New Age religion / a complete hijack of Hinduism regurgitated to gullible Westerners

[Kumar_Das]

Namaste,

In this thread I would like to expose this so-called "New Age" movement.

I shall attempt to explain several things;

1) how it must have started

2) what it actually stands for

3) how it basically steals the enlightenment of what our great Hindu Rishis have realized from our Hindu texts, and other texts which Hindus consider to be true revelations directly from God

[Eastern Mind]

Vannakkam Kumar Das: Welcome to the forums. Looking forward to this expose.

Aum Namasivaya

[Sahasranama]

Welcome, I am very curious about this topic.

[yajvan]

hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~

namast� kumar das

Namaste,

In this thread I would like to expose this so-called "New Age" movement.

I shall attempt to explain several things;

1) how it must have started

2) what it actually stands for

3) how it basically steals the enlightenment of what our great Hindu Rishis have realized from our Hindu texts, and other texts which Hindus consider to be true revelations directly from God

Can you perhaps begin with a definition ( or multiple ones) ? I for one am not sure of what 'new age' really is and comes to me only as a faint idea or conjecture of what it really means.

praṇām

[Kumar_Das]

Vannakkam Kumar Das: Welcome to the forums. Looking forward to this expose.

Aum Namasivaya

Welcome, I am very curious about this topic.

Thank you Eastern Mindji and Sahasranamaji.

Sorry for not posting further about the topic specified in this thread as I had promised.

Actually the day when I had registered and started this thread itself I had type an extremely long essay explaining what I had mentioned as 3 parts.

But I had accidently closed the browser and everything was lost... *sigh*

I don't want to talk about that. I will try to recollect and post in due time.

hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~

namasté kumar das


Can you perhaps begin with a definition ( or multiple ones) ? I for one am not sure of what 'new age' really is and comes to me only as a faint idea or conjecture of what it really means.

praṇām

Yajvanji, I had explained everything in what I had typed.

But as for now, I shall post these videos. I planned to include them part of my original essay. But since I wasnt able to post. I think I'll these videos for all to comment upon.

Are these pretty much not based upon Hindu scriptures especially Advaita Vedanta scriptures of Adi Shankarcharya?

Brahman and Atman is compared to ocean and a drop. And the "I am that I am" is "aham brahmasmi". Realizing Brahman leads to moksha, liberation from reincarnation...

In a nutshell, let me just say, these Westerners who used to be xtians, smacking their heads with the bible and brandishing a crucifix about some non-existent semitic son of god, invisible big daddy in the heavens and a ghost that brings you to the two. And labelling everyone who didnt follow this madness as heretics all of sudden speaking about these concepts?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXp2D2m32FM

Gary Zukav

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Zukav

An a harvard graduate who is an american war veteran suddenly realizing all these very profound concepts that only has been revealed by greatest of our Rishis within the scriptures?

This is pretty much Advaita Vedanta Monism. He talks about duality and illusion(maya).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5EDktQz5cM

"his true nature is not confined or limited to any particular form or shape, in an attempt to comprehend God many people often humanize the ineffable to the point where God's true nature becomes obscured and goes unrealized"

For 2000 years Europeans have been worshipping, mourning and beating themselves over jesus and begging themselves to be relieved of their eternal sins. All these years we have never heard about such things from. How did they suddenly know about all this?

Btw I hope not to seem anti-Western or anything. What I am appauled by is how they start speaking about such knowledge all of a sudden and claiming to have realized these things themselves.

It took India thousands upon thousands of years to get to this stage of realization. And out of the blue you have Westerners who are traditionally xtian speaking about all these.

[Odion]

Welcome! I am interested in hearing about your opinion on New Age.

My own view of New Age is that it's a bastardization of Sanatana Dharma with elements of Buddha Dharma in there, as well as some concepts which are just.. odd, to me.

[rainycity]

is this an attitude similar to the one fundamentalist christians have about new age?

[Eastern Mind]

Vannakkam all:

I have been reflecting a bit about this topic. I think that it is an error to make a sweeping generalisation of 'the new age movement'. In fact is is a wide mixture of many many things. "New-age" groups vary greatly from each other, as do Hindus. We complain that 'Hinduism' is really a misnomer and talk of its vastness, and yet we lump all these variations of something new, or different into "new-age" which is also a misnomer. Usually there is nothing new at all. It may come from theosophy, any of the earth's religions, western and eastern mysticism, astrology, gem study, tribal beliefs, psychology, and more. So I think we are being a bit hypocritical to lump the whole mishmash of great variety into one simplistic term instead of taking a closer look at each individual group, (if we want to) as we don't like outsiders from Hinduism doing that to us.

I ask anyone here to come up with a clear definition of the term 'new-age'. I certainly can't.

Aum Namasivaya

[Ao]

I've given this some thought, and the conclusion I came to was this: Shouldn't we be happy that people are finding these truths, regardless of the cultural baggage they may be bringing with them and the labels they may be applying to these truths? I mean, Hinduism is one of the great, if not the great, tolerant religions, right? Shouldn't we support seekers to keep searching for the truth regardless of the form they come in?