The New Age in Politics and Government
June 3, 2008
David Cloud, Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061
866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org
866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org
The following is excerpted from the new 510-page book The New Age Tower of Babel, available from Way of Life Literature.
The Age of Aquarius is supposed to be the age of peace and universal blessing, but it will not happen of its own accord. It will be created, we are told, through a transformation of the consciousness of mankind, and this will be brought about by the actions of “enlightened” individuals and their powerful New Age techniques.
The establishment of the New Age requires a great mixing and shaking. The following is from Shri Adi Shakti’s web site. Who better to explain the goals of the New Age than a Hindu guru?
“All our differences, all our dualities mix together like the fragrances of a flower shop, with all of the different flowers adding their bouquet to the overall mix until they are inseparable. ... Mystically, Aquarius signifies friendship. Friendship bursts upon us in its most elevated sense, in its most noble aspect--with understanding, collaboration, and fraternity. ... This is the era of peace, of unity, of love. ... This Golden Age is destined to synthesize all religious regimes and free the minds of ignorance and delusion forever. Once enlightened, each human being will begin his or her individual journey within, and strive to become the new race of super conscious humans awakening seekers of Truth and the eternal Spirit, healing peoples of many tongues and nations in the process. ... The Human Family is truly entering the Age of mystic revelations and the mind’s true liberation which is broadly known as spiritualism or New Millennium Religion” (http://www.adishakti.org/age_of_aquarius.htm).
New Age politics has the agenda of creating this unity through the mixing of dualities, the synthesis of all contrasting ideas and practices, religious and political.
Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson describe this work in the book Spiritual Politics (1994). They say that it is driven by “the Ageless Wisdom” that harkens back to the teachings that underlie ancient esoteric religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Druidism, Sufism, Kabbalism, Rosicrucianism, and Free Masonry (p. 15).
M. Scott Peck is one of the New Agers who has been at the forefront of building the new world. In his books The Different Drum (1987) and A World Awaiting to Be Born (1993), Peck preached the concept that a new age has arrived in man’s evolutionary process and a spiritually-evolved generation can create unity, solve the world’s problems, and bring in an age of peace. The Different Drum has the following dedication: “To the people of all nations in the hope that within a century there will no longer be a Veteran’s Day Parade...” This refers, of course, to the New Age dream of world peace.
Barbara Marx Hubbard is also at the forefront of trying to build the New Age world. She has been involved in The Committee for the Future, the World Future Society, the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, and other projects toward this end. Her books are funded by Laurance Rockefeller through the Fund for the Enhancement of the Human Spirit
Eckhart Tolle also wants to change the world. His book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005), which is being heavily promoted by Oprah Winfrey, describes this new world and provides techniques for building it.
Neale Donald Walsch is another influential New Ager who is trying to build the new world. In 2005 he founded the Group of 1000 toward this end. He calls this movement the New Spirituality and claims that it came to him by revelation following 9/11. The Group of 1000 web site says:
“We believe that God and we are One, that there is no separation in the Universe, that there is enough of all that we need on earth to live our lives in peace and harmony and happiness. ... We believe that the Universe was intended to be a friendly place, that human beings were intended to be loving creatures, and that life was intended to be a joyous experience, and that it is possible to create all these things in that image if we focus our energies together on a common goal.”
“We are committed to creating a New Tomorrow, a new future for the beings of this planet, a future in which our children and our children's children will feel safe, self-realized, and loved by life.”
The Group of 1000’s Action Plan aims to “shift the collective consciousness within ten to fifteen years.”
Deepak Chopra is also in the business of creating a new world. In his book Peace Is the Way: Bringing War and Violence to an End (2005), he calls for international disarmament and global spiritual enlightenment. Chopra is the president of the Alliance of a New Humanity, which is committed to world change.
Marianne Williamson is also out to transform the world. Her books Healing the Soul of America: Reclaiming Our Voices as Spiritual Citizens and Imagine What America Could Be in the 21st Century encourage the creation of a New Age America. She is President of the Board of The Peace Alliance and co-founder of the Global Renaissance Alliance. The latter encourages people to pursue their individual New Age enlightenment and power and to channel this New Age energy into politics.
These are just a few of the influential New Agers who are involved in politics and government toward the creation of the Age of Aquarius.
The New Age Tools for World Transformation
And how do they aim to achieve this goal? The tools for building the New Age world include discrediting the Bible, positive thinking, positive confession, visualization, guided imagery, mantra, meditation, interfaith dialogue, community building, political action, and education.
For our purposes here, we will focus on four of these.
THE FIRST MAJOR TOOL OF NEW AGE GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION IS TO DISCREDIT THE BIBLE AND ITS GOD AND SALVATION. All of the New Age gurus are involved in this process, and we have given examples throughout this book. See the Index for “Anti-Christian.”
Consider the following statements Neale Walsch’s The Group of 1000 web site:
“WE BELIEVE THAT DIVINITY DOES NOT JUDGE, AND NEITHER DOES IT CONDEMN OR PUNISH. WE BELIEVE THAT WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE POWER BY GOD TO CREATE OUR OWN REALITY, individually and collectively, and that we could do so if only we used that power. We believe that the world itself can change if humanity will but explore and examine NEW IDEAS ABOUT GOD, about life, and about each other”.
“We are committed to creating a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, FREEING HUMANITY AT LAST FROM THE OPPRESSION OF ITS BELIEF IN A VIOLENT, ANGRY, AND VINDICTIVE GOD, AND FROM ALL THE HUMAN BEHAVIORS THOSE BELIEFS PRODUCE.”
This attempt to discredit the God of the Bible is a foundational tool of the New Age toward establishing their new world.
Observe that the attack upon God is slanderous. He is described as violent, angry, and vindictive, whereas His great compassion and patience and love and mercy and kindness and gentleness are never mentioned. He is described as an unreasonable, monster. He is said to be a Judge but not a Saviour.
ANOTHER MAJOR TOOL OF NEW AGE GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION IS MYSTICISM. This involves a wide variety of practices that are used to bring the individual into connection with the New Age god, otherwise known as the higher Self, the real Self, the universal consciousness, the I AM, the ground of Being, the essential Beingness, the God force, the Universal Force, the Designing Intelligence, etc.
The mystical practices include hypnotic trances or mindless meditative states (created with mantras, breathing exercises, music, lights, color, and drumming), channeling, telepathy, journaling, guided imagery, visualization, and laying on of hands.
These are designed to bring the practitioner into connection with a “higher power” and through this to achieve spiritual enlightenment and transformational energy.
The Global Peace Meditation Days, which have been held on May 20, 2008, December 22, 2008, and May 8, 2008, and which will culminate in the Embrace the Planet Celebration scheduled for 2012, use these mystical practices. The hope is that “a critical mass of concerned and spiritually engaged global citizens” will heal the world “through the power of their collective consciousness.” These “global citizens” hold hands, meditate together, chant positive confession mantras (such as “May Peace Prevail on Earth”), energize themselves with drumming and dancing, and otherwise try to align themselves with the New Age powers.
The Global Peace Meditation days are co-sponsored by the Club of Budapest and the World Peace Prayer Society. The Creative Director is Ervin Laszlo of the Club of Budapest.
The Club of Budapest is an international association “dedicated to developing a new way of thinking and a new ethics that will help resolve the social, political, economic, and ecological challenges of the 21st century.” Its main tool is interfaith dialogue. It was co-founded in 1978 by Aurelio Peccei and Ervin Laszlo. It is named after the city of Budapest. As that city lies in the heart of Europe and sits on both banks of the Danube River and successfully merges the two cities Buda and Pest, so the Club of Budapest desires to “build bridges between generations, disciplines and cultures.” Since 2008 the Club of Budapest is operated by the Worldshift Network, established by Laszlo, Wolfgang Riehn and Johannes Heimrath.
Members of the Club of Budapest include Hindu and Buddhist swamis and a wide assortment of New Age practitioners. Honorary Members include Sri Bhagavan, the Dalai Lama, Peter Gabriel, Jane Goodall, Mikhail Gorbachev, Vaclav Havel, Bianca Jagger, Hans Kung, Yehudi Menuhin, and Desmond Tutu. Creative Members include Swami Kriyananda, Barbara Marx Hubbard, and Deepti Tewari (a member of Auroville, a New Age living laboratory that seeks to create a change of consciousness in mankind that will “give birth to a spiritualized human collectivity”).
Another key player in the Global Peace Meditation Day movement is the Oneness Movement, founded by Hindu “avatars” Sri Kalki Bhagavan and Sri Padmavathi Amma who are based in southern India. Their aim is to bring about a golden age for mankind through spiritual enlightenment. The Global Peace Meditation Day was also called World Oneness Day. One of the 12 world venues of the Meditation Day is the Oneness Temple in India. The Oneness Movement claims to channel Deeksha or the Oneness Blessing. Transferred through the laying on of hands by Oneness practitioners, Deeksha is said to create a new level of consciousness through unity with God. It produces “spontaneous feelings of joy, inner calmness and connection to the Oneness in everything.” Bhagavan says, “The mind of man is like a wall which divides man from God; the deeksha is an electrical energy that makes a hole in this wall. Once this happens, then God and man can come to relate to each other.” It is called a “channel for cosmic energies,” but in reality it is communication with demons.
The United Nations is a hotbed of New Age mysticism.
Consider the World Peace Prayer Society. It is affiliated with the United Nations’ Department of Public Information and it uses New Age techniques to “support peace, harmony, and goodwill among all citizens.” Its web site describes two of these tools (positive thinking and positive confession):
The Power of Thought: Thought forms create an energetic field strong enough to empower the course of planetary destiny. The Power of Words: Words carry vibrations strong enough to inspire, heal and transform the human heart as well as the Kingdom of plants, animals and all creation.
The World Peace Prayer Society operates a 154-acre World Peace Sanctuary in Wassaic, New York, two hours’ drive north of New York City. Here mystical practices are focused toward the building of the new world order.
Consider World Goodwill, which is part of Alice Bailey’s Lucis Trust. The Lucis Trust is on the roster of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and maintains the Meditation Room at the UN headquarters in New York City. World Goodwill is an approved Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) with the UN’s Department of Public Information. It is dedicated to solving the world’s problems through “a new perception of humanity as a unit of divine life within an ordered and purposive universe.”
In 1956-57 UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold completely remodeled the UN’s chapel. It had been opened in 1952 as a non-denominational prayer room and had been the brainchild of a Christian lay organization whose members included the department store millionaire J.C. Penney. Hammarskjold turned it into a New Age meditation chamber. The arm chairs, flags of the nations, draperies, and potted plants were removed, and a six-and-a-half ton block of iron ore was deposited in the center of the room, the polished top of which is lit by a single beam of light from the ceiling. The light depicts “divine wisdom,” and the block depicts an empty altar representing “God worshipped in many forms” (http://www.aquaac.org/un/sprtatun.html). The iron ore also represents the metal from which weapons are made and the New Age hope that through the power of meditation world peace can be achieved. Hammarskjold said, “... we thought we could bless by our thoughts the very material out of which arms are made.” This is the New Age concept of the power of thinking. He said the Meditation Room is a place “where people could really withdraw into themselves and feel the void.”
The UN Meditation Room has been the focus of New Age mysticism since its opening in 1957.
One of World Goodwill’s “transformational” tools is the “The Great Invocation,” which is part of its educational program. It is a New Age mantra. The World Goodwill web site says that men and women throughout the world are repeating the mantra and asks, “Will you join them in using the Invocation every day--with thought and dedication?” The mantra says, in part:
“From the point of Light within the Mind of God, let light stream forth into the minds of men. Let Light descend on Earth. ... Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth” (http://www.lucistrust.org/en/service_activities/the_great_invocation__1)
The objective of this New Age chant is to bring the cosmic christ into the world. This is “the Plan.” World Goodwill’s first three foundational beliefs are as follows, from its own web site:
Humanity is not following a haphazard or uncharted course--there is a Plan. This Plan has always existed and is part of the greater design of the Cosmos. The Plan has worked out through the evolutionary developments of the past and because of the special impetus given it from time to time by the great leaders, teachers and intuitives of the human race.
There is an inner spiritual government of the planet, known under such different names as the spiritual Hierarchy, the society of Illumined Minds, or Christ and his Church, according to various religious traditions. Humanity is never left without spiritual guidance or direction under the Plan.
The widespread expectation that we approach the “Age of Maitreya”, as it is known in the East, when the World Teacher and present head of the spiritual Hierarchy, the Christ, will reappear among humanity to sound the keynote of the new age (http://www.lucistrust.org/en/service_activities/world_goodwill__1/purposes_objectives).
Another New Age organization with accredited NGO status with the UN is The Aquarian Age Community (AAC). They hold their meetings in a conference room at the UN headquarters. The AAC, too, is based on Alice Bailey’s channeled messages from the Ascended Masters and has the objective of ushering the cosmic christ into the world to create the mystical new world order. The following is from the section of its web site on “The World Teacher”:
“The World Teacher is ... Christ ... Bodhisattva ... Lord Maitreya ... Iman Madhi ... Through Him flows the energy of the second aspect, reaching Him direct from the heart centre of the Planetary Logos via the heart of Sanat Kumara. He works by means of a meditation centred within the heart. ... to Him is committed the guidance of the spiritual destinies of men, and the development of the realization within each human being that he is a child of God” (http://www.aquaac.org/about/teacher.html).
Observe that Sanat (a thinly disguised name for Satan) is said to communicate with men through meditation, and we have no doubt that he does! The Aquarian Age Community opens its meetings with meditation and participates in mystical practices in the Meditation Room at the UN building (http://www.aquaac.org/un/medmtgs.html#dates). It is thereby seeking to communicate with its New Age god Lucifer (Alice Bailey believed Lucifer is God) in order to channel spiritual power toward world transformation.
The very influential United Nations’ leader Robert Mueller is also a follower of Alice Bailey. He was the Assistant to three Secretary Generals and chancellor of the UN University. He founded the Robert Muller School, which is certified by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The school’s curriculum was published by the Lucis Publishing Company and the preface says,
“The underlying philosophy upon which the Robert Muller School is based will be found in the teachings set forth in the books of Alice A. Bailey, by the Tibetan teacher, Djwhal Khul.”
Djwhal Khul was the alleged Tibetan Ascended Master (aka demon) who communicated through Bailey.
Thus, the New Age myth that the planet is run by highly evolved Ascended Masters who are guiding the world toward the coming of the cosmic christ and the establishment of the Age of Aquarius is no stranger to the United Nations.
The United Nations also affiliates with a wide variety of New Agers through its Society for Enlightenment and Transformation (SEAT), which is a part of the UN’s Staff Recreational Council (UNSRC). In 1993 it conducted a Symposium on Extraterrestrial Intelligence which treated UFO abductions as real events, and in 2000 it brought in New Age channeler Selacia to share wisdom from her spirit guides called “the Council of 12.” Selacia taught the UN personnel and visitors how to “shift into divine will” (http://www.selacia.com/workshops.htm#UNSRC%20Society). This is a good formula for communicating with demons. She also trains people how to communicate telepathically with animals!
Eckhart Tolle also calls for connection with the New Age god through mystical techniques. He says that the “new heaven” is “the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness” (A New Earth, p. 23).
To achieve this transformation requires, first, that the individual reject words and thoughts and labels and beliefs (pp. 21, 26, 27). This means that we are not supposed to test and evaluate things. He is prescribing a leap into blind mysticism based on intuition, feeling, and a mystical sense of being connected with “higher powers.” If we don’t carefully evaluate things by the Bible’s standard, the devil is able to lead us wherever he pleases.
Tolle urges the individual to immerse himself into the “essential Beingness, the I Am” (p. 79), to “realize that you don’t live your life, but life lives you,” that “LIFE IS THE DANCER, AND YOU ARE THE DANCE” (p. 115).
This Zen language describes surrendering oneself to the New Age god and atuning oneself with it. In The Power of Now, Tolle says that one connects with the real Self, which is God, by “feeling the body.” He instructs his students to “direct your attention into the body” and to “feel the subtle energy field that pervades the entire body” (p. 93). By this means the New Age practitioner can supposedly go beyond the veil of the “illusory self” to touch the “inner Being” where one is “forever one with God” (pp. 96, 97).
Since Tolle and every other New Age guru begins this quest by rejecting the God of the Bible and His salvation in Jesus Christ, it is obvious from a biblical perspective that he is teaching nothing less than unquestioning submission to the god of this world. Satan is posing as an angel of light to work out his purposes in the “mystery of iniquity” with the objective of putting the antichrist on the throne of the world (2 Corinthians 11:14; 2 Thessalonians 2:7-12). This is the main “song and dance” at the devil’s party, and I thank the Lord Jesus Christ for redeeming me 35 years ago and giving me a new song.
What New Agers consider techniques toward finding one’s higher Self, are actually techniques of demon possession.
Oprah Winfrey gave this “transformation” process a big boost in the first quarter of 2008 when she hosted a 10-week web seminar featuring a live discussion of Tolle’s A New Earth. The first session was described as “one of the largest single events in Internet history.”
Barbara Marx Hubbard also promotes techniques for tapping into the New Age god for wisdom and power and direction. She says, “It feels as though the organic process of planetary transformation IS BEING ORCHESTRATED AT A HIGHER LEVEL. ... We are receiving deeper super-intuitive guidance. ... Throughout the ages we have been in contact with ‘voices,’ gods, signals, messengers, visions and visitors from outer space” (The Evolutionary Journey, pp. 63, 87).
Hubbard recommends journaling, which she describes as entering a meditative state and recording whatever comes into your mind. She emphasizes the necessity of allowing “the thoughts and images to surface without judging how good or rational or realistic they are” (The Evolutionary Journey, p. 128).
Jean Houston also illustrates how mystical practices are being used by New Agers in politics and government. Her favorite technique is guided imagery.
Houston’s Mystery School supposedly enables the student to connect directly with ancient gods, goddesses, and religious teachers and philosophical thinkers through this means. The student is taught to enter an altered state of consciousness through self-hypnosis using such techniques as breathing exercises and chanting a mantra. If he gets “stuck or confused” he is to seek help from the “guiding Divine Architect.” This is also called the Beloved Spiritual Presence and “the golden protective light.” Since Houston has no biblical testimony that she is born again, the “Architect” in question is the devil appearing as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). She is inadvertently teaching her students to communicate with devils.
In her 1993 book Public Like a Frog she promotes the idea of establishing communication with Thomas Jefferson through guided imagery. When her students are in the trance state, she instructs them: “Be there now, with Mr. Jefferson. ... INTERACT WITH HIM. LET HIM INTRODUCE YOU TO SOME OF THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE THERE. Be there now, and discover as much as you can” (p. 178).
This is presented as an “imaginary” conversation, but the entities that are being “imagined” assume a life of their own in the practitioner’s mind.
In light of the Bible’s many warnings to be sober and vigilant and to try the spirits, this practice is more than dangerous.
Houston goes even farther than this and teaches her students to become God.
“You will become the realm of I AM, letting yourself be filled with the fullness of the god realm that is the I AM. You will become Being itself” (The Search for the Beloved: Journeys in Sacred Psychology, 1987, p. 81).
She teaches the New Age student to visualize the death of himself and his subsequent resurrection and marriage with his god.
“There you find yourself a place where you sit down and enter into communion with the Beloved. It is the place of the marriage of the self with the Beloved of the soul. It is the place of the great union. ... Know yourself now in communion with the Beloved. You have entered into a union that, if you choose, will sustain and support you all the days of your life. Never again will you ever really be alone, for now you are in union” (The Search for the Beloved, pp. 144, 145).
She describes this as “partnering with the Beloved” and “being godded in this union” (p. 188).
We won’t repeat her instructions for this process, but what she has done is to give a step-by-step formula for demon possession.
Such techniques are being used at the highest levels of government in various parts of the world. In 1996 Houston taught then First Lady Hillary Clinton her technique of visualizing a dialogue with the dead via guided imagery. Clinton chose Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi (Newsweek, July 1, 1996, p. 26). Houston also counseled Bill Clinton to use her techniques to “go back to his predecessors and try to harvest their learning” in order to construct a “possible society.” This refers to the New Age society.
Houston has lectured at more than 1,000 colleges, universities, schools, churches, hospitals, mental health agencies, and corporations. She has worked as an Advisor to UNICEF and has chaired programs associated with the UN.
This is just a tiny glimpse into what is going on in politics and government throughout the world. The New Age is using its “consciousness raising” techniques to bring politicians and government officials and UN workers into “transformational” connection with the “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2), the god of the spiritual darkness of this present world (2 Corinthians 4:4).
The Age of Aquarius is seeking to atune humanity with Satan and his demon hords, and it is no doubt finding great success in this quest.
ANOTHER MAJOR TOOL OF NEW AGE GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION IS COMMUNITY BUILDING. The back cover of M. Scott Peck’s The Different Drum says, “Dr. Peck believes that if we are to prevent civilization destroying itself, we must urgently rebuild community on all levels, local, national and international, and that is the first step to spiritual survival.”
The process is the Hegelian dialectic at work. It requires creating New Age communities all over the world in which differences can be resolved. In these communities, decisions are reached only by consensus, there are no “sides” and everyone is respected and heard (The Different Drum, pp. 71, 72). The individual is allowed to express any belief or doubt and to act out in his own individual way, to live as he pleases. The New Age community must be a “safe place.” Peck says the “healing” will only happen when “its members have learned to STOP TRYING TO heal and CONVERT” (p. 68). He said that true community means that “everyone is welcome” and there is “no pressure to conform” and that “all human differences are included” and “appreciated” and even “celebrated” (pp. 61, 62). New Age community must incorporate “the dark and the light, the sacred and the profane” (p. 65). Peck calls the acceptance and celebration of differences and the process of reaching a “consensus,” the politics of “transcendence” (p. 63). Those who are opposed to homosexual marriage and abortion and evolution and human divinity must be taught to live in harmonious community with those who are in favor of these things.
In reality, the no conversion rule applies only to Bible believers and other dogmatic truth holders. While they would refuse us the right to preach the Bible to New Agers, they feel at perfect liberty to preach to us! In the New Age community, the only real sin is the sin of exclusiveness and theological dogmatism.
In the foreword to the aforementioned book Spiritual Politics, the Dalai Lama writes about those who refuse to accept change.
“Narrow-mindedness and self-centered thinking may have served us well in the past, but today will only lead to disaster. We can overcome such attitudes through a combination of education and training.”
Peck says, “It is not only such ideological and theological rigidities that we need to discard, it is any idea that assumes the status of ‘the one and only right way’” (The Different Drum, p. 96).
He says that the greatest hindrance to world peace is “exclusivity” (p. 61). He warned about “groups that exclude others” because they are doubters or sinners and that are “defensive bastions against community.” He says that refusal to join a group because you don’t agree with it is “destructive to community” (p. 62).
Peck personally conducted scores of community-building workshops to further his objective, and he was only one member of a growing army of New Age personnel who are involved in this process.
Barbara Marx Hubbard is also at the forefront of New Age community building work. She says, “Cooperation is essential for survival” (The Evolutionary Journey, p. 77). Mankind must learn to be non-judgmental and to submit to the higher good of the group.
The Committee for the Future, which was established in 1972, promoted “Syncon,” which stands for Synergistic convergence. To synergize means to fuse something into a new whole. It refers to “group-connectedness.” It involves bonding people together in spite of their differences. Hubbard emphasizes terms such as “looking for common goals” (The Evolutionary Journey, p. 58), “awareness of our common potentials” (p. 58), “walls coming down” (p. 60), “bonding” (p. 60), “group-connectedness” (p. 62), and “making collective, evolutionary decisions.”
This refers to a process of breaking down the divisions between people and emphasizing unity and group thinking as opposed to individualism. It requires a non-judgmental attitude and a relativistic willingness to accept all different views and practices as legitimate. Great efforts are ongoing throughout the world at all levels of society to create this New Age community.
It is easy to see how unacceptable the practice of dogmatic Bible preaching and exclusive evangelism is in such a context! It simply cannot be allowed, because it will disrupt the sense of world community!
For a Bible-believing Christian to separate his children from the public school system and to disagree with evolution and to refuse to “celebrate” homosexuality is considered a great evil by New Agers, because they think it is hindering the evolutionary progress of the entire world. In their view, dogmatic biblical thinking is the chief obstacle to the establishment of the New Age.
The hate crime laws which are being enacted throughout the world reflect the New Age desire to shut the mouths of Bible believers. These laws can make it illegal for Christians to condemn moral perversions such as homosexuality and to warn plainly of heresies. Such actions are considered hateful and divisive and harmful to modern society. Christians have already been charged under these laws in Australia, Canada, England, and America, and we have only seen the beginning of this movement.
ANOTHER MAJOR TOOL OF NEW AGE GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION IS POLITICAL ACTION. This is occurring on every hand. Marianne Williamson’s Peace Alliance is trying to establish a U.S. Department of Peace and Nonviolence. Claiming that “peace is not a utopian ideal,” the Alliance seeks to bring “the science of peacemaking” to the highest levels of government. Established in 2004, The Peace Alliance is growing in influence. Senate bill HR 800 was created in February 2007 and had 69 co-sponsors as of March 2008. The bill is an attempt to bring United Nations’ objectives to pass in America. It cites the United Nations’ goal of establishing a “Culture of Peace.” It speaks of the “capacity for a higher evolution” and the ability of mankind to “tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform consciousness.” The ultimate objective is to make America into “a harbinger of peace that will be “the light of nations” (http://www.thepeacealliance.org/content/view/278/23/).
While Williamson’s outfit is building the United States of World Peace, Neale Walsch and Brad Blanton are building “the United States of Being.” They describe this in their book Honest to God: A Change of Heart that Can Change the World (2002).
“Our objective is to organize a new government for a new nation, to be built first in our imaginations and in cyberspace after we sign up as citizens by signing the new Declaration of Independence. We then intend to grow larger as a political force in the current structure at the same time we model a new one, and then take over increasingly the actual functions of government. We call our new country the United States of Being and we intend to be based on the sovereignty of the individual, rather than the sovereignty of the king, or the sovereignty of representatives” (Walsch and Blanton, Honest to God, p. 212).
Observe that this United States of Being begins in the imagination. It will thus be brought into existence, allegedly, through the power of New Age visualization.
They would like to see New Age high priestess Oprah Winfrey run for president of the United States of Being, so that her “advanced spiritual” thinking can bring about a transformed America and ultimately a new world. Walsch says:
“I’ll tell you one thing, if Oprah didn’t want to run for President I’d suggest Marianne Williamson, because she has the ability to articulate very important ideas very quickly, in a moment, with twenty-five words or less. ... Barbara Marx Hubbard needs to be in that group, too. In the cabinet” (Honest to God, p. 200).
An Oprah presidency is apparently not in the cards, but in late 2007, for the first time in her career, she threw her full weight behind a presidential candidate. His name is Barack Obama, and he is doubtless the New Age candidate of choice.
When Oprah introduced Obama at a political rally on December 11, 2007, in Columbia, South Carolina, she called him “an evolved leader” and said, “We’re here to evolve to a higher plane.” She said he is a “force for peace” who can break down everything that divides, including race and politics and religion (“Messianic Rhetoric Infuses Obama Rallies,” Politico, Dec. 11, 2007). That’s New Age community building taken to the national level.
Obama is running on a vague platform of ill-defined “hope” and “change,” but his candidacy has stirred an inexplicable level of devotion. Speaking in Omaha, Nebraska, Obama said that he and his supporters would “remake the world” (YouTube, Feb. 7, 2008). The Associated Press called him “a metaphysical force in American politics” (AP, Feb. 12, 2008). Christena Weatherspoon said that it was like Obama was “inside her head” and “knows what I want” (Tribune-Chronicle, Youngstown, Ohio, Feb. 19, 2008). Actor George Clooney said, “He walks into a room and you want to follow him somewhere, anywhere,” and actress Halle Berry said, “I’ll do whatever he says to do. I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear” (Lisa Lehrer, Politico, Feb. 20).
On her Internet blog for February 27, 2008, Marianne Williamson said Obama’s campaign is evidence of a mighty wind that is blowing and reflects the yearning of the 60s hippy generation for a new age of love and peace. She cited the occultic psychoanalyst Carl Jung, plus Bob Dylan, Gloria Steinem, John Lennon, and Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“Every once in a while, a mighty wind blows. The political sentiments now storming America in the form of support for Barack Obama are a mighty wind indeed. ... I'm a boomer, so I know this feeling. We have been here before. We knew what Bob Dylan meant when he sang, ‘Something’s going on here, but you don’t know what it is....Do you, Mr. Jones?’ And something is going on again. What we’re experiencing here is a new conversation. ...
“From Bob Dylan to Gloria Steinem to John Lennon to Martin Luther King, Jr., people who use words to foster new thinking are the ones we see in retrospect to have OPENED DOORS TO A BETTER WORLD. ...
“The ability to inspire new thinking is a more important ability in a leader today, than simply being a ‘problem-solver.’ ... WHAT WE NEED IS SOMEONE WITH A BETTER STATE OF MIND, WHO WILL LEAD US TO A BETTER STATE OF OURS” (http://marianne.iamplify.com/about.jsp).
The reference to John Lennon is very significant. In his hugely popular 1971 song “Imagine” he sang of a New Age world:
“Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try/ No hell below us, above only sky/ Imagine all the people living for today. Imagine there’s no countries; it isn’t hard to do/ Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too/ Imagine all the people living in peace. Imagine no possessions; I wonder if you can/ No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man/ Imagine all the people sharing all the world./ You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one/ And some day I hope you’ll join us/ And the world will be as one.”
This is precisely the world that New Agers are attempting to create, and the title of the song reminds us of that one of their chief tools is the power of visualization. If they can just IMAGINE specifically enough and energetically enough and long enough, it will come to pass.
Whether Obama wins or loses the Democratic ticket and the White House, U.S. politics will never be the same. The New Age has gained an open level of influence heretofore unthinkable.
The Age of Aquarius is on a roll.
The Age of Aquarius is supposed to be the age of peace and universal blessing, but it will not happen of its own accord. It will be created, we are told, through a transformation of the consciousness of mankind, and this will be brought about by the actions of “enlightened” individuals and their powerful New Age techniques.
The establishment of the New Age requires a great mixing and shaking. The following is from Shri Adi Shakti’s web site. Who better to explain the goals of the New Age than a Hindu guru?
“All our differences, all our dualities mix together like the fragrances of a flower shop, with all of the different flowers adding their bouquet to the overall mix until they are inseparable. ... Mystically, Aquarius signifies friendship. Friendship bursts upon us in its most elevated sense, in its most noble aspect--with understanding, collaboration, and fraternity. ... This is the era of peace, of unity, of love. ... This Golden Age is destined to synthesize all religious regimes and free the minds of ignorance and delusion forever. Once enlightened, each human being will begin his or her individual journey within, and strive to become the new race of super conscious humans awakening seekers of Truth and the eternal Spirit, healing peoples of many tongues and nations in the process. ... The Human Family is truly entering the Age of mystic revelations and the mind’s true liberation which is broadly known as spiritualism or New Millennium Religion” (http://www.adishakti.org/age_of_aquarius.htm).
New Age politics has the agenda of creating this unity through the mixing of dualities, the synthesis of all contrasting ideas and practices, religious and political.
Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson describe this work in the book Spiritual Politics (1994). They say that it is driven by “the Ageless Wisdom” that harkens back to the teachings that underlie ancient esoteric religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Druidism, Sufism, Kabbalism, Rosicrucianism, and Free Masonry (p. 15).
M. Scott Peck is one of the New Agers who has been at the forefront of building the new world. In his books The Different Drum (1987) and A World Awaiting to Be Born (1993), Peck preached the concept that a new age has arrived in man’s evolutionary process and a spiritually-evolved generation can create unity, solve the world’s problems, and bring in an age of peace. The Different Drum has the following dedication: “To the people of all nations in the hope that within a century there will no longer be a Veteran’s Day Parade...” This refers, of course, to the New Age dream of world peace.
Barbara Marx Hubbard is also at the forefront of trying to build the New Age world. She has been involved in The Committee for the Future, the World Future Society, the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, and other projects toward this end. Her books are funded by Laurance Rockefeller through the Fund for the Enhancement of the Human Spirit
Eckhart Tolle also wants to change the world. His book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005), which is being heavily promoted by Oprah Winfrey, describes this new world and provides techniques for building it.
Neale Donald Walsch is another influential New Ager who is trying to build the new world. In 2005 he founded the Group of 1000 toward this end. He calls this movement the New Spirituality and claims that it came to him by revelation following 9/11. The Group of 1000 web site says:
“We believe that God and we are One, that there is no separation in the Universe, that there is enough of all that we need on earth to live our lives in peace and harmony and happiness. ... We believe that the Universe was intended to be a friendly place, that human beings were intended to be loving creatures, and that life was intended to be a joyous experience, and that it is possible to create all these things in that image if we focus our energies together on a common goal.”
“We are committed to creating a New Tomorrow, a new future for the beings of this planet, a future in which our children and our children's children will feel safe, self-realized, and loved by life.”
The Group of 1000’s Action Plan aims to “shift the collective consciousness within ten to fifteen years.”
Deepak Chopra is also in the business of creating a new world. In his book Peace Is the Way: Bringing War and Violence to an End (2005), he calls for international disarmament and global spiritual enlightenment. Chopra is the president of the Alliance of a New Humanity, which is committed to world change.
Marianne Williamson is also out to transform the world. Her books Healing the Soul of America: Reclaiming Our Voices as Spiritual Citizens and Imagine What America Could Be in the 21st Century encourage the creation of a New Age America. She is President of the Board of The Peace Alliance and co-founder of the Global Renaissance Alliance. The latter encourages people to pursue their individual New Age enlightenment and power and to channel this New Age energy into politics.
These are just a few of the influential New Agers who are involved in politics and government toward the creation of the Age of Aquarius.
The New Age Tools for World Transformation
And how do they aim to achieve this goal? The tools for building the New Age world include discrediting the Bible, positive thinking, positive confession, visualization, guided imagery, mantra, meditation, interfaith dialogue, community building, political action, and education.
For our purposes here, we will focus on four of these.
THE FIRST MAJOR TOOL OF NEW AGE GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION IS TO DISCREDIT THE BIBLE AND ITS GOD AND SALVATION. All of the New Age gurus are involved in this process, and we have given examples throughout this book. See the Index for “Anti-Christian.”
Consider the following statements Neale Walsch’s The Group of 1000 web site:
“WE BELIEVE THAT DIVINITY DOES NOT JUDGE, AND NEITHER DOES IT CONDEMN OR PUNISH. WE BELIEVE THAT WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE POWER BY GOD TO CREATE OUR OWN REALITY, individually and collectively, and that we could do so if only we used that power. We believe that the world itself can change if humanity will but explore and examine NEW IDEAS ABOUT GOD, about life, and about each other”.
“We are committed to creating a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, FREEING HUMANITY AT LAST FROM THE OPPRESSION OF ITS BELIEF IN A VIOLENT, ANGRY, AND VINDICTIVE GOD, AND FROM ALL THE HUMAN BEHAVIORS THOSE BELIEFS PRODUCE.”
This attempt to discredit the God of the Bible is a foundational tool of the New Age toward establishing their new world.
Observe that the attack upon God is slanderous. He is described as violent, angry, and vindictive, whereas His great compassion and patience and love and mercy and kindness and gentleness are never mentioned. He is described as an unreasonable, monster. He is said to be a Judge but not a Saviour.
ANOTHER MAJOR TOOL OF NEW AGE GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION IS MYSTICISM. This involves a wide variety of practices that are used to bring the individual into connection with the New Age god, otherwise known as the higher Self, the real Self, the universal consciousness, the I AM, the ground of Being, the essential Beingness, the God force, the Universal Force, the Designing Intelligence, etc.
The mystical practices include hypnotic trances or mindless meditative states (created with mantras, breathing exercises, music, lights, color, and drumming), channeling, telepathy, journaling, guided imagery, visualization, and laying on of hands.
These are designed to bring the practitioner into connection with a “higher power” and through this to achieve spiritual enlightenment and transformational energy.
The Global Peace Meditation Days, which have been held on May 20, 2008, December 22, 2008, and May 8, 2008, and which will culminate in the Embrace the Planet Celebration scheduled for 2012, use these mystical practices. The hope is that “a critical mass of concerned and spiritually engaged global citizens” will heal the world “through the power of their collective consciousness.” These “global citizens” hold hands, meditate together, chant positive confession mantras (such as “May Peace Prevail on Earth”), energize themselves with drumming and dancing, and otherwise try to align themselves with the New Age powers.
The Global Peace Meditation days are co-sponsored by the Club of Budapest and the World Peace Prayer Society. The Creative Director is Ervin Laszlo of the Club of Budapest.
The Club of Budapest is an international association “dedicated to developing a new way of thinking and a new ethics that will help resolve the social, political, economic, and ecological challenges of the 21st century.” Its main tool is interfaith dialogue. It was co-founded in 1978 by Aurelio Peccei and Ervin Laszlo. It is named after the city of Budapest. As that city lies in the heart of Europe and sits on both banks of the Danube River and successfully merges the two cities Buda and Pest, so the Club of Budapest desires to “build bridges between generations, disciplines and cultures.” Since 2008 the Club of Budapest is operated by the Worldshift Network, established by Laszlo, Wolfgang Riehn and Johannes Heimrath.
Members of the Club of Budapest include Hindu and Buddhist swamis and a wide assortment of New Age practitioners. Honorary Members include Sri Bhagavan, the Dalai Lama, Peter Gabriel, Jane Goodall, Mikhail Gorbachev, Vaclav Havel, Bianca Jagger, Hans Kung, Yehudi Menuhin, and Desmond Tutu. Creative Members include Swami Kriyananda, Barbara Marx Hubbard, and Deepti Tewari (a member of Auroville, a New Age living laboratory that seeks to create a change of consciousness in mankind that will “give birth to a spiritualized human collectivity”).
Another key player in the Global Peace Meditation Day movement is the Oneness Movement, founded by Hindu “avatars” Sri Kalki Bhagavan and Sri Padmavathi Amma who are based in southern India. Their aim is to bring about a golden age for mankind through spiritual enlightenment. The Global Peace Meditation Day was also called World Oneness Day. One of the 12 world venues of the Meditation Day is the Oneness Temple in India. The Oneness Movement claims to channel Deeksha or the Oneness Blessing. Transferred through the laying on of hands by Oneness practitioners, Deeksha is said to create a new level of consciousness through unity with God. It produces “spontaneous feelings of joy, inner calmness and connection to the Oneness in everything.” Bhagavan says, “The mind of man is like a wall which divides man from God; the deeksha is an electrical energy that makes a hole in this wall. Once this happens, then God and man can come to relate to each other.” It is called a “channel for cosmic energies,” but in reality it is communication with demons.
The United Nations is a hotbed of New Age mysticism.
Consider the World Peace Prayer Society. It is affiliated with the United Nations’ Department of Public Information and it uses New Age techniques to “support peace, harmony, and goodwill among all citizens.” Its web site describes two of these tools (positive thinking and positive confession):
The Power of Thought: Thought forms create an energetic field strong enough to empower the course of planetary destiny. The Power of Words: Words carry vibrations strong enough to inspire, heal and transform the human heart as well as the Kingdom of plants, animals and all creation.
The World Peace Prayer Society operates a 154-acre World Peace Sanctuary in Wassaic, New York, two hours’ drive north of New York City. Here mystical practices are focused toward the building of the new world order.
Consider World Goodwill, which is part of Alice Bailey’s Lucis Trust. The Lucis Trust is on the roster of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and maintains the Meditation Room at the UN headquarters in New York City. World Goodwill is an approved Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) with the UN’s Department of Public Information. It is dedicated to solving the world’s problems through “a new perception of humanity as a unit of divine life within an ordered and purposive universe.”
In 1956-57 UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold completely remodeled the UN’s chapel. It had been opened in 1952 as a non-denominational prayer room and had been the brainchild of a Christian lay organization whose members included the department store millionaire J.C. Penney. Hammarskjold turned it into a New Age meditation chamber. The arm chairs, flags of the nations, draperies, and potted plants were removed, and a six-and-a-half ton block of iron ore was deposited in the center of the room, the polished top of which is lit by a single beam of light from the ceiling. The light depicts “divine wisdom,” and the block depicts an empty altar representing “God worshipped in many forms” (http://www.aquaac.org/un/sprtatun.html). The iron ore also represents the metal from which weapons are made and the New Age hope that through the power of meditation world peace can be achieved. Hammarskjold said, “... we thought we could bless by our thoughts the very material out of which arms are made.” This is the New Age concept of the power of thinking. He said the Meditation Room is a place “where people could really withdraw into themselves and feel the void.”
The UN Meditation Room has been the focus of New Age mysticism since its opening in 1957.
One of World Goodwill’s “transformational” tools is the “The Great Invocation,” which is part of its educational program. It is a New Age mantra. The World Goodwill web site says that men and women throughout the world are repeating the mantra and asks, “Will you join them in using the Invocation every day--with thought and dedication?” The mantra says, in part:
“From the point of Light within the Mind of God, let light stream forth into the minds of men. Let Light descend on Earth. ... Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth” (http://www.lucistrust.org/en/service_activities/the_great_invocation__1)
The objective of this New Age chant is to bring the cosmic christ into the world. This is “the Plan.” World Goodwill’s first three foundational beliefs are as follows, from its own web site:
Humanity is not following a haphazard or uncharted course--there is a Plan. This Plan has always existed and is part of the greater design of the Cosmos. The Plan has worked out through the evolutionary developments of the past and because of the special impetus given it from time to time by the great leaders, teachers and intuitives of the human race.
There is an inner spiritual government of the planet, known under such different names as the spiritual Hierarchy, the society of Illumined Minds, or Christ and his Church, according to various religious traditions. Humanity is never left without spiritual guidance or direction under the Plan.
The widespread expectation that we approach the “Age of Maitreya”, as it is known in the East, when the World Teacher and present head of the spiritual Hierarchy, the Christ, will reappear among humanity to sound the keynote of the new age (http://www.lucistrust.org/en/service_activities/world_goodwill__1/purposes_objectives).
Another New Age organization with accredited NGO status with the UN is The Aquarian Age Community (AAC). They hold their meetings in a conference room at the UN headquarters. The AAC, too, is based on Alice Bailey’s channeled messages from the Ascended Masters and has the objective of ushering the cosmic christ into the world to create the mystical new world order. The following is from the section of its web site on “The World Teacher”:
“The World Teacher is ... Christ ... Bodhisattva ... Lord Maitreya ... Iman Madhi ... Through Him flows the energy of the second aspect, reaching Him direct from the heart centre of the Planetary Logos via the heart of Sanat Kumara. He works by means of a meditation centred within the heart. ... to Him is committed the guidance of the spiritual destinies of men, and the development of the realization within each human being that he is a child of God” (http://www.aquaac.org/about/teacher.html).
Observe that Sanat (a thinly disguised name for Satan) is said to communicate with men through meditation, and we have no doubt that he does! The Aquarian Age Community opens its meetings with meditation and participates in mystical practices in the Meditation Room at the UN building (http://www.aquaac.org/un/medmtgs.html#dates). It is thereby seeking to communicate with its New Age god Lucifer (Alice Bailey believed Lucifer is God) in order to channel spiritual power toward world transformation.
The very influential United Nations’ leader Robert Mueller is also a follower of Alice Bailey. He was the Assistant to three Secretary Generals and chancellor of the UN University. He founded the Robert Muller School, which is certified by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The school’s curriculum was published by the Lucis Publishing Company and the preface says,
“The underlying philosophy upon which the Robert Muller School is based will be found in the teachings set forth in the books of Alice A. Bailey, by the Tibetan teacher, Djwhal Khul.”
Djwhal Khul was the alleged Tibetan Ascended Master (aka demon) who communicated through Bailey.
Thus, the New Age myth that the planet is run by highly evolved Ascended Masters who are guiding the world toward the coming of the cosmic christ and the establishment of the Age of Aquarius is no stranger to the United Nations.
The United Nations also affiliates with a wide variety of New Agers through its Society for Enlightenment and Transformation (SEAT), which is a part of the UN’s Staff Recreational Council (UNSRC). In 1993 it conducted a Symposium on Extraterrestrial Intelligence which treated UFO abductions as real events, and in 2000 it brought in New Age channeler Selacia to share wisdom from her spirit guides called “the Council of 12.” Selacia taught the UN personnel and visitors how to “shift into divine will” (http://www.selacia.com/workshops.htm#UNSRC%20Society). This is a good formula for communicating with demons. She also trains people how to communicate telepathically with animals!
Eckhart Tolle also calls for connection with the New Age god through mystical techniques. He says that the “new heaven” is “the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness” (A New Earth, p. 23).
To achieve this transformation requires, first, that the individual reject words and thoughts and labels and beliefs (pp. 21, 26, 27). This means that we are not supposed to test and evaluate things. He is prescribing a leap into blind mysticism based on intuition, feeling, and a mystical sense of being connected with “higher powers.” If we don’t carefully evaluate things by the Bible’s standard, the devil is able to lead us wherever he pleases.
Tolle urges the individual to immerse himself into the “essential Beingness, the I Am” (p. 79), to “realize that you don’t live your life, but life lives you,” that “LIFE IS THE DANCER, AND YOU ARE THE DANCE” (p. 115).
This Zen language describes surrendering oneself to the New Age god and atuning oneself with it. In The Power of Now, Tolle says that one connects with the real Self, which is God, by “feeling the body.” He instructs his students to “direct your attention into the body” and to “feel the subtle energy field that pervades the entire body” (p. 93). By this means the New Age practitioner can supposedly go beyond the veil of the “illusory self” to touch the “inner Being” where one is “forever one with God” (pp. 96, 97).
Since Tolle and every other New Age guru begins this quest by rejecting the God of the Bible and His salvation in Jesus Christ, it is obvious from a biblical perspective that he is teaching nothing less than unquestioning submission to the god of this world. Satan is posing as an angel of light to work out his purposes in the “mystery of iniquity” with the objective of putting the antichrist on the throne of the world (2 Corinthians 11:14; 2 Thessalonians 2:7-12). This is the main “song and dance” at the devil’s party, and I thank the Lord Jesus Christ for redeeming me 35 years ago and giving me a new song.
What New Agers consider techniques toward finding one’s higher Self, are actually techniques of demon possession.
Oprah Winfrey gave this “transformation” process a big boost in the first quarter of 2008 when she hosted a 10-week web seminar featuring a live discussion of Tolle’s A New Earth. The first session was described as “one of the largest single events in Internet history.”
Barbara Marx Hubbard also promotes techniques for tapping into the New Age god for wisdom and power and direction. She says, “It feels as though the organic process of planetary transformation IS BEING ORCHESTRATED AT A HIGHER LEVEL. ... We are receiving deeper super-intuitive guidance. ... Throughout the ages we have been in contact with ‘voices,’ gods, signals, messengers, visions and visitors from outer space” (The Evolutionary Journey, pp. 63, 87).
Hubbard recommends journaling, which she describes as entering a meditative state and recording whatever comes into your mind. She emphasizes the necessity of allowing “the thoughts and images to surface without judging how good or rational or realistic they are” (The Evolutionary Journey, p. 128).
Jean Houston also illustrates how mystical practices are being used by New Agers in politics and government. Her favorite technique is guided imagery.
Houston’s Mystery School supposedly enables the student to connect directly with ancient gods, goddesses, and religious teachers and philosophical thinkers through this means. The student is taught to enter an altered state of consciousness through self-hypnosis using such techniques as breathing exercises and chanting a mantra. If he gets “stuck or confused” he is to seek help from the “guiding Divine Architect.” This is also called the Beloved Spiritual Presence and “the golden protective light.” Since Houston has no biblical testimony that she is born again, the “Architect” in question is the devil appearing as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). She is inadvertently teaching her students to communicate with devils.
In her 1993 book Public Like a Frog she promotes the idea of establishing communication with Thomas Jefferson through guided imagery. When her students are in the trance state, she instructs them: “Be there now, with Mr. Jefferson. ... INTERACT WITH HIM. LET HIM INTRODUCE YOU TO SOME OF THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE THERE. Be there now, and discover as much as you can” (p. 178).
This is presented as an “imaginary” conversation, but the entities that are being “imagined” assume a life of their own in the practitioner’s mind.
In light of the Bible’s many warnings to be sober and vigilant and to try the spirits, this practice is more than dangerous.
Houston goes even farther than this and teaches her students to become God.
“You will become the realm of I AM, letting yourself be filled with the fullness of the god realm that is the I AM. You will become Being itself” (The Search for the Beloved: Journeys in Sacred Psychology, 1987, p. 81).
She teaches the New Age student to visualize the death of himself and his subsequent resurrection and marriage with his god.
“There you find yourself a place where you sit down and enter into communion with the Beloved. It is the place of the marriage of the self with the Beloved of the soul. It is the place of the great union. ... Know yourself now in communion with the Beloved. You have entered into a union that, if you choose, will sustain and support you all the days of your life. Never again will you ever really be alone, for now you are in union” (The Search for the Beloved, pp. 144, 145).
She describes this as “partnering with the Beloved” and “being godded in this union” (p. 188).
We won’t repeat her instructions for this process, but what she has done is to give a step-by-step formula for demon possession.
Such techniques are being used at the highest levels of government in various parts of the world. In 1996 Houston taught then First Lady Hillary Clinton her technique of visualizing a dialogue with the dead via guided imagery. Clinton chose Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi (Newsweek, July 1, 1996, p. 26). Houston also counseled Bill Clinton to use her techniques to “go back to his predecessors and try to harvest their learning” in order to construct a “possible society.” This refers to the New Age society.
Houston has lectured at more than 1,000 colleges, universities, schools, churches, hospitals, mental health agencies, and corporations. She has worked as an Advisor to UNICEF and has chaired programs associated with the UN.
This is just a tiny glimpse into what is going on in politics and government throughout the world. The New Age is using its “consciousness raising” techniques to bring politicians and government officials and UN workers into “transformational” connection with the “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2), the god of the spiritual darkness of this present world (2 Corinthians 4:4).
The Age of Aquarius is seeking to atune humanity with Satan and his demon hords, and it is no doubt finding great success in this quest.
ANOTHER MAJOR TOOL OF NEW AGE GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION IS COMMUNITY BUILDING. The back cover of M. Scott Peck’s The Different Drum says, “Dr. Peck believes that if we are to prevent civilization destroying itself, we must urgently rebuild community on all levels, local, national and international, and that is the first step to spiritual survival.”
The process is the Hegelian dialectic at work. It requires creating New Age communities all over the world in which differences can be resolved. In these communities, decisions are reached only by consensus, there are no “sides” and everyone is respected and heard (The Different Drum, pp. 71, 72). The individual is allowed to express any belief or doubt and to act out in his own individual way, to live as he pleases. The New Age community must be a “safe place.” Peck says the “healing” will only happen when “its members have learned to STOP TRYING TO heal and CONVERT” (p. 68). He said that true community means that “everyone is welcome” and there is “no pressure to conform” and that “all human differences are included” and “appreciated” and even “celebrated” (pp. 61, 62). New Age community must incorporate “the dark and the light, the sacred and the profane” (p. 65). Peck calls the acceptance and celebration of differences and the process of reaching a “consensus,” the politics of “transcendence” (p. 63). Those who are opposed to homosexual marriage and abortion and evolution and human divinity must be taught to live in harmonious community with those who are in favor of these things.
In reality, the no conversion rule applies only to Bible believers and other dogmatic truth holders. While they would refuse us the right to preach the Bible to New Agers, they feel at perfect liberty to preach to us! In the New Age community, the only real sin is the sin of exclusiveness and theological dogmatism.
In the foreword to the aforementioned book Spiritual Politics, the Dalai Lama writes about those who refuse to accept change.
“Narrow-mindedness and self-centered thinking may have served us well in the past, but today will only lead to disaster. We can overcome such attitudes through a combination of education and training.”
Peck says, “It is not only such ideological and theological rigidities that we need to discard, it is any idea that assumes the status of ‘the one and only right way’” (The Different Drum, p. 96).
He says that the greatest hindrance to world peace is “exclusivity” (p. 61). He warned about “groups that exclude others” because they are doubters or sinners and that are “defensive bastions against community.” He says that refusal to join a group because you don’t agree with it is “destructive to community” (p. 62).
Peck personally conducted scores of community-building workshops to further his objective, and he was only one member of a growing army of New Age personnel who are involved in this process.
Barbara Marx Hubbard is also at the forefront of New Age community building work. She says, “Cooperation is essential for survival” (The Evolutionary Journey, p. 77). Mankind must learn to be non-judgmental and to submit to the higher good of the group.
The Committee for the Future, which was established in 1972, promoted “Syncon,” which stands for Synergistic convergence. To synergize means to fuse something into a new whole. It refers to “group-connectedness.” It involves bonding people together in spite of their differences. Hubbard emphasizes terms such as “looking for common goals” (The Evolutionary Journey, p. 58), “awareness of our common potentials” (p. 58), “walls coming down” (p. 60), “bonding” (p. 60), “group-connectedness” (p. 62), and “making collective, evolutionary decisions.”
This refers to a process of breaking down the divisions between people and emphasizing unity and group thinking as opposed to individualism. It requires a non-judgmental attitude and a relativistic willingness to accept all different views and practices as legitimate. Great efforts are ongoing throughout the world at all levels of society to create this New Age community.
It is easy to see how unacceptable the practice of dogmatic Bible preaching and exclusive evangelism is in such a context! It simply cannot be allowed, because it will disrupt the sense of world community!
For a Bible-believing Christian to separate his children from the public school system and to disagree with evolution and to refuse to “celebrate” homosexuality is considered a great evil by New Agers, because they think it is hindering the evolutionary progress of the entire world. In their view, dogmatic biblical thinking is the chief obstacle to the establishment of the New Age.
The hate crime laws which are being enacted throughout the world reflect the New Age desire to shut the mouths of Bible believers. These laws can make it illegal for Christians to condemn moral perversions such as homosexuality and to warn plainly of heresies. Such actions are considered hateful and divisive and harmful to modern society. Christians have already been charged under these laws in Australia, Canada, England, and America, and we have only seen the beginning of this movement.
ANOTHER MAJOR TOOL OF NEW AGE GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION IS POLITICAL ACTION. This is occurring on every hand. Marianne Williamson’s Peace Alliance is trying to establish a U.S. Department of Peace and Nonviolence. Claiming that “peace is not a utopian ideal,” the Alliance seeks to bring “the science of peacemaking” to the highest levels of government. Established in 2004, The Peace Alliance is growing in influence. Senate bill HR 800 was created in February 2007 and had 69 co-sponsors as of March 2008. The bill is an attempt to bring United Nations’ objectives to pass in America. It cites the United Nations’ goal of establishing a “Culture of Peace.” It speaks of the “capacity for a higher evolution” and the ability of mankind to “tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform consciousness.” The ultimate objective is to make America into “a harbinger of peace that will be “the light of nations” (http://www.thepeacealliance.org/content/view/278/23/).
While Williamson’s outfit is building the United States of World Peace, Neale Walsch and Brad Blanton are building “the United States of Being.” They describe this in their book Honest to God: A Change of Heart that Can Change the World (2002).
“Our objective is to organize a new government for a new nation, to be built first in our imaginations and in cyberspace after we sign up as citizens by signing the new Declaration of Independence. We then intend to grow larger as a political force in the current structure at the same time we model a new one, and then take over increasingly the actual functions of government. We call our new country the United States of Being and we intend to be based on the sovereignty of the individual, rather than the sovereignty of the king, or the sovereignty of representatives” (Walsch and Blanton, Honest to God, p. 212).
Observe that this United States of Being begins in the imagination. It will thus be brought into existence, allegedly, through the power of New Age visualization.
They would like to see New Age high priestess Oprah Winfrey run for president of the United States of Being, so that her “advanced spiritual” thinking can bring about a transformed America and ultimately a new world. Walsch says:
“I’ll tell you one thing, if Oprah didn’t want to run for President I’d suggest Marianne Williamson, because she has the ability to articulate very important ideas very quickly, in a moment, with twenty-five words or less. ... Barbara Marx Hubbard needs to be in that group, too. In the cabinet” (Honest to God, p. 200).
An Oprah presidency is apparently not in the cards, but in late 2007, for the first time in her career, she threw her full weight behind a presidential candidate. His name is Barack Obama, and he is doubtless the New Age candidate of choice.
When Oprah introduced Obama at a political rally on December 11, 2007, in Columbia, South Carolina, she called him “an evolved leader” and said, “We’re here to evolve to a higher plane.” She said he is a “force for peace” who can break down everything that divides, including race and politics and religion (“Messianic Rhetoric Infuses Obama Rallies,” Politico, Dec. 11, 2007). That’s New Age community building taken to the national level.
Obama is running on a vague platform of ill-defined “hope” and “change,” but his candidacy has stirred an inexplicable level of devotion. Speaking in Omaha, Nebraska, Obama said that he and his supporters would “remake the world” (YouTube, Feb. 7, 2008). The Associated Press called him “a metaphysical force in American politics” (AP, Feb. 12, 2008). Christena Weatherspoon said that it was like Obama was “inside her head” and “knows what I want” (Tribune-Chronicle, Youngstown, Ohio, Feb. 19, 2008). Actor George Clooney said, “He walks into a room and you want to follow him somewhere, anywhere,” and actress Halle Berry said, “I’ll do whatever he says to do. I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear” (Lisa Lehrer, Politico, Feb. 20).
On her Internet blog for February 27, 2008, Marianne Williamson said Obama’s campaign is evidence of a mighty wind that is blowing and reflects the yearning of the 60s hippy generation for a new age of love and peace. She cited the occultic psychoanalyst Carl Jung, plus Bob Dylan, Gloria Steinem, John Lennon, and Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“Every once in a while, a mighty wind blows. The political sentiments now storming America in the form of support for Barack Obama are a mighty wind indeed. ... I'm a boomer, so I know this feeling. We have been here before. We knew what Bob Dylan meant when he sang, ‘Something’s going on here, but you don’t know what it is....Do you, Mr. Jones?’ And something is going on again. What we’re experiencing here is a new conversation. ...
“From Bob Dylan to Gloria Steinem to John Lennon to Martin Luther King, Jr., people who use words to foster new thinking are the ones we see in retrospect to have OPENED DOORS TO A BETTER WORLD. ...
“The ability to inspire new thinking is a more important ability in a leader today, than simply being a ‘problem-solver.’ ... WHAT WE NEED IS SOMEONE WITH A BETTER STATE OF MIND, WHO WILL LEAD US TO A BETTER STATE OF OURS” (http://marianne.iamplify.com/about.jsp).
The reference to John Lennon is very significant. In his hugely popular 1971 song “Imagine” he sang of a New Age world:
“Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try/ No hell below us, above only sky/ Imagine all the people living for today. Imagine there’s no countries; it isn’t hard to do/ Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too/ Imagine all the people living in peace. Imagine no possessions; I wonder if you can/ No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man/ Imagine all the people sharing all the world./ You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one/ And some day I hope you’ll join us/ And the world will be as one.”
This is precisely the world that New Agers are attempting to create, and the title of the song reminds us of that one of their chief tools is the power of visualization. If they can just IMAGINE specifically enough and energetically enough and long enough, it will come to pass.
Whether Obama wins or loses the Democratic ticket and the White House, U.S. politics will never be the same. The New Age has gained an open level of influence heretofore unthinkable.
The Age of Aquarius is on a roll.
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