7 APPENDIX

7.1. Some brief formulations of New Age ideas 

William Bloom's 1992 formulation of New Age quoted in Heelas, p. 225f.: 

_*All life – all existence – is the manifestation of Spirit, of the Unknowable, of that supreme consciousness known by many different names in many different cultures. 

_*The purpose and dynamic of all existence is to bring Love, Wisdom, Enlightenment... into full manifestation. 

_*All religions are the expression of this same inner reality. 

_*All life, as we perceive it with the five human senses or with scientific instruments, is only the outer veil of an invisible, inner and causal reality. 

_*Similarly, human beings are twofold creatures – with: (i) an outer temporary personality; and (ii) a multi-dimensional inner being (soul or higher self). 

_*The outer personality is limited and tends towards love. 

_*The purpose of the incarnation of the inner being is to bring the vibrations of the outer personality into a resonance of love. 

_*All souls in incarnation are free to choose their own spiritual path. 

_*Our spiritual teachers are those whose souls are liberated from the need to incarnate and who express unconditional love, wisdom and enlightenment. Some of these great beings are well- known and have inspired the world religions. Some are unknown and work invisibly. 

_*All life, in its different forms and states, is interconnected energy – and this includes our deeds, feelings and thoughts. We, therefore, work with Spirit and these energies in co-creating our reality. 

_*Although held in the dynamic of cosmic love, we are jointly responsible for the state of our selves, of our environment and of all life. 

_*During this period of time, the evolution of the planet and of humanity has reached a point when we are undergoing a fundamental spiritual change in our individual and mass consciousness. This is why we talk of a New Age. This new consciousness is the result of the increasingly successful incarnation of what some people call the energies of cosmic love. This new consciousness demonstrates itself in an instinctive understanding of the sacredness and, in particular, the interconnectedness of all existence. 

_*This new consciousness and this new understanding of the dynamic interdependence of all life mean that we are currently in the process of volving a completely new planetary culture. 

Heelas (p. 226) Jeremy Tarcher's “complementary formulation”. 

1. The world, including the human race, constitutes an expression of a higher, more comprehensive divine nature. 

2. Hidden within each human being is a higher divine self, which is a manifestation of the higher, more comprehensive divine nature. 

3. This higher nature can be awakened and can become the center of the individual's everyday life. 

4. This awakening is the reason for the existence of each individual life. 

David Spangler is quoted in Actualité des religions nº 8, septembre 1999, p. 43, on the principal characteristics of the New Age vision, which is: 

_*holistic (globalising, because there is one single reality-energy); 

_*ecological (earth-Gaia is our mother; each of us is a neurone of earth's central nervous system); 

_*androgynous (rainbow and Yin/Yang are both NA symbols, to do with the complementarity of contraries, esp. masculine and feminine); 

_*mystical (finding the sacred in every thing, the most ordinary things); 

_*planetary (people must be at one and the same time anchored in their own culture and open to a universal dimension, capable of promoting love, compassion, peace and even the establishment of world government).