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What Is the New Age Movement?Awake!—1994 | March 8
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A Religion of Self
In her autobiographical film Out on a Limb, famous actress and New Age author Shirley MacLaine stands on a windswept beach with her arms outstretched and exclaims: “I am God! I am God!” Like her, many New Agers promote the search for a higher self and the idea of a god within. They teach that humans need only raise their consciousness to find their divinity.
Once this is accomplished, they claim, the reality of a universal interconnectedness becomes clear—everything is god, and god is everything. This is by no means a new idea. Ancient religions of Mesopotamia and Egypt believed in the deity of animals, water, the wind, and the sky. More recently, Adolf Hitler allegedly encouraged others to embrace the “strong, heroic belief in God in Nature, God in our own people, in our destiny, in our blood.”
New Age culture is saturated with literature, seminars, and training programs dealing with self-potential and self-improvement. “Getting in touch with my inner self” is a popular logo. People are encouraged to try anything and everything that can help them unleash their own possibilities. As one writer put it in the magazine Wilson Quarterly, the “movement’s central teaching is ‘that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as it works for you.’”
Margot Adler, a New Age guru, explains that many of the women who join women’s New Age movements do it “for reasons that are very personal. . . . They hate their bodies, they hate themselves. They come into these groups which basically say to you, ‘You’re the Goddess, you’re wonderful.’”
New York magazine describes one group’s quest for the higher self: “A woman intones, ‘We are the teachers of the New Dawn. We are the Ones.’ Other participants, wearing horned headdresses, feathered masks, and wispy gowns, dance through the forest, grunting and gesticulating, keening and moaning.”
Sanitized Occultism
Some New Age concepts promote a new, sanitized view of the occult. Satanism is no longer associated with the occult in the minds of many New Agers. A writer in the magazine Free Inquiry states: “There are a growing number of practitioners of witchcraft, none of whom have any beliefs that embrace Satanism.”
A recent survey in Germany showed that there were 10,000 active witches in that country. Even children are being subtly attracted to the occult. The German book Der Griff nach unseren Kindern (The Grasp for Our Children) explains that through “children’s drama cassettes, children are getting accustomed to the new image of the witch as a normal woman who uses magic for good purposes.” The book adds: “The attention of even small children is thus attracted to a New Age way that can lead them to the supernatural.”
In her books, Shirley MacLaine promotes the idea that the occult is merely hidden knowledge and that its being hidden does not mean that it is not truth. This philosophy has lured countless people into experimenting with exotic spiritistic practices, such as divination, astrology, telepathy, and communication with the spirits. The latter has been known for thousands of years as spiritistic mediumship. But New Agers call it channeling. Their theory claims that the spirits of the dead select certain individuals to be their channels of communication with mankind.
These supposed human channelers can go into a trance at will and speak or write messages of “enlightenment,” purportedly from the dead or from extraterrestrial beings. Spirits of the dead are regarded as master sages awaiting the right time to reincarnate. In the meantime, they are allegedly guiding mankind into a new age.
Many New Agers meet regularly to listen to what these supposed masters have to say through their channelers. And believers have a choice of spirits to consult. Among those supposedly speaking today are the spirits of John Lennon and Elvis Presley, extraterrestrials with names like Attarro and Rakorczy, and a 35,000-year-old warrior from mythical Atlantis named Ramtha.
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What Is the New Age Movement?Awake!—1994 | March 8
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[Box on page 6]
MacLaine, New Age, and Ramtha
“THE astral dimension was real even though we couldn’t see it or measure it in linear terms. There is a greater reality than our ‘perceived’ conscious reality. That is what has come to be called the new age of thought. A new age of awareness. . . .
“I visited accredited mediums who channeled spirit guides from the astral plane. I developed relationships with those ‘entities.’ . . . One was more profound than any of the others. His name was . . . Ramtha the Enlightened One. . . . He said he had had one incarnation during the Atlantean time period and had achieved total realization in that lifetime. . . . As I looked into the eyes of Ramtha, I heard myself say, ‘Were you my brother in your Atlantean incarnation?’
“. . . Tears spilled from his eyes. ‘Yes, my beloved,’ he said, ‘and you were my brother.’”
MacLaine goes on to say: “The point of his spiritual education was to impart the truth that we were God. We were as capable of knowledge as he.”—Dancing in the Light, by Shirley MacLaine.
Compare Genesis 3:5, where the Serpent (Satan) lyingly said to Eve: “God knows that in the very day of your eating from it your eyes are bound to be opened and you are bound to be like God, knowing good and bad.” Those desiring divine approval must avoid any involvement with wicked and deceptive spirit creatures. The Law of Moses stated: “Do not turn yourselves to the spirit mediums, and do not consult professional foretellers of events, so as to become unclean by them. I am Jehovah your God.”—Leviticus 19:31.
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