New Age or More Old Age; underpinning Market Values

I do not like to be negative. To put people down who are trying to make sense of life. And in our present society anyone who advocates a balanced and integrated lifestyle has to be lauded. But that said I cannot help but hear that old cynical whisper when confronted with the New Age – Complementary movement. Now many New Agers would, no doubt, attribute this to my bad karma. Past lives of disbelief and scepticism. And fundamentalists of all persuasions would probably say the same voice was the devil whispering in my ear. But there is cynicism and there is healthy scepticism.

If any one figure of the New Age movement gets the cynical whispers going in me it is that of Deepak Chopra. Mr Chopra is a qualified medical doctor – a graduate from no less than the All India Institute of Medical Sciences; a prestigious institution by all accounts. However Mr Chopra does not actually practice medicine. No! he heads up the Chopra Institute for Well-Being. Their mission statement, to paraphrase, focuses on ‘enhancing health and the spirit’. It does this by ‘bringing together the talents of a number of professionals in the conventional, complementary, and alternative medicine fields’ It also offers, ‘health workshops, meditation instruction, hospital program development, and corporate training courses’.

I have nothing personal against Dr Chopra. In fact perhaps he gets the cynical whispers going because I cannot so quickly dismiss him. He does not, for example, wave tarot cards in your face, advocate the properties of certain crystals, or claim to go into a trance from which he drags up vague bits of mumbo-jumbo that could mean anything.

My first encounter with Deepak came through a friend. Might I say a good friend and genuinely well meaning person. ‘You must read this,’ she said. So I suspended my ‘oh yeah’ attitude and took the book she offered and promised to read. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Pocketbook Guide to Fulfilling Your Dreams (One Hour of Wisdom). It did not take me long. I think I hoped it would take longer. I managed to go through it in a lunch break. In between sandwiches and Moroccan-Spice soup. The result of which was, well, I waited for the wisdom.

It appeared to me, in his book, Deepak mixed a gentle dash of Indian mysticism into a generous soup of libertarianism and good business sense. As far as I could understand he claimed that health and wealth depend very much on our attitudes, our openness to the Universal life-force. If we thought positive thoughts positive things would come to us. If we were open to abundance then abundance would find us. Ill health and poverty were of our own making. Not to say influenced by karma.

Some of this is not new. The concept of a positive attitude and thinking still lingers in many of our cherished values. In fact elements of this belief can be traced through Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations to the Victorian concept of deserved wealth and self-help. It remains today embedded in the dialogue between left and right; at least in Europe. (except of course for the karma bit). But whereas most Victorian capitalists believed that the wretched and poor were wretched and poor because they did not work hard enough, drank too much, fornicated too much, none of them, as far as I can see, had the temerity to suggest that their condition was based on as intangible a concept as karma and past lives. Neither did they suggest anything to do with the Universal Life-Force. God was evoked, but generally as punishment for not trying. The belief in hard work did allow one an attempt at remedying one’s lot. Work harder man! With drink or fornication one could make an effort to desist. Self-discipline young fellow, self-discipline! (I mention males as females generally only officially begin to exist around the beginning of the 20th century). Established religion’s efforts were often aimed at supporting the above. However misguided.
No! I found Dr Chopra’s ideas rather flimsy. A bit too easy. All very well for these who apparently were making a tidy bundle from this ‘philosophy’. Comfortable justification for their success and material abundance?

Let us take the question of health for instance. The idea that good health has nothing to do with access to adequate and quality health care seems to fly in the face of post-enlightenment reason. It also contradicts sound science. Despite notions of karma and past lives antibiotics work on any body to which they are administered. Surgery removes tumours regardless of any alleged shenanigans in a patient’s previous life. Good sanitation and timely inoculation prevent the spread of disease whether karma determines people are deserving or not. Prompt admission to hospital in the case of sudden illness and access to quality care can make the difference between life and death; the difference between grieving loved ones and relived loved ones. Even if you were the biggest rogue in your last life those close to you love you in this one. My point being human intervention and effort make a difference.

What is really worrying is that elements of this type of ‘philosophy’ casually vindicate the driving market values that underpin so many 21st century approaches to social policy making. They tie in neatly with the downsizing of funding for health services, the increasing privatising of health care access and the belief (albeit unexamined) that only those with the wealth and power are deserving of what some consider to be at least one of a person’s inalienable rights; the right to health.
They also justify the increasing gap between those who have and those who have not. They suggest that if you are doing well it has been ordained by some un-interrogatable and unseen power. So you need not worry about how others live. Or what the long-term consequences of a dissatisfied and disenfranchised underclass would be. Or of the values being instilled into your children and grandchildren and what that might mean for the future.
Education is subject to the same pressures. Gone is the idea of a Universal system. Private academies and faith-based institutions are the shout of the day.

Where one can argue coherently that society should not be expected to provide the luxuries of life, the consumer perks etc without asking we make our contribution, that we show some initiative, that we work for them, health and in a wider sense well-being are all our right.

The New Age movement makes much of its belief in or a sense of a Universal Good. Yet it has proved itself skilled at positioning itself as arbiter of that good and then getting others to pay for it. It caters perfectly to those who already have all the basics. Now that you have the two cars, the luxury home, the twice yearly holidays why not add a little spirituality?
The Chopra Institute for Well-Being for example, currently offers ‘The Secret of Enlightenment’, a three day course for a throwaway $4575 – that is if you register early; otherwise it will cost a mere snippet at $4775. Or what about the five day ‘Perfect Health Program’ starting at $2875 and rising to $3475. Though rest assured an Ayurvedic spa treatment and two Ayurvedic lunches are thrown in.

Now it would be very cynical to suggest that in the case of Deepak Chopra, had he practised what he trained for, he would probably be just another doctor wrestling daily with people’s illnesses and misfortunes; that the lure of minor celebrity was just too much to resist. He would certainly have missed out on the poetry recordings with Madonna, Demi Moore, Sinead O’Connor, Angelica Huston plus the chance to author countless ‘mystical style’ books. He would also have passed up the opportunity to make many TV appearances, go into business with Richard Branson and co-write the script of a yet to be seen film entitled Buddha. But that perhaps is his karma.

I do not want to suggest that Dr Chopra is a charlatan, let alone accuse. (though I cannot be so sure about others who fall under the New Age – Complementary banner). But in our age of fascination with celebrity, with wealth, with luxury, in our consumer society of countless facile choices I do not think it is wild to say that the self-delusional, like the poor, are still with us. Dr Chopra and some of his fellow travellers have fallen headlong into a ready-made market. Justifying wealth without responsibility, health without conscience and a spirituality that condones our excesses and assures us we are basically fine as we are. What they prescribe is a little meditation, a workshop or two and some ‘complementary’ products from the shop. All with the patronage of those who can afford to indulge such illusions. And some who have a vested interest in keeping such illusions alive.

Hence the cynical whispers. Hence the past life scepticism. Hence the devil whispering in my ear.

I, for one, still believe, fairness and equality in society are things we must work and strive for. In my way I do believe in karma – that is, cause and effect. The society we get is the society we are prepared to believe in, the society we are prepared to take responsibility for.


Copyright (C) Peter Millington Oct 2007

the wayshower and the teacher.



Often I ran there. Feeling the freedom. Moving through the forest known simply as the Forest of Friendship. For what else would one call a forest that was so rich and sweet-smelling. A forest of such ancient and beautiful trees that even in our winter it held mystery. It held the murmur of the earth, the closeness of the air, caught the light of the sun.
I would come to the edge of the city and then the pathway that I knew led to the star-chamber. Leaving behind me the great glass buildings, the through-ways, the beautifully laid-out parks. Leaving the purr of the maglevs that ran east and west, north and south.
The shore of lake Chrinu, upon which our city is built, would recede. Not that I did not like to walk there. Hear the waves break and look out over its swaying surface. Dreaming of visiting the cities that lay on its far shore.
Yet it was the star-chamber I wished to visit.

He would be there. I knew. Sitting as he always did. One leg crossed over the other. His eyes closed yet his hearing alert. For as I ran, as I moved under the high leaf-laden branches, felt the brush of fern against my skin, its sharp-sweet smell rising to my nostrils, he would wait for me. Knowing the moment I cleared the wood-line, the moment I stepped into the space in which the star-chamber was built, to open his eyes. Then he would speak, saying.
"I sensed your approach."

It is a tradition among our people that the wise-ones who give guidance do not live in the cities. They enter the cities and are often to be seen in the glass-domed libraries reading the great works of literature of our people. They pour silently over these words. Words that are written into the memory of all those who live on the shores of Lake Chrinu. And though they walk the thoroughfares of the city, it is in the forests, close to the star-chambers they live.
It is believed that if a person should need guidance they must of their own desire ask for it. That is the way of our people. Knowledge is there for all. It is free for all. Yet it must be asked for.
One does not tell someone man who is not hungry he must eat. One does not say to the person is not thirsty they must drink.
To step outside the city is to surrender oneself to the earth. From which forests grow. Over which rivers flow. Those seeking guidance go to the wise-ones.
It was such a wise-one I would run to. Sanya he was named. In my confusion I felt a pathway offered to me. I would follow the way of those who seek truth.
Truth is freedom. Truth is the first condition of enlightenment. If a person cannot stand naked in the light of truth how then can they approach the greater light of understanding?

The day of which I speak I ran to Sanya for I wished to know of the difference between a wayshower and a teacher. A question that had perplexed me for some nights.
In Eratrin there are many wayshowers. A wayshower is one who shows the way to enlightenment. Yet there are many teachers. They are those who teach of the path of a wayshower.
I found him sitting before the star-chamber as was his custom. The star-chamber itself rose into the morning light. Its observation-dome shone clear. I saw through its open entrance, to the darkened walls on which were painted the many shapes and signs of the constellations of our world. And there was the sacred flame. The flame, it was said, that burned and was the watch-fire of all wise-ones; the flame of acceptance; acceptance of wisdoms greater than their wisdom.
Sanya sat as he always did. His robe wound loosely about him and his legs crossed. His head was bare and his face calm.
He greeted me with the gesture of friendship of our people. He called me 'friend' as he always did.
I went and sat before him. Hearing the sounds of the forest about me.
Birds sang. Their song pierced my heart. By midday any in the forest would seek the shade of the great ancient trees with their red-brown bark, their canopies of splayed leaves. Their coolness would be welcome. The sharp scent of fern would drift and calm the senses.
Yet here I sat before him with the sun not long risen. I had left the city early and found the path that led westwards. Following its dusty trail and then into the first trees and soon under the dense mix of green.

I was there for I had woken often during the night to see the moon crossing the star-filled sky. Leaving its glow as a memory in the first threads of dawn. I had risen before that dawn, asking that this moon might deliver me an answer. What whispered through my tendered thoughts was that I should determine the difference between the path of a wayshower and the path of a teacher. I should go to the wise-one.
So when the first light of sun came, I wrapped myself in my robe leaving the first stirrings of the through-ways, the opening of glass doors onto streets, and made for the forest.

"Wise-one," I asked, "explain to me the difference between a teacher and a wayshower."
He looked at me searchingly.
"Why do you wish to know this?" he asked.
I hesitated.
"Because it has occupied my thinking for some time," I replied. "I have not slept these last nights considering it."
He placed one hand over the other and appeared pensive. Yet did not speak for some time. Then he declared.
"You have not answered my question."
I bowed my head. I was quiet. In all the times I had come to seek his guidance I had grown used to this manner. He would elicit an answer from me. His response would subtly force me back upon myself.
"Do you mean why is this question of such importance."
He nodded his head.
"I cannot say. Perhaps it is that in my search for truth I have come to a place where I question my direction. I do not know how I should go forward.
He smiled.
"Or perhaps it is because in your search for truth you have come upon another truth."
"Another truth," I ventured. "Can there be more than one truth?"
"There is never more than one truth," he answered. "Yet it can be said there many levels and manifestations of truth."
"If there are many levels or manifestations of truth, is not the search for truth an unending search. If there is no one truth to which one arrives can it be said there is a truth that is above all truth?"
"Perhaps not," he answered. "But is that not itself a truth. Can one not say that truth is a truth above all truth. That there is an unending search for truth and the discovery of truth is as an ever unfolding journey."
I pondered this.
He remained silent. Then spoke.
"Tell me of your dreams."
"Still I dream," I said. "I dream I burn in the fire of dawn. I dream I am on a road without direction. I dream I am lost in the night with only the soft light of the moon. I dream I have an answer but have forgotten the question. Then I wake and think, these are but my dreams. Perhaps they are the longings of a foolish heart."
He laughed softly.
"A foolish heart is a heart that does not stop to consider its foolishness. A foolish heart is a heart that does not reflect upon the possibility of it being blind. If your heart were foolish then you would not be here before me. For you would have thrown yourself into the waves of the lake-edge upon which you wait. Or lost yourself in the crowd on the waterfront. Still you ask for guidance. You question your sincerity, your purity of purpose. You wait and listen to your dreams."
"It is so," I answered.
He smiled.
"I will speak to you of the difference between the teacher and the wayshower.
"Love can only find its expression in acceptance. Acceptance of the knowledge from which all knowledge flows. The self.
"Finding the pathway to that knowledge is the only pathway you can now follow. Listen."

"In the universe are many wayshowers. As many as there are rivers, are dawns, are seas, are moons, are suns. The number of wayshowers is as the number of leaves of the trees of a forest, the blades of grass in a field, the stones of a shore.
"If all these wayshowers were each a world then the number of teachers would be the number of people of those worlds.
"Why then must we look for a teacher? why must find a wayshower?
"We need not look. We need not wait. Only our vision is small. Our dreams narrow.
"The teacher we seek when our heart is questioning. When there rises within us a need to know. Blind as we are we do not see the desire of our heart until it appears in the mirror of the world.
"So is the world.
"It is when we are lost we search for the teacher.
"The wayshower we do not seek. The wayshower comes to us. The wayshower has never left us. Though we do not know it we walk always in the field of the wayshower we have chosen. Or who has chosen us.
"Our knowledge of a wayshower is like the seed that grows into the flower. The seed cannot understand fully the flower from which it has come. Though it will grow into a self-same flower. It will take each step it needs to take. As that is its natural path.
"Only when we have flowered, when we have grown and stand fully in the field of clear-thinking do we see clearly the wayshower working with us.
"What is the nature of the wayshower. Think of the wayshower as a person sitting beneath a tree. There is a breeze. It sways the branches of the tree lightly. The sun is falling. Its brilliance, its fullness is mediated by the tree and its branches.
"The person who is the wayshower watches the patterns the falling sun makes. They remember where it has shone, where it shines and contemplate that shining. They consider each pattern it has made or will make. Remember it is the breeze swaying the tree and the sunlight that forms the patterns. It is the wayshower who has learned to observe and consider the patterns.
"Each movement of the tree, each pattern focuses a different aspect of the world before their contemplation. Perhaps the insect moving slowly up the stem of a wild flower. The gossamer thread of spider-web left in tall grass. A bird swooping low.
"The breeze shifts the tree that shifts that pattern. The sun is the source of the pattern. For it shines regardless.
"The tree then is what mediates between the sun and the world. The breeze is the conveyor of the pattern and the conveyor of the sunlight. One could say that the breeze is the medium through which the sunlight and the pattern manifest. It is the wayshower that translates. The wayshower observes what they see and understand. This understanding is the discernment that light itself is the source of all light. The first universe is the source of all universes. All patterns are but a refraction of light falling through the breeze-changed branches of the tree. Each pattern reveals the many different aspects of a part of existence.
"One must learn to walk strong, to be certain in the path of true-living before one can approach the wayshower.
"The teacher is the person who helps the searcher along the path to true-living and clear-thinking.
"Teachers are many. Not all are good. Not all are wise. Some bring the searcher so far. Others take the searcher all the way. Teachers open the door on inner-being.
"It is wise to understand that though a teacher may be great in wisdom they may not yet be a free-being. A free-being is one whose consciousness is no longer held by the illusion of world. One whose consciousness has become tuned to the dream and the dreamer.
"For the searcher of truth there are things they must understand about their teacher.
"A teacher may be the very person who negates their learning.
"If they speak of wealth, a teacher may speak of poverty.
"A teacher may ask for questions then respond with silence.
"It is important to know that a teacher will not carry your burden. To carry your burden is your honour.
"Your pain may be your teacher.
"Your hope may be your teacher.
"Your solitude may be your teacher.
"Your love may be your teacher.
"A teacher is the person who stirs the memory of your unbounded self.
"It is in the stirring of the unbounded self that the teacher sets the searcher on the path to wisdom.

That day I walked slowly back through the forest.
I left the star-chamber with a feeling of calm. Again I felt myself to be moving with the lake upon whose shores our city was built. I knew I would go to its wharves as sun set. I would bow myself before its evening light.
Sanya, the wise-one, was correct.
It is in the mirror of the world that my dream appears.
My unbounded memory is stirred.
I will find the pattern of light I walk under.



Copyright (C) Peter Millington 2006

the adversary.

Far in the south, along the eastern shores of the Ireb, is a little known land. It lies in a narrow strip running east. Inotih it is named.
It is not mountainous as Coricia is, yet neither is it flat as the lands of the Hansa delta to the north are. It is a land of forest and wild woods. Of trees silver barked and dark leaved. Of valleys and plains and quick running rivers.
In the warm season the sun falls fierce over the hilltops and in the cold season the winds blow off the sea bringing soft rain and baring the branches of the forests and woods and keeping the small fishing boats tied to their harbour moorings.
It is a land, its people say, where one is born to learn of one's secret self, where dreamers wander and can dream their dreams how they will.

In Inotih the wooded hillsides fall gently to the sea. They are ochre-earthed and granite covered in places. There are the small villages one finds all along the Ireb. Harbours and inlets and beaten pathways that wind around the coast.
It was in one of those villages I passed a summer. To the north of the great city of that land. In a villa perched upon a rocky hillside.

The people of Inotih are great lovers of music and dance; a benefit for a wandering musician.
As evening approaches often they congregate about a village square to sing and dance. They abandon themselves freely to rhythm, to melody, as naturally as the breeze that moves the leaves of the trees or the tide that breaks the waves upon the sandy shore.
It is the fate of the wanderer to leave to chance much that those who are settled take for granted. The wanderer wonders often where a might will be passed. There is the open road, there are the homes of others. There is arriving and the question that hangs over every arrival. What will a city, a village, a land bring.
If the people of Inotih are lovers of music they are also a people that freely open their homes to those who pass through their country. Though little known this country is a reward to those who are persistent enough in their wanderings. It is spoken of with affection by any whose home is the open road.
It was there, in a village with a tree-shaded square, I met a man who offered me the hospitality of his home. For upon my arrival I had begun to play my lute for those who had gathered to listen. Its strings sang clear beneath the trees, its notes rose and fell as the first stars appeared over the hills.
He came to me. From his place among the onlookers. He was older than I in years. A man with close silvery hair and a handsome face. A face both serious and joyful.

I walked beneath the light of a new moon and came to his villa. It was set upon a hillside and hidden from the roadside by a grove of cypress. That night the sea was still. The moonlight reflected from its surface and threw long shadows on the silent earth.

Often we sat at evening, watching the sun set over the turquoise sea. It became pleasant to me so that I anticipated it with eagerness as the day drew to a close. For my host was eloquent and spoke freely of his life, his experiences. Being an official he had travelled widely. In the course of his service he had spent many years in the north. Finding in the colder climate, in the austerity of their beliefs an unease, a strange contracting of life.
I remember one evening in particular he spoke. And told me something of his beliefs. A subtlety of mind that has stayed with me since.
'Here, in Inotih,' he said, his eyes growing warm. 'we do not make of our gods one god. In Inotih the gods are in everything.'
I asked him to explain.
He told me of how the people of Inotih believe their gods are everywhere and in everything. There are gods of the forests and woods, gods of the sea, gods of music and dance, gods of the rocks and stones, of the running rivers. There are the gods of love, of death, of birth and of transition.
'We also make a distinction' he said, 'between the great gods and the lesser gods. And even the great greater gods are not one. If you travel through our country you will see their altars, their temples everywhere and in simplicity. You will see too the altars and temples of the lesser gods. For they are no less loved by the people of this land.
And he added.
'What are the gods then? But our dreams of ourselves. The gods are the dreams from which we spring and the dreams we become. If there is but one god there is but one dream. And perhaps there is but one dream and yet that dream is the dream of the many gods.'
He smiled and explained.
'I will give you an example.
'When I was in the north I had much opportunity to study the works of their thinkers. The thinkers of the north attribute great power to one they call the adversary. This adversary they claim has the legs of an animal and the torso of a man. And lurks everywhere. He is always ready to waylay the seeker of truth. This belief has gathered such weight with them that their lives are circumscribed by fear. To the adversary they attribute all the works of our lesser gods. So that in the abandon of music, or the joy of dance they see not the work of gods but a darkness that would keep them from truth. And they mediate upon this grave fact until their hearts are heavy and sorrowful. Until the world about them appears not to be a world of beauty and joy but a world that opposes them. One that opposes their search for truth. And then they come to fear it. They come to hate it. The world is not the playground of the gods but a place of darkness. It is the domain of the adversary.'
The corners of his eyes wrinkled and he laughed softly.
'I am not a philosopher. But I see that if there is an adversary in this world it is hate, it is fear. So the adversary these thinkers resist so greatly becomes a reality.
'And the people of Inotih,' I asked.
I looked to the setting sun. Long shadows fell upon the hillside from which we looked. The sea broke darkly below us.
'Ah,' he sighed dreamily. 'In Inotih we favour a more subtle understanding. We do not take a blunt instrument to make a thing of fineness. Beauty is everywhere, or so we believe.'
'You do not have this one those of the north name the adversary?'
He leaned back.
'No. But we do have one we represent as half animal, half man. Only we do not name him the adversary. We do not assign to him powers of obstruction and evil intent. To us he is one of the lesser gods. He is the god of nature in its wildness; nature in its joyful profusion. Nature in the purity of its untouched places. He is also the god of the sexual embrace; the god of our physical self. He is the god that takes pleasure in the body and in the joy of giving pleasure to another.
Here, in Inotih we do not distinguish between body and soul as the thinkers of the north do. For here we see the body as part of our dream of ourselves. It is the instrument through which we express our hidden self.'
He stood that evening. Then he turned to me. In the last warm fingers of the sun his face was soft.
'It is for this reason we dance,' he said. 'This is the reason we love music and the visions of poets. For like the animals we must seek shelter and warmth and that too is part of our dream. Like the animals we are possessed of our instincts and it is through them we bring the longing of our spirits to fruition. Yet unlike the animals we are guided by our spirit, by reason. It is only when the spirit, when reason is clouded with anger, with fear that our instincts drive us and not we them. For when the spirit is clouded so our instincts are burdens that dull our being. The world about us contains the darkness of the blind self. The blind self, the clouded spirit is the true adversary.
'In Inotih we dance, we embrace to forsake our fears. To discover the joy that softens all anger, all hatred. The joy that opens the eyes of the self.'

I spent some time there, waiting for the heat of summer to give way to autumn. Waiting for the trees to begin to turn. Then I took a boat that sailed south, crossing from the Ireb and into the Cirpassian sea. Seeking the warmth of its islands. Hearing the whisper of the desert said to lie on the Cirpassian's distant shore. Remembering the words of the man of Inotih. Remembering the wisdom of those who acknowledge the lesser gods. And in that acknowledgment the wisdom of the world about us.
To step straight from darkness into light would be to obliterate the self. To destroy the self that carries our dreams.
The people of Inotih, lovers of music, of dance know this truth. And their affections are free and their hearts open. Their gods are everywhere and their dreams accompany them through life.

When I sailed south that autumn I too understood this wisdom.


Copyright (C) Peter Millington 2004