During the decade of the 1960s, an overheated and overinflated notion of limitless human potential was part of the counter-cultural zeitgeist. Some of this starry-eyed leap of faith carried over into New Age philosophy, theology, psychology, and therapeutic practice. The central problem with this, in addition to the unrealistic expectations of human functioning, was the denial of the ontological reality of evil. The dangerous illusion was promoted that the “Universe” is a fundamentally benign and inherently erotic ground of being. As natural and human history will attest, and many of the old world religions recognized, nothing could be more distant from the truth!! While striving to expand life energy in our microcosmic and macrocosmic functioning, we must be forever vigilant to detect, and protect ourselves from, demonic and dangerously alien life-negative energies. It is the failure to see absolute evil that has allowed the leftists, and post-modern “liberals,” to open Western Civilization to communist gangs and the death religion of Islamo-fascism. See: The Oranur Experiment, Contact With Space, Ether, God and Devil – Cosmic Superimposition, and The Murder of Christ, all by Wilhelm Reich. See also, Civilization and its Discontents by Sigmund Freud. Compare: A Return to Eros by Marc Gafni and Kristina Kincaid, and Eros and Civilization by Herbert Marcuse.
Another feature of New Age Spirituality that is almost always present in the general syndrome is that the New Age leaders seek to develop a mass movement behind the “Guru” or “Masters” involved. History will attest that this always ends in disaster for the spiritually unprepared masses. Masses of people cannot be magically liberated by Gurus. There are too many spiritual and natural laws against it. Furthermore, spiritual development takes an individual years of effort and experience. It is never “democratic.” It is, as the philosopher Nietzsche pointed out, aristocratic in nature and restricted to those equipped intellectually and energetically to make the journey to the luminous summits. Down through history, this reality and truth has resulted in the scattered and unincorporated brotherhood and sisterhood of mystics and metaphysicians. These small groups of spiritual teachers only admitted as students those who met stringent character requirements and intellectual capacities. See Sabbatai Sevi by Gershom Scholem (N.J., Princeton University Press, 1976). See also, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism by Gershom Scholem (N.Y., Schocken Books, 1995).
