New Age Sociology

New Age Sociology – Introduction
New Age sociology and psychology will merge into a single discipline once everyone has made the evolutionary leap to collective godhood. Both will study a society unified into one mind (the mind of God). In the meantime, New Age sociology is attempting to explode the limits of a society that inhibits our ability to achieve higher consciousness. According to Gary Zukav, “communities, nations and cultures—all of our collective creations...reflect the decisions of our species to learn through fear and doubt.”¹ Marilyn Ferguson adds, “Every society, by offering its automatic judgments, limits the vision of its members. From our earliest years we are seduced into a system of beliefs that becomes so inextricably braided into our experience that we cannot tell culture from nature.”²

All social institutions should encourage us to seek inner truth from our perfectible human nature. Society must adopt a pantheistic perspective. David Spangler thus explains the New Age approach as looking at the objects, people, and events in our lives and saying, “You are sacred. In you and with you I can find the sacramental passages that reconnect me to the wholeness of creation.” It is then to ask ourselves what kind of culture, what kind of institutions—be they political, economic, artistic, educational, or scientific—we need that can honor that universal sacredness.³

New Age Sociology – Beyond Marriage and Family
New Age sociology sees marriage and family as outdated, unenlightened institutions. In their traditional Judeo-Christian forms, they are regarded as limiting—blind to the concept of universal sacredness and useless in helping us achieve full enlightenment. Vera Alder promotes a non-traditional perspective of family that sees “the idea that an unmarried person of either sex [having] to remain childless...far-fetched.”⁴

Shakti Gawain believes we need to alter our attitude about divorce to create a society that is more conducive to our evolution to godhood: “People who divorce almost inevitably feel that they have failed, because they assume all marriages should last forever. In most such cases, however, the marriage has actually been a total success—it’s helped each person to grow to the point where they no longer need its old form.”⁵

Thus, attempting to maintain traditional versions of marriage and family is counter-evolutionary. Gawain continues, “Relationships and families as we’ve known them seem to be falling apart at a rapid rate. Many people are panicky about this; some try to re-establish the old traditions and value systems in order to cling to a feeling of order and stability in their lives. It’s useless to try to go backward, however, because our consciousness has already evolved beyond the level where we were willing to make the sacrifices necessary to live that way.”⁶

Sexual freedom, including homosexuality, is a part of going forward. In order to allow all humanity to achieve higher consciousness, society should not limit our options. According to Kevin Ryerson, “Sexuality, whether homosexual or heterosexual, is the exploring of the personalities of yourselves as incarnate beings, or as a spirit inhabiting the flesh. An individual’s sexual preference should be viewed as neither good nor evil—such preferences are but the functioning of the body’s dialogue to and with another.”⁷

New Age Sociology – Educating for the New Age
New Age sociology calls for Cosmic Humanists to work within the existing educational system to encourage a limitless society. In fact, Cosmic Humanists tend to choose careers within education. According to Ferguson, of all the New Age professionals she surveyed for The Aquarian Conspiracy, “more were involved in education than in any other single category of work.”⁸ By teaching children the proper attitudes toward themselves and their consciousness, New Age educators believe they can create a generation capable of ushering in the New Age.

In an article entitled “A Religion for the New Age,” John Dunphy explains how Cosmic Humanist educators use their positions in the classroom to promote their worldview. He writes, “I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classrooms by teachers who correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call the Divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers.”⁹

The implementation in public schools of Values Clarification, sex clinics, moral relativism, biological evolution, Cosmos, and globalism indicated that Cosmic Humanist proselytizers have succeeded in establishing a foundation for their new faith.

New Age Sociology – Conclusion
New Age sociology maintains that modern society’s traditional views of family, church, and state hinder our evolution to godhood. In an effort to effect societal change, many Cosmic Humanists have chosen to work as educators so the next generation will learn to transcend traditional limits and achieve higher consciousness.

Because social institutions imply form and limits, Cosmic Humanists tend toward suspicion and rarely champion specific changes. Ultimately, meaningful change in society will occur only when sufficient meaningful change occurs in individuals. “Your decision to evolve consciously through responsible choice,” says Gary Zukav, “contributes not only to your own evolution, but also to the evolution of all of those aspects of humanity in which you participate. It is not just you that is evolving through your decisions, but the entirety of humanity.”¹⁰

Because each of us has God within, each of us individually has the power necessary to change society. Individual change is primary (psychology), while societal change is secondary (sociology). Societal institutions must refrain, however, from inhibiting our individual evolution to higher consciousness.