How did David Spangler and other New Age leaders describe their beliefs after the movement declined?

By the end of the 1980s, as the New Age movement lost its momentum, prominent figures including David Spangler and publisher Jeremy Tarcher shifted their perspective. While they maintained their commitment to the goal of personal transformation, they publicly announced that they no longer believed in the arrival of a coming New Age.1

This transition marked a departure from the movement's earlier focus on the manifestation of a new spiritual era, which Spangler had previously championed as an active, human-led process. By the mid-1990s, as the movement's original vision of massive social transformation faded, some adherents in Europe began describing this shift as moving from the "New Age to Next Stage". Despite the decline of the movement's collective vision, its influence persisted through the continued presence of esoteric-metaphysical traditions, meditation practices, and the ongoing operation of various New Age organizations and bookstores.12