Unconscious Dogma

I gather that a wide spectrum of people have been reading this weblog.

At one end of that spectrum are folk for whom esotericism and the New Age milieu are very alien and I imagine, unknown.

At the other end are folk of a ‘holistic’ orientation, for whom traditional Christianity is equally alien – and I am sure, often almost totally unknown.

Thus it is that I may say things here, that may seem so blindingly obvious to one group, that it might be asked why I trouble to say them at all …

The reason is, that to the other group they may not be at all obvious. And very possibly radical and highly controversial - to say the least.

What is in my mind as I write this, is that for some days, this weblog has been devoted to the idea that Christian spirituality – including esotericism – has major differences from other forms of spirituality.

In contemporary parlance, this will be ‘no-brainer’ for traditional Christians who have bothered to read these words. Why even mention it at all?

What I fear may not be sufficiently grasped, is how completely radical this idea is in much of the New Age milieu I experienced for nearly twenty years, at Findhorn and in many other venues.

And the reason it will appear so radical, in my opinion, is that the New Age milieu serves to FLATTEN differentiation.

Now this flattening of differentiation is based on noble aspirations to peace and unity. Those in the New Age milieu often look at a past when Catholics killed Protestants and vice versa, when the God of other religions, Islam say, was not seen as the same God …

And the result in my view, is that in the New Age milieu as elsewhere, an effort has been made to emphasise the commonality of spiritual aspiration to such extent that not only are differentiations flattened, but that the things I have been saying recently could be actually **mind-boggling**.

Could be actually mind-boggling … That is to say, the very idea of holding **sacred** notions such as the Fall and the Redemption (common to both Catholicism and to the Christian esotericism of Rudolf Steiner, for example) could actually be **startling**.

At least, taking these **seriously** as profound Mysteries, which can serve to shape a **very different** spirituality, could be greeted in certain circles, not only as radical – but I suspect, even as **contemptuous**.

And if I am right, it seems to me, it is because, without even realising it, the New Age movement is united by an often unspoken, often even unconscious dogma that all paths are the same, or are so minimally different as not to matter …

And to take the universal Fall and Redemption seriously, just doesn't jibe with what I'm calling flatness. Yes, a flatness, no matter how noble the intent may be ...

But as I look out on a world of increasing hyper-individualism, consumerism, ever more brutal capitalism, environmental catastrophe ... as I look out on this world and search my heart, I feel the time has come to challenge this unconscious dogma – that all spiritualities are more or less the same, and that they thus presumably **shape** people and societies in the same ways …

I think the question needs to be put to the New Age movement: what if they DON'T shape people in the same ways?

What if the ascending spirituality of the New Age movement makes little difference to the secular trajectory ... towards disaster?

What if our culture needs to reclaim the Mysteries held most especially by the traditional Church (Eastern Orthodox and Catholic) ... ?

So, so much more I feel in my heart about the **ascending** ‘holistic’ paradigm that I need to try to say … all the while feeling ever more deeply those words of Rudolf Steiner: 'Was heute zu retten ist, das ist das Mysterium von Golgotha'.

This means literally: 'What is to be saved today, is the Mystery of Golgotha'. By which I take it, that he meant that as far as he was concerned, the world needs, burningly needs the Mystery of the Redemption from the Fall …