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Reimagination of the World: A Critique of the New Age, Science, and Popular Culture .
Book by Spangler, David, Thompson, William Irwin
218 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1991
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May 29, 2023
TWO AUTHORS LOOK AT THE NEW AGE, AS WELL AS CONTEMPORARY SOCEITY
Co-author David Spangler wrote in the Prologue to this 1991 book, “This book is based on two seminars that William Irwin Thompson and I gave together for two consecutive summers at the Chinook Learning Center … When the last seminar was finished in July 1989, the Iron Curtain still covered all of Eastern Europe… and the Cold War was still in effect…The idea that there would be military bases for American troops on Arab soil was out of the question… Now, two years later, all that has completely changed… I mention [these events] here by way of affirming the transformational nature of our times. Furthermore, there is nothing stable about the present situation. It is entirely possible that a year or two from now, the entire… situation in the world will have changed again…
“Yet, all these outer changes should not obscure the comparable inner changes… going on in our time… New ideas and insights are constantly emerging, challenging older worldviews… something new is emerging synergistically in our world. Every culture, religion, philosophy, economic system, political system, artistic sensibility, and technology adds something to the mix, as do all the forces and beings of nature. The [result] will be something new, something for which, as yet, we do not have a name. Whatever we end up calling it, it will be planetary… in a way we have never experienced… This book is about this emerging planetary stew… we are reimagining our world. We are taking hunks of ecology and slices of science, pieces of politics and a sprinkle of economics, pinch of religion and a dash of philosophy, and we are reimagining these and a host of other ingredients into something new: a New Age, a reimagination of the world.”
William Irwin Thompson begins his first seminar with the statement, “Since this setting is so informal, I propose that we do not give academic lectures but have a more casual sharing of ideas in which we can explore together the cultural wok of the New Age at this moment when it is being vulgarized, debased, and degraded in the commercial marketplace. Is there anything of intellectual worth of spiritual value left? What kind of spiritual search is it that brings us together in cultural centers such as Chinook?” (Pg. 3)
He states, “The more I reflected on the New Age in my exile from it, the more I began to be concerned about the explosions of hysterical religious warfare on the one hand and the neurotic implosions of New Age cults and communities on the other. Rather than being prophetic of the future, the religions were stuck in the past; rather than being evolutionary harbingers of a new dawn, the intentional New Age communities were actually quite regressive and were not really to a radical sense of planetary interconnectiveness, but were moving into a life of ‘us and them.’” (Pg. 14-15) He adds, “The vulgarization of the New Age indicates that the New Age is over… and that now is definitely the time of its degradation.” (Pg, 17)
Spangler outlines, “the New Age … is a spiritual phenomenon. As such, it has three aspects: it represents a fundamental force, an essential component of life; it represents an inner condition or state of mind; and it represents a particular spiritual an impulse inherent in the incarnational processes of Earth. In the first instance, the New Age may be seen as a symbol of the spirit of renewal and creativity rooted in the ground of all being… The second aspect of the New Age… is that it is a state of mind… It is a way of looking at the world, an inner architecture that structures how we process our information about the world… My final image of the New Age is that it is imaginary. By ‘imaginary’ … I mean that the New Age is an image of the future---one that we hope will align us with the deeper spirit and empower us to create a new world.” (Pg. 27-29)
Spangler suggests, “the death of the New Age is a metaphor, of course. There is no way we can ‘kill’ the process of change that is going on in society. What we can affect is the pace, the intensity, and, to some extent, the direction of the process. More importantly for us, we can deeply affect our individual relationship to this process. We can damage or kill our own transformative and hopeful sense of the future. We may not be able to kill the emergence of the New Age in a global sense, but we can certainly kill it for ourselves.” (Pg. 52)
Thomson states, “One of the attractions of the impulse to establish a New Age science is that we recognize that science is the religion of our culture. Now that the church has lost its power, science has become the dominant religion of our time. Therefore, we need to have some alternative to orthodoxy. The scientist is the priest, and in our society we can feel that some of our emotional and artistic sides have been abandoned and forgotten in the rise of a particular kind of science, especially in the United States.” (Pg. 97)
Spangler says, “Understanding just what such a New Age theology or cosmology might be like is my own cutting edge. In some ways, I am back where I was thirty-some years ago, seeking an appropriate language with which to articulate my deepest spiritual experiences. Events like this help, because speaking to you and dealing with your questions help to draw out images and language. At the same time, there are some things I cannot discuss yet, because they have not simmered enough within me.” (Pg. 127)
Spangler explains, “for me, the Christ is a major spiritual reality, a fundamental presence at work in the world. I see this presence at work. I am aware of its energy being active in the inner realms and in this one. It is my observation… that this presence transcends any particular dogma, or any ideology’s attempt to confine it, or any organization’s need to possess it and define it. Put another way, the Christ transcends Christianity.” (Pg. 138-139)
Thompson comments, “The science of brain research is providing us with some very interesting insights into the nature of imagery, but in its cocky wan of overgeneralization, this science has claimed, in its favored reductionist fashion, that this is all there is to so-called spiritual experiences: they are ‘real’ physical, sensory inputs transformed into illusionary mental imagery… overgeneralizing it even further… Omni magazine has proven that spirituality exist and that you can all go home now, for soon you will be able to buy an electronic helmet that will give you more ‘spiritual’ experiences than you could ever get in a church, a yogic ashram, or at a summer camp for mystics like Chinook.” (Pg. 158)
Spangler concludes, “There is a place for initiatic, linear learning. It is a fine technique when used properly, but it is a lousy state of mind. Initiations do take place, but they affect the virtual reality of the realms of form more than the realms of spirit and essence… Improperly understood and used, images of initiation can reflect the particulate vision of the universe too much to give a clear view of the inner workings and conditions of the soul. They are too dependent on the virtual realities of appearance, even as they claim to reveal the inner realities of spirit. The true initiatic path of the larger spirit is based less on what is known and more on what can be embodied and served… In particular, and initiatic path is based on the birth and embodiment of that supreme source of empowerment of all incarnational patterns, which is love.” (Pg. 199)
Thompson said in an Epilogue, “Findhorn and the New Age sought to teach us about the presence of the elemental kingdoms through gentler and more loving means---gentler and slower… As a merchandised fad, the New Age came in the interval between two wars, Vietnam and the war in the Persian Gulf… Findhorn, Auroville, Arcosanti, Lindisfarne, and Naropa---there were the sorts of educational experiments that expressed the zeitgeist… [But] the war in the Gulf has remapped out cultural territory. This time, however… there can be no ‘us’ or ‘them’… we are all passing through this catastrophe together. What was once merely mystical idealism has now become the political reality of the United Nations of Earth.” (Pg. 210-211)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying New Age and similar ideas.
Co-author David Spangler wrote in the Prologue to this 1991 book, “This book is based on two seminars that William Irwin Thompson and I gave together for two consecutive summers at the Chinook Learning Center … When the last seminar was finished in July 1989, the Iron Curtain still covered all of Eastern Europe… and the Cold War was still in effect…The idea that there would be military bases for American troops on Arab soil was out of the question… Now, two years later, all that has completely changed… I mention [these events] here by way of affirming the transformational nature of our times. Furthermore, there is nothing stable about the present situation. It is entirely possible that a year or two from now, the entire… situation in the world will have changed again…
“Yet, all these outer changes should not obscure the comparable inner changes… going on in our time… New ideas and insights are constantly emerging, challenging older worldviews… something new is emerging synergistically in our world. Every culture, religion, philosophy, economic system, political system, artistic sensibility, and technology adds something to the mix, as do all the forces and beings of nature. The [result] will be something new, something for which, as yet, we do not have a name. Whatever we end up calling it, it will be planetary… in a way we have never experienced… This book is about this emerging planetary stew… we are reimagining our world. We are taking hunks of ecology and slices of science, pieces of politics and a sprinkle of economics, pinch of religion and a dash of philosophy, and we are reimagining these and a host of other ingredients into something new: a New Age, a reimagination of the world.”
William Irwin Thompson begins his first seminar with the statement, “Since this setting is so informal, I propose that we do not give academic lectures but have a more casual sharing of ideas in which we can explore together the cultural wok of the New Age at this moment when it is being vulgarized, debased, and degraded in the commercial marketplace. Is there anything of intellectual worth of spiritual value left? What kind of spiritual search is it that brings us together in cultural centers such as Chinook?” (Pg. 3)
He states, “The more I reflected on the New Age in my exile from it, the more I began to be concerned about the explosions of hysterical religious warfare on the one hand and the neurotic implosions of New Age cults and communities on the other. Rather than being prophetic of the future, the religions were stuck in the past; rather than being evolutionary harbingers of a new dawn, the intentional New Age communities were actually quite regressive and were not really to a radical sense of planetary interconnectiveness, but were moving into a life of ‘us and them.’” (Pg. 14-15) He adds, “The vulgarization of the New Age indicates that the New Age is over… and that now is definitely the time of its degradation.” (Pg, 17)
Spangler outlines, “the New Age … is a spiritual phenomenon. As such, it has three aspects: it represents a fundamental force, an essential component of life; it represents an inner condition or state of mind; and it represents a particular spiritual an impulse inherent in the incarnational processes of Earth. In the first instance, the New Age may be seen as a symbol of the spirit of renewal and creativity rooted in the ground of all being… The second aspect of the New Age… is that it is a state of mind… It is a way of looking at the world, an inner architecture that structures how we process our information about the world… My final image of the New Age is that it is imaginary. By ‘imaginary’ … I mean that the New Age is an image of the future---one that we hope will align us with the deeper spirit and empower us to create a new world.” (Pg. 27-29)
Spangler suggests, “the death of the New Age is a metaphor, of course. There is no way we can ‘kill’ the process of change that is going on in society. What we can affect is the pace, the intensity, and, to some extent, the direction of the process. More importantly for us, we can deeply affect our individual relationship to this process. We can damage or kill our own transformative and hopeful sense of the future. We may not be able to kill the emergence of the New Age in a global sense, but we can certainly kill it for ourselves.” (Pg. 52)
Thomson states, “One of the attractions of the impulse to establish a New Age science is that we recognize that science is the religion of our culture. Now that the church has lost its power, science has become the dominant religion of our time. Therefore, we need to have some alternative to orthodoxy. The scientist is the priest, and in our society we can feel that some of our emotional and artistic sides have been abandoned and forgotten in the rise of a particular kind of science, especially in the United States.” (Pg. 97)
Spangler says, “Understanding just what such a New Age theology or cosmology might be like is my own cutting edge. In some ways, I am back where I was thirty-some years ago, seeking an appropriate language with which to articulate my deepest spiritual experiences. Events like this help, because speaking to you and dealing with your questions help to draw out images and language. At the same time, there are some things I cannot discuss yet, because they have not simmered enough within me.” (Pg. 127)
Spangler explains, “for me, the Christ is a major spiritual reality, a fundamental presence at work in the world. I see this presence at work. I am aware of its energy being active in the inner realms and in this one. It is my observation… that this presence transcends any particular dogma, or any ideology’s attempt to confine it, or any organization’s need to possess it and define it. Put another way, the Christ transcends Christianity.” (Pg. 138-139)
Thompson comments, “The science of brain research is providing us with some very interesting insights into the nature of imagery, but in its cocky wan of overgeneralization, this science has claimed, in its favored reductionist fashion, that this is all there is to so-called spiritual experiences: they are ‘real’ physical, sensory inputs transformed into illusionary mental imagery… overgeneralizing it even further… Omni magazine has proven that spirituality exist and that you can all go home now, for soon you will be able to buy an electronic helmet that will give you more ‘spiritual’ experiences than you could ever get in a church, a yogic ashram, or at a summer camp for mystics like Chinook.” (Pg. 158)
Spangler concludes, “There is a place for initiatic, linear learning. It is a fine technique when used properly, but it is a lousy state of mind. Initiations do take place, but they affect the virtual reality of the realms of form more than the realms of spirit and essence… Improperly understood and used, images of initiation can reflect the particulate vision of the universe too much to give a clear view of the inner workings and conditions of the soul. They are too dependent on the virtual realities of appearance, even as they claim to reveal the inner realities of spirit. The true initiatic path of the larger spirit is based less on what is known and more on what can be embodied and served… In particular, and initiatic path is based on the birth and embodiment of that supreme source of empowerment of all incarnational patterns, which is love.” (Pg. 199)
Thompson said in an Epilogue, “Findhorn and the New Age sought to teach us about the presence of the elemental kingdoms through gentler and more loving means---gentler and slower… As a merchandised fad, the New Age came in the interval between two wars, Vietnam and the war in the Persian Gulf… Findhorn, Auroville, Arcosanti, Lindisfarne, and Naropa---there were the sorts of educational experiments that expressed the zeitgeist… [But] the war in the Gulf has remapped out cultural territory. This time, however… there can be no ‘us’ or ‘them’… we are all passing through this catastrophe together. What was once merely mystical idealism has now become the political reality of the United Nations of Earth.” (Pg. 210-211)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying New Age and similar ideas.
January 10, 2015
Living at Findhorn in the late 80s, these two men were my guides. Indeed, I considered Spangler the wisest, sanest living author I knew.
Then everything changed ... http://corjesusacratissimum.org/2013/...
Then everything changed ... http://corjesusacratissimum.org/2013/...
July 20, 2013
Fascinating time-capsule discussions occurring in 1988 and 1989 reflecting on the popular culture of the 1970s and 80s and speculating on the outcomes of trends for the 90s.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews