This post will interrupt our regular broadcasting to address an issue that has been prompted by my interaction with someone at my place of employment who is quite the fan of a guy named Charles Eisenstein, and now I have come to find out, another guy named, Joseph Campbell. Both of these thinker/communicators can be classified as New Age thinkers. James Sire provides five distinct characteristics that help us identify some core contours, that give what can be called New Age teaching its shape; he writes:

1. Whatever the nature of being (idea or matter, energy or particle), the self is the kingpin—the prime reality. As human beings grow in their awareness and grasp of this fact, the human race is on the verge of a radical change in human nature; even now we see harbingers of transformed humanity and prototypes of the New Age.
2. The cosmos, while unified in the self, is manifested in two more dimensions: the visible universe, accessible through ordinary consciousness, and the invisible universe (or Mind at Large), accessible through altered states of consciousness.
3. The core experience of the New Age is cosmic consciousness, in which ordinary categories of space, time and morality tend to disappear.
4. Physical death is not the end of the self; under the experience of cosmic consciousness, the fear of death is removed.
5. Three distinct attitudes are taken to the metaphysical question of the nature of reality under the general framework of the New Age: (1) the occult version, in which the beings and things perceived in states of altered consciousness exist apart from the self that is conscious, (2) the psychedelic version, in which these things and beings are projections of the conscious self, and (3) the conceptual relativist version, in which the cosmic consciousness is the conscious activity of a mind using one of many nonordinary models for reality, none of which is any “truer” than any other. [James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door, 146-58]

This is not an exhaustive attempt to index all of the features of the ‘New Age movement,’ but indeed it is an attempt, obviously, to provide broad contours which folk like Eisenstein and/or Campbell could potentially fit into; and thus why I see them as ‘New Age’ teachers.

Furthermore, Joseph Campbell, has also been influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). He was a German philosopher who worked in the wake of Immanuel Kant; of course Kant has had an seismic impact on intellectual history, and thus his influence is broad and deep; an influence that we all still live through—even in the sense that we have language like post-Kantian. I digress. Kant essentially placed a dualistic disjunction between our capacity to know ‘things in themselves’; since, basically, we cannot get beyond our subjective intuitions about reality. Here is how the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarizes of  Kant’s perspective:

• In some sense, human beings experience only appearances, not things in themselves.
• Space and time are not things in themselves, or determinations of things in themselves that would remain if one abstracted from all subjective conditions of human intuition. [Kant labels this conclusion a) at A26/B42 and again at A32–33/B49. It is at least a crucial part of what he means by calling space and time transcendentally ideal (A28/B44, A35–36/B52)].
• Space and time are nothing other than the subjective forms of human sensible intuition. [Kant labels this conclusion b) at A26/B42 and again at A33/B49–50].
• Space and time are empirically real, which means that “everything that can come before us externally as an object” is in both space and time, and that our internal intuitions of ourselves are in time (A28/B44, A34–35/B51–51). (see original source)

And here’s a short description of Schopenhauer:

Among 19^th century philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer was among the first to contend that at its core, the universe is not a rational place. Inspired by Plato and Kant, both of whom regarded the world as being more amenable to reason, Schopenhauer developed their philosophies into an instinct-recognizing and ultimately ascetic outlook, emphasizing that in the face of a world filled with endless strife, we ought to minimize our natural desires for the sake of achieving a more tranquil frame of mind and a disposition towards universal beneficence. Often considered to be a thoroughgoing pessimist, Schopenhauer in fact advocated ways — via artistic, moral and ascetic forms of awareness — to overcome a frustration-filled and fundamentally painful human condition. Since his death in 1860, his philosophy has had a special attraction for those who wonder about life’s meaning, along with those engaged in music, literature, and the visual arts. (source)

For both of these German philosophers the emphasis is on the absolutized self as the knower, and thus access to the outside world (as it is in itself) is not possible. We can see then how some of this can be appropriated and overlap with some of the description provided by Sire on the so called, New Age.

Since this post is running long (for a blog post), I am going to cut it short, and will pick up on a Christian response to this hopefully in the next couple of days. I didn’t really get into Campbell’s thought, but it should be noted that he is quite eclectic (another aspect of the New Age synthesis of East and West) in his approach; and thus he is a child (somewhat paradoxically, which is par for the course of a New Ager) of the modern era. Which of course we all know that buy now we have moved into the Post-Modern, Post-Kantian era; but no problem, a New Ager would simply see this as the natural evolution of human consciousness to the next level. In my next post, beyond a Christian response—before I provide that—I will take a brief look, and provide a small critique of Campbell’s use of myth (again, another modern tool invented to cope with the fall out produced both by German idealism and existentialism).

PS. Let me say something, though (since this post is kind of fragmented—that’s because I am exhausted, but I wanted to get something up and going on this because I said I would); the basic Christian response to New Age teaching in general, is that as we are under the teaching of Jesus Christ we quickly realize by his person-and-work that God is exclusively One (and of course Three … One being, Three persons-Three persons, One being). Jesus cannot be assimilated into the ‘New Age’ compass as another guru, myth, or self actualizing teacher; Jesus claimed to be ‘… the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes to the Father except through me’ (Jn 14.6). There is no other way, according to Jesus, to experience spiritual enlightenment, or union with the ‘source’ and ground of our life; except through a personal union and relationship with him. He is the bridge between God and humanity in his God-man person; his existence, his resurrection, and his testimony through his Church (over the last 2,000 years) demand, at least, that folk take notice, and like Mary sit at his feet and actually listen to his teaching in context. It is when the seeker sits under Jesus, that the seeker understands how his life creates its own categories and conceptualities for understanding and knowing God; that the seeker, will ‘taste and see that God is indeed good’ and that there is no other. The original lie found in Genesis 3, the one that Satan whispered to Eve, was that humanity could be like god; ironically, this is one of the core teachings of the New Age movement; and what serves as a major premise of both Eisenstein’s and Campbell’s teachings. If my meta-narrative, or grand scheme story (the Christian Bible) out narrated your story; and I were you,  I would at least stop and wonder if maybe my story might be the wrong story. In short, if my grand-scheme story explains your story better than it explains itself; then, again (if I were you), I would seriously consider switching stories 😉 .