For many people, space and the new age are practically synonymous. In books such as The Third Industrial Revolution by G. Harry Stine, The Evolutionary Journey by Barbara Marx Hubbard, and Doomsday Has Been Cancelled by J. Peter Vajk, projects such as the creation of space colonies and the shifting of industries into near earth orbit are seen as doorways into a new world of abundance for humanity. They are also seen as the means for transforming ourselves for a limited , planet-bound species into a cosmic one-the logical next step, in the view of Vajk and Hubbard, both for humanity and for Gaia, the earth as a whole. They are acts of transcendence.

There may well be practical economic reasons for developing the potentials of space, although Daniel Deudney, a former senior researcher for the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C., refutes the value and feasibility of some of the more glamorous projects, such as space colonies, in his publication Space: The High Frontier in Perspective. Unfortunately, as we know, there are military reasons as well, which are being explored by both the United States and the Soviet Union. However, the feeling I observe behind much of the talk about the development of space is as much religious in its tone as it is pragmatic. It is as if for some people the space program is a modern equivalent of the aspiration for the transcendental that empowered the great cathedral- building projects of the Middle Ages. It is our way of reaching toward the heavens, metaphorically as well as literally.

As for something to fill the void of the sacred, however, the space program is insufficient. Using a chemical reaction to propel men and women inside a steel container into a vacuum is an event, however glamorous and useful it may be. A cathedral is a presence and a process. It is at its best a seed that gives life to the world around it. As an image of liberation, space exploration, at the present time at least, is more an image of escape. It is flawed transcendence because it is that alone. It is essentially a going out, not a return. It does not fulfill or honor the earth.

The cathedrals, on the other hand, were-and are, or can be-a celebration of the sacred united with the earth, growing out of the earth, entering into the earth. They are examples of grounded transcendence, of incarnate liberation.

Cathedrals have always bee close to the heart of western culture, places of innovation and cultural development, sacred centers around which universities emerged. While upholding tradition, they have often also provided the spiritual, intellectual, and artistic impetus for transformation. In their architecture and design they embody our feelings of transcendence, our relationship with the Other who is at the center of a true image of the future. British architect Keith Critchlow, an expert on sacred geometry, describes this relationship: "The cross of the cathedral is the cube, symbol of material perfection, unfolded...It is the exploding of the imprisonment of material plane by the Spirit allowing the soul to be released."

This liberation, this openness to new possibilities that the spirit can bring by "exploding" the limitations of the material plane, is an eloquent definition of the sacred. It is not a liberation from the world but a freedom secured by unfolding the potentials within the world. It is precisely this freedom that a true image of the future offers, for it liberates us form imprisonment of habit and the limitations of the familiar. It offers transcendence of the known in ways that honor and extend the known. It is not escape. It is empowerment and fulfillment. Thus the cathedral is an "explosion of stone." Its structure symbolizes the freedom of the spirit paradoxically contained, not dispersed but turned into a source of energy for the empowerment and nourishment of life.

The desire for this liberation is strong in our society. it is hunger for transcendence that I often encounter in my travels and lectures. It is one of the motivation that draws people into considering the idea of the new age, for almost by definition this idea offers transcendence and liberation from the world as we know it, which for many people is frightening, depressing, and dangerous. Unfortunately, in the quest for the transcendent for a renewed connection with the sacred at the heart of all true culture, we may opt for escape instead.

The space program will be like a cathedral, a true and worthy vessel for a meeting the human hunger for transcendence and the sacred, only when it can inspire reverence for our own planet with the sam enthusiasm and dedication with which it seeks other worlds, leading us to honor and serve Gaia and her enfolded potentials as a living world and not regard her just as a launching pad for somewhere else.

The space program is not the only kind of exploration that can be a form of escape while appearing to be a path of transcendence. The quests for spirituality and for a liberated self can also be misused. At their highest, the revisioning of the meaning of the sacred and the nature of the human self are the third and fourth key elements within the idea of the new age, the first two being the emergence of planetary culture and the recognition of Gaia. However, in a lesser form, they can become, like the space program at worst, images of escape.

There is an important revisioning of spirituality going on-a new interest in the nature of the sacred dimension of life. Ironically, much of the impetus for this revisioning has come from modern sciences, such as physics and ecology, which are revealing a universe that is an unbroken wholeness, not unlike the vision of the mystic. At the same time, as cultures converge, we are experiencing an increasing cross-pollination between the religions of the world. This can lead to doctrinal difficulties and conflicts, but it also leads to a deepening realization of what Frithjof Schuon calls "the transcendent unity of religions." In his book by that title, he discusses the common root experience of the sacred that lies at the source of all religious expression and demonstrates the unity of these religions within what he calls the "esoteric" or essential domain of existence. Similarly, there is a perennial philosophy, as Aldous Huxley named it, a body of insights, teachings, wisdom, and experience that can be found in almost identical form in nearly every culture of humanity. These insights transcended religious differences and provide a basis for a planetary spirituality.

At the same time, the idea of planetary spirituality takes on an even broader meaning when considered in the context of Gaia. What is the spiritual nature of our planet? How does humanity relate to it? The garden at Findhorn [the spiritual community in Scotland where the author lived in the early '70's] was based on communication with precisely that nature, not in a worshipful or pantheistic sense of seeing nature as God, but rather in recognition that nature, too, has a soul with which we may share a communion of mutual interests as children of God.

Findhorn is part of a spiritual tradition that can be found in may religions, including Christianity (particularly the Celtic Christianity and the work of the German mystic Meister Eckhart). In this tradition, which could be called creation theology, humanity participates in and is even responsible for the spiritual unfoldment of the earth, of nature, and of matter itself, as well as for its own spiritual progress.

The quest for meaning of planetary spirituality is, to me, a necessary component of the new-age idea. unfortunately, the lesser side of this quest becomes a search for experiences, particularly of a psychic nature. This is largely due to a convergence of spiritual illiteracy in our culture with a public interest, semisupported by scientific research, in extrasensory perception. The new-age circuit is filled with groups and teachers offering classes and weekend seminars on how to become psychic.

Having a background of psychic and mystical experiences, I know that the human mind and soul are capable of far more than an exclusively materialistic model of the universe would allow. I fully believe that parapsychological research and the skillful and appropriate development of extended sensory abilities are worthy areas of exploration.

Like the space program, however, psychic phenomena are a poor vessel to contain our longing for the transcendent; they are an inappropriate substitute for the experience that can "explode" our minds by putting us in touch with an aspect of the universe different from the physical and that we may not have known existed, but they cannot liberate our souls. Psychic powers do not create cathedrals. They can, however, effectively launch our consciousness out of this world and can serve as a glamorous form of escape when not integrated into the discipline of an ordinary material life.

Similar pitfalls surround our quest for an new vision of selfhood. The indulgences of the "me decade" and the narcissistic excesses of the human-potential movement have been so frequently analyzed and criticized as to be cliches. Humanistic and transpersonal psychologies have done much to open us to new vistas of inner creative possibilities and talents. Nevertheless, in the pop- psychology versions of these disciplines, the concept of the "real self" emerges as the criterion against which all experience must be measured.

Does this relationship, this job, this situation, help me discover, unfold, nourish, develop my self? And what is this real self, the holy grail for which so many knights go questioner through the rigors of weekend seminars and sensitivity- training classes? Again, it is a modern substitute for the image of the sacred, the point of transcendence, the point of liberation. It becomes a new deity, to which we are often willing to sacrifice everything on the altar of growth and personal fulfillment, for if we can connect with it, it promises us liberation. What it delivers, though, is only the illusion of escape, for like psychic powers, this ego masquerading as the real self cannot release us into the world and from imprisonment. It, too cannot build a cathedral.

Once more, it is the loss in our culture of a true sense of the sacred that opens us to distortions. It is important that we discover a new vision of who we are. For too long we have suffered under very limiting images of our human nature and potentials, not the least damaging of which is our current image of a person as essentially an economic entity-a consumer and a replacement part in the industrial social machine. As part of the emergence that the new-age idea proclaims, we recollect ourselves as creative and cocreative individualism as embodiments of a sacred self.

As part of this recollection, though, we must also remember that the true "real self," the sacred identity within us, is not a thing, an object unto itself; it is a condition of connectedness and mutuality, of love and of community; it is a process, an accessibility, an accountability, an empowerment, and a sharing.

The space program, psychic development in the name of spirituality, and the quest for growth and the real self are all alike. They all seem to offer transcendence and liberation, but what they deliver is more confinement. Each is finally an image of isolation. Each requires that we take our familiar environment with us essentially unchanged, like the astronaut in his spacesuit. The spacesuit miniaturizes the world so that the spaceman can take it along with him, but within it he remains separate for the universe around him. He may have new experiences, but he is not transformed into a different creature. He does not learn to become a being of energy, capable of surviving in space and riding the cosmic waves of light between the stars.

But transformation, rebirth into a different creature, a new life, is what the sacred dimension is all about. It is the essence of the new-age idea: exposure to that which changes, to that which explodes and unfolds you. It is the message of the cathedral, and it is precisely this discovery of the self and the spirit as cathedrals and not spacesuits that will bring a new age into being.

Copyright © 1996. The Light Party.