James Redfield tell us that by working on our own religious, psychological, or spiritual evolution, we are working on the world. The amount of consciousness you bring to the collective mind is part of your contribution . But what is perhaps even more troubling than the childlike passivity encouraged by these books is their denigration of skepticism and their encouragement of habits of unreason, which carry over into political and work and home life. The elevation of personal truths and personal testimony over logic and verifiable fact which links popular psychology and popular spirituality today also infects other kinds of belief. Consider the militia movement, which invests the New World Order with demonic power.
Propagandists argue by declaration, relying on intensity and relative ubiquity of belief.
There are also clear analogies between the denial of coincidence that's central to popular spirituality literature and the embrace of conspiracy theories. It's not surprising, then, to find crossovers from New Age beliefs to the militias. I know a convert to the militia movement who was once deeply enmeshed in the Church of Scientology and remains an avid believer in the paranormal. She has always thrived on the presence of enemies, and so, in a way, do popular spirituality authors. Despite their majoritarian appeal, mass-market spirituality books offer the pleasures of membership in a besieged minority.