Hi Patrick; responding to your questions is going to be difficult to do as I am reasonably confident you won’t like my angle on spirituality, and I want to be as non-confrontational as possible. As mentioned previously I’m trying to write articles in such a way as to avoid too much negativity without some positive takeaway in there as well – not easy to do if your starting point is the wholescale ‘mis-directedness’ of New Age.
What is the essence of the problem ? New Age spirituality is basically the idea that, thanks to techniques imported from the East, ordinary people living in secularised societies are now in a position to reach the endpoints of spirituality in a way that was unimaginable a century ago. And, thanks to the many adaptive modifications of these techniques – ie their having been made more user-friendly – we can achieve spiritual illumination relatively easily; no longer any need for the whole monastic palaver.
What is the essence of these techniques? Basically altered states of consciousness, underpinned by the theory that altered states in themselves are reconnections with spiritual realms, and that by exploring them, we ‘progress’ towards an endpoint.
There is a certain cogency to this argument, especially if one has not had the good fortune to hear an evidential counterargument, and especially if one has not tried and tested many of these techniques for oneself, and found them wanting.
What is the counterargument to altered states of consciousness being a gateway to spirituality ? Altered states consist of an experiential state + associated ideas (meaning doctrinal support; often intellectually flimsy and overtly biased, meaning relying wholly on the idea that if it is experienced as convincing, then it must be true); and the experiential core of the altered state is basically a trip into the imagination. How can one know this ? By trial and error, and a measure of cold objectivity: directed meditation is never objective – you have to be told in advance what you’re going to find, otherwise it would just be free association.
Summary: New Age (all spiritual teachings currently on the market) is all about ‘easy techniques’ leading to altered states (in varying degrees of severity, from mild delusions to wholesale loss of connection to normality) leading in turn to the conviction that one is progressing spiritually.
But if one asks oneself ‘Wait a minute, what if…’ the whole thing collapses.
Current ‘spirituality’ is shot through with comforting but vacuous self-justifying thinking. It is fantastically appealing, which is why there are so many teachers. Bottom line is that none of it ‘works’ – it’s just an exercise in open-ended delusion.
I’m hoping you can see from all this where I’m going, but if it strikes you as heading in the wrong direction, I well understand.
