New Age Cults and Religions

by Texe Marrs

  Setting aside individual differences and doctrinal nuances, the New Age leadership is today proposing that since “all is one,” it is fitting that a New World Religion be forged out of the disparate units which make up the New Age movement as a whole. In the coming era, then, what we will no doubt see is an emphasis on the common characteristics and shared beliefs of all in the New Age. The many New Age cults and religions will hold hands and, regrettably, uniformly take sides against Christianity. The New Age groups will become a united, adversarial group in opposition to long cherished traditions fostered by the Judeo-Christian ethic. In fact, this process is already far advanced.

  Just a few years ago, when my bestselling book, Dark Secrets of the New Age, was first published, there were a number of Christian pastors and other leaders who confessed to me that they simply did not believe that such a thing as “the New Age” even existed. Today, few deny that there is an incredible, ongoing transformation taking place in American society. The evidence of this surrounds us on every front.

  In the Los Angeles Times last year was the report that an estimated 30,000 New Agers had filled the Los Angeles Airport Hilton Convention Center for a three-day long Whole Life Expo. Claiming to “vibrate a lot of positive energy” this event has been held in Southern California each year since 1983. The most recent expo featured 200 speakers and nearly 300 exhibit booths. Long lines of people paid up to $33 per workshop plus $17 a day for general admission. Participants found a smorgasbord of New Age techniques, practices, religions, and messages to chose from. For example, on one hand there were seminar presentations concerning mystical ways to attract money, while, at a number of Expo exhibition booths, subliminal tapes were on sale which promised to reveal the “positive and miraculous power of prosperity consciousness.” “Get your first million here today,” one display sign announced.

  The theme of this particular expo was “Healing Mother Earth,” and a panel of Hollywood celebrities was on hand to promote the New Age view concerning holistic healing and ecological concerns. There were also electronic devices being demonstrated—brain machines which hold out the promise of altering brain waves to send a person into an eternal form of electronic bliss. The pitch was that through glorious alterations in brain chemistry, an exalted state of cosmic consciousness can be achieved. Presto!—god-like powers.

  Across the United States many such expos, conventions, and grand galas are being presented. But this is only the froth, the foam atop a smashing series of oceanic waves that are pelting and blasting away at the shoreline of American society. “The main fight, make no mistake,” said theologian Neal Sperre in 1961 in his book Christology and Personality, “is between the Christian faith and its inner classical meaning and the new orientalized versions.” As Sperre went on to say, “the supernatural, personalistic, classical Christian faith is now being undermined by an ultimately impersonal, or transpersonal faith. Winds are blowing gale-strong out of the east.”

  These statements are not hyperbole and the problem is not being over-dramatized. The New Age Movement is a herculean accomplishment by powerful spiritual forces firmly opposed to Biblical Christianity. As Barbara Marx Hubbard, a leading New Age visionary, has proclaimed: “A New Order is being born that will be as different from what exists now as the Renaissance was from the Middle Ages.” Hubbard believes that humanity is genetically “preprogrammed for New Age enlightenment” and she has warned that those of us who are not ready for the New Age religion will be destroyed in a cataclysmic conclusion to the current age of traditional Christianity.

  The Cult Explosion

  Perhaps the most frightening thing about the New Age is its use of unchristian cults and aberrant religions and sects to promote its goals. The upsurge of cults in the United States began in the late-60s and became a highly visible social phenomenon by the mid-70s. Many studies have been conducted, thousands of media reports and articles published, expert testimonies given in legal cases, and legislative hearings held in an attempt to deal with the destructive and harmful cults which are now dangerously influencing millions of lives. The scary thing today is that many of the New Age and occultic cults and religions now prosperous and growing were, only a few years ago, considered unhealthy and ridiculous. But in recent years, many have undergone a whitewashing in the public mindview and their far out teachings are being unquestionably accepted.

  For example, once upon a time it was generally considered absurd, outrageous, and certainly unwise for a person to embrace such cult groups as Scientology, Hare Krishna, Eckankar, the Moonies, or one of the multitude of Hindu gurus. Not so today. Logic has been turned on end so that in the current era, even the most dangerous cults are readily afforded an aura of respectability.

  Believe me, many of the groups described in this book are not harmless. Though there is disagreement as to the relative danger of each of the cults and religions, there is no dispute that at least some of these groups can be hideously life threatening.

  Recently, I had occasion to read the book Combatting Cults Mind Control, by Steven Hassan. Hassan is a brilliant man who himself managed to escape from the clutches of a controversial New Age cult. Today, he is a full-time worker in exposing cult techniques. He writes in his book that there are people today involved in cults who are being “systematically lied to, physically abused, encouraged to lose contact with family and friends, and induced to work at jobs which offer them little or no significant opportunities for personal or professional growth.”

  Hassan also says that what he has learned about many of the cults conjures up “an image of totalitarianism from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.” He goes on to add that while the world at large may not as yet have become the nightmare reality that Orwell depicted—a place where state “thought police” maintain complete control of people’s mental and emotional lives and where it is a crime to act and think independently or even to fall in love, nevertheless:

  In an increasing number of organizations in our world, Nineteen Eighty-Four has come true: Basic respect for the individual simply doesn’t exist, and people are gradually led to think and behave in very similar ways through a process of mind control.

  Because of this unseemly and torturous process, says Hassan, “they lose the ability to act on their own and are often exploited for the sake of the group’s economic or political ends...whether religious or secular in its apparent orientation.”

  Therefore, we should not take these cults lightly. I believe strongly that individuals who become caught up in New Age cults and religions may well find, eventually, that they are not only imperiled in a spiritual sense, but that their physical well-being is also at stake. Many of the cults listed in this book deprive their disciples and initiates of basic nutritional needs. Some prescribe a rigid vegetarian diet or require their members to use a regimen of unsafe and unhealthy herbs and other natural substances that are extremely harmful and damaging to the body. Yet, members of the cults rarely question the necessity for such strict and excessive dietary restrictions. Obedience to the leadership and the need to develop harmonious and close relationships with other peer members in the group prevent the individual from using his or her full mental capabilities and evaluative thinking process.

  Please understand, I am not saying that every group, every cult, every religious sect and organization listed in this book constitutes a present danger to their members’ health and welfare. I only point out that some do. And while the others may not endanger the physical body, certainly they have placed in jeopardy the spiritual health and moral reasoning capacity of the men and women under their discipleship. This, in fact, is an even greater and more significant reason to avoid the New Age cults and religions, as well as the popular New Age environmental, political, economic, social, educational, and related organizations and groups.

  All influence their members to develop and defend a worldview totally contradictory and even sometimes hateful of true Christianity. Jesus once told us not to fear he who could ki
ll the body, but rather fear only he who can kill the soul. We should realize, therefore, that the most dangerous aspect of the New Age is the spiritual damage that it may cause the individual. This is a harm that may well endure for an eternity.

  The Octopus-Like Tentacles of the New Age

  Many people are unwittingly drawn into the New Age because of its insidious, yet subtle, infiltration of so many areas of our daily lives. For example, the New Age is now freely and with little organized opposition being taught in the business world, with seminars and workshops conducted on-premises in America’s largest corporations. Our children are being introduced to New Age practices and theories in schools. Nightly we view television “entertainment” that is jam-packed with New Age plots, and the secular book world is literally eaten up with New Age themes in both the fiction and non-fiction categories of books.

  Unfortunately, many people whose first experience with the New Age is by one of these methods often soon develops an insatiable appetite to learn more about the New Age. This is because of the seductiveness and lure of the New Age message. It so often comes disguised as an exciting new way to enhance or empower the self while, in reality, the New Age simply represents another feeble attempt of the Adversary to pollute Christianity, promote immorality, and foster unethical attitudes.

  The frightening situation today is that, whether in the corporate work place, in our schools, or in any of hundreds of other forums, New Age cults and religious groups are being invited in. Often they come cloaked in a disguise other than that of a religion. The leaders of the New Age well know that the American ethic dictates that religion and dogma be excluded from the workplace and from our public schools. Therefore, these messengers of deception must hide the true nature of their mission.

  Tens of Thousands of Entry Points

  As one prominent New Age authority has stated, “There are tens of thousands of entry points” into the New Age. Indeed, there are so many New Age cults and religious groups active today that entire directories have been published to list them. Examples include Network: the First Report and Directory, The National New Age Yellow Pages, and The New Age Catalog. Moreover, new groups spring up almost daily.

  Some of the groups discussed in this book are being paid large sums of money by industry and government to bring their programs into the workplace. For example, in 1986 representatives of IBM, AT&T, and General Motors gathered in New Mexico to discuss how occultic techniques and Hindu mysticism might help their executives become more competitive in an increasingly challenging world marketplace. Meanwhile, New Age subjects from est to firewalking are being explored by top management. At Stanford University’s much respected Graduate School of Business, a seminar on “Creativity in Business” includes such activities as meditation, chanting, dream work, the use of Tarot Cards, and discussion of New Age capitalism. Although these incidents were widely reported in the secular press, including the vaunted New York Times, and also exposed in Christian magazines such as Eternity, the inroads of the New Age into the business community have continued to blossom. Today a large part of the funding for New Age cults and religions come from our business community.

  Funding also comes from governmental agencies. For example, NASA, our nation’s space agency, paid Werner Erhard, founder of the New Age group est and the newer The Forum, the sum of $40,000 to personally travel to NASA’s space center and teach managers there his New Age thinking techniques.

  Moreover, our education system is fast becoming almost an adjunct of the New Age Movement. As Dave Hunt, in his book, Peace, Prosperity and the Coming Holocaust, writes:

  The New Age Movement does its most strategic work in the public schools. It is teaching our children that they are gods, and that the only authority they need to follow is the “Inner Light” of their “Higher Self.” New Age educators are deliberately trying to bring about a transformation of thinking, morals, worldview, and personal identity in the public schools of America.

  It should be noted that such phrases as “Higher Self” or “Inner Light” are New Age terms for deity.

  It is a well-known fact that since the 60s, New Age groups have pushed New Age concepts and practices for application in our schools. For example, the Association for Humanistic Psychology suggested over a decade ago that public school teachers incorporate the following activities into their daily routine. As you read this, you should understand that the recommendations of this New Age group have since been duly complied with by thousands of school districts across America and Canada:

  THE STUDENT WILL: Do yoga each morning before class; interpret their astrological charts; send messages via ESP; mind project; astral project; heal their own illnesses; speak with their Higher Selves and receive information necessary for joyful living; lift energies from the power chakra to the heart chakra (Buddhist and Hindu concepts); practice skills necessary for color healing; hold an image of themselves as being perfect; receive advice from their personal (spirit) guides; merge minds with others in the class to experience a collective consciousness of the group.

  New Age organizations and religions ranging from Transcendental Meditation and the Silva Method to the Church of Wicca have brought their techniques and methodology into schoolrooms. However, fearing retribution by Christian fundamentalists, these techniques are often covered up by the use of innocuous phrases, titles, and names to describe them. For example, occult forms of meditation are rarely called meditation: instead such destructive and mind-warping techniques in the classroom are cloaked in such deceptive language as “centering,” “focusing,” “magic time,” “visualizing,” “think time,” “creativity,” “mind play,” “visioning,” “guided imagery,” “guided fantasy,” and so forth.

  It is clear that the New Age has graduated from the Gee Whiz, Golly Gee, Shirley MacLaine faddism stage into a bright new era of respectability and acceptance in which it is influencing every segment of our lives. New Age cults and religions are ascending to center stage, and increasingly their unchristian values are being enthusiastically accepted by the movers-and-shakers of society. The American way of life is being drastically revised and debilitated. What is even more astonishing is that the thousands of New Age cults and religious groups, as well as the multitude of New Age groups in political, economic, educational, and other arenas, are now networking together and making an astonishingly successful attempt at forming a World Religion of Unity.

  Unity is made possible because New Age believers easily cross over from cult to cult and from group to group. Not too long ago I did a study on why people enter the New Age Movement and why people become involved in New Age cults and religions. In speaking to over 150 New Age believers involved in cults, I discovered that a full 131 had been active in at least four other cults in the previous three year period. In other words, over a period of about three years the typical New Age believer involves himself or herself in a total of five cult groups.

  My findings are confirmed by many other researchers. For example, Geoffry Ahern, in his book Sun at Midnight, reported that he had interviewed 18 men and women involved in the New Age cult founded by Rudolf Steiner called Anthroposophy. He found that 12 of the 18 had previous experience and involvement in other cults prior to entering the realm of Anthroposophy. Another researcher has found that cult members stay in a cult an average of only 90 days before, for one reason or another, they drift on, inevitably to become linked up with yet another cult or religious faction. It is apparent that these people have few spiritual bearings for they seem to be like unanchored ships in a storm, tossed by the tempest of the sea and carried away with every wind of doctrine and every sleight of hand by the gurus.

  The one trait prevalent among almost all those who are involved in New Age cults and religions is that they are seekers of spiritual experience. In other words, they do not desire to simply have a surface knowledge or a shallow faith, their heartfelt desire is to know, to become immersed in “truth.” They are, therefore, sitting ducks for the New Age e
lite who declare forthrightly that theirs is not a religion but an all-encompassing spiritual movement. In a recent issue of Back to Godhood magazine, published by the Hare Krishna movement (known officially as the International Society of Krishna Consciousness), the Hindu god Krishna was quoted from the Hindu scriptures, the Gita, as saying that the seeker must “abandon all varieties of religion and surrender unto me.”

  This is a prime example of how the New Age promotes universal spiritual values and requires surrender of the new recruit’s logical reasoning and critical thinking faculties. The appeal is not to logic nor to what is ultimate Truth. Certainly the appeal is not to a sound mind; but instead, the New Age cults strive to arouse and massage one’s emotions. Their expertise lies in the ability of their leadership to dredge up experiential feelings, desires, and deeply felt longings and instincts in the fresh and vulnerable new disciple.

  God As You Understand Him: The New Age Deity

  The first and cardinal rule in the New Age is simply this: “Believe in any god and in anything, but do not claim that your god, or your belief, is exclusive.” That is, as long as you accept that all is one and that your religion is no better than the next person’s, then you qualify to be a New Ager. It does not matter whether you worship a Hindu guru, your own Higher Self, the group, or a pagan deity from ancient Rome, Greece, or Babylon.