Rarely has a question caused such head-scratching confusion and voluminous guesswork among social observers. Go back through hundreds of magazine and journal articles, dozens of books, encyclopedia entries, and who-knows-how-many Web site posts – and you’ll never find the New Age defined the same way twice.   Well, here’s my definition, short and sweet:

The New Age is the most recent social expression of the Perennial Philosophy -- the philosophy of idealism -- which says that One Spirit is the essence of all reality.

That’s it. Each New Ager works out the details of “All is One Spirit“ in different ways.  Still, that’s pretty much it – the New Age in a nutshell.

Wait a minute, I can almost hear you say. That’s it? What about crystals? And Tarot cards and near-death experiences and all that occult stuff on the New Age shelf at Barnes & Noble? Everyone knows that vaporous stuff is what the New Age is about, right?

The New Age spectrum

The list of New Age interests is nearly limitless, wandering all over the spectrum from the holy and profound, to the irrelevant and ridiculous.

Alternative and “holistic” medicine, Eastern and Native American religions, transpersonal psychology, pagan spirituality, Gaia environmentalism, the “new” physics, myths and archetypes –- all these subjects can be found in a New Age bookstore.  And yes, there are also books on crystal “healing,“ and astrology, and ESP, and the occult. 

Turn around and you will find yet more: Buddha figurines, dancing Shivas, angel pendants, yin-yang symbol earrings, candles for Wiccan rituals, cushions for meditating, “Give Peace a Chance” bumper stickers, aromatherapy oils and CDs of music made to sound like rain.  It's no wonder that New age pioneer David Spangler compared the New Age to a country fair with its combination of wares and amusements for sale.

To some observers, this anything-and-everything laundry list of subjects makes the New Age too slippery to pin down. In his book, The Children of the New Age: A History of Spiritual Practices, Steven Sutcliffe complains about the lack of "boundaries" in the New Age and refuses to grant it the status of a social movement. The New Age, he declares, is nothing but "a diffuse collectivity of questing individuals." 

I’ve never understood why so many want to define the New Age by the scattered interests of its adherents.  Would anyone define Christianity by the ability to speak in tongues or the use of rosary beads?  No. We know such practices are beside the point.  Christianity can only be defined by a particular set of beliefs about the nature of reality; namely, that there is a division between spirit and matter, God and man, heaven and hell -- and the bridge between them is belief in Jesus Christ.   

Yes, occult subjects are popular in the New Age; in an “All is One Spirit” reality, communication with the dead is not outside the realm of possibility.  And how will you ever know if you don’t at least test that possibility?   But the majority of spiritual idealists have little interest in the occult.  Meanwhile, many a Christian dualist has been known to try to communicate with their own dearly departed through a psychic or medium, which tells us an interest in the occult is not at all particular to the New Age.

In the same vein, New Agers may come upon a practice or tradition that expresses their idealism “just right,” such as Buddhist meditation or Wiccan ritual.  And more than likely, the Buddha-curious or the Wiccan practitioner is also a New Age-style idealist.  But it does not work in reverse.  Just because all Catholics are Christians, doesn’t mean all Christians are Catholics.  And just because most Wiccans are New Agers doesn’t mean all New Agers are trooping off to join a coven.

Sutcliffe may be right that the New Age is comprised of a collectivity of questing individuals, but he’s wrong about the movement being only that. New Agers do pursue divergent interests, but what they practice is not nearly as important as why they practice it.

Why do holistic health consumers believe the mind can heal the body?  Why do psychics claim it is possible to see into the future?  Why do some scientists believe quantum physics supports the worldview of Eastern religions?  What kind of picture of reality allows such divergent beliefs?

Beneath the surface flash of the New Age, beneath all the faddish practices and commercial pitches, the basic principle of “All is One Spirit” holds the whole movement together. This principle is what connects one New Age seeker to the other, from the physicist who sees Zen principles reflected in the behavior of subatomic particles, to the psychic who finds wisdom in her Tarot cards.

In other words, the New Age is a movement fueled by a philosophy -- a working hypothesis about what is real, and what that reality makes possible in our lives.

The Perennial Philosophy

The philosophy of idealism has a long and rich history that stretches back into the mists of time.  It was first primitively expressed in pagan and aboriginal religions, then elevated in Hindu sutras and Taoist poems and Plato’s discourses on eternal Ideas. (See Idealism for a full definition.)  Over the past few thousand years, the idealistic worldview has emerged again and again in many places, in many times, in many guises -- Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, Transcendentalism, Theosophy, New Thought, the Counterculture.

In his 1945 book, Aldous Huxley called idealism the Perennial Philosophy and described it like this:

Philosophia Perennis -- the phrase was coined by Leibniz; but the thing -- the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being -- the thing is immemorial and universal. 

The modern New Age movement, which dates back to the 1970s, is merely the latest resurgence of the timeless philosophia perennis.  As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of the “new views” of 19th century Transcendentalism, New Age views are essentially “not new, but the very oldest of thoughts cast into the mold of these new times.”

And these very oldest of thoughts tell us that in order to serve our purpose here, we must look deeply into the nature of our existence, and discover what is most real and most true. These oldest of thoughts tell us, as Henry David Thoreau did, that we must “settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance… through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality and say, This is, and no mistake.” 

The New Age seeker, like all other idealists throughout history, is ultimately trying to get to this ‘what is’ place.  Although, today’s New Ager is more likely to call it a place of “higher” awareness than a “bottom” place.  Yet, whether we look at the movement from the perspective of high up or hard bottom, it is clear we are talking about a something with a spatial element, something that holds a metaphorical place.  As it turns out, the most interesting question about the New Age is not what is it?, but where is it?  Where does the New Age sit on the map of spiritual territory? 

Yes, it so happens there is a map of spiritual development.  And taking a look at this map is the only way to get down to the nitty-gritty of what the New Age movement is, the purpose it once served, and why it could be so important to revive it.  Beyond that, getting a good grasp of the map of spiritual development is undoubtedly one of the most life-changing, world-saving things you can do.  Period.

Go back to A New Age Manifesto.