Back in the 1980s, most of us swept up by the swelling New Age movement were certain the social phenomenon would continue to grow.  It was, we believed, inevitable.  The laws of evolution dictated that the human race would keep developing in awareness until we reached critical mass and tipped the whole of society into a New Age of harmony. 

It was, we believed, necessary for the survival of humankind.  Nuclear proliferation and environmental damage had us poised on the brink of disaster, and the only way to save our future would be a paradigm shift, arriving just in the nick of time.  We felt this was would be increasingly clear to all, and our numbers would swell, and swell some more…  

Yet less than two decades later, in 2002, the movement’s most well-known publication, New Age Journal, changed its name to Body + Soul. Not long after, the popular reference Web site, About.com, dropped its New Age category altogether. It was official: the New Age was no more. 

No one protested its disappearance, at least not publicly. Certainly, no one seemed surprised to see it go, and today, almost no one identifies with the term “New Age” anymore.

Of course, we know the holistic-idealistic movement did not really go anywhere, it just shed what most people saw as an unhelpful and unrepresentative label.  But in the interests of learning from history, it would be helpful to ask, what happened to the optimistic and revolutionary New Age-ness of it all? 

Although a more important question might be: Now that global warming has pushed us beyond the brink of disaster and our survival is even more in doubt, is it really in our best interests to let the New Age stay lost? 

New Age under attack

Two thousand years ago. when the Christian worldview first emerged to challenge the polytheistic status quo, the upstart Christians were fed to the lions.  Four hundred years ago, when materialistic science first challenged the Christian status quo, the upstart scientists like Galileo were hauled before the Holy Office of the Inquisition and tossed in prison.

Fortunately, when the New Age brought the first large-scale wave idealism to challenge Western Civilization's status quo, we upstart New Agers weren't devoured by wild beasts or locked up.  However, following the venerable tradition of hostility toward new ideas, the New Age was immediately set upon by both scientific materialism and religious dualism.

Many a science writer relished the role of "debunker," dismissing New Age beliefs in general and poking fun at New Age believers in particular.  According to the science-minded, New Agers lacked critical thinking skills and lived in a fantasy land of their own making.

Yet far more upsetting were the accusations leveled by Christian writers. An entire subgenre of books issued from Christian publishers bizarrely declared the New Age a plot of Satan to take over the world. (See 4 Myths about the New Age.)  Even now, if you type "New Age" into an Internet search engine, the first five pages of results are nothing but Christian Web sites which accuse the New Age of trying to seduce good Christians away from their religion.

This reprehensible campaign had the intended effect of making the nice people of the New Age afraid to offend their neighbors, and hesitant to identify with their own movement.

When the majority opinion is that your beliefs make you a crackpot or the devil's handmaiden or both, it becomes ever more difficult to openly explore, let alone celebrate, those beliefs.  Which, of course, is exactly why the status quo attacks in the first place.  Attacks work.    

History Lesson #1 – If we don't do a better job of defining ourselves, our detractors will be happy to do it for us.   

An Image Problem; or the Pre/Post Fallacy

Attacks on the New Age rarely originated from genuine knowledge of the movement and its intellectual underpinnings. Rather, the movement’s critics usually responded to the superficial image of the movement created bya cynical media.

In a decade defined by Reagan-style religiosity and Wall Street-driven materialism, the mainstream media of the 1980s downplayed the New Age’s legitimate ideas and their benefits, and shone an out-of-context spotlight on the more kooky practices happening under the New Age umbrella. 

Reporters looking for a good story were understandably attracted to the entertainment value of the movement’s colorful fringe – psychics, trance channelers, alternative “healers.” But in going for flash over substance, they created an indelible image of the New Age as a gathering of hucksters and clueless eccentrics.  They then took the image they themselves created, and went on to heap ridicule upon it.  For example, David Brooks, a pundit for PBS and the New York Times, called New Agers “vaporheads.” 

Considering the popular image of the movement they presented to us, who could blame them for their opinions? After all, what sensible person would want to walk around with a pyramid perched on her head?

According to William Irwin Thompson, the big media attention to the Harmonic Convergence in 1987 was the point at which the “noise” of mass media “overwhelmed the transcendental signal.” Under the skewed glare of the media spotlight, the New age kairos -- or opportune moment -- simply collapsed.

I do agree with Thompson; however, the image problem suffered by the New Age goes far beyond the media stampede toward mockery. The essence of the problem lies in a nearly universal lack of knowledge of spiritual stages and levels of growth.

With a map of spiritual development in hand, we can see that many products and claims coming from the New Age of the 1980s poured directly from pre-rational Stage One magical thinking.  I don’t think the media can be faulted for noticing this.  But there was also a lot of profound post-rational Stage Four and Five growth and exploration going on as well that deserved the media’s respect.  Huge numbers of people used transpersonal psychology to put aside harmful habits of thinking and to break addictions, or used alternative medicine to heal their bodies of trauma or disease, or used insights from the great wisdom traditions to better connect with God and each other.  

Unfortunately, the media assumes, as many do, that all spirituality—whether traditional religion or alternative New Age—is pre-rational, or non-rational.  As Wilber notes, “Any transpersonal, nondual spirituality is unceremoniously lumped with, and dumped into, the pre-personal garbage pail.”  

All non-rational worldviews are treated as basically the same, even though pre-rational and post-rational spiritualities are poles apart.  Wilber calls this “the pre/post fallacy,” and believes that this common error is a huge obstacle in our collective evolution up the spiral of development.  

“The means of our liberation are confused with the cause of most of our misery,” Wilber concludes. “In running from what appears to be the cause of suffering, we are running from our salvation.”

Those ready to grow beyond Stage Three rationality toward higher post-rational awareness are afraid to budge.  Meanwhile, those in Stage Four and Five feel they must disown the New Age, or any other post-rational label, in order to avoid being tarred with the Stage One brush.   

History Lesson #2 – If a reporter asks you about the New Age, don’t send him to a psychic fair; he’ll think that’s all there is.

The New Age becomes a “market”

One of the best things to happen to the movement was the discovery of an adventurous group of consumers known as the New Age “market.”  This led to the first real attempts at organizing information about the movement and pinpointing its audience and their various interests.

At the same time, one of the worst things to happen to the movement was the discovery of the New Age as a market. This could not help but lead to the manipulation of the movement for maximum financial gain.

Mainstream publishers began in typically mainstream fashion by chopping the subject up into ever smaller niches.  Although the biggest-selling New Age books (Celestine Prophecy, Conversations with God) were broad and sweeping looks at New Age thought -- books that clearly satisfied a broad and sweeping hunger among seekers -- publishers continued to chop and narrow until it was difficult to find anything on a New Age shelf except off-the-wall subjects like feng shui for the bathroom, or the prophecies of Nostradamus.

This caused widespread category confusion; narrow, irrelevant niches made the entire New Age look narrow and irrelevant.  Publishers, in an attempt to escape the problem they had created, then abandoned the New Age category altogether, creating a brand new broad category – Body/Mind/Spirit – that meant everything and nothing.   

Thus, those truly curious about the larger New Age picture found little but crumbs to fuel their interest, and serious students looking for depth found little to study.  (The exception: small presses like Shambhala or Hampton Roads.)

The publishers who pushed the New Age to the fringe then began to complain that they were losing “mainstream” consumers for their spiritual books.  In an attempt the escape the problem they themselves had created, they scrapped the New Age category altogether, little caring they were throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  Meanwhile, book stores still slap the word “New Age” over their shelves of Occult, Paranormal and Astrology books, as if that’s all there is to it.  

It’s no wonder that Michael Grosso, author of the Millenium Myth, calls the New Age a “publishing artifact.” It’s also no wonder even the most dedicated idealist now equates New Age with subjects that have nothing to do with real spiritual transformation, and authors of books on real spiritual transformation avoid the New Age label like the plague. “To be called New Age today,“ wrote David Spangler as early as 1989, “is the kiss of death intellectually, academically and professionally.“

Subjected to a market that operates by the rules of materialism, idealism is mercilessly trampled underfoot .

History Lesson #3 – Fine chopping might be good for general reference, but the abstract and amorphous ideas that lead to transformation get lost between niches.

The New Age becomes a “market” - Part 2

While publishers were confusing the New Age consumer, other companies were doing far more damage.  Like the snake-oil salesmen of old, a wide range of companies peddled useless products and remedies to New Agers with minds more open -- and expectations more grand -- than the average consumer. 

Whether it was a pyramid on the head, or the advice of a so-called trance channeler, we with open minds and wallets too often discovered that the main benefit of New Age products and therapies went to the seller in the form of cash. 

Of course, New Agers themselves often contributed to the problem with gullibility and a propensity for magical thinking.  But whether we deserved our disillusionment or not, many of us ended up feeling ripped off, and fled the movement with the feeling that “this is a bunch of crap.”

History Lesson #4 -  Transformation cannot be bought.

The New Age becomes a "market"-Part 3

The New Age movement began with the intention to free us from the old paradigm, but the seductive market beckoned to us with its entertainments and false promises.  Principles meant to free us were instead put to use to help us succeed within the framework of the old paradigm.  Instead of learning to live mindfully in the moment, we went to Tarot card readers to learn our futures.  Instead of aspiring to compassion and practicing loving-kindness, we aspired to prosperity and practiced The Secret.

In the saddest of ironies, the New Age as a market has reinforced the old paradigm rather than dismantling it, and has too often rendered genuine New Age impulses impotent.

            History Lesson #5—The old paradigm has ways to keep us playing its games.

A political darkness descends

By the end of the 1990s, the New Age movement was clearly on the decline, although its most visible leaders -- Marianne Williamson, Neale Donald Walsch and Deepak Chopra among others -- were still working to organize its adherents under a common identity with a noble project called the Global Renaissance Alliance.

Then events began unfolding on the world stage which tossed us all into turmoil.

The first blow was the 2000 election -- some would call it the stolen election -- of George W. Bush.  A year later, we were blindsided by the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the most shocking and soul-shaking event of our time.  As if this were not horrific enough, we were then forced to watch as our own government manufactured reasons to declare war on Iraq.

Then came the final straw:   The re-election of George W. Bush and the hard knowledge that the majority of Americans actually preferred the path of destruction over harmony.

Idealistic hopes for the future were dashed hard upon these rocks.  During these last years of war and deficit and disaster, it has often felt ridiculous -- even insensitive -- to prattle on about the possibility of a positive, harmonious future.

Under the shadow of our long political darkness, there was simply not enough light to help the ailing New Age movement gain new life. 

History Lesson #6 --  Progress never unfolds in a straight line.

Clearly, the social pressures from the outside were immense, and devastating to the movement.  And although it is tempting to stop here and blame the collapse of the New Age entirely on outside pressures, the truth is, the movement ultimately fell prey to the much more serious challenges from within. 

Go to Decline and Fall of the New Age - Part 2.