The New Age is widely discussed today, usually without much insight into its true significance. The term is derived from the biblical Book of Revelation--"And I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth" (21.1). The movement toward a New Age is presently effervescing with faddishness, foolishness, fraud and even outright danger; but beyond the crass commericalism and superficiality, there is a genuine core truth to it. In its best aspect, the New Age movement aims at manifesting a new mode of being--a radically transforemed world inhabited by a new humanity. What precisely does this mean? How does it relate to Jesus and the Bible?

The emergence of a higher humanity is a perennial theme in world affairs. The images drawn from this theme vary in form and purity, ranging from the inspired visions of mystics such as Sri Aurobindo tot he deranged fantasies of madmen such as Adolph Hitler. Nietzsche's Ubermensch or "Overman" was distorted into the racial supremacy doctrines of the Third Reich, and Hitler sought, through World War Two, to create a super race. The Ubermensch, in a more benign form, also became the basis for the comic book hero, Superman. The French Jesuit philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, wrote of this emergence in quasi-scientific terms; the Indian yogi-scientist-philospher, Gopi Krishna, addressed it more rigorously in his examination of hte next evolutionary development in man via the kundalini experience; transpersonal psychologist, Kenneth Ring, finds evidence for it in the widespread phenomenon of the near-death experience. Occult traditions sucha s Thesophy, Anthroposophy, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, Alchemy, Kaballa and the genuine mystery schools aslo present the notion of the evolution of humanity to still-higher states. One of the most memorable statements about it was given by the Canadian psychiatrist, Richard M. Bucke, on the last page of his 1901 classic, Cosmic Consciousness:

"...just as, long ago, self-consciousness appeared in the best specimens of our ancestral race in the prime of life, and gradually became more and more universal and appeared in the individual at an earlier age, until, as we see it now, it has become almost universal and appears at the average of about three years--so will Cosmic Consciousness become more and more universal earlier in the individual life until the race at large will possess this faculty. The same race and not the same; for a Cosmic Conscious race will not be the race which exists today, any more than the present race of men is the same race which existed prior to the evolution of self-consciousness. The simple truth is, that there has lived on the Earth, "appearing at intervals," for thousands of years amoung ordinary men, the first faint beginnings of another race; walking the Earth, and breathing another air of which we know little or nothing, but which is, all the same, our spiritual life, as its absence would be our spiritual death. This new race, is in the act of being born from us, and in the near future it will occupy and possess the Earth."

For the majority of Westerners, however, the most familiar term for this experience---the emergence of a cosmically conscious race---was given to it two millenia ago by Jesus of Nazareth.

When Jesus spoke of himself, why did he principally use the term "Son of Man"? Others called him the Son on God, but Jesus most often referred to himself as the Son of Man, the ofspring of humanity. Moreover, he told those around him that they would by higher than the angels and that those things which he did, they would do also, and greater (John 14:12), for that is the estate of man.

The reason for this declaration by Jesus is that he was aware of himself as a finished specimen of the new humanity which is to come--the new humanity which is to inherit the Earth, establish the Kingdom, and usher in the New Age. His mission and his teaching have at their heart the development of a new and higher state of consciousness on a specieswide basis rather than the sporadic basis seen earlier in history when an occasional adept or abatar such as Buddha or Krishna appeared. Jesus' unique place in histor is based upon his unprecedented realization of the higher intelligence, the Divinity, the Ground of Being incarnated in him--the ground which is the source of all becoming.

The Aramaic term for the Greek word "Christ" is M'Shekha, from not a last name (as in Jesus the Christ); and although it is conventially translated as "anointed," it really means "perfected" or "enlightened" or "the ideal form of humanity." Thus, Jesus was his historical person, a human being who lived two thousand years ago; but Christ, the Christos, the Messiah, is an eternal transpersonal condition of being to which we must all someday come. Jesus did not say that this higher state of consciousness realized in him was his alone for all time. Nor did he call us to worship him. Rather, he called us to follow him--to follow in his steps, to imitate him, emulate him, learn from him and his example, to live a God-centered life of selfless, compassionate service to the world s if we were Jesus himself. This is what is meant by the Latin phrase imitatio Christi, the imitation of Christ. Jesus called us to share in the new condition, to enter a new world, to be one in the supramental consciousness which alone can dispel the darkness of our mindsand renew our lives. He did not not call us to be Christians; he called on us to be Christed. In short, he aimedat duplicating himself by forstering the development of many Jesuses. He aimed, as the New Testiment declares, to make all one in Christ. And who is Christ? St.Paul tells us that Christ is the Second Adam, the founder of a new race.

The Kingdom is within us. Divinity is our birthright, our inheritance, nearer to us than hand and foot, but the eye will not see and the ear will not hear. Jesus called people to awaken, to change their ways, to repent. The very first words he spoke to humanity in his public ministry were, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel." (Mark 1:14, Mathew 4:17) This is his central commandment---what is called kerygma.

But notice the word "repent." Over the centuries it has become misunderstood and mistranslated, so that today, people think it merely means feeling sorry for thier sins. This is an unfortunate debasement of Jesus' teaching. The Aramaic word Jesus used it "tob," meaning "to return," to flow back into God." The sense of this concept comes through best in the Greek word used to translate it. The word metanoia and, and like tob, it meanssomething far greater than mearly feeling sorry for misbehavior. Metanoia has two ctymological roots. Meta means "to go beyond" or "to go higher than." And noia comes from nous, meaning "mind." It is the same root from which Teilhard de Chardin developed his term, noonsphere, and from which the word noetic, meaning "the study of consciousness," comes. It is also the term Plato used to designate the creative source of the universe prior to the Logos, the Word, which in the gospel of John refers to Jesus. So the original meaning of metanoia is literally "going beyond or higher than the ordinary mental state." In modern terms, it means transcending self-centered ego and becoming God-centered, God-realized.

Copyright © 1996. The Light Party.