Hinduism, Gnosticism And The New Age

by Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer



Oprah Winfrey is considered by many to be the most powerful woman in the world. She is revered by millions around the world as an excellent source of inspiration for spiritual guidance and wisdom. One of her favorite spiritual teachers is Marianne Williamson, an internationally acclaimed New Age spiritual teacher who is also a politician-who plans to enter the 2020 race to be our next president.

Williamson teaches that we are Spirit. Eckhart Tolle is another one of Winfrey's favorite spritual teachers. He is one of the most influential spiritual teachers in the world. In a youtube video Tolle says he is Spirit. He said: "I am Spirit." He did not say: I am the Universe, as do (1.) pantheists of a particular form of pantheism, and (2.) panentheists of a particular form of panentheism.

Panentheists believe in an immanent and transcendent God. The panentheists who say "I am the Universe" believe they are suppose to [only] become "One" with the immanent aspect of God, and that when they do, they will experience the Earth and the whole Universe as their Cosmic Body. They believe that the Spirit of God in Its transcendent, beyond the cosmos existence has no personality and that the immanent aspect of God has a personality and that It, the "Spirit of the Universe," and the material universe, together, as "One Entity" is who "We" are. In other words, they believe "We" are the "Divine Universe."

New Age panentheists, including me, believe that on our way to becoming One with Spirit we will first experience an exalted state of consciousness wherein we will [feel] like we are the universe. We believe we must go through that state of consciousness before we can enter into the most exalted state of consciousness wherein we will experience ourselves as Spirit, in creation and beyond it-in infinity.

David Spangler, one of the founding figures of the modern New Age movement, wrote: "The world soul is usually conceived as a 'formative force,' an active, intelligent, purposeful spiritual presence at work in the material world [it is immanent] to guide and guard the course of planetary evolution. It is generally not accorded the status of being the ultimate source, or Creator, but might be looked upon as a great angelic or archangelic being presiding over the well being of the world, or as the gestalt, the wholeness of all the lives and patterns that manifest upon, and as, the earth."

New Agers do not worship the earth, as leading Christian opponents of the New Age wrongly believe and teach.

Paramahansa Yogananda, who is widely regarded as the Father of yoga (Hinduism) in the West, wrote: "The word 'God' means the manifested, transcendental Being beyond creation, but existing in relation to creation. Spirit existed before God. God is the Creator of the universe, but Spirit is the Creator of God." Spirit is "the ultimate source, or Creator," and is so, because It "created"/emanated the Creator of the universe. Spirit is the ultimate source of everything.

Hindus teach that the emanated God sinned, and that it caused Him to fall to a less than divine status, and that when He fell he created the material and psychic cosmos, a manifestation of his corrupted and less than divine self.

The New Age is a blend of Hinduism and Gnosticism:

Gnostics believe that because the "ultimate and absolute God," who is Spirit, emanated a deific being named Sophia, who in turn "emanated a flawed consciousness, a being who became the creator of the material and psychic cosmos" (who is referred to as "half-maker")" that, therefore, "the ultimate source, or Creator" (also known as the "authentic half") is the ultimate and absolute God, and that It (Spirit) is the ultimate source of everything.

Gnostics and some New Agers, including me, believe that the Old Testament god - a different entity than Jesus's Father in heaven - is a Spirit emanated flawed consciousness, a being who became the creator of the material and psychic cosmos, a creation that was corrupt from its origins, as modern-day scientific discovery has proven. This belief and scientific fact contradicts a Bible scripture and a Christian dogma based on it.

Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) is the Mother of the New Age movement. Mahatma Gandhi said: "Theosophy is the teaching of Madame Blavatsky. It is Hinduism at its best." Paramahansa Yogananda quoted his Hindu guru in his book Autobiography of a Yogi: "Christ’s claim, 'No man cometh unto the Father, but by me' (John 14:6), is a promise to all humanity, irrespective of creed. 'Jesus meant, never that he was the sole Son of God, but that no man can attain the unqualified Absolute, the transcendent Father beyond creation, until he has first manifested the 'Son' or activating Christ Consciousness within creation." - Swami Sri Yukteswar

God the Father (or Mother) is Spirit and He (or She) is in all of creation and It - Spirit has no gender identity nor personality beyond the creation - is also beyond the creation and is infinite. When people first become somewhat "One" with Spirit in creation they will feel like they are the world soul, they will also feel like the universe is their body. This gives them the mystical experience of being one with the universe. At this stage they will have "manifested the 'Son' or activating Christ Consciousness within creation." They will then advance spiritually and lose all attachment to having a body to identify with. At the time, they will become One with the Father in creation and also One with the "unqualified Absolute, the transcendent Father beyond creation," the ultimate goal of New Agers.

When Robert Muller was the Assistant Secretary of the United Nations he was widely regarded as the UN's philosopher and prophet of hope. And his visionary plan to usher in the New Age is still widely promoted at the UN. He was a disciple of Alice Bailey and she was a disciple of Helena Blavatsky. Muller has a review statement on the back cover of Paramahansa Yogananda's book, Autobiography of a Yogi. Muller (1923-2010) was a promoter of both Bailey's and Yogananda's visionary plan for the world, as are some of today's leaders of the UN.

George Harrison (1943-2001) achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. He was a disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda and promoted his book Autobiography of a Yogi, a book referred to as the "hippie Bible." Yogananda's picture was one of many pictures of famous people displayed on the cover of the Beatles' Lonely Hearts Club Band Album. A global movement named Ananda, led by a direct disciple of Yogananda, promotes the Beatles' late 1960s New Age spiritual philosophy. And Albert Bates, an international renowned hippie and world-wide internationally renowned environmentalists, who is the spokes person for the Global Eco-village Network at UN climate change conferences, also promotes the Beatles' late 1960s New Age spiritual philosophy, as I also do.

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Comment:

Excerpts from Dr. Timothy Conway's article entitled Panentheism and the Reality of God

In the best definition of Panentheism, God transcends yet also immanently includes all beings as their true Identity, their Real Self, the only ONE who can affirm "I AM THAT I AM." Thus, in pure Panentheism, God is beyond all beings/persons as their Source, and within all as their essential Substance. God is Spirit, God is Truth, God is Light, God is Love. These are our Biblical definitions of God, and notice that these terms "Spirit," "Truth," "Light," and "Love" clearly connote a Supra-personal, not merely "personal" Divine Reality.

This Panentheism positing of a truly Supra-personal God or Divine Absolute easily takes us beyond the old false choice that we must choose between a "personal God" or "impersonal God." This false choice is what too many Christian, Jewish, and Muslim clergy have tried to foist onto people who, for instance, begin to explore Western or Eastern mystical forms of religion and spirituality with a loftier conception of God than given in their non-mystical or anti-mystical institutional religions.

So let us deeply contemplate what our most eminent mystics are saying, after all. For they allow us to let God be God in the most sublimely grand and glorious manner: both transcendent and immanent, both Supra-personal and Personal. This God is the true Reality of Spirit, Love, Light and Truth Who is ultimately Formless, yet capable of manifesting as a beautiful personal Form for devotees, just as this God has manifested so spectacularly as all creation. This God (or Absolute Godhead, Brahman, Buddhata, Dharmakaya, Tao) is the Absolutely Aware and also Conscious, Compassionate Context or Ground of Being—in Whom all of us "live, move and have our being," as Paul wrote nearly 2000 years ago.

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My Comment:

One of the above statements by Dr. Timothy Conway reads: "...just as this God has manifested so spectacularly as all creation." I would have wrote: ...just as this God has - indirectly, as an emanated god, a less than divine expression of Its Self - manifested as all creation.

"This God" (Spirit) emanated a subordinate God who was a Divine Spiritual Universe and this Spiritual Universe then sinned, which caused this Pure Spiritual Universe to become corrupted, which caused it to be physically manifested as all creation.

This explains why this creation has so much death and corruption in it. "Original sin" occurred before the world began, and it is the cause of it coming into existence. We were the Divine Spiritual Universe. We were experiencing our Divine Oneness and we were also conscious of our traces of individual separate entities. Then We sinned causing the physical and psychic cosmos to come into existence. After a long time of evolutionary life on earth we began coming into the world as human beings, unaware of our true Divine Identity. We were delusional, thinking we were only separate individual human beings.

When we were the emanated Divine Spiritual Universe we could have, and should have, remained loyal to God. If we had done so, for a designated period of time, we would had gone back to where we were emanted from and then had a better relationship with God. But because we chose to sin and go our own disobedient way we now have to find our way back to God through this long evolutionary process.

When we have all become enlightened this physical and psychic cosmos will come to an end. When it all comes to an end, we will have been delivered from our bondage to corruption and will once again be the emanated Divine Spiritual Universe. From there we will go back to where we were with God before we were emanated. We will then have a better relationship with God than we originally had. This is what the New Age is all about. It is about humanity waking up to reality and finding, with God's assistance, our way home, where we will all be eternally happy.