In August 1987, my girlfriend and I drove to Will Rogers State Beach in Santa Monica. We joined several dozen spiritual seekers to experience the Harmonic Convergence. This rare astrological event, based on the Mayan calendar, involved a planetary alignment supposedly opening a cosmic portal releasing a wave of positive spiritual energy. I had my doubts but my girlfriend was a believer so I tagged along.
Most adherents were in their 20s with long hair and post-hippie garb. One bearded guy was naked and frying on acid. We all held hands, smoked joints and played music around a bonfire. As the sun set, people hugged each other and said things like, “Can you feel your chakras opening?” The naked guy inadvertently rolled his leg into the fire and screamed, “My kundalini’s burning.”
The event was a microcosm of 1980s Los Angeles. New Age Spirituality was rampant and local spots like the Self-Realization Fellowship in Pacific Palisades and the Vedanta Center in the Hollywood Hills became gathering grounds. Everyone I knew read books like Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda or The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield. People fermented kombucha teas in refrigerators and brewed Chinese herbs on stove tops.
New Age thinking is hard to define. It revolves loosely around an esoteric synthesis of mind, body and spirit. Adherents believe that divine energy informs every aspect of the universe. New Agers focus on finding God’s presence within themselves instead of submitting to the precepts of traditional religious teachings.
The New Age movement coincided with the release of Marilyn Ferguson’s 1980 book The Aquarian Conspiracy. Ferguson wrote about a shift in human consciousness outside the realm of churches and synagogues. The movement gained momentum in 1983 when actress Shirley MacLaine released her bestselling book Out On a Limb. MacLaine’s spiritual journey took her around the world and introduced her to phenomena such as reincarnation, channeling, past-life regression and ufology.
Ground zero for Los Angeles spiritual seekers in the 1980s was the Bodhi Tree Bookstore in West Hollywood. I worked at the Bodhi Tree for several months. Customers flocked to the store for books on meditation, tarot reading, reiki and astrology. Some purchased healing crystals to direct inner chi, volcanic rocks for protection from electromagnetic energy or neti pots to cleanse their naval cavities.
My own view on New Age thinking was complicated. I was in my early-20s and trying to understand the world. I was estranged from my Jewish heritage but desperately yearned to believe in a God that was active and alive in my life. New Age teaching allowed me to explore spirituality without the dogmatic approach of western religion.
In 1986, my girlfriend attended a self-help seminar called Insight. She emerged from the experience filled with optimism and newfound purpose. She urged me to attend the workshop hoping it would help our rocky relationship. I paid the $150 fee and signed up. On an October night, I entered a nondescript building on Wilshire Boulevard and joined 150 strangers for a week-long gathering to learn about “purpose and intention in life.”
Insight was the brainchild of an ex-Mormon author named John-Roger (real name Roger Delano Hinkins). He’d attained “mystic traveler consciousness” after a near-death experience due to kidney-stone surgery. This gave him spiritual keys to understanding our purpose on earth. I knew none of this when I signed up. I also didn’t know that John-Roger’s organization was accused by the Cult Awareness and Information Centre of being a cult. All I knew was my girlfriend wanted me to take the seminar so our relationship could enter a new phase of love and spiritual partnership.
The seminar was held in a large carpeted ballroom with a stage. It was led by two men, Peter McWilliams and David Raynr. McWilliams was an author who’d written a best-selling book on Transcendental Meditation. Raynr was a recognizable actor who I remembered from the 1970s television show James at 15. Both men were charismatic, likable and funny. Attendees teamed up in pairs and were guided through a series of exercises intended to reveal personal hang-ups and emotional stumbling blocks.
I was partnered with a man named Daniel in his 30s who bore a resemblance to Alfred E. Neuman from Mad. One of our first activities involved staring into each other’s eyes and imagining our partner as our father or mother. I couldn’t get into the exercise. It seemed silly and contrived. Daniel, on the other hand, was fully engaged. He slowly articulated a list of grievances toward his father.
“You never loved me, you never gave me compliments, you never cared about my feelings, you never asked me what I wanted to do.”
Throughout the room, people were yelling at their imagined parents. Some were sobbing, others shrieking. Group energy pushed attendees forward to voice inner torments trapped in their hearts for years. I held Daniel’s gaze as he told his father (me) everything he’d never been able to say in person.
“Why did you do it, dad? All I wanted was for you to love me. Instead you used me. You violated me. You destroyed my innocence and took away my manhood.”
Instead of seeing a broken man reliving heinous memories, I saw gap-toothed Alfred E. Neuman recounting childhood nightmares about abuse. The juxtaposition was too much to process. I got up and walked toward the exit. The doors were locked. An Insight volunteer with a stern demeanor confronted me.
“What do you think you’re doing,” he barked.
I concocted an excuse. “I need to use the bathroom.”
“Wait until the exercise is over,” he demanded.
“I can’t wait.”
“You can and you will.”
He finally opened the door and let me into the lobby. I ran to the bathroom and locked myself in a stall. I lingered for 10 minutes vacillating between shock and indignation. I wasn’t emotionally mature enough to continue the seminar.
I took a deep breath and returned to the ballroom. When I opened the door, McWilliams confronted me. “You didn’t just let everyone else down, you let yourself down. Is there something you’d like to say to the group?”
People stared with condemning eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Do we accept his apology,” McWilliams asked the group.
Most said yes. “Wonderful,” McWilliams said. “Your family has forgiven you. You can rejoin us now.”
“I have to leave,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
I opened the door and drove home. I felt like a failure for abandoning the group, specifically Daniel. I also felt moral outrage for being told I couldn’t use the bathroom. This reminded me of stories I’d heard about EST, the 1970s self-improvement seminar that Time magazine dubbed “no-pee therapy.”
As the 1980s gave way to the 90s, New Age precepts assimilated into the mainstream. Conventional bookstores added self-help book sections. Workshops taught by the likes of Marianne Williamson (Course in Miracles) and Louise Hay (You Can Heal Your Life) drew thousands. Everyone owned an African Djembe drum or an Egyptian tabla. Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead offered “drum medicine retreats” where attendees made drums from cured cow skins.
In those days, most of my thirtysomething friends didn’t have health insurance. I didn’t either. We turned to alternative treatments like acupuncture, Reiki massage, healing magnets, craniosacral therapy or iridology. I discovered Applied Kinesiology (AK), a system using muscle testing to diagnose underlying health issues. In one case, an AK practitioner helped me with my migraine headaches. He diagnosed the underlying cause as intestinal parasites and prescribed an herb called wormwood. I was skeptical but the treatment worked. My migraines went away (only to return years later).
When I had a skin rash, a massage therapist friend urged me to visit a psychodermatologist who explored mind-body connections triggering health challenges. The 30-minute session was priced at $300. The “doctor” told me somehow I’d internalized a belief that my body was toxic. This triggered “a phantom allergic reaction.”
“Are you saying my rash is all in my head?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“I need something more than that, doc.”
“Your skepticism is negatively impacting your health.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe the $300 you’re charging is impacting my health.”
“What were you hoping to get from me?”
“I don’t know, medicine, supplements, nutritional advice.”
“Okay,” he said. “Go to the market, buy marrow bones and make a bone broth. This will give your body collagen to help your skin.”
I did as he said and the rash went away.
In 2014, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act. This allowed my friends and me to finally afford health insurance. I abandoned most alternative health methods though I still visited my Applied Kinesiologist from time to time. (This wasn’t covered by Obamacare.)
As I reached my 50s, several New Age modalities became staples in my life. I meditated, practiced yoga, juiced vegetables and took vitamins and herbal supplements. I listed the positive things I learned from my days as a New Ager.
—We are not our physical body. We are Spirit inhabiting a physical body.
—There’s a mind-body connection to health.
—Alternative health methods can be effective at treating illness, but not always.
—Food is medicine.
—Prayer and meditation have power.
—Thoughts and words can physically manifest as “reality.”
—Gratitude and mindfulness have a positive impact on our life.
Conversely, there were negative influences in New Age thinking.
—New Agers often claim Western Medicine is evil. This is not true.
—The alternative health community is filled with charlatans and grifters.
—“Big pharma” is not out to kill us (though medication should be a last resort).
—Groupthink can lead to faulty beliefs.
—Mind-expanding drugs (LSD, DMT, Ketamine) aren’t a shortcut to expanded consciousness.
—Too much focus on mysticism and metaphysics can lead to “Spiritual Psychosis” where people lose touch with reality.
—New Age thinking is not a substitute for rational thinking.
The “RFK MAHA” movement has adopted New Age ideas. Acolytes support dubious claims about vaccines and Tylenol causing autism, fluoride destroying the pineal gland and Covid being a governmental conspiracy. When I first heard RFK Jr. spout ideas on alternative health, I flashed back to the conspiratorial ideas I heard in my days as a New Ager. Uncritical thinking can cause otherwise intelligent people to embrace bunk science.
There’s a place for alternative thinking and one for traditional thinking. As a close friend says, “It’s important to be open-minded but don’t throw your thinking out with the rose water.”