Terry Mattingly, the religion journalist, inquires in to the definition of the New Age

Theosophy (literally, “god-wisdom”) is a surprisingly little known but nonetheless highly influential movement of the past several centuries in Europe and North America. In this week’s featured audio, Ken Wilber traces the development of theosophy and its descendents, down to the New Age movement.

LOUISE HAY IS ONE OF THE BEST-SELLING AUTHORS IN HISTORY, and none of the women who have sold more — like J. K. Rowling, Danielle Steel and Barbara Cartland — owned a publishing empire. They did not change the spiritual landscape of America and several of its Western allies. They were not pregnant at 15 and they did not lack high-school diplomas. Finer writers they may have been (depending on your taste), and wealthier women, but it would be hard to argue that any was more interesting than Louise Hay.

I have long suspected that much of the populist bandwagon boosterism for "the ecology" (sorta like the Iraq and such as) has been driven by a turning away from deeper and more difficult social issues -- like the poverty and such as -- and instead toward a burning spiritual desire to get a pat on the head and a gold star from Goddess Gaia.

The New Age still matters because it is the best resort we have to age-old traditions of wisdom. I wanted to say that up front, even though I have never used the phrase "New Age" in any talk or writing. The New Age has become a byword for any cheap shot or automatic sneer directed toward a carnival of spiritual noodles and charlatans. But that's not the whole story, or even reality. Behind the label is something very different--a loose coalition of people who want to reach beyond organized religion and its many drawbacks.

Given that it is the LOHAS community that zaadz/gaia operates in and that attracts the audience for Integral Theory, it is to be expected that the New Age worldview will dominate discourse in this ouevre. So the distortions of this worldview are the lingua franca not only in the predictable general discourse on popular spirituality here, but also (in perhaps less obvious ways) in the exploration and application of Integral Theory.

Listen to this illuminating and inspiring audio blog by David Wilcock in which he presents a compelling case, scientifically speaking, for seeing 2012 as a positive transformation of our world.