While widely accepting so many alternative views, why does New Age embrace old age capitalistic self-branding as its root metaphor? Does the Root Chakra now symbolize a paid butt in a seat, ready to buy more products? Doesn't branding make one part of the Herd? Or, is it a desperate plea to be heard by those otherwise without a voice? Does self-sell and self-promotion substitute for actual spiritual substance?
"As Jung noted, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,…”.[34] Such imaginings are a very popular activity among New Agers, with their fascination with enlightenment and higher consciousness, but it is one doomed to failure. Rather, we achieve enlightenment by “making the darkness conscious.”[35] But, as Jung realized, looking within to spot our own darkness is not popular. It requires work, hard work, painful exploration of our weaknesses and frailties. But along such paths our wholeness lies. Being true to Jung’s philosophy requires us to temper the New Age mentality with realism, humility and discernment, and to undertake the challenging personal inner work that individuation requires."
http://jungiancenter.org/jung-and-the-new-agers/
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
"As Jung noted, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,…”.[34] Such imaginings are a very popular activity among New Agers, with their fascination with enlightenment and higher consciousness, but it is one doomed to failure. Rather, we achieve enlightenment by “making the darkness conscious.”[35] But, as Jung realized, looking within to spot our own darkness is not popular. It requires work, hard work, painful exploration of our weaknesses and frailties. But along such paths our wholeness lies. Being true to Jung’s philosophy requires us to temper the New Age mentality with realism, humility and discernment, and to undertake the challenging personal inner work that individuation requires."
http://jungiancenter.org/jung-and-the-new-agers/
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
New Age critique
https://donmatesz.blogspot.com/2011/04/epistemology-percepts-concepts-and.html
You have no doubt noticed that when you question someone's knowledge, the individual will often react quite defensively or aggressively. Often, people go to war to defend systems of knowledge (i.e. what they believe is true). This tells us that some primal emotions drive the pursuit of knowledge.
People look at the vast and unpredictable universe around them, feel fear of the unknown, and particularly, of death. To reduce this fear, they seek knowledge, through which they hope to control the unknown and stave off death. Hence, fear or dis-ease motivates all striving for knowledge. Knowledge is sought as a balm for dis-ease.
People believe that if they know (are "right") they are protected from the unknown, and if they don't know (are "wrong"), they lack protection, are vulnerable. Hence, knowing/not knowing is a life-or-death situation.
Consequently, when you question someone's knowledge, you question their security. This is why questioning is not well tolerated by many individuals, and they may react violently to any questioning of their "knowledge." If you question someone's knowledge, you are (often) questioning their very security of being.
Everyone agrees that reality exists. However, descriptions of reality vary from person to person, culture to culture. Why?
Knowledge consists of systems of percepts ("data") and concepts (names, categories, and explanations). Disputes can be factual (about data) or theoretical (about explanations). Solving disputes about data involves simply producing the data or evidence. Disputes about explanation are a whole other ball game.
1. People seek knowledge for emotional comfort, i.e. to relieve the dis-ease that arises from feeling small and powerless in a vast, unpredictable universe.
2. Knowledge systems consist of percepts (sensory data) and concepts, along with rules about how to arrange concepts into explanations (i.e. logic), and procedures of experimentation the produce data that begs explanation.
3. All knowledge systems are limited by our perceptual apparatus.
4. Knowledge disputes can be about data, or about explanation.
5. Explanatory concepts connect to empirical concepts, but they do not consist or even necessarily include empirical content (color, shape, odor, texture, sound, flavor).
6. You can't refute an explanatory theoretical concept by searching in the physical world for the entity proposed by that concept, whether it is gravity, energy, nature spirits, or qi.
7. Theoretical concepts obtain their meaning from their explanatory power or utility in guiding action but only in the context of the conceptual framework (knowledge system) in which they occur.
8. We can measure the value of a conceptual-perceptual framework by its ability to facilitate survival of the human species. If the actions and technologies that arise from application of the framework promote survival of the individual, the species, and the resource base of the species, then we can judge it relatively 'good', and if they reduce the survival of the individual, etc, then we can judge it relatively 'bad,' keeping in mind that this judgment is only true relative to humans, not an absolute truth. (Don Matesz)
You have no doubt noticed that when you question someone's knowledge, the individual will often react quite defensively or aggressively. Often, people go to war to defend systems of knowledge (i.e. what they believe is true). This tells us that some primal emotions drive the pursuit of knowledge.
People look at the vast and unpredictable universe around them, feel fear of the unknown, and particularly, of death. To reduce this fear, they seek knowledge, through which they hope to control the unknown and stave off death. Hence, fear or dis-ease motivates all striving for knowledge. Knowledge is sought as a balm for dis-ease.
People believe that if they know (are "right") they are protected from the unknown, and if they don't know (are "wrong"), they lack protection, are vulnerable. Hence, knowing/not knowing is a life-or-death situation.
Consequently, when you question someone's knowledge, you question their security. This is why questioning is not well tolerated by many individuals, and they may react violently to any questioning of their "knowledge." If you question someone's knowledge, you are (often) questioning their very security of being.
Everyone agrees that reality exists. However, descriptions of reality vary from person to person, culture to culture. Why?
Knowledge consists of systems of percepts ("data") and concepts (names, categories, and explanations). Disputes can be factual (about data) or theoretical (about explanations). Solving disputes about data involves simply producing the data or evidence. Disputes about explanation are a whole other ball game.
1. People seek knowledge for emotional comfort, i.e. to relieve the dis-ease that arises from feeling small and powerless in a vast, unpredictable universe.
2. Knowledge systems consist of percepts (sensory data) and concepts, along with rules about how to arrange concepts into explanations (i.e. logic), and procedures of experimentation the produce data that begs explanation.
3. All knowledge systems are limited by our perceptual apparatus.
4. Knowledge disputes can be about data, or about explanation.
5. Explanatory concepts connect to empirical concepts, but they do not consist or even necessarily include empirical content (color, shape, odor, texture, sound, flavor).
6. You can't refute an explanatory theoretical concept by searching in the physical world for the entity proposed by that concept, whether it is gravity, energy, nature spirits, or qi.
7. Theoretical concepts obtain their meaning from their explanatory power or utility in guiding action but only in the context of the conceptual framework (knowledge system) in which they occur.
8. We can measure the value of a conceptual-perceptual framework by its ability to facilitate survival of the human species. If the actions and technologies that arise from application of the framework promote survival of the individual, the species, and the resource base of the species, then we can judge it relatively 'good', and if they reduce the survival of the individual, etc, then we can judge it relatively 'bad,' keeping in mind that this judgment is only true relative to humans, not an absolute truth. (Don Matesz)
PULLING THE WOO OVER YOUR EYES
https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/new-age-critique.html
The New Age looks a lot like the old age; mostly warmed over Theosophy, rudimentary Psych 101, a hodge-podge of contradictory philosophical and pseudo-scientific ideas, and perennial wisdom.
An offspring of the Human Potential Movement, the counterculture manifesto was outlined early on by Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy. It evolved with the self-help market and its migrations of groupies from one faddish presenter to the next, dreaming of a quick fix for what ails them. They embrace various fantasies that overlap and feed one another as subsets of the subculture.
Mistaking the metaphorical and symbolic for the literal, and lack of critical thinking is exchanged for fantasies and self-aggrandizement -- not to mention the spiritual materialism of branded personality cults and self-styled groups that identify with the collective psyche. The populist fad twists gnosis, art, and science. Too much fantastical thinking and revisionism is bad, as is fictionalizing ourselves.
New age thought appropriates and bastardizes Jung. Though often thought so, the new age isn't 'Jungian' at all because Jung prioritized individuation which resists collective forces with a well-considered critical response and values.
Jungian thought is a convergence of parallel disciplines, multiple areas of knowledge, not ungrounded metaphysical speculation. The roots of the soul are models of psychic operation, how we see ourselves and the world, and the theories we embrace.
The new age harks back to the old when primordial humans huddled together for warmth and safety and the tall-tales of the community campfire. Stages of identification and projection with our own psychological complexes lie between unconsciousness and self-confrontation.
One of them is the dissociation of utopian or Romantic metasubjective unconscious. For example, to self-identify with a fad of Gnosticism does not mean one actually knows what that was in its original form. And the internet notions are branded fabrication -- a haze of their own speculations.
So, no matter what such 'gnostics' think it is unlikely they are creatively nurturing an ancient and perennial Gnosis into a new time as much as concocting a confabulated myth. Gnosis is a psychological fact, but gnosis is not Gnosticism, as Jung said. In fact, it is self-selected cluster of often-erroneous beliefs about Gnosticism. There is a myth of Gnosticism.
Parroting memes, buzzwords, disinformation and the misguided thoughts of others is as sterile as self-absorption, especially during spiritual crises. It can promote ego inflation. It can reflect rather than combat our culture's passivity, narcissism, and cynicism, making us vulnerable to hypnotic trance and groupthink. The value of niche products is in the niche. At the edge. For the ideal.
Self-absorption in individual or collective idiosyncratic fantasy, rehashing half-baked notions that already failed historically, is not self-actualization but a regressive kind of culturally proscribed self-indulgence with an addiction to peak experiences. Its empty promise is hope as dope. Yet in myth, hope is the last evil in Pandora's box, a meme for cultural desire, a defense against fear and pain. “(Hope) alone is still found among the people, promising that she will bestow on each of us the good things that have gone away." (Aesop, Fables 526, trans. Gibbs)
Some myths have been reframed or watered down from their ancient meanings to reflect today's idiosyncratic revisions and retrival of gnosis -- 'gnostalgia' -- bent to support pet theories. One trend is distinctly different than the prevailing tone in the therapeutic community. Gnosticism never had a paranoid edge in depth psychology which doesn't take the stories literally. Some gnostic narratives have taken on a distinctly paranoid tone and anti-intellectualism that is a sign of the times and media trends. We all reflect the personal and cultural imagination.
Much of what passes for the well-meaning new age vacillates between the compensations of manically positive Pollyannas and those who marinate in the negative, the suspicious and apocalyptic. Fear-porn is a 'black swan' of programmed despair and unforeseen consequences. It is an analogy to the retrospectively predictable fragility of any system of thought once its fundamental postulates and conclusions are disproved. More often the realization is staved off with denial, self-delusion, "oceanic feelings," rubber-stamp validation, and pseudo-scientific devices we 'should' believe in.
The culture is stuck in egocentric entertainment, with a dark, often sexual shadow that compulsively desires darkness and transgression, and surrender to the group or personality cult leader. New age culture seeks to gain our sympathy by promising to fill in our gaps with the next podcast, amateur 'expert', hyped product or airbag treatment. What it offers are dependencies, dysfunction, and propaganda for unconscious 'meat-puppets'.
Enmeshment, ethical ambivalence, and entitlement is not uplifting, even while giving lip-service to the feminine. Rather than supporting you tube talking heads, we should pay more attention to our core issues and consider the source. When we look for what is meaningful, we have to get down into the soul of a person. Dissociation creates uncritical, half-baked ideas for the way things work. Magic becomes whatever you believe, but that does not make it a fact. It is delusory and naive, a model based in ignorance.
The new alchemical maxim isn't 'as above, so below' but 'garbage in, garbage out.' So, other than cottage industries, where are the spiritual fruits beyond 'secondary gains' of this movement and community that exploit the naive? Why is critique met with narcissistic rage? With few exceptions, where are its adepts free of the "cultural capital" of commercialism, the bait of branded methodology, and shameless self-promotion?
--Iona Miller, 2017
http://www.planetdeb.net/spirit/contrast.htm
https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/new-age-critique.html
The New Age looks a lot like the old age; mostly warmed over Theosophy, rudimentary Psych 101, a hodge-podge of contradictory philosophical and pseudo-scientific ideas, and perennial wisdom.
An offspring of the Human Potential Movement, the counterculture manifesto was outlined early on by Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy. It evolved with the self-help market and its migrations of groupies from one faddish presenter to the next, dreaming of a quick fix for what ails them. They embrace various fantasies that overlap and feed one another as subsets of the subculture.
Mistaking the metaphorical and symbolic for the literal, and lack of critical thinking is exchanged for fantasies and self-aggrandizement -- not to mention the spiritual materialism of branded personality cults and self-styled groups that identify with the collective psyche. The populist fad twists gnosis, art, and science. Too much fantastical thinking and revisionism is bad, as is fictionalizing ourselves.
New age thought appropriates and bastardizes Jung. Though often thought so, the new age isn't 'Jungian' at all because Jung prioritized individuation which resists collective forces with a well-considered critical response and values.
Jungian thought is a convergence of parallel disciplines, multiple areas of knowledge, not ungrounded metaphysical speculation. The roots of the soul are models of psychic operation, how we see ourselves and the world, and the theories we embrace.
The new age harks back to the old when primordial humans huddled together for warmth and safety and the tall-tales of the community campfire. Stages of identification and projection with our own psychological complexes lie between unconsciousness and self-confrontation.
One of them is the dissociation of utopian or Romantic metasubjective unconscious. For example, to self-identify with a fad of Gnosticism does not mean one actually knows what that was in its original form. And the internet notions are branded fabrication -- a haze of their own speculations.
So, no matter what such 'gnostics' think it is unlikely they are creatively nurturing an ancient and perennial Gnosis into a new time as much as concocting a confabulated myth. Gnosis is a psychological fact, but gnosis is not Gnosticism, as Jung said. In fact, it is self-selected cluster of often-erroneous beliefs about Gnosticism. There is a myth of Gnosticism.
Parroting memes, buzzwords, disinformation and the misguided thoughts of others is as sterile as self-absorption, especially during spiritual crises. It can promote ego inflation. It can reflect rather than combat our culture's passivity, narcissism, and cynicism, making us vulnerable to hypnotic trance and groupthink. The value of niche products is in the niche. At the edge. For the ideal.
Self-absorption in individual or collective idiosyncratic fantasy, rehashing half-baked notions that already failed historically, is not self-actualization but a regressive kind of culturally proscribed self-indulgence with an addiction to peak experiences. Its empty promise is hope as dope. Yet in myth, hope is the last evil in Pandora's box, a meme for cultural desire, a defense against fear and pain. “(Hope) alone is still found among the people, promising that she will bestow on each of us the good things that have gone away." (Aesop, Fables 526, trans. Gibbs)
Some myths have been reframed or watered down from their ancient meanings to reflect today's idiosyncratic revisions and retrival of gnosis -- 'gnostalgia' -- bent to support pet theories. One trend is distinctly different than the prevailing tone in the therapeutic community. Gnosticism never had a paranoid edge in depth psychology which doesn't take the stories literally. Some gnostic narratives have taken on a distinctly paranoid tone and anti-intellectualism that is a sign of the times and media trends. We all reflect the personal and cultural imagination.
Much of what passes for the well-meaning new age vacillates between the compensations of manically positive Pollyannas and those who marinate in the negative, the suspicious and apocalyptic. Fear-porn is a 'black swan' of programmed despair and unforeseen consequences. It is an analogy to the retrospectively predictable fragility of any system of thought once its fundamental postulates and conclusions are disproved. More often the realization is staved off with denial, self-delusion, "oceanic feelings," rubber-stamp validation, and pseudo-scientific devices we 'should' believe in.
The culture is stuck in egocentric entertainment, with a dark, often sexual shadow that compulsively desires darkness and transgression, and surrender to the group or personality cult leader. New age culture seeks to gain our sympathy by promising to fill in our gaps with the next podcast, amateur 'expert', hyped product or airbag treatment. What it offers are dependencies, dysfunction, and propaganda for unconscious 'meat-puppets'.
Enmeshment, ethical ambivalence, and entitlement is not uplifting, even while giving lip-service to the feminine. Rather than supporting you tube talking heads, we should pay more attention to our core issues and consider the source. When we look for what is meaningful, we have to get down into the soul of a person. Dissociation creates uncritical, half-baked ideas for the way things work. Magic becomes whatever you believe, but that does not make it a fact. It is delusory and naive, a model based in ignorance.
The new alchemical maxim isn't 'as above, so below' but 'garbage in, garbage out.' So, other than cottage industries, where are the spiritual fruits beyond 'secondary gains' of this movement and community that exploit the naive? Why is critique met with narcissistic rage? With few exceptions, where are its adepts free of the "cultural capital" of commercialism, the bait of branded methodology, and shameless self-promotion?
--Iona Miller, 2017
http://www.planetdeb.net/spirit/contrast.htm
Charts & Taxonomies, from
John Curtis Gowan, Trance, Art & Creativity
This book [Trance, Art & Creativity] is concerned with a taxonomy of the cognitive representation of numinous experience arranged in a hierarchy. The theme of the book addresses itself to the most important issue which exists for man: how to get in touch with the ground of being (the numinous element) without losing ego-consciousness. The taxonomy therefore goes from a state of complete cognitive chaos (such as schizophrenia) through other types of dissociation and trance (which are regarded as prototaxic modes), to a middle ground of parataxic mode which involves some amelioration of the relationship with the conscious ego through successive stages of archetype, dreams, ritual, myth, and art, finally to the syntaxic mode, in which there is some cognitive control (involving creativity, biofeedback, and meditation) among others.
It is important that we recognize the overwhelming aspect of the numinous element, whose approach to man can be as awe-ful and dangerous as high voltage electricity. Indeed, as a plenary elemental force, which appears as a daimonic element, it has many aspects of high voltage electricity - such as lightning. One would never think of playing with high voltage electricity without the most careful insulation preparations, and a similar precaution is necessary with the numinous element. All people who have written about it have emphasized this aspect, for one would be foolhardy not to.
This book is concerned with how to get in touch with this ground of being without exposing oneself to these dangers. In the prototaxic mode, the price of admission is simply no less than the excursion of ego-consciousness and the loss of memory of the encounter. In the parataxic mode, the matter is handled through ritual and images. Even the fuller understanding of the syntaxic mode does not allow (in its lower manifestations) complete absence of this negative aspect, as carried on through the osmosis of creativity, the self-reference of orthocognition, and the passivity of meditation.
http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/251/271A
Retrospective Commentary on the Consciousness Mapping of John C. Gowan
Iona Miller
John Curtis Gowan, Trance, Art & Creativity
This book [Trance, Art & Creativity] is concerned with a taxonomy of the cognitive representation of numinous experience arranged in a hierarchy. The theme of the book addresses itself to the most important issue which exists for man: how to get in touch with the ground of being (the numinous element) without losing ego-consciousness. The taxonomy therefore goes from a state of complete cognitive chaos (such as schizophrenia) through other types of dissociation and trance (which are regarded as prototaxic modes), to a middle ground of parataxic mode which involves some amelioration of the relationship with the conscious ego through successive stages of archetype, dreams, ritual, myth, and art, finally to the syntaxic mode, in which there is some cognitive control (involving creativity, biofeedback, and meditation) among others.
It is important that we recognize the overwhelming aspect of the numinous element, whose approach to man can be as awe-ful and dangerous as high voltage electricity. Indeed, as a plenary elemental force, which appears as a daimonic element, it has many aspects of high voltage electricity - such as lightning. One would never think of playing with high voltage electricity without the most careful insulation preparations, and a similar precaution is necessary with the numinous element. All people who have written about it have emphasized this aspect, for one would be foolhardy not to.
This book is concerned with how to get in touch with this ground of being without exposing oneself to these dangers. In the prototaxic mode, the price of admission is simply no less than the excursion of ego-consciousness and the loss of memory of the encounter. In the parataxic mode, the matter is handled through ritual and images. Even the fuller understanding of the syntaxic mode does not allow (in its lower manifestations) complete absence of this negative aspect, as carried on through the osmosis of creativity, the self-reference of orthocognition, and the passivity of meditation.
http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/251/271A
Retrospective Commentary on the Consciousness Mapping of John C. Gowan
Iona Miller