Kremlin sponsors `New Age' kookery by Mark Burdman On Oct. 11, the Soviet Foreign Ministry

Kremlin sponsors `New Age' kookery
by Mark Burdman
        
On Oct. 11, the Soviet Foreign Ministry sponsored
a most unusual press conference. With Foreign Ministry
spokesman Gennadi
Gerasimov standing by his side, Soviet mystic and faith
healer Anatoly Kashpirovsky boasted to journalists about
the success of his activities. ``They idolize me,'' he
said of the Soviet people. ``I can reverse what was
thought irreversible. I tap the inner resources of the
body.'' 
   The next day, Radio Moscow's English-language
broadcast lauded Kashpirovsky's ``psycho-therapeutic''
techniques, saying that Kashpirovsky's show on Soviet
television was watched by 200 million viewers, and that he
had ``cured many of them.'' He would now be turning his
bio-energies to curing AIDS, said Radio Moscow. 
   On Oct. 12, the London s Moscow
correspondent commented that Kashpirovsky has become a
``Soviet superstar, the talk of the land. When his
television show is on, the streets are deserted.... As
faith healer, hypnotist, national comforter and healer of
the sick, he has millions hanging on his words.'' 
   Kashpirovsky is not the only popular occult game in
town. Hundreds of thousands of Soviets, every morning,
watch ``healing energy'' personality Alan Chumak on
television. He has been called a ``Good Samaritan version
of the czarist mystic Rasputin.'' Chumak claims miracle
cures for the multiple crises now facing the U.S.S.R. For
example, on the devastating food shortage, he asserts:
``Vast amounts of our farm produce just rots before it can
get to the stores. Now we're doing an experiment to see if
I can radiate the energy that will be a preservative and
help store fruits and vegetables.'' 
   The Soviet government daily  recently
reported that ``practically every city now has its popular
extrasensory healer....  miserable medical care,
and a certain naive belief in extrasensory powers have led
to their remarkable success in the Soviet Union.'' 
   The sudden obsession, both in the official media and
in the population at large, with phenomena ranging from
UFOs to the Abominable Snowman (``Yeti''), has begun to
receive attention in the West. Britain's  reported Oct. 15, under the headline,
``Mother Russia Loses Her Marbles,'' that ``regular
visitors to Russia believe the country is becoming more
unhinged.'' The paper quotes a woman watching the vast
queues for every imaginable consumer good: ``Only aliens
from outer space can save us now.'' Noting that ``the
whole edifice'' of the Marxist belief structure of
previous regimes has been destroyed under Gorbachov, the
paper adds: ``Pre-revolutionary Russia was famed for its
mystics and faith-healers. The most notorious, the
Siberian monk Rasputin, thrived at a similar time of
turbulence, in the last years of Czardom.'' 

				  - A Russian Nazi [sic] movement? -
   But such commentaries do not come to grips with 
the Soviet elites are so blatantly sponsoring occultism,
mysticism, and irrationalism. In part, this is an empire's
classic reflex in a time of crisis, to provide a
combination of cults and ``bread and circus'' forms of
bizarre entertainment, to distract the masses from the
misery of their lives. But the cultural engineers
ultimately behind this occultism are thinking of something
more ambitious and far more dangerous. They are creating
the basis for a mass fascist transformation in the
U.S.S.R., in the same sense that the proliferation of
paganism, Satanism [sic], and occultism in Germany was an
essential part in forming the committed Nazi cadre [sic]. The
greater danger in the Soviet case, is that the
transformations occur in a Russian culture that is far
more irrational to begin with, than was German culture
earlier in this century. 
   Also, the relevant Russian elites believe that by
doing this, and having it adequately publicized in the
West, they will reinforce ``New Age'' movements globally.
This has the aim of destroying the values of Western
Judeo-Christian civilization [sic]. But beyond this, today's
cultural managers, like the mystical Tibetan-born
millionaire Badmayev and the creators of movements like
Madame Blavatsky's theosophy in the 19th century, claim
that the ``Russian soul'' is uniquely attuned to the
values associated with the ``Age of Aquarius,'' and that,
therefore, Great Mother Russia will ultimately rule a
world driven crazy. This belief in the superiority of the
``Russian soul'' is fully shared by Western leaders in
such cult movements as anthroposophy and theosophy [sic].

					 - Applause from Lucifer [sic] -
   It is no accident that the ``spiritualist''
transformations in the U.S.S.R. are enthusiastically
welcomed by the London-based Lucis (originally Lucifer) [sic]
Trust. During an Oct. 12 discussion, a Lucis official
expressed hope that mystical ideas could fill a vacuum in
the country, as the popular faith in the Communist system
collapses. The Lucis official said the mystical paintings
of the late Nicholas Roerich and the writings of Roerich
and his wife from earlier in this century, could form a
good basis for this kind of spiritual renewal. She reported
that Mikhail Gorbachov recently was quoted in an interview
in the Soviet press, praising Roerich. 
   One Roerich follower now touring Britain,
Russian-born Barbara Ivanowa, has reportedly been a
student and disciple of Lucis founder Alice Bailey, she
said. Ivanowa will be a featured participant at an Oct.
21-22 conference on parapsychology in London (see last
week's ). She is one of the leaders of a ``Madame
Blavatsky revival'' in the U.S.S.R. Blavatsky's theosophy,
like Roerich's ideas, are used as a bridge between the
``Aquarian'' movements of East and West, but with the
effect of proliferating Russian mysticism in the West. 
   In mid-October, the U.S.S.R.'s Association of Peace
Through Culture sponsored an international conference
honoring Roerich. Delegates from India, Mexico, Bulgaria,
France, the United States, and other countries were in
attendance. The meeting received favorable coverage on
Radio Moscow. 
   Meanwhile, preparations are being geared up for a
major Soviet patronized East-West Gnostic
extravaganza during the first weeks of 1990. On Jan.
14-20, a thousand people--700 from the Soviet Union
and 300 from the
West--will be attending the second Global Forum of
Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders for Human Survival,
taking place in Moscow, on the theme ``Environment and
Development for Survival.'' The four-man coordinating
committee for the Global Forum includes Peru's former
Finance Minister Manuel Ulloa and Rev. James Park Morton
from the St. John the Divine Cathedral cult center in New
York City. Official co-sponsors on the Soviet side include
the Supreme Soviet, the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and
the Interfaith Foundation for the Survival and Development
of Humanity.
   One example of the official Moscow sponsorship of the
New Age, should give some insight into the brutality and
cynicism underlying the Soviet government's ``Operation
Occult.'' The Oct. 12  of London wrote
that, ``in an extraordinary demonstration of its new-found
faith in transcendental meditation, the Soviet Union has
asked 1,000 followers of the Maharishi [Mahesh Yogi] to
set up a futuristic domed settlement on the site of an
Armenian city devastated by last year's earthquake. The
Maharishi Ayar-Ved Foundation, named after the giggling
guru who owns Mentmore, Bedfordshire, former home of the
Earls of Rosebery, set up a clinic in Moscow earlier this
year to teach Russian meditation techniques. Now, with
the backing of the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Culture, a vast
Maharishi delegation will travel to Leninakan, Armenia's
second largest city, to teach techniques which the
foundation claims will `create coherence and stability
throughout Armenia.'|'' 
   The same day that this article appeared, the
international media were filled with reports of Soviet
Army cadets shooting at Armenians in the disputed enclave
of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenians are being starved out
by a road blockade from Azerbaijan, which the Soviet
authorities have refused to break. Obviously, this is a
source of amusement for the ``giggling gurus'' at the
Ministry of Culture in Moscow.