New Age | Bob Schwartz

Sometime in the 1970s, a spiritual/cultural/social movement emerged. It wasn’t really new, since currents like it had flowed many times before in many places among many people. Immediately before that, the counterculture of the 1960s had included many idealistic and transformational elements that were out of the mainstream, and that the establishment branded silly or dangerous or both.

One of the first books to identify the movement was Marilyn Ferguson’s Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s (1980). She writes:

In January, 1976, I published an editorial, “The Movement That Has No Name.” It said, in part:

“Something remarkable is underway. It is moving with almost dizzying speed, but it has no name and eludes description.”…

The spirit of our age is fraught with paradox. It is at the same time pragmatic and transcendental. It values both enlightenment and mystery… power and humility… interdependence and individuality. It is simultaneously political and apolitical. Its movers and shakers include individuals who are impeccably Establishment allied with one-time sign-carrying radicals.

Within recent history “it” has infected medicine, education, social science, hard science, even government with its implications. It is characterized by fluid organizations reluctant to create hierarchical structures, averse to dogma. It operates on the principle that change can only be facilitated, not decreed. It is short on manifestos. It seems to speak to something very old. And perhaps, by integrating magic and science, art and technology, it will succeed where all the king’s horses and all the king’s men failed….

I thought again about the peculiar form of this movement: its atypical leadership, the patient intensity of its adherents, their unlikely successes. It suddenly struck me that in their sharing of strategies, their linkage, and their recognition of each other by subtle signals, the participants were not merely cooperating with one another. They were in collusion. “It”—this movement—was a conspiracy!…

Conspire, in its literal sense, means “to breathe together.” It is an intimate joining. To make clear the benevolent nature of this joining, I chose the word Aquarian. Although I am unacquainted with astrological lore, I was drawn to the symbolic power of the pervasive dream in our popular culture: that 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 waterbearer in the ancient zodiac, symbolizing flow and the quenching of an ancient thirst, is an appropriate symbol….

As its networks grew, the conspiracy became truer with every passing week. Groups seemed to be organizing spontaneously all over the country and abroad. In their announcements and internal communications, they expressed the same conviction: “We are in the midst of a great transformation….”

Ferguson had written about “The Movement That Has No Name.” It did quickly get a name: New Age.

The New Age Catalogue: Access to Information and Sources (1988) is an introduction to the range of the movement. Its editor writes:

Why Publish a New Age Catalogue?

“A leaderless, but powerful network is working to bring out radical change in the United States.”
— Marilyn Ferguson
From The Aquarian Conspiracy

America is currently being flooded with New Age ideas, concepts, awareness, spirituality and organizations. You’ve awakened to trance mediums on “Good Morning America.” Shirley MacLaine gave us a close look at her metaphysical adventures in her best selling books and TV movie, Out on a Limb. Subliminal and hypnosis tape programs are being sold in shopping mall bookstores. Business executives admit that their intuition was an important vehicle on their road to success and physicians are finally acknowledging that the true healer lies within each of us.

You are participating in a revolution of consciousness. The goal is an understanding of who you are, learning why you’re here and exercising your unlimited potential in this lifetime. The problem is the often confusing glut of information sources, tools, experts and organizations ready to help you travel down your unique pathway to awareness.

We’re here to help you make informed choices.

That’s why Body, Mind & Spirit magazine was created. Since 1982, we’ve helped our readers sort out and understand New Age ideas and resources. Today over one half million readers look to us to help them explore the latest New Age trends and ideas. The New Age Catalogue is a natural extension of our work. This book lays out the broad spectrum of things New Age from channeling to Zen. It gives you the basic concepts behind each topic and the finest quality resources including books, tape programs, organizations, magazines and manufacturers….

Basic metaphysics says that the Earth plane is a wonderfully instructive school. What we perceive in this reality is just illusion created by each one of us for the grand and important purpose of learning.

Spirit entities, the Bible, Nostradamus, Ruth Montgomery’s spirit Guides and virtually any other New Age-conscious person you talk to says this Earth plane is currently undergoing profound changes. These ideas range from a destructive shifting of the Earth’s poles that will take place in the year 2000 to simply an upward shift in this plane’s vibrational rate (assuming, of course, that we are basically composed of energy).

According to Jose Arguelles, the Harmonic Convergence that took place in August 1987 marked the final 25-year-cycle of this planet as indicated by the ancient Mayan calendar. What follows is what has been called throughout history as “The Golden Age,” “The Millenium” or “The Promised Land.”

Assuming that we do create this plane of reality, then it follows that we are also creating these changes. We need to be aware of our role in creation, since the seeds of change are our individual efforts. Consciousness is being raised. Awareness is being heightened. When you picked this book up, you acknowledged the curiosity — the fire within you — that yearns to know the very nature of your being.

Body, Mind & Spirit and now The New Age Catalogue exist to help fuel that fire within and help you discover the answers and pathways that are right for you. As you travel through these pages, trust your intuitiveness and allow it to be your guide.

We selected what we felt were the best quality sources of insight in the major New Age topic areas, intended to serve as a take off point for your own explorations.

The final choices are up to you, as they should be.

Paul Zuromski
Editor & Publisher
Body, Mind & Spirit Magazine

As with so many movements, big and small, ancient and modern, there are those who hear about them and think them nonsense—harmless or dangerous—and there are those who get it.

In some ways, elements of the New Age movement, and the countercultural movements that preceded it, have not entirely disappeared. About 16% of Americans—34 to 38 million—practice yoga. If you retrojected that news to the 1950s or 1960s, the puzzlement and laughter would not end.

On the whole, though, much of the openness, seeking and adventure of the New Age have diminished and been left behind. In Star Wars terms, the Empire has struck back. We need the Force to be with us. That Force can be a renewed New Age. The conspiracy can live. The choices are up to us.

March 1, 2016

The Revival of Enlightened and Transformative Politics

Talking about the revival of enlightened and transformative politics is bound to be imprecise.

That concept has never actually been dead. Looking at Christianity, a recent post about Jim Wallis and Sojourners highlights just one instance. A bigger and much more famous current example is Pope Francis. And it is nothing new. The Social Gospel movement, which is still represented (though not always appreciated), aimed to see the realization of the highest Christian principles in everyday practical society.

Keeping with the Christian theme, this is not about what Jesus would say about abortion or gay marriage or prayer in schools or any of these specific arguments—though all have a certain significance. It is about politics as a tool of overall transformation, beyond sectarian concerns.

This is not limited to Christianity. Every one of the traditions has a core of enlightenment and large scale transformation. But each of those traditions has found a way to occasionally devolve that mission into movements and policies and tactics that diverge and even contradict the higher principles and aspirations. It isn’t necessary to point out the wrong turns that, for example, Judaism and Islam have taken along the way to supposedly establish heaven on earth.

In the era of what was affectionately, or for some derisively, known as the New Age movement, this concept of politics as a transformative tool was central. There was the idea that if we kept our eyes on the prize—not just a country but a world elevated above our baser selves—we could together create something better. Politics was one of the tools that would serve that end, instead of enabling smaller personal ambitions and selfish, possibly pernicious, goals.

So here we are. Enlightened and transformative politics is not dead. But it may be missing in action. Each political choice we make—each donation, each tweet, each vote and, yes, each post—might help us find it. Or kill it. It’s up to us.

August 14, 2013

Bandon by the Sea and Living Forever

Continuum Center
This is about a beach town and the possibility of living forever.

Bandon is a small beach town (about 3,000 people) on the southern coast of Oregon. It is special because of its beauty and spirit, including extraordinary rock outcroppings and stacks of bleached drift logs that hover in the sun and occasional fog. It is also special because few know about it. It is far enough from anywhere—248 miles south of Portland, 465 north of San Francisco—that there are other tourist stops better known and, to some, more exciting.

Bandon 4

The New Age is an ignored topic that deserves more than this brief discussion. In the 1970s, the movement toward a new consciousness coalesced around the concept of a New Age, a new era of human enlightenment and evolution that would move us forward, leaving some of the darkest aspects of our sometimes-sorry history behind. This included not only spirituality and religion, but psychology, art, music, mythology, earth, food, sex—anything that could help transform us and the way we live. By name, “New Age” has fallen into disuse; but as a matter of fact, many of the ideas and expressions are now part of our cultural fabric.

In 1979, philanthropist Hugh Harrison visited the Continuum Exhibit at JFK University in California. The exhibit showcased the Immortality Principle, the possibility of consciousness continuing after death. He was impressed and put the exhibit on tour, and also established a home for it in Bandon, in a building on Main Street called the Continuum Center. It was a splendid multimedia exhibit, state of the art for its time.

Continuum Book
One of faces of the New Age movement that is powerful though sometimes mocked is its music. New Age music was once a common category, though it has fallen into disuse. No good cultural development goes untortured. New Age music at its start and at its best is an attempt to coax, drag, push, pull and otherwise move your consciousness by the ear. In less talented hands it has been oversimplified and underpowered, but no different than with any other musical genre.

When I walked into the Continuum Center in Bandon years ago, I saw the oversized graphics and read about a vision of consciousness. But the very first thing I noticed was the music playing. It was, it turned out, the sublime Angel’s Flight by Shadowfax, and it was the first New Age music I had ever heard. The pictures and text of that visit are a little indistinct in memory, but that song isn’t, maybe because I’ve listened to it a few hundred times since.

A recent visit to Bandon, for the first time in a long time, revealed that not much had changed, a good thing. Maybe it was not a surprise that the Continuum Center as an exhibit is gone. But the building is still there, transformed into a small shopping plaza, but as you’ll see above, the name remains. Spirit abides.

So if any of this is interesting, here’s what to do. Listen to Angel’ Flight and other transportive music by Shadowfax and other worthy New Age artists. Learn a little more about the possibilities of consciousness and change, if you aren’t already doing so. Does consciousness survive death? Who knows, but what a beautiful question.

Last but not least, if your travels take you to the Pacific coast, visit Bandon. Unlike the Continuum Center exhibit, which lasted a few years, the beach and rocks and waves go on and on and on, waiting for you. They will wait forever.

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