Declinative
Experience bank
At that point, the individual has a complete experience bank: "Well, then you must have gone from being a murderer, or whatever you want, to something... to having done something good. To have been involved in it all, and it takes many incarnations" (p7).
Reincarnation memories
One of the respondents describes certain parts of the new spirituality as "a subjectivist quagmire" that he personally wants nothing to do with. When people remember past lives then it is often in the form of celebrities and great figures from world history, which indicates that there may be an element of self-deception in it all.
Wikström (1998) speaks of "the crisis-stricken person's inability to see the bitter reality in the white eye" (p. 36) and of a kind of regression back to the child's magical thinking and control.
Without going into what is true and what is not, it is reasonable to ask, from a psychological point of view, what this and a number of other analyzes in the neo-spiritual thought system risk doing to the follower? Are they really ideas that can be embraced without them having any dulling or negative effect?
One of the interviewees, however, reserves himself against an overly optimistic approach:
So that I am absolutely not as optimistic as... So from the big perspective very optimistic... but from the like more concrete smaller perspective then I am not as optimistic as a new ageare is... that it is like we should just embrace each other, and that is lovely, and the future is just lovely and so, I don't share that, unfortunately.
"... and whith the seriousness that can arise when life is more than half over" (in Conn, p 347)
The danger here is to become paralyzed, passive, "giving rise to complacency or synical withdrawal, due to its paradoxical understanding of truth" (in Conn, p. 547)
This is something that the respondents agree with. Evil is an aspect of God. To the extent that we become subject to this, it is because we have something to learn, it is our own energies that return to us, so to speak. The analysis of evil and its consequences is simple and clear.
In the material there are some accounts that give the impression of being of the conspiracy theory type, for example that the security services of different countries are cooperating to find the reincarnated Adolf Hitler. Even more sane criticism of or distrust of the establishment can have elements of a conspiracy theory. This seems to stand in some contrast to other parts of the worldview which emphasize that it is the individual himself who creates his destiny and that no one else really has any influence over this.
"Somewhere along the way, your parents broke the news to you, too: Life isn't fair. And they were all right. As we mature and turn more and more towards reality, we must face it as it is. We must come to terms with its nature. Life is not always as we wish it would be. We wish we could live without pain, but we can't. We wish we would always get what we want and feel we deserve, but we don't. We wish that our loved ones would never die, but they do. And no matter how hard we wish, how loud we protest, or how well we behave, we can't make these fundamental realities disappear.”
Kunst, Jennifer (2014-06-10). Wisdom from the Couch: Knowing and Growing Yourself from the Inside Out (Kindle Locations 1020-1024). Central Recovery Press, LLC. Kindle Edition.
Signs of personal maturity.
An increased compassion, ability to love and understanding are indicated as signs of personal or spiritual development.
"Unusual before mid-life, Stage 5 knows the sacrament of defeat and the reality of irrevocable commitments and acts. What the previous stage struggled to clarify, in terms of boundaries of self and outlook, this stage now makes porous and permeable. Alive to paradox and the truth in apparent contradictions, this stage strives to unify opposites in mind and experience" (p. 347, in Conn)