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BusinessWeek counted 79 books on spirituality in the workplace in its November 1999 cover story. A search on "business spirituality" at Amazon.com now produces 116 titles. Not all have New Paradigm content and some reflect Christian approaches, but the New Age faction has definitely taken its place in the emerging business and workplace spirituality.

"There is a feeling we know as spirit—only the names and words change," Terry Mollner, a top New Paradigm consultant and author, tells 150 people at a Founders Meeting for the global institute and network. "Imagine your nervous systems connecting, and we're all part of the one. … a circle of intentionality and knowing and warmth."

Before the session ends they will pass around a black stone. Upon receiving it, each is to say "the word that gives force to what you will bring to the conference." Imagination. Authenticity. Mystery. There is little repetition, except for a few words like Joy. The stone continues around the room. Magic. Intuition. Connection. Divinity. Eternal life.

A bell chimes, and Mollner shuts his eyes to give a closing blessing. "Let the pure light of intentionality behind each of these words resonate," he says. "We are all in this together. We are all in this together. We're here to be open-minded. We're going to rise from here with an energy that says, 'We're going to serve as servant leaders—just for the d— joy of it.' Amen."

In the new millennium, the New Age label itself falls away. Like Baptist and other churches disowning their denominational identifiers to present themselves as "community churches," postmodern New Agers would rather not be encumbered by the pigeonholing of the New Age brand name.

The code words for New Age spirituality remain—intuition, transformation, interconnectedness—but even New Age Journal changed its name to Body & Soul last year to break free of extremist or negative connotations. The preferred term within the movement, emerging mainstream, is telling.

Into the mainstream, indeed, basic New Age tenets are flowing through the culvert of business. As Mollner indicated, everyone is interconnected and, by extension, one with that undefined deity of different names. Monism—like much New Age thought, borrowed from Eastern religions—holds that everything and everyone, including the divine, is one. Hence the New Age tendency to blur the distinction between the human and the divine.

This religious belief sneaks into the office through the secular guise of seemingly neutral meditation techniques (See "Prosperity Consciousness," p. 38). The Spirit in Business conference offered no fewer than nine talks on or exercises in inner-directed meditation. Not to mention the homily that S.N. Goenka, founder of the Vipassana Meditation Centers Worldwide, delivered to the full assembly.

I went into a conference "moving meditation" exercise aware of its well-documented benefits for stress reduction. Stepping about in a circle at varying rhythms to recorded instrumental music (mainly zither, I think), my fellows and I became mindful of our connection with the floor. We sat for a guided meditation, focusing first on merely being, and then working toward a finer appreciation of nothingness. It was pretty relaxing. I got a little tense, though, when meditation leader Sam Kirschner brought the monism to the surface.

"From this place," Kirschner informed us, "you can authentically change your reality to whatever you want it to be."

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February 2003, Vol. 47, No. 2