We seek renewed reverence for the biosphere as the ultimate context for human existence....

Embracing the New Age
By Robb Miller
Vice President, Universal Pantheist Society

We as pantheists are aware that our religious views are not mainstream.  Yet when others describe our philosophy as "alternative" or "New Age", many of us a quick to say,  ãNow wait just one second, don't lump me in with those...ä Why is it that we so easily dismiss the New Age movement?  Perhaps it is a reaction to the claims of 'channeling' or 'light work' that fuels the distaste.

While doing research for New Age, one might see the following topics associated with the movement: 

Do this little exercise: In the table above, draw a line through each item that absolutely turns your philosophical stomach ö they no longer exist.  Now circle those you can embrace ö allow these to become the prime tenants of the New Age.  Leave those you can stomach, but donât necessarily adopt, alone.  This chart now illustrates how you fit into the New Age scheme.  Looking at this newly modified chart as the ãNew Ageä makes the movement a little harder to dismiss. 

So you object to pantheism being on the list.  ãA dirty trick,ä you say.  I have yet to walk with anyone who practices an alternative spirituality that says, ãI am New Age!ä  I attribute this to what I call the Shirley McClain Syndrome.  No one wishes to associate their innermost being with 1-900 psychics or magnetic healing bracelets. 

With views on everything, from "Ascension" to "Walk-Ins", it is easy to dismiss New Age spirituality.  But, should we?  Paul Heelas, New Age researcher and author of The New Age Movement states, "such notions are relatively uncommon in the contemporary New Age.  They direct efficacy away from human agency, and thus run counter to the basic New Age theme of self-responsibility." 

Chip Brown, "New Age" magazine contributor admits, "·It's not easy to embrace a movement overrun with marketers and bad prose."   He continues by stating, "focusing on what is venal or unintelligible in the New Age misses the point."    Do a little authentic research and you will find that, at the heart of the New Age movement is an alternative spirituality one might call Pantheism.

At the heart of the New Age movement is an alternative spirituality one might call Pantheism.

What exactly is at the heart of the New Age Movement?

David Elkins, author of Beyond Religion, explains those practicing New Age spirituality hold at the core of their belief system, a paradigm shift -- a new way of thinking about the universe.  This shift involves a move from fundamentalism to holistic thought.   A move away from dogma toward spiritual self-realization.  A move away from individuals competing to survive and succeed independently toward seeing oneself as part of an immense interconnected, interdependent whole.  A move away from dominion and objectification of nature toward communion with her. 

Irving Hexham unifies Pantheism and the New Age in the Concise Dictionary of Religions, "Pantheism: the doctrine that all things and beings are modes, attributes, or appearances of one single, unified, reality or being. Hence Nature and God are believed to be identical. Although the term is often incorrectly used to describe Hinduism, and various other yogic religions, it appears to accurately describe many new religious movements and the views of most New Age thinkers. "

Chip Brown states the New Age movement is, ã[based] on centuries of precedent. The veneration of Mother Earth has its precursor in the planting and harvest rituals of almost every tribal culture. Contemporary Western interest in Eastern philosophy and religion goes back at least two hundred years. Some new age doctrines - the belief that everything in the universe is connected, that God is a kind of omnipresent energy, that the self contains a fragment of divinity - were set down as scriptures in ancient China and India. They have been advanced as part of an intuitive mystical tradition that has remained so consistent and vital over the centuries that Aldous Huxley called it the Perennial Philosophy.ä

The Universal Pantheist Society implies like-mindedness with the core tenants of the New Age movement through our motto "We seek renewed reverence for the biosphere as the ultimate context for human existence."  We cannot claim this to be true and not accept our place in the shifting paradigm that is the New Age movement.

Work Cited:

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For more information about Pantheism, or questions about this website please contact Harold Wood at ups@pantheist.net

Pantheism \Pan"the*ism\, n. [Pan- + theism.]

Any doctrine, philosophy, or religious practice that holds universe [cosmos], taken or conceived of as the totality of forces and/or matter, is synonymous with the theological principle of God.

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