Excerpt from chapter three in: A Catholic Response to the New Age Phenomenon by the Irish Theological Commission in 1994. To see the contents of the whole chapter, click here.
"New Age Movement" is abbreviated as NAM.
The Initiatory Path is one of the sure ways to enlightenment. Without initiations one is seen to dabble in these ideas, but not seriously. 84 Baer claims that these initiations involve a ritual infusion of occult mystical power into the recipient 'who thereby receives various gifts, powers, and awakenings'. 85 Baer claims that one experiences powerful altered states of consciousness involving bliss, joy and love that hook the initiated into the experience. Each initiation is seen as a major spiritual breakthrough into new plateaux of higher consciousness and psychic powers (ibid.).
Creme explains that 'the esoteric process known as Initiation is the scientific path to this perfectionment, whereby man becomes united and at-one with his Source. This path of perfectionment is marked off by five major steps or points of crisis and tension. Each initiation results in a tremendous expansion of awareness or consciousness which brings an ever deepening and more inclusive vision and knowledge of the true nature of reality. No Master of the fifth Initiation needs any further incarnational experience on Earth' because at this point he has completed his Karmic cycle. 86
Alice Bailey, in her major work The Rays and Initiations, says that the time for individual initiation is over. 87 What is required now is group initiation. Her book gives detailed instruction on how to achieve this. She claims that the contents of her book were dictated by the entity identified as D.K., otherwise known as Master Djwhal Khul, the Tibetan, an ascended master. It was published in 1960 in time for the universalisation of the occult through the NAM.
NOTES
(Full details of the publications referred to in these notes can be found in the Select Bibliography).
84. Rays and Initiations, Alice Bailey.
85. Inside the New Age Nightmare, Randall N. Baer, p. 107.
86. Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom, B. Creme, p. 29.
87. Rays and Initiations, Alice Bailey, p. 26.
