New Age Spiritualities: How are we to Talk of God?
Richard Woods
New Blackfriars April 1, 1993 DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-2005.1993.tb07304.x (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Commentary Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Citations | 1 |
| Key points | Argues that Pacwa's definition of the New Age movement as based on monistic experience, pantheism, and millennarian views of history is 'very limited,' since no one literally experiences monism or believes in pantheism; contends Pacwa is really describing experiences and ideas he considers monistic or insufficiently distinct from the world. Contrasts this with Toolan's account, which presents the New Age as an 'epistemological revolution' blending Asian mysticism, modern physics, and transpersonal psychologies. |
Abstract
Two autobiographical accounts by American Jesuit priests of their New Age involvement have gained considerable attention recently—David Toolan’s Facing West from California’s Shores: A Jesuit’s Journey into New Age Consciousness published in 1987, and Fr. Mitch Pacwa’s Catholics and the New Age, published last year and already reprinted. David Toolan does not, so far as I am aware, attempt to define the New Age movement. But his encounters reveal this ‘epistemological revolution’ to be an amalgam of Asian mysticism, modem physics, and transpersonal psychologies. Its major proponents are the Esalen Institute, Jean Houston’s ‘Ritual Theater,’ and a host of physicists, psychologists, and naturalists, including Ernest Becker, Stanislaus Grof, Loren Eisley, David Bohm, and Ilya Prigogine, among others. According to Pacwa’s descriptive (and to my way of thinking very limited) definition, the New Age Movement ‘is a loosely structured, eclectic movement based on experiences of monism that lead people to believe in pantheism, with a tendency to hold millennarian views of history’ (p. 13). (No one, of course, with the possible exception of some professional philosophers, experiences monism or believes in pantheism or even holds millennarian views of history. What Pacwa means is that some people have experiences that he considers monistic rather than dualistic, or entertain ideas about God that he considers insufficiently distinct from ideas about the world, and who tend to think the world might end soon.)