Caryl Matrisciana (1947-2016) was one of the leading Christian opponent of the New Age. She wrote a best-selling book titled "Gods of the New Age." There is a Caryl Productions YouTube video about the New Age. It is titled "Yoga Uncoiled - Christ Centered Yoga False Christianity - Documentary." The video includes an introductory documentary about how the New Age spiritual philosophy entered the mainstream by way of the Beatles' promotion of the yogic Hindu, 1960's hippie spiritual revolution. In this video a narrator states that the 1960's spiritual revolution that the Beatles began to promote-continued to spread throughout the 70's and succeeding decades-and that it "is still rapidly gaining global acceptance today." The members of the two pontifical councils that wrote a joint document on the New Age do not know what the New Age is about and neither do all the other leading Christian opponents of the New Age, they get it wrong. They teach that it is about pantheism and panentheism, this is true, but there are very different forms of pantheism and panentheism and the form of pantheism and panentheism that they claim the New Age is about, is totally wrong. The leading Christian opponents of the New Age claim that New Age pantheists view the universe and God as identical. This is not New Age panentheism. Panentheism is the belief that the divine pervades and interpenetrates every part of the universe and also extends beyond time and space and is infinite. The leading Christian opponents of the New Age all most always incorrectly teach that New Agers only believe in the part of panentheism wherein God is immanent, or is in all things, and if they do mention that New Agers also believe that God extends beyond time and space they when erroneously teach that God's transcendence beyond the creation is irrelevant to New Agers. The truth is, God's transcendence beyond the creation is the most important part of the New Age spirituality philosophy. The Beatles promoted the spiritual philosophy of Paramahansa Yogananda and his line of Gurus. Yogananda's book "Autobiography of a Yogi" is considered by many to be the New Age Hippie Bible. 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." The Hindu name for "God" is Brahma. "This Sanskrit word [Brahma] derives from the verbal root b?h 'to expand, grow, fructify', because 'Brahma expands' and becomes the Universe woven out of his own substance." - Theosophy Wiki The Hindu scriptures teach that after Spirit (the Supreme God) "created"/emanated a subordinate God, this subordinate God sinned. After this God sinned, He became manifest, because of his sin, as this corrupt and less-than-divine physical universe. A Hindu scripture says that after God sinned Spirit told him that he would "NEVER BE WORSHIPED." Thus, Hindus and New Agers do not worship the universe. New Agers do not believe that God and the creation are identical. New Agers believe that a less-than-divine god and the universe are identical. New Agers believe in and worship the transcendent God (Spirit) beyond creation. Helena Blavatsky, the Mother of the New Age Movement, wrote in THE SECRET DOCTRINE Vol. 1, Page 274: The Universe {Brahma] is called, with everything in it, Maya, because all is temporary therein, from the ephemeral life of a fire-fly to that of the Sun. Compared to the eternal immutability of the One [Spirit]. Yogananda wrote: Maya is the principle of relativity, inversion, contrast, duality, oppositional states; the "Satan" (lit., in Hebrew, "the adversary") of the Old Testament prophets; and the "devil" whom Christ described picturesquely as a "murderer" and a "liar," because "there is no truth in him". -(John 8:44) Yogananda also wrote: Maya is Nature herself—the phenomenal worlds, ever in transitional flux as antithesis to Divine Immutability. Beyond the gross vibratory boundaries of matter [or, beyond the boundaries of the finite universe made of matter], the Immutable Infinite reigns in all His majesty and vastness. Yogananda's Guru wrote: “Jesus meant, never that he was the sole Son of God, but that no man can obtain the unqualified Absolute, the transcendent Father beyond creation, until he has first manifested the ‘Son’ or activating Christ Consciousness within creation.” - Swami Sri Yukteswar Contrary to what the leading Christian opponents of the New Age believe and teach, for New Agers becoming One with the "unqualified Absolute, the transcendent Father beyond creation" is the ultimate goal.
"spiritual philosophy" isn't "new age". it is older and more eternal, then any brand name flavor of belief, be it christian, buddhist, hindu or anything else. everyone can, and many people do, experience things that can neither be proven nor disproven, nor accurately discribed, and none of them, whatever it might be, that actually does exist, owe anything, to what anyone tells anyone else, to think they know about it.
If I understand what your post is about, you seem to be making three main points: (1) the Beatles and their guru played a role in putting the New Age on the map in the 1960s, at least according to its Christian critics; (2) Christian critics consider New Age spirituality to be a form of nature worship--either pantheism or panentheism; and (3) this is wrong, because the essence of New Age spirituality is belief in a transcendent deity beyond material existence and ultimate union with this deity. My only reservations are that it provides maybe too neat a picture of a diffuse movement. I'll take on the first of these and come back to the others later. The Beatles played a role in popularizing East Indian spirituality, but New Age thinking was already around and gaining a following as a result of the counterculture of the sixties and experimentation with psychedelic drugs at Harvard by Leary, Alpert, et al. , in the early 1960s. Caryl Matrisciana wasn't the only Christian critic to blame the Beatles for the movement. British Catholic writer K.V. Turley sees the release of the Beatles film Revolver as a major contributor. "It was the first Beatles album to make explicit reference to these influences then surfacing: the final track, Tomorrow Never Knows, using direct quotations from The Tibetan Book of the Dead. It wasn’t just the lyrics though. That track was musically very different from anything the band had thus far recorded. Its droning, discordant, hallucinatory sound world marking the commencement of what would come to be viewed as the embodiment of the preeminent counter-cultural musical form: psychedelia—at the time seen as an important component part in the dawning of the so-called 'Age of Aquarius'.” But he Beatles, particularly George Harrison were influenced by more than one guru. Besides Yogugnanda, there were Vishnidevananda, Bheklividanta Swami, and of course the celebrated Maharishi Makesh Yoga. Besides Asian influence, there was western esoteric/occult influence. The Theosophy of Madame Blatavsly fashioned an ecclectic brew from eastern thought and western mystical and esoteric/occult traditions, including Gnosticism and hermeticism. And Alice Bailey, who succeeded Annie Besant as head of the movement, was the first to make extensive use of the term and basic concepts. As the term "New Age' suggests, Bailey's version stresses the dawning of a new age of harmony, celebrated in the famous song "Age of Aquarius, from the 1967 musical Hair. The Age of Aquarius is an astrological term which posits a linear view of history, unlike the cyclical versions emphasized in eastern thought, and comes out of an apocalyptic view of history. After the Theosophy movement collapsed Bailey continued under the name Arcane School in 1923, and after her death in 1949, the Arcane School continued under the auspices of the Lucis (formerly Lucifer) Trust to train for New Age discipleship. The year 1967 was a coming of age for the movement. This was the year of the "Summer of Love". The musical Hair made its debut with the Age of Aquarius song; Anthony Brooke, a wealthy patron and founder of the Universal Foundation predicted an apocalyptic event and published Revelation for the New Age; and the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper album was released. K.V. Turley comments darkly: "A new age was indeed dawning, and on the album cover the world saw the “founding fathers” of this coming reality. It should have set alarm bells ringing. Amongst a seemingly random selection were: assorted Hindu gurus and deities, Jung & Marx, H.G. Wells & G.B. Shaw, and, of course, Aleister Crowley—not included in the final edit was Lennon’s choice of Hitler." But I think this gives the Beatles far to much credit or blame.
I would only say that I believe the counterculture was introduced to Eastern thinking more by the Beat generation et al then by The Beatles, Leary, and Ginsberg on his own. Champions of Eastern thought that greatly influenced the counterculture might better be identified as D.T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, Richard Alpert, and Robert Thurman. (Although Thurman came along a little later).
I've met quite a few new agers over time, and none of them seemed that focused on a transcendent Father deity. In fact, part of the new age as I've encountered it, is a kind of longing to bring back the Goddess. It often involves people who are disillusioned with Christianity as presented by mainstream churches, and seek something more to their liking. It always seemed to me like a smorgasborg of differing ldea and tendencies, some of it rather silly, - from energy healing, flying saucers, neo-shamanism, ascended masters, channelling and the rest. None of it very deep. A lot of it simply folks trying to make money out of people's gulibility. I'd say the new age movemnent has gone past its peak here in the UK. It was all a lot more in evidence during the 1990s.To me it seems to have been connected with the millenium and a brief period of optimism prior to that. Hardly hear anything about it now. There may be earlier references, but the earliest reference I know of to a new age came from the 18th century theologian, Emanuel Swedenborg. Long before the Beatles or even the Beats.
I go along with the comments above in viewing New Age spirituality as too diverse and ecclectic to characterize as a quest for union with a transcendent deity. The sixties were a time of rejection of the canned spirituality of the churches and an exploration of exotic religions, especially those of Indians with the dot and those with the feather, as well as "go with the flow" Taoism and various offshoots of esoteric/occulticTheosophy, especially Alice Bailey's. The strains geared to Native American sprituality glorified Mother Earth to a degree that bordered on neo-paganism, pantheism and panentheism--nature worship, Christian critics complained. The Gaia hypothesis was the culmination of this line of thinking, and was essentially pantheistic. The more oriental strains rooted in transcendental meditation envisioned union with the divine consciousness, the Brahman. But then the OP says something strange: "The Hindu scriptures teach that after Spirit (the Supreme God) "created"/emanated a subordinate God, this subordinate God sinned. After this God sinned, He became manifest, because of his sin, as this corrupt and less-than-divine physical universe. A Hindu scripture says that after God sinned Spirit told him that he would "NEVER BE WORSHIPED." What Hindu scripture says that? Hindu scriptures teach that the Brahman , the ultimate, eternal reality in the universe, is manifest in the Trimurti of cosmic functions of creation (Brahma), maintenance (Vishnu) and destruction (Shiva), which in turn are manifested in numerous gods. The teaching described in the OP is distinctively Gnostic and dualistic--possibly a syncretic theosophical rendering by someone getting Hinduism from Blatavsky or her disciples. The God(dess) who sinned sounds a lot like the Aeon Sophia and her progeny, the Demiurge, described in the Apocryphon ("Secret book") of John With New Age spirituality, practically anything goes, but I think it would be difficult to say that this version is the essence of New Age thinking, or that "for New Agers becoming One with the 'unqualified Absolute, the transcendent Father beyond creation' is the ultimate goal."
I've read quite a few Hindu scriptures but never come across anything resembling this. It does seem more in line with gnostic myths about Sophia and her son, Yaldabaoth.
