Letter On New AgeTruth

Dear Hodor23

If you met her and found her sincere, would that change my mind?   Well, yes, and no.  Remember, it is normal for people to ‘show their best side’ when in relationships, particularly romantic relationships, and I know that that is not what we are talking about here, but I offer it as an example of how people… almost all people… have built up a certain skill level at projecting a Model Ideal Self.  Typically the Romantic Charades stop at marriage, when the real personalities show themselves; but when certain persons adopt a Projected Persona for Business Reasons, often the person realizes very deeply that such a Persona needs to be maintained.   It is too risky to drop the act.  Spiritual Groups always wind up breaking up over ‘insider revelations’, that is, when the Guru  or Cult Leader lets down his guard and acts a bit too casually toward some of the members or devotees.   So the best Gurus never let their guard down.    Indeed, I was thinking of writing a Screen Play about a Fake Guru who finds that one of his followers is the “real deal” and then becomes very conflicted between maintaining his own personal Empire and his urge to advance his more deserving protégé, and one of the big turning points in the screen play would be when the Fake finally lets down his Projected Image Persona and becomes Real.

 

Oh, I admire your reaching out to me, so let me tell you a story from more than 40 years ago.  I was in College and I found this fascinating little New Age Book by a Mr. George Weed I believe, and it had all sorts of fascinating  ideas that were new to me.  A friend of mine, a beautiful  albino Upper Classman, whom I was showing the book to, snatched it out of my hands and tossed it in the nearest trash bin, and told me I must hold myself up to Academic Standards, and advised me to check out perhaps William James’ “Varieties of Religious Experience”, or to go back to some of the famous European works on mysticism and spirituality, such as Saint Teresa of Avila’s “Interior Castle”.  These pivotal works do not go away, and everybody can refer to them.  But these flash in the fire New Age books that pop up every five minutes, so the latest Pretty Person can go on Book Tour and run those Seminars, well, they come and go.  Five minutes later it is useless to quote them because everyone has either forgotten or never known the reference.   For instance, I went to Amazon and tried to find a book by my poor old Mr. George Weed, and found that a mere half century was enough to totally submerge him in oblivion.

 

Now, if you really like New Age, then why not go back to the source materials that everyone… all the fakes… have been using for the best part of a century now.  Madame Blavatsky, and Annie Besant and the Theosophical Society.  Even Edgar Casey stole from them.  Oh, here is an example -- Let’s face it, WHAT!? “Akashic Records”?  Until Madame Blavatsky wrote of the Akashic Records, there had never in the History of the Universe been any even tiniest reference to such a thing as  “Akashic Records”… but now no New Age Book is complete without a section on those Akashic Records.  Which brings up a point about how to Pull Off Being a Fake.   You simply repeat back what your Target Audience already thinks it knows, and in a deplorable way, the Knowledge Reinforces itself… it seems Truer every time it is repeated.   And only Blavatsky would know the Joke, but after she died, well, it isn’t funny anymore.   Nobody knows what came from any honest investigation or scholarship or what was simply invented to charge the atmosphere with wonder and amazement.  So we are in a place where we can’t suppose something is true simply because we hear it being repeated all the time.   So I am old fashioned and will only listen to a Saint, that is, someone who can support what he says by being able to demonstrate an affirmative connection with the Divine Will and Power.   If you want to show me the Truth, then you will have to show me God too.   Religious and Spiritual Truth can only be verified by Miracle.