Russell Chandler's Understanding the New Age is a breezy, generally good-hearted overview of the spiritual smorgasbord of the late 20th century. For the most part, Chandler treats the often eccentric religious manifestations of this era with respect and with the lightest of touches. Having to cover such a great deal of territory and material has hampered Chandler's ability to delve deeper into the content and concepts of these groups. However, he explores with greater focus and intensity, if not greater depth, the more mainstream-oriented of these and related entities, such as the humanistic psychology of thinkers like Maslow and Rogers, and the theories of Einstein and Heisenberg. The reader can be forgiven for concluding that Chandler, the religion writer for the Los Angeles Times for almost two decades, takes the New Age religions with a grain of salt, believing perhaps that the great bulk of them will fade away like grains of salt, leaving the world's more traditional religions largely unscathed.
However, even though Chandler writes of these new religions and sects with a light-heartedness, with less than thorough scientific scrutiny, he does not treat them with disrespect. Despite the generally brief and superficial treatment he gives them, he does report their fundamental beliefs and salient features, letting the leaders and/or believers speak for themselves, never mocking their words. This attitude should be appreciated, for certainly some of these sects are difficult not to mock. Some of them, in fact, are so outrageous that they seem to be inviting ridicule.
Instead of expressing such ridicule, Chandler simply offers a brief counter-argument from a critic of the group in question. For example, in discussing the Mobius Group, a collection of psychics who claimed to have discovered "the ancient palaces of Antony and Cleopatra," Chandler calls the group "an unusual exploration and research organization" which :stirred up...