Why are the New Age movement and other exotic ideas so attractive?

[benedictus2]

I listened to the former Anglican Sister Mary’s interview (number 127), and I recognized the section of Yogananda’s biography that she was referring to. The context is this: Yogananda’s Guru, Sri Yukteswar, had passed into the Infinite (‘died’) on 9 March 1936, and his body was buried. (Not all Hindus are cremated.) A few months later, on 19 June 1936, the physical, resurrected body of Sri Yukteswar appeared to Yogananda while Yogananda was in Bombay.

Did the physical resurrected body appear to Yogananda or was it just his spirit?

Yukteswar had become one with God, and since he had become one with God, Yukteswar could have, potentially, fully entered into God’s Being, never having to take up a body ever again. However, God gave Yukteswar a new job, to give help to those beings in the spiritual/astral worlds.
Notice my highlights. All this is speculation.

If you have the book, then maybe it will be helpful if you can post here the extract verbatim.

I think it’s likely that the Sister misunderstood what Yogananda was trying to say regarding Sri Yukteswar’s statement on Jesus.
Unless you can quote here the exact words from the same book she read, then that is speculation.
Notice, also, that Yogananda’s experience of Yukteswar’s resurrected body, means that resurrection and reincarnation, at least for Yogananda, are not inherently incompatible.

No it isn’t. Yukteswar may think he has been re-incarnated before but that is only what he thinks. That is not fact.

 

[PRmerger]

So again, w****hich Christians and which parts of the Bible say that the resurrection is not the resurrection of the physical body?

Again, which church and what is it that they exactly teach?

Yes, I am interested in the answer to this as well. What Christians* deny the physical resurrection of Christ?

And how do they reconcile that with St. Paul’s “If Christ is not risen then our faith is in vain!”?

*Actually, as I type this I now remember one of my college Theology professors–one of those “enlightened” modernists–proclaiming that it really didn’t matter if Christ physically rose from the dead, because he “rose in the hearts and minds of his disciples”.

Hogwash!

Christianity is not about its ethos and Christ’s teachings, important as they are. It is about a PERSON, a person who became the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

 

[benedictus2]

Personal religious ideologies aside (whether New Age thought is evil or not,) do you think Catholics are more apt to be interested in New Age thought because Catholicism itself is highly mystical?

What I mean is, Protestants pay little attention to Marian apparitions, weeping statues, stigmata, and the like, but there is a place for the mystical in Catholicism.

I think there is something in that. I think too that it is because there are so many Catholics who are ill catechised and don’t really know what Christianity is all about.

I think the fact that generally Protestants are very centred on Scripture is what helps them grounded on the core Christian beliefs.
Additionally, what do you make of some “metaphysical” traditions drawing on Catholic ideas and traditions? For instance, Voodoo and Santeria rely heavily on the pantheon of Catholic saints.
This is all due to a speedy conversion of masses of people without proper catechism.

Even in very Catholic countries like the Philippines, a large part of the population don’t really know their Christian faith, members of the religious included.
Even a traditional Catholic (right or wrongly) might bury a statue of St. Joseph upside down and facing the house in order to sell said house? Is that a form of “magic?”
This again boils down to a lack of proper understanding of the faith so a poor apprehension of Christian doctrine lives side by side with superstition.

I am a member of a group that does programs regarding the Eucharist and even members of this group come up with some weird stuff. The only good thing is that being part of this group, the error has a chance of being corrected.

That is why the Church really needs to push forth with the New Evangelization and it must be pitched at the adult Catholic.

 

[benedictus2]

Yes, I am interested in the answer to this as well. What Christians* deny the physical resurrection of Christ?

And how do they reconcile that with St. Paul’s “If Christ is not risen then our faith is in vain!”?

*Actually, as I type this I now remember one of my college Theology professors–one of those “enlightened” modernists–proclaiming that it really didn’t matter if Christ physically rose from the dead, because he “rose in the hearts and minds of his disciples”.

Hogwash!

Christianity is not about its ethos and Christ’s teachings, important as they are. It is about a PERSON, a person who became the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

And that unfortunately is what a lot of so called "Christians’ fail to get a grip on. Which is quite tragic.

 

[benedictus2]

Not exactly, Ahimasa,

You see, the Catholic scholars took Greek logic and adapted it to develop ways of explaining concepts and actions already presented by Christ.

What it appears you are trying to do is to take Catholic thought and run it through the lens of polytheistic pagan beliefs - and expect to improve on Christ’s teachings and His Church. This is where the conflict has become most obvious - and simply results in an impossibility.

God bless

Excellent!!

 

[benedictus2]

There’s nothing to stop Christian theologians from taking Hindu and Buddhist ideas and adapting them to Christianity.

You are right. But once they do they cease to be Christian even though they may still refer to themselves as such.

 

[Ahimsa]

**So again, w****hich Christians and which parts of the Bible say that the resurrection is not the resurrection of the physical body?**Marcus Borg is probably one of the more famous of Christian authors whose focus is not proving that a physical resurrection didn’t happen, but that, whether the resurrection was physical or not, is a question that is not as important as the question of what the story of the resurrection means for us today. His book, The Heart of Christianity, addresses this issue.

Again, which church and what is it that they exactly teach?

One such church is the Unity School of Christianity. You may visit its website here.

 

[Ahimsa]

Can you tell me which Neo-Platonic philosphy that is inconsistent with Scripture has been adopted?

I didn’t say that anything inconsistent with scripture had been adopted. I said that Neo-Platonic ideas had been adopted.

 

[Ahimsa]

You are basically saying that you are coming from a totally enlightened state, decides to be unenlightened and now works back to the point of being enlightened again which of course does not precludes you from choosing to not be unenlightened again and so the cycle goes.

Different Hindu traditions have different answers about how the reincarnational process begins. Those explanations are not necessary when construction a Christian view of reincarnation. For instance, among Hasidic Jews, it is believed that God creates a soul, and sends the soul to earth to do a particular job, which might require several lifetimes. Thus, in the Jewish scenario, the soul was not initially “part of God”. A Christian version of reincarnation could adopt a similar perspective.

 

[Ahimsa]

No. The reptile, fish, primates is no longer found in you. If you think that they are still part of you then that is sad.

Are you denying that the human body evolved from other life-forms?

 

[Ahimsa]

Did the physical resurrected body appear to Yogananda or was it just his spirit?Sri Yukteswar’s physical body (not his spiritual/astral body) appeared to Yogananda, according to Yogananda.

 

[Sufjon]

If you read the account about the appearance to Mary, it happened within seconds. With the Emmaus disciples, it was after a few hours.

As I said earlier, I think it was because none of them were expecting him to be alive. I think their brain cannot accept that this is Him.

Once they had accepted that He is indeed alive, they recognized HIm whenever He appeared.

Not sure I buy that Benedictus. I don’t know why they didn’t recognize Him, but if I had just buried a friend and then saw someone who looked just like him, I would have thought it quite remarkable and I would have noted the resemblance. Again, I can’t say that I can offer a reason for it, but the reason you suggested doesn’t sound right. Maybe it’s better to just take the scriptures for what they said and say we don’t know why they said that. My opinion is that there have been 2,000 years over moving pieces around to force a fit in the puzzle on the topic of Jesus. Maybe we could leave this one alone until something compelling comes up on it.

Your friend
Sufjon

Your friend
Sufjon

 

[Sufjon]

The quantum leap in interest in New Age and neo-paganism (especially in this country) occurred over 40 years ago – in the decade immediately following Vatican 2 – long before public exposure about clergy pedophilia, and long before the level of globalization & instant information sharing that now occurs.

It is difficult to say, however, whether V2 (speaking to myself, not you) had direct cause or accidental coincidence. Concurent with the decade following V2 was the widespread availability of contraception, and the pre-emergence of various “liberation” movements (gender, race, etc.); in some of these movements, license (as opposed to genuine freedom) was an operative concept. With that license came an assumption of exploration, self-determination, and separation from authority and absolute standards. License to disregard systems of thought with defined boundaries, license to behave with regard only to personally derived standards, license to “try on” new religious affiliations and identities, and even to create hybrids from those out of whole cloth.

The one thing I will agree with – and I’m glad you brought it up, because I think this is underrated in discussions like this – is that globalization makes the retaining of all kinds of boundaries more difficult. Merely the plentiful availability of information, not to mention the unspoken pressure to obtain information, invites indirectly a kind of intellectual experimentation and even confusion (especially among those not solid in a single faith tradition to begin with). Globalization is both a positive and a negative, i.m.o. Modern society tends to look upon it with an extreme bias toward the positive, but I think it has brought, and still brings, a number of downsides to it, including the important illusion that faith tradtions are interchangeable and “united.”

I would take issue with how much genuine peace is demonstrated by the search for new age spirituality. I think there are a lot of claims of inner peace, but some of the least peaceful I have met are die-hard New Agists. Some of them have become rigid and slavish, not to mention cultish. Lots of them are very caught up in me, me, me, which ultimately does not bring peace but preoccupation and self-idolatry.

Hi Elizabeth: I thought you had left the thread. I left you some questions a few pages back. I was hoping you might address them for me if you would.

Your friend
Sufjon

 

[Sufjon]

Yes, I’ve got that book and it is quite scary.

Another exorcist (the one in the DVD In interview with an Exorcist) was asked why demonic possesion seems to be on the rise. He said it was because of people’s fascination with the occult and new age.

That’s an interesting observation. Have you heard of their being many “new age” exorcists? It seems that most exorcists aren’t Hindu, Buddhist or New Age, but rather they are Catholic, or at least that’s how it appears. Actually, I have never heard of of met a Hindu exorcist. You can probably imagine where this is taking my line of thought, right? What I am thinking is that there aren’t a lot of crocodile hunters in Minnesota, or a lot of elephant hunters in Washington DC. That’s because there aren’t many crocodiles in Minnesota or many elephants roaming Washington DC outside of the National Zoo. so it seems to me that the crocodile hunters are found where crocodiles are found, and elephant hunters are found where elephants are found. It follows that perhaps exorcists are found where demons are found, in which case, it wouldn’t be new age religions that bring the biggest threat of an encounter with something evil.

So, which new age faith has exorcists, and which eastern religion has exorcists on the payroll? Moreover, which religion anywhere has formal exorcists? Answer that, and I’ll bet that’s where you find a the best chance for an encounter the demonic and hence the need for an exorcist. Maybe I’m being too simplistic, and perhaps you can straighten me out, because what you’re saying sounds like me telling the police that they should check my neighbor’s house for pot while I’m sitting in my front yard on a sack of seed.

Your friend,
Sufjon

 

[PRmerger]

So, which new age faith has exorcists, and which eastern religion has exorcists on the payroll? Moreover, which religion anywhere has formal exorcists?

It would seem then, Sufjon, that this is* another* area in which Christianity and eastern religions are not convergent, yes? For are you not trying to point out that eastern religions do not have exorcists?

 

[GEddie]

There’s nothing to stop Christian theologians from taking Hindu and Buddhist ideas and adapting them to Christianity.

Except that the message of Christ is self-consistent and has no need for those ideas.

 

[Sufjon]

It would seem then, Sufjon, that this is* another* area in which Christianity and eastern religions are not convergent, yes? For are you not trying to point out that eastern religions do not have exorcists?

Yes, PRMerger, it is very much an area of divergence. I am pointing out that exorcists are probably present where there is a need for them and where they have work to do. It’s a pretty simple point. I’ll cut to the chase: About 30 times on this thread I’ve seen people make the statement that eastern religions and these so called “new age” religions are dangerous because they potentially expose people to the demonic. Each time these statements have been made on this thread, they have been made by people who come from the only large religion on the planet that has the need to employ an army of exorcists. So I find it absurd that so many from that faith would try to pin demonic problems on other faiths. The exorcists are probably employed where the problems with demons are, so why would people with demon problems try to point the finger at other people who don’t even have the need to spend much time on the matter. It’s like John Candy warning people that hanging out with Woody Allen will make them overweight. Still puzzled? I am.

Your friend
Sufjon

 

[GEddie]

Yes, PRMerger, it is very much an area of divergence. I am pointing out that exorcists are probably present where there is a need for them and where they have work to do. It’s a pretty simple point. I’ll cut to the chase: About 30 times on this thread I’ve seen people make the statement that eastern religions and these so called “new age” religions are dangerous because they potentially expose people to the demonic. Each time these statements have been made on this thread, they have been made by people from the only large religion on the planet that has the need to employ an army of exorcists. So I find it absurd that so many from that faith would try to pin demonic problems on other faiths.

Your friend
Sufjon

Dear S:

Maybe the reason for our employing an “army of exorcists” when no-one else does is that we, alone, are aware of the need for them?

Someone who does not believe in microbes will not buy antiseptics.

God Bless and ICXC NIKA.

 

[Sufjon]

Dear S:

Maybe the reason for our employing an “army of exorcists” when no-one else does is that we, alone, are aware of the need for them?

Someone who does not believe in microbes will not buy antiseptics.

God Bless and ICXC NIKA.

You don’t buy what you don’t need, even when you know about it. Trust me, we’ve been told all about demons by Christians, and if we run into any, perhaps we’ll give you guys a call. :bigyikes:

Your friend
Sufjon

 

[Sufjon]

Maybe the reason for our employing an “army of exorcists” when no-one else does is that we, alone, are aware of the need for them?

Perhaps you alone are aware of the need for them because you alone have a need for them.

Someone who does not believe in microbes will not buy antiseptics.

You don’t buy what you don’t need, even when you know about it. Trust me, we’ve been told all about demons by Christians, and if we ever run into any, perhaps we’ll give you guys a call.

Your friend,
Sufjon