More on New Age Spiritualities and Religions: Nonduality, the unlimited power of the self and the reality as an illusion

In the lastest posts, I've analyzed and criticized some New Age Spiritualities and Religions, specially the ones which pose themselves as revisionisms of Christianity. 

As far I've noted, these revisionistic spiritualities have many more features in common (besides misleadingly using Christian terminology in order to convey the impression that it is Jesus himself who is providing the information):

1-They tend to accept the Indian religious concept of "Maya" (illusion), according to which the reality is a projection of consciousness, an illusion. Such illusion is characterized by "dualisms": good and evil, God and the devil,  love and fear, etc. This is a key concept in mysticism.

2-They tend to undermine the authority of God (which is essential in monotheistic religions) and exalt the "individual self" as the key to unlocking the TRUTH. It is the individual, in its interior, who will find the answers, the inner teacher or guide.

An obvious moral problem with the "illusion" concept, interpreted in terms of duality, is that if the objective reality has not dual aspects, then it is hard to see how objective moral values can be justified. After all, moral values implies anti-values (e.g. the good is opposed to the evil, justice is opposed to unjustice).

If all of duality is an illusion, then the dual distintion between good and evil is also an illusion. Therefore, there is not objective basis (i.e. a basis in reality) to judge that certain actions are objectively (not merely illusory) bad or evil or wrong.

Ironically, this is the mioral view implied by metaphysical naturalism, as Richard Dawkins has summarized: "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference"  River Out Of Eden p.155. Emphasis in blue added).

The New Age believer perhaps would challenge Dawkins's last point about everything being ultimately "blind, pitiless indifference", but he would agree with Dawkins that the duality of "good and evil" is illusory and hence not objectively existing.

Part of the appealing for this "anti-duality" mentality is that it makes the believer to feel good, and vanishes the feelings of guilt and fear connected with Christianity. After all, if there is not duality, no sense can be made of the distinction between justice and unjustice, and hence there is not point in talking about divine justice. Therefore, not possibility of being "punished" by sins or evils committed in this life exists, and the feelings of fear and guilt dissapear.

Another problem that I see in these New Age spiritualities is that they tend to undermine God's authority and power on creation on behalf of the "Self"' own powers. It is not God, but the "self" which determines almost everything. As consequence, the believers in these systems tend to have a watering down view of God (at least, in relation with the concept of God in monotheistic religions and analytic philosophy in which the distinction between God and the created universe is sharp and ontologically essential).

This position may make sense if you assume the non-personalistic ontology of many branches of Hinduism and Buddhism, but not in theism which is grounded in fundamental and ontologically senior person called God. 

But the New Age revisionist won't be bothered by that.