New Age Trend: Indigo Children and 'Spiritual Cinema'

By Carrie Tomko, Natalie Khorochev, and Marylin Mai
ASSIST News Service

CBN.com – HOLLYWOOD, CA (ANS) -- A growing phenomenon in today’s cinematic landscape is a genre of film centered around spiritual—though not biblical—themes. Recent box office hits indicate that movie audiences are increasingly interested in films that contain more than the romantic comedy and action formulas that have come to dominate our screens. Stephen Simon, producer of Somewhere in Time and What Dreams May Come, has taken note of this trend and spearheaded a movement bent on providing more movies in this thread, which Simon calls “Spiritual Cinema.”

In an interview for The Journal Gazette, Simon indicated that he “grew disillusioned with the lack of spiritually potent films being made in Tinseltown.” This disillusionment spurred Simon to explore and develop his ideas of spiritually-centered cinema.

Stephen Simon’s most recent project was Indigo, a movie he produced and directed about a psychic child with the ability to heal. Released January 29, 2005, Indigo was shown in AMC theaters and Unity Churches worldwide and received the Audience Choice Award at the Santa Fe Film Festival this past January. The cast of Indigo includes New Age luminary Neale Donald Walsch, who also co-authored the script. Subsequently, Simon and Walsch are teaming up to make a second spiritual movie based on Walsch’s bestselling book, Conversations with God.

It is important to understand that “spiritual” in Simon’s sense of the word does not mean Christian. In an online review of Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ, Simon stated:

I must also say that the entire film seemed like the dying gasp of an old ultra-religious paradigm that is slowly fading into oblivion. I had the distinct feeling that I was watching the symbolic conclusion to 2000 years of human history that, in the West, has been dominated by the Catholic Church. If, in fact, that turns out in the future to have been true, then Gibson has indeed ushered out this chapter of history in a blaze o’gory.

Rather, Stephen Simon, who is also the co-founder and president of the Institute for Spiritual Entertainment, has a vision for using the word “spiritual” to identify this new wave of entertainment that “nurtures creativity, ignites the imagination, and awakens the sacred within [and is] focused upon the rediscovery of inner wisdom and divine power.”

Characteristics of the Indigo Child

In the mid 1970s, while researching the colors of the human aura and their possible meaning and effects, Nancy Ann Tappe, teacher, counselor, psychic and synesthetic, identified a deep blue aura color she coined “Indigo.” By the 1980s it was recognized in 80% of the children she saw based on a set of human attributes and behavior patterns that correlated to this particular hue of their aura.

According to Tappe,

The Indigo phenomenon has been recognized as one of the most exciting changes in human nature ever documented in society. The Indigo label describes the energy pattern of human behavior which exists in over 95% of the children born in the last 10 years. As small children, Indigo’s are easy to recognize by their unusually large, clear eyes. Extremely bright, precocious children with an amazing memory and a strong desire to live instinctively, these children of the next millennium are sensitive, gifted souls with an evolved consciousness who have come here to help change the vibrations of our lives and create one land, one globe and one species. They are our bridge to the future.

Indigo Children have indeed become the current generation as described by Wendy Chapman, director of Metagifted.Org, who also claims to be an Indigo adult:

They are different. They have very unique characteristics that set them apart from previous generations of children. The name itself indicates the Life Color they carry in their auras and is indicative of the Third Eye Chakra, which represents intuition and psychic ability.

A close look at a website dedicated to “Indigo, The Symbol of Hope” reveals that the external characteristics of these children are fairly disruptive in nature. They “get bored easily with assigned tasks” and “are easily distracted.” They also “have difficulty with discipline and authority” and “often express anger outwardly.” Meanwhile, internal traits are ambiguous, and difficult if not impossible to diagnose or prove. For instance, children either “have strong empathy for others or NO empathy,” or “have an obvious sense of self,” “display strong intuition,” and “know they belong here.” (I can think of very few children who are convinced that they belong somewhere else.)

What this concept of Indigo Children seems to do is provide justification for society’s declining investment and involvement in a healthy, positive upbringing of our children. It is no coincidence that many of the disruptive traits outlined here are the same traits that sociologists have identified in the children of this generation, who get little positive attention from their parents and instead demand reparation in the form of gadgets and toys.

Furthermore, it is undeniable that we as a society are failing to provide children with the moral foundation they need, which stems from a firm, family-based upbringing. Even sociologists who decry the “family values” of the 1950s as well as the concept of Biblical parenting admit that those values have proven to be more successful than the permissive parenting that today’s culture insists upon. What the Indigo culture does, instead of acknowledging these trends, is try to justify this retrogression by claiming that these disruptive children are not spoiled, but rather are “here to change the world.”

What is convenient about these ideas, and also works well with the nebulous descriptions of these children, is that they provide a tempting ideology for parents to buy into, especially if they are already experiencing guilt about their child-raising. Now, instead of confronting the possibility that their lack of investment in their children has resulted in problematic behavior, they can believe that their children are simply “extremely bright” but “misunderstood,” and that they wield power from an “evolved consciousness.” Not a bad turn of events for people such as Dr. Chapman, who pulls in a healthy $75 an hour for a mere phone consultation.

As this Indigo Child movement gains momentum, it becomes clear that its supporters not only ask people to encourage and magnify these children, but to allow them a place in our lives as masters. Twyman features a prayer for the Indigo Children on his website:

We are all the Children of Light, and we offer ourselves to the greater service of humanity, knowing that Peace Prevails on Earth through each one of us. We thank the spiritual masters that we know as our children for having the courage to come to the planet at this time to offer their gifts, knowing that we are one with them. As we focus on this oneness, the Light increases and we initiate a world of compassion and peace. Together with the children we SEE the world as healed, and we allow this vision to take root all around us. Bless the children who have come to lead us into the new world.

It is impossible that any possible good can come from reverencing our children as gurus and masters, yet that clearly seems to be the proposal here.

Educating Indigo Children

Those who desire to foster the development of Indigo Children recommend schools like Montessori, Waldorf, and a number of charter schools. The Waldorf School system uses the educational methods pioneered by Rosicrucian clairvoyant Rudolf Steiner. They stress creativity and downplay regimentation.

However, some background research into the curriculum of the Waldorf schools reveals that the school and the religion are inseparable. Roy Wilkinson, in Rudolf Steiner on Education: A Compendium explains:

In the child we have before us [is] a being who has only recently left the divine world. In due course, still at a tender age, he comes to school and it is the teacher’s task to help to guide him into earthly existence. The teacher is therefore performing a priestly office. He is mediating between heaven and earth, i.e. seeking to harmonize a soul-spiritual being with a physical body.

Waldorf schools may not teach the word “anthroposophy,” but the curriculum is formed out of a worldview that follows its course. As a result, schools like Waldorf are meant to encourage these Indigo Children in the pursuit of reincarnation, clairvoyance, and their supposed divinity.

Overtones of the Occult

Embedded in this ideology formed and proliferated by people such as Twyman, Simon, Walsh, and Cayce are dangerous leanings toward the divinity of man and the occult. Chapman, the Indigo Children counselor, also has interests in tarot, channeling, and psychic abilities. Furthermore, the Indigo Children Section Index features an interesting symbol – the Eye of Horus, which traditionally symbolizes the Egyptian Sun God Ra but has also been associated with alternate religions ranging from Satanism and the Masonic Lodge to Mormonism.

Spreading the Word

Since the release in 2005, advocates of the film Indigo and the Indigo Children movement continue to work toward developing a wider audience. Indigo has been released to DVD, and the official website encourages people to host viewings of the movie in areas where the film is not yet offered.

On January 29, 2005, tens of thousands of people gathered at 100 different AMC theaters and 600 churches and additional venues to watch screenings of the film, followed by a video segment by James Twyman and Doreen Virtue. Twyman encouraged those who were unable to participate in the event to “please set aside some time during the day to focus on the Indigo Children and send them your prayers. Many of these children are sensitive enough to feel the energy we are sending their way, and believe this will offer them a strong energetic foundation to take their mission to the next level.”

In Conclusion

Apart from influencing members of the general public, could the Spiritual Cinema Circle also draw in believing Christians? It certainly appears to have the potential to do so, since many churches have already participated in the 700 screening locations offered for World Indigo Day.

There is an added hook. The temptation for parents to see their children as “brilliant” and “independent” is natural, especially if it lessens the pressure and guilt they are already feeling as they juggle between career and children. But the certain erosion of their parental authority is a costly trade-off in this illusory bargain.

The glorification of their children to assuage guilt will prove disastrous in the end and will show that the Indigo phenomenon is an especially toxic stream to emerge from the New Age movement. It can only poison what it touches, starting with the family as New Agers once again abandon all common sense.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared in the Spiritual Counterfeits Project Newsletter 29-3. It is reprinted by permission.

For endnotes and documentation, please see our website at www.scp-inc.org.

About SCP, the Spiritual Counterfeits Project

SCP is one of the foremost apologetics and culture watching organizations in America, now passing the 30-year mark. In the heart of Berkeley, California, SCP has garnered over nine EPA awards, four for first place. To Subscribe: call SCP at 510-540-0300 or visit the SCP web site with secure ordering at www.scp-inc.org.