Following are replies by Fr Mitchell
Pacwa SJ, author of Catholics and the New
Age (Servant Publications, Michigan) to questions put to him by Sandra
Miesel. Fr Pacwa is also associate
professor of theology at Loyola University in Chicago, and a veteran writer and
lecturer on New Age topics.
What is meant by “the
New Age”?
The New Age movement is not an
organisation but a cultural trend in Europe and America. It is characterised by belief in monism
(everything is One) and pantheism (everything is God - including me). It says our key problem is that we’ve
forgotten that we’re God. New Age
techniques, including experience with drugs, hypnotism and other mind-altering
practices, are supposed to overcome this and provide a fresh basis for interpreting
the world.
Your book draws on
your personal experience with the New Age.
How did you get involved?
When I was a college student in the
late ’60s and early ’70s, I studied Oriental religion. I started toying with Zen, Hinduism,
astrology and so forth. I read Carl Jung
and Herman Hesse – fantastic stuff that became a prism through which I viewed
the world.
How did you get away
from this?
It was a crisis of obedience,
whether or not to teach at the high school to which I was assigned. I was desolate, but willing to obey. Later, after an eight-day retreat on St
Ignatius’ “Exercises”, and after joining the charismatic renewal, I saw things
differently. I became Christ-centred,
not consciousness-centred: focused on
Christ in Scripture, not occult practices,
Your book discussed
your involvement and disillusionment with the enneagram.
The enneagram, from the Greek ennea
(nine) and gram (line
drawing) is a system of classifying personality types based on the figure of a
circle with nine points on it, (each) connected by lines. Each point stands for an ego-type that has
its own distinctive vice and virtue.
Each can get worse by moving with the arrow to another type or improve
by moving against the arrow.
I was taught the enneagram in 1972 while
a student in the Jesuit theologate. We
used it in our spiritual and social life.
But we noticed we were typing people incorrectly, and interest faded.
Yet the enneagram
has become popular lately in Catholic parishes and retreat houses.
In the ‘80s I saw an enneagram
industry develop, but the versions being taught were contradictory. So I did research. The enneagram is supposed to be ancient Sufi
wisdom, thousands of years old. But the
Sufis, who are Muslim mystics, aren’t that old a movement. The diagram itself can’t be older than the 14th
or 15th century. It was
discovered in the 1890s in Central Asia by a Greek-Armenian occultist named
George Gurdjieff. He got it from a
secret brotherhood of Sufis called the Naqshbandi, who were using it for
numerological fortune-telling.
Gurdjieff, a charlatan and a
swindler who was into Gnosticism, taught it to his disciples as a symbol of the
cosmos. Gurdjieff died in 1949 but left
followers.
Oscar Ichazo, a Chilean who claimed
to have had out-of-body experiences since childhood and studied all sorts of
psychic practices, learned the enneagram from such a group.
In the 1960s Ichazo devised a
personality system of nine types – each with its animal totem – matched to the
enneagram. Esalen Institute psychologist,
Claudio Naranjo, another admirer of Gurdjieff, collaborated with him. Naranjo spread the enneagram through Esalen
classes where my teacher, Father Bob Ochs, learned it.
Besides its occult
roots, what else do you find wrong with the enneagram?
I
have two criticisms.
First, it’s theological nonsense, suffused
with Gnostic ideas. For instance, the
nine points of the enneagram are called the “nine faces of God’, which become
nine demons turned upside down. Well,
God doesn’t have nine faces and can’t be turned upside down, much less be
remoulded into a demon. No one should
speak that way. It’s also claimed that
Christ – being perfect – had the virtues of all nine personality types. How can anyone claim to know this? And the way the enneagram is taught is
Pelagian – self-salvation through a man-made technique, not by God’s grace.
Secondly, this is a psychological system that
hasn’t been tested by professional psychologists. We have no independent evidence that it’s
true. As a result, enneagram experts –
who aren’t necessarily aware of the occult aspects – are making up descriptions
as they go along. It’s irresponsible to
pass this off as true.
And what makes one an
expert on the enneagram?
There are no controls over who is an
expert. You wouldn’t go to any other
professional on that basis. Using the
spiritual label guards them from state regulations, but they’re still giving
psychological advice. I don’t have much
respect for the enneagram industry at this point.
Why do audiences accept
it?
They relate to the anecdotes. They recognise that people do have
personality types. But they don’t ask if
this system is true, or why it is supposed to work and not others. They don’t see the potential for abuse if
they start relating to other people by their enneagram numbers.
So what’s the appeal
of the enneagram and other New Age programmes?
Americans are narcissistic
already. They’re curious about the self
and attempt to take control. They want
to short-circuit the process by joining the in-crowd.
So is there a New Age
conspiracy?
Some like to spread that myth. We Jesuits are very sensitive about
conspiracy theories. Powerlessness
breeds them. The New Age isn’t a conspiracy,
but it is a danger to organisations and individuals because it leads people
away from Christ and may damage their psyches.
Still, I don’t want to underestimate the New Age, especially if it
should get political.
But we can’t go
witch-hunting, either.
Of course not. Use common sense and charity. Challenge New Agers from sound knowledge of
faith and fact. Remember, the point of
Christianity isn’t a higher state of consciousness, but an interpersonal
relationship with Christ and with the other members of his church.
By
Fr Mitch Pacwa SJ.
Southern
Cross
30.8.1992
