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

[Elizabeth502]

From what I have seen, most ideas that people on this thread call “new age” have their roots in some religion or another, and perhaps a mixture of a number of them. Tell me Elizabeth if you would, which of these religions lack morals, responsibility and consequences? Could you give a lost of the world’s religions that fall short of your expectations on morality and accountability and explain why you think this is the case?

(1) The concept of reincarnation, for example, excuses for a lot of people the ultimate judgment of their acts in this life; many people rationalize that ‘it will all be taken care of’ in the ‘next life,’ and by that they mean not the Christian concept of an afterlife with its demarcations, but rather a ‘second-time-around’ (and more) in which to “get it right.” In other words, nothing is ever “final,” you see, because even after death you’ll have a whole new start, and possibly multiple new starts at the beginning of each new life “cycle.” What has simplistically been described by believers in some eastern religions is that ‘you keep getting reincarnated until you eventually get it right.’ Of course, they conveniently neglect to point out that within that doctrine of reincarnation there’s a fair amount of pain; it’s not necessarily a triumph to ‘have another life.’ Yet, since the sinner or seeker has the illusion that he or she can put off facing himself/herself, the idea of ‘another chance’ is attractive.

While that is a simplistic and reductionist view of the doctrine of reincarnation, it is one which has been superficially popularized and which is convenient for those who want to believe that there will be no Personal Judgment with permanent consequences for this particular life, and that there will be an opportunity to “redo” this life.

(2) The concept of the self being the center of the spiritual experience, even though it is not explained in that way (in Buddhism, in which one is supposed to lose the self) is still something which appears attractive, albeit inaccurate. It is a focus on me, myself, and I becoming the ultimate introvert. That is actually the converse of Christianity, which, in order to journey toward holiness, the loss of self is not an introverted experience or process, but an “outward” one, in that one 'forgets" (stops concentrating on) self, releases self in the service of others, abandons self to the will of God, donates self in service to those most in need, no matter how much those needy people are not serving one’s ‘self.’

Again, some of this is a slight or grand distortion of the philosophy, but it is one which, in its distortion, appears attractive, particularly as it allows removal of distracting and annoying others from one’s personal spiritual journey.

(3) The journey in Buddhism is one without a clear external referent – an absolute Other. It is in essence an “impersonal” journey, which to many may appear attractive due (again) to its lack of accountability. This is the biggest distinction between Buddhism and Christianity. Christianity is the most individually personal and interpersonal of all religions, relative to the Holy and to whatever any religion conceives of as a Godhead or peak attainment. Because Christianity is so personal, it is highly interactive and dynamic, not only in its theology but in its spiritual practice. God is distinct Person in Christianity, not a force, not a thing, not a process, and not a goal or an end that the individual “becomes.” As Person, God is absolute Other. We can never become Him – i.e., merged into Him, evolving into Him, etc. That would be utter blasphemy.

There is no escaping that relationship, which requires communication from the believer, receptivity from the believer, a listening ear and heart from the believer, and above all, response. (In this latter aspect, Christianity is quite close to Judaism.) There can be no relationship with God that is devoid of response. We are not merely just acted upon; as we act, so we also receive; as we act, so we also are further challenged to act in a more self-giving manner, which in turn makes God’s responsive action in us (grace) more available.

(4) In general, consequences for immoral behavior are perceived as diminished in eastern religions, by the Christian believer, because of (a) the less personal nature of relationship with divinity (thus by definition making the believer less accountable to an actual person, more accountable to a subjective self, and more in control of judgment, via self-judgment; (b) the appearance of a less formalized or codified moral law; yes, there are general principles of right and wrong that are guideposts for the virtuous life and the ideal seeker, but they are broader than either the moral code of Judaism or that of Christianity & Catholicism especially.

(5) The seeming abandonment of personal responsibility to various ‘life-forces’ as conceived in some new age disciplines (guardedly named) is another attractive element. (Various ‘energies,’ ‘forces’ that supposedly appear out of nowhere, out of our control, and are conveniently to blame when one’s personal life goes awry. It couldn’t be the consequences of one’s bad decisions; rather, it must be ‘bad energy’ that interfered in my life and made me screw up.)

So, if these religions are different from yours on the basis of them being attractive, comforting and validating, could you share what it is you feel is unattractive, uncomforting, and unvalidating about your religion?

Anyone who wants to evade responsibility for one’s actions is someone who would hate both Judaism and Christianity, because their framework is “judgment” for one’s actions. And evasion of personal responsibility, combined with the attractiveness & availability of hedonism, is of epidemic proportions, globally.

[cont’d]

 

[Elizabeth502]

[cont’d]

Or is your religion attractive, comforting and validating and therefore these are not distinctions between your religion and these others?

Someone who does not despise the hard work of personal relationships, realizing that perhaps the greatest peak experience is unitive love itself, and who wants such a love to endure eternally, will find Christianity attractive, as the balance is in favor of the seeker/sinner. The infinite mercy of God is promised to the sincere and humble seeker, and is experienced in this lifetime, repeatedly – not only in an afterlife. (That’s a common misconception about Christianity: that we have a miserable life now, so that we can have joy in Heaven.) But the joy of an intimate relationship is the ultimate joy, for those who have experienced that kind of ‘loss of self.’ It’s the freeing of the self from enslavement to preoccupation with ego. Talk about comforting: nothing is more comforting that God’s forgiveness for our wrongdoings, especially since our God asks so little for us to attain this forgiveness; we merely need be truly sorry, confess our sins, seek his graces to change our patterns of bad behavior. And the validation? That comes from God knowing us so personally and intimately, calling each one of us uniquely as individuals to become progressively closer to Him in this life, so that we may share permanent unity with Him in our (only) next life.

 

[Erethorn]

Hi, Erethorn,
I think you need to view the entire set of documents to formulate an opinion.

Have you seen the entire set of documents ?

I think Benedictus2 is correct in her statement.

Again, have you seen thye entire set of documents, in order to formulate the above opinion.

BTW, I think Benedictus2 is correct, in that God doesn’t send non catholics to hell, but then again, that is not what the Church has always taught.

Those who willfull remain outside the Chruch they know to be True

(Jews, heretics, schismatics - and, anyone else for that matter) are denying God’s aurthority and will go to everlasting fire.

It would’ve been great if that part I underlined had appeared in Cantate Domino; however, it does not.

By the way, maybe I misread your post … but, it sounded a bit edgy. Is there a problem here that attitude is going to fix?

I don’t know. Is there ? Perhaps, telling people of different religions that theirs is not true and that hell awaits them if they don’t convert, while the Church itself cannot seem to have a consistent position on the matter - could that be a problem ?

God bless

 

[benedictus2]

Ahimsa:
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.
But the question is not whether the resurrection is important for us today.

I asked which Christian believes that resurrection is not a physical resurrection and which part in the Bible supports this belief.

Does this Marcus Borg believe that the resurrection was not physical and is he able to support that stand from the Bible?

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

I checked that website and that is not Christian. The tenets in their about page is not Christian.

Just because they label themselves Christian does not mean that their belief is.

 

[benedictus2]

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.

You keep going back to Hasidic Jews.

If you go back to the post that I replied to prior to this, you said " The reason a person re-incarnates in the first place, is because that person has created separation between himself and God".

Now you are saying that God created the soul to do a particular job.

You have to establish some consistency sometime Ahimsa. Either God created the soul or the soul was part of God created the separation hence the reason he keep re-incarnating.

You have to start learning to argue from a particular viewpoint intead of doing this two step and cha-cha when you get boxed in.

Since you claim to be Buddhist then it would probably help the discussion if you discuss it from your own viewpoint. How does re-incarnation begin from the Buddhist viewpoint. What did Gautama Buddha teach?

 

[benedictus2]

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

Maybe. At this stage it is still a theory.

But even if it were true, it does not mean that you still have the gnat,dog, gorilla in you.

 

[benedictus2]

Sri Yukteswar’s physical body (not his spiritual/astral body) appeared to Yogananda, according to Yogananda.

Can you give the exact extract here?

Is there proof that it was really him and that his body was not decomposing where it was burried? Did someone check that?

 

[benedictus2]

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.

You would have noted the resemblance but would you have thought that it was him? Would you have said Hey John, I am sure I buried you three days ago?

Again, I can’t say that I can offer a reason for it, but the reason you suggested doesn’t sound right.

Actually it does. In a culture who does not believe that the dead come back, it is very likely.

Remember, they are encountering here a very physical person. The Mary account says that the angels appeared to Mary so she must have known that they are not physical beings. But here you have a very physical being (no wonder she concluded he must be the gardener). Do you really expect her to think of this person as the one they buried 3 days ago?

Notice how after they knew that He has indeed risen, they were quick to recognize Him in his subsequent appearances.

There’s a video on selective attention test that sort of gives us an idea on this.
youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

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

We certainly could do that too but we can make conjectures on the topic.

 

[benedictus2]

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.

Here’s what this priest said.

In the Bible you read accounts of demonic possesions. With the advent of Christianity, demonic possessions decreased dramatically. But now, with the resurgence of the occult and new age, you see this on the rise again.

Applying that to your analogy of the elephant and crocodiles, there seems to be an influx of crocodiles and elephants with the rise of people interested in the new age.

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

Would those who call on evil spirits want to exorcise the evil spirits that they’ve called? That would be like Christians wanting to be rid of the Holy Spirit.

 

[benedictus2]

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?

Very good point.

People, unaware that they are ill would hardly visit the doctor.

 

[benedictus2]

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

The exorcist I mentioned invites atheists with him when he goes on his exorcisms. They’re the last one to believe in the devil but they leave believing.

Not everyone who is sick know that they are indeed sick and so in need of a doctor.

 

[benedictus2]

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

This is very much what a priest who studied buddhism concluded.

There is nothing in Buddhism that has not been perfected in Christianity.

 

[Ahimsa]

You keep going back to Hasidic Jews.

Right, because my point was that reincarnation and resurrection are not inherently incompatible. What Hindus, and Buddhists, believe about reincarnation is interesting, but not cogent to the main point.

 

[Ahimsa]

Can you give the exact extract here?

Is there proof that it was really him and that his body was not decomposing where it was burried? Did someone check that?

All this is in chapter 43 of Autobiography of a Yogi. If you don’t want to believe that what Yogananda said, actually happened, you don’t have to. I’m not here to convince you. I wanted only to correct the Sister’s statement.

 

[Ahimsa]

I checked that website and that is not Christian.

It’s fine that you don’t think that this church is Christian.

 

[afthomercy]

In this discussion, one term that is being used vigorously by both sides is “person”. Actually there is no agreement on what it means and in fact divides us seriously. GEddie, I would not agree when you equate the person to the mind (Post#724). If the mind is the essence of the person, then all humans are not created equal, as some have higher/more powerful minds than others, and some have defective minds (as in mentally impaired persons). Your explanation completely fails when it comes to the divine persons, because here we see 3-persons sharing one mind. Christian theology does not attempt to define what the essence of the person is, but rather leaves it as a mystery. Christian theology says that there are 3-kinds of persons, and that they stand in a hierarchy, with the Divine person(s) at the top, followed by the angelic person and lastly the human person. The latter two were created by the first, who themselves are uncreated. Such being the case, there is never any possibility of any of the 3-kinds of persons intermingling/uniting at any point of time from a Christian point of view.

Living in a Hindu country, what I have understood of Hindu belief is that there is a Supreme Being (SB) or Consciousness. Some particles of the SB got separated from the main SB by accident or design, and are now trying to reunite with it. For some reason, the only route for reunion is through incarnation as a human being and doing of good karma (“works alone”). The main SB keeps creating the whole spectrum of living beings right up from amoeba to humans at various points of time and pushes the individual separated particles of the SB into them to become the life force of those creatures. Those who are unlucky to get incarnated in non-human bodies have to put up with those particular bodies till they are rid of them through death, and have to await the next shot at incarnation. Those who having once gotten the golden chance of human incarnation but botched it up through bad karma, have to await their next chance for human birth, which might take millennia, and in the interim they might get pushed umpteen times into rebirth as a lower life form. When the eastern religions use the term “person”, they are referring to the diverse separated particles of the SB. By this logic, even plants and animals should be persons for them.

So the disagreement on who or what exactly is the person goes to the root of the east-west divide, and the indefatigueable apologists on both sides should sort it out before going any further. Christianity, because of its personification of good and evil (in God and the devil respectively), see the eastern religions as deliberately misguided by the devil, whereas the eastern religions see Christianity as merely harmlessly misguided. They think that Christians, out of fear of hell, will do good karma and thus attain moksha even without accepting the theology of it (unwittingly saved). That’s why they are tolerant of all religions that promote good karma, and feel insulted when the Christians trash their theology.

If I were denovo given the choice of the two alternative belief systems – one in which salvation depended on faith plus works and the other on works alone, I’d choose the former, because I don’t want to take the pain of doing leading a good life and then losing it all just for the sake of a wrong intellectual understanding of salvation!

 

[PRmerger]

Yes, PRMerger, it is very much an area of divergence.

Quite.

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

The fact that Catholics understand that there are demonic influences, and that you dismiss them is irrelevant.

Picture a 3rd world country which doesn’t have safety lights. People from this country are criticizing the US for having safety inspectors. We try to inform them of their need to provide safety lights and engineers to create and monitor them. However, “we don’t need no stinkin’ safety people” is their response.

Yet the mortality and morbidity from traffic accidents in said 3rd world country is staggering.

Now, they can certainly persist in their la-la land mentality that they don’t need to be warned about oncoming traffic or follow basic principles of traffic, but it is to their detriment, no?

And the fact that the US is the largest employer of safety people speaks to our, well, intelligence.

 

[Sufjon]

Would those who call on evil spirits want to exorcise the evil spirits that they’ve called? That would be like Christians wanting to be rid of the Holy Spirit.

That would be assuming that someone is calling on evil spirits.

Your friend
Sufjon

 

[Sufjon]

Very good point.

People, unaware that they are ill would hardly visit the doctor.

But people can be fully aware of the doctor and not need to visit one because one is not needed. I know all about podiatrists, but I have never been to one because I don’t have feet problems, or at least my feet don;t bother me. I think you are deluding yourselves into thinking that everyone is plagued by what you’re plagued by. If we had a need for exorcists, we’d probably have them.

Your friend
Sufjon

 

[PRmerger]

If we had a need for exorcists, we’d probably have them.

Your friend
Sufjon

LOL!

Do you think these people are in desperate need of a Safety Inspector?



Or should we just assume that, since they don’t have any, that they don’t need them? :doh2: