
From reading some of her work, I feel that she seems to be slightly detaching from reality. At the very least, she is seriously distorting it. She is so obsessed by the idea that you can create your own reality that everything bows to that belief. When MacLaine's daughter's acting teacher was burned beyond recognition in a head‑on collision MacLaine wondered: "Why did she choose to die that way?" [30]
The rest of MacLaine's science also seems faulty. She cites an occurrence on the island of Koshima in the 1950's where researchers dumped sweet potatoes on a beach where researchers were studying various monkeys. One monkey began to wash the potatoes by dunking one in the water. (It had sand on it and obviously monkeys don't like sand on their potatoes.) A few other monkeys observed this and also began washing their potatoes. Soon, as MacLaine reports it, other monkeys on other islands far away began to wash their potatoes. This, to MacLaine, shows that information acquired can be a "flashpoint" by which other members of that species suddenly acquire that information. (Just for good measure, MacLaine drops a scientific term "M-field" thereafter in support of her growing thesis). [31]
Yet, this thesis has been disproved. These findings were reported in a book by Lyall Watson and were proven faulty when it was shown that Watson faked his findings. The new ability did not spread from colony to colony. [32] This is the sort of quantum-jump faulty science relied on by New Agers, much like the belief that because we have a right side and left side of our brain, we have two minds (one of which is the "higher self"). [33] Science in the hands of New Agers can be a deadly and much maligned weapon.
As far as the rest of her philosophy, James Sire levels the harshest complaint. MacLaine asks her higher self (H.S.) how the pantheistic "whole" ever got separated. It (supposedly) told her that in the act of creating individual souls, the souls became seduced by the physical and lost touch with the divine. Sire asks why New Agers would want to believe in a higher being or entity that gets confused so easy, or at least allows parts of it, individual souls, to get so confused. "MacLaine's spirituality," Sire says, "seems to be more a counsel of despair than an offer of hope." MacLaine seems to use her supposed past lives to interpret present events and a skeptic would reverse the situation and ask whether she is using current events to accent her interest in reincarnation (Sire provides notes to show that reincarnation is doubtful scientifically and philosophically). Sire exposes her theology for what it is: not a "dance in the light" but an excursion into dark deluded reasoning. [34]
New Age
Near-Death Experiences and Ghostly Contacts
If you made a list of what books are the most popular today, you would have to include books on near-death experiences. They are everywhere, and just about every title has something to do with "the light." Either people experiencing this phenomenon are moving closer to the light, getting embraced by the light, getting loved by the light, or anything else imaginable.
One of the most recent books on this subject is Betty J. Eadie's Embraced By The Light. [35] On this book's cover it is described as the New York Times #1 bestseller, a tribute to the popularity of this phenomenon. Eadie states that she died on the operating table and met Jesus in the void between death and life. While Eadie supposedly met Jesus, she wanted to know why there were so many churches. She got a reply.
I wanted to know why there were so many churches in the world. Why didn't God give us only one church, one pure religion? The answer came to me with the purest understanding. Each of us, I was told, is at a different level of spiritual development and understanding. Each person is therefore prepared for a different level of spiritual knowledge.
This is reflective of New Age beliefs since there is no reason for supposing that different people need different levels of spiritual development. The fact that people have converted from one faith to another shows how people are capable of understanding one faith as well as another, and the different religions do conflict with each other. If they were all god-inspired, then that god would be contradicting himself and any truth derived from that god would be meaningless. Eadie doesn't seem to understand this perhaps because she is blinded by New Age thought with a desire to have all religions be equally true.
Eadie gives a hint that she believes in something of preexistent souls that can occupy different bodies as in reincarnationist beliefs when she again mentions this idea of "spiritual progression."
Then we watched as the earth was created. We watched as our spirit brothers and sisters entered physical bodies for their turns upon the earth, each experiencing the pains and joys that would help them progress.
Eadie also pays homage to the idea of negative and positive energies in our universe that make things possible. She doesn't say that there are right and wrong moral codes; she instead says there are right and wrong energies, an idea that has much in common with the occult ideas of yin and yang. Eadie says, "Simply by thinking positive thoughts and speaking positive words we attract positive energy. . . . The very words themselves - the vibrations in the air - attract one type of energy or another. . . . There is a power in our thoughts." This is just another reflection of the pantheistic idea of a universal energy which we can control through methods described in this essay previously in my discussion of Shirley MacLaine. Eadie even says that "The source of energy is God and is always there, but we must tune him in." According to Eadie, we can take advantage of this energy and create our own reality. And we can do all this with our thoughts.
Eadie also stumbles when she considers the Biblical ideas of sin and grace. She doesn't believe that the fall into sin was a terrible thing for she says:
Eve did not "fall" to temptation as much as she made a conscious decision to bring about conditions necessary for her progression, and her initiative was used to finally get Adam to partake of the fruit. In their partaking of the fruit, then, they brought mankind to mortality, which gave us conditions necessary for having children - but also to die.
So the fall into sin was not that bad after all but instead made it possible for us to "progress." Eadie's idea of this power to create our own reality goes even farther for she, like MacLaine, believes that people can choose how they want to die. "To my surprise,” she says, “I saw that most of us had selected the illnesses we would suffer."
Eadie is not without her critics. Christian writer Doug Groothuis points out that Eadie's book has been sold in many Christian book stores despite the fact that her message is anything but Christian. Eadie has declared that scripture (meaning Biblical scripture) is authoritative, yet her Jesus is anything but Biblical. Jesus, to her, is a separate being from the Father. This squares with Mormon doctrine, not Biblical doctrine, and Eadie repeats Mormon ideals when she believes in the existence of people in spirit form before they're born yet denies Mormon beliefs when she says each spirit chooses the body it will inhabit. This leads me to believe we are dealing with somebody either misled by themselves or something else. At the very least, she is not consistent. There are myriads of other differences between Christianity and Eadie's visions that lead one to be seriously skeptical of her Christianity and I am led to believe there are strong chords of New Age themes embedded in her narratives. [36]
Betty Eadie wrote a sequel to her bestselling Embraced by the Light entitled The Awakening Heart: My Continuing Journey to Love (1996, Simon & Schuster). Eadie continues the same themes in Embraced in her author's note to Awakening. "Life does not end when we die," she says to begin and later speaks of her journey through the tunnel between earth and our heavenly home. She feels the indescribable joy being associated with being in the company of Jesus. There's more.
I learned that there are so many religions on earth because we are all at different levels of spiritual development, and that each religion teaches some truth.
I know of no Christian philosopher who would say other religions offer no truth at all although they may not grasp the total truth. Yet, Eadie mixes what she says here in with a bland talk of different levels of spiritual development innate in humans. Is that really the likely explanation for the difference between religions like Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and the New Age movement? More likely people in these religions prefer to believe as they do because of whatever evidence they have been shown, sparse as it may be, or because they refuse to believe others might be absolutely true. Most likely our spiritual progression has nothing to do with the reason people choose to believe different irreconcilable beliefs.
While researching her book, I turned quickly to chapters on how she sought the "presence of god" and her "spiritual progression." She rightly says her search for God's presence in her life was more important than ever before, as it should be. After several paragraphs of the importance of her search, she speaks of attending two different churches, hoping to find the right spiritual niche. Then this:
I knew from my experience that each church fulfills spiritual needs that perhaps others cannot fulfill. I now experienced the truth of that in my own life. No once church can fulfill everybody's needs at every level; there is no "perfect" religion for all of us. I had been shown that, because we are at various levels of spirituality, any step closer to God is good, so we should never criticize any church or faith where people are seeking God.
After this she says Christ's ministry was "all about loving one another." Nothing comes between god and us and our self-righteousness creates blocks between us and God's love, Eadie says. That's partly true because Christ came to emphasize the role of love, but he also came to redeem lost sinners and to establish his church on earth. There's no mention of this in Eadie's work because, to Eadie, love is all important regardless of theological errors, or truth for that matter. Isn't what each church teaches to be checked thoroughly for errors?
There's other reasons a person may be tempted to take in Eadie's gospel when reading her account of her spiritual gifts. "My heightened state of spiritual awareness made me more intense," she says. Taste, thought, and smell increased in intensity, and other sensory powers developed. At first she "knew" what people thought but did not express verbally. Now Eadie may be lying about this or may be reflecting on her actual contact with spiritual beings who may be imparting this knowledge to her. While I agree God may impart spiritual gifts, what Eadie speaks of touches occult pantheism. Further proof is when she speaks of mediums and channels using their spiritual gifts. She warns against taking their advice, but not from the Biblical standpoint I use when I quote quite extensively the warnings in Deuteronomy. Eadie says because these spiritualists can only "see" what has already been filtered through our conscious or subconscious minds, their readings can be based on deceptive input. True enough, but wouldn't it also be possible they might be linking up with deceptive spirits. Eadie doesn't warn us about them here when she should and instead takes the advice of what could well be deceiving spirits.
In the end, I with my research, along with that of Groothius' work I mention here, look upon Eadie with suspicion. Her message is undoubtedly been heralded as welcome and she has appeared with Oprah Winfrey who has approve of her theology. Whatever damage may come may not necessarily fall on her, but on others. That's why critiques like mine and those of Groothius are needed.
Conclusion
While no exhaustive survey of the New Age is complete, this one should cast serious doubt on the validity of the philosophical claims of Campbell, MacLaine, Eadie, and Dixon.
For more critiques of New Age thinking, all negatively, see my book reviews of two New Age works and my essay on how the New Age is influenced by evolutionary beliefs.
[1].
Peter Levenda, Unholy
[2]. Tom Snyder, Myth Conceptions: Joseph Campbell and the New Age, (Grand Rapids, Baker, 1995)
[3]. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, (Bethesda: Maryland, Adler & Adler, 1985); Phillip Johnson, Darwin on Trial, (Downer's Grove: IL, Intervarsity Press, 1993)
[4]. Webster's Dictionary, Thomas Nelson, Inc.
[5]. Snyder, p. 49
[6]. Michael Toms, An Open Life, (Burdett: NY, Larson Publications, 1988); cited pages include 58, 64, 67, 77, 79
[7]. Quoted in Snyder, p. 77
[8]. I owe this objection to Brad Scott, another excellent Christian author.
[9]. Denis Brian, Jeane Dixon, The Witnesses, (Garden City: NY, Doubleday & Co. Inc., 1976) Henceforth the next few quotations will be from Brian unless otherwise noted.
[10]. Jeane Dixon, My Life and Prophecies, 1966, William Morrow and Company: New York, NY, p. 156-160
[12]. Ibid, p. 31-32
[13]. Herbert B. Greenhouse, Premonitions: A Leap Into the Future, (Bernard Geis Associates, 1971), p. 43
[14]. Colin Wilson, Mysterious Powers, Part of The Supernatural collection, (London, Aldus Books ltd., 1975), p. 124
[15]. Harmon Hartzell Bro Ph. D., Edgar Cayce on Religion and Psychic Experience, 1970, (New York,
Association for Research and Enlightenment Inc., Constellation International
Edition, and Coronet Communications Inc., 1970), p. 31-34
[16]. Ralph Rath, The New Age: A Christian Critique, (South Bend: IN, Greelawn Press, 1990), p. 88
[17]. Shirley MacLaine, Going within: A Guide for Inner Transformation, (New York, Bantam, 1989), p. 95
[18]. James Sire, The Universe Next Door, (Downer’s Grove: IL, Intervarsity Press, 1988), p. 157
[19]. Shirley MacLaine, Dancing in the Light, (New York, Bantam, 1985), p. 40
[20]. Ibid, p. 39-41
[21]. Ibid, p. 41-45
[22]. MacLaine, Going Within; using selected portions from pages 308 ff.
[23]. Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Greatest Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God, (Colorado Springs: CO, NavPress, 1993)
[24].MacLaine, Dance While You Can, (New York, Bantam Books), p. 288‑290
[25].MacLaine, Going Within, p. 50
[26].MacLaine, It's All in the Playing, (New York, Bantam), p. 68‑ 69
[27].Ibid, p. 236‑237
[28].MacLaine, Dancing in the Light, p. 118‑119
[29] Bruce Tucker, Twisting the Truth, (Minneapolis: MN, Bethany, 1987), p. 162
[30]. Rath, p. 91
[31]. MacLaine, Going Within, p. 97
[32].See Russell Chandler, Understanding the New Age, (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1993), p. 96-97; See also part five, pages 172 and thereafter, of Ron Amundson's article on this phenomenon in Kendrick Frazier's The Hundredth Monkey and Other Paradigms of the Paranormal.
[33]. Elizabeth Hillstrom, Testing the Spirits, (Downer’s Grove: IL, Intervarsity Press, 1995), See chapter three
[34]. Sire, chapter eight
[35]. Betty J. Eadie, Embraced By the Light, (Placerville: CA, Gold Leaf Press, 1992); the following quotes will be from this book unless I indicate otherwise.
[36] Doug Groothuis, Deceived by the Light, (Eugene: OR, Harvest House, 1995), p. 25