Living: New Age Harmonies

A strange mix of spirituality and superstition is sweeping across the country

"Let us not walk the path of life in darkness but shed your light upon the path so that we may clearly see the power of your glory forever." Those words of prayer are the last spoken by Bob Johnson, 54, a gentle, white-haired man who practices his spiritual arts in a modest apartment in midtown New York City. Now his eyes are half shut, unseeing, and when he next speaks, in a strangely clipped Irish accent, he represents a "tutelage" of spectral beings from Alpha Centauri, the nearest of the stars.

"Greetings from the almighty form of God," says the...

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