"We are entering a new era. It is the era where the final frontier is not space, as they would say in Star Trek, but the Mind."(Fred Alan Wolf)
"All the celestial treasures and hidden riddles that have been unsolved for generations will be discovered in the Age of Aquarius" (The Zohar).
The New Age
Philosophy
Born in the second half of the 20th century, the New Age (New Age) is a new paradigm resulting from the fusion of various holistic, mystical, spiritual, oriental, esoteric, ecological, astrological and gnostic movements. Its main characteristics are:
Search for the meaning of existence through the vindication of the lost spiritual dimension (outside organized religions) and of a broader mysticism, configured as an experience of totality or plenitude.
Rejection of dogmatism, of rigid belief systems, of closed doctrines. Revisionism of official truths. Truth can be discovered at the individual level, without the help of any authority.
Faced with the fragmentation of human knowledge and the loss of the sense of the whole, the search for a new unifying consciousness, for the ultimate essence that connects all things, for a cosmovision, for a global and holistic vision of reality, for a superior and profound knowledge (gnosis), for the superior dimensions that explain and support reality. In short, it tries to unify science and religion.
Acceptance of Eastern philosophy and intuitive thinking as an essential complement to Western rationalism. Intuition is the way to access deep truths.
Interest in metaphor, analogical thinking and creativity.
Emphasizes the important role of imagination, as a fundamental faculty of the soul (and not of the mind, as is often claimed).
Acceptance (practically unanimous) of the cyclical character of existence (reincarnation) as a mechanism of individual evolution.
Fascination for extraordinary manifestations (paranormal experiences, contact with entities from other dimensions, etc.).
Transformation (even transmutation) and personal self-realization through the practice of meditation, in order to experience our deepest reality (our higher self), transcend the apparent reality (differentiating and manifested) and walk towards the Absolute, the Universal Spirit (undifferentiated or non-manifested). This personal transformation corresponds to the development of intuitive knowledge and is experienced as awakening, liberation and unification (with elimination of boundaries).
Application of alternative therapies ("soft" medicines) that heal on a holistic level and allow to identify the deep roots of the disease and its meaning. Belief in the healing power of the mind.
It attempts to overcome all forms of dualism by harmonizing the opposites: east and west, science and humanism, body and mind, matter and spirit, the objective and the subjective, the finite and the infinite, the masculine and the feminine, the terrestrial and the celestial, the absolute and the relative. It is the harmonization of the two cerebral hemispheres. Transcending duality expands consciousness.
Advocates non-hierarchical organizations and environments of a cooperative, open and creative type.
The search for harmony on all levels (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual).
Faced with the complicated explanations offered by science and religion, seeks simple solutions and available to all, trying to bring order and understanding to the seemingly scattered, chaotic and disintegrated.
Respect for ecology, the environment and all forms of life.
Conception of humanity, the world and the universe as an organic whole, as a living organism, as a network of dynamic relationships.
Fascination for the "new physics" and its search for a unified theory.
Defense of the existence of a perennial knowledge or philosophy, common to all religions, since all religions are based on the same transcendent truths.
Conception of the idea of God principally as monism or panentheism:
In monism everything that exists comes from a single source (God). The differences between things are illusory. The deep reality is fundamentally spiritual.
In panentheism, all that exists is in God, but God transcends the universe. God is the beginning, the essence, the center and origin of all that exists.
Search, more or less conscious, for the Center, the field of all possibilities and the source of all manifestations. From that privileged point all reality is intelligible, comprehensible and where everything is connected.
The holographic paradigm is considered the paradigm of the New Age. This paradigm establishes that the real world is constituted or constructed from general principles, through which the whole manifests itself enveloped in each of its parts, and the parts in turn envelop the whole.
MENTAL and the New Age
The New Age has coincided with the great explosion and diffusion of information technologies, which are contributing decisively to create a global consciousness. The Internet, a metaphor for the mental universe and the consciousness of the planet, is a global framework of communication in which spatial and temporal limitations are overcome. It is also a (virtual) space of freedom, flexible and open. But the Internet revolution needs a new language, a language associated with unified consciousness. This language can be MENTAL.
Clearly disregarding the spiritual, mystical and parapsychological aspects, the unifying philosophy of MENTAL has clear parallels with the New Age movement, with which the author of this work feels identified:
It is a unifying paradigm, bringing a new global consciousness.
It is based on intuitive principles, which are archetypes of consciousness, philosophical categories, dimensions or degrees of mental freedom.
It is an essentialist language that makes it possible to relate domains that previously seemed different and disconnected. It blurs the boundaries between domains.
It is a simple, but powerful language.
It is a free and open language in which it is possible to define new axioms, rules, languages, etc.
It is a creative language.
It harmonizes the two modes of consciousness associated with the two cerebral hemispheres: theory and practice, syntax and semantics, the qualitative and the quantitative, the constructive and the descriptive, language and metalanguage, the real and the imaginary, the inner world and the outer world, holism and reductionism, etc.
It implies a return to the origins, to the search for new principles and a new consciousness.
Addenda
The Age of Aquarius
The Earth has three motions: annual translation around the Sun, daily rotation on its own axis and a precession motion of its own axis that lasts 25,776 years (divided into 12 eras of 2,148 years). Each era is associated with a constellation of the Zodiac. The era of Pisces corresponds to Christianity and would end on a not very precise date (according to different authors, it varies from 1962 to 2376). The following era, that of Aquarius, is associated with the New Age, an era of synthesis, of change of consciousness, of inner change, of dimensional change, of peace, freedom, intuitive intelligence, creativity and enlightenment. Aquarius is the symbol of freedom.
The manifesto of the New Age or Age of Aquarius is considered to be the book "The Aquarian Conspiracy", by Marilyn Ferguson [2007].
Origins of the New Age
Emanuel Swedenborg is considered the inspiration and precursor of the New Age:
He promoted the union of science and religion. He himself was a scientist until the age of 56, at which age he reoriented his life towards spirituality as a result of a religious experience (he claims that a person who identified himself as Jesus Christ appeared to him).
He explored the world of the invisible (the other dimensions) with rigorous scientific precision. And he revealed the secrets of life after death.
He assigned symbolic-esoteric meaning to the sacred texts with the so-called "doctrine of correspondence". For example, the seven days of Genesis would correspond to the seven chakras (energy centers of the body, according to Hindu teachings).
Also considered precursors of the New Age are Helena Blavatsky (founder of the Theosophical Society) and Rudolf Steiner (creator of Anthroposophy), clearly influenced by Swedenberg. But the New Age movement as such (sensu stricto) began with Alice Bailey, who realized its spiritual and esoteric foundation:
Former member of the Theosophical Society, she created her own school (the Arcane school).
He claimed to receive messages (by clairaudience) from invisible masters (of the Occult Hierarchy). He channeled many books, among them "Discipleship in the New Age".
He advocated a new spirituality, a new universal religion, based on the essential truths of all religions.
He emphasized the theme of unity as the fundamental element of all that exists.
His doctrine of the seven rays asserts that seven spiritual principles (or fundamental energies) underlie manifest reality. Everything is energy and energy manifests as life and consciousness. The universe is alive. Individual consciousness must be transcended and evolve into the Universal Self.
The New Age movements
The New Age has exerted a great influence in all fields: science, religion, art, medicine and health, education, etc. There are innumerable authors who have contributed to the new consciousness that the New Age represents, among which we can highlight, among others, the following:
William James (religion as experience, not as dogma).
Teilhard de Chardin (Omega point theory). Evolution is the dynamic principle of the universe and its purpose is the attainment of ultimate consciousness (Omega point). Principle of "unitarity": consciousness, spirit and life exist at all levels of existence.
Carl Jung (collective unconscious). Jung tried to harmonize psychology and esotericism. He presented an esoteric worldview in psychological terms and enriched psychology with esoteric concepts.
Aldous Huxley (the "perennial philosophy", the core common to all religions).
David Bohm (theory of the implicate order). Deep reality corresponds to a folded, unmanifest order. Superficial reality corresponds to unfolded, manifest order.
Karl Pribram (the holographic paradigm). It is considered the paradigm par excellence of the New Age: in the universe each part is a reflection of the whole and the whole is reflected in each part.
Roberto Assagioli (psychosynthesis). Complement to psychoanalysis, it contemplates the person on a holistic level, as a whole.
Sri Aurobindo (integral yoga). The purpose of integral yoga is inner self-development to achieve conscious identity with the divine, the Supermind, the unifying principle of matter, life and mind.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Transcendental Meditation). Meditation as a way to reach pure consciousness, the unified consciousness from which thoughts arise.
Abraham Maslow (humanistic psychology).
Alexander Lowen (bioenergetics).
James Lovelock (Gaia hypothesis: Earth as a living organism).
Rupert Sheldrake (morphogenetic fields).
Ken Wilber (the unity of consciousness).
Claudio Naranjo, Ken Wilber and Stanislav Grof (transpersonal psychology). The psychology closest to the New Age, studies the psychology of altered states of consciousness, in which the limits of the self are transcended.
Joseph Campbell (the myth of the hero's journey as a metaphor for spiritual and psychological growth, as self-discovery and self-realization).
Fritjof Capra (the Tao of Physics). The parallels between physics and Eastern mysticism.
Ervin Laszlo (hypothesis of the Akashic or in-formation field as an integral theory of the whole).
Brian Weiss (past life regression therapy).
Also noteworthy is the countercultural movement (of the 1960s and 1970s), whose main promoters were John Lilly, Timothy Leary, Gregory Bateson, Albert Hofman, and Werner Erhard.
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