Different and the Same
Contrasting Beliefs. “Many of the ideas of the New Age movement are elements of older spiritual and religious traditions, from both east and west, melded with modern ideas from science, especially psychology and ecology. It has roots in Spiritualism, Theosophy, and some forms of New Thought / Metaphysical movements, all of which date back to the nineteenth century.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Age
"The New Age movement began as an alternative to what many perceived as a failure of Christianity and …Secular Humanism to provide spiritual and ethical guidance for the future. … A number of fundamental beliefs are held by many New Age followers.
Pantheism: All that exists is God; God is all that exists. This leads naturally to the concept of the divinity of the individual, that we are all Gods. They do not seek God as revealed in a sacred text or as exists in a remote heaven; they seek God within the self and throughout the entire universe.
Panentheism. God is all that exists. God is at once the entire universe, and transcends the universe as well.
Reincarnation. After death, we are reborn and live another life as a human. This cycle repeats itself many times. This belief is similar to the concept of transmigration of the soul in Hinduism.
Karma. The good and bad deeds that we do adds and subtracts from our accumulated record, our karma. At the end of our life, we are rewarded or punished according to our karma by being reincarnated into either a painful or good new life. This belief is linked to that of reincarnation and is also derived from Hinduism.
Personal Transformation. A profoundly intense mystical experience will lead to the acceptance and use of New Age beliefs and practices. Believers hope to develop new potentials within themselves: the ability to heal oneself and others, psychic powers, a new understanding of the workings of the universe, etc. Later, when sufficient numbers of people have achieved these powers, a major spiritual, physical, psychological and cultural planet-wide transformation is expected.
Ecological Responsibility: A belief in the importance of uniting to preserve the health of the earth, which is often looked upon as Gaia, (Mother Earth) a living entity.
Universal Religion. Since all is God, then only one reality exists, and all religions are simply different paths to that ultimate reality. There is no one correct path. All paths eventually reach the top. They anticipate that a new universal religion which contains elements of all current faiths will evolve and become generally accepted worldwide.
New World Order As the Age of Aquarius unfolds, a New Age will develop. This will be a utopia in which there is world government, and end to wars, disease, hunger, pollution, and poverty. Gender, racial, religious and other forms of discrimination will cease. People‘s allegiance to their tribe or nation will be replaced by a concern for the entire world and its people."
http://www.religioustolerance.org/newage.htm
Parallel Beliefs. There are striking similarities in some New Age literature to the themes of the Rapture. One is the ending of the book Celestine Prophesy by James Redfield. Here there is an image, a hope, that the true believers, the ones who understand true spiritual principles, will transcend this plane of existence by changing their bodies into etheric form. To our eyes, they will become more and more transparent and then simply disappear.
“As we all evolve toward the best completion of our spiritual missions, the technological means of survival will be fully automated as humans focus instead on synchronistic growth. Such growth will move humans into higher energy states, ultimately transforming our bodies into spiritual form and uniting this dimension of existence with the after-life dimension, ending the cycle of birth and death." 9th Insight Celestine Prophecy, see also http://www.celestinevision.com/
This vision of bodily transformation is quite similar to what is talked about in the Rapture, including emerging into a permanent afterlife where one no longer needs to incarnate on the earth. It is not however accompanied by an earth catastrophe. The earth doesn’t come to an end. Those people whose spiritual vibrations are high enough simply leave together to work on a different vibrational plane.
Ascension. “In …some New Age groups, ascension is a process of spiritual enlightenment whereby any person may escape the physical plane of existence to become an ascended master.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_%28disambiguation%29
“One definition of an ascended master is an individual who has undergone the process of ascension. Throughout history, there have been stories of these individuals who have reached a higher state of spiritual awareness and placed themselves in service to humanity. In the theory of ascension, it is assumed that humans are composed of seven energetic bodies—physical, etheric, astral, causal, mental, celestial, and Christ bodies. The physical body is at the lowest frequency, and each of the successive bodies exists at higher frequencies. … Ascension is described as consciously increasing the vibratory rate of the physical and other bodies to the Christ level.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascended_Master
Volumes of esoteric material have been written on the teachings of Ascended Masters, which include the practices of how one can purify one’s own vibration to be able to ascend as Christ did after the Resurrection. None of the ascension teachings focus on an apocalypse. They are more in accordance with Hinduism in that the transcendence into a higher vibration of consciousness is a product of long and disciplined study and practice in clearing one’s whole being—body, mind and soul—of negative vibrations and purifying one’s spiritual intention. This is expected to take many years and even lifetimes, rather than the twinkling of an eye connected with the Rapture. See: http://www.ascension-research.org/ and http://www.iamuniversity.org/
“Ascension is the process in which the soul and form become one vessel, thus ceasing the need for the form altogether, i.e., the form moves into the non-physical realms along with the soul. …As soul learns all it needs to understand from a particular form, it ascends the form back unto itself, and the form ceases to exist. At one time, ascension was prevalent on Earth. This was a time shortly following the seeding of the human species on Earth by the Sirian Race some 200,000 years ago. …Over time, the process of ascension was lost too along with all of the genetic archives that would allow for such an experience in physicality. Over the past 8,500 years of human history, some beings developed a form of ascension that would allow them to complete certain spiritual initiations without biologically ascending the form but rather casting the form off (dying). The Order of Rize views this as a major distortion in the process known as ascension. Ascension is about the form and soul becoming one, not the soul separating from the form to complete its spiritual journey. …There have been many attempts …to restore ascension to Earth. …Jesus also came to attain a complete biological ascension.” http://http://www.2012.com.au/ascension.html+askdfjaskld+
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