New Age

To separate belief and spirituality into "new age" and Not new age, effectively means that belief and spirituality isn't part of our current life. What we need to ask ourselves when we even consider dividing belief and spirituality into concepts of "new age" and Not new age, is, "is God not part of the age in which we live in now?" How can we divide something that ongoingly is part of our existence, both now and in the past?

Originally Posted by P.McCoy

To separate belief and spirituality into "new age" and Not new age, effectively means that belief and spirituality isn't part of our current life. What we need to ask ourselves when we even consider dividing belief and spirituality into concepts of "new age" and Not new age, is, "is God not part of the age in which we live in now?" How can we divide something that ongoingly is part of our existence, both now and in the past?

P.McCoy,

I think that new age spirituality and the questions surrounding it have to do with a specific brand of spirituality that arose from Eastern spirituality blending with Western spirituality a few decades ago. The results of this are views on energy vortexes, what we consider as Christ-consciousness and the most popularized concepts of "chakras" (the original concept from Vajrayana Buddhism is a much more complex system of energy channels. The system that is widely used today was a meeting of East and West that arose in 1927, pioneered by Sir John Woodroffe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakra..._yogic_chakras

I believe that the blending of the term "ego" with the concepts of Buddhism also arose from this movement, as, although Buddhism promotes detachment from the illusion of the senses, most of the teachings do so through detaching from concepts and perverse use of ideas, not a brow-beating of the self (although, the individuating consciousness, roughly similar to the "ego" was thought to dissolve as a result of this).

As with every belief system, some of these views were new, novel and helpful, and others are oft debated as to their reality and spiritual usefulness. Personally, while I believe many good things have arisen from New Age philosophy, I also think that much misunderstanding has come from many over-eager practitioners trying to integrate Eastern and Western thought while only having a solid grounding in one of the two. As someone from the West who studies both forms of thought and has for some time, I STILL find such an integration extremely difficult without having an extensive knowledge of Sanskrit, Ancient Chinese and other relevant languages, which I admittedly lack. It is easy to come up with mistaken "insights", and much moreso if the study of such integrative spirituality is simply treated as a hobby or a pastime.

So when we speak of New Age, we aren't necessarily speaking of old spirituality applied to a new age, we are speaking of a specific philosophy of thought. In light of your comments, perhaps it is time to find a new name for it, though.

-TaoSandwich

[RyanWind]

Actually I think the term "new age" was invented by the large book store chains that needed a category for all those books that dealt with metaphysical things yet didn't fit into the religion category. So they coined the term "new age" and put things there like Zen, Tarot Cards, Mediums, Ghosts, ESP, Reincarnation, astral projection etc.

[Shaunc]

Originally Posted by RyanWind

Actually I think the term "new age" was invented by the large book store chains that needed a category for all those books that dealt with metaphysical things yet didn't fit into the religion category. So they coined the term "new age" and put things there like Zen, Tarot Cards, Mediums, Ghosts, ESP, Reincarnation, astral projection etc.

Probably not a bad guess.

[CrystalSong]

Wow, lots of Wiccan stuff on those shelves - I guess its very popular right now.