February 2003

ARTICLE TOOLS

Find similar articles E-mail this page

High on the New Paradigm agenda is transformation of corporations by increasing to a "critical mass" the number of individual psychic experiences. The primary means for achieving transformation of individual consciousness is Transcendental Meditation or other "psychotechnologies" with occult potential.

Meditation techniques taught to relieve executive stress are typically the Trojan Horse into the business world for subtly effecting conversion to a New Age perspective. Fundamental to the worldview of inner-directed meditation (rather than meditation directed toward a transcendent God) is the assumption that all is one: matter and spirit, creature and creator.

The belief that humanity is destined to realize its divinity is the underlying assumption in some seminars of Landmark Education (formerly Werner Erhard's Transformational Technologies), Lifespring, and others with major corporations on their client lists. Monism comes to the fore when salespeople are taught to center on the "higher self" and become one with the "Universal Mind" and its unlimited abundance.

A salesperson focusing on the "higher self" detaches from traditional, quantifiable business goals (such as sales quotas) that feed the ego. Instead, accrual of wealth (sales) comes about as a byproduct of spiritual progress.

As Deepak Chopra describes it in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, when the universal laws of wealth consciousness are assimilated, they will provide the ability to create unlimited riches "with effortless ease, and to experience success in every endeavor."

Similar philosophies have roots in the metaphysical cults of Charles Fillmore's Unity School of Christianity and the 19th-century New Thought (mind-healing) movement—the same taproot that eventually ...