Quote:
Originally Posted by Heretic
The New Age Movement:Can it be claimed as being brought forth by honest good folk who have humanity’s best interest at heart? Could this ideology have been planted into our reality just as we see new ideologies planted in our reality today via many channeled publications, and alleged alien contacts? Is it indeed original, just being remembered (past lives), or has it been taught to us by “tutors”?
The New Age Movement seems to have first emerged in the 1960’s counter-cultural movement based on love, peace, harmony, equality, and all of the “anti” leagues which watch-dogged and denounced the warmongering and manipulative government of the times.
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Point 1 above: It is amazing how many who preach the necessity of discovering the eternal "self," and who stress the individuality of the spirit, nevertheless have a "true" system of enlightenment to share - there is always a "system" to learn that can lead to enlightenment. All spirtual systems and organizations that exist today can serve as catalysts to spiritual growth, or become roadblocks, but are not in and of themselves the totality of truth - slivers of it perhaps, but not the complete picture. If true enlightenment were as easy as asking forgiveness, preserving and exercising one gland, or any of the other formulas out there, there would be no need for the discussion we are engaged in here. No one can teach enlightenment, one must seek it for themselves. Beware those who tell you they have the answers - if they have the answers, and know the meaning of it all, they have quit seeking, and have grown spiritually lazy.
Point 2 above: The 1960s gets so romanticized today because of the massive volume of Baby Boomers. Think of American culture as a python, his enlongated body represents our linear version of time. The python has just eaten a pig, and you can watch the pig travel down the python's body because of the bulge. Well, Baby Boomers, as one historian as articulated, are the "pig in the python;" the fifty million of them who were born between 1945-1965 alter the shape of the python (American culture) as they are digested. That generation shapes everything, and now they are getting old, looking back on their youth with all of the nostalgia that facing death can produce. They use the rebellious music of the Rolling Stones and Beatles to sell the Baby Boomers their Hummers, their limp-weenie pills, etc.
But what substantive contributions did they give us? For all the idealism and revolutionary sentiment of their "movements," they accomplished very little. The Civil Rights Movement was successful, but it wasn't hippies out there getting attacked by the dogs - it was preachers, regular African-Americans, and a handful of Euro-American college kids - who went on to get their MBAs. They didn't stop the Vietnam War. They didn't save the environment. They partied - sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. I'm not poo-pooing any of those three, they all have their place in our experience. I'm just saying that rather than anything idealistic or substantive, the Baby Boomers merely loosened the cultural restraints tightened by the previous generation who had lived through the Great Depression and the bloodiest world war in recorded history. Their contribution is a double edged sword; cultural freedom in exchange for a decline in collective morality.
The "New Age" movement of the 1960s was just as much an act of rebellion against the traditional dominant religious paradigms as it was motivated by a desire for truth. Spiritual movements born out of negative intent may be influenced by things that feed off of such negativity.