Are most of Spirituality and New Age teachings just baseless beliefs?

by Vic Shayne
author
Consciousness: The Potentiality of All Existence:
Exploring reality and belief as a subjective experience

There are some who divide people into materialists and idealists. It’s a rather oversimplified worldview at best. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that nearly everyone has a personal collection of beliefs. This includes the most adamant atheists and scientists, as well as religious-minded individuals, and those who are steeped in beliefs about “spirituality.”

This word “spirituality” is a strange one, because it encompasses quite a number of beliefs projected from minds that are inherently limited to assess “reality.” This idea may take some time to fully consider.

In today’s world of spirituality there are so many ideas that have been repeated so often that people believe they are true. They have formed a widely-accepted cosmology under the umbrella of spirituality. Examples are: what happens after you die, that you’re protected by angels, that life has a purpose, what happens between lives, what karma is, how to become enlightened, what it means to be aware, what a spiritual awakening is, and much more. Most of those who teach this cosmology are passing along secondhand information.

Now, what’s the problem with these beliefs? Nothing on the surface. Like all beliefs, unless they are imposed upon others and/or create suffering, then people should be able to believe whatever they would like. This is as true for the scientist who says that consciousness is an artifact of the brain, as well as for the psychic who tells us that she has come back to this lifetime to channel an “ancient soul.” There are very few people — of course there is no way to know how many — who want to know who they are. For these individuals, believing is not enough; they’re tired of ideas and suppositions. And they are not interested in phenomena, cosmology, or the stuff of the supernatural. All they want is the Ultimate Truth of who they are.

It may very well be that beliefs have had an evolutionary benefit. Since the beginning of humanhood beliefs have lead people to test what they suspected may be true in order to discover something new. For example, Galileo (1564-1642) believed that Earth and all other planets revolve around the Sun. Most people in his time believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun and planets revolved around it. It was Galileo’s observations of Venus that proved his belief correct.

The moral of the Galileo story is that beliefs can lead to great things for those who try to prove or disprove them. However, there is no value to anyone in believing that he or she is a space alien, can see the future, is the reincarnation of Joan of Ark, or has personally conversed with Tutankhamun or Tesla.

A lot of people weighing in on the subject of enlightenment and self realization with only a belief to guide their authoritative answers. Perhaps they are convinced that they are correct, but the truth remains that all they are espousing are beliefs based upon either secondhand information or the limited perceptions of the mind. For example, a person with a near death experience (NDE) may come back to life and report that he met God and discovered the secrets of life. But what is overlooked is that this is the stuff of the mind; it is neither enlightenment or a realization of the Ultimate Truth. It’s just more of the same phenomena produced by a judgmental, conditioned sense of self. You can read my book The Self Is A Belief for a full explanation of how the egoic self is a self-limiting belief system.

So why believe when it comes to spirituality? Why accept the teachings of New Age gurus and positive thinking teachers when what you really want is to know for yourself what the Truth is? Why not just observe reality for yourself , what thoughts are and where they come from, whether the sense of self is real, and so on? If someone has to give you the answers, then what have you realized for yourself?