What's New Age spirituality all about? An eclectic post-war synthesis of eastern and indigenous belief systems woven in with more recent teachings such as Theosophy, itself based based on esoteric and occult traditions. New Age is not so much a religion, then, as a zeitgeist, a loose spiritual twist to the counterculture that swept through the Western world in the second half of the 20th century. With no single leader-figure, no holy text or agreed theology, it was less of a movement and more of a soup in which dozens of ingredients found themselves.
Though the term 'New Age' has fallen out of favour (Google Books' Ngram Viewer shows usage of the term peaking around the turn of the millennium), many of its features are still around. The continued rise of 'spiritual but not religious' (SBNRs) as a name one could self-apply suggests that the concept of a spiritual pick'n'mix remains attractive in the free market of ideas.
Humans are still drawn to the numinous, but increasingly reject the regimentation of organised religion, with many preferring the network to the hierarchy.
New Age hasn't got itself together in the way that early Christianity did – establishing its central set of beliefs, rites and rituals, deciding on the canonical texts, casting out heretical thought (such as the Gnostics) and formulating itself into a robust religious system that could last millennia. Having said that, it did take Christianity over 300 years to reach that stage.
The New Age was said to be the Age of Aquarius, though astrologers remain divided as to when it would begin (from the 15th to the 24th or even 36th century). Though the second half of the 20th century does find a consensus. And here I will cite the lyrics of Aquarius by Fifth Dimension:
"When the moon is in the Seventh House, and Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius/Age of Aquarius
Harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions, golden living dreams of visions,
Mystic crystal revelation/And the mind's true liberation."
You get the picture – wishful thinking, well-meaning twaddle. Yet this song, from the hit musical, Hair, was one of the most popular songs of 1969. Today, however, the words no longer seem to resonate. The hope of the hippy age has been extinguished by the divisive atmosphere created to a large extent by the social media, amplifying discontent brought on by globalisation and the tech revolution.
So what features did New Age spirituality possess?
Although focused very much on the self, there was a dismissal of individual salvation. New Age is more about vague notions of collective Cosmic consciousness – "are we are all one or something?" Communes never took off; the West was too comfortable on its sofas in centrally heated or air-conditioned houses watching TV.
I have been put off New Age by its very vagueness, by it's imprecision ('Quantum Healing' from people who probably couldn't explain the difference between the Copenhagen interpretation and the Many-worlds interpretation); the number of folk making a living selling New Age merch, and its lack of intellectual rigour. And it's very likely that the SBNRs feel the same way, hence SBNR on the rise, while New Age is in decline.
Yet from time to time something New Age'y passes by me and does resonate; an idea that feels roughly right but one that needs a lot more thought to turn it into something more appealing. Typically, it's around couching the narrative in the precise language of philosophy and science rather than waffle and slogan.
Certainly the topic of reincarnation is one brought to the fore on with New Age. A central belief in Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as in many animist faiths, it never figured in the mainstream of the Abrahamic religions which have almost exclusively shaped mainstream Western thought up to the mid-20th century. Whilst I am deeply interested in it, and convinced that there's some reality to this phenomenon, I am put off by the typical New Age treatment which comes across as artifice and lacking in authenticity. Products of imagination rather than of anomalous qualia memories (exomnesia or xenomnesia). Serious academic research by the late Ian Stevenson or Bruce Greyson from the University of Virginia, or James Matlock, or is something I can latch on to; stories about "my past life as a Russian ballet dancer killed by the Nazis" don't.
The need for meaningful spiritual experience, and the form they take, is very much an individual matter. ("Everyone who seeks God shall find God in their own way," as I have stated.) Everyone has a different threshold of evidence that needs to be met for some belief to become accepted.
[I awoke this morning from a brief but vivid and very beautiful dream; a golden meadow bathed in strong morning sunlight, full of bright flowers. I take a really close-up look at one, strongly saturated yellow; the detail, the complexity is stunning. The power of the works of nature. Waking up, I open the blinds – outside, it's grey and dull, the light is weak and there are no flowers.]
Tomorrow: from New Age to the Seven Ages.
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