Author’s Note: This is the first article in a multi-part series on New Age thought and political utopianism.

Ever since humanity was ushered out of the Garden of Eden for rebellion against God (Genesis 3), we have been constantly scheming and working towards a unifying Man with some system of Paradise. From the mystical doctrines of the Egyptian mystery religions to the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union, from Plato’s Republic and council of wise men to the dreams and aspirations of a globally enhanced United Nations—mankind has sought to create the "perfect utopian" society shaped in Man’s image.

The New Age Movement fits in nicely with this concept, envisioning a spiritually evolved humanity coupled with a complete global social, political, and economic system. It’s a world were cosmic harmony and attunement motivates and permeates each group and individual, and where every nation and culture can come together in solidarity and equity. If you’re thinking that all of this sounds like a blend of Karl Marx’s communism and H.P. Blavatsky’s Theosophical mysticism, you’re not far off.

Marx, the founder of communism, postulated a model for state control of all economic production. His ideas, ultimately carried forward by V.I. Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Tse-tung, were an attempt to achieve the utopian atheist political and economic regime. The results of this experiment in paradise-building; over 100 million dead, millions more imprisoned, vast regions depopulated, and suffering such as the world has never before seen [for a statistical analysis of government sponsored mass murder, see R.J. Rummel, Death By Government, Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917, and China’s Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900.)

But never mind the mountain range of corpses, the New Age Movement and the spiritual masters behind New Age thought have somehow managed to transcended the biggest bloodbath in history.

Consider the following quotes from the New Age spirit master, Maitreya the Christ, as channeled to Benjamin Crème (The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom, 1980)—keep in mind, these words were transmitted during the height of the Cold War,

In another series of New Age messages channeled during the Cold War, the spirit being calling itself I AM transmitted an extensive plan for a worker’s world communist paradise (GOD—Ultimate Unlimited Mind—Speaks, 1982).

This is only one small portion of I AM’s message. In fact, the entire text is over 450 pages in length and has, as a central theme, the literal establishment of a "New World Government" through a planetary form of "true" Communism.

One particular Ascended Master, the Tibetan Master Djwhal Khul [in the New Age an Ascended Master is a highly evolved spiritual entity], channeled the raisons de’être for the despots and tyrants of the last two hundred years, ascribing to them a high and beneficial role in the development of human spiritual enlightenment. Alice Bailey, one of the more prominent leaders of the Theosophical movement [Theosophy has been a key factor in the creation of today’s modern New Age Movement], recorded the Tibetan’s words in her book, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,

"…They are the destroyers of what must be destroyed…" Think about it! This section of The Externalisation of the Hierarchy was written in 1939, the year World War II began. Hitler’s atrocities against his own people—particularly the infirmed and incurables—was known by 1939, as was his treatment of German Jews. Mussolini’s tactics were also known, as was the executions by Franco’s Nationalists Spain. Lenin and Stalin’s crushing of their own people, soaking the Russian motherland with its own blood, was known too. And the French Revolution, with its forests of guillotines, had kick started revolutionary ideologies that had bled Europe and other parts of the world over and over again.

But remember, it was the master Djwhal Khul, a spiritual entity that can supposedly transcend time and space [hence, ignorance cannot be used as an excuse], that basically proclaimed all of this death and destruction as good and necessary. Why? So that "humanity can go forward along the Lighted Way."

Now please understand, not every New Age leader, author, or medium speaks highly of communism or despotism. Most of the time the word "communism," or the names of Marx or Lenin, never enters into the lexicon of the more recent New Age literature. But there is a remarkably shared vision between the New Age "global society"—an ideal which spans the lifetime of mystical thought—and the utopian visions of political tyrants.

How so? The New Age Movement, like the political utopians of the twentieth century, seeks a perfect world balanced by economic, political, and spiritual unity and harmony. It’s the ultimate centralist World State.

In this mystical paradise society, nature, man, and God are placed on the same plane. Mankind, once spiritually evolved and recognizing its collective consciousness, is God. Likewise, the despot rulers of our immediate past exhibited the same ego-mania: the atheist state, a product of evolved man, was touted as God—and the Party and its leaders were the voice of this centralist-state deity.

A utopian New Age united world, where tolerance is enforced in the name of diversity, and mankind steered down the path of social and spiritual transformation; would it be any different than the Communist system, where the hammer crushed indiscriminately and the sickle reaped were it did not sow?