The New Spiritualist Worldview with Dr. Jeff Myers, part 3
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Dr. Jeff Myers: Another key point to this New Spiritualist worldview is this:
Life is about the search for higher consciousness
In other words, you know that you are becoming enlightened if you begin to give up the idea that you actually should think things through and apply logic to life’s situations, according to this worldview. You should give up having a reasonable reason for why you do the things you do in your life. Instead, you should search for something else – some reality that goes beyond the resources that you have been taught would help lead you to truth.
Well, what would this actually look like? It’s hard to tell, according to the writings in this field. But, one of the key terms that you will hear over and over again is the term “Higher Consciousness”. This means that while we are conscious of our own existence; but, if we are really meditating well, we can connect with this “higher consciousness… this god… this oneness of all things that actually exists”.
There’s an interesting book called War of the Worldviews that actually compares the New Spiritualist worldview with the Atheist Materialist worldview. I found it as being an incredibly interesting premise. On the one side, Leonard Mlodinow defends materialism. You may know Mlodinow’s name from the book The Grand Design that he co-authored with renowned physicist Stephen Hawking. But, Hawking went away from physics and into philosophy and religion and wrote a book. In doing so, he began to demonstrate that sometimes people who are super smart about science are not that great at philosophy and religion. So, Mlodinow – who is really smart, really funny, really incisive – helped Hawking write The Grand Design and co-wrote the War of the Worldviews with Deepak Chopra. Chopra is almost always listed along with Eckhart Tolle as one of America’s top spiritual teachers. Chopra defended the immaterial, spiritual view. So, you have one guy (Mlodinow) who only believes that the material world exists, and another (Chopra) who believes that the material world is immaterial to what actually exists. In other words, they try to explain the same data from completely different perspectives.
In this book, Deepak Chopra attempts to explain that higher consciousness has an intent for the world. Somehow, even though this higher consciousness is energy – and energy doesn’t create new things without a design and therefore a designer – it has an intent for the world. But, this puts Chopra in a tough position. If he acknowledges an intelligent design, people will say, “Ah ha! You’re talking about God, as a person!” So, Chopra tries to explain “higher consciousness” as NOT being like the Christian conception of God. This is how he phrases it (and I still don’t know exactly what he means by this):
“All we need is a universe that contains consciousness as an inseparable aspect of itself.” (Deepak Chopra in a debate with atheist Lonard Mlodinow)
You may see this thinking elsewhere, as well. In Colorado Springs, we recently saw ads for a Sant Mat “Awakening of Soul Meditation” seminar which offered this as it’s description: “The source of all life is God” (so far, so good). “…who manifests in the form of light and sound.” So, God is a force, not a person. And, if God manifests in the form of light and sound, where should we turn to find out more about God and His plan for the world? The documents about the seminar went on to say, “All blessings are available from within and they are ours freely for the asking.” In other words, attainment of self-knowledge and “God-reailization” is the birthright of every human being. If everything is this “force” (connected as one), and you are plugged into it, then God is actually within you. So, you should meditate in order to figure out what God is.
Another main idea of the New Spiritualitist / Cosmic Humanist worldview is:
Higher consciousness brings the unity which solves the world’s problems.
This is a point not embraced by a lot of people who otherwise embrace this worldview. A lot of people stop before they get to this place.
For example, a lady named Rhonda Byrne wrote a book called The Secret, which sold millions of copies worldwide. And, in the book, she says:
The universe wants you to be rich.
In other words, the universe wants you to succeed, be popular, be famous, feel an overwhelming sense of love in everything you do. If you tap into this higher consciousness through meditation, you will begin to get all the things that you need in the same way that you plug in an electrical appliance into a source of electricity and all of a sudden, it fires up and does all kinds of wonderful things for you. It’s the same idea. Most people make it very personal.
I remember listening to a very popular motivational speaker while riding my stationary bike a while back. And, as part of his motivational series, he said:
“There is a higher consciousness that, if we can tap into, can guarantee us ongoing success.”
The example he gave was this: “For example, my wife meditates on getting the parking space closest to the entrance when she goes to the store. And, invariably, she gets it!”
I nearly fell off of my bike when I heard this! But then I though, “Well, it’s worth a try!” So I went to the store, and throughout the whole drive there, I meditated on an open spot close to the front door, thinking that the whole universe was conspiring to open up that parking spot just for me so that I can pull into it when I arrive. And sure enough, the parking space closest to the front door was open!! Except, it had a big, blue handicap sign in front of it, so it wasn’t going to be possible for me to park there.
Now, I make light of this type of thinking. But, here’s the more serious issue. And it’s actually a pretty deep issue, at that. If I were to say to the speaker, “I have not been able to get to the parking space closest to the door. The universe has not made me rich. What’s going wrong?” His obvious response would simply be, “You’ve got to work harder and meditate better”
So, this whole worldview is based on works. The key to success in life is somehow coming back to what YOU DO… not what God does for you.
But, there are people who go to the next step and say, “If we were all to do this together, we would be able to arrive at enlightenment that would actually change the whole world.
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(This podcast is by Summit Ministries. Discovered by Christian Podcast Central and our community — copyright is owned by the publisher, not Christian Podcast Central.)