I'll be the first to admit I have as many problems with new age philosophy as I do with the traditional -- more, actually. It's not that I think they're completely off the rails like some people do; it's just that I don't think they've solved any of the problems of traditional philosophies except the packaging. The majority of new age authors that I am familiar with are drawing primarily from either Eastern spiritual philosophy or skimming the magical cream off more esoteric ideas -- be it psychicism, angels, energy or plain old self talk. And I'm perfectly comfortable with each of those components within a broader context. But the disconnect I see is that they often rely upon the validity claims of traditional epistemologies which are not compatible with formal rational methods. Meaning that there is no stable foundation for continuity into an evolutionary trans-rational stage of development. Furthermore, by resting solely on the merits of the author to establish credibility and lacking the "teeth" of ethical demands, they present as very "feelgood" and "lightweight," which diminishes them in the marketplace of spiritual ideas. But for all of that, there is something important that they bring to the dialog, which may point us in the direction of our spiritual evolution.
In Spiritual Evolution and the Four-Minute Mile I proposed that we need to find new validity claims and formal structures that can be applied to the evolving practices of the unfolding human consciousness as it approaches non-material areas of inquiry. It's one thing to take a strictly pluralistic approach -- as most of the new age set does -- and allow everyone their own version of truth, but lacks collective credibility. It's good that we're coming to an understanding of the pure subjective nature of personal experience, and we ought to regard every expression of that encounter as true, though not necessarily truth. However, there are certain foundations on which a collective consciousness rests, and those foundations set the boundaries of what that collective can accomplish.
At present, we are bound by the empirical reductionist thinking by which we define our world. As such, only a limited portion of the population has a fair chance to receive the benefit of expanding consciousness. For example, our social and political structures based on these empirical observation that there are insufficient resources, and so we propagate scarcity. In Africa, where tremendous and noble efforts have been expended to bring relief, we have actually created a greater crisis as the traditional agricultural methods that provided stable albeit humble subsistence in pre-Colonial times have been lost due to the creation of a dependency upon charitable organizations. So there's a whole generation of people who have grown up never learning to support themselves. Not only does that exacerbate the material crisis, but it reduces the opportunities for people to expand their consciousness by living through their own power of decision and action. As long as we define potential by looking at the past for examples, we will only get more of the same.
Likewise, if we choose validity claims for evolutionary ideas by looking to the past for examples, those new ideas will be kept at the fringes of the collective consciousness because they will not have the evidential strength of empiricism to prove them, nor will they have the weight of tradition faith to support them. Which means that these ideas and practices will not make it into the majority of the minds in the world.
Proselytizing those ideas is not the answer, because it doesn't solve the core issue, which is that they do not satisfy the validity claims of either religion or science, nor do they propose a new set of validity claims that are compatible with religion and science. So our modes of thinking become even more fragmented, as we have to account for the traditional and the empirical as well as the phenomenological.
At the same time, continuing to ignore them is not the answer either. The neutral ground of the contest between traditional and rational mind is that both have come to deny the miraculous. In science it's unprovable pseudoscience, and in religion it's relegated the marginalia of the dead and gone. If we believe that the nature of consciousness is to evolve, it doesn't do us any good to blind ourselves to the possibilities. And blinding others to those possibilities through weak claims is just as bad.
An intellectually honest approach to evolutionary consciousness demands that we raise these questions because it allows for a subjective phenomenological experience within a framework of ineffable truth. This is the hidden pearl that new age brings to our awareness: that we need to stop ignoring the inexplicable and find new methods of connecting all of our knowledge. The problem I have -- to get back to my point -- is that blind acceptance or unfounded metaphysical explanations are very often the authority on which these practices rest. This is a backslide to the same epistemological pitfall that created the irreconcilable differences between religion and science.
To a large degree this problem arises as a result of the entanglement of the phenomenological manifestations and their metaphysical explanations. What is the value of a story? It's structure and content or the greater experience it evokes? What is the true gift of an intuitive? The ability itself or the ability to help others through it? One well-known psychic medium answers that question in her claim that her life's work is to help others discover their own life's work, and part of that is helping them develop their own intuitive abilities. And I completely agree with her approach to that point. But she tells her stories in terms of specific categories of beings which can only be accepted by the religious mind or dismissed by the empirical. That is, her validity claim is her word and her word alone, and it doesn't translate into any other context because it's an exclusive domain.
That is why evolutionary consciousness must distinguish between true and truth. I believe wholeheartedly that her experience is true, but there is no reason for that experience to be inextricable from her storytelling motifs. And it's not even that I stubbornly insist upon denying angels or the like. It's that her authority rests solely on her claims. And it's not that there is a burden of proof to be satisfied. That's just the point. We're still looking through the bifurcated lens of faith and proof. We need to bring minds of different inclinations into dialog to try to find the ground of reconciliation for our fragmented consciousness. We need to stop acting as scattered groups each trying to protect their claims from the others and become whole in our thinking, in our believing and in our acting. If we believe that some new collective mindset is going to emerge, it is amongst ourselves that it must first take root. We must seek common understanding and -- more importantly -- a common foundation for developing and teaching these abilities outside a specific belief system, and for legitimately reconciling them against our rational capacity.
And that's just the first swing of the pendulum. We also need to address the spiritual teachers who deny phenomenological experience as well as those in all camps who dismiss ethics.
