As we have seen, evolution is a key element in the New Age utopian dream. A panentheist, Wilber believes that the entire universe is God, evolving throughout billions of years toward Teilhard de Chardin’s “Omega Point.” Man, having evolved from a primordial soup, now evolves toward total God-consciousness, and in this way even God is in the process of becoming. According to New Age thought, with Darwin’s “discovery” of physical evolution, and even more so with the “discovery” of spiritual evolution, evolution has become conscious of itself, and this new paradigm shift will accelerate the process of cosmic evolution.70 Thus it is that, in Wilber’s view, those religious believers who reject evolution and “pledge allegiance to a mythic Eden in any actual sense” are destined for extinction.71 Only those who embrace the new religious consciousness, or who at least “bracket” their religious beliefs, will survive in the coming global society, which Wilber says will be marked by a “world-centric” awareness based in “universal pluralism.”72
Since traditional Christianity is an obstacle to the dreams of globalists on both the secular and “spiritual” fronts, there is now a concerted effort to reinterpret and denature the Christian faith — to transform Christ from the Divine-human, unique Saviour of Christian orthodoxy to a mere “spiritual guide” of the New Age variety.
We have already discussed how the feminist theologians of the Re-imagining movement have sought to reinvent Christianity: for them, Christ is not particularly unique, but is only one of the many “expressions” or “servants” of the goddess Sophia.73 These theologians, however, represent only one facet of the cultural trend to denature Christianity.
If, according to the neo-pagan view, we and everything else are but emanations of God, then there is nothing for Christ to do but guide us back to gnosis of what we already are. This idea is precisely what is being promoted today under the guise of being the authentic, esoteric teaching of Christ. In actual fact, it is but a revival of the ancient gnostic heresy, based on pagan philosophy, that was rightly condemned by the early Fathers of the Orthodox Church. This message of gnostic “Christianity” is being publicized today through the writings and media appearances of scholars with an obvious bias against traditional Christianity, chief among whom is Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief. The same message has recently received much attention through the quasi-historical novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown: a blasphemous assault on traditional Christianity that has sold over twelve million copies since its publication in 2003.
Ken Wilber speaks of the teachings that are being “rediscovered” in the ancient gnostic texts: “It is obvious from these texts that Jesus’ primary religious activity was to incarnate in and as his followers, in the manner, not of the only historical Son of God (a monstrous notion), but of a true Spiritual Guide helping all to become sons and daughters of God.... Elaine Pagels points out that there are three essential strands to the esoteric message of Christ, as revealed in the Gnostic Gospels: (1) ‘Self-knowledge is knowledge of God; the [highest] self and the divine are identical.’ (2) ‘The “living Jesus” of these texts speaks of illusion and enlightenment, not of sin and repentance.’ (3) ‘Jesus is presented not as Lord but as spiritual guide.’ Let us simply note that those are precisely tenets of Dharmakaya religion.”74
Here is a clear outline of the “new Christianity” that can easily be accommodated by the “religion of the future” — an imitation Christianity that leads not to Christ but to antichrist. Here, Christ is seen as a vague concept of ultimate Good, the belief in Him as the only begotten Son of God is rejected as a “monstrous notion,” and the idea is put forth that we ourselves can be just like Him.75 This is a crucial element in the “religion of the future,” for by it the antichrist will actually be convinced that he is another incarnate Son of God.
In one sense, the imitator of Christ will appear as a kind of saviour, solving man’s economic and political problems and offering to satisfy his spiritual aspirations through what Fr. Seraphim called a “melting pot” of science and world religions. According to the worldview of the “new religious consciousness,” however, the ultimate saviour will be evolution itself, moving forward in a natural development of this world into the Kingdom of God. The last great deceiver, who in the end will pretend to be Christ, will be seen as but another magnificent product of evolution.
10. The Vague Expectancy of the “New Man”
If, as we have said, the worldview of the “new religious consciousness” is entering into all aspects of human thought, what are some of the signs by which one can identify it? It can be seen, first of all, in the common sentiment that all religions are one, all are equal, and all are saying the same thing, only in different ways. On the surface this idea appears attractive because it seems to give everyone a fair shake. On a deeper level, however, it can be seen how this concept, under the pretense of fostering “unity in diversity,” actually destroys diversity. If an adherent to a religion believes that all other religions are equal to his own, he can no longer truly hold to that religion; he can no longer be who he is. Instead, while perhaps holding to some outward cultural artifacts, he becomes essentially a blank — a blank waiting to be filled by some new revelation. He has become as blank as everyone else who has been infected with the same modern mentality. Thus there is no true unity or diversity, only sameness based on blankness. This false “unity in blankness” is precisely what satan will use in order to hypnotize the mass mind in the last days. As Fr. Seraphim once pointed out in a lecture: “Such a vague thing is exactly what the devil likes to grab hold of. In any particular religious belief you may be mistaken, but at least you put your heart into it, and God can forgive all kinds of mistakes. But if you do not have any particular religious belief and you give yourself over to some kind of vague idea, then the demons come in and begin to act.”76
The religious mentality of modern man is becoming more amorphous and hazy all the time. A poll taken in 2002 indicates that 33% percent of Americans consider themselves “spiritual but not religious,” which is to say that they do not identify with an organized religion but are creating their own personal spirituality. According to the same poll, the number of such people is increasing by over two million every year, even as the number of those who consider themselves religious is declining at the same rate.77
The new, “spiritual” man of today can browse through bookstores or surf the internet to find any religious idea or practice that strikes his fancy, from Western to Eastern, from Sufism to satanism. The more data he stores in his head, however, the more vague his worldview becomes. He has religious interests in several areas, but he basically believes that all is relative: i.e., “My ideas work for me, your ideas work for you.” He believes in everything at once, but in nothing very deeply, and in nothing that will demand a sacrifice from him. He has nothing worth dying for. But his antennae are out, feeling for something else that will strike his fancy, that will satisfy his vague unrest without asking that he honestly look at himself and change, without disturbing his constant endeavor to satisfy his ego. His spiritual interest is intimately connected to his quest for ego gratification, and thus he stands poised to receive anything from anywhere that will provide this gratification. He is as clay in the hands of the spirit of antichrist, which, as the Apostle teaches, is already in the world (I John 4:3). He is a candidate — or rather a target — for the “religion of the future” about which Fr. Seraphim wrote.
A sad indicator of the spiritual condition of contemporary man is seen in the enormous popularity of the Conversations with God books by Neale Donald Walsch, which have sold over seven million copies since the first book appeared in 1995. At the 1997 summit conference of the United Religions Initiative, Walsch said of himself, “I represent the new paradigm of a religionless religion — a religion without structure — a spirituality that transcends all boundaries.” Walsch claims to channel a being whom he calls “God.” Flattering readers with the idea that they too are God, Wal
sch’s “God” tells them there is no such thing as sin and no need for repentance, for the “Original Sin” was really the “Original Blessing” — an ascent to knowledge.78 Walsch’s “God” speaks to the blank mind of the new, “spiritual” man: “You may want to consider the possibility that what would work for the world right now — given what the world says it wants to experience, which is peace and harmony — is a New Spirituality based on New Revelations.... A spirituality that enlarges upon organized religion in its present form. For it is many of your old religions, with their inherent limitations, that stop you from experiencing God as God really is. They also stop you from experiencing peace, joy, and freedom — which are other words for God as God really is.... The world is hungry, the world is starving, for a new spiritual truth.”79
In these revelations from Walsch’s “God,” one can recognize the same basic message that was channeled by earlier occultists such as Alice Bailey. But while this message resonated with a relatively small number of occultists during Bailey’s time, today it resonates with mainstream society, with the emerging “global consciousness.”
If one perceives a common thread among occult and New Age teachings spanning generations, this is because there is a single mind directing the formation of the new religious consciousness. It is the mind of the same fallen angel who tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden with the words: Ye shall be as Gods (Genesis 3:5). But while the evil one’s servant, the antichrist, will appear to triumph for a time, in the end it is he whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming (II Thes. 2:8).
11. Conclusion
From all that has been said above, it can be seen how, in the years following the publication of Fr. Seraphim’s book, the formation of an actual “religion of the future” has become increasingly real and believable. Now we can see even more clearly how humanity is being made open to the “demonic pentecost” that Fr. Seraphim predicted, in which the multitudes of the world — including those who call themselves Christians — can actually be initiated into the realm of demons.
Only Orthodox Christianity — with its Patristic standard of spiritual life and its thoroughly refined teachings on spiritual discernment — can cut through all the deceptions of our times at once. For this reason, satan sees it as his greatest enemy, and is doing all in his power to undermine it. But for the same reason we must do all that we can to cling to it, as Fr. Seraphim exhorts us.
“He who does not experience the Kingdom of God within him,” writes St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, “will not be able to recognize the antichrist when he comes.” In Orthodoxy we behold Christ undistorted. We can know Who He is, and we can know His Kingdom within us, without fantasies, hysteria, heated emotional states, and without any mental images. Knowing this, we will not be starving for a new spiritual truth, for we have found the Truth, not as an idea but as a Person — and we partake of Him in Holy Communion. We will not be a blank waiting to be filled, for we will already be filled with Christ, Who is all, and in all (Col. 3:11). Having Christ’s Kingdom within us, we will inherit it for eternity.
Footnotes
Preface to the Fifth Edition
1 From Fr. Seraphim’s Chronicle of the St. Herman Brotherhood, entry for May 10, 1976.
2 Some of these encounters are described in Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works, St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, Platina, Calif., 2003, pp. 688–90.
3 Letter of Constance E. Cumbey to the St.Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, July 8, 1988.
Introduction
1 Sobornost, Summer 1971, p. 171.
2 Full text in ibid., pp. 166–74.
3 As cited in J. Gregerson, “Nicholas Berdyaev, Prophet of a New Age,” Orthodox Life, Jordanville, New York, 1962, no. 6, where full references are Given
Chapter I: The “Monotheistic” Religions
1 For this fifth edition, some theological clarifications have been made in this chapter by the editors.
Chapter II: The Power of the Pagan Gods
1 Further on prelest, see below, p. 143ff.
2 Editor’s note: Few, even of those most desirous of entering into “dialogue” with Eastern religions and of expressing their basic religious unity with them, have any precise conception of the pagan religious practices and beliefs from whose tyranny the blessed and light yoke of Christ has liberated mankind. The goddess Kali, one of the most popular of Hindu deities, is most commonly depicted in the midst of a riot of blood and carnage, skulls and severed heads hanging from her neck, her tongue grotesquely protruding from her mouth thirsting for more blood; she is appeased in Hindu temples by bloody offerings of goats. (Swami Vivekananda justifies this: “Why not a little blood to complete the picture?”) Of her, Swami Vivekananda, as recorded by his disciple ‘Sister Nivedita,’ said further: “I believe that she guides me in every little thing that I do, and does with me what she will,” and at every step he was conscious of her presence as if she were a person in the room with him.He invoked her: “Come, O mother, come! For Terror is thy name;” and it was his religious ideal “to become one with the Terrible forevermore.” Is this, as Metropolitan Georges Khodre tries to persuade us, to be accepted as an example of the “authentic spiritual life of the unbaptized,” a part of the spiritual “riches” which we are to take from the non-Christian religions? Or is it not rather a proof of the Psalmist’s words: The gods of the pagans are demons?
3 Editor’s note to the fifth edition: For an exposition of Vivekananda’s evolutionary views, see “Swami Vivekananda on Darwin, Evolution, and the Perfect Man,” What Is Enlightenment? Spring/Summer 2002, pp. 58–63, 150–51. The guru Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) was another major proponent of modern evolutionism according to Hindu metaphysics; see his book The Life Divine, Lotus Press, Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, 1985.
Chapter IV: Eastern Meditation Invades Christianity
1 J. M. Dechanet, Christian Yoga, Harper&Row, New York, 1972; first English translation, 1960.
2 Harper & Row, New York, 1971.
3 All citations in this section are from Jhan Robbins and David Fisher, Tranquility without Pills (All about Transcendental Meditation), Peter H. Wyden, Inc., New York, 1972.
4 See TM in Court: The complete text of the Federal Court’s opinion in the case of Malnak v. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; Spiritual Counterfeits Project, P. O. Box 4308, Berkeley, Calif. 94704.
Chapter V: The “New Religious Consciousness”
1 Charles Glock and Robert Bellah, The New Religious Consciousness,University of California Press, Berkeley, 1976, pp. 31–32.
2 Robert Greenfield, The Spiritual Supermarket, Saturday Review Press, New York, 1975, p. 43.
3 The Journal of Shasta Abbey, Jan.–Feb. 1978, p. 6.
4 See Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov’s exposition of the Orthodox teaching on the spiritual and sensuous perception of spirits and the opening of man’s “doors of perception,” in The Orthodox Word, no. 82, 1978.
5 See Jiyu Kennett, How to Grow a Lotus Blossom, Shasta Abbey, 1977 — a Zen Master’s description of her near-death visions.
Chapter VI: “Signs from Heaven”
1 Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, Bantam Books, 1977, pp. 98–99. See articles in Russian of Dr. Vyacheslav Zaitsev, “Visitors from Outer Space,” in Sputnik, January 1967, and “Temples and Spaceships,” Sputnik, January 1968.
2 See Time magazine, April 24, 1978.
3 Robert Scholes and Eric S. Rabkin, Science Fiction: History, Science, Vision, Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 175.
4 Scholes and Rabkin, p. 183.
5 G. V. Grebens, Ivan Efremov’s Theory of Soviet Science Fiction, Vantage Press, New York, 1978, pp. 108, 110.
6 Ibid., pp. 109–10.
7 UFOs in Space: Anatomy of a Phenomenon, Ballantine Books, New York, 1977 (first published by Henry Regnery Company, 1965); page numbers as indicated in parentheses in text above.
8 Ibid., p. 47.
9 Ibid., pp. 47–53.
10 Ibid., p. 53.
11 Ibid., p. 31.
12 Ruppelt, Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, Ace Books, New York, 1956, pp. 80, 83.
13 Hynek, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, Ballantine Books, New York, 1977, pp. 215, 219.
14 “UFOs, What Are They?” in Smena, Apr. 7, 1967. See also his article “Unidentified Flying Objects” in Soviet Life, February 1968; Ostrander and Schroeder, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, pp. 94–103.
15 Felix Ziegel, “On Possible Exchange of Information with Extra-Terrestrial Civilizations,” paper presented at the All-Union Engineering Institute in Moscow, March 13, 1967; Psychic Discoveries, p. 96.
16 Philip J. Klass, UFOs Explained, Random House, NewYork, 1974, p. 360.
17 The Hynek UFO Report, Dell Publishing Co., New York, 1977, chs. 4–9; The UFO Experience, chs. 5–10.
18 J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallee, The Edge of Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, Henry Regnery Co., Chicago, 1975, pp. 289–90.
19 Vallee, UFOs in Space, pp. 187–91; Hynek, The UFO Experience, pp. 172–77.
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