SWAMI SACHIDANANDA BHARATHI AND NEW AGE

SWAMI SACHIDANANDA BHARATHI AND NEW AGE

[On page 2 he calls Bede his “sadguru according to the Upanishadic tradition”. On page 22, Jesus is the sadguru].

“Bede helped me to understand the contemplative and mystical traditions of Christianity and other world religions and develop a contemplative consciousness. He also enabled me to develop an integral vision of life and reality and to see the interdependent organic nature of creation,” page 2. [The last phrase is New Age-ese].

“This book is an invitation to disciples of Christ in the modern world to liberate themselves from the paralysing bondages and structures of institutions, hierarchies, dogmas and rituals that have emasculated the Christian faith today,” page 4. “Only a synthesis of the religious insights and experiences of the East and the West can provide the foundation for a universal faith… Christianity has the potential to serve as the facilitator for the birth of a universal faith, but it has first to be de-westernised and reconceived. Christian churches as they are today will not be able to do justice to this historic task. A reconception of Christianity from a ‘marriage of West and East ' as suggested by Bede Griffiths is needed to be able to fulfill this divine responsibility… Unfortunately the denominational Churches have failed to grasp fully the trans-historic nature of the Cosmic Christ… A new vision of Christianity for the third millennium will have to emphasise mysticism, transcendence and intuition as its essential characteristics…

More people are alienated from Christianity and Christ by immature and ignorant Christians preaching the ‘Good News’ and trying to convert models to their model of Christianity than by the oppressive and exploitative structures and institutions of the various Christian churches put together… [Pursuing this ‘new vision’] may mean sacrificing our friendships, our security and even taking a stand against established ideologies and institutions… Many of these Churches… among which the Roman Catholic Church is the largest and the strongest… are far from the original Christian experience… As a result, many believers, recognizing the sterility of the religious teachings, are turning away from these churches in search of something more relevant for their spiritual life. In order to realise the [new] vision of Christianity for the third millennium, we need a new form of ‘Church’ which need not even have the name ‘church’. As Bede Griffiths remarks, [a quotation from pages 292, 293 of Bede’s A New Vision of Reality]… [This ‘Universal Church’] may not have any resemblance to the existing churches at all and may not even have the name ‘church’,” pages 11, 12, 24, 38, 42, 43, 44. [The above requires no comments from this writer].

The swami uses a lot of New Age-ese: Planet Earth, paradigm shift, unity of all life, integral organic and holistic vision of reality’, body-mind-spirit entities, intuition, holistic health, etc. [see Vatican Document on the New Age].

“The Newtonian-Cartesian worldview resulted in a separation of mind and matter, man and nature, spirit and body, the sacred and the secular, the intuitive and the rational…” page 10. He talks of “the proponents of new science like Werner Heisenberg, David Bohm, Fritjof Capra, Paul Davies, Ken Wilber, Rupert Sheldrake and E.F. Scumacher. In his prophetic book ‘A New Vision of Reality’, Bede captures and presents the spirit of this emerging integral vision in a very beautiful way… Mystics of the present century like Sri Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin… and Bede Griffiths have served as prophets of this new vision of reality. We see in the present era a confluence of science and religion taking place… The unitive experience of mystics of world religions and the inter-dependent organic nature of creation as discovered by modern scientists only serve to confirm the authentic disciple of Christ in his desire to reach out to all who belong to the Earth Family,” pages 13, 14, 32. On page 31, he quotes the words of “the great German mystic Meister Eckhart.” [These New Agers will be dealt with later in this report].

[CHAI] which propagates Holistic Health, Alternative Medicine [Pranic Healing, Reiki, Acupressure etc.] and psycho-spiritual counselling, and sells occult books written by Choa Kok Sui, the founder of the Pranic Healing Foundation, and Theosophical Society books written by 33^rd degree Freemasons and occultists. *see pages 43, 45, 66

“Noteworthy developments” include “collaboration with organizations like Brahmakumari Iswariya Vishva Vidyalayam, Sri Ramachandra Mission, Swami Vivekananda Institute, and Sri Sathya Sai (Baba) Institute”. The Swami also carries quotes from Annie Besant [see page 54] in his Manual and published Seminar papers.

“The initial momentum for NRM was further reinforced on 18^th August 1998 at Hyderabad by His Holiness Swami Jayendra Saraswathi of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam.” At the inauguration on 5^th August 2000 of the NRP 3-year Pilot Project, “Swami Paramarthananda, President, Ramakrishna Math, Hyderabad gave the benediction.”

He wrote, “Mystics of 20^th century like Sri Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin… and Bede Griffiths have served as prophets of this emerging new integral vision of reality… The term ‘New Science’ implies the scientific developments beginning with the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Physics that point towards the interdependent organic nature of creation, the inter-convertibility of matter, energy and mind and towards the complementarity of religious insights and scientific discoveries.

Heisenberg and Bohm were nuclear physicists. Davies and Wilber are psychologists. Sheldrake teaches biology at Oxford University. All of them through their various works, point towards the interdependence of energy, matter and mind, of the physical, psychological and the spiritual. Sheldrake wrote his famous book ‘New Science of Life’ living in Shantivanam Ashram of Fr. Bede Griffiths. They were friends. Fr. Bede was my guru.”

[The ENTIRE passage is loaded with New Age, in its vocabulary, its message and its personalities as we will see.]

From a letter dated July 2, 2002 written to me by Swami Sachidananda Bharathi: “Discoveries of New Science starting with the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Physics are today proving beyond doubt the interdependent organic nature of creation… A holistic vision of reality is slowly replacing the old mechanical and materialistic model. This emerging integral vision of reality demands profound and far-reaching changes in our attitudes and outlooks as can be seen from the works of the proponents of New Science like Werner Heisenberg, David Bohm, Fritjof Capra, Paul Davies, Ken Wilber, Rupert Sheldrake and E. F. Schumacher to name a few.”

“Swami Sachidananda was introduced to the scientific dimension of spirituality by… Swami Dayananda, previously called Father Bede Griffiths. He got to meet men of New Science like Fritjof Capra who wrote ‘The Tao of Physics’ & Rupert Sheldrake who wrote ‘The Seven Experiments that could Change the World’,” reported the Bangalore Times, February 9, 2002.

“New Science” is a euphemism for “New Age” where religion and science fuse together [see yin-yang, page 48].