THE MYSTICAL REVOLUTION – Part 4
The following is an excerpt from the booklet: THE MYSTICAL REVOLUTION October 14, 2015 by Lighthouse Trails By Ray Yungen
Europe Gets on Board
In 2014, I traveled to Europe, specifically England, Ireland, and Germany for a number of speaking engagements. I was shocked to see the level of New Age acceptance in these countries. I didn’t get a real sense of how big this was until I went to a number of bookstores. In Dublin, Ireland at the city’s largest bookstore, there were 80 shelves devoted to mind, body, spirit (the “non-threatening” term for New Age spirituality). Traveling around Ireland, I found that New Age spirituality was the prominent spiritual expression even in little villages scattered around the countryside. I was expecting to find lots of books on Catholicism; instead, I found many books by the likes of Neale Donald Walsch, a New Age channeler.
Dusseldorf, Germany’s major bookstore absolutely reflected the mystical revolution I am trying to describe. Eighty-eight shelves were devoted to these subjects, which they called zie esoterik (German word for occult). It was then I was introduced to the German word for spirit guide, geist fürer.
Finally, in Birmingham, England (the second largest city in England), the largest bookstore in the center of town had a whopping 100 shelves devoted to the New Age compared to only twelve shelves devoted to Christianity. And in that small “Christian” section, many of the titles reflected the New Age view rather than the Christian.
This coincides with my experience in Germany, because right at the time I was there, I read an article that came out, which stated that Germans spend 25 billion euros a year on New Age activities and things related to the New Age. Twenty-five billion! The article said that New Age practices have become integrated into everyday life in Germany. Integrated and very common.
I had further evidence of that when I was in a large retail outlet in Germany called Hercules (the equivalent of the U.S. outlet, Walmart). The store’s large magazine section contained a sizeable number of New Age magazines, indicating the public was interested in these subjects.
In a 2013 trip to Europe, I saw the same level of interest in France. In one large bookstore, a small religion section was mostly Catholic, with a much larger section representing the entire panoply of New Age thought and practice.
All this shouldn’t be much of a surprise because the most popular spiritual author in Europe, Anselm Grün, has a strong New Age bent. Grün, a German Benedictine monk, promotes contact with spirit guides, getting in touch with “your angels,” and Buddhist-type meditation. Grün has written over 300 titles, which have sold over 14 million copies.
Clearly, from my own observation and from talking to people who live there, the mystical revolution is considerably more advanced in Europe than the U.S., although as time goes on, the gap is narrowing.
In addition to Europe, America’s neighbor to the north, Canada, has also heavily embraced this mystical revolution to roughly the same degree. In one national chain bookstore in the suburbs of Vancouver, BC, the number of shelves devoted to New Age spirituality has more than doubled in just a few years from twenty to forty-five.
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Next – Planetary Spirituality
