Why did New Age followers use practices such as Zen meditation outside their original religious settings?

New Age followers utilized practices like Zen meditation outside of their original religious contexts because the movement integrated various occult and meditation techniques specifically as tools to facilitate personal transformation.1

This approach was heavily influenced by the development of transpersonal psychology, an academic discipline that combined Eastern mysticism with Western rationalism to explore spiritual well-being and psychological health. Proponents of this field, along with other disciplines studying states of consciousness, encouraged the belief that these consciousness-altering practices could be effectively detached from their traditional religious settings and applied for individual growth or "planetary healing". By stripping these techniques of their original doctrinal frameworks, New Age adherents sought to utilize them as universal instruments for achieving a heightened state of spiritual awareness.12