A
Theological Analysis of the New Age Movement
CHAPTER
II
THE
DOCTRINES OF THE NEW AGE MOVEMENT
Yahweh
Elohim of the Old Testament
Alice
Bailey, of the Theosophical society, is one of the most popular writers of New
Age thought. Between
1919 and 1949 she wrote 24 books.
In 1922 Mrs. Bailey founded the Luciferic Publishing Company (later the
name was changed to Lucis Publishing Company and Lucis Trust of 866 United
Nations Plaza, New York), and in 1947 she published a book entitled Problems
of Humanity.
The new Age attitude toward the God of the Old Testament is expressed:
Christianity
has emphasized immortality but has made eternal happiness dependent upon the
acceptance of a theological dogma; Be
a true professing Christian and live eternally in a somewhat fatuous heaven or
refuse to be an accepting Christian and go to an impossible hell-a hell growing
out of the theology of The Old Testament and its presentation of a God
full of hate and jealousy. Both
concepts are today repudiated by all sane, sincere, thinking people. No one of any true reasoning power or with any true belief in
a God of love accepts the heaven of the churchmen or has any desire to go there.
Still less do they accept the “lake that burneth with fire and
brimstone” or the everlasting torture to which a God of love is supposed to
condemn all who do not believe in the theological interpretations of the Middle
Ages, of the modern fundamentalists or of the churchmen who seek—through
doctrine, feat and threat—to keep people in line with the obsolete old
teaching.
Yahweh Elohim of the Old
Testament is held to be a hateful and jealous God, a god who exhibits evil
intent, rather than lovingkindness and righteousness. This concept of God is quite similar to the Gnostic God of
the Old Testament—the inferior God who created evil matter.
An anti-God, anti-Bible,
anti-Jesus Christ-as-Lord attitude pervades the Bailey writings.
It is as if these writings emanated from the pit of hell.
Alice credits the very words of her books to a being called “The
Tibetan, “ known also as D. K. or Djwhal Khul.
One New Age writer, Benjamin Creme, explains it in this manner:
May I ask, having
read some of the Alice Bailey books, I wonder—is the information contained
therein telepathically received or is it received through a particular line of
people who have held the esoteric secrets of the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
the Book of Thoth, or is it a burst of sudden illumination which has
allowed somebody to set these writings down?
From the
Hierarchical point of view, the Secret Doctrine of Madame Blavatsky, the
founder of the Theosophical Society, represents the preparatory phase of the
Teaching given out to the world for this new age. The Teaching embodied in the
Alice Bailey Teachings
represents the intermediate phase of this Teaching. This was given to her by the one who called himself for many
years simply “the Tibetan,” whom we know now as the Master D.K.—Djwhal
Khul. Alice Bailey received it by
means of the higher telepathy, through the medium of the soul.[2]
More about Djwhal
Khul is recorded by H. Saraydarian:
Djwhal Khul, a
second-Ray master, works under Master Koot Humi and helps him tremendously in
training disciples and dictating books to advanced disciples. It was he who dictated a great part of the Secret Doctrine to H.P.
Blavatsky and a number of books of great esoteric value to Alice A. Bailey.
He is known as the Messenger of the Masters . . . . He is mainly concerned with philanthropic movements, Red Cross, healing
work and with the Devas.[3]
The utter contempt for the
god of the Old Testament and His Holy Scriptures is also displayed in the
writings of David Spangler: “. .
.we can take all the scriptures and all the teachings, and all the tablets, and
all the laws, and all the marshmallows and have a jolly good bonfire and
marshmallow roast, because that is all they are worth.”
Spangler continues: “Once
you are the law, once you are the truth, you do not need it externally
represented for you. Rather you
will be external representative for the world.”
Obviously New Age writers do
not feel they need the God of the Bible or His Word. This is because they believe that man, with a proper
understanding of the esoteric secrets can be a god himself.
Man becomes “Truth.”
The Divinity of Man
The deception of Genesis 3:5,
“You shall be like God,” is perpetrated in most New Age writings.
In speaking about an occult celebration called “The Festival of
Humanity,” the Tibetan Master through Alice Bailey writes:
It will be the
day pre-eminently on which the divine nature of man will be recognized and his
power to express goodwill and to establish right human relations (because of his
divinity) will be stressed. On this
festival we are told Christ has for nearly two thousand y ears represented
humanity and has stood before the Hierarchy as the God-man, the leader of His
people and “the Eldest in a great family of brothers.”[6]
David Spangler alludes to the
divinity of man during a discussion of the distinction between mysticism and
religion:
Mysticism is the
experience of the wholeness in which we are embedded—the perception of the
presence of God. It is an
experience of unity with that presence, the discovery of the spirit of God
within oneself. . . .mysticism shows us how we are one with God and
co-participants with divinity in the unfoldment of creation.
Man’s eternal and elusive
aspiration to achieve divinity is a theme also characteristic of Rosicrucian
teachings. Max Heindel reports:
. . .the Gospels
(which are formulas of Initiation) commence with the account of the immaculate
conception and end with the crucifixion, both wonderful ideals to which we must
sometime attain, for each of us is a Christ-in-the-making, and will sometime
pass through both the mystic birth and mystic death adumbrated in the Gospels.
By knowledge we may hasten the day, intelligently cooperating instead of
as now often stupidly frustrating through ignorance the ends of spiritual
development. . . .Let us remember. . .that we are all Christs-in-the-making;
that sometime we must cultivate characters so spotless that we may be worthy to
inhabit bodies that are immaculately conceived. . . .
Throughout the literature of
this New Age occultic core is the teaching that men can attain godhood—that
men can be like Christ. Dr. Donald
Curtis of Unity Church (6525 Forest Lane, Dallas, Texas) is a convinced and
convincing apologist for the divinity of man concept.
Dr. Curtis labels himself a Christian pastor of a Christian church.
His theological credentials as reported in Who’s Who in New Thought,
display a discernable lack of any biblical foundation:
A
deep student of world religions, Dr. Curtis has studied with the yogis and holy
men of India, spending time in their ashrams, as well as seeking out the counsel
and instruction of Buddhist monks, and Tibetan lamas. In Japan, he studied Oriental techniques of healing, studied
Zen, did research in the traditional older religions, and spoke at the centers
of many of the “new religions” there.
In his monthly newsletter,
Dr. Curtis offers a flowery explanation for his church’s existence at once
recognizable as a twentieth century edition of Satan’s original deceptive
distortions:
The
Unity Church of Dallas is a unique and beautiful expression of God in
action. . . .The great love which we feel for our church and for each other
comes from our mutual contact with the realization of the Indwelling Christ.
We are truly “the called-out ones.”
We are always aware that “where two or three are gathered together in
my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20).
This
is a New Age church—Christ Centered—a community church, dedicated to
discipleship. . . .As we behold the Christ in ourselves and in each other, our
consciousness expands into Inner space and we conduct ourselves as sons of God.
Dr. Curtis elaborates his
doctrine regarding the divinity of man in his pamphlet, “what is the Golden
Bridge?” This pamphlet is
distributed to visitors at Unity Church and reads in part:
The
Golden Bridge is a means of cooperating with the creative law of life.
It enables us to use the power within us for the real business of life. .
. .
The
Golden bridge is a master symbol, an inner archetypal form upon which we pass
over from one state of consciousness to another. . . .The Golden bridge is the
connecting link between old states of consciousness and new. . . .
“I
go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will
come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also”
(1 John 14:2,3).
We
understand the “I” to be the Indwelling Christ, “That was the true Light,
which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” (John 1:9)
Jesus is not talking about himself as a man. He is speaking as His True Self, the Impersonal Christ which
dwells within every individual, the Light upon our Path, that which ever goes
before us, preparing the Way, and making the crooked places straight.
This “I” is our Real Being—the
God Self which we really are.
Curtis plainly teaches that
Christ dwells in every man—a direct contradiction of the biblical truth that
men are sinners who need a savior and must receive Christ by faith in order to
inherit eternal life.
When Curtis writes that our
Real being is the “God Self which we really are,” he refutes 1 Corinthians
8:5,6 which states:
For
even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there
are many gods and many lords,
Yet
for us there is but one God the Father from Whom are all things and we exist for
Him and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by Whom are all things and we exist through Him.
This
concept of the divinity of man currently permeates both specialized and popular
literature. The Editor-in-Chief of Essence
magazine expresses a similar thought in an editorial entitled, “In the Spirit,
Inner Power”:
We
are wondrous beings. Made in the
image and likeness of our Creator. But
it’s the literal interpretation of that truth that keeps up groveling on our
knees, begging a gray-bearded, all-powerful God in the sky to answer our needs.
The
best kept secret in the world is that god is not up in the sky arbitrarily
answering our rote incantations. The
Godmind—the energy that created us—is inbred in us.
It is our power within. This
inner intelligence is the mind power at the core of our beings.
You
are as a child of the universe, part of a Divine Process.
The degree to which you accept your divinity determines how much It can
work for you. Get busy practicing
the Presence within. Be still and
know that you are God.
The
“fact” that men are gods and gods do not die leads to another sub-topic of
new Age teaching regarding the Doctrine of Man:
belief in reincarnation and the Law of Karma.
Reincarnation and the Law of Karma
The
eastern religions (such as Hinduism and Buddhism) contain many concepts which
have been amalgamated into new Age theology. Chief among them is the belief in reincarnation and the Law of Karma.
In Reincarnation and Christianity Robert
Morey quotes DeSmet as saying:
In
the Indian Vedas, the word “Karma” originally meant “a sacrifice”
or “a ritual act.” In the Upanishads
it evolved into the concept that any act in this life will have an effect on
one’s next life. Finally in the Bhagavad
Gita, Karma is viewed as a punishment in this life for evils done in the
past life, with a prospect of purification for future lives.
These
concepts of reincarnation and karma are believed to be traceable to the
Indo-Aryans of Punjab and Sind, India, around 1800 B.C.
Originally reincarnation was called the transmigration of the soul,
meaning that at physical death the soul would “migrate” or move into some
other bodily form. This presupposes
that every soul experiences existence before incarnation and phenomenal
existence is, therefore, a beginningless cycle of births (samsara) which succeed
one another more or less uninterruptedly.
This
cycle or samsara, however, did not proceed in any random fashion: the total life-situation of any given individual in any given
firth was viewed as the cumulative effect of his choices and deeds in previous
lives; and this principle of casual
connectedness, this law of the deed and the effect, was called the principle of
karma (deed, or action). . .
Bound
thus to the cycle of births by the inevitable consequences of his previous karma,
an individual would understandably come to view the realm of samsara as a
condition of bondage from which escape was to be sought at various levels.[15]
New Age prophetess Alice
Bailey refers to karma as being inherited from a previous solar system and
passing on to another:
The
esotericist is dealing with substance all the time; he is concerned with that
living, vibrant substance of which the worlds are made and which—inherited as
it is from a pervious solar system—is coloured by past events, and is (as has
been said) “already tinged with karma.”
The Law of Karma (referred to
as the “Law” or the “Wheel of Law” in esoteric literature) is gaining
popularity in the west as is the concept of reincarnation.
Perhaps Annie Besant, an early leader in the Theosophical Society, best
explains this belief in and attractiveness of the concepts of Karma and rebirth:
Karma
brings us ever back to rebirth, binds us to the wheel of births and deaths . .
Such
is an outline of the great Law of karma and of its workings, by a knowledge of
which a man may accelerate his evolution, by the utilization of which a man may
free himself from bondage, and become long ere his race has trodden its course,
one of the Helpers and Saviors of the World.
A deep and steady conviction of the truth of this Law gives to life an
immovable serenity and a perfect fearlessness:
nothing can touch us that we have not wrought, nothing can injure us that
we have not merited. And as
everything that we have sown must ripen into harvest in due season, and must be
reaped, it is idle to lament over reaping when it is painful; it may as well be
done now as at any future time, since it cannot be evaded, and, once done, it
cannot return to trouble us again. Painful
karma may thereafter well be faced with a joyful heart, as a thing to be gladly
worked through and done with; it is better to have it behind us than before us,
and every debt paid leaves us with less to pay.
Would that the world knew and could feel the strength that comes from
this resting on the Law.
A cursory glance at India is
sufficient to display the questionable merits of generations of people committed
to the Law of Karma and reincarnation. These doctrines of the East, which have been adopted by the
occultic core of the New Age movement, are anti-biblical.
The God of the Bible states:
For Christ did
not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into
heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us;
Nor was it that
He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year
after year with blood not his own.
Otherwise, He
would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now
once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by
the sacrifice of Himself.
And inasmuch as
it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment,
So Christ also,
having been offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time
for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him (Heb.
9:24-28).
Bruce Demarest, in a chapter entitled “How is God
Known” writes:
(There is a) . .
.resurgence of interest in the non-Christian religions,--an interest that has in
turn been accelerated by the progressive convergence of world cultures.
A leading vision of twentieth-century man undoubtedly is the progressive
unification of the human race. . .Increased immigration, urbanization,
international political (U.N.) and ecclesiastical forums (W.C.C.), and the
world-wide exchange of ideas in education, science, and the arts have set in
motion powerful centripetal forces promoting a new global consciousness.
Scattered tribes and ethnic groups with diverse languages, customs, and
religions are steadily moving in the direction of a new unity.
Multiplicity and pluraformity are gradually giving way to a new
convergence, which Marcuse styled a “one-dimension world.”
A. . .significant result of the contemporary formation of a global
village is that one can no longer isolate himself from the beliefs and practices
of peoples on the other side of the globe.
Religions and ideologies once held to be remote and strange are now
becoming familiar objects of knowledge.
Such
is the New Age concept of reincarnation and karma.
New
Age writers contend that the Bible originally taught the doctrine of
reincarnation, and that his teaching was removed from the bible by various
church councils and dishonest editors.[19]
Regarding this John Snyder states:
Such
beliefs are notable only for their lack of historical integrity.
A brief survey of the available evidence wills how that it would make no
difference what later church councils decided, because one can go directly to
the most ancient texts that preserve the gospel for us.
Those texts that are the earliest surviving manuscripts in Greek show us
that the verities of the faith antedate any medieval attempts at revision.
Many of these manuscripts are older than the major councils of the
church. The ancient world was so
flooded with copies of the New Testament that it was well beyond the power of
any officials to expunge certain uncomfortable doctrines from them.
Nonetheless,
New Agers posit that Jesus, Himself, while studying with the yogis in India,
both learned and taught the veracity of reincarnation.
The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ states:
9
One day
Ajainin sat with Jesus in the temple porch; a band of wandering singers and
musicians paused before the court to sing and play.
10
Their
music was most rich and delicate, and Jesus said, Among the high-breed people of
the land we hear no sweeter music than that these uncouth children of the
wilderness bring here to us.
11
From
whence this talent and this power? In
one short life they surely could not gain such grace of voice, such knowledge of
the laws of harmony and tone.
12
Men call
them prodigies. There are no
prodigies. All things result from
natural law.
13
These
young people are not young. A
thousand years would not suffice to give them such divine expressiveness, and
such purity of voice and touch.
14
Ten
thousand years ago these people mastered harmony. In days of old they trod busy thoroughfares of life, and
caught the melody of birds, and played on harps of perfect form.
15
And they
have come again to learn still other lessons from the varied notes of manifests.
That reincarnation is indeed
a fact and not alien to Christianity is believed by a United Nations’ leader
and prominent Catholic layman, Robert Muller.
Dr. Muller has been an employee of the United Nations for 33 years.
As Assistance Secretary-General he is in charge of economic and social
services and is the coordinator of the 32 specialized agencies and world
programs of the U.N. Dr. Muller
performs diplomatic missions of great influence, and is a regular guest lecturer
at universities around the world. Although
Dr. Muller is a practicing Roman Catholic, he attributes many of his spiritual
concepts to the Buddhism of U Thant. He
says, regarding reincarnation:
O
God, I know that I come from You, that I am part of You, that I will return to
You, and that there will be no end to my rebirth in the eternal stream of Your
splendid creation.
Dr. Muller believes that he
is a part of the eternal “Cosmic Organism.”
This is the Hindu monistic thought that “All is One” and, when tied
to reincarnation, produces the belief that all wisdom and knowledge is within
oneself, and it is simply a matter of finding the right Master or Guru to open
those secrets of ancient wisdom deep within one’s own mind.
Jagadish Chatterji, former Director of Oriental Research and Archeology
in the Government of Kashmir, India, expresses it this way:
It
thus happens that all knowledge, indeed all the universe, the whole “Kingdom
of Heaven,” is literally within us; it is within us as eternal, timeless,
spaceless, idealized objectivity lying in front of Atman, the eternal subject
and untiring Enjoyer . . .
These
are ideas which are not peculiar to the Vedas or to India;.. . .Robert Browning.
. .has expressed the thought in Paracelsus in the following vivid
passage: “Truth is within
ourselves; it takes no rise from outward things; whate’er you may believe.”
Browning
continues his Orientally influenced thought:
There is an inmost center in us all.
Where truth abides in fullness, and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perception—which is truth.
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and
to know
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without. Watch
narrowly
The demonstration of a truth, its birth,
And you trace back the effluence to its spring
And source within us; where broods
radiance vast,
To be elicited ray by ray, as chance
Shall favor:. . .
Paracelsus,
then, displays not only the philosophy of the Vedas (as in Chatterji’s
evaluation), but also supports Gnostic thought with its emphasis on sinful
matter binding real knowledge (to know). Thus, the “light” of real knowledge is within the mind and needs to find some
“spark” or way of release. The
esotericist of antiquity and of the New Age occultic core claims to have the
secret knowledge necessary for this “redemption”.
Alice Bailey in her discussion of what she calls the
“science of Esotericism” and the abilities of the esotericist, continues:
He
learns to differentiate between the quality or karmic predispositions of the
“unprincipled” substances of which his form and all forms are made, and the
qualified principles which are seeking expression through those forms and,
incidentally, to redeem, salvage and purify them so that the substance of the
next solar system will
be of a higher order than that of the present one, and consequently more
responsive to the will aspect of the Logos.
Viewed
from the angle, esotericism is the science of redemption, and of this all
World saviors are the everlasting symbol and exponents.
It was to redeem substance and its forms that the planetary Logos came
into manifestation, and the entire Hierarchy with its great leader, the Christ
(the present world symbol), might be regarded as a hierarchy of redeemers,
skilled in the science of redemption. Once
they have mastered this science, they can then pass on to the Science of Life
and deal with the energies which will eventually hold and use the qualified,
redeemed and then principled substance and forms.
It is the redemption of unprincipled substance, its creative restoration
and spiritual integration which is their goal; the fruits of their labor will be
seen in the third and final solar system.
So
the esotericist has thoughts of redemption and the necessity of some type of a
savior or Christ to unfold the destiny of man as he attempts to deliver himself
from the Law of Karma.
Those
who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which from birth
to death, every man is weaving thread by thread around himself, as a spider does
his cobweb; and this destiny is guided by the heavenly voice of the invisible prototype
outside of us, or by our more intimate astral, or inner man, who is but
too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man.
There
is hope, among occultists of all ages, that this saving Christ is coming and
that he will deliver mankind from bondage and usher in the long awaited
“Golden Age of Mankind” or the “Age of Aquarius.”
He
will appear as Maitreya Buddha, the last of the Avatara and Buddhas, in the
seventh Race. This belief and
expectation are universal throughout the East.
Only it is not in the Kali yug, our present terrifically
materialistic age of Darkness, the “Black Age,” that the new Savior of
Humanity can ever appear.
In 1888 H. P. Blavatsky
reminded the initiates of the Ageless Wisdom that the Maitreya Buddha (the
Avatar/Christ) had promised to come to earth and rule the Age of Aquarius.
Christology: Jesus and the
Christ
Many
New Age doctrines initially were recorded by Helena Petrova Blavatsky, the
founder of the Theosophical Society (1875).
Blavatsky, who preferred to be called H. P. B. and is often referred to
by these initials in occult literature, displays an acquaintance with Gnostic
thought and defines Christ in this way:
Chrestos
(Gk.) The early Gnostic term
for Christ. This technical term was
used in fifth century B. C. by Aeschylus, Herodotus and others. The manteumata pythocresta,
or the “oracles delivered by a Pythian god” through a pythoness, are
mentioned by the former (Cheoph., 901), and pythocrestos is derived from chrao.
Chresterion is not only the “test of an oracle,” but an
offering to, or for, the oracle. Chrestes
is one who explains oracles, a “prophet and a soothsayer,” and Chresterios,
one who serves an oracle or a god. The
earliest Christian writer, Justin Martyr, in his first apology, calls his
co-religionists Chrestians. “It
is only through ignorance that men call themselves Christians, instead of
Chrestians,” says Lactantius (Lib. IV, cap. VII).
The terms Christ and Christians, spelt originally Chrest and Chrestians,
were borrowed from the temple vocabulary of the pagans.
Chrestos meant, in that vocabulary, “a disciple on probation,” a
candidate for hierophantship; who when he had attained it, through initiation,
long trials and suffering, and had been anointed (i.e., “rubbed with oil,”
as initiates and even idols of the gods were, as the last touch of ritualistic
observance), was changed into Christos—the “purified” in esoteric
or mystery language.
That the Christ of H. P. B.
and Theosophy and the Christ of the Bible are assuredly not one and the same can
be seen as H. P. B. continues:
In
mystic symbology, indeed, Christes or Christos meant that the “way,” the
“path,” was already trodden and the goal reached; when the fruits of this
arduous labour—uniting the personality of evanescent clay with the
indestructible individuality—transformed it thereby into the immortal
Ego. “At the end of the way
stands the Christes,” the Purifier; and the union once accomplished,
the Chrestos, the “man of sorrow” became Christos himself.
Paul, the initiate, knew this, and meant this precisely, when he is made
to say in bad translation, “I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in
you” (Gal., IV. 19), the true rendering of which is, “until you form the
Christos within yourselves.” But
the profane, who new only that Christos was in some way connected with priest
and prophet, and knew nothing about the hidden meaning of Christos, insisted, as
did Lactantius and Justin Martyr, on being called Chrestians instead of
Christians. Every good individual,
therefore, may find Christ in his “inner man,” as Paul expresses it (Ephes.,
III. 16, 17) whether he be Jew, Mussulman, Hindu or Christian.
The
Christ of H. P. B. is believed to be formed in man when the personality
(the mortal ego) unites with the individuality (the higher, the divine or
impersonal ego) resulting in the “Ego”—the consciousness in man of the
“I am I,” or the felling of “I-am-ship.”
When this mystical transformation occurs not only in individual men, but
in a significant segment of humanity (critical mass) around the globe, the
Maitreya Christ will come.
It is noteworthy that H. P.
B. appears to identify the history and symbolism of this Maitreya Christ with a
wide variety of religious thought back through the centuries—even to the
father of Nimrod and to the serpent.
He
is called the “Dragon of Wisdom”. . .as all the Logoi of all the ancient
religious systems are connected with, and symbolized by, serpents.
In old Egypt, the god Nahbkoon, “he who unites the doubles”. . .was
represented as a serpent on human legs, either with or without arms. It was the emblem of the resurrection of nature, as also of
Christ with the Ophites, and of
Jehovah as the brazen serpent healing those who looked at him, the serpent being
an emblem of Christ with the Templars also (see the Templar degree in Masonry).
The symbol of Knouph (Khoum also), or the soul of the world, says
Champollion (Panthem, text 3), “is represented among other forms under that of
a huge serpent on human legs; this reptile, being the emblem of the good genius
and the veritable Agathdaemon, is sometimes bearded.” The sacred animal is thus identified with the serpent of the
Ophites, and is figured on a great number of engraved stones, called Gnostic or
Basilidean gems. This serpent
appears with various heads (human and animal), but its gems are always found
inscribed with the name Chnoubis. This
symbol is identical with one which, according to Jamblichus and Champollion, was
called “the first of the celestial gods”; the god of Hermes, or Mercury with
the Greeks, to which god Hermes Trismegistos attributes the invention of, and
the first initiation of men into magic; and Mercury is Budh, Wisdom,
Enlightenment, or “Re-awakening” into the divine Science.
This Christ-figure which H.
P. B. claims is traceable to Hermes (the deified son of Ham, i.e., Cush, the
father of Nimrod) can be nothing less than the “re-awakening” of the spirit
of Antichrist and of evil among the post-flood heirs of Noah and is none other
than the Maitreya Christ of the New Age who was introduced to the world, in
concept, on April 25, 1982.
Major newspapers around the
world displayed full page advertisements on that day in 1982 which read:
THE
WORLD HAS HAD ENOUGH. . .OF HUNGER, INJUSTICE, WAR.
IN ANSWER TO OUR CALL FOR HELP, AS WORLD TEACHER FOR ALL HUMANITY
THE CHRIST IS NOW HERE.
HOW
WILL WE RECOGNIZE HIM?
Look for a modern man concerned with modern problems—political, economic, and
social. Since July, 1977, the
Christ has been emerging as a spokesman for a group or community in a well-known
modern country. He is not a
religious leader but an educator in the broadest sense of the word—pointing
the way out of our present crisis. We
will recognize Him by His extraordinary spiritual potency, the universality of
His point, and His love for all humanity. He
comes not to judge, but to aid and inspire.
WHO
IS THE CHRIST?
Throughout history, humanity’s
evolution has been guided by a group of enlightened men, the Masters of Wisdom.
They have remained largely in the remote desert and mountain places of
earth, working mainly through their disciples who live openly in the world.
This message of the Christ’s reappearance has been given primarily by
such a disciple trained for his task for over 20 years.
At the center of this “Spiritual Hierarchy” stands the World Teacher,
Lord Maitreya, known by Christians as the Christ.
And as Christians await the Second Coming, so Jews await the Messiah, the
Buddhists the fifth Buddha, the Moslems the Imam Mahdi, and the Hindus await
Krishna. These are all names for
one individual. His presence in the
world guarantees there will be no Third World War.
WHAT IS HE
SAYING?
“My task will be to show you how
to live together peacefully as brothers. This
is simpler than you imagine, My friends, for it requires only the acceptance of
sharing.
“How can you be content with the
modes within which you now live: when
millions starve and die in squalor; when the rich parade their wealth before the
pool; when each man is his neighbor’s enemy; when no man trusts his brother?
“Allow me to show you the way
forward into a simpler life where no man lacks; where no two days are alike;
where the Joy of Brotherhood manifests through all men.
“Take your brother’s need as the
measure for your action and solve the problems of the world.
WHEN WILL WE
SEE HIM?
He has not as yet declared his true
status, and his location is known only to a very few disciples.
One of these has announced that soon the Christ will acknowledge His
identity and within the next two months will speak to humanity through a
worldwide television and radio broadcast. His
message will be heard inwardly, telepathically, by all people in their own
language. From that time, with His help, we will build a new world.
WITHOUT
SHARING THERE CAN BE NO JUSTICE;
WITHOUT JUSTICE THERE CAN BE NO PEACE;
WITHOUT PEACE THERE CAN BE NO FUTURE.
- - - - - - - -
That this Christ is
the same Christ of the biblical Second Coming is totally false.
Benjamin Creme’s Tata Center ads state that “He comes not to judge but to
aid and inspire.” This is a
direct attack against the truth and reliability of God’s Word, the Bible.
Regarding the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ the Bible states in
Matthew 25: 31-34, 41, 46:
But when the Son of
Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His
glorious throne.
And all the nations
will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the
shepherd separates the sheep from the goats;
And He will put the
sheep in His right, and the goats on the left.
Then the King will
say to those on His right, “Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit
the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. . . .”
Then He will also
say to those on His left, “Depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal
fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels. . .
And these will go
away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
The Scripture makes
it clear—when Jesus the true Christ comes it is not to “aid and inspire”
but to judge.
That this Christ of
Blavatsky and Creme is the same as that of Alice A. Bailey seems obvious:
The coming of the
Avatar, the advent of a Coming One and, in terms of today, the reappearance of
the Christ are the keynotes of the prevalent expectancy. When the times are ripe, the invocation of the masses is strident enough
and the faith of those who know is keen enough, then always He has come
and today will be no exception to this ancient rule or to this universal law.
For decades, the reappearance of the Christ, the Avatar, has been
anticipated by the faithful in both hemispheres—not only by the Christian
faithful, but by those who look for Maitreya and for the Boddhisattva as well as
those who expect the Imam Mahdi.[33]
As Bailey states
above, the coming of Maitreya Christ is dependent upon the times being
“ripe,” the faith of those who know and the invocation of the masses.
The ripeness of the times is documented by New Age apologists to be the
end of the Piscean Age (identical with the Christian Dispensation)
and the beginning of the Age of Aquarius. The
“faith of those who know” is the absolute and unwavering commitment of the
“wise ones” of the occultic core who are the custodians of the ageless
esoteric secrets. The invocation of
the masses is the linking of the people around the world in the joint recitation
of the secret mantras (names of pagan gods and demons) and the Great Invocation,
of which more will be said later.
The
Maitreya Christ of Blavatsky, Bailey and Creme is quite similar to the Christ of
the Gnostics. Jesus was but a man
on whom the Christ descended at His baptism, and:
The Spirit of
Peace descended upon Christ. The
New Testament bears witness to a somewhat similar event when, at the
Baptism, we read, “he saw the Spirit of God, descending like a dove and
alighting upon Him.” (St. Matt.
III.16) This Spirit is a Being of
tremendous cosmic potency and is today overshadowing the Christ in much the same
manner as Christ (two thousand years ago) overshadowed or worked through the
Master Jesus.[
The initiates of
the occultic core maintain that the Christ Spirit (or power or consciousness)
was responsible for the resurrection of the disciple Jesus.
Creme describes the resurrection in this manner:
The
Christ resurrected the body of the Disciple Jesus. When the body was laid in the tomb, the Christ, Maitreya, entered on the
third morning. His consciousness
once again entered into the body of the Disciple Jesus and brought it back to
life—as He had done before with Lazarus—only that wasn’t resurrection.
Lazarus was simply brought back to life. This happens—I don’t say frequently—but it has happened quite often
since, and before. But Resurrection
is a very special thing technically. It
is a great occult happening.[36]
The resurrected
“Disciple Jesus” is now a Master of Wisdom (Master of the Universe, Ascended
Master) on one of the lowest levels of authority of the Spiritual Hierarchy as
documented by Alice Bailey (see the organization chart of the forces of the
Solar Logos).
Regarding
the true Logos, the Bible states:
In the beginning
was the Word (Logos), and Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the
beginning with God.
All things came
into being by Him; and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into
being.
In Him was life;
and the life was the light of men.
And the light
shines in the darkness; and the darkness did not comprehend it. . . .
And the Word became
flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten
from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:1-5,14).
John is stating
that Jesus is the Logos and the Logos was in the beginning, was with God and was
God. This eternal God-the-Son left
His heavenly estate (Phil. 2:5-11). This
same Jesus Christ said, “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30), and,
“And now, glorify Thou Me together with Thyself, Father, with the glory which
I had with Thee before the world was” (John 17:15).
Jesus and the Father are one and existed together before the world was
created.
Since
Nimrod, the human custodians of Satan’s Plan have deified themselves and
taught that man is God. Yet they
refuse to believe that one particular man was uniquely God.
Psychic and esotericist Edgar Cayce said, “Christ is not a man.
Jesus was the Man.”
Of all men of all time only Jesus is stripped of His divinity by the
disciples of the occult.
Benjamin
Creme verbalizes the attitude of the esoteric initiates toward Christ:
But Christ is not
God. He is not coming as God. He is an embodiment of an aspect of God, the Love aspect of God.
He is the embodied soul of all creation. He embodies the energy which is the consciousness aspect of that Being we
call God. . . . He would rather you
didn’t pray to Him, but to God within you, which is also within Him. . .
He said it Himself. “The Kingdom of God is within you.”[39]
The Logos of the
gospel of John is not the Logos of the New Age herald, Benjamin Creme.
Creme describes his “Logos”:
That aspect of God
to which we immediately aspire, can aspire to, is the Logos of our own planet,
who is embodied for us as Sanat Kumara on Shamballa. He is our “Father.”
God is both within us and can be known—you can see God. In this coming age many, many people will see God, as Sanat Kumara.
They will come before Sanat Kumara and take the third Initiation. (Even more will come before the Christ and take the first and second
initiations.) When you take the
third Initiation you see God, as Sanat Kumara, the Lord of the World, who is a
real physical Being in etheric matter on Shamballa.[40]
The
Third Initiation is more fully described by initiate David Spangler:
Lucifer prepares
man in all ways for the experience of Christhood and the Christ prepares man for
the experience of God. Jesus said,
“As the Christ, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man goes to the Father but through Me.”
This is true. The avenue out of microcosmic limitation into macrocosmic
wholeness, universal consciousness and attunement is through the Christ. But the light that reveals to us the presence of the Christ, the light
that reveals to us the path of Christ comes from Lucifer. He is the light giver.
He is
aptly named the Morning Star because it is his light that heralds for man the
dawn of a greater consciousness. . . . He
stands no longer as the tester or the tempter but as the great initiator, the
one who hands the soul over to the Christ and from the Christ on into even
greater realms.
The true light of
Lucifer cannot be seen through sorrow, through darkness, through rejection.
The true light of this great being can only be recognized when one’s
own eyes see with the light of the Christ, the light of the inner sun. Lucifer works within each of us to bring us to wholeness, and as we move
into a new age, which is the age of man’s wholeness, each of us in some way is
brought to the point which I term the Luciferic initiation, the particular
doorway through which the individual must pass if he is to come fully into the
presence of his light and his wholeness. . . .
At some point each
of us faces the presence of Lucifer. . . .
Lucifer comes to
give us the final gift of wholeness. If
we accept it then he is free and we are free. That is the Luciferic initiation.
It
is one that many people now, and in the days ahead, will be facing, for it is an
initiation into the New Age.[41]
The term Sanat
Kumara mentioned previously by Creme is an anagramatical method of referring to
the God of this world, Satan (or Lucifer)—the true god of the occultic core of
the New Age movement. He is called
the “Lord of this World Himself, Sanat Kumara on Shamballa.
He is also referred to as the “Planetary Logos” in Alice Bailey’s
material.
The first or will
energy is, as you know, focused in Sanat Kumara, the Ancient of Days (as He is
called in the Christian Bible), the Lord of Shamballa, who is the Embodiment of
the Personality of the planetary Logos.[43]
And:
“Sanat
Kumara, the Eternal Youth, can be seen by Those Who have the right, presiding,
for instance, over the Council in Shamballa, yet at the same time He is present
as the life and the informing intelligence upon and within our planet.”[44]
Bailey
appears to ascribe omnipresence and omniscience to Sanat Kumara.
Creme states:
Eighteen and a half
million years ago, in middle Temurian times, early animal-man had reached a
relatively high state of development: he
had developed a strong physical body; a coordinated astral or emotional feeling
body; and the germ of mind,
incipient mind, which could form the nucleus of a mental body. At that point the Logos of our planet took physical manifestation as
Sanat Kumara, the Lord of the World, on Shamballa. The center we call Shamballa was formed.
With Sanat Kumara,
from Venus, came the Lords of the Flame, who brought that energy we call Mind.
This energy stimulated the . . .Individualization of Man.[45]
The occult Logos in
some manner emanated “Mind.” The
concept of “mind” is noticeable in a variety of other sources.
Among these is “Paracelsus” by Robert Browning which reads:
“God! Thou art mind! Unto the master-mind, Mind should be precious.”
The Unity Church of
Dallas offers seminars entitled “The Master Mind Principle.”
At these seminars participants are asked to take “Seven steps into the
Master Mind Consciousness.” These
steps of commitment include, in part:
Surrendering
1.
I admit that I am personally powerless to improve my life.
I need God’s help.
Believing
2.
I now come to believe that there is a creative intelligence and power
responding to me, and to which all things are possible. . . . (It is not I
(personality), but the Spirit within me (individuality) who
does His works.).
Deciding
3.
I make a decision to place myself completely under the influence and
direction of the Master Mind. I ask
the Master Mind to take complete charge of my life and to change me at depth. .
. . brackets in the original
The true Lord and
Savior of mankind becomes increasingly difficult to find as Satan, the father of
lies, distorts God’s Word, the Bible, to the point that the Logos is a serpent
(H. P. Blavatsky) or a “consciousness” (A. Bailey) or a nebulous “Master
Mind.” Only on one point does the
occult literature agree with Orthodox Christianity—the Christ (however He is
named or described) is coming again. This
coming of the Christ will be hastened as humanity displays unity in expressing
the “Great Invocation” for the Christ’s return.
New Age
Prayer: Meditation and Invocation
In the New Age, the
Age of Aquarius, meditation and invocation will be the techniques of reaching
God. The Old Age (Piscean Age)
practice of prayer will gradually be abolished. The occultic core strongly teaches that the Christian Age or
Piscean Age is finished. Alice
Bailey states:
. . .the ending of
the Piscean Age, which has brought to the point of crystallization (and
therefore death) all those forms through which the Piscean ideals have been
moulded. They have served their
purpose. . .the coming into manifestation of the Aquarian Age. This fact should provide the grounds for a profound and convinced
optimism; nothing can stop the effect—growing, stabilizing and final—of the
new incoming influences. These will inevitably condition the future, determine the
type of culture and civilization, indicate the form of government and produce
and effect upon humanity, as has the Piscean or Christian Age. . . .[48]
So the Piscean Age
has served its purpose, it was the age of the Christian and was characterized by
distortions and mistakes. It did
not deliver the Golden Age of Mankind as it had allegedly promised; hence, the
New Age must come and the remnants of the Old Age must be forsaken.
Creme explains the Apostle Paul’s role in the Piscean Age part of the
Plan:
Christianity was
really built by St. Paul. The
Christ, working through Jesus, inaugurated the Piscean Age and with it the
Christian religion, but the structure of Christianity, of the Church, was built
by St. Paul—and St. Paul made a number of mistakes. He distorted Christianity considerably.
He is now one of the Masters of Wisdom, the Master Hilarion (and He is
one of Those who will soon be in the world), but He made these mistakes, and He
wasn’t prevented from making these mistakes.
No disciple is ever
prevented from making mistakes. He
makes the mistakes, humanity suffers through the mistakes, so the Plan suffers
through the mistakes, but the Plan eventually works out. The Plan is ideal.[49]
Marilyn Ferguson
picks up on this theme that the Piscean must be done away to bring in the
Aquarian.
. . .after a dark,
violent age, the Piscean, we are entering a millennium of love and light—in
the words of the popular song, “The Age of Aquarius,” the time of “the
mind’s true liberation.”
Whether or not it
was written in the stars, a different age seems to be upon us; and Aquarius, the
water-bearer in the ancient zodiac, symbolizing flow and the quenching of an
ancient thirst, is an appropriate symbol. . . .
Long after an old
paradigm has lost its value, it commands a kind of hypocritical allegiance.
But it we have the courage to communicate our doubts and defection, to
expose the incompleteness, the rickety structure, and the failures of the old
paradigm, we can dismantle it.[50]
David Spangler
carries this desire to do away with the Piscean Christian one step further in
what might be his god Lucifer’s explanation for the rapture of the Church:
With the
transference of life energy from the thought-form of the old world to the
thought-form of the new one, the old world now exists only as a disintegrating
world memory. Those who stand on it
for support find that it is becoming like shifting sand, unstable, confusing,
filled with stress. Yet they cannot
reach up and out in consciousness to attain and stand on the rock of the new
world. It would not be without
precedence for them to be withdrawn into the inner worlds, to live in an
“upstairs” room which would reflect the needs of their consciousnesses and
minister to those needs. In other
words, the planet or plane or level to which they will go, through the law of
attraction, may not be “somewhere else.” It may be another level of Earth’s own consciousness where they can be
contained and ministered to until such time as they can be released safely into
physical embodiment again. There is
a suggestion of this in the Bible where it speaks of Satan and his minions. .
.being bound for a thousand years and then released again. Thus these ones could be withdrawn into an inner realm that would be
their home while the consciousnesses attuned to the New Age were active in
building the new world physically and psychically.[51]
The people of the
Old Piscean Age must give way or be “withdrawn” (raptured?) to make the full
blooming of the New Age possible. This
transformation from Old to new requires the linking of humanity in meditation on
and recitation of the “Great Invocation.”
This “Great Invocation” is a prayer of three stanzas dictated to
Alice Bailey by the Master Djwhal Khul. The
three stanzas are as follows:
First Stanza
(1935):
Let the Forces of Light bring illumination to mankind.
Let the Spirit of Peace be spread abroad.
May men of goodwill everywhere meet in a spirit of cooperation.
May forgiveness on the part of all men be the keynote at this time.
Let power attend the efforts of the Great Ones.
So let it be, and help us to do our part.
Second Stanza
(1940):
Let the Lords of Liberation issue forth.
Let them bring succows to the sons of men.
Let the Rider from the Secret Place come forth,
And coming, save.
Come forth, O Mighty One.
Let the souls of men awaken to the
Light,
And may they stand with massed intent.
Let the first of the Lords go forth:
The end of woe has come!
Come forth, O Mighty One.
The hour of service of the Saving Force has now arrived.
Let it be spread abroad, O Mighty One.
Let Light and Love and Power and
Death
Fulfill the purpose of the Coming One.
The WILL to save is here.
The LOVE to carry forth the work is widely spread abroad.
The ACTIVE AID of all who know the truth is also here.
Come forth, O Mighty One; and blend these three.
Construct a great defending wall:
The rule of evil now must end.
Third Stanza
(April 1945):
From the point of Light within the Mind of God
Let Light stream forth into the minds of men.
Let Light descend on Earth.
From the point of Love within the Heart of God
Let Love stream forth into the hearts of men.
May Christ return to Earth.
From the center where the Will of
God is known
Let purpose guide the little wills of men—
The purpose which the Masters know and serve.
From the center which we call the
race of men
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out,
And may it seal the door where evil dwells.
Let Light and Love and Power
restore the Plan on Earth.
The third stanza of
the “Great Invocation” was dictated by D. K. to Alice Bailey in 1945 and
published in her book, Problems of Humanity. One way this prayer appears in contemporary form is with
white lettering on a deep blue background and with a Lotus blossom caption.
The Lotus blossom is formed around a point within a circle which, as a
symbol, dates back to early Egypt and Babylon.
The center of the circle is a point of light which represents Lucifer,
the light bearer. The New Age
evangelists teach that the more frequently the “Great Invocation” is recited
the sooner the Christ will come. Hence
people of the New Age movement are linking together around the world and
reciting this diabolical prayer. The
ability of Satan to deceive event the elect, as he did Ananias and Sapphira
(Acts 5:1-11), is shown as Christians in evangelical circles confess that they
have been reciting this Satanic prayer.
This thesis has
referred to several terms that are contained in the “Great Invocation.”
The terms are defined below as suggested by the writings of Alice Bailey/Djwhal
Khul:
1.
“Mind of God”—the mind of Sanat Kumara (or Lucifer)
2.
“May Christ return to Earth”—Maitreya Christ (not Jesus
Christ)
3.
“. . .center where the Will of God is known”—Shamballa (not
Heaven)
4.
“Masters”—the Masters of Wisdom, the Ascended Masters, the Masters
of the Universe, the Spirit Guides. (These
are the demons.)
5.
“the Plan”—Lucifer’s Plan to rule the world and gain the worship
of man.
6.
“. . .seal the door where evil dwells”—shut down all systems true
to the Bible in any way, especially Evangelical Christianity, but also
Fundamentalist Moslems and Orthodox Jews.
This demon-dictated
prayer is rapidly gaining global popularity and has been translated into many
languages. It appeared as a
full-page advertisement in the October 1982
“Readers Digest”
(sponsored by Lucis Trust) and in the May 26, 1983 “Dallas Morning News”
(sponsored by the School of Wisdom). This
prayer occurs frequently on the three major network television channels in
Dallas, Texas, usually during the late, late movies.
It also is distributed to the congregation of Unity Church in Dallas for
Sunday morning “worship” and meditation, and thus finds its way to the
bulletin boards of schools, senior citizens homes, and civic organizations.
Regarding this
prayer Alice Bailey writes: “Each
of you can aid more than you can guess through the regulation of thought and
ideas, through the cultivation of a loving spirit and through the general use of
the Great Invocation whereby these forces and energies—so sorely needed—can
be invoked.
The move from the
Piscean Age into the Aquarian Age will be implemented as humanity links up in
meditation and invocation. Meditation
and invocation are to replace prayer, as can be seen in Creme’s writing:
Prayer and worship
as we know it will gradually die out and men will be trained to invoke the power
of Deity. This is one reason why
the Great Invocation was given out—to enable us to learn the technique of
invocation. . . .
The aim of
evolution is to become at-one with one’s source; at-one with Divinity, the
Logos, or God, one’s Spirit, of which the soul on its plane is the reflection.
The immediate aim of evolution is identification or at-one-ment
with the soul; and this is what meditation is for, to bring about this at-one-ment.
This leads to Initiation.[57]
Ultimately, as a
critical mass of humanity
meditates on the “Great Invocation,” the Maitreya Christ will respond and
reappear on earth to usher in the Golden Age of mankind—an age characterized
by a one world government, a one world religion and a one world Christ—the
threefold goal of those who know within the inner spheres of the
“Plan.” In the meantime, the
New Age doctrines of God, Man, Reincarnation and Karma, the Christ, and
Meditation and Invocation are being gradually popularized by the Media.
Trends are building which are considered by the occultic core of the New
Age to be signs that the appearance of Maitreya Christ and the Age of Aquarius
are at hand.
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Chapter 3
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