V. DECEIVED BY THE NEW AGE - The Story Of A New Age Priest

Imagine you are in a secluded place. Suddenly in front of you appears a shining person radiating intense golden-white light that almost blinds you by its brilliance. He also emanates a soothing presence, filling you with a beautiful sense of peace as you stare transfixed by his radiance.

In an amazing appearance, a dazzling person like this stood before me on the morning of October 30, 1981, about a year after I had started attending classes at the Lighted Way. When I first saw him, my own initial thought was, He looks just like Jesus Christ.

On the morning of the master's appearance, as I pulled myself out of bed, little did I anticipate that I was about to experience an incredible life-changing event. I was about to be taken into the innermost depths of mystical experience and would never again perceive the world in the same way.

After showering, I returned to the bedroom to do my morning meditation. It was a condition of class membership at the Lighted Way that each student should engage in a private meditation session every day. In the Hindu/Buddhist type of meditation that the Lighted Way taught, it was desirable for the meditator to hold his spine as erect as possible, supposedly to enable a free flowing of the energies associated with the chakras. I usually had difficulty doing my meditation because of a painful back problem that has plagued me since childhood.

This morning was no exception. I felt very uncomfortable as I began to sit cross-legged upon the carpeted floor of my bedroom. The pain in my back prompted me to consider cutting the session short. But I then remembered the words of warning expressed by Master Djwhal Khul in one of his books: “It is impossible to progress along the spiritual path except through the practice of meditation”.

I heeded the advice and disciplined myself to sit upright as best as I could. After carrying out the preliminary invocations and prayers, I sat still in meditation. Fighting my back pain, I struggled to keep my torso straight, knowing that the posture needed to be correct for the meditation to be effective. After about three minutes of discomfort and irritability, I had to get up and stretch. I was again tempted to abandon the session and leave the house for my job as an engineer. I just didn't seem to be in the mood for meditation. But the inner voice of conscience prompted me to give it one more try. I again sat down on the floor, crossed my legs, closed my eyes, and repeated the main invocation ritual.

The Mysterious Enveloping Force

I had been meditating for only about four or five minutes. The discomfort in my back was intense, and I had difficulty sitting still. Cramps afflicted my legs as if I had been chained in stocks for several hours.

Suddenly, a physical force that I had never felt before seemed to come upon me. Brilliant light filled my whole being, as if my whole body had become an incandescent lamp. I felt and perceived this sphere of light to be encompassing me and permeating every cell of my body. My brain, especially, was flooded with light, as if a thousand-watt bulb had been switched on inside of my head.

I noticed I had lost all sense of weight and discomfort. The backache was gone. The mysterious force now acted dynamically upon my posture. It felt as if someone very strong took hold of my torso and forcefully straightened my back and shoulders until I was held fully upright. All remnants of muscular tension had entirely disappeared.

I did not feel any sense of apprehension over what was happening. On the contrary, I felt a deep sense of peace. I noticed I had lost all sense of gravity, as if I were completely weightless and were levitating just above the floor. Yet at the same time I was very much aware that I was still sitting in a corner of my bedroom. My mind, my rational thinking, was still functioning normally, with clear and precise, logical thoughts. I had not taken any kind of drugs whatsoever.

The Master Appears

Suddenly, a man radiating intense golden-white light stood before me. My first perception was that the mysterious, shining figure looked just like Jesus Christ.

Immediately a strong intuitive thought, or “knowingness”, surfaced that told me this person was Djwhal Khul, the high-ranking member of the White Brotherhood of Masters. He was the master who had dictated to Alice Bailey the contents of the metaphysical books she had published under her own name.

He appeared to be surrounded by so much brilliance that I could not make out any background scenery. All I could see was his kingly form surrounded by light as he stood motionless before me.

I noticed his curly golden hair resting upon his shoulders. He wore a long white robe. His arms hung at his side, and his feet were hidden by the light that enshrouded his entire being. Even though I had difficulty distinguishing his facial features because of the intensity of light that seemed to emanate more strongly from his face, he looked very handsome and dignified.

In spite of the fact that I was enveloped in intense cosmic energy, my mind and intelligence did not in any way feel hypnotized or “possessed” by Djwhal Khul's presence. I had sharp clarity and awareness in my thinking.

“How are you doing?” Djwhal Khul asked me.

I noticed his lips did not move when he spoke. The communication seemed to be transmitted telepathically. I perceived his message clearly, but seemed to hear it with an “inner ear”, as if his voice were speaking directly into the inside of my mind.

After asking the question, he waited for my reply.

“Well, I am struggling on in my spiritual life”, I calmly told him.

I spoke to him with my mind rather than by using lips and vocal chords. It was as if I telepathically communicated my statement. I somehow “knew” that Djwhal Khul could understand me and was able to respond through direct return communication.

Djwhal Khul then commented nonchalantly, “Yes. Well, that is how it is”. I sensed the gesture of shrugging his shoulders.

Feeling relaxed and at ease, I then took the initiative to ask him about a specific health problem that had been bothering me for some time. I was eager for his reply.

“Don't worry about it”, he simply commented.

After a few moments of silence on his part, he suddenly disappeared, leaving behind the intense aura of brilliant light, which slowly began to dissipate. Simultaneously, physical sensation began to return. My back posture started to sag, and I became aware that I was sitting in an uncomfortable cross-legged posture.

The light and the mysterious force that had filled my whole being now vanished. I moved my aching muscles and became conscious of the fact that I had suddenly resumed breathing. Apparently it had been unnecessary to breathe while in the presence of the great master.

I got up to stretch my legs and then sat on the bed to think about the meaning of this experience.

Wow! I thought, I have made it to something big.

I recalled Djwhal Khul's teachings, as recorded in Alice Bailey's books, of how a dedicated aspirant on the metaphysical path can eventually receive a reward for his efforts. He can receive the honor of being made a personal disciple of one of the masters of the White Brotherhood. The master then appears to the disciple to confirm the master-disciple relationship.

Regarding myself as one of the luckiest people in Los Angeles that morning, I was delighted to have been selected for training as a personal disciple of one of the masters. I was especially excited by the fact that I had been accepted as a disciple by the distinguished Master Djwhal Khul, the master whose books I had so reverently appreciated and loved to study. Oh, how much I admired the wisdom contained in his writings. I had never read anything so captivating and intellectually inspiring. For me, his works had relegated the knowledge of Kant, Aristotle, and Sartre to the kindergarten level.

I felt privileged that I could now serve “God” by serving under his noble agent, my master, the venerable Djwhal Khul. It was as if my highest dream and ambition had come true.

I recalled how only a few days previously I had taken a private vow of celibacy. It appeared that “God” had truly rewarded me for my decision to renounce women and sex and to seek the things of “God” by making me a disciple to one of the masters. I knew I would face much hardship on the discipleship path, but I had faith that the forces of the heavenly realms would assist me.

I was thankful to “God” that I had been through the emotional hardships and feelings of dissatisfaction that had prompted me to search for existential knowledge; for they had led me to seek wisdom, understanding, harmony, and fulfillment of my life's destiny plan. Now at last, the master's appearance seemed to give me tangible proof that I had been searching in the right direction.

Suddenly realizing that I would be late for work if I sat around any longer, I headed out of the house and jumped into my car. During the twenty-six-mile drive to work, I thought of nothing except the privilege of being a disciple of Djwhal Khul. I wondered where my life would now lead, but I really didn't care. All that mattered was that I must serve the master.

After arriving at work, I started to feel tired. Normally I am a fairly energetic worker, but on this morning I had difficulty concentrating on my job. As the morning progressed, I felt more and more fatigued. By about eleven, I felt absolutely exhausted, both mentally and physically. I could hardly stand up, and every muscle in my body ached as if I had just completed a twenty-six mile marathon. I had never felt so exhausted in my life, not even during a severe bout of influenza. I told my supervisor that I was feeling very sick, and I returned home, where I collapsed in total exhaustion and slept for hours.

The visitation of Djwhal Khul involved a colossal depletion of my energy reserves. I recalled the apostle Paul's blindness and weakness after his initial encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus. Reasoning that one doesn't get exhausted from dreams, vivid imagination, or hallucinations lasting for only three or four minutes, I knew that whatever happened to me was real and involved a massive taxing of my energy system. I had not been involved in any kind of drug taking.

Any lingering doubts in my mind regarding the existence of spirit beings were now demolished forever. The dramatic visitation by Djwhal Khul relegated the philosophies of materialistic atheism to the level of absurdity. I now had total faith in the New Age movement and its array of metaphysical teachings.

Spirit Guides and Their Master-work of Deception

Djwhal Khul's books fascinated me. I had read several of his volumes with great enthusiasm and had become captivated by his apparently vast knowledge regarding the realms of God and the way God interacted with humanity through the medium of spiritual energies, spirit beings, and masters such as Djwhal Khul himself and Master Jesus. Djwhal Khul's books had the power to radically transform my life: to completely change the way I thought, the way I viewed the world, and the way I perceived my destiny.

By means of telepathic communication, Djwhal Khul was able to dictate verbatim the contents of twenty-five volumes of esoteric metaphysical knowledge through a woman named Alice Bailey. The books, published between the years of  1919 and 1949, provide much of the doctrinal basis for what has now emerged as the New Age movement. Amazingly, at one time Alice Bailey was a devout Christian and wife of an Episcopal priest before she became influenced by friends who belonged to the Theosophical Society.

In his Alice Bailey-authored books, Djwhal Khul claims that he is a senior member of a group of people called the Hierarchy of Masters. He has deceived many people into thinking he is an emissary from God. In reality, he is one of  the main spirit beings orchestrating the New Age movement.

He maintains that he is a human being born more than 350 years ago in Tibet, where he was at one time the abbot of a Tibetan lamasery. He asserts that through the process of meditation and strict spiritual practices, and through the assistance of heavenly beings, he has so evolved his consciousness as to have reached a state of immortality in his current physical body. Hence his claimed ability to have lived for almost four centuries.

Djwhal Khul claims that his immortality was bestowed by means of an initiation ceremony held in the heavenly realms, called the “fifth initiation” (also known as the “ascension”, “Christhood”, or “mastership” initiation). As a result of this cosmic initiation, Djwhal Khul alleges that he became a member of an elite group of human beings who describe themselves as being “ascended masters” and who have attained immortality, never again to be reincarnated.

“Jesus Christ” and the Hierarchy of Masters

In his metaphysical works, Djwhal Khul contends that forty-nine human beings presently living on the planet - most of them in remote areas of the Himalayas - are ascended masters. As a group organization, he calls them the “Hierarchy of Masters” (also “the White Brotherhood”, “the Masters of Wisdom”, “the Hierarchy”, or simply, “the Masters”). The leader of the Hierarchy, a master called Lord Maitreya, holds the executive office, or title of “the Christ”.

Djwhal Khul claims that “Jesus Christ” is a senior-ranking member of the Hierarchy of Masters and asserts that the great legendary gurus of India, such as the Buddha, also form part of the brotherhood. He contends that the Hierarchy are working for the spiritual evolution of humanity on planet Earth in all its aspects: religious, political, technological, scientific, and cultural.

Djwhal Khul specifically teaches that Master Jesus is alive on the planet, busily directing the destiny of Christianity by telepathically transmitting ideas into the subconscious minds of the leaders of the Christian church. He emphasizes that Master Jesus is a man who evolved himself over successive incarnations and initiations until he became an immortal “Son of God”, just as the other masters, such as the Buddha, also became “Sons of God”.

According to Djwhal Khul, the masters can exit their physical bodies and travel around in their “soul” or spirit” bodies to any location on the planet, unimpeded by distance or time. A master also supposedly has the power to condense his spirit body into a visible body of light, called the 'anuvarrupa' in Hindu terminology. Thus the master would be in his anuvarrupa body when he appeared to someone as a shining being of dazzling light, just as Djwhal Khul appeared to me. The master can, at will, condense his spirit body into a physical form and be seen, touched, and experienced as a regular human being.

The New World Religion

Djwhal Khul claims that as part of his work for “God”, he was assigned the special project of bringing to humanity the New Age teachings for the New World Religion. Designed to integrate Christianity and the Eastern teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism into a homogeneous wholeness, the New World Religion pretends to reveal the full expression of divinity in all its aspects. Djwhal Khul asserts he received most of his knowledge directly from his own superiors in heaven.

His books have found their way across the globe. They cover a wide range of topics - from cause of illness, psychoses, and demonic possession to development of intellect, growth of civilizations, and economic cycles. Thousands of people have completely changed their lifestyles as a result of his writings. I myself became so overwhelmed by Djwhal Khul's concepts and his intellectual genius that I revered him as a great saint.

Perhaps the most important and the most deceptive, are Djwhal Khul's teachings about the Holy Bible. He demonstrates a vast knowledge concerning the major religions of the world and even comments about the nature of God Almighty, the Most High, and the operations of the heavenly throne.

One statement especially caught my attention:

What do we mean by that phrase “forces of evil”? Not the armies of unrighteousness and sinfulness, organized under that figment of the imagination, the devil, or some supreme antichrist. For such an army does not exist, and there is no great enemy of God, arraigned in battle against the Most High. There is only suffering, erring humanity.

I found his statement a brilliant confirmation of what I had believed for many years: Satan did not exist. Djwhal Khul then went on to describe just what the forces of evil were:

The forces of evil are, in the last analysis, only the entrenched ancient ideals and habits of thought which have served their purpose in bringing the race to its present point of development, but which must now disappear if the New Age is to be ushered in as desired.

Slavery to the Masters

Impressed by his vast knowledge, I felt honored to become Djwhal Khul's obedient and devoted disciple. Eventually, however, the esteemed discipleship turned into a nightmare of slavery.

I had little money, but gradually I was forced to give everything I had to support his New Age cause. Eventually I devoted all of my time to the furtherance of his work. In obeying his teachings and commands, I believed I was serving God. In return, I was promised healing and happiness, abundance and joy. I was even promised immortality in this lifetime. Not one promise was to have lasting fulfillment.

I became one of the many people who are now consciously serving the masters and the other spirit guides through a direct and personal relationship with them. On a global basis, millions of people are being lured into following the inner guidance of their “higher consciousness” through meditation and other consciousness raising techniques. Opening the door of the mind to the “higher self” really does allow one to contact the realms of “the spirit”. At the time, I never suspected that the powers of the spirit world that I was turning to were those same powers that the apostle Paul warned about in his message to the church at Ephesus:

“We are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood, but against persons without bodies - the evil rulers of the unseen world, those mighty satanic beings and great evil princes of darkness who rule this world; and against huge numbers of wicked spirits in the spirit world” (Ephesians 6:12)

Djwhal Khul's specialty is counterfeit religion. He is a master forger who tries to lead even the elect astray, if that were possible. As a Christian, you need to be aware of the activities of Djwhal Khul and his colleagues. Masquerading as Jesus Christ, they sometimes appear to Christians, attempting to deceive them into believing that they are being visited by the real Jesus.

At the time of my dramatic rescue from the New Age movement, I discovered that the masters and the other cunning New Age spirit guides have a leader.

He is, of course, Satan, alias Lucifer, alias the devil.

Long ago the apostle Paul warned us of his deceptive powers: “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).

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Chapter 6

DECEIVED BY THE NEW AGE - The Story Of A New Age Priest

This paperback is subdivided into fourteen chapters which should be read in sequential order. A true story touching on the high points of  the New Age movement  describing the experience of a young man who let go of his Christian background in order to find something more promising and more powerful. Because of his sincere devotion he advanced quickly. He found that the key to successful discipleship  and communication with the masters was frequent and regular, eastern-type meditation. He visited  what is called the “Vatican City of the New Age”, and he had actual encounters with the masters Djwhal Khul, Sanat Kumara and others. Lots of fun!

Start  with  the First Chapter. Name of  the author, publisher and  ISBN number may be found at the end of the last chapter (start with the First Chapter).

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“Get down on your knees!”

“Get down on your knees. I am Jesus Christ, and I am going to heal you”.

I listened to Muriel's narrative with fascination. She was standing at the front of the class in our New Age center and was describing an incredible experience that had recently occurred to her in the middle of the night.

“I am telling you the truth,” Muriel continued with excitement. “He stood there right in the middle of my locked bedroom and told me to get down on my knees. If people think that Jesus is a weedy weakling, they are in for a big surprise. He is over six feet tall and looks very dignified and handsome.

“He is a power-r-r-ful being,” she stressed with force.

I started to feel somewhat uneasy as I sat listening to Muriel's account. Blonde and of good height, she was about sixty years old and looked fairly slender in her attractive blue dress. Her face beaming with joy, the founder and director of our center described what happened next.

“I got out of bed and knelt in front of Jesus. He laid his hands upon my head and gave me a blessing. Then he turned around and walked straight through the solid, locked door of my hotel room”.

Muriel commented matter-of-factly. “He was gone. He just disappeared into the corridor”.

This was the second occasion in which I had listened to Muriel's account of the visit by Jesus to her hotel room. After her experience, many changes started taking place in the Lighted Way, our small metaphysical organization. I was becoming quite confused. The new Christian emphasis made me feel uncomfortable.

It wasn't that I disbelieved Muriel's experience. On the contrary, I fully accepted her narrative as being factual. After all, I was a board member of the center and had known Muriel for several years. She was very spiritual, and I had never observed her to lie or exaggerate. What made me feel uneasy was the new focus upon the Bible.

Muriel was a New Age channeler, or spirit medium, when she founded the Lighted Way in the early sixties. Shortly after her visit from Jesus in 1985, she communicated a message from the Holy Spirit saying that I should throw away all my occult books and start to study the Bible instead. I was reluctant to accept her advice and give up my beloved esoteric volumes.

I had been a member of the Lighted Way for five years and loved the metaphysical teachings. Over the years I had had many spiritual experiences, some of them as important to me personally as Muriel's visit from Jesus was to her. For example, about a year after my first visit to the Lighted Way, I became a devotee of a noted Hindu/Buddhist guru called Djwhal Khul. After the four-year relationship with Djwhal Khul, I could not understand why I should suddenly become a follower of Jesus Christ instead and be required to trash all my occult books!

[NOTE Channelers are New Age mediums who claim to be able to receive messages from intelligent spirit entities existing in the spirit realms. The act of channeling is the verbalization by the medium of any messages received.]

Muriel had stated that the metaphysical books were only half-truths and that the Bible was a much greater source of divine wisdom. But I remained reluctant to become involved in this Christianity.

I gradually began to acknowledge the fact that Jesus had taken over our center and that I must accept him as my master. I purchased a Bible and started to attend the weekly Bible-study classes and prayer groups that were being offered in lieu of classes on metaphysics.

The teachings expounded at the Lighted Way evolved into a curious mixture of New Age mysticism and biblical Christianity. We regarded ourselves as New Age Christians. I even began to tell people that I was a born-again Christian. After all, I had given up my Hindu guru and accepted “Jesus Christ” as my master and savior.

During my meditation periods, I could sense that “Jesus Christ” and the “Holy Spirit” were inspiring me through my voice of conscience, exactly in the manner that Djwhal Khul seemed to have done previously. After a while, I became devoted to this Jesus. He took over my life.

I was also told to attend regular Christian church congregations so that I could meet new friends and interest them in meditation and other less offensive New Age ideas disguised in biblical-sounding terms.

Avoiding anything too controversial, I presented subtle suggestions here and there. I found quite a few people who were willing to listen to my interesting proposals. For example, a pastor from an evangelical congregation told me it would be a good idea for me to start a meditation group in his church if I could get some people interested.

Two years after the mysterious visit by “Jesus Christ” to the director of our New Age center, I experienced a dramatic conversion to authentic Christianity and discovered that the Jesus Christ I was following was not the real Jesus, Son of God Almighty. I was devastated to learn that as a New Age Christian, I had been following false prophets and false teachings purporting to be revelations of wisdom from God.

You may be wondering, Who or what appeared to Muriel in her hotel room? Was it her imagination? Or was it perhaps a demon in a disguise, pretending to be Jesus?

Regarding the second possibility, perhaps you do not believe in the existence of satanic angels. When I was a Christian youth, I held the same view. Believing that evil angels were simply mythical, I never thought it was possible to be influenced by them. However, some definite power certainly took control of our center and my personal life. I was destined to have a profound and incredible learning experience before I was pulled from the clutches of darkness and brought into the true light of a relationship with Christ.

The New Age Seduction of Christians

Several months after my rescue from the New Age and its counterfeit Christianity arm, I gave a personal testimony about my experiences to a large group of Christians at a camp meeting. I told them about my experience of being held firmly in the grip of deception perpetrated by the New Age cult movement and about its endeavor to fuse Eastern philosophy with Christianity.

After the talk, a middle-aged Christian couple approached me. With a worried expression on his face, the father reported: “Our daughter was always rather timid and nervous. She recently started to attend Yoga classes. Now she is also doing meditation in order to find peace and relaxation. She tells us that it works. She is becoming more and more interested in other New Age ideas and will not listen to anything we tell her. She still sings in our church choir. What can we do?”

Maybe you have an acquaintance involved in the New Age. I have discovered that it is subtly luring many Christians into its influence. As a teenager, I, too, was one of the victims. Even though I had been brought up in a Christian family that attended church each week, I was still deceived by the New Age movement's promises of health, happiness, and fulfillment. I was completely led astray, eventually becoming totally immersed in the world of the occult. It really can happen to anyone, you, your family, or your friends.

For example, my own active involvement with the New Age movement began when I joined a London-based international networking organization called Health for the New Age. Not even knowing what the term “New Age” meant, I wasn't looking for spirit guides or occult practices. I was simply interested in finding information about alternative healing techniques for a condition that I had. My innocent interest eventually led me onto the path of obedience to the powers of deception. Apparently, my Christian upbringing failed to give me the knowledge that would have alerted me to the dangers of the course I was taking.

Knowledge, success, and oneness with “God” are the promises the New Age movement presents to the potential victims it is about to ensnare. And thousands of unsuspecting individuals - Christians and atheists alike - are swallowing this lure. Many orthodox Christians, including some pastors, have tasted the New Age bait and found that it “was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom” (Genesis 3:6).

During the time I was a New Age Christian, it was very pleasing to find that a few Christian preachers were already teaching some of the New Age beliefs. Joyfully hearing them express statements that were in line with what I had learned in my metaphysical training, I reasoned that these preachers must have received revelation knowledge directly from the spirit realm, or possibly were inspired by the New Age writings in widespread circulation. Your own pastor may have expressed odd interpretations of biblical passages, and you are not quite sure where he is coming from.

The New Age teachings and practices have now become so widespread that most Christians are quite likely to come into contact with them in one form or another. Often people are not aware of that exposure. For example, maybe you have been to healing professionals who practice new and interesting techniques and you were unaware those techniques are New Age oriented.

Like Nancy Reagan, perhaps someone in your family has taken an interest in astrology, thinking that it may be beneficial, or, at worst, just harmless fun. I am sure the wife of our popular former President did not realize that astrology is an ancient divination practice originating from pagan Babylon and is expressly forbidden by the Bible.

It is possible you may have sought advice from a psychological counselor, and, unknown to you, he was a New Ager, and you were being exposed to a subtle web of evil deceit.

If you have desired to seek closeness with God, perhaps meditation has attracted your attention, that so-called science of seeking communion with God. You may have wondered whether it is really a good idea for a Christian to meditate.

I first began to practice New Age introspective meditation in a class at the Lighted Way metaphysical center. Some people begin New Age meditation techniques right in their own churches. Like my acquaintance Jean, for example. She is a secretary with a large Christian publishing house. As she sat at her desk reading through one of my manuscripts, several questions started to surface concerning her own recent activity.

Jean reported: “I am going to a Bible study in which the teacher asks the members of the class to sit quietly and try to listen for God's voice. I wonder if this is the beginning of what you talk about in the book”.

“You bet it is,” was my reply. “It sounds to me like a classic case of the invasion of New Age techniques right into your own church. This type of introspective meditation is not found in the Bible, and it has never been part of orthodox Christian activity. It is a Hindu practice that is undesirable and potentially dangerous!”

Occultist Lectures in Methodist Church

Some churches in my own area openly accommodate New Agers and their evil philosophies. Take, for example, a large Methodist church in the Los Angeles area. It has boldly rented its sanctuary to the renowned New Age celebrity Benjamin Creme so that he could present his West Coast lectures on the subject of the second coming of “the Christ” to planet Earth. Creme is an occultist who placed full-page advertisements in eighteen of the world's major newspapers in 1982, announcing that “the Christ” had returned and was living in London.

Jesus warned that Creme's type of activity will happen toward the end of the age:

At that time if anyone says to you, “Look, here is the Christ!” or, “There he is!” do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect - if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time (Matthew 24:23-25).

Note that even the elect are in danger of being deceived. I hope your pastor would not rent your church to an agent of the Antichrist conspiracy.

Are New Age Philosophies Really That Bad?

Initially, I felt grateful that I had been led into the New Age movement. The teachings answered many questions and gave hope for the future. The New Age appeared to offer everything that I had been looking for. I felt part of a movement, part of a group of people who were genuinely seeking to improve the quality of life on this planet and who were seeking to harmonize their lives with God.

I came to believe that if I applied the New Age teachings and techniques in my life, my skills and talents would develop to their full potential, and I would attain fulfillment and happiness.

For example, I began to practice meditation in the hope of receiving enlightment. In meditation, I became aware that it was possible to tune in to an inner voice of conscience that seemed to give wise advice. Known by New Agers as the voice of the “higher self,” it was not some strange voice speaking to me, but was more like my own voice of conscience - with a special clarity and composure - speaking to me in a new and distinct manner. The newly found conscience seemed to operate from a higher level of wisdom than my regular, logical thoughts. The New Agers regard this inner voice as an expression of the voice of God, a manifestation of the Holy Spirit as it speaks through the mind. I was delighted to discover this source of “divine” wisdom within my own mind as it prompted me to make many beneficial changes in my life.

Unfortunately, after the first few years of apparent blessings, life gradually became a nightmare of slavery to the dictates coming from my perverted inner voice of conscience. For example, my endeavors to secure the financial prosperity promised by the New Age prophets resulted in monetary debt as I was forced by my conscience to make large donations to help finance the operations of the Lighted Way and its advertising thrusts to promote New Age “Christianity”. Any disobedience began to result in severe depression, which I perceived to be the feeling of separation from “God” because I was disobedient to his will. As soon as I donated the amount of money I had been commanded to give, the intense depression lifted immediately. This scenario occurred repeatedly; like a puppet on a string, I was being controlled by a strange and awesome force.

The cult of the New Age is similar to all other cults. It doesn't matter whether you are a slave to false voices of conscience, to spirit guides, or to cult organization leaders; the process of intimidation, guilt, and bondage is very similar. However, the progressive deception was so subtle that I never suspected I was being manipulated by some kind of evil power.

A Promise of Immortality

It became my hope that New Age Christianity would bring me into immortality, the eternal life promised by Christ. I was unaware that Satan was using New Age teaching to perpetuate the lie he told Eve in the garden: “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). Believing this lie, I had to accept distorted interpretations of the clear scriptural statements that “death came to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12) and that the wages of sin is death (see Romans 6:23).

I had believed that all the different avenues of religious expression would ultimately lead to God, whether those expressions were colored by Hinduism, Buddhism, or something else. The idea that all spiritual paths lead to God is one of the fundamental New Age doctrines.

But the Bible says something different:

Wide is the Gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and man enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it (Matthew 7:13, 14).

Upon my rescue from the New Age, I was stunned to realize that even though I was praying and preaching in the name of Jesus, in reality I was traveling the wide road to destruction. Perhaps you think it is impossible for someone to be preaching and praying in the name of Jesus while being under the control of the powers of darkness.

Christ warned that there would arise false teachers who would preach in his name:

Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?” Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” (Matthew 7:22, 23).

You need to know about my former activities because right now others are doing exactly what I was doing. You need to be able to recognize them before they lead you or your church astray into false doctrines and questionable practices.

Before I describe how I was seduced by the Master mind, I would like to tell you a little about my background.

The Disappearance of God

I was born thirty-nine years ago into a Christian family who methodically attended church each week. My father was a lay preacher in the small congregation. Even though I believed that Jesus was the Son of God, I gradually developed an attitude of apathy and coldness toward Christianity.

I think much of this attitude can be attributed to the neighborhood in which I grew up - a medium sized town located in the industrial region of northern England. Factory chimneys endlessly belched out smoke into the drab, cloudy sky. People seemed oriented to a secular, coarse lifestyle. Among my friends, religion was hardly ever talked about except as a subject for rude jokes and as a means of expressing profanities. Schoolteachers never mentioned God, and everyone seemed to get along fine without religion.

I began to drift into the worldly values and activities of my friends. At first it was small things, such as minor vandalism, smoking, and stealing liquor from my uncle's pantry. More serious was the tendency never to think about God or Jesus or about the role they should have in my life.

As I became more involved with my predominantly ungodly friends, I gradually categorized religion as something that belonged to my parents, but not to me. Even though I believed that Jesus had existed as the Bible teaches, I felt no special relationship with him. And yet, surprisingly, I felt secure that if I died I would go to heaven.

My alienation from Christian values intensified in high school, where my teachers exposed me to fascinating ideas such as the theories of evolution, reincarnation, and extrasensory perception.

I recall one teacher in particular. Mr. Harding looked to be in his early thirties. He was of medium height and build, with reddish-brown hair neatly styled in a manner typical of British high-school teachers. But he seemed to be different from most schoolmasters. A rather solitary character, he often could be seen in his beige raincoat sitting by himself in local cafes. Even though I was a sciences student, I found his twice weekly philosophy class to be most interesting.

“Freud says” was one of Mr. Harding's most common phrases as he introduced us to the ideas of Sigmund Freud, the famous psychoanalyst.

“Freud says that man's unconscious mind is a very powerful force in his life,” commented Mr. Harding. “He believed that all the idiosyncrasies in our motives and emotions result from the workings of the unconscious”.

I had a deep personal interest in Mr. Harding's statements. Sitting in his class, or in any of my high-school classes, for that matter, I often felt discomforting anxieties and fears. Sometimes my chest would tighten, and a dark wave of claustrophobia would descend upon me like a nightmare, giving me the powerful urge to leave the room, for no apparent reason. I knew the feeling was irrational, but could not understand my fearful response.

The problem had started one morning when I was sixteen years old. During a school assembly in the auditorium, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a panic attack. I had felt tension and stress building inside of me for months. On this particular morning, the tension seemed to explode in an attack of fear and anxiety, which I had difficulty keeping under control. My chest tightened as if a steel band had been wrapped around it, and I thought I was going to faint from lack of oxygen. It seemed as if I were under a cloud of impending doom as I wrestled to keep my thinking clear. Using every drop of willpower available, I fought the urge to run and forced myself to stay outwardly composed until the assembly was over.

After this first panic attack, I was never again the same person. My late teens seemed to be dogged with incessant anxiety. The family doctor prescribed tranquilizers and told me to take it easy. I was disappointed when he failed to give any meaningful reasons for my condition.

“Why do I feel this way?” I asked him.

“I think you may have been working too hard,” he suggested nonchalantly. His vagueness precipitated a lack of confidence in his diagnosis. To be truthful, excessive study did make me feel worse, but I could not agree that it was the basic cause of my condition. I intuitively sensed that something had changed inside my nervous system as I became an adolescent, but I did not know what to do to correct the condition.

While listening to Mr. Harding's Freudian-oriented philosophy talks, I wondered whether the anxiety was connected with my unconscious mind, as proposed in Freud's psychology theories. Perhaps Freud's books could throw some light upon my strange feelings of tension and alienation.

Being motivated to read some of Freud's works, I began to evolve a general opinion that all human problems could be explained in terms of dysfunctions associated with the unconscious mind. I thought, Perhaps religion itself is a neurosis, a condition of psychological weakness, a mask for an underlying lack of maturity. This was a view that Freud expounded.

This led me to question whether Satan really existed. Were temptations really a process of some evil being playing psychic war games with his victim, as the church taught? Freud expressed the contrasting idea that the activity of the subconscious mind was responsible for conflicting thoughts and impulses. He believed that a person's irrational and antisocial actions were highly influenced by the unconscious memories associated with detrimental childhood experiences called trauma.

I began to agree with Freud's view and regarded Satan as a purely mythical symbolic representation of man's inner disordered state with its destructive impulses. To deal with this condition, one needed greater psychological understanding.

After digesting a couple of Freud's books, I focused my efforts once again upon academic studies. My fear and anxiety had abated somewhat, and my interest in psychology waned. However, Freud's ideas had deeply affected my attitude toward religion.

“Will, are you going to the fresher's stag night this evening?” Brian asked as he took off his black-framed spectacles in the elevator. A friendly guy of rather thin build, Brian was a fellow university freshman living on the same floor of our students' accommodation building. It was my first week of beginning a bachelor's course in physics.

“What is a stag night?” I asked with curiosity, having never lived in a big city before.

“Oh, it's a striptease show with plenty of booze. The students' union has organized a special show for all the freshmen. Why don't you come with us?”

I knew it wouldn't be the right thing to do. But even though I wasn't really to interested in the suggestion, I felt as if I could just do with some kind of excitement to pass the evening and get away from the worries and stress of starting university life.

“I guess I'll come with you.  Sounds like it may be fun,” I said with a lump in my throat. As a student at a university, I wanted to stretch my boundaries to see what kinds of things were happening in the bright lights of the metropolitan city of Manchester. In a spirit of rebelliousness, I didn't want anything to stop me from having a “good time,” especially not my conscience.

Out of curiosity, a few weeks later I visited pornographic movie theaters on a couple of occasions. They were a terrible bore, but at least I felt I was exercising my initiative and maturity to search for some excitement to break the loneliness of student life.

The university's bars and weekend rock shows now attracted my attention. However, even they became boring unless I had a couple of beers to help me loosen up a little. As intoxication progressed, my lowered moral standards enabled me to amuse Brian and our companions by telling lewd jokes, much to their cheering applause.

What relationship I may have had with Christ was now over, even though my “body” still attended church once a week so that things would look good in our family. Like a kind of Jekyll and Hyde, I became a double personality, putting on an air of respectability in church, but living an unchristian life outside of it.

Upon leaving the university, I aspired to find fulfillment in a career and in the pursuit of leisure. Becoming an engineering designer-draughtsman for a large manufacturer of textile machinery, I was busy earning and spending money, trying to satisfy an insatiable thirst for excitement through motorcycles, cars, travel, partying, and bars.

When I was about twenty-four years old, I decided to quit the token visits to church, even though I was afraid my family would treat me as an outcast. It was not easy to leave the church. Quite frankly, I was afraid that the Christian gospel might be true after all, and my life would end in damnation. After weeks of excruciating deliberation, I finally decided to cease all church attendance. I rationalized that I would “take a vacation” from all religion for a while to see how I would feel. Then perhaps later I would reassess my beliefs.

Life without any religion seemed to be better than the former pretense, at least now my beliefs and behavior were consistent. For example, I noticed I could now use profanities and pornographic expressions without arousing any nudge from my conscience, leaving me completely free to do as I pleased.

“Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die” became an apt symbolism for my life. But a new problem developed. I didn't die, and it was getting more and more difficult to be merry, no matter how active my social life became. And frantically active it had become: the once withdrawn high-school student was now involved in anything from motorcycle gangs to mountaineering, from shady bars to rock festivals. However, after playing out these activities, the old feeling of unfulfillment would creep upon me.

A letter arrived from my older sister. “Why don't you come and live with us in Canada?” she wrote. “You can start a whole new life in this land of opportunity”. My sister had emigrated to Toronto with her husband and family several years before. The invitation sounded appealing.

Deciding I needed some drastic change to get out of my rut, I took her advice and flew out to a prospective new life. Unfortunately, being in a new country did not seem to alter the way I felt. I also very much missed my friends back in England. After a few months, I returned to my hometown.

I now became more acutely aware of the underlying unfulfillment and creeping depression. Further, the phobias and tension I had felt in my teens had never completely left me, and I wanted so much to feel relaxed and completely at ease. Remembering my high-school teacher's high esteem for Freud, I decided to turn to psychology as a means of finding answers to the problems of my life.

Paying many visits to a local lending library, I borrowed several books on psychology. In my thinking, I wondered, Could a correct application of this psychology give me peace and contentment in life? The ideas expressed in the pages sounded very promising.

One small book on the library shelf caught my special attention.

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Chapter 2