New Age and holistic consciousness
Explanation
The New Age movement is a broad and heterogeneous spiritual and cultural current that flourished in the West from the 1960s and 70s, although it has roots in nineteenth-century occultism (theosophy, anthroposophy), spiritualism, humanistic and transpersonal psychology, hippie cultures and the counterculture. It is not an organised religion but a bag of things, as historian Paul Heelas described it: an eclectic, individualistic and experiential spirituality.
Among the typical ingredients of the New Age are: astrology (the age of Aquarius as the next cosmic stage), channelling of entities (Seth by Jane Roberts, Ramtha by JZ Knight, Abraham-Hicks), chakras and energy body, crystal therapy, tarot and divination, meditation and relaxation techniques, reincarnation and past-life therapies, alternative medicine (reiki, Bach flowers, homeopathy), enneagram and personality typologies, quantum mysticism, Gaia and spiritual ecology, macrobiotic or vegetarian diet.
Influential New Age figures include: Marilyn Ferguson (The Aquarian Conspiracy, 1980), Shirley MacLaine (with her books on past lives), Louise Hay (You Can Heal Your Life), Fritjof Capra (The Tao of Physics), Deepak Chopra (Ayurveda and quantum spirituality), Ken Wilber (integral philosophy), James Redfield (The Celestine Prophecy), Neale Donald Walsch (Conversations with God). Eckhart Tolle, although in a more refined tone, is also part of the panorama.
The holistic paradigm is central to the New Age: the universe is an interconnected totality, body-mind-spirit form a unity, health is global harmony, illness is energetic imbalance. There is a strong orientation toward self-transformation, personal growth, individual empowerment, the search for meaning beyond consumerist materialism and traditional religions. The phrase believe in yourself, you are divine sums up one of its central inspirations.
For the theory of consciousness, the New Age proposes a fluid, energetic and spiritual conception: consciousness is fundamental in the universe, everything is vibrationally interconnected, we are evolving collectively toward higher levels of consciousness. There is affinity with philosophical panpsychism, with the idealist interpretation of quantum physics, with certain simplified Eastern traditions.
The New Age has been heavily criticised: for its superficial and uncritical eclecticism, for its commercialisation (a multibillion-dollar industry of spiritual products), for decontextualised appropriation of foreign traditions (orientalism, indigenism), for its naivety toward pseudoscience, and for its consumerist individualism disguised as spirituality. Scholars such as Wouter Hanegraaff (New Age Religion and Western Culture, 1996), Paul Heelas, Christopher Partridge have seriously analysed the phenomenon. In its best manifestations, the New Age has kept alive a sensitivity toward spiritual dimensions of existence in a secularised culture; in its worst, it has been spiritual kitsch with little depth. Today it has mutated into various forms of spirituality without religion, yoga, mindfulness, integrative therapies, which remain very influential in contemporary culture.
Strengths
- Cultural openness to spiritual diversity.
- Emphasis on direct experience and autonomy.
- Impulse toward integrative medicine and deep ecology.
- Includes rigorous work and not only kitsch.
Main critiques
- High proportion of pseudoscience and charlatanism.
- Cultural appropriation of indigenous and Eastern traditions.
- Excessive epistemological relativism.
- Commercialisation and market logic.