Copyrighted 2009

Many New Agers say the New Age movement is the result of a leap in human evolution.  According to this explanation, humanity as a whole, or a part of it, has made a big leap in evolution, and the New Age movement is just an outer manifestation of this evolutionary leap.  As one major advocate of this explanation, Peter Russell says, “Humanity is not bound to a long, slow process through trial and error . . . As a result, human evolution has taken a huge leap forward; so much so that we now appear to be in the midst of an unprecedented period of extremely rapid development . . . Could we be on the threshold of a leap as significant as the evolution of life from inanimate matter?”[i] This leap is a larger spiritual explanation of the New Age movement because it sees human beings not as individuals but as part of a larger spiritual organism that includes all humans or the entire earth, as in the Gaia hypothesis.

Many prominent New Agers agree with this explanation, although they disagree on the nature of this leap.  Ken Carey says of the evolutionary leap that “this will be a transition as great as the transition that inspired the first cellular assemblies some 3.5 billion years ago.”[ii] Barbara Marx Hubbard is somewhat more conservative about the breadth of this leap: “I believe we are born at a time as great as that during the step from animal to early humanity.  It is a jump from the separated human to the human connected to all beings, the human co-creative with Nature and, as Thomas Jefferson would have said, Nature’s God.”[iii] John White is even more modest in his view of this leap and says that it is only the emergence of a new species: “What is coming to pass today . . . A new species is making its way onto the planet . . . Outwardly, these mutant humans resemble the earlier forms.  The difference is inward, in their changed mentality, . . . Homo noeticus is the name I give to the emerging form of humanity.”[iv] James Redfield, author of The Celestine Prophecy, also asserts that humanity is undergoing an evolutionary leap.  At the beginning of his book (in line with his mass marketing approach), Redfield makes a generic, modest claim about the nature of this leap: he says that soon “human society will take a quantum leap into a whole new way of life.”[v] At the end of his book, however, Redfield has stopped being so conservative and claims that people will soon evolve so much that they actually transform themselves into light. Theodore Roszak, as befits a scholar, is comparatively restrained about the importance of this leap, and says “We can discern, through all these starry-eyed images of an Aquarian Age filled with wonders and well-being, a transformation of human personality in progress which is of evolutionary proportions, a shift of consciousness fully as epoch-making as the appearance of speech or of the tool-making talents in our cultural repertory.”[vi]

This explanation appeals to New Agers because many of them feel that something larger than merely a paradigm shift is happening to them.  As Hubbard says of the New Age: “This is not just a cultural change.  This is an evolutionary change.”[vii] Moreover, New Agers claim that recent developments in science support the possibility of this evolutionary leap.  For example, Marilyn Ferguson claims that evolutionary leaps are supported by Stephen Jay Gould’s version of evolution – punctuated equilibrium.  Ferguson says Gould’s punctuated equilibrium version of evolution supports rapid evolutionary change instead of the gradual evolutionary change supported by more mainstream Darwinians.[viii] Moreover major scientists such as Julian Huxley supported Teilhard de Chardin’s similar claim that there will soon be a leap in human evolution where we will join our consciousnesses into one in what Chardin calls the noosphere.

The first problem with this explanation is that the notion of an evolutionary leap is not an established scientific fact; Gould’s idea of punctuated equilibrium is only one possible theory of evolution, and it has not yet been accepted by the majority of scientists.  Furthermore, even if Gould is right, there certainly is no scientific support for such a major evolutionary leap as some New Agers are claiming.

The second problem with this explanation is that the explanation promises so much – a leap in human evolution – and the New Agers themselves deliver so little.  People who are involved with the New Age, while different from others in views and attitudes, are not so much greater than other people that they can possibly be considered a great leap forward in evolution.  This is trivializing the notion of real changes in evolution and puts the New Age movement into the category of fantasy. Some New Agers worry this explanation feeds the egos of people who believe in it. So Paul Hawken, the author of The Magic of Findhorn and one of the leading exponents of New Age business practices says, “There’s a vanity in the ‘new age’ thinking that claims we are approaching a threshold, a pinnacle, the crest of human evolution- a favored moment in time when all of humanity can become enlightened.”[ix] The third problem with this explanation is that this change often requires nothing on the part of the people making the change.  James Redfield says, “All that any of us have to do is suspend our doubts and distractions just long enough . . . and miraculously, this reality can be our own.”[x] Redfield is not the only New Ager who takes this position; many other New Agers agree with him.  So to make this leap in evolution, all we have to do is to suspend our doubts and disbelief.  This seems like wishful thinking and maybe even dangerous.  When one suspends all one’s doubts about something, it is easy to be misled by negative or evil people who are more sophisticated and less kind-hearted. Furthermore, this means people do not have to do anything now to be part of the leap.  David Spangler, the New Age thinker, is against the idea of seeing the New Age as a quantum leap in evolution for this very reason.  He says people need to work on integrating their personality to be part of the movement.[xi]

Copyrighted 2009

This essay was written by Joseph Waligore. He dedicated his life to following the will of the Universe when he was 20. Seven months later he received a message from his Higher Self or inner connection to the divine to quit Dartmouth College. Through following a deep intuition in a dream and after many synchronistic experiences, he met his soulmate and married her. He and his wife followed their spiritual intuitions in their daily lives, including receiving messages to have children. For twelve years he stayed at home and raised his three children while his wife worked. Then, his wife told him he needed to make some money, so he got a Ph. D. in philosophy from Syracuse University. He currently has a part-time job teaching philosophy and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. More information about him can be found at his MySpace profile. He also has a website with information about his own spiritual journey and his spiritual philosophy.

There is a Facebook group called Flowing.  People interested in meeting other people who are interested in these ideas and/or participating in discussions about these ideas are invited to join the group.

Many people reach this site through keyword advertisements. It might be of interest that Joseph got the money for these ads through his daytrading profits.

---

[i]  Peter Russell, The Global Brain:  Speculations on the Evolutionary Leap to Planetary Consciousness (LA:  J.P.  Tarcher, Inc., 1983), p. 33.

[ii] Ken Carey, The Third Millenium:  Living in the Posthistoric World (San Francisco:  Harper San Francisco, 1991), p. 142.

[iii] Barbara Marx Hubbard, as quoted in Laurel King, Women of Power (Berkeley:  Celestial Arts, 1989),  p. 281.

[iv]John White, in the introduction to the 1979 International Cooperation Council Directory, as cited in Constance Cumbey, The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow: The New Age Movement and Our Coming Age of Barbarism (Shreveport, Louisiana: Huntington House, 1983), pp. 111-2.  Italics in the original.

[v]James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure (New York: Warner Books, 1993), the unnumbered page just before p. 1.

[vi]Theodore Roszak, Unfinished Animal: The Aquarian Frontier and the Evolution of Consciousness (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 3.  Italics in the original.

[vii]Barbara Marx Hubbard, as quoted in King, p. 281.

[viii] Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s (Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1980), p. 157-62.

[ix]Paul Hawken, as quoted by Allan Hunt Badiner, “Natural Capitalism,” Yoga Journal sept/Oct 1994, no. 118, p. 71.

 

[x]Redfield, p. 0.  Italics in the original.

[xi] David Spangler, Emergence: The Rebirth of the Sacred (New York: Delta, 1984), p. 96-7.

Copyrighted 2009

My name is  Joseph Waligore.   I currently have a part-time job teaching philosophy and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.   More information about me can be found at my MySpace profile or my Facebook profile.

This website is one of four websites I have.   At makingyourconnections.com I have a posted a significant portion of a self-help book  I am currently writing.  This book helps people succeed in the world by making their connections, the special people in their lives.  Another website, www.followingtheflow.com is for spiritually oriented people and discusses very similar ideas from a more spiritually oriented perspective.  Another one, www.josephwaligore.com is for academically or intellectually oriented people.  It has my writings about spiritual philosophies such as Stoicism, Socrates, the Deists, the Enlightenment period, and the rise of modern science.

There is a Facebook group called Flowing.  People interested in meeting other people who are interested in these ideas and/or participating in discussions about these ideas are invited to join the group.

Many people reach this site through keyword advertisements. It might be of interest that Joseph got the money for these ads through his daytrading profits.