Please Note: Although The M+G+R Foundation agrees with Mr. Penn about the dangers that lurk in the New Age Movement, we do not necessarily agree with each point and/or statement, written or implied, in Mr. Penn's document.


INDEX

Section 1

Section 2

Section 3

Section 4

Section 5

Section 6

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This article is intended as a warning against the spiritual and socio-political dangers associated with the New Age and globalist movements. When I shout in this story, it is not to call down fire upon "bad guys." Rather, I seek to sound an alarm, to awaken those who are in these movements (and those who might be in a position to resist these movements) to these perils. Let no one hastily assume that the rank-and-file adherents of these movements are aware of, and culpable for, the bizarre beliefs (described below) of the New Age and globalist leaders. Very often, spiritual seekers and those who desire political reform enter these movements with good intentions, and never have a reason to look inside the movement's closets for skeletons. In addition, the writings of the globalist and New Age leaders are crashingly dull, and few of their followers will examine these texts in sufficient detail to learn of the darkness at the heart of these movements.

Christian opponents of the New Age and globalist movements need to remember the profound truth in the saying, "the cults are the unpaid bills of the Church." Some of the causes that the New Age and globalist movements support (such as protection of the environment from pollution, and an end to inter-religious violence) are praiseworthy. Some of what the New Age and globalist movements oppose (for example, racial discrimination and imperialism) deserves Christian opposition. Thus, a knee-jerk reaction (i.e., if the New Age is for "X," Christians must oppose "X") is unwise. Christian opponents of the New Age and globalist movements should consider what real injustices and spiritual hungers lead people to follow these movements - so that the People of God might answer these real, unmet needs of their fellow men.

Christ loves, and came to save, all who are now in the New Age and globalist movements. (That goes for the leaders as well as the followers: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do!" [Lk. 23:34]) Let us never forget to pray for them all, and to entrust them all to God's Mercy. For all of us, myself included, are utterly dependent upon this same Mercy.

In recent years the New Age movement has come out of the closet in the Church and in the world. The New Age movement is made up of those who follow a potpourri of beliefs and practices that fall outside the boundaries of the major traditional religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, animism, and Buddhism). Its manifestations are protean. Some Catholic nuns walk on labyrinths to contact the "Divine Feminine." Increasing numbers of health insurance companies have heeded consumers' demands to cover offbeat treatments, ranging from Ayurvedic herbal medicine to "therapeutic touch" - in which a healer's hands manipulate "energy fields" but never touch the patient's body. Hillary Clinton has contacted the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt under the guidance of Jean Houston - a New York-based avatar who runs a "Mystery School," and who inspired the current fad of walking on labyrinths. Millions of Americans with more money than common sense are buying into this trendy, feel-good style of spirituality; they have helped to keep Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations with God books on the best-seller lists since 1997. These are the people who say, "I'm spiritual, but not religious."

Many Christians view the New Age movement as merely self-indulgent silliness. Unfortunately, there's far more to the movement than astrology, crystals, weird workshops, and psychobabble. Many New Age spiritual leaders have a firmly entrenched anti-Christian worldview, and harbor a special hatred for the Catholic Church. Some New Age leaders believe that the Fall was really man's ascent into knowledge, assisted by Lucifer - whom they hail as the bringer of light and wisdom. These New Age teachers expect an imminent, apocalyptic transformation that will lead humanity into the New Age. By acts of men or by an act of "spirit," earth will be cleansed of those who refuse to evolve. In the New Age, there will be world government; the economy will be remade to promote "sharing." Traditional morality and traditional families will disappear. Orthodox religions - especially Christianity and Judaism - are considered "separative" and "obsolete"; in the New Age, they too will vanish.
 

In a better world, such teachers would have a following only among a few alienated misfits. The reality is otherwise. For the last 125 years, New Age leaders worldwide have followed the false light of Theosophy; they now whisper sweet lies into the itching ears of the powerful - politicians, media moguls, UN officials, foundation grant-makers, and Anglican bishops alike. As the West moves into a post-Christian era, the influence of the New Age movement spreads.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky blended Eastern religion with Western occultism, establishing the Theosophical movement in 1875 in New York City. Theosophy has influenced occult, spiritualist, "New Thought," and New Age movements around the world since then. For Blavatsky, the LORD is not God; mankind is. She says, "Man is truly the manifested deity in both its aspects - good and evil." [1] Since mankind is god, it follows that "mankind will become freed from its false gods, and find itself finally - SELF-REDEEMED." [2] Or rather, some of mankind - "the Aryan and other civilized nations"- is "god-informed" and capable of self-redemption. Others, "such human specimens as the Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some African tribes" are "lower human creatures," "inferior races" that are "now happily - owing to the wise adjustment of nature which ever works in that direction - fast dying out. Verily mankind is 'of one blood,' but not of the same essence."[3] Part of Blavatsky's pantheon is the seven-headed "Serpent of Darkness" bearing the swastika on its crowns, an entity worshipped "in India, among esoteric Buddhists, in Egypt, Chaldea, etc."[4 ] The Nazis borrowed the swastika symbol and ideas of Aryan racial supremacy from the Thule Society and other German theosophists, and then made their own murderous adaptations to occultism.[5]

In the early 1900s, Alice A. Bailey carried forward the teachings of Theosophy in the United States. She founded the Lucifer Publishing Company in New York City in 1922, and renamed it the Lucis Publishing Company in 1923. Between 1922 and 1949, Bailey published 24 books of "revelations" that she claimed to have channeled from the Tibetan ascended "spiritual master" Djwhal Khul. All these books remain in print, and are widely available.

The influence of Theosophy and Alice Bailey continues to grow a half-century after her death. Robert Muller, a former assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, won the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education in 1989 for his World Core Curriculum. He says, "The underlying philosophy upon which The Robert Muller School is based will be found in the teachings set forth in the books of Alice A. Bailey by the Tibetan teacher, Djwhal Khul."[6] Like Robert Muller, Neale Donald Walsch praises Theosophy. He says that Spiritual Politics, a popularization of Alice Bailey's teachings, is "one of the most important books to appear in the marketplace of ideas in a very long time."[7] He also extols the Waldorf Schools and their founder Rudolf Steiner, a German theosophist. Barbara Marx Hubbard, a New Age futurist, says that the goal of her newest book, Conscious Evolution, "is that it serve the fulfillment of the plan. 'May Light and Love and Power restore the plan on Earth.' That is my prayer."[8] She doesn't mention the source of this prayer; it is the final verse of "The Great Invocation," a Theosophical prayer provided by the Lucis Trust with each of Alice Bailey's books.[9] The third verse of the Great Invocation says, "From the centre where the Will of God is known Let purpose guide the little wills of men - The purpose which the Masters know and serve."[10] No wonder Barbara Marx Hubbard did not quote the entire prayer! James Parks Morton, the Dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City until his 1997 retirement, praises another Theosophist, David Spangler, as "a highly regarded advocate of spiritual empowerment" who is "both down-to-earth and a genuine mystic."[11]

Robert Muller, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Neale Donald Walsch, and James Parks Morton's Temple of Understanding all actively support the United Religions Initiative (URI), a well-funded venture in religious syncretism led by Episcopal Bishop William Swing of San Francisco. (Other Theosophists are lining up to support the URI. The Rudolf Steiner Foundation has recently made a grant to the URI,[12] and the Lucis Trust newsletter, World Goodwill, has praised the URI twice in 1999.[13] ) Laurance S. Rockefeller and his Fund for the Enhancement of the Human Spirit have financed Matthew Fox,[14] Bishop Swing's Grace Cathedral,[ 15] and Barbara Marx Hubbard.[16] Morton has friends in high places; he is on the Council of Advisers for Global Green, USA (an affiliate of Gorbachev's Green Cross International, an environmentalist organization), and has been a co-chair of UN conferences on the environment in 1992 and 1997.

Another of Gorbachev's organizations, the San Francisco-based State of the World Forum, draws funding from a galaxy of Establishment corporations and foundations, ranging from Archer Daniels Midland, CNN, Hewlett-Packard, and Occidental Petroleum to the Carnegie Corporation, the Kellogg Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The State of the World Forum attracts almost 1,000 VIPs to San Francisco each year, and encourages them to believe that they will be the ones to shape the emerging "new civilization." Not all participants are eggheads and political has-beens; the 1998 Forum included Georges Berthoin, President of the Trilateral Commission[17] , James Michel, the Chair of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,[18] and other power brokers. Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu is one of the 22 co-chairs of the Forum, along with Gorbachev, Ted Turner, Federico Mayor (Director General of UNESCO), and other high UN officials.[19] Neither orthodox Christian nor Orthodox Jewish leaders have spoken at any Forum sessions since it was founded in 1995. Instead, the assembled dignitaries have heard New Age preaching from such people as Andrew Weil, Michael Lerner, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Michael Murphy and Steven Donovan (leaders of the Esalen Institute), Fritjof Capra, Jean Houston, Sam Keen, Ram Dass, Matthew Fox, Deepak Chopra, and Tony Robbins.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a consensus-building management technique developed by Dr. David Cooperrider, co-chair of the Center for Social Innovation in Global Management (SIGMA) at the Case Western Reserve University School of Management. SIGMA staff members have used the AI process to manage URI summit meetings and workshops since 1996. Other users of AI have included Protestant agencies, Catholic agencies, and big business alike: the Adventist Development and Relief Agency International, Lutheran World Relief, the Salesian Society, the Salvation Army World Service Office, World Vision Relief and Development,[20] United Way,[21] GTE, Johnson and Johnson, Sandia National Laboratories, Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, and Smith Kline and Beecham.[22] Cooperrider's Taos Institute works with the Benedictine University in Napierville, Illinois to "explore the powerful potentials of the appreciative organization."[23] Currently, Cooperrider is training managers of UN-affiliated lobbying and social action groups, known in UN parlance as "non-governmental organizations" (NGOs).[24] All are being taught a process that, in Dr. Cooperrider's own words, views "realities as socially constructed" and seeks to "affirm, compel, and accelerate anticipatory learning" with the objective of "inspiring, mobilizing and sustaining human system change" among "larger and larger levels of collectivity."[25] The agenda - post-modernist relativism and groupthink - could hardly be clearer. It's consistent with Blavatsky's view that "the only world of reality is the subjective."[26]

The Wittenberg Center, a pro-URI interfaith seminary that has consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, requires seminarians to take its course in "survival and empowerment for the 21st century."[27] The class includes "knowledge and survival skills for both the contemporary rural and urban shaman;"[28] much of the class covers "clairvoyance & intuitive training, energy and chakra balancing, accessing past lives," and "crystal & etheric healing."[29] Readings for the seminary core program mix the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita with New Age and neo-pagan froth: Joseph Campbell's The Masks of God, Jung's Man and His Symbols, Starhawk's Truth or Dare, Matthew Fox's books, Jane Robert's The Education of Oversoul 7, and Brian Swimme's The Universe Is A Green Dragon.[30] Despite - or because of - its odd teachings, the Wittenberg Center has powerful friends. Among the members of its Board of Advisors are Dr. Jeffrey Sachs,[31] Director of the Harvard Institute for International Development and the former economic adviser to Russia, and the aforementioned Rev. James Parks Morton.

In short, promoters of New Age and theosophical ideals are not social outcasts. Often enough, these followers of the Spirit of the Age get attention and money from the rich and the powerful. (So much for the idea that the rich are smarter than the rest of us, and so much for the idea that business leaders are necessarily rational.)

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What, then, do the New Age prophets teach? Let Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Alice Bailey, Robert Muller, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Neale Donald Walsch, David Spangler, and Matthew Fox speak for themselves - and for the motley crew of "spirit guides," "ascended masters," and "cosmic Christs" whom they have served.

The avatars of the New Age say that humanity is God, and that there is no death. Barbara Marx Hubbard states the creed of the Serpent succinctly: "We are immortal. We are not bound by the limits of the body."[32] "We can create new life forms and new worlds. We are gods!"[33] Neale Donald Walsch says the same: "Trust God. Or if you wish, trust yourself, for Thou Art God."[34] His spirit guide denies death, saying, "There is no 'death.' Life goes on forever and ever. Life Is. You simply change form."[35] Alice Bailey said, "We are all Gods, all the children of the One Father, as the latest of the Avatars, the Christ, has told us."[36] These New Age teachers repeat the lies that the Devil told in Eden: "You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Gen. 3:4-5). As a woman devotee of Walsch's recently told the Washington Post, "We discovered the God within ... That's why we need God. Because we are God."[37]

Since we are gods, there is no need for Christ to save us. Instead, as Barbara Marx Hubbard says, "Multitudes of self-saviors is what we are, for those who have eyes to see."[38] How will mankind perform this feat? David Spangler says that we "manifest our heritage as gods in the making" by becoming "a spiritual materialist, or material spiritualist;"[39] now "comes the time to become the servants of evolution" and to "release the light, the love, the wisdom that will bring our renunciation of spiritual estate to its fruition, in the occult redemption of the world."[40] In other words, we are asked to tell God non serviam, and to choose Hell.

New Age teachers invert Christian doctrine about sin, the Devil, and the Fall. Barbara Marx Hubbard says, "The serpent symbolizes an irresistable [sic] energy that is leading us toward life ever-evolving. First the serpent tempted Eve to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It attracted her beyond the animal/human world which knew no separation from the Creator. Then self-awareness came."[41] She adds, "Evil - the devil - is evolution's selection process that constantly weeds out the weaker from the stronger."[42] A spirit that identified itself to Barbara Marx Hubbard as "Jesus" told her to "love Satan, my fallen brother," and to "forgive Satan for fearing God."[43] Walsch's ectoplasmic friend says that Adam and Eve "are said to have committed Original Sin. I tell you this: it was the Original Blessing. For without this event, the partaking of the knowledge of good and evil, you would not even know the two possibilities existed!"[44] Blavatsky spoke most plainly: "The Fall was the result of man's knowledge, for his 'eyes were opened.' Indeed, he was taught Wisdom and the hidden knowledge by the 'Fallen Angel."[45]

These New Age teachings lead inexorably to praise of the Darkness. Walsch's statement that God is "the Darkness that creates the Light, and makes it possible"[46] mirrors Blavatsky's dictum that "According to the tenets of Eastern Occultism, DARKNESS is the one true actuality, the basis and the root of light ... Light is matter, and DARKNESS, pure Spirit."[47] Alice Bailey likewise says that those who learn to meditate will see that "darkness is pure spirit."[48] Followers of Bailey's New Age path will find that "each contact with the Initiator leads the initiate closer to the centre of pure darkness ... a centre or point of such intense brilliance that everything fades out and at the place of tension, and at that darkest point, let the group see a point of clear cold fire."[49] Perhaps Dante was right when he described the center of Hell as ice.

Theosophists make it clear that in the contest between God and the Devil, they side with the Devil. Blavatsky says, "It is but natural ... to view Satan, the Serpent of Genesis, as the real creator and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual mankind. For it is he who was the 'Harbinger of Light,' bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the eyes of the automaton created by Jehovah."[50] According to Alice Bailey, the revolt of the angels against God was part of "the divine plan of evolution;" the fallen angels "descended from their sinless and free state of existence in order to develop full divine awareness upon earth."[51] Spangler, like Blavatsky, praises Lucifer as "the angel of man's evolution. He is the angel of man's inner light."[52] He says that "Lucifer comes to give us the final gift of wholeness,"[53] and "as we move into a new age", "each of us in some way is brought to that point which I term the Luciferic initiation."[54] Spangler sees this as "an initiation into the New Age. It is an initiation of leaving the past and moving into the new, shedding our guilts and fears ... and becoming whole and at peace because we have recognized our inner light and ... the light of God."[55] G. K. Chesterton warns those who wander after this will-o'-the-wisp: "Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all the horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. ... That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones."[56]

The New Age prophets deny orthodox teaching about Christ. Alice Bailey says that "Christ taught also that the Kingdom of God is on Earth and told us to seek that Kingdom first and let all things go for its sake."[57] Jesus Christ said otherwise to Pilate while He was on trial for his life: "My kingship is not of this world" (Jn. 18:36) - a rebuke to utopians who seek to build a New Jerusalem on earth by human action, and also to those who enrich themselves and abuse or dominate others "in the name of God." Bailey denies hell and Christ's atonement for man's sin; instead, "the concept of hell" will be replaced by "an understanding of the law which makes each man work out his salvation upon the physical plane, which leads him to right the wrongs which he may have perpetrated in his lives on Earth, and which enables him eventually to 'clean his own slate'."[58] What a rotten deal Bailey offers! Instead of being saved and forgiven through Christ's death and resurrection and being told like the good thief "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise" (Lk. 23:43), we are left with the unforgiving law of karma and the requirement to right all the wrongs of all our past lives ourselves.

For Barbara Marx Hubbard, the Second Coming will occur "when the Christ within the people of Earth awakens simultaneously in a Planetary Pentecost."[59] Robert Muller echoes his mentor Alice Bailey in saying that after the New Age Christ "reappears," he will help mankind to set its affairs aright; he will then leave Earth again forever, saying "I have to turn My sight to other troubled and unfinished celestial bodies. I now pronounce you Planet of God."[60] As might be expected from a man who has channeled "a disembodied entity" for 20 years,[61] Spangler says, "Christ is the perfect balance to Lucifer."[62] Like Matthew Fox, Spangler proposes to replace Jesus with the "cosmic Christ;" "any old Christ will not do, not if we need to show that we have something better than the mainstream Christian traditions. It must be a cosmic Christ, a universal Christ, a New Age Christ. ... The Christ is universal. It is cosmic. It always has been."[63] Note the pronoun: Spangler calls Christ "it." The Christology of the New Age savants earns this Scriptural rebuke: "Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already." (1 Jn. 4:2-3)

New Age writers follow the Gnostic tradition, denying that birth, life, and the body are good. Neale Donald Walsch says, "Birth itself is a death, and death a birth. For in birth, the soul finds itself constricted within the awful limitations of a body, and at death escapes those constrictions again."[64] This is, almost word for word, what the Theosophist Alice Bailey wrote: "Birth establishes the soul in the true prison, and physical death is only the first step toward liberation."[65]

Denial of the goodness of the body leads to giving a "get out of Hell free" card to Hitler. As Neale Donald Walsch says, "Hitler went to heaven."[66] "There is no hell, so there is no place else for him to go."[67] After all, according to Walsch's incubus, Hitler was doing his victims a favor by killing them; his deeds were "mistakes," not crimes: "The mistakes Hitler made did no harm or damage to those whose deaths he caused. Those souls were released from their earthly bondage, like butterflies emerging from a cocoon. ... When you see the utter perfection in everything - not just in those things with which you agree, but (and perhaps especially) those things with which you disagree - you achieve mastery."[68] The price of "mastery" is to see "utter perfection" in Auschwitz and Treblinka. David Spangler's spirit friend, an entity named "John," likewise said, "We naturally do not identify life with the physical body, consequently, to us, the loss of your physical form is not a tragedy ... The death of millions of people in itself is not a tragedy for us, for it simply means their birth into our domains."[69]

Walsch's "God" says that Hitler does not deserve blame for his acts - but the rest of humanity is responsible for allowing them to happen; "The purpose of the Hitler Experience was to show humanity to itself."[70] Walsch's imp repeats what Alice Bailey said in September 1939, as World War II began: "Blame not the personalities involved ... They are only the product of the past and the victims of the present. At the same time, they are the agents of destiny, the creators of the new order and the initiators of the new civilisation; they are the destroyers of what must be destroyed before humanity can go forward along the Lighted Way. They are the embodiment of the personality of humanity. Blame yourselves, therefore, for what is today transpiring."[71] A similar argument has been common for a generation in American courtrooms: the criminal is not accountable for his evil deeds; instead, "society" - everybody else - is guilty.

The New Age philosophers define evil as matter, selfishness, and the refusal to embrace change. Alice Bailey says, "The domination of spirit (and its reflection, soul) by matter is what constitutes evil;"[72] at the human level, "the true nature of cosmic evil finds its major expression" in "materialistic selfishness and the sense of isolated separativeness."[73] David Spangler has a similar definition of evil. It "seeks a reductionist simplicity," "cannot abide change," "cannot abide complexity," is "fixated upon its sense of particularity," "is the dimension of separation," and "abhors diversity and seeks conformity and sameness."[74] This is the same way that some liberals in politics and the churches describe those who are not "PC." For Walsch's god, the basis of goodness is knowledge: "The mistake, therefore, is not in choosing what is best for you, but rather, in not knowing what is best."[75] This belief might explain why some "progressives" see education as the panacea for all social ills.

For New Age teachers, spiritual growth is not the fruit of taking up the Cross and following Christ. Instead, as Barbara Marx Hubbard says, "Your highest spiritual beings, even now, are telling you that each of you has access to an inner teacher ... They tell you that through a process called 'initiation,' you can transform yourself into an 'ascended master'."[76] (Perhaps "initiation" is more dangerous than Ms. Hubbard lets on; Alice Bailey says, "each contact with the Initiator leads the initiate closer to the centre of pure darkness."[77] ) Walsch's god does not favor obedience to God's will: "Obedience is not growth, and growth is what I desire."[78] Instead, the spook offers this alternative: "No kind of evolution ever took place through denial. If you are to evolve, it will not be because you've been able to successfully deny yourself things you know 'feel good,' but because you've granted yourself these pleasures - and found something even greater. For how can you know that something is 'greater' if you've never tasted the 'lesser'?"[79] Groovy! Do your own thing, man! Don't knock it if you haven't tried it!

In the same way that the New Age teachers invert theology, they also invert morality. Walsch's celestial confidant told him that: "There's no such thing as the Ten Commandments. ... God's Law is No Law."[80] As a result, Walsch's god approves of sexual activity by children and teenagers, saying "In enlightened societies offspring are never discouraged, reprimanded, or 'corrected' when they begin to find early delight in the nature of their very being. ... Sexual functions are also seen and treated as totally natural, totally wonderful, and totally okay."[81] Walsch's goblin does not say whether the enlightened little ones are doing it solo, with their friends, with their siblings, or with adults. Barbara Marx Hubbard says, "The break-up of the 20th century procreative family structure is a vital perturbation needed for the breakthrough of the 21st century cocreative family structure."[82] For the sake of the Divine Self, Neale Donald Walsch denounces fidelity and marriage vows: "Betrayal of yourself in order not to betray another is Betrayal nonetheless. It is the Highest Betrayal."[ 83] Indeed, family members who won't move into the New Age should be left behind. Barbara Marx Hubbard says, "But if members of our family choose to remain where they are, we have no moral obligation to suppress our own potential on their behalf. In fact the suppression of potential is more 'immoral' than growing beyond our biological relationships."[84] Once our bodies, minds, and souls are drained dry by free sex and trafficking with the spirit world, we can - and ought to - choose to die. As Barbara Marx Hubbard says, "Those who have more to create choose to live on until they are finished with their work. When we feel that our creativity has run its course, we gracefully choose to die. In fact, it seems unethical and foolish to live on."[85]

Both Barbara Marx Hubbard and Neale Donald Walsch would rewrite the Lord's Prayer, making it a hymn to the Divine Self. Barbara Marx Hubbard's version is: "Our Father/Mother God... Which Art In Heaven... Hallowed Be Our Name... Our Kingdom Is Come... Our Will Is Done... Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread... Forgive Us Our Trespasses As We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us... Leave Us Not In Temptation But Deliver Us From Evil... For Ours Is The Kingdom, Ours The Power, Ours The Glory, For Ever And Ever. Amen."[86] Walsch's familiar spirit inverts the prayer in the same way, saying, "My Children, who art in Heaven, hallowed is your name. Your kingdom is come, and your will is done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. ... For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, forever."[87] Are these savants copying each other on the Earth-plane, or are their spirit guides holding conference calls to coordinate their messages to humankind?

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For mankind to enter the New Age, we must abandon the traditional religions, especially the monotheistic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Alice Bailey said, "Palestine should no longer be called the Holy Land; its sacred places are only the passing relics of three dead and gone religions. ... Judaism is old, obsolete, and separative and has no true message for the spiritually minded which cannot be better given by the newer faiths; the Moslem faith has served its purpose and all true Moslems await the coming of the Imam Mahdi who will lead them to light and to spiritual victory; the Christian faith also has served its purpose; its Founder seeks to bring a new Gospel and a new message that will enlighten all men everywhere."[88] Bailey's "Christ" says "There is no need for any man to join the Christian Church in order to be affiliated with Christ. The requirements are to love your fellowmen, lead a disciplined life, recognise the divinity in all faiths and all beings, and rule your daily life with Love."[89] By contrast, the real Christ says to his disciples, "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned." (Mk. 16:15-16)

Bailey's call to "recognise the divinity in all faiths" is belied by her hatred for traditional religions. This avatar of New Age globalism was willing to nuke the Vatican if necessary. In 1946, she wrote: "The atomic bomb ... belongs to the United Nations for use (or let us rather hope, simply for threatened use) when aggressive action on the part of any nation rears its ugly head. It does not essentially matter whether that aggression is the gesture of any particular nation or group of nations or whether it is generated by the political groups of any powerful religious organisation, such as the Church of Rome, who are as yet unable to leave politics alone."[90]

Another of Bailey's targets - before, during, and after the Holocaust - was Judaism. Bailey wrote that the Jews' sufferings were "the working out of the retributive aspect of the Law of Cause and Effect ... Though much that has happened to the Jews originated in their past history and in their pronounced attitude of separativeness and nonassimilability, and in their emphasis upon material good ... the agents who have brought the evil karma upon them equally incur the retributive aspects of the same law."[91] When Bailey accuses Jews of "separativeness" and "emphasis upon material good," she is making - in her own terms - the most serious accusation possible, since she says "the true nature of cosmic evil" is "the supreme evil of materialistic selfishness and the sense of isolated separativeness."[92] In January 1939, two months after the Kristallnacht pogrom in Germany, Bailey wrote: "the Jew ... must let go of his own separative tendencies and of his deep sense of persecution. ... There must ... be a realisation by the Jew and Gentile of equal responsibility and equal liability for the present world difficulty."[93] In 1948, Bailey said that "the Jewish people ... forget that millions in the world today have suffered as they have suffered and that - for instance - there are eighty per cent of other people in the concentration camps of Europe and only twenty per cent Jews. The Jew, however, fought only for himself, and largely ignored the sufferings of his fellowmen in the concentration camps."[94]

In Western Europe and North America since 1945, any public figure suspected of anti-Semitism has been made a pariah. This sanction has not been applied to Alice Bailey, her teachings, and her Theosophist followers. On the contrary. Betsy Stang, an "interfaith minister" at the Wittenberg Center and an active participant in the URI, said, "Some of Bailey's writing is really remarkable, very Gothic. You would put her with Blavatsky, Gurdjieff, and Steiner. She is historically very important. In my mind, Bailey has beautiful, poetic evocations in her books."[95]

Other New Age writers refrain from anti-Semitic rants. Instead, they spit hatred at orthodox Christians, whom they denounce as "fundamentalists." Robert Muller said at the 1996 URI summit conference that the United Religions must tame "fundamentalism" and profess faithfulness "only to the global spirituality and to the health of this planet."[96] Recently, Muller added an anti-Catholic twist: "Two of the worst principles and words still used on planet Earth are: fundamentalism and infallibility."[97] Muller explained: "Look at all the religious wars we had during the Middle Ages. Killing in the name of God was the rule. Religion was discredited to the point that the French Revolution abolished religions as troublemakers. Even today, many regard religions as troublemakers. This is why the common values between all religions should be expressed. ... we can move, we must move ... to a global spirituality."[98] Muller poses two alternatives for us: worship Gaia, or face the Jacobins' response to religious "troublemakers." (Unfortunately, the crimes of many Christians, hierarchs and laity alike, provided a basis for revolutionary hostility - in 1789, 1917, 1936, and other occasions.)

Dr. Jim Garrison, President of the State of the World Forum (SWF) and a self-described follower of "inclusive Buddhism," said in 1998 that the days of dogmatic religion are ending: "I think that Judaism and Christianity and Islam have done real damage to the planet because they have too many answers. ... If my theology is an impediment I have to get rid of my theology. ... The conservative Jews and the conservative Christians and the conservative Imams they think what I'm saying is heresy, but I just say to these people, your box is too small, get into a bigger box."[99] A coffin, perhaps? Garrison said that the SWF honors the mavericks and the heretics; "during times of transition orthodoxies fall and the heretics and the mavericks are the people creating the new orthodoxy."[100] Garrison to traditional monotheism: change or die; I'll be in charge soon. Welcome to the New Religious Order, in which the only heresy will be orthodoxy.

Blavatsky hated orthodox Christianity, and her greatest fury was directed at the Vatican. In 1877, she wrote that Isis Unveiled "is in particular directed against theological Christianity, the chief opponent of free thought. ... We cast our gauntlet at the dogmatic theologians who would enslave both history and science; and especially at the Vatican, whose despotic pretensions have become hateful to the greater portion of enlightened Christendom."[101] Likewise, in 1888, she described "the Latin Church" as "intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who do not choose to be its slaves."[102]

Nature abhors a vacuum, and no throne long remains vacant. If the New Age movement were to dethrone Christ the King, who would take His place? If Mikhail Gorbachev has his way, the god of the New Religion will be nature. He has said, "Nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals."[103] Muller has also hailed the Earth as God: "Hindus call our earth Brahma, or God, for they rightly see no difference between our earth and the divine."[104]

Blavatsky expected the current world religions to disappear; the "religion of the ancients is the religion of the future."[105] The "religion of the ancients" was the worship of the Dragon and the Sun; Blavatsky claimed that "there was a time when the four parts of the world were covered with temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon."[106] The memory of this ancient religion was "the origin of the new Satanic myth" of Christians.[107] The restored worship of the Dragon and the Sun is what Blavatsky expects to be the New Religion of the future. In 1931, Hilaire Belloc warned about the emergence of such a Satanic, post-Christian religion: "When the gods of the New Paganism come they will not be merely insufficient, as were the gods of Greece, nor merely false; they will be evil. One might put it in a sentence, and say that the New Paganism, foolishly expecting satisfaction, will fall, before it knows where it is, into Satanism."[108]

New Age writers say that we will accept the New Religion when we understand that all religions have the same source and the same end. Alice Bailey said, "The day is dawning when all religions will be regarded as emanating from one great spiritual source; all will be seen as unitedly providing the one root out of which the universal world religion will inevitably emerge."[109] Likewise, Episcopal Bishop William Swing believes that all religions "come together at the apex, in the Divine."[110] Knowingly or not, their affirmation of religious unity echoes Blavatsky, who said that all religions have "been derived from one primitive source," and that separate religions are "but shades of human error and the signs of imperfection."[111] Blavatsky's turgid writings of 1877 have become the received truth for some present-day religious liberals.

In 1946, Bailey said that all of us must accept religious unity, or "humanity is headed towards a religious war which will make the past war appear like child's play; antagonisms and hatreds will embroil entire populations and the politicians of all the nations will take full advantage of the situation to precipitate a war which may well prove the end of humanity. There are no hatreds so great or so deep as those fostered by religion."[112] Bishop Swing's warning, "What is a bigger terrorist threat than religion in the world today? There is none,"[113] repeats Bailey's statement. (Thus, the New Age leaders lay a subtle spiritual trap. They warn accurately of the dangers of religious violence - and then propose a totalitarian spiritual counterfeit as the means to avert this peril.)

Bailey expected the New Religion, which she called the "Church Universal," to emerge by the close of the twentieth century[114] - in other words, now. Bailey says that "Only those will remain as guides and leaders of the human spirit who speak from living experience, and who know no creedal barriers; they will recognise the onward march of revelation and the new emerging truths. These truths will be founded on the ancient realities but will be adapted to modern need and will manifest progressively the revelation of the divine nature and quality."[115] Thus, liberal Protestants and heretical Catholics will have a happy place in the New Religion. Bailey believed that the New Religion would work closely with the United Nations: "Thus the expressed aims and efforts of the United Nations will be eventually brought to fruition and a new church of God, gathered out of all religions and spiritual groups, will unitedly bring to an end the great heresy of separateness."[116] Robert Muller has gone further, proposing to deify the United Nations: "At the beginning the UN was only a hope. Today it is a political reality. Tomorrow it will be the world's religion."[117]

Bailey said that in the New Religion, there will be two levels of religious practice - one for the masses and one for the adepts of the New Age, those who "know the potency of formulas, mantrams and invocations and who work consciously."[118] Fellow-theosophist David Spangler said, "The new spirituality may well have aspects that resemble shamanism. It will have aspects drawn from all the great faith traditions, but it will add something new, arising perhaps from a deeper experience of our co-creative relationship with the Earth and with God."[119] Barbara Marx Hubbard called for a "meta-religio," a "new ground of the whole" to be created by the United Religions: "We long not for a new religion, but for the evolution of religion, such that we embody the qualities of our master teachers and become conscious cocreators with the divine universal intelligence ourselves."[120]

With the New Religion, there will be spiritual totalitarianism. New Age leaders agree that the last 2,000 years - the Age of Pisces - were a time for development of individual identity and personality. In the coming Age of Aquarius, this will change. People will happily let go of individualism and merge their own goals and identity into that of the whole race. As Alice Bailey said, "Selfishness, as we now understand it, will gradually disappear, for the will of the individual will voluntarily be blended into the group will."[121] After all, the existence of separate persons is an illusion; we are all really part of The One. David Spangler says, "We come into the age of the group again ... and now in the next two thousand years or so man leans how to blend his divine centre in wholeness."[122] Neale Donald Walsch's familiar spirit says, "Social evolution is demonstrated by movement towards unity, not separatism."[123]

In language that foreshadows Bishop Swing's blather about the emergence of a "global soul,"[124] Teilhard de Chardin, whom New Age writers now hail as a prophet, says, "The organization of human energy ... is directed and pushes us towards the ultimate formation, over and above each personal element, of a common soul of humanity."[125] (Did you know that you are a "personal element"?) The goal of human evolution, for Teilhard, is that people must "acquire the consciousness, without losing themselves, of becoming one and the same person."[126] If we understand things rightly, we will "love the preordained forces that unite" us; "a natural union of affinity and sympathy will supersede the forces of compulsion."[127] As Orwell said of his protagonist, Winston, at the end of 1984, "He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."[128]

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The New Age avatars proclaim their commitment to democracy and tolerance. However, they propose totalitarian solutions to mankind's urgent, undeniable problems. The sacrifice of freedom and the acceptance of unlimited government power will - as always - be for our own good; necessity will be the excuse of tyrants. The New Age movement uses the theory of evolution - a theory of inevitable and desirable Progress - as a justification for whatever policies are needed to drive humanity and the planet to the next great leap upward. (Can anything good ever come from applying Darwinism to society?)

Alice Bailey and her followers at the Lucis Trust have repeatedly praised revolutions and dictatorships, approving them as part of the workings of "the Plan." In September 1939, she said, "The men who inspired the initiating French revolution; the great conqueror, Napoleon; Bismarck, creator of a nation; Mussolini, the regenerator of his people; Hitler who lifted a distressed people upon his shoulders; Lenin, the idealist, Stalin and Franco" were "all expressions of the Shamballa force"[129] - a force which Bailey extolled. She viewed the dictatorships of her time as a positive part of human evolution, fostering humanity's "power to regard himself as part of a whole."[130] Alice Bailey criticized the Stalinist regime in the USSR but said that "The true communistic platform is sound; it is brotherhood in action and it does not - in its original platform - run counter to the spirit of Christ."[131]

Foster Bailey carried on Alice Bailey's work after her death in 1949. In a 1972 book called Running God's Plan, he wrote that the Russian Revolution had been "an outstanding hierarchical success. It has been demonstrated that hopeless, illiterate peasants when stimulated and given a chance become industrial workers."[132] Historians describe these same events as forced industrialization, forced collectivization, and man-made famine. Bailey's "hierarchy" also approved of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: "The cultural revolution in China was begun a few short years ago. This also is an hierarchical project. Amazing changes have been achieved in that short period."[133] According to the Black Book of Communism, there were approximately 20 million victims of Soviet Communism, and 65 million victims of the Chinese regime. Evidently, the Theosophists' spiritual Hierarchy condones mass bloodshed to achieve its goals.

The implosion of the Soviet Empire has not dampened the enthusiasm of today's New Age writers for world government and socialism. Robert Muller favors using the European Union as the basis for "World Union," unless the UN is "rapidly transformed" into "an effective world political union."[134] Then, "since Russia reaches into the North of Asia, the old dream of Eurasia can be implemented. The plan of Robert Schuman who dreamt of integrating the African countries into Eurafrica can be implemented ... In the meantime, the US can organize the Americas from Alaska to the [sic] Tierra del Fuego and the two unions can be integrated into a World Union."[135] This ought to be interesting news for Latin Americans who cherish independence from the Yankees. Projects for the world government would include global prohibition of alcohol,[136] a global ID card for all,[137] global police and military forces under the control of "the Ministry of Peace"[ 138] (the same term that Orwell used in 1984 for Big Brother's military force[139] ), a global secret service,[140] "world penal legislation,"[141] a global property register similar to "what the young French revolutionaries did for France,"[142] a global income tax,[143] and a global computer database to house "all data on our planet, on its environment, and on humanity."[144]

If this sounds like world Communism, Muller says that might not be altogether bad: "We should ask an honest man like Mikhail Gorbachev to tell us what was good in certain cases in communism and which would be useful for humanity. Not everything is totally bad in any system. Even Hitler did something worthwhile, still existent today, when he asked for the building of the Volkswagen, the cheap, economic car for ordinary, low income people."[145] (There were 150,000 advance-paid orders for the car by 1939; none were ever fulfilled.) To achieve his goals, Muller favors abolition of "nationalism" and of "the big, multinational companies"; this could be achieved either by a "people's revolution or a revolution of the scientists, thinkers, visionaries, prophets, globalists, futurologists and synthesizers of this planet."[146]

Neale Donald Walsch's spirit guide also favors communism and world government. The god says that highly evolved beings - smart ETs - practice pure communism: "They share everything. With everyone. ... All the natural resources of their world, of their environment, are divided equally, and distributed to everyone."[147] Nations must disappear. Instead, there should be a world government,[148] backed up with a World Court and a world "peacekeeping force."[149] Each nation would have two representatives in the Congress of Nations, and "representation in direct proportion to a nation's population" in the People's Assembly.[150] Under this plan, the U.S. would have as many votes in the Congress of Nations as the Sudan, where Christians are sold into slavery or executed. The U.S. would have about one-fourth as many votes in the People's Assembly as the People's Republic of China, which persecutes Christians and enforces a one-child policy on families. Would anyone care to guess how long our Constitutional protections of freedom of religion and freedom of speech (which are already under seige) would survive?

Barbara Marx Hubbard has a similar vision of an earthly utopia: "In the past our glorious visions of the future - heaven, paradise, nirvana - were thought to happen after death. The newer thought is that we do not have to die to get there! We are not speaking here of life after death in some mythical heaven, but life more abundant in real time in history. We are speaking of the next stage of our social evolution."[151]

Matthew Fox concluded The Coming of the Cosmic Christ with a vision of "Vatican III," to be called by Pope John XXIV to define the doctrine of the Cosmic Christ as intrinsic to faith. The future Pope has replaced the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith with a board of grandmothers,[152] and has also dealt firmly with dissenters: "Still another action taken by this pope has been to gather all the Opus Dei bishops of the world on one island where, it is said, they are undergoing a two-year spiritual retreat that includes a critique of the history of fascism and Christianity on the one hand and an inculcation of creation spirituality on the other. It is said these bishops do body prayer three times daily and art as meditation four hours per day. The native people of the island are the instructors for the art as meditation classes. Women have assumed the office of bishop in their respective diocesan sees."[153] In other words, the rightist extremists are to be brainwashed.

There is literary precedent for sending undesirables to islands. In Brave New World those who do not fit into society are sent to islands of their choice [154]; World Controller Mustapha Mond leaves the misfits to their own devices and does not force them to change. Thus, Fox's utopia would treat its dissenters more harshly than Huxley's dystopia.

David Spangler likewise points toward a totalitarian future. He says: "From the depths of the race a call is rising for the emergence of a saviour, an avatar, a father-figure ... who can be for the race what the ancient priest-kings were in the dawn of human history."[155] The priest-kings of Sodom, Egypt and Babylon will return to rule us. Spangler describes "true democracy" in terms reminiscent of Rousseau's "General Will": "All spiritual societies are hierarchical. They cannot function in any other way. ... It is not the will of the majority that is important. It is the will of the whole ... Democracy as we know it is a quantitative form of government. True democracy, however, is qualitative, and that is what we must return to."[156] Such "true democracy" is to be our future, for Spangler says "theocratic democracy" is "what we are moving towards for humankind."[157] ("Theocratic democracy"? Quick, call the ACLU! Or does it only oppose Christian theocracy?)

Spangler says that today's "new gurus" are "accepting their divinity without becoming inflated by it;" they are "givers of life, and they are forming the basis for the government of the future. This will be a government that is authoritarian ... in the same way that the laws of thermodynamics or of gravity are authoritarian."[158] The authority of the New Regime will be as omnipresent and inexorable as the authority of the laws of Nature; each subject will say, "I can only follow this rhythm, this pattern," for we will be "at one with the currents of life."[159] (One might reply that the only beings that always move "at one with the currents" are dead.) The regime that Spangler describes as "government by the whole, the true democracy"[160] will be just as democratic as the German Democratic Republic.

Teilhard de Chardin explicitly and repeatedly favored totalitarianism. In March, 1939, Teilhard wrote that the time for "egotistical autonomy" had passed; "the modern totalitarian regimes, whatever their initial defects, are neither heresies nor biological regressions: they are in line with the essential trend of 'cosmic' movement."[161] In August 1941, Teilhard said, "the real divide, the real human conflict of today, is not between democrats, fascists, communists, and Christians, but between those who do and do not believe that there is a Humanity to be constructed over and above man."[162] On another occasion, he said, "A progressive democrat is not fundamentally different from a really progressive totalitarian."[163]

The teachings of Alice Bailey, Teilhard de Chardin, Robert Muller, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Neale Donald Walsch, and David Spangler provide the theory of totalitarian New Age government and economics; the programs of Gorbachev's State of the World Forum and the Earth Charter Campaign describe the proposed practice.

Forum President Garrison states the mission of the State of the World Forum: to mobilize "creative minorities" who will set the agenda for the "new phase of human development."[164] Gorbachev considers those who participate in the Forum to be members of a "global brain trust"[165] for a new civilization. Both men agree that world government is needed. In 1995, Garrison said that "Over the next 20 to 30 years, we are going to end up with world government ... It's inevitable;"[166] he likened opponents to Confederate secessionists and the Oklahoma City bombers.

In his 1995 keynote speech to the Forum, Gorbachev said, "We should take a sober and unprejudiced view of the strengths and weaknesses of collectivism, which is fraught with dictatorship. But what about the individualism of Western culture? At the very least, something will have to be done about its purely consumerist orientation."[167] To further his agenda for a "new civilization," Gorbachev would develop new "moral maxims," "values common to all humankind"; "it is not enough to say 'Thou shalt not kill.' Ecological education implies, above all, respect and love for every living being. It is here that ecological culture interfaces with religion. ... Honoring diversity and honoring the Earth create the basis for genuine unity."[168] In the new morality, "honoring diversity and honoring the Earth" will replace God.

To build the "new civilization," Forum speakers have offered all the progressive nostrums that they can pull from the shelf: upholding "indigenous cultures" as the ideal, reforming education to create the "new global citizen,"[169] legalizing marijuana,[170] revising the world's major religions to "produce more democratic, egalitarian, and individual-friendly spirituality,"[171] rejecting the idea of original sin, redefining truth as "a way of knowing in which we learn to honor our woundedness and our dependency on others,"[172] and creating a new "integral culture" in which "all roles and relationships will be redefined: inner spiritual values, intimate family relationships (between men and women, and among adults, children, and elders); communities; nations, ethnic groups, and cultures; global institutions ... and the relationship of humans with the natural world."[173] (Not even the Bolsheviks went that far.) All will have to accept the new, holistic world view; the 1998 Forum session on "Our Common Enterprise" said, "The future thus belongs to those who can see interconnections, who can appreciate the whole as well as the parts, and who can blend one aspect of life with another. To be authentic in the future will be to be integrated."[174]

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The Earth Charter is the brainchild of Gorbachev (acting as chairman of Green Cross International) and Maurice Strong, a wealthy proponent of world government, a leader at UN environmental meetings, and an adviser to the World Bank.[175] (Ted Turner is also involved, as a member of the Green Cross International board.[176] ) Gorbachev views the proposed Earth Charter as "a kind of Ten Commandments, a 'Sermon on the Mount,' that provides a guide for human behavior toward the environment in the next century and beyond."[177] Maurice Strong says, "The real goal of the Earth Charter is that it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments, like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."[178] Gorbachev and Strong seem to view themselves as the lawgivers of the future, successors to Moses and Jesus.

Gorbachev and Strong wrote the Charter to correct what they saw as the excessively "anthropocentric emphasis" of the Declaration on the Environment produced at the 1992 UN conference in Rio de Janeiro.[179] They hope to gain UN adoption of the Earth Charter.[180] Once adopted, the Charter would be the basis for new local, national, and global law. Steven Rockefeller, chairman of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, is coordinating the drafting of the Earth Charter,[181] and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund is supporting Earth Charter activities in ten Third World countries.[182] Global Education Associates, the Temple of Understanding, [183] and the URI also promote the Earth Charter.

The basis of the Earth Charter is the belief that "Earth, our home, is alive with a unique community of life." [184] The Charter states that "A dramatic rise in population has increased the pressures on ecological systems and has overburdened social systems" [185] - the "Population Bomb" argument. Charter writers want to promote "equitable distribution of wealth" [186] and to "promote gender equality" [187].

The Charter asks us to "treat all living beings with compassion and protect them from cruelty and wanton destruction." [188] (So far, so good.) However, unborn children are excluded from this compassion; the Charter supports "universal access to health care that fosters reproductive health and responsible reproduction." [189] (In UN circles, "reproductive health" includes artificial contraception, abortion, and sterilization.)

Another document on the Earth Charter web site, "The Green Cross Earth Charter Philosophy," is from Gorbachev's own organization; it takes a hard line about what the Earth Charter will mean for us. First comes the call for immediate "fundamental economic, social and cultural changes that that address the root causes of poverty and environmental degradation."[190] Then comes the call for "Stabilization of the World's Population," and "Zero-Growth of Material Economy;" the needs of the world's poor will be met by "reducing material over-consumption by the rich minority."[191] To enforce all this, there must be "Global Sovereignty" with total power and universal jurisdiction: "The protection of the Biosphere, as the Common Interest of Humanity, must not be subservient to the rules of state sovereignty, demands of the free market or individual rights. ... An international body for the Sustainability of Human Life on the Earth ... must have the independence and power to facilitate agreement between all societal actors to support the protection of the Biosphere as the Common Interest of Humanity."[192] Democratic institutions must not delay the Earth Charter revolution; at the 1995 State of the World Forum, Maurice Strong said, "We shouldn't wait until political democracy paves the way. We must act now."[193]

When Maurice Strong says crazy things, we need to pay attention; he has powerful friends. Strong, Chairman of the Earth Council, is on the board of the World Economic Forum (WEF); Klaus Schwab, president and founder of the WEF, is a member of the Earth Council.[194] The WEF, which meets annually in Davos, Switzerland, describes itself as "the most significant global business summit bringing together close to 2,000 business and political leaders, experts, academics, and members of the media, to set the global agenda for the coming year."[195] Top executives of billion-dollar companies pay fees and travel costs of $30,000 to $250,000 each year[196] for the privilege of schmoozing with presidents of many countries and of the world's largest corporations - including President Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bill Gates, Kofi Annan (UN Secretary General), John Smith (CEO of General Motors), Peter Sutherland (Chairman of Goldman-Sachs), Kim Woo-Choong (Chairman of Daewoo Corporation), Jürgen Schrempp (Chairman of Daimler-Benz),[197] and George Soros.[198]

In their pride, the radical New Age teachers, the globalists, and their financiers plan for a planetary Utopia. The greater the pride of people or movements, the greater their rage when they encounter opposition, and the greater their despair they feel when their grandiose visions fail. Pride, rage, and despair are the spiritual precursors of cruelty and murder.

It might seem odd to accuse the New Age prophets of these things. After all, they and their followers appear to be nice, well-cultured people who use the correct fork at the dinner table; they claim that their goal is the betterment of the human race and of the Earth. Nevertheless, these radical New Age leaders believe that the two World Wars were necessary for human evolution, and that the birth pangs of the New Age began with the atomic explosions in 1945. They also advocate sending those people who are unwilling to enter the New Age into oblivion, and reducing world population to 2 billion - or less. Such is the blood lust of the "compassionate."

All of this flows from the Gnostic belief expressed by Alice Bailey: "Death is not a disaster to be feared; the work of the Destroyer is not really cruel or undesirable."[199] The New Age avatars have embraced a brutal version of spiritual Darwinism. As Barbara Marx Hubbard says, "Nature is less concerned about individual survival, than with the evolution of the whole to ever higher degrees of freedom, union, and consciousness of God."[200] David Spangler's familiar spirit says that suffering is merely part of "a world of form" that "has little meaning;" the spirit is "concerned with that which is the eternal life of you, the Divine Presence which I nourish and embrace. If forms must be destroyed that this Presence be released, then so be it."[201] This spirit speaks like someone in charge of targeting nuclear weapons.

From the start of World War II until her death in 1949, Alice Bailey wrote that the war was necessary for the New Age to come. She believed that the New Age would be preceded by a "destructive cycle, wherein the old order passes away" and "human civilization with its accompanying institutions - is destroyed."[202] She gives credit to the "Hierarchy" of ascended spiritual masters for "their decision, taken early in this century, which precipitated ... that major destructive agency, the world war (1914-1945)."[203] In April 1943, Bailey said, "One of the purposes lying behind the present holocaust (World War II) has been the necessity for the destruction of inadequate forms. ... the Law of destruction was permitted to work through humanity itself, and men are now destroying the forms through which many masses of men are functioning."[204] ("Destroying forms" does not mean shredding IRS paperwork; it is the Theosophist code word for death.) After the war, Bailey wrote that "the Custodians of God's Plan" viewed World War II as a "major surgical operation" that had been "largely successful" in removing "a violent streptococcic germ" that had "menaced the life of humanity."[205] She warned that this would be only the beginning of sorrows: "The germ, to be sure, is not eradicated and makes its presence felt in infected areas of the body of humanity. Another surgical operation may be necessary."[206]

Bailey viewed the atomic incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an "inevitable and desirable" manifestation of the "saving force," since "the wrecking and disappearance of that which is bad and undesirable must ever precede the building of the good and desirable."[207] Barbara Marx Hubbard saw the nuclear explosions of 1945 as a turning point for humanity, "the beginning of our collective labor pains. It was the signal that the Cosmic Child, humanity, could either kill itself by remaining in self-centered consciousness in the womb of Earth, or instead emancipate itself for universal consciousness."[208] David Spangler likewise hailed the discovery of atomic energy. He said that the explosion of atomic bombs in 1945, "plus subsequent research into nuclear energy," was a sign that "man was beginning to discover, through his exoteric science, the reality of the etheric plane."[209] A spirit that spoke to Spangler in "the transmissions of limitless love and truth" said, "Should nuclear devices be used, the energies will be the revelation of me. All that will remain is of what I am and all that is not of me shall disappear, to follow another law and another destiny."[210] (Perhaps the earth-plane manifestation of Spangler's incubus was Dr. Strangelove.) In September 1946, after the US nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean, Teilhard closed a paean to the Bomb by saying, "For all their military trappings, the recent explosions at Bikini herald the birth into the world of a Mankind both inwardly and outwardly pacified. They proclaim the coming of the Spirit of the Earth."[211] Teilhard's proclamation of the spiritus mundi foreshadows Bishop Swing's announcement at the 1997 summit meeting of the URI, that "If you have come here because a spirit of colossal energy is being born in the loins of earth, then come here and be a midwife. Assist, in awe, at the birth of new hope."[212]

For the New Age soothsayers, the "end times" are now. Alice Bailey, Barbara Marx Hubbard, David Spangler, Neale Donald Walsch, and others have predicted that the transition to the New Age would happen between 2000 and 2010. As Neale Donald Walsch's god said, "Yours is a race awakening. Your time of fulfillment is at hand."[213] Gordon Davidson, the Theosophist author of Spiritual Politics who praised the URI as an example of the emergence of the "Avatar of Synthesis,"[214] says that in the year 2000, humanity faces "the impending descent of the Shamballa energy."[215] This would not be an joyful event; Davidson's mentor, Alice Bailey, had said that the European dictators of the 1930s were "all expressions of the Shamballa force."[216] There's no reason for Christians to accept New Age writings as true prophecies. Nevertheless, New Age fortune-tellers whose writings span the last 60 years agree with each other about the imminent, apocalyptic arrival of the New Age. We can expect New Age devotees to be busy with mischief, doing their utmost to fulfil their own prophecies.

Other New Age avatars don't set a date for the apocalypse. Instead, they view the possibility of human extinction with Earth-centered, reptilian calm. Jean Houston, spiritual mentor of Lauren Artress[217] (the Episcopal priest who runs the Labyrinth Project at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco) announces the choice facing humanity: "It could be that the human race will end as a vast, failed experiment within the next twenty-five years. And the planet will shake its shoulders, let 'em slide off and the dolphins will inherit the earth."[218] Barbara Marx Hubbard likewise offers the alternative: "We will either evolve or become extinct."[219] William Irwin Thompson, a New Age associate of the Rev. James Parks Morton and David Spangler,[220] said: "We might even end it for human beings and not be able to keep the experiment going, but the biosphere will not cease to evolve. If you're mystical, you don't necessarily identify just with a momentary piece of meat called hominoids."[221] Robert Muller also thinks that we may become extinct: "The Earth will take revenge against her most advanced species which has begun to destroy her. ... God will not allow us to destroy His Creation and to put an end to the Earth's careful, miraculous evolution over billions of years. He is more likely to let humanity be destroyed."[222]

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As part of the imminent global transformation, the radical New Age leaders look forward to a "selection" of the human race. The elect of humanity will survive to enter the New Age. Many others will die - a prospect that these gurus view with cold equanimity.

Alice Bailey described World War II as "the broom of the Father of all, sweeping away obstructions in the path of His returning Son."[223] Since she saw war and mass murder as part of God's plan, it's reasonable to ask whether other Theosophists and New Age leaders who foretell a "selection process" intend to kill their opponents, if they can.

For several decades, in books with titles such as Happy Birth Day, Planet Earth, The Revelation: A Message of Hope for the New Millennium, and The Book of Co-Creation, Barbara Marx Hubbard has predicted "personal extinction"[224] for people who will not get with the New Age program. "A Quantum Transformation is the time of selection of what evolves from what devolves. The species known as self-centered humanity will become extinct. The species known as whole-centered humanity will evolve."[225] At the time of the quantum transformation, "humans capable of cooperating to self-transcend will do so"; "elements" who maintain "the illusion of separation will become extinct ... just as Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal humans became extinct."[226] In referring to undesirable people as "elements," she follows the example of the Nazis, the Communists, and others who dehumanize their opponents to justify destroying them. Barbara Marx Hubbard warns that if the selection comes, it will be violent: "Either the good will prevail, connect, link, and magnetize the majority of humanity to act with love for life everlasting, or the violent selection of the self-centered will begin."[227] For her, Satan "is part of the selection process ... that will bring forth the self-elected from the self-rejected, so that ... only those connected to the whole survive."[228] Robert Muller says that persons "who hold contrary beliefs" to those favored in the "next phase of evolution" will disappear[229] ; opponents of the UN and other "anti-evolutionary, blind, self-serving people" will have their souls "parked in a special corral of the universe for having been retarding forces, true aberrations in the evolution and ascent of humanity."[230] David Spangler says that those who do not enter the New Age "will lose, for the time being ... the ability to control or influence the developments upon Earth. ... They will have moved from an active state to a relatively passive one."[231] "Relatively passive" - like a corpse?

All the New Age soothsayers say that the extinction of the opposition is for their own good, the beginning of their cosmic re-education. David Spangler says that those not attuned to New Age energy "have no place in the new world";[232] they will be sent "where the patterns of the old still hold sway" for their "highest good."[233] Barbara Marx Hubbard says that those who are against the New Age "will begin again within a different planetary system which will serve as kindergarten for the transition from self-centered to whole-centered being."[234] Nick Bunick, the self-styled reincarnation of the Apostle Paul, sets the date for the selection. Between 2000 and 2010, "those people who are not living according to the laws of God" will be "no longer participating in our world".[235] The resisters will be sent to "a different vibrational plane"[236] - not as a punishment, but to improve their karma.[237] Barbara Marx Hubbard says that survivors of the "selection" will go with the flow of evolution, will love "choice, diversity, flexibility, ambiguity, uncertainty, responsibility, and response-ability," and will be able to "co-create, unite, synergize and love everyone as a member of your body."[238] The inheritors of Marx Hubbard's new kingdom will pass all the current tests for political correctness, and will be highly qualified to serve as bishops in the Episcopal Church.

The leaders of the New Age movement argue that the earth is overpopulated, and that radical measures are needed to defuse the "population bomb." In the 1940s - when world population was less than half what it is today - Alice Bailey said, "certain physical restrictions should be imposed, because it is now evident that beyond a certain point the planet cannot support humanity."[239] Matthew Fox has said, "Excessive human population is a grave danger ... it's one of the reasons I joined the Episcopal church, because of its open-minded and pragmatic view of birth control."[240] In 1997, Gorbachev said, "for a certain transitional period families should limit themselves to one child;" once the world's population is stabilized, the former Communist premier would consider upping our ration to two children per family.[241]

Some of these "forward-thinking" people want to go further, and reduce Earth's population to 2 billion or less. In a November 1991 interview with The UNESCO Courier, Jacques-Yves Cousteau said: "World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that we shouldn't even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable."[242] That works out to 127,750,000 people per year, and 1.27 billion people to "eliminate" per decade. Media magnate Ted Turner is more patient; he will allow 80 to 100 years to reduce the population of the Earth from 6 billion to 2 billion by a global "voluntary" one-child policy.[243] In an interview with the environmentalist E Magazine, he added, "I think the population should be closer to when we had indigenous populations, back before the advent of farming. Fifteen thousand years ago, there was somewhere between 40 and 100 million people. But [population researchers] Paul and Anne Ehrlich have convinced me that if we're going to have a modern infrastructure, with commercial airlines and interstate highways around the world, we're going to need about two billion people to support it."[244]

The eco-feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether has a similarly low view of humanity. She told those who attended a May 1998 ecological conference that "We need to seek the most compassionate way of weeding out people. ... In place of the pro-life movement we need to develop the 'spirituality of recycling' ... a spirituality that includes ourselves in the renewal of earth and self. We need to compost ourselves."[245] Several months later, Ruether told a national conference of Call To Action, a liberal Catholic organization, how many people must go onto the compost pile: "We must return to the population level of 1930"[246] - about 2 billion people. What the supporters of population reduction leave discreetly unannounced is how to get rid of the 4 billion "surplus" people.

Despite his deep involvement in New Age occultism, Spangler points out some dangers of the New Age worldview: "a desire for power, the tyranny of the group over the individual," "an attachment to novelty for its own sake," destruction of marriages due to pursuit of "self-development," a misguided pursuit of "limitlessness," losing awareness of the transcendence of God, and "unwillingness to say that anything is out of place or wrong."[247] He also warns, "The new age movement in North America has much in common with its counterpart in Europe between the world wars. The ecological spirit and desire for transcendence expressed at that time in Germany became corrupted and channeled into the Nazi movement, which had many roots in occultism."[248] An orthodox Christian might also offer all of these criticisms. It is unfortunate that Spangler did not use similar discernment in his other work.

Because the radical New Age adepts extol each other's writings, speak at the same workshops, and share board memberships in the same organizations, it's fair to assess their teachings as a group. (If this is "guilt by association," it's an association that the New Age gurus have created themselves.)

Taken together, the works of Robert Muller, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Neale Donald Walsch, Alice Bailey, David Spangler, and Helena Blavatsky are an anti-Catechism: a revival of the Gnostic heresy, a comprehensive anti-Gospel, and a point-by-point inversion of Christian morality and doctrine. The problem is not a few "smoking gun" quotes pulled from otherwise-innocent writings. The adepts of the New Age have provided an arsenal full of smoking guns, all pointed in the same direction. Those who can stand to read New Age and theosophical books in detail will find that these writers make clear their intentions for us all - just as Hitler did with Mein Kampf and as the Communists have done since Marx and Lenin. This time, let us heed the warning!

Is the New Age movement a conspiracy? No. Conspiracies are usually secretive associations with illegal objectives. New Age leaders and their utopian, globalist allies are open about their aims, and their activities are legal. The goals of the current crop of New Agers and utopians match what radicals have sought since the French Revolution. Their project reveals the permanent vulnerability of mankind to temptation and sin. Consider: God remains forever, and does not change. Human nature does not change, since mankind is created in God's image. The devil does not change, and the temptations he offers mankind do not change. From the Garden of Eden to the séances of the theosophists, the message is the same: you will not die, and you will be a god. Human response to temptation does not change either; apart from God's grace, we sin. Therefore, human rebellion against God will follow a consistent pattern. People who wish to rebel against God will find collaborators and mentors to affirm them and to assist them in their plans. (Also, the religious and governmental authorities, by their oft-repeated injustices and abuses, put the same temptations, scandals, and stumbling blocks before their people, again and yet again.) What some fevered observers see as multi-generational, international conspiracies are really just successive groups of fallen men following temptation to its logical conclusion. If New Age and utopian movements show unity and consistent purpose internationally or historically, it arises from the dark spirit they follow, rather than from human conspiratorial skill.

The Vatican has spoken against the false teachings of the New Age movement and the globalist utopians. The Church rejects notions of a man-made paradise on earth: "The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can be only realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the 'intrinsically perverse' political form of a secular messianism."[249] As for the spiritual practices that are common in the New Age movement, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to 'unveil' the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone."[250]

St. Paul foresaw the spreading influence of the false prophets of the New Age: "Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons." (1 Tim. 4:1). The Apostle also warned: "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths." (2 Tim. 4:3-4).

The deluded and spiritually starved souls who follow New Age teachers are, each and all, people for whom Christ died and rose again. If people are rushing heedlessly toward the edge of a spiritual cliff, it is a spiritual work of mercy to warn them loudly, even if this means offending them. Christ loves those who have fallen into the New Age trap; dare we, who are members of His Body, do otherwise?

The deluded and spiritually starved souls who follow New Age, globalist, and utopian teachers are, each and all, people for whom Christ died and rose again. Christ desires that all be saved. It is a spiritual work of mercy to warn the people involved in these movements that they are rushing heedlessly toward the edge of a spiritual cliff.

Christ loves those who have fallen into the New Age trap; dare we, who are members of His Body, do otherwise?

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