Is the New Age Getting Old? Then Change the Channeler

It was a dark and balmy night.

A perfect night to lock into the energies associated with the full moon, in company with members of metaphysical movements deeply rooted in Los Angeles’ past.

A dark night because the moonlight was blurred by overcast.

To the strains of a Shakuhachi flute, about 140 adults, old and young, silently took seats arranged in circles in the Sepulveda Unitarian Universalist Society’s bulbous wooden sanctuary nicknamed “the Onion.”

The congregation, known for skepticism but with a typical openness to other beliefs, had allowed an old New Age coalition known as the Los Angeles InterGroup to use the mystically suggestive structure for full-moon meditation services, or “festivals.”

Welcoming words came from Jeriel C. Smith, a Century City attorney who, with his wife, leads a small meditation group in Tujunga called the Open Lotus Circle.

“Thank you for joining our annual celebration of the Festival of Humanity . . . on the eve of the full moon in the solar month of Gemini,” said Smith, noting that similar gatherings were being held around the world.

“The work in which we and they are cooperating--group meditation in the service of Humanity--takes place in silence upon the mental plane and has profound effects upon all of the invisible levels of the energetic existence which permeates all living matter, including the planet itself.”

Participants lit candles on a small, round table, first to invoke the Divine Presence, then in turn the deities of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Taoism.

The meditators named Lord Buddha, Allah and other deities, chanting “Om” for 10 seconds after each.

As the last candle was lit, people were invited to “name the Divine Representation of your choice,” and quite a few did.

With that, as printed instructions advised, everyone joined “in singing the sacred Om in a continuous rhythm . . . until we sense the Divine Presence as grounded and embodied.”

The monotone chant lasted a little over a minute until somehow experience or common sense said that was long enough.

Musician David Zasloff was reintroduced, playing the Autoharp. “Please, no applause during the program,” the instructions read.

In a lecture that took listeners through the year, relating equinoxes and solstices and moons to the cycles of emotion and “mental centers” in the human body, Georgia Lambert spoke as if she was teaching a class.

In fact, she brought 40 students from her Monday night class at Griffith Park on “The Nature of Soul” to this service and gave her lecture there.

Jerry Ann Smith, wife of Jeriel, alternated with Guy Michael Douglass of “The Nature of Soul” group in reciting words of guidance for the meditators.

“Send forth a stream of illumined thoughts. . .”

OMMMMMMMM.

” . . . to all who care, to all who love humanity. . . . “

OMMMMMMMM.

“We invoke with one world voice divine energy that will transform Humanity.”

OMMMMMMMM.

Participants were then asked to “cross the threshold of silence.”

The next 10 minutes were so quiet--without a cough or creaking chair--that you could hear the traffic on usually quiet Haskell Avenue and a jet flying high over the Valley.

Then it was time to recite the Great Invocation. Many present recited from memory the 113 words passed on decades ago by Alice Bailey, which she said she learned from “the Tibetan,” a guru whose thoughts she perceived telepathically.

While in America in 1915, the British-born Bailey became interested in theosophy, a blending of Eastern and Western philosophy most notably propounded by Madame Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891). Bailey rose to prominence in one wing of the movement, moving its headquarters to a Hollywood retreat called Krotona.

She fell out with other leaders in 1920 and later moved to New York. But her writings between 1919 and her death in 1949 inspired followers in California to keep her vision alive even as they added other interpretations.

The Great Invocation purports to summon emanations from the Mind, Heart and Will of God, and even asks that “Christ may return to Earth.” A footnote to the name Christ in the printed program advises that “the coming one” of another faith may be substituted at that point.

Glenda Christian, a teacher of esoterica at the University of the Seven Rays in Los Angeles, led a closing ritual intended to radiate symbolically the summoned energies of harmony, intelligence, etc., out to Humanity, with participants carrying candles to the periphery of the sanctuary, followed by a final chanting of Om three times.

As the gathering slowly broke up, Jeriel Smith said participants are free to reject any teaching or aspect of the ritual.

One counsel from Alice Bailey--or the Tibetan--was “if you can’t validate it by personal experience, then don’t validate it,” according to Smith.

An ominous warning in the program, it turns out, was not to be taken literally:

“The energies invoked at the festivals may be over-stimulating for very young children.”

Jane Watson of Canoga Park, who edits a New Age newsletter, said with a smile: “That’s just a polite way to say don’t bring small children.”