Apostasy Update # 22 An Introduction to Demons Through Drugs

Tom: Welcome to Apostasy Update. I’m T. A. McMahon, and in this program, we’re addressing biblical eschatology—what the Bible has to say prophetically about the last days prior to the return of Jesus Christ. My partner in this discussion is Carl Teichrib. He’s the author of Game of Gods: The Temple of Man in the Age of Re-enchantment. 

Carl, welcome back, and thanks for joining me in our ongoing discussions on where the world and Christendom are headed according to the Scriptures as history draws to a close. 

Carl: Good to be back, Tom. This is going to be another interesting conversation.

Tom: Much of the information that we’ve been presenting for those of you who have been following our programs, you know that we’ve looked to a number of books: first of all, Carl’s book, Game of Gods; America, the Sorcerer’s New Apprentice; Christianity and Anti-Christianity in Their Final Conflict; and most importantly, the Bible, which is God’s direct communication to mankind. 

And, Carl, well, I want to focus again, as we have been for the last couple of weeks, on your book Game of Gods: The Temple of Man in the Age of Re-enchantment. And what I’d like to do in this program is revisit, really revisit, a subject that we discussed not too long ago, and that is sorcery: sorcery, which the Bible declares will be a conspicuous characteristic of society and a popular pursuit in the last days just prior to the return of Jesus Christ. 

The term used in the New Testament in Greek is pharmakeia, which has to do with the administering of drugs, and from which we get our English word pharmacy. And one of the reasons I want to revisit sorcery and the Bible’s claim that the use of drugs will be common place in the end times has to do with the recent US election. Bills were passed in a number of states legalizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes and for recreation. 

Now, here’s a quote from a very recent Gallup Poll: “Seven in ten Americans support marijuana legalization. The release of the survey results comes one week after voters in five states approved initiatives to legalize cannabis for medical or recreational purposes. That includes reform wins in traditionally conservative states such as Montana and South Dakota. Majorities of most demographic subgroups of Americans support legalizing marijuana, including by age, by gender, by education, and household income. Gallup, which conducted the survey of 1,035 adults from September 30 to October 15, said, ‘The chief supporters are males, young people between 18-29, college grads, and those whose incomes are $100,000 or more. Only slightly more than half of those who attend church,’” according to the survey, “’slightly more than half who attend church on a weekly basis don’t support drug legalization.’” It’s the same for those who call themselves conservatives: 49 percent. All others are in the 80 percent category in support of marijuana legalization. 

Now, it may sound like the church is, you know, against legalizing drugs, marijuana in particular, but wait a minute—we’re talking 49 percent here! So it’s close to a 50/50 proposition. So, Carl, what do you think?

Carl: I think, Tom, we are living in an age when mysticism and drugs and human potential and all of these alternatives to the salvation message of Jesus Christ are resonating with civilization. It is because, Tom, the go-to situation—we have turned our back on the biblical worldview. And so for a considerable period of time—and I’ll talk about this in a few minutes—considerable period of time, we have watched as pharmakeia, as sorcery, as the drug culture has infused a New Age spirituality in our Western civilization. It walks hand in glove with progressive politics and has for 50-plus years. The church has been asleep. We don’t recognize what is taking shape around us. For the most part, we’ve hid our head in the sand on this issue, and now we’re coming face to face with it, aren’t we? Now, how can we ignore what’s happening around us? 

You just cited, Tom, the evidence that your own country is pulled towards the drug culture. My country, Canada, we legalized marijuana not too long ago. We did this a couple of years ago. And now it seems that this is where we’re going even in your country, and that is obvious by what happened in terms of policy votes that opened up the doorway for the legalization of marijuana. And not just legalization of marijuana, but I believe your state, Oregon, the legalization of a lot of different substances that was at one point considered illegal! So now, I think, in your state you can have small doses of heroine, meth, as long as it’s for personal use. Wow! We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?

Tom: Well, are you picking on my state, my state, Carl?

Carl: [laughing]

Tom: You know, which I have dubbed, by the way, “Oregonia,” okay? It was one of the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, living up to its reputation as the leader of the dope domain. The Wall Street Journal announced (I’m quoting), “Oregon became the first state in the nation to decriminalize the possession of all illegal drugs, and also legalize the use of psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms for mental health treatment after voters passed a pair of ballot measures this week. Both are the first of their kind in any US state and represent the next frontier in the relaxation of drug laws beyond marijuana.”

Now, Carl, I know some people say, “Well, wait a minute: marijuana’s not a psychedelic drug.” No, it’s not, but it is a hallucinogenic drug, okay? And we’ve talked about this before: it’s the ease into the heavy drugs and so on, and we can support this statistically and every which way that you want. 

You know, one of our—I say “our,” I’m talking about the state of Oregon—one of our representatives, he’s a leader in the legalization of the drugs movement. He confirmed—this is what he said: “This is what voters want.” 

Carl, remember what Samuel Andrews said about democracy, okay? We’ve got to touch on that in a bit. You can get after that. 

He says, “This is what voters want. They’re not partisan issues. It’s an opportunity for Republicans to be able to make progress in their red states and bring people together at a time of division. I think you’re going to watch people understand what just happened last night, and it is a continuation of progress that’s been going on since 1996. I think it’s going to be much easier to pass reform in the new congress with Republicans and Democrats both in the House and the Senate.”

Oh, brother!

Carl: You’re going to go for a ride, Tom. You’re going for a ride. It’s the magic bus ride, and with it comes a spiritual democracy and a spiritual movement that ties it all together.

Tom: Yeah. And, folks, if you’ve followed our discussions here when we were talking about Samuel Andrews’ book Christianity and Anti-Christianity in Their Final Conflict, he pointed to democracy. Look, in one sense, Oh yeah, well, you know, we have to have democracy! But he pointed the problem with it: the problem with it, in order to get elected, you have to give the people what they want. Not like a republic that goes—you know, many of them went on the basis of God’s laws and rules and so on, constitution and so on. No, now it’s “whatever they want as long as I can get into office.” And he—120 years ago, he pointed that out! Wow.

Carl: I’m glad you brought up Samuel Andrews. Can I give you a little bit of a timeline, allow your listeners to have—to wrap their head around this historically, because it’s important. And keep in mind, Tom, there’s a lot of complexity to this. There’s a lot of moving parts. I’m only giving you the Coles Notes, or in this case, the “Carl’s Notes.” 

So he had in the late 19—oh, pardon me, late 1800s—Samuel Andrews, he recognizes that pantheistic impulse of Western civilization, and he already sees what’s taking shape. And as we talked about earlier, he gives warning to Christians about what was already in motion, and what was on the horizon. And one thing he does point out is the 1893 Parliament of World Religions. And, Tom, we’ve talked about it before, but it has to be brought up again…

Tom: Sure.

Carl: …because there is a direct connection, okay? So at the 1893 Parliament of the World’s Religions, the East comes West primarily through one man, Swami Vivekananda. Now, Vivekananda, he’s a Hindu guru who preaches Advaita philosophy. Advaita philosophy is this: there’s no separation, there’s no otherness. All is one, okay? 

But we have to back this up a little bit. Advaita philosophy pulls from what would be considered proto-Hindu lore, ancient Hindu texts that kind of form the basis or the foundation of Hinduism, primarily the Rigveda, and that’s where we run into something called soma. Now, in the Rigveda, soma is a drink that’s extracted from plants, and when you drink this tea or drink this substance, it opens up your eyes to divine illumination, divine enlightenment. You now become godlike in your understanding. 

Did you catch that? I mean, Tom, really, I’m hoping our audience catches that. This means that Hinduism, at least in part, is probably a religion inspired by a psychedelic experience. So that’s pretty wild right there, isn’t it? 

So, Swami Vivekananda is now preaching Advaita philosophy—we’re all one—and he’s preaching this to America’s religious and social elites at the 1893 parliament. And then afterwards, as he’s traveling across the United States, then Britain and the back of the US, and he introduces yoga, and he openly teaches that we’re not sinners. That is one of his messages: we’re not sinners. 

He influences David Rockefeller to start charitable foundations or charitable activities, and at least is partly responsible for Rockefeller setting up his foundations, which is instrumental in fermenting kind of the political and cultural change that was already taking shape in your country. 

And he influences a man by the name of Aldous Huxley, who was the grandson of Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s “bulldog.” Now, Aldous Huxley, he’s enamored with Advaita philosophy, okay? He thinks Advaita philosophy, this is where we’re going. It’s all one, it’s all oneness. And so he’s one of the main promoters at that point of another philosophy that goes hand in glove is called perennial philosophy—that is, that all religions have a core truth formed around some mystical experience. 

Now, he writes a book that probably a lot of your viewers have either heard about or even maybe read in high school, Brave New World. And at the center of Brave New World is a drug called soma, and that drug called soma subdues and connects everybody within this world of hypersexuality and community, all right? Then later on Huxley tries mescaline and he enters a psychedelic state, and that’s where he finds distinctions are blurring, and he enters this mystic white quality. And he writes about it in his book The Doors of Perception, along with another book titled Heaven and Hell. 

And then a psychologist at Harvard—I’m giving you some history here—a psychologist at Harvard by the name of Timothy Leary goes to Mexico and tries hallucinogenic mushrooms. So he sets up the Harvard Psychedelic Drug Project, also known as the Harvard Psychedelic Club, to experiment with LSD and other substances, and Huxley becomes his mentor of sorts. And Leary goes on later on to explain that, in fact, Huxley was coaching them in the history of mysticism! 

About the same time, Huxley is also inspiring Michael Murphy and Dick Price at the Esalen Institute. Now, they only meet, I think, once, but there’s already an inspiration that takes shape. And that’s where, of course, we talked about this in the past, where Advaita philosophy, oneness, combines human potential, psychology, and effectively it births the New Age movement. 

By the way, Rockefeller funds keep Esalen financially floating. 

Tom: Right.

Carl: It comes full circle, doesn’t it? Finally, Leary, along with Timothy…pardon me, with Ralph Metzner, Richard Alpert write The Psychedelic Experience, a manual for LSD use based on the shamanistic Tibetan Book of the Dead! And so LSD becomes Advaita in a pill, and Leary starts his league of spiritual democracy, and the counterculture explodes as the West Coast and the East Coast discover psychedelic mysticism. 

At the same time, the burgeoning computer industry ends up walking hand in hand with the counterculture. It’s a really interesting history and we can’t go into it, but the two tie themselves together. The New Age movement catches wind, and eventually sweeps into the church. Events like Burning Man connect Silicon Valley to the psychedelic community to the human potential movement to the Advaita philosophy. Oneness, that thinking, infuses your politics, it infuses your culture—it’s been doing it for 50 years. It’s called progressivism. It infuses academia, seminaries, Hollywood, public education, it infuses our churches…and now, last week—of course, you’re airing this ahead, I know that—but in 2020, your state votes for the legalization of drugs along with others. Wow! We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? But it all comes together. It’s all the same thing. 

Tom: Again, one of the reasons I wanted to revisit this was yes, because of the bills that were passed, legislation that was passed in our country. But, folks, the Bible—we’re talking about prophecy here! The Bible tells us that this is going to come into place. As you said earlier, you know, you’ve laid out—that timeline is fantastic. But, folks, you’ve got to pick up Carl’s book. You want to get the details of all this thing, and I’m going to give you some quotes from the book related to that. 

But it’s…hey, it’s prophecy being just laid right before our eyes. And again, this isn’t some wild-eyed fundamentalist—I don’t have any problem with being a fundamentalist. I mean, you know, even when I went to school you had to learn the fundamentals before you could do anything else! But the point being is that you’re right, we’ve…you know, the line I’ve been using is “hidden in plain sight.” Well, now it’s not hidden anymore! If you can’t see it, you know, you’re going past the billboard in huge letters, and you’re just not paying attention to it, but it’s right there in your face.

Carl: Right! How can you say it’s hiding in plain sight when you’re actually voting on it? 

Tom: [laughing] That’s right! Yeah, oh, brother!

Carl: [laughing] You’re voting in Advaita philosophy! 

Tom: Yeah. Well, I want to go back and just point…

Carl: Sorry! [laughs]

Tom: …I want to go back and point a few things out based on your timeline. Let’s go back to the Parliament of World Religions. Wasn’t there a tea that was offered there, okay? Wasn’t it called something like ayahuasca tea? Wasn’t that introduced at that…you know, I don’t know if others had gotten into it. Certainly the shamans had! 

I mentioned my interview with the Yanamamo shaman, and as a teenager he was introduced to drugs. Drugs are the doorway. We’re going to talk more about that. 

But the point was, it wasn’t just his antichrist philosophy that he was laying out in spades—talking about Vivekananda, okay—but it also had to do with the, you know, the associated elements, not just the rituals, yoga, and so on and so forth. But it’s incredible! It’s been there. And, Carl, you’ve done a yeoman’s job of bringing these things to the forefront and pointing it out, and I hope people will take—you know, get your book and get into it. Plus America, the Sorcerer’s New Apprentice—Samuel Andrews, okay, his book as well. I think…somebody wants to have 120 years, 32 years, and now your book, you want to see what’s going on and has been going on. 

And then, hey, the quote—Wall Street Journal, okay? Be a little, you know, at least laying out the information. Gallup Poll—you know, again, we’re not making this up, folks. This is something else. 

I want to go back to…

Carl: You know, I watched—oh…sorry, let me just interject something quickly. 

Tom: Sure.

Carl: I watched, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, at a 2018 parliament, we had representatives of ayahuasca on the stage given legitimacy. It’s a religious movement, recognizing that the psychedelic state and essentially, essentially becomes a spiritual state. It becomes that spiritual portal. I’ve since discovered that now we have an ayahuasca church in my own province, in my capital city Winnipeg! And ayahuasca opens up something—it allows a certain molecule known as DMT to function. 

Tom: Right.

Carl: Now, everything has DMT. Everything living, from what I understand, has DMT. But, you know, I look back at the work of Rick Strassman, DMT: The Spirit Molecule! It’s understood that this is a gateway, that there is something happening. It’s more than just simply neurochemicals cooking off. It’s neurochemicals opening up your mind to something else. 

Tom: Well, going back to Timothy Leary—I’m a product of the hippie days, you know, the ‘60s and so on. We were aware of Leary and so on, but I don’t know any of my friends…I wasn’t into drugs at all! I didn’t want to lose control of anything, okay? I mean, that used to freak me out, even though I had friends who were into that and so on. But no one ever said, “Hey, wait a minute, Leary’s into religion!” What?! You know, nobody said that to me! But if they would have said it, I’d say, “Get away from me. The guy’s on drugs. Who knows what he’s into?” 

But let me quote from your book—this is Timothy Leary: “’Listen! Wake up!’ screamed Leary in his book High Priest. ‘You are God! You have the divine plan engraved in cellular script within you. Listen! Take this sacrament—you’ll see! You’ll get the revelation. It will change your life! You will be reborn.’” 

There’s another quote from him: “Commenting…” Oh, no, this is from Dr. Charles Slack, a friend of Leary’s, okay? He said, “The first time you take LSD, it makes you think you are God. This is certainly one of the most common reactions to the drug. Proselytizing is likely to follow with little success among those who haven’t had any of the drugs.” 

Folks, we are underscoring the fact that drugs are—Dave used to call it, “It’s the elementary school to get into this,” and there are other things that are even more powerful and more effective than drugs. But we just want to stay with drugs for right now, because, hey, America has opened its arms to all of this. 

So, once again, Leary…oh, I want to talk about Leary’s relationship to Hinduism. 

Now, folks, I’ve said in the past (Carl has confirmed this), I mean, you know, it’s obvious: Why are we turning to India and Hinduism to solve our problems? You just go there, and you think problems are being solved by this “perennial wisdom” which you underscored before, okay? I mean, I don’t know what to say! 

But anyway, I’m going to quote—this is from Leary. I think it may have been the trip to Mexico that you talked about—it’s the ashram. This was in 1962 where he guided worshippers into psychedelic session. Listen to this: “The LSD had been placed in chalices on the altar. Incense and flowers adorned it. The LSD sacrament, was mixed with…” This is unbelievable! I’m sorry, guys—I know a bit about India, okay? He says, “The LSD sacrament was mixed with holy water from the Ganges.” 

I mean, Carl, before we went on the air, you were talking about a glass of water that had been sitting on your desk for like five or six days or something? And your wife wouldn’t let you take it, okay? The Ganges? I mean, dead bodies floating down! I mean, you know…anyway, I shouldn’t get into all that, but anyway…

So Leary continues: “I looked around the room. Ramakrishnan’s statue breathed and his eyes twinkled the message. Vivekananda’s brown face beamed and winked. Christ grinned to be joined again with his celestial brothers. The sacred kundalini serpent uncoiled up the bronze candelabra to the thousand-petaled lotus blossom. This was the fulcrum moment of eternity, the exact second of consciousness, fragile, omniscient. God was present and spoke to us in silence.”

He goes on—let me get down here on this, just a second…he goes on, “I was a Hindu from that moment on. No, that’s not the way to say it. I recognized that day in the temple that we are all Hindus in our essence. We are all Hindu gods and goddesses. That day in the temple I discovered my Hindu-ness.”

Sounds like he’s moved from just the drugs to religion, his life, his philosophy, his worldview, whatever you want to call it. 

Carl: Yeah, and it was! It absolutely was a spiritual movement. 

It’s interesting—on the East Coast, primarily through Harvard and the work of Timothy Leary, it began, in terms of trying to work through the unconscious, discovery of the mind… at the same time, because of Huxley’s inspiration, it was understood that there was a mystical component to it. There was no hiding that from the get-go. There was that element there. On the West Coast, it was more of a party situation, but a party that also connected it to some type of a spiritual theme as well as spiritual movement. The two kind of come together in different ways. 

Where Leary was, when he was talking about that experience in the ashram, I understand, and I’d have to look up the exact location, but it was somewhere on the East Coast that he was in a Hindu ashram when he had that experience. Which isn’t surprising, because, again, I think a lot of people don’t even realize how important Hindu ashrams have been to the counterculture movement, and that goes back to Advaita philosophy and specifically it goes back to Vivekananda. After Vivekananda’s time in 1893, Krishna temples and Krishna study centers popped up all across the United States from Massachusetts to Chicago to Hollywood, California.

Tom: Hey, don’t leave out Indiana! 

Carl: Yes! I know…yes, yes! So…

Tom: Why would I say that, Carl?

Carl: Because that’s the place where the Dalai Lama’s brother set up his Tibetan Buddhist Cultural Center in Bloomington, Indiana.

Tom: Right.

Carl: I had the opportunity to go to one of their Kalachakra ceremonies to observe some of the happenings that were taking place at the university in Bloomington around the Tibetan Buddhist Cultural Center. 

Tom: Yeah. Carl, we’re going to take this up next week. I think we’ve got about maybe 10 minutes left here, but I want to move to another point. 

Carl, in your book you talk about Dr. Rick Strassman. He’s a medical researcher who specialized in psychiatry. But anyway, he—he’s been granted by the government to do the research in this area. So he tells of attending a Buddhist monastery, and he questions the resident monks there, and he asks them two questions: “Did you take psychedelics before becoming a monk? And how important were they in your decision?”

Well, the response was most of them had gained their first view of the spiritual path while on psychedelic drugs. The overwhelming majority had taken them and had experienced their first glimpse of the enlightened state of the mind with their assistance—that is, the assistance of drugs. And one of the more troubling aspects for Dr. Strassman himself was the research…his patients were into DMT, which we mentioned before—it’s a plant-based hallucinogenic drug—was the test patients, they had contact with other entities. This shocked the doctor—he couldn’t figure it out: What’s going on here? Because again, many scientists don’t believe in the spiritual realm. They…and we’ve talked about that in programs past. 

But…so, they had contact with other entities. Mental interactions with nonmaterial life forms described encounters with angelic beings and alien creatures. Strassman had previously heard of strange life forms seen in psychedelic visions, but the doctor was unprepared for their level of involvement. These beings were communicating with and manipulating his subjects! Their business appeared to be testing, examining, probing, and even modifying the volunteers’ mind and body, he reported. One patient described it this way: “It’s more like being possessed.”

Carl, again, this is not a fundamentalist, you know, character; this is a guy who wants to understand some things through his scientific background. So the patient said, “It’s more like being possessed. During the experience, there’s a sense of someone or something else there taking control. It’s like you have to defend yourself against them, whoever they are, but they certainly are there. I’m aware of them and they’re aware of me. It’s like they have an agenda.” 

You know, once again, Carl, we’re just about out of time for this program. I want to come back to this, because…so what are we saying here? Hallucinogenic drugs open the door to a spirituality, okay? And in the taking of these drugs…look, we’ve talked about shamanism. I mentioned interviewing a Yanomamo shaman, and that’s how he got started. As a teenager they put him on what probably was DMT of some kind, but we talked about ayahuasca. In other words, he had a mind-altering drug that began to give him communion and communication with the spirit realm and so on. 

So we need to underscore this. So, the Lord willing, we’ll get after it next week.

Carl: Sounds good, Tom. It’s a serious subject. My goodness, the church needs to wake up to this fact that this is a real and important and serious subject.

Tom: Right.

Carl: You’ve been voting on it. 

Tom: Bingo. Thanks, Carl, for your input.