THE NEW AGE MOVEMENT
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
A Comprehensive Exposé of The New Age Movement
by Lee Penn
SECTION 4 of 6
Beware! The New Age Movement Is More Than Self-Indulgent Silliness
A Comprehensive Exposé of The New Age Movement
by Lee Penn
SECTION 4 of 6
Published by - New Oxford Review, July-August 2000, pp. 19-31
Please Note: Although The M+G+R Foundation agrees with Mr. Penn about the dangers that lurk in the New Age Movement, we do not necessarily agree with each point and/or statement, written or implied, in Mr. Penn's document.
CHANGES REQUIRED TO ENTER THE NEW AGE
[B] Political
The New Age avatars proclaim their commitment to democracy and tolerance. However, they propose totalitarian solutions to mankind's urgent, undeniable problems. The sacrifice of freedom and the acceptance of unlimited government power will be for our own good; necessity will be the excuse of tyrants. The New Age movement uses the theory of evolution - a theory of inevitable and desirable Progress - as a justification for whatever policies are needed to drive humanity and the planet to the next great leap upward.
Bailey and her followers at the Lucis Trust have repeatedly praised revolutions and dictatorships as part of the workings of "the Plan." In 1939 she said, "The men who inspired the initiating French revolution; the great conqueror, Napoleon; Bismarck, creator of a nation; Mussolini, the regenerator of his people; Hitler, who lifted a distressed people upon his shoulders; Lenin, the idealist, Stalin and Franco" were "all expressions of the Shamballa force" - a force which Bailey extolled. She viewed the dictatorships of her time as a positive part of human evolution, fostering a person's "power to regard himself as part of a whole." Bailey did criticize the Stalinist regime, but said that "The true communistic platform is sound; it is brotherhood in action and it does not - in its original platform - run counter to the spirit of Christ."
Foster Bailey carried on Alice Bailey's work after her death in 1949. In a 1972 book called Running God's Plan, he wrote that the Russian Revolution had been "an outstanding hierarchical success. It has been demonstrated that hopeless, illiterate peasants when stimulated and given a chance become industrial workers." Historians describe these same events as forced industrialization, forced collectivization, and man-made famine. Foster Bailey's "Hierarchy," a supernatural group of ascended masters and spirit guides whose mission is to direct human evolution, also approved of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: "The cultural revolution in China.... is an hierarchical project. Amazing changes have been achieved...." According to the Black Book of Communism, approximately 20 million deaths can be attributed to Soviet Communism, and 65 million to the Chinese version. Evidently, the Theosophists' spiritual Hierarchy condones mass bloodshed to achieve its goals.
The implosion of the Soviet Empire has not dampened the enthusiasm of today's New Age writers for world government and socialism. Robert Muller favors using the European Union as the basis for "World Union." Then, "since Russia reaches into the North of Asia, the old dream of Eurasia can be implemented. The plan of Robert Schuman who dreamt of integrating the African countries into Eurafrica can be implemented.... In the meantime, the US can organize the Americas from Alaska to the Tierra del Fuego and the two unions can be integrated into a World Union." This ought to be interesting news for the Latin Americans who cherish independence from the Yankees. Projects for the world government would include global prohibition of alcohol, a global ID card for all, global police and military forces under the control of "the Ministry of Peace" (the same term that Orwell used in 1984 for Big Brother's military force), a global secret service, "world penal legislation," a global property register similar to "what the young French revolutionaries did for France," a global income tax, and a global computer database to house "all data on our planet, on its environment, and on humanity."
If this sounds like world communism, Muller says that might not be altogether bad: "We should ask an honest man like Mikhail Gorbachev to tell us what was good in certain cases in communism and which would be useful for humanity." To achieve his goals, Muller favors abolition of "nationalism" and "the big, multinational companies," to be achieved either by a "people's revolution or a revolution of the scientists, thinkers, visionaries, prophets, globalists, futurologists and synthesizers of this planet."
Walsch's "God" says that highly evolved extra-terrestrials practice pure communism: "They share everything. With everyone.... All the natural resources of their world, of their environment, are divided equally, and distributed to everyone." Along with global communism, there must be world government, backed up by a World Court and a world "peacekeeping force." Each nation would have two representatives in the Congress of Nations, and "representation in direct proportion to a nation's population" in the People's Assembly. Under this plan, the U.S. would have as many votes in the Congress of Nations as the Sudan, where Christians are sold into slavery or executed. The U.S. would have about one-fourth as many votes in the People's Assembly as the People's Republic of China, which persecutes Christians and enforces a one-child policy on families. Would anyone care to guess how long our constitutional protections of freedom of religion and freedom of speech (which are already under seige) would survive?
Spangler likewise points toward a totalitarian future. He says: "From the depths of the race a call is rising for the emergence of a saviour, an avatar...who can be for the race what the ancient priest-kings were in the dawn of human history." The priest-kings of Sodom, Egypt, and Babylon will return to rule us. Spangler describes "true democracy" in terms reminiscent of Rousseau's General Will: "All spiritual societies are hierarchical.... It is not the will of the majority that is important. It is the will of the whole.... Democracy as we know it is a quantitative form of government. True democracy, however, is qualitative, and that is what we must return to." Spangler says "theocratic democracy" is "what we are moving towards for humankind." ("Theocratic democracy"? Quick, call the ACLU! Or does it only oppose Christian theocracy?)
Spangler says that today's "new gurus" are "accepting their divinity"; they are "forming the basis for the government of the future. This will be a government that is authoritarian...in the same way that the laws of thermodynamics or of gravity are authoritarian." The authority of the New Regime will be as omnipresent and inexorable as the authority of the laws of Nature; each subject will say, "I can only follow this rhythm, this pattern," for we will be "at one with the currents of life." One might reply that the only beings that always move "at one with the currents" are dead.
Teilhard de Chardin explicitly and repeatedly favored totalitarianism. In 1939 Teilhard wrote that the time for "egotistical autonomy" had passed; "the modern totalitarian regimes, whatever their initial defects, are neither heresies nor biological regressions: they are in line with the essential trend of 'cosmic' movement." On another occasion he said, "A progressive democrat is not fundamentally different from a really progressive totalitarian."
The teachings of Alice Bailey, Teilhard de Chardin, Robert Muller, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Neale Donald Walsch, and David Spangler provide the theory of totalitarian New Age government and economics; the programs of Gorbachev's State of the World Forum and the Earth Charter Campaign describe the proposed practice.
The mission of the State of the World Forum is to mobilize "creative minorities" who will set the agenda for the "new phase of human development." Gorbachev considers those who participate in the Forum to be members of a "global brain trust" for a new civilization. He believes world government is needed.
Bibliography for SECTION 4
NOTE: Internet document citations are based on research done between September 1997 and January
2000. Web citations were accurate as of the time that each Web page was accessed. However, some
documents may since have been moved to a different Web site, or they may have been removed
entirely from the Web.
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(132) Foster Bailey, Running God's Plan, Lucis Publishing Company, New York, 1972, p. 12
(133) Foster Bailey, Running God's Plan, Lucis Publishing Company, New York, 1972, pp.
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(134) Robert Muller, 2000 Ideas And Dreams For A Better World, Idea 126, 13 November 1994,
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http://www.lsw.org/ideas/RMideas.html
(135) Robert Muller, 2000 Ideas And Dreams For A Better World, Idea 126, 13 November 1994,
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(136) Robert Muller, 2000 Ideas And Dreams For A Better World, Idea 1410, 21 May 1998,
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(137) Robert Muller, 2000 Ideas And Dreams For A Better World, Idea 1001, 7 April 1997,
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(147) Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 3, Hampton
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