contemporary theology ii: st507 from theology of hope to ... · that everything and everyone is god...

Contemporary Theology II:

Transcript - ST507 Contemporary Theology II: From Theology of Hope to Postmodernism© 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 18 of 24ST507

New Age Theology: Central Themes

Contemporary Theology II: From Theology of Hope to Postmodernism

In our last lecture at the very end we began to look at New Age theology, and I noted for you that there are many different ideas involved in New Age thinking, but that we could identify some six central themes. At the end of our last lecture, we looked at the first one, and I want to pick up the rest of those major themes and then go from there, but before we do any of that, let’s bow for a word of prayer.

Thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to study about these contemporary theologies. We realize, Lord, that we are now studying a movement that has caught the fancy of many ordinary, average people in our societies. Lord, because these ideas are so pervasive in our day, we realize the importance of understanding what’s being said and how to respond to it. So help us now as we study. For it’s in Christ’s name we pray it. Amen.

Let me come back to you to sketch out these major themes in New Age thinking, and as we have suggested before, each individual theme raises a set of subthemes as well. The first one of those themes that we looked at last time is the idea that all or everything is one. There is a unity within the universe of every existing thing. The second theme is that all or everything is God. Once it’s claimed that everything is one, then the only question that’s left at that point is what that one thing is. According to New Age thinking, that one thing is God. As a result the New Age doctrine that everything and everyone is God is a central idea in New Age theology. Here we get the view then that everything partakes of the one divine essence. If this view sounds familiar, it is. It’s really nothing new at all. It’s justpPantheism resurrected and recast in a different context.

Now just because many things that are part of this unity, which is said to be divine, because many of those things have personality, that does not mean that the pantheistic God of the New Age is necessarily personal. As Douglas Groothuis says on page 20 of

John S. Feinberg, PhD University of Chicago, MA and PhD

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, ThMTalbot Theological Seminary, MDiv

University of California, BA

Transcript - ST507 Contemporary Theology II: From Theology of Hope to Postmodernism © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.


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Unmasking the New Age, and I quote him, “It is argued that if everything is one and if all dualities in reality dissolve into the cosmic unity, then so does the idea of personality. A personality can only exist where it defines itself in relation to other beings or things. Even self-consciousness demands some form of a relationship, but if all is one, then there is only one being, the One. The One [and here One is capitalized] does not have a personality, it is beyond personality. God is more an It than a He. The idea of a personal God is abandoned in favor of an impersonal energy, force, or consciousness. Ultimate reality is God, who is in all and through all; in fact, God is all.”

As you are aware, Scripture makes it very clear that there is a definite distinction between God on the one hand and everything else on the other. And Scripture shows that God is a personal being. He is not an impersonal force or energy. Note here, however, how this monistic, pantheistic notion of God sounds reminiscent in certain respects to Hegel’s concept of God as Spirit; that is, you’ll remember that idea of an underlying consciousness that unites all individual consciousnesses. Now please do not misunderstand this. I am not saying that New Agers got this idea from Hegel, and that this is exactly the idea that Hegel presents when he talks about Spirit. I’m only noting that there are some similarities between the ideas of Hegel and New Age thinking at this point.

So a second major theme then in New Age theology is that all is God. The third theme naturally and logically flows from the first two, and it is the theme that humanity, that human beings are God. I’m sure that you can see that it follows with logical necessity that if all is God, then humans are also gods. Now to show that New Agers in fact make this logical connection, let me quote what Groothuis says on page 21. He quotes some New Age thinkers saying, “We are God in disguise. Only ignorance keeps us from realizing our divine reality. Our goal, according to New Age analyst, Theodore Roszak, is to awaken to the god who sleeps at the root of the human being.” Then Groothuis says Swami Muktananda, a great influence on Werner Erhard, founder of EST and a forum, pulls no pantheistic punches when he says, and he quotes, “Kneel to your own self. Honor and worship your own being. God dwells within you as you.” That’s pretty clear language that human beings are, in fact, God.

Let me read a little bit further from Groothuis on pages 21 through 22, where he quotes a number of New Age thinkers, and we can see that they’re suggesting that indeed human beings are God.



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Groothuis says, “Whether it comes from Eastern religions such as Hinduism, Atman is Brahman, the individual self, that is, is really the universal self, or from Classical Occultism, and the here the idea is ‘as above, so below’; that is God and humanity are one, or whether it comes from the new self-actualizing psychologies, they are psychologies that say all knowledge, power, and truth are within and waiting to be unlocked. This, of course, means that the New Age raises the placard of Pantheism high. You are God. That’s what they’re saying. Stewart Brand,” Groothuis says, “writing in the introduction to the popular book The Next Whole Earth Catalog says, ‘We are as gods and might as well get good at it.’ This is the good news,” Groothuis says, “that the New Age has to preach. According to George Leonard, longtime New Age activist and author, each of us is the entire universe and Leonard says, ‘we are like a god omnipotent and omniscient.’”

In addition to these New Age themes, a fourth New Age theme is that all of us need a change in our consciousness. You see, if everyone is one and if everything, including human beings, is God, then why is it that we don’t think of ourselves in this way? Why is it that we don’t see our divinity, and why is it that we don’t see the unity among all things? New Agers tell us that the reason is simply ignorance. It’s an ignorance that is engendered by Western culture that has shaped our consciousness. As a result we remain content with the everyday notions of human limitation and human finitude. Western culture, Western ideology, Western thinking, has told us that, and we have bought into it. What we need to do, though, is to be enlightened to our true identity. In other words, what we need is a change in consciousness.

Now you might say, How would one go about getting this change of consciousness? According to New Agers, there are various ways that this could happen. One possible way would be through sports. As strange as that may seem, let me read to you what Groothuis says about this so that you can get an idea of how this might work. This is from page 22 to 23, Unmasking the New Age. He says, “There are many ways we can achieve this enlightenment. Even sports, the all-American pastimes of brawn and skill, have become a theater for this kind of change in consciousness. Michael Murphy, founder of the Esalen Institute in northern California, has studied the experiences of athletes and concludes that extreme physical achievement, whether it be in baseball, football, golf, skiing or whatever, can induce a mystical state of consciousness much like that spoken of in Eastern religions. He says in his book entitled The Psychic Side of Sports that ‘the many reports that we have



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collected show us that sport has enormous power to sweep us beyond the ordinary sense of self, to evoke capacities that have generally been regarded as mystical, occult, or religious.’”

So it’s possible that through our activity in sports we might enhance our consciousness and gain a new one, but enlightenment may also come, we are told, in the scientist’s laboratory. Here let me read again from Groothuis, pages 23 and 24, “But this change in consciousness is not limited to the playing field. It can also take place in a scientist’s laboratory. Fritjof Capra, after having an experience that altered his understanding of the universe, describes how what had previously been scientific theories became for him a mystical reality.” Groothuis quotes him as saying, “‘I ‘saw’ the atoms of the elements and those of my body participating in this cosmic dance of energy; I felt this rhythm and I ‘heard’ its sound, and at that moment I knew that this was the dance of Shiva, the Lord of Dancers worshipped by the Hindus.’ For Capra the experience of oneness (‘the Dance of Shiva’) compelled him to attempt a reconciliation and marriage between modern high energy physics and Eastern mysticism.”

Sometimes people have an alleged contact with some sort of UFO or extraterrestrial being, and they tell us that that too has triggered this change in consciousness. But beyond these ways of gaining this enlightenment, this change of consciousness, are some other things that may come spontaneously, or they may come through disciplined practice—disciplined practice, for example, in meditation, in yoga, or some other consciousness-raising technique. Other methods for doing this are chanting, dancing, or tripping their way into altered states of awareness. “They may use self-hypnotism, internal visualization, biofeedback, and even the sexual act,” says Groothuis.

On page 25 Groothuis explains to us what these kinds of transforming experiences are called. He says, “There are many names for this transforming experience: cosmic consciousness, God-realization, self-realization, enlightenment, illumination, Nirvana (that’s what the Buddhist would call it), satori (that’s what Zen might call it), at-one-ment or satchitananada (as the Hindus might call it).”

What are we to do, and what are we looking for when we seek this change of consciousness through one of these methods? Groothuis again explains. He says, “But whatever the name, this new level of awareness is said to be vital for the resurrection of



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Western civilization and the world. The old consciousness of Western rationalism has stripped the world of mystic meaning. Only through a resurrection of consciousness will the world be raised out of the modern miry pit. As the popular New Age radio program ‘New Dimensions’ says in their introduction, ‘It is only through a change of consciousness that the world will be changed. This is our responsibility.’

“And what are we to do? We are to look within. As one New Age ad put it, ‘The only way out is in.’ All is perfect says Werner Erhard. The trouble is we don’t see it. Humans are not depraved or dependent on any outside source of deliverance or strength. The answer is not reconciliation with a God different from ourselves, but the realization that we ourselves are God. The self is the cosmic treasury of wisdom, power, and delight.

“This realization of oneness and divinity leads to spiritual power and well-being. Tension subsides, claims transcendental meditation, when one meditates twice daily. The true god-self consumes the troubles of everyday life. But often the claims of the New Age embrace far more than natural well-being. In 1977,” Groothuis says, “transcendental meditation offered a Sidhi program which promised advanced students the ability to levitate, fly, and become invisible.”

I think it’s also important that we note the role of the mind and the role of reason in all of this change of consciousness. Someone might say, This really is terrific because finally we’re going to get our minds to operate at full steam, so to speak, full power. We’re going to use all that we’ve got there. Not at all. Listen to what we find in regard to the use of the mind.

On page 26 we read, “If this change of consciousness depends on our grasping and experiencing some truth, we must ask ourselves what role does our mind play or our reason? Some teachings of the New Age seem contradictory; that there are many realities and that all is one. Some reply that ordinary logic doesn’t apply to the higher states of consciousness; in fact, it may hinder the raising of consciousness. The influential guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh puts it strongly: ‘It is not that the intellect sometimes misunderstands. Rather, the intellect always misunderstands. It is not that the intellect sometimes errors, it is that the intellect is the error, it always errors.’” Then Groothuis says, “Though some may qualify this statement, New Age thinkers agree that the One is beyond what the normal intellect can grasp. It must be



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experienced, not discussed.”

Reason and intellect then are basically put aside; the mind to a certain extent is to become emptied of these thoughts, and one is just to experience this higher level consciousness. Now, of course, we know that Christianity teaches that human beings do need a change in their thinking. However, the change that Scripture says is necessary is not that we begin seeing ourselves as gods or that we start to think about how to release the potential that is within us; instead, the need for all of us is to see ourselves as God sees us—as sinners in need of a Savior. As Groothuis says on page 27, “Jesus did not teach ‘at-one-ment’ with the One (which would involve losing individuality), but atonement with God through His sacrificial death on the cross.”

In addition, God doesn’t resolve rational, logical thought; instead, God’s propositional revelation that we find in Scripture assumes that human beings are capable of intellectually understanding what God has told them about how we are to relate to Him and to one another. So rather than saying that intellect is the problem, if that were the case then why would God have revealed to us all the propositions which require intellectual interaction, propositions of Scripture? Indeed, we have a very different picture in New Age thinking from what we find in biblical Christianity.

The fifth main theme of New Age theology is one that you probably would expect. It’s a view that says that all religions are one. If it is true that we hold that all is one and all are God, one adopts those New Age themes, then it stands to reason that all religions must really be about the same thing. Though the externals of the religions may differ, it seems that the essence of each religion would really have to be the same and would have to be based on the same experience of the oneness of all things. Any claims, then, that Christians would make or any other religion would make about the distinctiveness of their own religion must be denied, and they must be dissolved into the cosmic unity. As we’re going to see, it is even claimed that the real teachings of Jesus square with the central ideas of the New Age, and it goes without saying that Jesus, then, is not who Christians claim He is.

As Groothuis explains, and here I quote him from pages 28 through 29 of Unmasking the New Age, “Jesus of Nazareth, then, is no longer said to be the only begotten Son of God, the God-man, the Lord and Savior of the cosmos. He is merely one of many appearances or manifestations of God throughout the millennia. His mission



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was to alert the sleeping masses to their innate divinity. Jesus is thus reverentially enshrined in the Pantheistic pantheon where He echoes the chorus of the enlightened: all is one. The Christ of the Bible is redefined and made the ventriloquist’s puppet for the New Age. Christ as the mediator between God and humanity is replaced with the idea of ‘Christ-consciousness,’ which is, of course, another word for cosmic consciousness. Likewise, the biblical teaching of eternal judgment (heaven or hell) is replaced by reincarnation in much New Age thought.”

Let me move to sketch for you, then, the sixth major theme, and it is the idea of cosmic evolutionary optimism. Groothuis appeals at this point to Julian Huxley, who is not a New Ager but who made some comments that seem to typify much of New Age optimism and hope for a better future. Huxley said, “Man is that part of reality in which and through which the cosmic process has become conscious and has begun to comprehend itself. His supreme task is to increase that conscious comprehension and to apply it as fully as possible to guide the course of events.”

Having quoted Huxley, Groothuis goes on to explain, and I quote him, “As this philosophy gains ground and infiltrates all of life with the gospel of cosmic unity, it is predicted that humanity will be ready to take over the reins of evolutions. Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit philosopher and paleontologist, prophesied a progressive evolutionary harmonization and unification of world consciousness eventually reaching ‘the Omega Point’ where all consciousness is fused and all become one with the One.” As Groothuis points out, then, de Chardin is a patron saint of New Age thinking, but there are other New Age thinkers that are also very optimistic about prospects for the future as more and more people become enlightened to the god within themselves and the fact that all of us are really one.

Let me read from Groothuis to share with you some of that optimism that other New Age thinkers have as part of their mindset. On page 30 we read, “A variety of futurists, notably Barbara Marx Hubbard and Willis Harman, expect a New Age to dawn, rising out of the ashes of the old Western world view. Hubbard warns that global problems are increasing exponentially; yet, at the same time our potentials are also growing exponentially. We must move beyond the ‘crisis futurism’ of doomsday scenarios in which we are seen as ‘poor lost riders mounted upon a wild horse of transformation with little hope of gaining control.’ Instead we must embrace a ‘spiritual futurism’ which incorporates all the



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strength of ‘evolutionary futurism’ (hope for radical evolutionary change). With millions now ‘actively praying, listening to inner intuition, expanding their awareness toward whole-centered consciousness,’ we see that evolution itself is ‘a consciousness-raising experience.’ We may even expect a new suprahuman species which will be ‘as superior to present day humanity as we are to the apes.’

“As consciousness changes, so will the future. In her book The Evolutionary Journey Hubbard explains what she means by ‘spiritual futurism.’” And then Groothuis quotes her, “‘At this moment of our planetary birth each person is called upon to recognize that the ‘Messiah is within.’ Christ consciousness or cosmic consciousness is awakening in millions of Christians and non-Christians.’ The ‘messiah within’ will lead all of us forward into a glorious future. We should remember,” Groothuis says, “that Hubbard’s article on ‘spiritual futurism’ did not appear in an obscure occult newsletter, but in a mainline magazine, The Futurist. Even ‘the establishment’” he says, “is becoming primed for transformation.”

These are the six main themes that lay out for us the basic concepts of New Age theology. But let me turn now to speak about New Age spirituality. How do you express your agreement with these beliefs? New Age spirituality incorporates a lot of ideas from the classical Eastern religions like Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism, but it is not simply reducible to those religions alone. And the reason for that is that it also incorporates items from the Judeo-Christian worldview and even from paganism. What results, then, if you will, is a hodgepodge of ideas and practices, and a lot of this is geared to the West and North America’s concern for efficiency and immediate results. We don’t like to be a people in the Western world and in North America, in particular, who just sit and think wonderful thoughts. We want to see some changes, some results from all of this wonderful thinking.

Let me, if I may, read to you from Groothuis again on page 132 to see what he has to say about this. He says, “The One may even receive technological support. A California firm is marketing ‘samadhi tanks,’ sensory deprivation tanks that can be installed in the privacy of your own home. The purpose is to achieve a higher state of consciousness—‘samadhi’ is a Hindu term for ‘oneness with the One’—and we’re supposed to receive this higher state of consciousness through entering a casket-like box which keeps out all light and noise while floating the user in water to simulate



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weightlessness. Supposedly, the mind turns inward and, through altered consciousness, produces various latent psychic powers.” Groothuis then says, “While some critics within the New Age may condemn such efficiency and pragmatism, the One often finds itself at home in this modern mindset. The agonized spiritual acrobatics of the mystics, masters, and sages is bypassed in favor of ‘the American way.’ Harvey Cox refers to this attitude as ‘enlightenment by Ticketron.’ The New Age repudiates the world-denying or ascetic approach that characterizes much of Eastern mysticism. Instead it favors a world-affirming or even hedonistic lifestyle where ‘enlightenment’ is fully compatible with worldly success.” You can see why this view, then, would be so popular with so many people. You can keep all of the trappings and possessions of modern life and still be, if you will, enlightened and raised to new powers.

Beyond this general kind of statement, we can specify some specific ideas that get incorporated into New Age spirituality. For one thing, there is an element that can be referred to for lack of a better term, and not that this is a bad one, but it can be referred to as neo-paganism. Let me, if I may, read to you again from Groothuis. He recounts an instance where he was on the campus of the University of Oregon and he picked up a tract there, a New Age tract, and here’s what it said. He says, “Several cars at the University of Oregon in Eugene sport the bumper sticker ‘Pagan and Proud’ or ‘I’m a born again pagan.’” Then he says, “walking through the student union one day, I was given a tract entitled ‘A Pledge to Pagan Spirituality.’” And then he quotes from it. He says, “It read in part, I am a pagan and I dedicate myself to channeling the spiritual energy of my inner-self to help and to heal myself and others. I know that I am a part of the whole of nature. May I grow in my understanding of the unity of all nature. May I always be mindful that I create my own reality and that I have the power within me to create positivity in my life. May I always be mindful that the goddess and god in all their forms dwell within me, and that this divinity is reflected through my own inner-self, my pagan spirit.”

That is quite a mouthful to say the least. Quite a tract full, we might say. This kind of spirituality, New Age spirituality, also includes the occult, but in using that term, we need to understand what is actually meant by it, and Groothuis is helpful here in explaining the many forms of occult practices that are involved in the New Age approach. And here, let me, if I may, read to you again from Groothuis. He says on page 134, “For many of us, the word



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occult conjures up images of the demonic and Satanic. Satanism, black masses and gruesome ritual sacrifice quickly come to mind. Although these elements have not been lacking in history and are not absent from the modern scene,” Groothuis says, “the burgeoning neo-pagan movement is not occult in that sense. While witchcraft is usually (and sometimes correctly) thought to be associated with Satan worship, many modern witches do not even believe in Satan. Despite disbelief in Satan, however, the essence of occultism remains. Occult (that term) means ‘hidden’ or ‘secret’; a concealed wisdom must be experienced for personal liberation and psychic power. Beyond the ordinary perceptions and feelings lies the experience of oneness, of the divine within. Connected with this monistic idea may be forms of divination (astrology, I Ching, tarot cards), spirit contact (with the dead, Ascended Masters, or nature spirits) or psychic powers (telepathy, ESP, precognition, telekinesis, magic).” So you see that occult is being used in a very fundamental sense of that which is hidden or secretive, and it doesn’t necessarily have to include the demonic and satanic, though it could.

Another element involved in New Age spirituality is worship of the great goddess. The emphasis here is to get away from patriarchal religion; we’ve heard that before already in this course, but now this idea is entrenched as well to a certain extent in New Age thinking. So there’s a desire to get away from patriarchal religion, that is, religion that deified masculinity and demoralized femininity and established male exploitation of women in nature. Again on page 134 of Groothuis, we have some thoughts here about worship of the great goddess. And on page 134, Groothuis has a quote from Margo Adler, a priestess in a coven and a reporter for National Public Radio. Here’s what she says: “By pagan they [that is, the pagans] usually mean the pre-Christian nature religions of the West, and their own attempts to revive them or to recreate them in new forms. The modern Pagan resurgence includes the new feminist goddess-worshipping groups, certain new religions based on the visions of science fiction writers, attempts to revive ancient European religions—Norse, Greek, Roman—and the surviving tribal religions.

“In rejecting much of Western culture—including established religion, male dominance, alienation from nature and the body—neo-pagans embrace the old ways of the earth and body. Through ritual celebration and myth, they attempt to reharmonize themselves with the Whole, or the One, which many of the groups refer to as the Goddess.



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“Patriarchal religion, these neo-pagans declare, pushed divinity off into the clouds and away from earth and heart; it deified masculinity and thus demoralized femininity, establishing male exploitation of women and nature. The Goddess, in all her ancient forms—Isis, Diana, Cubele, Hecate—symbolized the primal energies of fertility, sensuality, imagination, and celebration. But Mother-earth was replaced by Father-God; cosmology and theology were fumigated of femininity and for centuries God the Father and the sons of God ruled civilization after civilization. But now we must move beyond God the Father and be nurtured by the Goddess,” these people say.

“Interest in the ancient Goddess religion ranges from those motivated to psychologically reform the Western male-dominated psyche with the potent symbolism and mythology of the ancients, to those who make Goddess worship a religious practice, often aligning it with feminist concerns. The various goddesses of ancient culture serve as symbols of liberation from spiritual inferiority and personal and political powerlessness. Goddess enthusiasts usually advocate either the superiority of women or some kind of androgenous ideal.

“The revival of witchcraft (also known as Wicca) represents the return to the Goddess. While traditional male-dominated religion suppressed the Goddess in its theology and witch hunting, the Goddess will again prevail. The hope is that the old, deceptive view of witchcraft as demonic and Satanic will give way to the positive evaluation that Wicca is a natural spirituality of ecological wholeness and pantheistic pleasures. A modern witch said in an interview that ‘paganism is the spirituality of the ecological movement.’ According to Starhawk, a modern witch, ‘the Goddess is the world. Manifest in each of us, she can be known by every individual in all her magnificent diversity. Religion is a matter of relinking with the divine within and with her outer manifestations in all of the human and natural world.’”

This is indeed quite interesting. This is not to say that all feminism is equivalent to this emphasis on the great goddess, but we surely see some similarities in themes between what I just read and what we heard from Elizabeth Johnson and other feminist thinkers.

In New Age spirituality, there’s also an interest in various other pre-Christian religions. Shamanism is one of them, and Adamist Pantheist emphasis in the Findhorn community of Northern Scotland is another. And there’s also druidism, Celtic spirituality,



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and Egyptian religion. Again, we have in Groothuis a quote from Margot Adler, who gives a summary of these groups; that is, actually Groothuis gives a summary of these groups and then gives a quote from Margot Adler. He says, “To our list of neo-pagan philosophies, we could add druidism, Celtic spirituality, Egyptian religion and any number of tribal and indigenous forms of animism and pantheism. Although these groups do not draw their spirituality primarily from the East, their worldview and religious practices converge on the One. Margot Adler, in her extensive study of neo-paganism, sees the pagan worldview as essentially polytheistic-pantheistic. The One takes many forms, but remains the same underneath it all.”

And then here is the quote from Adler: “No matter how diverse the Neo-Pagan’s ideas about deities, almost all of them have some kind of ‘Thou Art God/dess’ concept. Most would agree that the goal of neo-paganism is, in part, to become what we potentially are, to become ‘as the gods,’ or, if we are God/dess, to recognize it, to make our God/desshood count for something.”

There is clearly in all of this strong influence from major Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, and let me list for you some of the key ideas that come out of that tradition. One of them is an all-encompassing oneness and unity of all things, so that the person is identified with the whole, and then secondly there is a view that the basic problem that all of us have to overcome is a problem of perception, that is, forgetting our true identify as united to all. We’ve forgotten that, and so we perceive things as disjointed and disconnected, but we need to overcome the illusion of separation and individuality. Experiencing the One helps to overcome this problem, and this is to be done through, we are told, a process of self-discovery, whether that comes by meditation, yoga, or some other spiritual discipline.

Another idea taken from Eastern religions is that God is not a distinct person to be addressed, worshipped, and obeyed. As a matter of fact, He is beyond personality. Here let me read again from Groothuis, pages 142 and 143. “Theism’s contention that God must be addressed, worshipped and obeyed as a personal Creator distinct from the creation is seen by New Age as a deficient spirituality. As Wilbur puts it, at the highest level of consciousness, ‘saintly communion with spirit is transcended by sagely identity with spirit.’ God is beyond personality; only those less advanced view him as a person. Rajneesh cautions that there is no relationship in or with the divine. A relationship takes at



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least two people; but all is one. Rajneesh says, ‘The divine has no self so you cannot be related to it. A bhakti, a devotee, can never reach divine because he thinks in terms of relationship: God the Father, God the lover, God the beloved . . . he goes on thinking of God as other.’” And, of course, that’s not the way to do it.

It is also the case that God is also deemed to be beyond rationality. Here Groothuis explains, “Average, rational consciousness is only concerned with appearances and dualisms—humanity and nature, God and humanity, person and person—but logic cannot describe the One; it is beyond the scope of dualistic reason. To those Westerners tired of arid rationalism and intellectual disappointments, the One beyond reason may come as a welcome alternative. For example,” Groothuis says, “many of Rajneesh’s followers come from well-educated European and American backgrounds, while Rajneesh himself teaches people to distrust reason and to pass into an experience beyond it. Certainly not all New Age teachers hold this view of reason—some speak of transcending logic without abandoning it—but most agree that the divine reality must be experienced by some means other than normal thought processes.”

The One is also beyond good and evil, and is beyond the normal moral reasonings of the West. That means that the typical categories of good and evil don’t apply to the One. Let me again read what is here in Groothuis’s explanation. He says, “Traditional Western thought divides ethical considerations into good and evil, right and wrong, helpful and harmful; but if all is one, these dualisms must be dissolved. In summarizing the difference between East and West, Joseph Campbell clearly makes this point when he speaks of the oriental idea that ‘the ultimate ground of being transcends thought, imagining, and definition. It cannot be qualified. Hence, to argue that God, Man, or nature is good, just, merciful, or benign is to fall short of the question. One could just as appropriately—or inappropriately—have argued, evil, unjust, merciless, or malignant. All such anthropomorphic predictions screen or mask the actual enigma which is absolutely beyond rational consideration.’”

Going beyond good and evil in one’s moral reason is considered acceptable, and what that means is that it is proper for you and for me to make our own rules. There’s a couple of other things that I want to say about New Age spirituality, but I’m going to save them for our next lecture; we’ll come to that at the very start, and then we’re going to look at backgrounds to the New Age. You

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may be thinking as you listen to this, How in the world did we get to this? We’re going to talk about that in the next lecture.

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