| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 社會學研究所 === 94 === The New Age Movement emerged in Western society in 1960s and it is a cultural and religious movement. It’s internalized religious presentation and the view point of individualized spirituality make it different from other religions in present time. It makes the individual as the centre of religion. It also makes stress on the Cosmology of Monism and the human-consciousness-centered viewpoint of practice.
This article take the「Individualization」theory as the analyzing tool, to understand the characteristics of the New Age Movement. Individualization means, in highly institutionalized and functionalized differentiated societies, individuals do not recognize the primacy of collectivity, but take the spirit of 「self-responsibility」, and construct the reflexive life attitude. The New Age Movement develops a spiritualized cosmos system, and by making the material world energized, it gives the reflexivity a superior status, which even superior than personal social actions. In practice, this movement uses the Transpersonal Psychology as its methodology, and by combining the Human Potential Movement and the Holistic Health Movement, it tries to mould an ideal individuality. Using the self-consciousness as the centre of practice, these movements utilize the techniques of discipline and confession, and try to make the body as the path of fulfilling the individuality. From this view of point, 「curing」is being viewed as a tool of uniting the individual and Cosmos. The reflexivity becomes imaginations, and transforms curing the interpersonal relationships to internal dialogs of the subject. These practices can be divided to three modes: the Vipassana mode, the Yoga mode, and the Shaman mode. The first takes stress on the self internal dialogs. The second tries to raise body’s energy status. And the third emphasizes the utilizing of external consciousness-lifting tools. Furthermore the New Age Movement expands the curing metaphor, lifts it from the personal level, to the societal level. Starting from the angle of personal consciousness, the social potential movement asks people to develop the influence and creativity of consciousness, and makes the society experiencing the「quantum leap」,to give birth of the 「new paradigm」. The root actions of community politics and small scale local economies, forms the base of the new life politics and green consumptions. And they make use of deep ecology to substitute the myth of ongoing growth.
the New Age Movement develops the reflexive spirituality, as the presentation form of the internal individuality. In everyday life, such individuality becomes the action strategy of life politics. Facing risks which traditional social actions can not handle, reflexive thinking becomes the only way. At last, when the reflexivity in the individual is being pushed to an extreme, it may give birth of a new kind of individuality. It would be a reflexive thinking of reflexivity. It can help individual to get rid of limits of external categories, and constructs some new possibilities of actions.
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