The guru in Spain of a New Age meditation group has given a lecture in a Dominican cultural space. What is the complaint that we make public?
On November 23, O_Lumen, a “space for the arts and the word” that the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) has in Madrid, hosted a conference whose title drew attention: “The spirituality of Paleolithic women and its relevance nowadays”.
Being a place of dialogue with culture, such an act might seem understandable, due to the interest in knowing such a distant and unknown aspect of the religious nature of the human being. In addition, the speaker was presented as a doctor in Psychology and a scientific researcher, which indicated a rigorous intervention to talk about “the spirituality of Paleolithic women reflected in their art through the works found in the caves of the Peninsula Fundamentally Iberian”.
However, there was another fact that certainly “creaked”. The third piece of information that was provided about the speaker was the following: “instructor in the Arka Dhyana method of intuitive meditation”. This, together with the “current relevance” of prehistoric feminine spirituality that was pointed out in the title of the activity, casts many doubts about the opportunity to celebrate it in a Catholic space. Let’s take it slow.
“Contact with our inner Being”
In the previous information published by the Dominican space, one could read what appears to be a summary of the speaker’s thought: “In the same way that Paleolithic women probably entered into a contemplative silence, to understand the nature of the Universe, the introduction it also includes how to contact our inner Being through our hearts and thus obtain intuitive guidance in our lives.
That is why it is worth asking: who maintains this theory? Yes, it is only a theory, and completely unverifiable, since, due to the lack of documentation from the time, hypotheses can only be made from the remains studied by archaeologists. And the question becomes more important when considering, as the basis of the conference, a kind of “practical application” to “contact our inner Being”. Here there is no simple look at Prehistory, but a clear intention to spread New Age beliefs.
From meditation to pseudotherapy
The protagonist is Tina Lindhard (image above), a native of South Africa, who in her official autobiographical account states that her university studies left her with a thirst for interiority that moved her to “try many methods of meditation.” Until he met an Indian yoga teacher, Srinivas Arka, founder of the Center for Conscious Awareness (CCC), who invented an intuitive meditation proposal, built on Hinduism foundations and heavily influenced by the methods of human potential and positive psychology.
That’s the method Tina Lindhard teaches: Arka Dhyana, also called “intuitive meditation” (IM) or “heart-based.” Not only that: she is the president of the CCC in Spain. And she even explains the healing dimension of it: “I have spent many years of my life providing a type of touch-based therapy that combines the sensitivity gained from using the IM method with the biodynamic cranial sacral approach.” We enter, then, into the field of pseudo-therapies of esoteric origin.
Scraps of Hinduism for the Postmodern World
What does this woman believe? On her website, when she talks about “spirituality” she does so in terms of knowledge of reality, as a method to “discover the nature of life.” Nothing that has to do with a Christian conception of the world, but in a Gnostic key and with many allusions to Hindu concepts. The main thing, for her, is to “seek the nature of the Being” of things (remember that the purpose of Hinduism practices is to discover that “reality” which is the non-existence of what we see, which is nothing more than parts of Brahman , the impersonal divinity that fills everything).
Lindhard affirms that in order to know the truth of everything that exists, “yogis developed methods that lead to meditation.” Some methods that would help “to produce different experiences and interior states, which give rise to a series of revelations.” What she practices and teaches is inscribed in this line: intuitive meditation or Arka Dhyana.
Call to conversion: another religion
Would what counts be compatible with the Christian faith? We must attend, first of all, to the fact of the ambiguity in the presentation of his proposal, which is sometimes camouflaged behind psychology and even under the cloak of the sciences of History, as has happened in the O_Lumen premises in Madrid, owned by of a religious order as important as the Dominicans. One would expect, from those who should be custodians of the faith, clear discernment criteria so as not to be complicit in the dissemination of ideas that, in a sneaky way, are presented as aseptic, when in reality they propose a worldview that is totally incompatible with Christianity. .
It is enough to take a look at the letter of introduction of Arka Dhyana meditation to realize what it is: through touch and sound, the practitioner is invited “to the spiritual consciousness or the conscious life force to manifest itself completely in the physical body”. As a consequence -always according to Tina Lindhard herself- “certain centers are activated and become sources of energy, each one with its own wisdom and its own connection with nature and the universe, all of which changes our perception of the world” . In other words: a conversion would take place. A radical religious change.
everything is divine
“In Arka Dhyana we start by touching the physical body and repeating a vibratory sound, although we slowly go further to connect with our essence or Being”, we read.
We must understand this, in the spiritual context of the New Age (New Age), as an expression of pantheism, that is, the conception that everything that exists is part of the great impersonal divinity, of the energy that permeates everything. The essence of the human being, ultimately, would be that hypothetical divine Being (that is why they write it with a capital letter).
Dissolution of Christianity
Nowhere does God appear, nor Christ, nor prayer. The reality, according to this meditative proposal, is enclosed in the identity of man with the totality of the universe, which has a divine character. There is no room for any historical revelation, nor is there any place for the reality of an incarnated God in the world. Because, among other things, there is no sin and, therefore, no need for redemption. If at any time Christian concepts are used or accepted, it will be by emptying them of their original meaning.
The method that Tina Lindhard discloses “is open to everyone regardless of their religion,” according to their followers. Indeed: the faith of the people does not matter to him, since it is reinterpreted from his own “holistic” worldview, which annuls the characteristics of particular religions –especially Christianity–. Deep down, she seeks the dissolution of revealed faith.
What was hosted by the cultural space of the Order of Preachers in Madrid was not, therefore, a simple interesting conference based on what we know about Prehistory, but a proselytizing activity of an esoteric group from the New Age, taking advantage of the claim of meditation and the need for interiority that exists in many people. It is tragic that it was done in a place where the faith preached, thought and prayed by great figures of our Church such as Santo Domingo de Guzmán and Santo Tomás de Aquino, among many others with a prolific centennial history, should be shared.