Christian groups are up in arms. Parent groups are concerned. The Internet is home to cults, alternative religionsand New Age practitioners. These are indeed the end times.
MIs your life a mess? Is your health declining? Does your house or apartment give you bad vibes? The Web offers the forlorn seeker of truth an answer to all the tired questions a loss of spirituality may make you ask, and some you wish were never asked.
MBefore I delve deep into the etheric levels of existence I must ask a rhetorical question. At what point does a cult become a religion? When a majority of the population are adherents, or when it becomes richer than a multi-national corporation? With that in mind we must remember that we make our own reality. Each one is as fucked up as the supposed one that surrounds us.
MWhen I think of New Age I think channeling and crystals and finger cymbals. I think Hare Krishna and the Dalai Lama, not for natives but for Westerners. It is this mixing of Occidental and Oriental that is the real answer behind the question of what is New Age. And like all Americans those who practice eastern philosophies almost always subvert the teachings so that they can continue living their life of American excess and duress. That life of excess and duress may be why so many are turning to eastern thought. Its appearance of a slower, meditative and peaceful thought appeals to Westerners whose lives revolve around speed, anxiety and death. Too bad most of us in the West don't realize that India and Tibet see more death in a day than we see in a week.
MEarthtribewelcomes you home to the Earth. Have we ever left it? After seeing this site you'll wish you never came back. Annoyingly fast neon animations remind me that if the highest level we can attain in web design are GIF animations then we need to restrict bandwidth. That way no one will think it's cool to throw those hogs on their page.
MAltaVista not fast enough for you. Yahoo too yahoo-like. Then try Avatar Search, the search engine for the Occult Internet. I tried it and was disappointed by the lack of pure crystal power and from all the Wiccan sites clogging my screen. Enlightenment.comwants to be the preeminent New Media platform for a spiritual renaissance. They wish to offer alternative spirituality, peak performance and consciousness related tools. I will not comment upon their use of the Masonic one-eyed pyramid from the $1 bill, other than to say I was frightened. One link piqued my interest, however. They claimed to have the real truth, the most twisted truth to Roswell. We are the truth. We create our own realities. We create aliens. We become these aliens in our sub-personalities. We become the abductors and the abductees, the cover-uppers and the covered-up. We are the aliens. My question is why would anyone want to manifest themself as a Gray? I prefer to be a Chubacabra.
MIf living with better understanding in Life is something you'd like to try, then jump to Maitreya World. Only don't be surprised by a mess. Living with a working web site and understanding of HTML is more like it. Of course, if all else fails in your understanding then New Age info should help.
MFor some of us Life is what is failing. For others it's Afterlife. Bruce Moen has developed extraordinary experience helping earthbound ghosts find their place in the Afterlife. He also frees lost souls from their post-death traumatic existence.

MNew Age life is not all spirits and meditation. Total healing begins with oneself and with your partner. In an interview for GQ magazine Raymond Powers(a certified Tantra therapist) outlined his ideas and theories of Tantra. According to Ray this country needs it tantric massage badly. I agree.
MNo discussion of New Age could be complete without a little channeling. My favorite site has to be Marina Michaels McInnischanneling etheric levels of existence. She is of no relation to me, but considering that the spelling of our last name is not common, I had to check her site. I'm not interested in channeling, but she remains bookmarked out of some weird filial loyalty. Serious channeling occurs with the Counsel of Light.They are a collective of sentient light beings (they couldn't be dark beings, or opaque beings?!) who employ humans both in body and out of body. What these humans do in the Counsel's employ is unknown. I'm sure it is something nefarious.
MLast, we turn to what I will term New Age lite (not to be confused with the above). The Holistic Internet Community Learning Centeroffers brief essays on everything from "What's wrong with eating Pasta?" to "Cleansing the Colon," from "What homeopathy can do for your cat" to "Feng-shui." Each essay is a bite size morsel of information that reminded me of that Monty Python skit about learning how to be a nuclear physicist, playing the flute and performing surgery. There has to be more?
MThere is, if you are willing to pay for it. The New Age is, if anything, a product of its time. Far from the poverty of most Tibetan monks, the Dalai lama is a rich man, as is the Pope. If they aren't rich personally, then they are in charge of huge fortunes, using it for their benefit. New Age charlatans, practitioners, healers, chanters and Feng-shui masters are all in it for the money. For them, like the pathetic who come crawling to them, there is no higher calling than that of money-master.

Michael McInnis, founder and principal of Primal Publishing, designs web sites, publishes short story booklets and writes daily, with Lauren Leja, 9and2a list of what's pretty good and what's pretty shabby.
Web Views5 copyright 1997 Michael McInnis

Tension Summer 1997