On Saturday, 10 November 2007 at 08:44:28 UTC+11, NoVA101 wrote:

I had originally posted this on an Advaita board, but it basically
asks the same question of any philosophy that offers 'enlightenment'.
I would love your feedback!
*** Advaita ***
Advaita is one of a large number of teachings that offers "Spiritual Enlightenment." You could substitute almost any other teaching of "Enlightenment" in the discussion below.

*** Is Advaita a Cult?? ***
Do you really want to believe there is something more than just this
mundane, misery-filled, earthly life, and then that's it? Or do you
really WANT to believe there is something more? Advaita offers that
for which we have all been seeking: Enlightenment, Heaven on Earth,
the One True Way, Freedom from all suffering, and Oneness with God.
But is it just another Cult? Is it Brainwashing? Are its believers
Delusional or suffering from Psychosis? Is it just another religion?
There are zillions of people and zillions of groups who claim to have
"The Answer" to all your problems. Advaita is one of those teachings.
The people who "believe" in Advaita and claim that it has changed
their lives for the better say MANY of the EXACT same things that Cult believers do. How can you ever know if THIS set of beliefs is finally
"The Answer"?

*** SUMMARY ***
Advaita can be seen as the ultimate self-help program because it
solves 100% of ALL of your problems. That is because you actually
transcend this life, there is no "you" any more, you are one with
everyone and everything in the universe. You now realize your "true
natural state," you "awaken from the dream" which was the entire life
you had lived up until this moment. You are now "One with God" (you
and everything else IS God, you just didn't know it before Advaita),
you reach "Nirvana", "The Real Truth", "Constant Bliss", "Innate
Happiness", "True Freedom", etc. This is truly the answer to all your problems. Who wouldn't want all that?!
To achieve this, proponents often study ancient, obscure spiritual or semi-religious documents, usually with guidance of a Guru, ideally
from India. What you have to get is "ineffable" -- it can never
actually be explained, it must be experienced. But once you experience
it you will never want to (or even be able to?) go back. Many cool Eastern-sounding paradoxes abound: You must search for it, but you
can't get it until you stop searching for it.
You realize that there is no such thing as "time" any more. You
believe you are eternal, and this is just one of many of your lives.
If you are killed that is OK, that is just your body dying, that is
not the real you, you are Eternal. All of your thoughts and emotions
really don't exist, you realize there is no such thing as free choice,
you therefore have no responsibility.
Proponents of Advaita say that if you call them a cult, then you just
don't get it. Just like all cults do.
*** Reality, or Mental Disorder ***
Why do you believe what you believe? Most people don't even know WHAT
they believe, let alone the reasons WHY they believe those things.
SOME of the reasons WHY you believe what you believe are:
1. an authority figure you trust told you (parents, news reporter,
etc.)
2. you are afraid not to (authoritarian religious belief)
3. you really want to (there must be life after death, I don't want to believe this is all there is)
4. you engaged in groupthink (everyone else believes it, so you do as
well)
5. you had an EXPERIENCE that convinced you something was true
Note that the strongest beliefs we ever have are #5 -- things we
believe because we actually experienced them ourselves. And the only
way a person can get Enlightened in Advaita is by having a particular mysterious experience. Then they "know" it is true. But how can they
share an EXPERIENCE with you? They can't! Therefore the *ONLY* way for
you to "know" what it is like to be Enlightened in Advaita is to have
the required experience yourself. But once you have the experience,
there's no turning back!
It is 100% possible that believers of Advaita experience reality "the
way it really is", and are forever changed for the better, and they
know something that the vast majority of humans have never known and
will never know.
Also, it is 100% possible that the believers of Advaita have an
experience, and now they believe what they are experiencing, but they
are actually "Delusional" -- that is, they really, truly, totally
believe something that is in fact NOT TRUE. Obviously if you ask them,
they will say that is ridiculous, they "know" what is "true" and you
do not.
You have now entered the realm of Epistemology -- the philosophical
study of what is TRUE and what is REALITY and what are BELIEFS. You
will find NO definitive answers here.
SHOCKING Implication: It MUST be that EITHER people who are
Enlightened, or the rest of us, are DELUSIONAL. By classical medical definitions, one group is mentally ill! And neither one can know which
is right. Ever. This may be a truly impossible problem.
But look at the amazing implications of this! First off, is it
possible to have an experience that completely screws up your sense of reality? Are there other cases in regular medicine where this is known
to be true?
* Something you experienced, so you "know" it is true, but it
actually is not true at all, but you really believe it is, since you
actually experienced it? What is true reality? If it makes you feel
better, is that wrong? What if is actually right? But what if it makes
you feel bad, does that make it wrong or not true?
* Some people suffer a break with reality when traumatized by an
experience (shell-shocked, PTSD, victim of a crime) and they don't
know what reality is any more. Dissociation is a symptom of PTSD, and
it sounds shockingly similar to Enlightenment: "Dissociation is
another "defense" that includes a variety of symptoms including
feelings of depersonalization and derealization, disconnection between
memory and affect so that the person is "in another world," and in
extreme forms can involve apparent multiple personalities and acting
without any memory ("losing time")." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-traumatic_stress_disorder#Symptoms
* And since you now feel really much better about yourself, you stick
with that belief, even if the old "you" tries to pull yourself back
into the old belief of reality.
* If you had an experience that completely changed your view of
reality FOR THE WORSE, you would think you were sick and had a mental breakdown, and would work really hard to get your old view of reality
back.
* So we seem to have a measure of what reality is: if our view of
reality changes for the better, than that must be the REAL reality,
but if it changes for the worse, then that can't be real and we have
to be cured.
* That is why you rarely hear of anyone who gets Enlightened and then
goes and seeks a "cure" for this ailment. But there is one REALLY good (actually bad) example: Suzanne Segal, discussed below.
More implications: A Psychotic Break is a loss of contact with
reality, which is a mental disorder.
MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS: You should be alarmed that there seems to be a
growing trend of people who are seeking out this "enlightenment" thing
-- they are actively seeking to have a mental breakdown on purpose!
Here is a person writing about such an experience in a relatively
mainstream publication: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacey-lawson/who-are-you-really_b_67506.html?view=screen
BELIEVERS IN ENLIGHTENMENT: If you are an Advaita believer, even
though you don't really feel compelled to Enlighten anyone else, if
you speak the language of medical professionals to show them that YOU
have the correct view of reality, and they and everyone else is
actually suffering a mental illness known as psychosis. They will take
it from there -- it is the job and responsibility of medical
professionals to cure people of their illnesses, so if you can
demonstrate to them that they are mentally ill, and cure them, then
they will also cure others. Then it will become the medical mainstream
to fix the mental illness most people suffer from, and "cure" them by Enlightening them. Finally the world will be filled with people who
are cured of mental illness. A world of people who are Enlightened/no
longer mentally ill would be a entirely different world than anything
else in history.
Here is a scholarly work that compares Mysticism (such as
Enlightenment) and Psychosis.
"IT IS REFRESHING to read a paper that manages at once to be interdisciplinary and intercultural in its range of reference, and
that also confronts a difficult and controversial question about how
we are to assess the similarities and differences between psychotic
and mystical experiences. Many psychiatrists have been skeptical about whether there are any genuine differences..." http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/philosophy_psychiatry_and_psychology/v009/9.4mcghee.html
Here is the only guy I found who is a proponent of Enlightenment, yet
has any criticism of the potential psychosis of Enlightenment. But he
also makes fun of other teachers of Enlightenment, and you end up
having no idea what the heck is the "right kind" of Enlightenment at
all! http://www.infinitesmile.org/?p=172
Long paper comparing Psychosis and Mysticism. You will see that the Enlightenment promised by Advaita isn't all that special after all...
The Relationship Between Schizophrenia & Mysticism: A Bibliographic
Essay
http://sandra.stahlman.com/schizo.html
"As awareness increases to include more external and internal
information, a sense of self, a boundary between self and environment, expands, seems to dissipate. The experience is one of unity with
information formerly defined as non-self. This expansion of the self,
often referred to as loss of self, may not be beneficial for someone
who does not have a "strong" sense of self to begin with. To these
people, a mystical experience can be frightening and confusing, to say
the least."
"Addressing the concepts "unifying" and "ego-transcending" seems vital because the sorts of phrases turn up again and again in literature on mysticism. F.C. Happold (1975) writes "unless the idea of non-duality
can be grasped the range of mystical experience is
incomprehensible" (p.71). "Duality" describes the manner in which we
usually perceive our self in relation to the environment. A division
of "self" and "other" occurs. "Ego" can be used to refer to that self
which we are aware of. What happens during a mystical experience has
been described as transcending this ego, or going through a process of temporary "ego-loss." As multiplicity ceases, the experience is of a
mode of consciousness often referred to as "the One." "
"Kenneth Wapnick (1980) explains that mystics tend to follow a very structured, common process, culminating with the mystical experience.
He refers to an outline of this process created by Underhill in 1961,
in which the mystic moves from "an awakening of self" (p.323) to the purgation of attachments to the social world and the self, resulting
in an experience of "a state of pure consciousness, in which the
individual experiences nothing" (p.324)."

*** Positives ***
Here are some POSITIVE things that Advaita proponents say, that makes
them sound like they are NOT a cult:
1. "Real" Advaita leads you to an understanding such that you do NOT
feel compelled to teach others at all. Therefore all those teachers,
Gurus, etc. are suspect and may very well be frauds.
2. Those who experience Advaita claim to see everything in the world
as "unconditional love," including themselves and other people.
Presumably they don't want to do anything 'bad' to things they love, including other people, animals, the earth, etc.
3. There are proponents who say they have been "Enlightened" by the
teachings of Advaita, and they appear to live normal, productive lives
within the rest of society. They don't seem to do anything too extreme
like meditate on a mountaintop for the rest of their lives, or go kill
lots of people, or try to "convert" everyone around them.
4. There are only a FEW people whose teachings may be considered
Advaita who are obviously out to make money (such as Eckhart Tolle).
5. There do not seem to be any hard-core brainwashing techniques used
(google 'Scientology Brainwashing' if you want to see ALL the
techniques). Mostly it is up to every individual to seek out this
knowledge and continue to seek it out even when difficult.

*** ALL CULTS ***
ALL cults share a large number of these properties. (Longer
definitions of Cults are below, or search the internet for more
definitions. They all say and do the same things.)
1. They teach the "REAL" way to find God, bliss, enlightenment,
eternal happiness, etc.
2. They solve ALL of your problems.
3. They can't really explain it.
4. Only a select few ever get it.
5. There is a difficult journey to get it.
6. To get it requires resolve, faith, seeking -- often times for many
years or decades, or a lifetime.
7. Most followers got into it because of some pain in their life that
made them seek a solution to their pain, which makes them committed/ gullible.
8. There are always leaders that teach or have the special method that followers have to seek out.
9. The leaders have special powers, and followers get a "feeling" just
being in their presence.
10. They use lots of weird language and mumbo-jumbo.
11. SEPARATENESS. Members are set apart from the rest of society
because they are special. <-- IMPORTANT!
12. There are often cool mystical, spiritual, or religious ancient/old teachings and sacred documents.
13. Cult members "know" what is "true" and everyone else does not, so
they form groups to be able to interact with other who "know" the
"truth."
14. The actual destination is debated or mysterious, and is often
never really clear.
15. If you don't get it, that would be really bad.

*** NEGATIVE, Cult-like teachings of Advaita ***
Here are some NEGATIVE things that Advaita proponents say, that makes
them sound like they ARE a cult:
1. Look at the DEFINITION of a cult: they ALL offer the REAL solution
to your problems. The rewards for an Enlightened Advaita believer are astonishing! Here are just some of the things you hear Advaita
believers saying you will get:
Awakening from The Dream, The Ultimate Truth, God, Bliss, Heaven on
Earth, Unconditional Love, Liberation, True Freedom, The Highest
Happiness, Perfect Peace, Nirvana, Salvation, Metamorphosis, Universal
Law, Paradise, Dharma, Dhamma, Bodhi, Satori, Kensho, Prajna, Death of
the Ego, Perfect Sanity, An Illuminated Soul, Ancient Wisdom, Merging
of the Human and the Divine, Brilliant Infinite Self of Awakened Consciousness, The Vastness of all Being, the Enormity of who We
Really Are, One with the Universe -- to name just a few.
Everything that all ancient Eastern philosophies ever taught, and
arguably much of what Western religion teaches, is yours for free!
2. Very few self-help programs claim to ever be able to solve all of
your problems. Even New Age teachings often refer to the "spiritual
path" or your "journey towards Enlightenment" but they rarely if ever
claim any sort of final destination. Only cults and religions do: They
TELL you what you MUST do in order to be rewarded, and not punished.
Cults vaguely tell you that you must continue to follow their
teachings forever, because there is always something more, some higher
level to achieve, some mysterious secret yet to be revealed and
learned but maybe if you're really lucky you will be The One who
actually gets it. Many religions tells you that you must do certain
things here on this earth and struggle for an unachievable perfection
in this life, in order to get some reward or avoid some punishment
after death.
But not Advaita! They tell you that you will receive all rewards,
right now. All problems are solved. Heaven on earth. In an instant.
Well, maybe longer.
"When you see that that is what you are, then the very subtleness
expresses itself. That is the uncaused joy. Nisargadatta puts it
beautifully. He puts it in the negative. 'There is nothing wrong any
more.' "
http://sailorbob.net/home/books.html
3. All cults have some "difficult," "incomprehensible," or completely "ineffable" concepts that only a very small, select-few people know
about or can explain. If you take The Landmark Forum they repeatedly
tell you that you will "get it" but they never, EVER tell you what
"IT" is. IT is inexplicable, apparently. All Cults use have concepts
that are somehow spiritual, they just can't be explained rationally,
and even trying to understand things rationally shows what problems
you have, and how much you need whatever they are offering. Why can't
you just "let go?"
Advaita is arguably the most intense in this respect. The whole
problem is that you are not really YOU. YOU are actually something
else. So whenever you try to understand YOU, you is just getting in
the way. Only when you -- in some absolutely indescribable,
incommunicable manner "lets go" can the real YOU be set free,
liberated, enlightened.
4. This Advaita Enlightenment is not widely known, so only a select
few special people are seeking it, and even fewer ever "get it".
Before you get it, you get to belong to a cool, small, underground
group of seekers-of-truth who study ancient manuscripts and wise old spiritual guys from India who got Enlightenment spontaneously, so they
are really special.
5. Getting Advaita Enlightenment is also described as a paradox: It is actually staring you in the face right now, all you have to do is see
it. But almost no one in history ever has. So getting it is really
hard, but once you get it (often times after decades of trying) you
will see how easy it was to have gotten it. The struggle and the fight
to get it is necessary, but you only get it when you stop struggling
and fighting.
6. Getting Advaita Enlightenment is sometimes (not always) described
as requiring great discipline and resolve. Which sounds a lot like
religious faith, or faith in the teachings of a cult leader.
Andrew Cohen - Embracing Heaven & Earth, Page 23:
To succeed, we must be convinced beyond any doubt from our own
experience that Liberation is a living possibility, that it is real.
But from that moment on, whether that which was directly experienced
in the spiritual revelation is apparent or not, we must choose to be
free in every moment no matter what. That's when we become true
spiritual warriors. That's when we have finally become serious about attaining victory over ignorance in this life.
7. Like any self help program or group you can join that promised to
help you solve your problems, Advaita offers to solve ALL your
problems. And everyone who gets Advaita Enlightenment describes it in incredibly colorful language, often in flowery poetry, and almost
always as an amazingly awesome, reality-changing experience for the
better. Now imagine you have some pain in your life, and someone comes
by and offers you all of this peace, love, happiness, eternal bliss.
Why wouldn't you spend the rest of your life trying to find Heaven on
Earth? I know damn well from personal experience that if you try to
sell this to people who are HAPPY with their lives, they will think
you are nuts. So therefore in my experience, the ONLY people who seek
out Advaita are those who are in pain, weak, gullible, open to their teachings, etc. If you need to believe there is something more to this
life, Advaita offers all the answers, the Real Truth.
8. Advaita teaches that anyone can get Enlightenment right here, right
now, nothing special is required, you don't have to buy anything,
follow some teacher, or even do anything like meditate. And Advaita
teaches the ultimate Egalitarianism -- you aren't really you, you are
just part of all the universe, so the thought that any person is more
or less than any other is nonsensical.
Well, sometimes they say it really helps to learn from someone who is
already Enlightened, and is a master at teaching, known as a Guru or
Sage or something. Uh oh! In fact there is overwhelming praise for
their master teachers, they are revered as important historical
figures and spiritual leaders, and they have followers and some
Advaita students stridently argue their Guru is better than other
Gurus. And ANYONE who got Enlightenment *spontaneously* is extra-
revered! But people who get Enlightened by studying under one of the
special, well-known Gurus can and often do go on to become teachers themselves. Then they set up a cool thing called a "Lineage" which
presumably shows how good/special they are because they are a teacher descended from one of these revered masters. http://www.gangaji.org/satsang/library/lineage.asp http://nisargadatta.net/Navnath_Sampradaya.html http://www.ex-premie.org/video/pages/lineage.html http://www.realization.org/page/doc0/doc0097c.htm http://www.advaita.org.uk/teachers/lineages.htm
Also there is a really strong feeling that these revered, wise,
mystical ancient old Indian dudes must know something the rest of us
don't know. They really figured out the mystery of life. Wouldn't it
be cool if you could know what they knew? How could those mystical old
guys be just some sort of cult? No way. They must know something
really special. Magical. Spiritual. Mystical. God-like.

9. There are many stories about how people tried to get Enlightenment
on their own for a really long time, but when they finally met with
their Guru they "felt" a special "presence" and shortly thereafter
their lifelong quest for Enlightenment was over!
10. Advaita is an ancient Hindu teaching. So modern Western
practitioners can -- and do -- use really cool kick-ass Sanskrit words
like Atman, Brahman, Prasthanatrayi, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and
Brahma Sutras. And there are cool words like Non-Dualism, Delusion, Extraordinary Ordinariness, and the word Advaita itself. Now you get
to make up cool sentences like this one I found on the net:
"a. Brahman alone is real b. The world is unreal c. The world is
Brahman. This is an ancient quote from the Upanishads which was
echoed by Shankara. Appearances are only Brahman, short and sweet."
How do you like me now!!

11. SEPARATENESS -- Here we get into the culmination of a lot of
things that Cults do, and that Advaita does: separates people from the mainstream. And yet another paradox: Advaita claims that when you get
their brand of Enlightenment, you will become one with all, but at the
same time you know damn well that very few other people actually are Enlightened. So even though you now know we are all totally the same
thing, you are somehow different. Special. And get this: you now have
a cool new language to use -- JUST LIKE ALL CULTS DO, so when you talk
to people about what Advaita is and what happened to you, it will be
all cool sounding yet incomprehensible to them -- setting you APART
from the mainstream, just like ALL cults do. AND you have really cool sounding concepts, but you really can't explain them to people, just
like ALL cults do. AND you know some sort of Ultimate Truth about The
Way Things Really Are -- just like ALL cult members ALWAYS say. The
only way for people to understand you is to join in, to get
Enlightened themselves, just like ALL cults. Otherwise, all those
people from your old life are now not as good as you because you know
what is real and they don't. You are now separate from the mainstream.
But that is totally OK, you know skeptics just say these things, and
that is fine. You *KNOW* what the truth *REALLY* is, and those OTHER
people are fine just the way they are. You aren't out to convert
anybody. You KNOW what the truth is, you are perfectly content at all
times, including when people tell you that you are bonkers. You know.
They don't. You are special. You are different. Just like ALL other
cult members.

12. There are ancient Advaita teachings, written in Sanskrit. They are extremely sacred, opaque, and revered. Isn't it cool to be studying
some ancient mysterious wisdom that only a few people ever actually
"get" making them super-happy all the time? Dude, cool.

13. Enlightened people see almost everyone else as not-Enlightened
(or at best all other people are Enlightened they just don't know it
yet.) Therefore Enlightened people form groups of other similarly- Enlightened people to interact with. How hard it must be to talk to
all those other people who "don't get it" and are living a "delusion"
and are "still dreaming". We Advaita believers know what is true, and
we have our separate concepts and language. It is just easier to hang
out with other believers in The Truth. Just like *ALL* cults that
provide groups that allow you to indulge your separateness from the mainstream.

14. What exactly is the Enlightenment offered by Advaita? As best I
can tell, Advaita is NOT just another self-help program that offers
infinite incremental changes to yourself to make you a little bit more
happy all the time. It is a full on 100% transformation of the way you
see the universe and your role in it.
But it is completely "ineffable" and the way to get it is also
ineffable. Here is an illustration of ineffable:
Say a young woman tells a little boy that she is "in love." The boy
asks her what that means, and how did she get it. She will explain in colorful language the process of falling in love (or she might even
say, "it just happened"), and in very colorful language what it feels
like to be in love and how great it is. The boy, never having been in
love, will probably say he sort of gets it, and it sure seems great.
But he certainly does not now actually feel what she feels. Then a
friend of the girls comes in and says she is in love too. So she
explains it to the boy, and this next girl uses totally different
colorful language, and again it all seems great, but yet again the boy doesn't actually feel what she feels. Then the two girls turn to each
other and wonder -- are we feeling the same thing? The fact is they
can never know!
And that is what Enlightenment is like -- since no one can ever
explain it, no one ever knows if they really got it or not, or if
anyone else ever got it.
And there are some things that seem to offer Enlightenment, but it
just isn't clear. For example, lots of people say that "dissolving the
ego" is the definition of Enlightenment. http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&pwst=1&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=ego+death+enlightenment&spell=1
But believers in Advaita say you are "perfect" just as you are now, so
there is no need to dissolve your ego:
This is not about "giving up the search" or "transcending thought" or "dropping the ego". No, this message is simpler than any of that: it's
about life as it already is.
http://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/index.html
Finally, there are MANY different possible meanings of Enlightenment,
so the Advaita version must be something specific, yet ultimately indescribable.
In religious use, enlightenment is most closely associated with South
and East Asian religious experience, being used to translate words
such as (in Buddhism) Bodhi or satori, or (in Hinduism) moksha. The
concept does also have parallels in the Abrahamic religions (in the
Kabbalah tradition in Judaism, in Christian mysticism, and in the Sufi tradition of Islam).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_%28concept%29

15. Once you have tasted the promise of Advaita Enlightenment, how can
you stop trying to get it? Even though you didn't get it yet, you now
"know" that there is a whole magical world out there, and your current
life is just so small and meaningless. It isn't even "real",
everything you do isn't even real, your memories, beliefs and even
your thoughts are not real at all, you just need to "get it" and then
you will be free! How can you go back to your mundane life and just
forget about Advaita? This feeling that there must be more, just at
the verge of your knowing, will eat away at you forever. Think about
it all the time. Read books. Meet gurus. Join a group. JOIN US.

*** Cult Definitions ***
Here are some definitions of Cults off the internet, there are plenty
more. All that is really important is to notice that ALL cults have similarities, and Advaita shares MANY of these traits:
1. Cult roughly refers to a cohesive social group devoted to beliefs
or practices that the surrounding culture considers outside the
mainstream, with a notably positive or negative popular perception. In
common or populist usage, "cult" has a positive connotation for groups
of art, music, writing, fiction, and fashion devotees, but a negative connotation for new religious, extreme political, questionable
therapeutic, and pyramidal business groups. For this reason, most, if
not all, non-fan groups that are called cults reject this label. A
group's populist cult status begins as rumors of its novel belief
system, its great devotions, its idiosyncratic practices, its
perceived harmful or beneficial effects on members, or its perceived opposition to the interests of mainstream cultures and governments. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult
CHECK: Advaita = out of mainstream, great devotions, idiosyncratic
practices, perceived benefits.
2. CULT - Any group which has a pyramid type authoritarian leadership structure with all teaching and guidance coming from the person/
persons at the top. The group will claim to be the only way to God;
Nirvana; Paradise; Ultimate Reality; Full Potential, Way to Happiness
etc, and will use thought reform or mind control techniques to gain
control and keep their members. http://www.culthelp.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=5
CHECK: Advaita = does have revered leaders, offers ALL those great
rewards and a much more!
3. A group or doctrine with religious, philosophical or cultural
identity sometimes viewed as a sect, often existent on the margins of society.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cult
CHECK: Advaita = totally transcending society.
BONUS Definition:
New Age - New Age is a recent and developing belief system in North
America encompassing thousands of autonomous (and sometime
contradictory) beliefs, organizations, and events. Generally the New
Age borrows its theology from pantheistic Eastern religions and its
practices from 19th century Western occultism. The term "New Age" is
used herein as an umbrella term to describe organizations which seem
to exhibit one or more of the following beliefs: (1) All is one, all
reality is part of the whole; (2) Everything is God and God is
everything; (3) Man is God or a part of God; (4) Man never dies, but continues to live through reincarnation; (5) Man can create his own
reality and/or values through transformed consciousness or altered
states of consciousness.
http://www.watchman.org/cat95.htm
CHECK: Advaita = 1. Yes, 2. Yes, 3. Yes, 4. Yes, 5. Yes.
*** Enlightenment Gone Wrong ***

[continued in next message]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)