Products sampled from this guide:
...so I'm working on a new book tentatively titled Mystic Bourgeoisie: Numinous Lunacy & the Sanctimonious Narcissism of the NewAge++ (or) the unlikely story of how America slipped the surly bonds of earth & came to believe in signs & portents that would make the Middle Ages blush.
I like short, pithy titles.
The idea of the ++ in "NewAge++" is that this new breed (ilk, if you will) comprises far more than the usual tinfoil-pyramid-hat crystal aromatherapy angels-out-the-yin-yang crowd. Many concepts that have come to be uncritically accepted as capital-T Trooths would have been laughed at not so long ago. How did this stuff sneak up on the culture at large? How did its axioms and premises come to infiltrate the shelves of the typical bookstore beyond the New Age -- excuse me -- Metaphysics section? Today these hugely questionable ideas permeate books categorized as Self-Help, Relationships, Psychology, Health, Philosophy, even Science. How did Americans (especially but not exclusively) become so steeped in outright superstition?
Read 'em and weep
The pharmacological experimentation of the 1960s certainly precipitated a resurgence of edgy and full-bore occult beliefs. A couple good books on Esalen Institute, the scene of the crime for much of this malarky, are The Upstart Spring: Esalen and the Human Potential Movement: The First Twenty Years and On The Edge Of The Future: Esalen And The Evolution Of American Culture (Religion in North America). One of Esalen's chief boohoos at the time was Abraham Maslow, whose The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (An Esalen Book) became something of a sacred text for the newly hyper-spiritualized encounter-in-a-hot-tub set. The "transpersonal" so-called psychology that came out of those hot-tubs is now widely accepted as relevant to some actual reality, though there's not a shred of evidence that it constitutes anything more than drug-induced wishful thinking. Roll up for the mystery tour. Here are a handful of titles to get you rolling... A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality (though Wilber now claims to be neither New Age nor Transpersonal; uh-huh), The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives (by an old acid "researcher"; me too, but I quit just shy of 10,000 um experiences), and Shadows of the Sacred: Seeing Through Spiritual Illusions ("the writing is always engaging and lucid" says Booklist, but YMMV; mine did).
The Lower Dregs
And those are among the | |
