Core Appeal of Religion and New Age
You may find the following quote interesting. In The Ecclesiastical History of the English, written by the Venerable Bede sometime around A.D. 700, Bede tells how King Edwin of Northumbria held a council in A.D. 627 to decide on the religion to be accepted in his kingdom, and gives the following speech to one of the king's chief men
"Your majesty, when we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like a swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter's day with your thanes and counsellors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside, the storms of winter rain and snow are raging. The sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. Even so, man appears on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or what follows, we know nothing."
It is an almost irresistible temptation to believe with Bede and Edwin that there must be something for us outside the banqueting hall. The honor of resisting this temptation is only a thin substitute for the consolations of religion, but is not entirely without satisfactions of its own.
The main product sold by religious and New Age groups and persons competing in the spiritual marketplace is "life after death". Whatever else they do, their core appeal, which is difficult for people to resist, is their claim that for you to have life in the hereafter you must follow their religious beliefs and/or practices and their personal God. People have a very strong drive to survive. Almost anyone would love to continue this life after death if it were available.
We know better now than Bede and Edwin did then. Science strongly suggests that this life is our only existence -- that God and other supernatural imaginings that we (our right temporal lobe and associated brain parts), with the help of others around us, have created; die with us. Either side of the hall there is not even a winter storm or wintery world for anyone.
To many people knowing this is upsetting -- to me and others knowing this truth is more satisfying than believing the untruths of religion -- the claims regarding the existence of the supernatural and supernatural entities.