(2 of 11)
Though it is hard to say exactly how many Americans believe in which parts of the New Age, the movement as a whole is growing steadily. Bantam Books says its New Age titles have increased tenfold in the past decade. The number of New Age bookstores has doubled in the past five years, to about 2,500. New Age radio is spreading, with such stations as WBMW in Washington and KTWV-FM in Los Angeles offering dreamy light jazz that one listener described as "like I tapped into a radio station on Mars." The Grammys now include a special prize for New Age music (latest winner: Swiss Harpist Andreas Vollenweider). Fledgling magazines with names like New Age, Body Mind Spirit and Brain/Mind Bulletin are full of odd ads: "Healing yourself with crystals," "American Indian magic can work for you," "How to use a green candle to gain money," "The power of the pendulum can be in your hands," "Use numerology to win the lottery." And, perhaps inevitably, "New health through colon rejuvenation."
If some of those have a slightly greedy tone, the reason is that New Age fantasies often intersect with mainstream materialism, the very thing that many New Age believers profess to scorn. A surprising number of successful stockbrokers consult astrological charts; a yuppie investment banker who earns $100,000 a year talks of her previous life as a monk. Some millionaires have their own private gurus who pay house calls to provide comfort and advice. Big corporations too are paying attention. "The principle here is to look at the mind, body, heart and spirit," says a corporate spokesperson, who asks that her employer be identified only as a "major petrochemical company." This company provides its employees with regular workshops in stress management; it has hired a faith healer to "read auras" for ailing employees and run her hands over their "fields of energy." Even the U.S. Army has commissioned a West Coast firm to explore the military potentials of meditation and extrasensory perception.
Now come to the ballroom of the New York Hilton, where 1,200 of the faithful have paid $300 apiece to get the word from the New Age's reigning whirling dervish, Shirley MacLaine. To the soothing accompaniment of crystal chimes and distant waterfalls, the star of Terms of Endearment leads her new acolytes in meditating on the body's various chakras, or energy points. First comes the spinning red wheel of the base chakra, then the sexual pulsation of the orange chakra, and finally upward to the solar plexus and the visceral emotions of the yellow chakra.
"Feel the cleansing power of the stream of life, the coolness of water . . ." MacLaine purrs. She is wearing a turquoise sweater, violet sweatpants and green ankle-high sneakers, and a sizable crystal dangles from her neck. "There is so much you need to know . . . See the outer bubble of white light watching for you. It is part of you. Let it be. It is showing you itself, that part of God that you have not recognized."
A woman in the audience complains that she has suffered chronic physical pain since childhood. MacLaine is not fazed. "Sometimes people use pain to feel alive," she explains. "Pain is a perception, not a reality." That is a basic New Age doctrine: you can be whatever you want to be.