Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future

by Seraphim Rose

  Since the publication of Communion, hundreds of thousands of UFO “abductees” have come forward with accounts of their contact with aliens.40 Today they have formed a substantial network, sharing their views and experiences through the internet and call-in radio shows.

  Perhaps not surprisingly, this UFO network has found itself segueing into the New Age movement. Whitley Strieber is himself an indication of this. Now one of the leading spokesman of the UFO network, he has in more recent books offered reflections on how contact with aliens can help usher in a New Age. As one UFO “abductee,” Col. Philip J. Corso, writes in his endorsement of Strieber’s latest book, Confirmation (1999): “During an ‘alien encounter,’ the message that they were offering mankind, ‘A new world — if you can take it,” was conveyed to me.... It took an intellect like Whitley Strieber to give this message’s meaning to me and the world.”41

  Setting forth the evolutionist view that “we are passing into a great change of species,” Strieber writes: “As we express ourselves into the next age, we will come to a prime moment of this species, when mankind gains complete mastery over time and space and lifts his physical aspect into eternity, inducing the ascension of the whole species into a higher, freer, and richer level of being.... As mind frees itself from time and thus approaches singularity of consciousness, nations as we know them — directed by power politics, greed and lies — will end.”42

  Strieber sees this utopian dream being realized as mankind leaves behind the “the old hierarchies” of the past: “The absolute blackness of the past symbolizes the rigidly authoritarian nature of the past civilization. Indeed, its customs have echoed forward all the way to the present, where they persist still in our governments, our ritual-encrusted religions, and our moral lives with their emphasis on sin.”43 As humanity abandons the “religious mythology” of those who “identify [aliens] with their version of demons,”44 it will become open to the “new world” offered by the visitors: “As we move into [the Age of] Aquarius, we do indeed see authority weakening in almost every human culture and institution. The new willingness to entertain notions like the presence of visitors and to largely reject the refusal of the old authorities to deal rationally with such matters signals a new eagerness to form opinions outside the traditional control mechanisms. As those mechanisms fade, the unknown uses their weakness to attempt to break through into the conscious world, and we find ourselves inundated with reports of UFOs, aliens, and all sorts of weird and wonderful things.”45

  In order to reconcile the obvious contradiction between the apparently sinister nature of the “visitors” and his own utopian ideas about aliens helping to usher in a New Age, Strieber attempts to blur the distinction between good and evil: “We live in an ethical and moral world that is like the ethical context of the [UFO] phenomenon, full of ambiguities, a place in which plain good and plain evil are rare.”46

  Strieber’s view, which is shared by many in today’s UFO network, is that the “visitors” are highly evolved beings which want us also to evolve — for their sake as well as ours. He speculates that, in their often terrifying encounters with humans, the visitors are exploiting us and at the same time “tempting” us to advance further in our evolution, to “close the gap” between us and them, so that we may “join [them] as a cosmic species”: in other words, that we may become like them. This, he says, “explains why many people are taken to an evolutionary edge in their experiences” of aliens.47

  Strieber notes that “In all the past fifty years, there has been no instance of the visitors directly adding resources. Nobody gets the plans to a starship. Nobody gets a map back to the home world. What we get instead are fear, confusion, cryptic messages, and a feeling of being pushed around — and the sense of something beyond price, lying just out of reach.... Rather than satisfying us, they are likely to tempt us further and further — with outrages, with dazzling displays, with promises — with whatever it takes.”48

  Perhaps the saddest “sign of the times” in our post-Christian age is the fact that great numbers of spiritually impoverished people now find it preferable to be in contact with these monstrous “visitors” than to feel all alone in what seems to them an impersonal universe. As a journal called The Communion Letter states, “People all across the world are encountering strange beings in their homes and even in the streets ... along the roads of dream and night.” The journal asks people to “learn to respond usefully and effectively to the visitors if they appear in your life. — Discover the mystery, the wonder, and the beauty of the experience ... the things the ordinary media will not reveal ... the strange and wonderful truths that are rushing up out of the darkness.”

  In the face of all this, the Christian believer can hardly doubt Fr. Seraphim’s words that “satan now walks naked into human history.” Whitley Strieber is likewise correct when he observes that, with the decline of the “control mechanisms” of traditional Christian civilization, the “visitors” are attempting more and more to “break into the conscious world.” But instead of leading us to the New Age that Strieber envisions, these attempts will help to usher in precisely what he described of his first encounter with aliens: “hell on earth.”

  7. The Plan for the New Age

  It is interesting to note that 1975, the year that Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future came out, was a banner year for the “new religious consciousness.” This was the year which the deceased occultist Alice Bailey (1880–1949) — one of the major builders of the present-day New Age movement and an avowed enemy of orthodox Christianity — had designated for her disciples to publicly disseminate hitherto secret teachings to all available media. During that year David Spangler and a host of other New Age spokesmen and organizations began their public work.

  The goals of today’s New Age movement were mapped out well in advance in the writings of occultist and medium Helen Blavatsky, who founded the Theosophical Society in 1875,49 and later by Alice Bailey, Nicholas Roerich (author of the Agni Yoga writings), Teilhard de Chardin (the evolutionary thinker and paleontologist mentioned in chapter 2 above), and H. G. Wells. In the words of Teilhard, these goals include a “convergence of religions” in tandem with a “confluence” of political and economic forces toward World Government.50 Today, some New Age circles speak of “The Plan” for a “New World Order,” which would include a universal credit system, a universal tax, a global police force, and an international authority that would control the world’s food supply and transportation systems. In this utopian scheme, wars, disease, hunger, pollution, and poverty will end. All forms of discrimination will cease, and people’s allegiance to tribe or nation will be replaced by a planetary consciousness.

  According to some of the major architects of the New Age movement, this “Plan” can be traced back to the fall of Lucifer and his angels from heaven. Alice Bailey wrote that the revolt of the angels against God was part of “the divine plan of evolution,” for by it the fallen angels “descended from their sinless and free state of existence in order to develop full divine awareness on earth.”51 In this total reversal of Christian theology, the Fall of man was really an ascent to knowledge, for by it man’s “eyes were opened” to good and evil.52 Thus, wrote Helen Blavatsky: “It is but natural ... to view Satan, the Serpent of Genesis, as the real creator and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual mankind. For it is he who was the ‘Harbinger of Light,’ bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the eyes of the automaton created by Jehovah.... Indeed, [mankind] was taught wisdom and the hidden knowledge by the ‘Fallen Angel.’”53 As man’s “benefactor,” Lucifer continues to assist man’s evolution. In the words of David Spangler, a disciple of the writings of Blavatsky and Bailey, Lucifer is “the angel of man’s evolution.”54

  Within New Age esoteric societies it is taught that, for the furtherance of “The Plan,” mass “planetary initiations” will occur. According to Benjamin Creme — another follower of Blavatsky and Bailey — “revitalized” Christian churches and Masonic lodge
s will be used for the purpose of giving these initiations. And as we have seen, David Spangler has stated that these initiations will be “Luciferic” at their esoteric core. Reiterating the teachings of Alice Bailey, who “channeled” them from a discarnate entity called “Djwhal Khul,” Spangler writes: “Lucifer works within each of us to bring us to wholeness as we move into the New Age...each of us is brought to that point which I term the Luciferic initiation.... Lucifer comes to give us the final ... Luciferic initiations... that many people in the days ahead will be facing, for it is an initiation into the New Age.”55

  As “The Plan” approaches fulfillment, the one-world religion acquires its final shape. “The day is dawning,” wrote Alice Bailey, “when all religions will be regarded as emanating from one great spiritual source; all will be seen as unitedly providing the one root out of which the universal world religion will inevitably emerge.”56Helen Blavatsky said that this universal religion was “the religion of the ancients,” the memory of which was “the origin of the Satanic myth” of Christians. “The religion of the ancients,” Blavatsky wrote, “is the religion of the future.”57

  “The Plan” reaches its apotheosis with the coming of the New Age Messiah: the so-called “Maitreya — the Christ.” David Spangler speaks in anticipation of this event: “From the depths of the race a call is rising for the emergence of a saviour, an avatar, a father-figure ... who can be for the race what the ancient priest-kings were in the dawn of human history.”58 According to Alice Bailey, “angels” will appear with this false Christ in order to convince people that they should follow him. Thus, the final stage of the “New Age” reversal of Christianity will be the worship of the antichrist, whose coming is after the power of satan with all power and signs and lying wonders (II Thes. 2:9).

  It should be pointed out that many New Agers today would not be aware of, much less subscribe to, all the points of “The Plan.” As we have seen, the movement incorporates a diverse array of groups, ideas and practices. If it can be called a “conspiracy,” this is certainly not because all New Agers are working together secretly, on an organizational level, toward fulfillment of “The Plan.” Ultimately, “The Plan” is being orchestrated not on a human but on a demonic level, and the architects of the New Age movement are, to a large degree, only mouthpieces of ideas that are not their own.

  8. Globalism

  The New Age movement is only the “spiritual” side of a much broader movement which has mushroomed in the decades since Fr. Seraphim’s death. This is the multi-faceted movement toward “globalism,” which is very much in the interest of those whose goals may not be religious at all.

  In recent years international investment bankers and corporations have made enormous strides toward their goal of a hegemony of world finance and a global economic system. In 1980 the following warning was issued by Admiral Charles Ward, a former member of the elite Council on Foreign Relations, which includes major government figures, heads of multinational corporations, and representatives of the largest banking firms in the world: “The most powerful cliques in these elitist groups have an objective in common — they want to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and the national independence of the United States. A second clique of international members in the CFR ... comprises the Wall Street International bankers and their key agents. Primarily, they want the world banking monopoly from whatever power ends up in the control of global government.”59 More recently, in 1993, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, Les Gelb, announced on television: “You had me on [before] to talk about the New World Order.... I talk about it all the time.... It’s one world now....Willing or not, ready or not, we are all involved.... The competition is about who will establish the first one-world system of government that has ever existed in the society of nations. It is control over each of us as individuals and over all of us together as a community.”60

  This vision of the future has been shaping the foreign policy of many governments, not least that of the United States. A clear declaration of the globalist agenda was made in 1992 by Strobe Talbott, longtime personal friend of President Bill Clinton, Deputy Secretary of State during the Clinton administration, and one of the chief architects of the U.S.-led military intervention in the Balkans: “Nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority.” In Talbott’s view, nations are nothing more than social arrangements: “No matter how permanent and sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary....It has taken the events in our own wondrous and terrible [20th] century to clinch the case for world government.”61

  With the establishment and expansion of the European Union, the creation of the Euro currency, the advances toward a cashless society, the control of former Eastern-bloc countries by Western financial interests, the formation of an international criminal tribunal by the United Nations, and the consolidation of state armies as “peacekeeping” forces under the United Nations and NATO, we see what appear to be the forerunners of such a one-world system. Some of these developments are not necessarily evil in themselves. Taken together, however, they help to set up a global apparatus which can make way for the rising “religion of the future.” Such was the expectation of Alice Bailey, who in the 1940s wrote: “The expressed aims and efforts of the United Nations will be eventually brought to fruition, and a new church of God, gathered out of all religions and spiritual groups, will unitedly bring to an end the great heresy of separateness.”62 Robert Muller, former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, expressed the same belief on the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations in 1995: “At the beginning the United Nations was only a hope. Today it is a political reality. Tomorrow it will be the world’s religion.”63 A proponent of the teaching of both Alice Bailey and Teilhard de Chardin, Muller says that mankind’s goal should be “to see the religions globalize themselves urgently in order to give us a universal, cosmic meaning of life on Earth and give birth to the first global, cosmic, universal civilization.”64

  Today, those with a globalist agenda in the political and financial sectors work alongside globalists in the religious sector, particularly with “interfaith” organizations such as the United Religions Initiative (founded as a religious counterpart to the United Nations), the Temple of Understanding (an official consultant of the United Nations Economic and Social Council), and the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions (a revival of the World’s Parliament of Religions, mentioned in chapter 2 above, which first convened in Chicago in 1893).65

  Although “interfaith” organizations usually affirm that their only aim is to promote “understanding” and “dialogue” among religions, it is apparent that in some cases this aim is only a first step in a larger program: the “convergence of religions” in the New Age. As William Swing, Episcopal Bishop of California and founder/director of the United Religions Initiative, expressed it in his book The Coming United Religions: “The time comes ... when common language and a common purpose for all religions and spiritual movements must be discerned and agreed upon. Merely respecting and understanding other religions is not enough.”66 Bishop Swing imagines all the world’s religions as paths up a mountain, converging from below on a single point, a “unity that transcends the world.” At the top of the mountain, the esoteric believers from each faith would “intuit that they were ultimately in unity with people from other religions because all come together at the apex, in the Divine. Everyone below the line would be identified as exoteric.”67 Like Blavatsky, Bailey and Teilhard before him, Bishop Swing looks to this convergence of religions with messianic expectancy. In his opening address to the 1997 summit conference of the United Religions Initiative, he proclaimed: “If you have come here because a spirit of colossal energy is being born in the loins of the earth, then come here and be a midwife. Assist, in awe, at the birth of new hope.”

  9. Denatured Christianity

  Although not all globalists and globalist org
anizations share specifically religious goals, they are certainly united in their view of what kind of religion will not fit into the one-world system they are working to create. Conservative, traditional adherents of a religion, who believe that their religion is a unique revelation of the fullness of truth, will not be welcome in the “global village.” As Paul Chaffee, board member of the United Religions Initiative, said in 1997: “We can’t afford fundamentalists in a world this small.” The same view was expressed at the 1998 State of the World Forum (sponsored by a host of international investors and corporations), where Forum president Jim Garrison announced: “If my theology is an impediment, then I have to get rid of my theology.... I think history is moving beyond dogma.... During times of transition, orthodoxies fall and the heretics and mavericks are the people creating the new orthodoxy.”68

  Also in 1998, this subject was discussed in some detail by one of the more recent ideologues of the “new religious consciousness,” Ken Wilber. A popular author whose works have been praised and avidly studied by both former President Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore, Wilber outlined the agenda that the world must follow in order to combine science with religion, as well as to establish a “universal theology” which all religions can embrace without losing their outward differences. “Religions the world over,” he writes, “will have to bracket their mythic beliefs,” and he cites as examples Moses parting the Red Sea, Christ being born of a Virgin, and the creation occurring in six days. Further, he says that “religion will also have to adjust its attitude toward evolution in general,” and “any religion that attempts to reject evolution seals its own fate in the modern world.”69