Carl-Richard

If it's mainstream and society-compatible, it ain't a cult. It's culture. The reason why scholars don't like the term "New Age" as describing a unified thing or movement ("the New Age movement") is because it's a collection of cults. They're so heterogeneous, lacking in a central orienting doctrine. New Age cults happen when a charismatic leader is like "we don't need those religions, we just need ourselves and our own insights into what is true" and then people ironically gather around that leader and listen to their thoughts because they of course need religion, they just don't want the current ones.

Actually, I'm creating a new category for this: post-New-Ager. It's when you're New Age compatible but you realize 1. you're religious, 2. current religious institutions are stale but religious institutions in and of themselves are necessary, and 3. the problem with current institutions isn't as much "it's religion" as it is dogmatism. Call it a "transcend-and-include" of New Age and traditional religion, a step from Green to Yellow if you wish. The Green New Agers exclude traditional religion, that's what makes them "Tier 1". Examples of post-New-Agers: Rupert Sheldrake, John Vervaeke, myself, Bernardo Kastrup also I seem to recall.

I'm an LGBTQ+ ally. But when I eat bananas, my brain goes nanana and my body goes bobobo (i.e. feminizing and non-vitalistic effects, PS: non-interchangeable concepts). Is it the copper? The fructose? The potassium? The magnesium? The polyphenol oxidase? What's up with this penis shaped yellow flag?

But not the priests or rulebooks for disseminating the teachings and to whom. They want to be in charge and open-source everything, even if it leads them to losing an eye (even a third eye).

New Age are (typically) closed to many elements of traditional religiosity, like the institutional and more tightly communal aspects. Hence New Age is the religion of cults. Propose to a New Ager the idea that religion in the institutional and widespread sense might be good, even for achieving their own goals, and they'll not take you seriously. The individualistic dogma is strong.

Mysticism vs theism (they're not mutually exclusive but still distinctions). Definitely in Christianity. Faith, hope, etc. (and submission in Islam). It's a product of the Axial revolution (the evolution from a circular to a linear/transcendent worldview). You see it less in Hinduism. And nature religions that predate Christianity (e.g. Norse paganism). But it's all religion. Yes, there is a difference in cognitive development (or at least the cultural code associated with it), hence Blue vs Green. Conformism is stronger at Blue than Green. But there is still conformism, community, belief in Green and any cultural code. It's not a hard line. A category like "religion" vs not religion, you would want a hard line somewhere, a definition. A new-ager has faith and hope in awakening being real and possible, even if they're not currently awake or is yet to experience it, even despite hardship.

Did you tell them it's the office air? 😶‍🌫️

I'm not saying they are similar in every way. I'm saying they are similar with respect to whether you want to call it religiosity or not. Religiosity is a vast concept. Traditional religious people tend to be Blue, New Agers tend to be Green. They seek/aim for the highest value. The level of conviction may vary. But doubt is common even in traditional religious people. And non-dualists are of course thoroughly convinced that they have found the Absolute truth, even if they're seemingly currently in an egoic state of mind.

He is his own thing definitely, evidenced by my utterly weird description of him. All descriptions are of course partial, but we can still try. Anything involving "seeking" (a search for the ultimate value, be it God, Consciousness, Love, etc.). You can of course again make a distinction between that ("spirituality") and "traditional" religion (allegiance to a specific traditional religion), but it's quite superficial when you consider again that the people act very much the same (they tend to hold beliefs they cannot currently verify, they seek out and engage in communities of likeminded individuals, and they very often take knowledge and inspiration from existing traditions). New Age is basically what happens when you take somebody who grew up atheist or agnostic or skeptical of traditional religion and they rediscover the religious impulse but they can't pretend like Jesus is the only Lord and Savior.

Why does he think that?

Shrödinger's Cat. It used to be the name of a show I watched on TV as a kid. It was about science and it was probably my favorite program.

😂

😂

And what does he mean by that? That his Chamundi hill story is bs?

Let's see what wikipedia says: I think the best description for Sadhguru is ironically just "Indian guru".

Ok fuck it, Hinduism is a wacky religion and a culture, so Sadhguru can be a Hindu AND New Age.

Fingers 🥴

Banana too big.

Because he is not literally a Hindu "bible-thumper", a literalist traditionalist. He is like a weird thing: a New Age Hindu/India supremacist or something like that, like I tried to explain above. He has contemporary non-dual / New Age background / cognition and lingo but he uses a lot of Hindu stuff, and he makes the claim that Hinduism is "spirituality" rather than religion. That's simply it. Take an Indian atheist from the 1980s/90s, make him have an awakening, and what you'll get is a Sadhguru-kind-of-guy. Had he called himself religious (which he doesn't), he would be like a Rupert Sheldrake. He has a soft-spot for Christianity, he calls himself a Christian, he calls himself religious, but he has New Age roots and cognition. There is like a "dumb" kind of New Ager (the one who thinks New Age is not a religion) and the ones who think it is a religion. The dumbness just makes it obvious that they are New Age, but if your background is obviously postmodern, post-rational, atheist, individualist, even hippie, you'll also be New Age.

What, do you have a banana up your butt? All the mods in the thread are having a great time. Right? Right? Right? Yes.

Religion-critical, culture-aware, Hindu supremacist. It's really funny. The same reason he calls Hinduism not a religion is the same reason why New Agers call New Age not a religion. "It's just people practicing their own thing". It's of course all hocus pocus anyway. New Age is religion, Hinduism is religion. "Seekers" believe in stuff they have no personal experience of, before they have the personal experience. They follow religious frameworks (dogmas) that shape their path, their practices, what they find useful or relevant to invest time in. And they engage in communities that share their view and that amplify their vision and share knowledge, practices, insights, get advice. And of course they worship.

New Age is postmodern, individualistic, (and often) syncretic. It critiques the ills of traditional religion as dogmatic and besides the point, it focuses on individual practice / individual insight and "going inwards", and it may incorporate a multitude of practices from different cultures (as it has deconstructed the adherence to just one set of dogmas as necessary or useful). But I would say its defining characteristic is its postmodern / post-rational qualities, its syncretism is a downstream effect of the former.

So does the New Age. Does that make New Age Hindu? The hell. Bingo.

Ok it's weird: he shits on religion more than you do, and he does the thing where "we're just seekers, not believers", like you and other New Agers do, but he applies that to the entire Hinduistic/subcontinental enterprise ("we've always been a country of seekers, not believers"). So he is like a Hindu/India supremacist while still New Age. "Seeker vs believer" is a New Age concept. It's directly tied to the modern atheistic critique. "We're spiritual but not religious".

Bruh this is a braindead take. He shits on religion more than you do.