A welcome antidote to the magical thinking of many New Age gurus from writer Ken Wilber:

“The New Thought schools, of which Christian Science is the most famous, mistake the correct notion “Godhead creates all,” with the notion, “Since I am one with God, I create all.”

This position makes two mistakes, I believe, which both Emerson and Thoreau would have strongly disagreed with. One, that God is an intervening parent for the universe, instead of its impartial Reality or Suchness or Condition. And two, that your ego is one with that parent God, and therefore can intervene and order the universe around. I have found no support for that notion in the mystical traditions at all.

Advocates of the new age themselves claim that they are basing this idea on the principle of karma, which says that your present life circumstances are the results of thought and actions from a previous lifetime. According to Hinduism and Buddhism, that is partially true. But even if it were totally true, which it isn’t, the newagers have, I believe, overlooked one crucial fact: According to these traditions, your present circumstances are the results of thoughts and actions from a previous life, and your present thoughts and actions will affect, not your present life, but your next life, you next incarnation. The Buddhists say that in your present life you are simply reading a book that you wrote in the previous life, and what you are doing now will not come to fruition until your next life. In neither case does your present thought create your present reality.

Now I personally don’t happen to believe that particular view of karma. It’s a rather primitive notion subsequently refined (and largely abandoned) by the higher schools of Buddhism, where it was recognized that not everything that happens to you is the result of your own past actions. …

And so where does that notion itself come from? Here I am going to part ways with Treya and spin out my own pet theories on the people that hold these beliefs. I am not going to relate compassionately to the suffering these notions cause. I am going to try to pigeonhole them, categorize them, spin theories about them, because I think the ideas are dangerous and need to be pigeonholed, if for no other reason than to prevent further suffering. And my comments are not addressed to the large number of people who believe these ideas in a rather innocent and naive and harmless way. I have in mind more the national leaders of this movement, individuals who give seminars on creating your own reality; who give workshops that teach, for example, that cancer is caused solely by resentment, who teach that poverty is your own doing and oppression something you brought on yourself. These are perhaps well-intentioned but nonetheless dangerous people, who in my opinion, because they divert attention away from the real levels – physical, environmental, legal, moral, and socio-economic, for example – where so much work desperately needs to be done.

In my opinion, these beliefs – particularly the belief that you create your own reality – are level two beliefs. They have all the hallmarks of the infantile and magical worldview of the narcissistic personality disorder, including grandiosity, omnipotence, and narcissism. The idea that thoughts don’t influence reality but create reality is the direct result, in my opinion, of the incomplete differentiation of the ego boundary that so defines level two. Thoughts and objects aren’t clearly separated, and thus to manipulate the thought is to omnipotently and magically manipulate the object.

I believe that the hyper-individualistic culture in America, which reached its zenith in the “me decade”, fostered regression to magical and narcissistic levels. I believe (with Robert Bellah and Dick Anthony) that the breakdown of more socially cohesive structures turned individuals back on their own resources, and this also helped reactivate narcissistic tendencies. And I believe, with clinical psychologists, that lurking right beneath the surface of narcissism is rage, particularly but not solely expressed in the belief: “I don’t want to hurt you, I love you; but disagree with me and you will get an illness that will kill you. Agree with me, agree that you can create your own reality, and you will get better, you will live.” This has no basis in the world’s great mystical traditions; it has it basis in narcissistic and borderline pathology….”

Comment:

I posted this quote just after the quote I posted from Deepak Chopra, one of the most popular dispensers of New Age thought. I think it provides a corrective to some aspects of that thought. It’s not that I dislike Chopra or his brand of popular Hinduism. I don’t….at least, what I’ve read of it, which isn’t all that much. I think it has its uses. And apparently, millions of people agree with me on that. I also don’t think his comments about terrorism to CNN in November – which provoked a sharp reaction from Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal – are as off-base as she writes. They aren’t. He probably knows more about terrorism in India than she does.

But there is a tendency in a lot of New Age thought – one that gets amplified by the narcissism and consumerism of mass culture – to relate everything to the “inner” world of the self (the model of the self as “inside” and apart from its relation to the material world… and to others… is itself problematic). This tendency to dismiss logic, rationality, and the sheer materiality of life; to refuse harsh emotions, physical facts, and the intractability of things – this is problematic.

I’ve written elsewhere on the dangers of magical thinking. Here, for example, is a piece I did on Ward Churchill’s description of 9-11 as “roosting chickens.” It’s an interesting read, today, after the latest wave of terrorism in Mumbai.

In any case, here is the rest of Wilber’s critique in “Grace and Grit.”

(Note: I only know one book of Wilber’s – “Spectrum of Consciousness.” I thought its synthesis of elements from different religions tended to gloss over differences, in an effort to systematize, although it was fairly interesting and useful in other respects. It’s actually been some time since I read it, though, so perhaps I am doing it an injustice. It’s not the kind of thing I like to read any more. I prefer books that are more experiential, biological, and/or psychological.

Right now, in fact, I read a lot of peak performance literature.