Exposing Christian Propaganda Against The New Age Movement

by Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer

In her 1983 #1 best-selling book The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow Constance Cumbey offered the first major criticism of the New Age movement from a Christian perspective. She has also discussed the contents of this book of hers on the EWTN global Catholic TV network. I occasionally correspond with her and often post on her blog. My 11/7/2017 post on her blog reads:

In one of Constance Cumbey's blog posts about Pope Francis' new environmental mission, she provided a link to an article by Mary Jo Anderson, a renowned Roman Catholic writer and speaker. In the post Cumbey wrote: "I had talks about it [where Catholics are headed] in the past and she [Anderson] agreed with my analysis "Earth Worship was definitely where they were headed." The article that Cumbey provided a link to is titled Neo Gnostics at the End of the Age.

In the article Anderson wrote: Across America Catholics were being wooed with outright neo-Gnostic practices taught by priests and nuns. The strategy to empty the Catholic Church of its doctrine and to supplant it with a false religion...[An Earth worshiping religion].

Neo Gnostics do not worship the earth, nor do they worship the creation. The most common form of ancient Gnosticism was Valentinianism. The renowned Christian Gnostic Valentinus (100-160), who was once a candidate for the Bishop of Rome, but lost and then started his own church, wrote: "... the world is the total mountain of evil, a deserted dwelling place of beasts, to which all who lived before the law and all Gentiles render worship. But Jerusalem represents the creation or the Creator whom the Jews worship.... You then who are spiritual should worship neither the creation nor the Craftsman [Creator, the Old Testament God], but the Father of Truth [Jesus's Father]."

Anderson also wrote: Perhaps the best known New Age apostate from Catholicism is a former Dominican priest, Matthew Fox. Fox frequents dissident Catholic conferences as a guru of a pantheistic “Creation Spirituality.” Fox, and New Age priest Tom Berry are votaries of the urbane French Jesuit paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin. ... It was Chardin’s mystical marriage of pantheism and futurism that captivated and inspired....

Matthew Fox is not a pantheist and neither was Chardin a pantheist. Fox is a pan[en]theist who is a votary of the pan[en]theist Teilhard de Chardin.

A statement on Fox's website reads: A principle of Creation Spirituality is panentheism: God is as much beyond all words and images as in all forms and beings. God is both transcendent and immanent. [Pantheists believe that God is only immanent.]

The universe is expanding out into infinity and it's expanding faster than the speed of light. The universe is an image or form, and there are no images or forms beyond the outer boundaries of the universe. The only thing that is out there in infinity is God's Spirit.

Helena Blavatsky is the Mother of the New Age movement. Mahatma Gandhi said that: "Theosophy is the teaching of Madame Blavatsky. It is Hinduism at its best." Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) was a Hindu who is widely revered as the Father of Yoga in the West. He quoted his guru in his book Autobiography of a Yogi, "Christ’s claim, 'No man cometh unto the Father, but by me' (John 14:6), is a promise to all humanity, irrespective of creed. 'Jesus meant, never that he was the sole Son of God, but that no man can attain the unqualified Absolute, the transcendent Father beyond creation, until he has first manifested the 'Son' or activating Christ Consciousness within creation." - Swami Sri Yukteswar

God the Father is Spirit and It is in all of creation and It is also beyond the creation and is infinite. When people become One with Spirit in creation they are still attached to having a body to identify with, so they will experience the universe as their body. This gives them the mystical experience of being one with the universe. But they will then eventually advance spiritually and lose all attachment to having a body to identify with. They will then become One with the Father (or Spirit) beyond the creation.

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Two pontifical councils wrote and published a joint document about the New Age and they totally got it wrong. To distort the truth to the degree that they did in this document of theirs makes me think that they are influenced and deceived by an evil supernatural entity. They wrote:

New Age has a marked preference for Eastern or pre-Christian religions, which are reckoned to be uncontaminated by Judaeo-Christian distorsions. Hence great respect is given to ancient agricultural rites and to fertility cults. "Gaia", Mother Earth, is offered as an alternative to God the Father, whose image is seen to be linked to a patriarchal conception of male domination of women. There is talk of God, but it is not a personal God; the God of which New Age speaks is neither personal nor transcendent. Nor is it the Creator and sustainer of the universe, but an "impersonal energy" immanent in the world, with which it forms a "cosmic unity": "All is one". This unity is monistic, pantheistic or, more precisely, panentheistic. God is the "life-principle", the "spirit or soul of the world", the sum total of consciousness existing in the world. In a sense, everything is God. God's presence is clearest in the spiritual aspects of reality, so every mind/spirit is, in some sense, God."

Wikipedia: "Pantheism is the belief that all reality is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent god. Pantheists do not believe in a distinct personal or anthropomorphic god." [God is totally immanent.]

Wikipeadia: "Panentheism is the belief that the divine pervades and interpenetrates every part of the universe ... is greater than the universe ... extends beyond time and space. ... and transcends all things created." [God is both immanent and transcendent.]

H.P. Blavatsky, the Mother of the New Age Movement, hardly ever used the word “God.” She used terms such as “Deity,” “The Divine,” and “The Absolute.” Blavatsky said that "the One Infinite Divine Principle is undefinable and indescribable but that the ancient Hindu teaching about Brahman comes closest to the reality." It is literally "beginningless," and greater than the universe, which had a beginning. It "manfested" the universe and "sustains" it. And It is not a little bigger than the universe, but is "boundless," "endless," "Infinite," and "entirely unconditioned." "It is not a Being. It is Be-ness itself."

David Spangler, one of the founding figures of the modern New Age movement, wrote: The world soul is usually conceived as a "formative force," an active, intelligent, purposeful spiritual presence at work in the material world [it is immanent] to guide and guard the course of planetary evolution. It is generally not accorded the status of being the ultimate source, or Creator [who is transcendent], but might be looked upon as a great angelic or archangelic being presiding over the well being of the world, or as the gestalt, the wholeness of all the lives and patterns that manifest upon, and as, the earth [Gaia].

 

Paramahansa Yogananda wrote: "The word 'God' means the manifested, transcendental Being beyond creation, but existing in relation to creation. Spirit existed before God. God is the Creator of the universe, but Spirit is the Creator of God." Spirit is the "ultimate source, or Creator," because It "created"/emanated the Creator of the universe. Spirit is the ultimate source of everything.

Gnostics believe that because the "ultimate and absolute God," who is Spirit, emanated a deific being named Sophia, who in turn "emanated a flawed consciousness, a being who became the creator of the material and psychic cosmos" (who is referred to as "half-maker")" that, therefore, the "ultimate source, or Creator" (also known as the "authentic half") is the ultimate and absolute God, and that It (Spirit) is the ultimate source of everything.

 

This is true. Brahman is pure consciousness as the Vedas point out.

Prajñānam brahma - Brahman is pure consciousness (Aitareya Upanishad 3.3 of the Rig Veda)

Nirguna Brahman is pure consciousness of an impersonal nature, while God as Saguna Brahman and the jivatman or soul are pure consciousness of a personalised nature, with the Jivatman in bondage due to karma. This bondage, when hacked off through spiritual exercises and meditation, results in the soul or jivatman being purified of karma and regaining its original state as pure consciousness.

Here Spirit stands for Nirguna Brahman, while God stands for Saguna Brahman. Nirguna means attributeless , formless and impersonal. Saguna means with attributes, qualities, form and personalized nature.

In the yogic philosophy, the Shivalingam as Saguna Brahman is considered the first form to arise when creation occurs, and also the last form before the dissolution of creation.

The Kashi Vishwanath temple considers the Shivalinga as representing a cosmic pillar of light. The avatars Parashurama, Rama and Krishna were worshippers of Shiva themselves.

Interestingly, as per the Shaivite monotheistic religious sect called the Prajapita Brahmakumaris, the form of the Shiva linga denotes God as a point of light, and who is known as Jehovah, Allah, Ahura Mazda in other religions.

The Prajapita Brahmakumaris is the only spiritual organisation in the world run by women leaders, administrators and teachers. They have teaching centres in almost every country around the world where they teach 7 day courses on yogic philosophy and meditation free of charge.

Brahma Kumaris - Wikipedia

Brahma Kumaris - Home