The Psyche & New Age Religion

Spirituality Past and Future

One day in the future, all men and women will be spiritual. Science, religion, politics and art will be understood only as different aspects of the same Mystery: the Mystery of Being, which is the Mystery of God.

In past ages, Spirituality was strictly associated with the various religious traditions—Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Japanese, and so forth—and the Spiritual Teachers came from specific religious and cultural backgrounds. In the coming New Age, however, Spirituality will be based upon the Knowledge of the inner constitution of Humanity, God and the Universe, and the direct perception of these through meditation and inner experience.

In the New Age, the mind will be used to organize Spirituality more clearly than ever before. Faith will give way to true Knowledge, and the Teachers will be universal, trans-religious, beyond the confines of orthodoxies and established customs and traditions. Thus, Religion will be purified by the knowledge of its present limitations, and the superstition and ignorance found in religions during the past few thousand years will be removed.

In the past, in all religions, there has been much prayer (talking to God or at God), and much thinking and speculation about God. In the coming New Age Spirituality, the emphasis will be upon the experiencing of the Soul, the experiencing of God. The focus will be Interior Union, to sense and feel interiorly the Eternal, the Everlasting, to be touched from within by the Godhead in silent, wordless prayer and unitive meditation, and a genuine Spiritual Vision of the great Mystery that is in us and around us.

To reach this state we must quieten the mind and stop the mental talking. This will be strange and new to many, but this has always been the Way and it will be so in the future.

Prayer produces its own results on the physical, subtle and mental dimensions, results which may even appear to be miraculous. But Union with the Soul, with God, with the Great Invisible Cosmos, is infinitely higher.

Psychology and the New Age Religion

There is a new form of psychology emerging in the West called Transpersonal Psychology, which in fact will be the basis for the new religion of the New Age. The Latin word transpersonal means “beyond the personality, beyond the little self”; in other words, Transpersonal Psychology looks beyond the “personality stuff” which is dealt with in the behavioural, humanistic and psychoanalytic schools of psychology. In fact, Transpersonal Psychology deals with what used to be the domain of good, old-fashioned Religion!

Transpersonal Psychology

Transpersonal Psychology is based on the fact that there is more to Man than meets the eye, and more to the Universe than is perceivable by the five physical senses and their physical gadgets and instruments. The subjects of Transpersonal Psychology include Yoga philosophies and practices, Muslim Sūfī teachings, Jewish Kabbalah, Zen Buddhism, Occultism, Magic, Parapsychology, and so on. William James and Carl Jung were the outstanding early psychologists who dabbled in religious experience and who held the view that Man is more than just the body, that the mind is more than just nerves, tissues and nerve-impulses.

Anthony Sutich, as far back as 1969, had already defined the subjects of Transpersonal Psychology, which include:

• The science of becoming.
• Individual and species-wide spiritual needs.
• Ultimate values in life.
• Unitive and Cosmic Consciousness.
• Peak experiences.
• Ecstasy and the mystical states.
• Self-actualization.
• Religious awe, bliss and wonder.
• Self-transcendence (transcendence of the little self, the ego).
• Union with the Self, the Over-Soul.
• The sacredness of everyday life.
• Transcendental phenomena.
• The Spirit, God, the Ultimate.
• Individual and species-wide synergy.

You will see that this, in fact, is the province of Religion! We don’t mean “Churchianity”—the political intrigues and worldly, material power that characterizes the organized church. By Religion we mean just what is listed above. Religion is Man’s quest for the Sacred, the Ultimate, the Godhead, the Mystery of Life, Death and the Beyond.

Transpersonal Psychology includes the study of Buddhism, Christian Mysticism, Sikhism, Taoism, the ancient Mystery Religions, Gnosticism, Theosophy, and all the Mystical Traditions such as Freemasonry, the Rosicrucian Teachings, Alchemy, and the Western Tradition of true Magic. It also deals with the Supernatural in its various manifestations. It includes the study of the Tarot systems and all forms of Symbolism. It includes the higher aspects of Religion, but does not include Voodoo, Shamanism, Black Magic, or any practices enhancing the little ego, the personal self and selfishness.

Transpersonal Psychology is a strenuous body-mind discipline, practice and experience, whether in the form of Zen Buddhism, Christian Mysticism, Jewish Kabbalah or Hasidism, Muslim Sūfīsm, the Sikh Sant Mat Path, Chinese Taoism or Hindu Yoga. Transpersonal Psychology is a process that was discovered by all the higher religions, a process that enables one to realize one’s higher potential. It is the awakening to the experience of oneself as an Immortal Spirit and Soul. It is the discovering of one’s Universal or Higher Self, one’s Buddha-Nature, Tao, the Self-moving Way. It is Insight into the Deathless Condition. All great religions described this in so many ways.

Do not be confused by the terminology used by the Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, Taoists, and others. What they are trying to describe is a process of personality transformation, a series of practices whereby the little self (the ego or personality) is transcended, and You (the Immortal Soul or Spirit) become known to yourself. What is more, in this condition you know that the Immortal You is essentially One with the Immortal in the Universe, whether that Transcendental Reality be called God, Allāh, Jehovah, Buddha, Tao, Brahman, Paramātman, or whatever.

This is not an idea, not a concept.
It is something you experience directly, first hand.

Excerpt from Heavens & Hells of the Mind Vol 3,  Pages 1104-1107