New Age Occultism and the Christian

By: Dave Hunt; ©1991

What is the New Age Movement? Does the Bible specifically warn against many of the beliefs and practices of the New Age Movement?

New Age Occultism and the Christian
What is New Age Occultism?

Turn to Matthew 24, if you have your Bibles and care to turn there. It’s very familiar Scriptures to all of us. Matthew 24. You remember the story. The disciples showed Jesus the temple as though He would be impressed by this and He told them in verse 2 that “there wouldn’t be one stone left upon another that wouldn’t be thrown down” and that shocked the disciples. In verse 3, they are alone on the Mount of Olives and they ask Him privately three questions: When shall these things be?—that is, the destruction of the temple; what will be the sign of your coming, and of the end of the world? They thought all of these were one event? These are not all one event and Jesus deals with these three things but not necessarily in that order in this chapter. And we’re not going to get into that. We’ll talk a bit about that in our last session when we deal with the last days.

But Jesus gives some signs, and we’ve heard a lot of sermons, and books have been written, and so forth about the signs of the last days: wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, pestilence, famine and all that sort of thing. But the first thing that Jesus talked about and the sign that He emphasized three times over was something else, and that was really what started me writing books on this topic. You notice what he said in verse 4. “Jesus answered and said, ‘Take heed that no man deceive you.’” Beware that no one deceive you. And he went on to explain that the primary sign of the last days would be religious deception like the world has never seen before. And He explained what that deception would involve.

Now, if you and I had been making a prediction even 50 years ago, we would have said, “Oh, you want to know what will characterize the last days? Skepticism, atheism, men on the moon. Science will reign supreme. Nobody will believe in God. No interest in religion anymore.” Jesus said just the opposite. He said the last days would be marked by an explosion of interest in spirituality and the spiritual world, spiritual realm. He said, notice in verse 11, “Many false prophets shall rise and shall deceive many.” So there’s going to be an interest in prophecy and indeed there is in the secular world. Many, not just a few, many.

And then you go down to verse 24: “There shall arise false christs and false prophets and shall show great signs and wonders, inasmuch that if it were possible, they will deceive the very elect.” So the last days would be marked by false christs, false prophets, and false miracles, miracle workers, supposedly. False signs and wonders.

And you read about it a bit in Matthew 7:21-23 where Jesus said, “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, haven’t we…” and you know: “cast out demons, done miracles, prophesied in your name,” and Jesus will say, “I never knew you.” False miracle workers, false prophets.

Well, there is an explosion of interest in the spiritual in our day and I’ll just show you a few things here. This is from a Catholic paper, by the way, and it was last December. “A top grossing film Ghost shows renewed interest in spiritual afterlife.”

“‘In Ghost the afterlife theme is presented positively,’ said Ms. Pear, a film critic for the U.S. Catholic Conference Office for Film and Broadcasting.” She has nothing negative to say about this. Ends up by saying, “‘Ghost, with its romantic motif, also conveyed another significant message: that love transcends death,’ said Ms. Pear.” That’s a spiritual message in itself, she said.

So, isn’t that great? This occult film about communication with the dead and spiritual survival, isn’t that a wonderful spiritual message that we’re getting these days?

This is from the Houston Chronicle and it says, “On this crisp, clear fall night in the library of Saint Peter Catholic Church in Skokie, Illinois, psychic Ruth Berger is leading 35 members of the North Shore Chapter of NAME, a non-denominational support group for Christian widows and widowers through what amounts to a class in basic ghost-calling. In a matter of fact fashion she summons into the room what she advertises as the “spirits of the dead” and under the picture it says, “Members of a Christian support group for widows and widowers in Skokie, Illinois meditate to try to contact deceased loved ones with the help of psychic Ruth Berger.” That’s absolutely forbidden in the Bible—Deuteronomy 18. That’s called necromancy, communication with the dead. But it’s spiritual, you see? It all comes under the banner of spirituality. Science, materialistic science has come to a dead end. I didn’t bring a marked-up copy so I don’t know if I can find what I want in here but in America: The Sorcerer’s New Apprentice, for example, I’m quoting Ken Wilber and Ken Wilber, he’s an occultist, a New Ager, but he took the writings of the top scientists, the Nobel prize winners of this century, and went through everything to find out what they said about spirituality, about religion. And he put it all together. “Quantum Questions to the World’s Leading Scientists,” [sic: “Quantum Questions: The Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists”] it’s called. You’ll find it an interesting book. But he says, “There is no longer any major physical theoretical objection to spiritual realities. This view, which is supported by virtually every theorist in this volume—Einstein, Sherrington, Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Planck, Eddington, et al—is probably the most revolutionary conclusion vis a vis religion that has ever been officially advanced by a theoretical science itself.”

I’m quoting Stanislav Grof. He said, “Western science is approaching a paradigm shift of unprecedented proportions, one that will change our concepts of reality and human nature, bridge the gap between ancient wisdom and modern science, and reconcile the difference between Eastern spirituality and Western pragmatism.”

Again, I’m quoting Erwin Schroedinger, a Nobel laureate in physics. He said, “The scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in magnificently consistent order, but it’s ghastly silent about all that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Whence came I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us, and science has no answer to it.”

So you see, the scientists themselves are saying science has brought us to a dead end. It doesn’t answer the important questions. And there is another dimension, a spiritual dimension, and so I think I begin the… well, here’s another quote. John Gliedman. He’s a Philosophy of Science professor. And after extensive interviews, both in Europe and the United States, Gliedman wrote in Science Digest, “From Berkeley to Paris, from London to Princeton, prominent scientists from fields as diverse as neurophysiology and quantum physics are coming out of the closet and admitting they believe in the possibility at least of such unscientific entities as the immortal human spirit and divine creation.” They don’t mean the God of the Bible, however. But they believe there is some spiritual dimension.

I think the first quote I give you in the book is from the New York Times. “Representatives from some of the nation’s largest corporations, including IBM, AT&T and General Motors met in New Mexico this summer to discuss how metaphysics, the occult and Hindu mysticism might help executives compete in the world marketplace. A thread of alternative thought is working its way increasingly into the nation’s cultural, religious, social, economic and political life. It’s evidenced by a surge of new interest in metaphysical religions, mediums, the occult, reincarnation, psychic healing, Satanism, spirit guides and other aspects of supernatural belief. Leaders in the movement contend they are ushering in what they call a New Age of understanding and intellectual ferment as significant as the Renaissance.”

Now, you could take someone like—and I quote him in here also but I just can’t take time to try to find it—but you could take someone like Robert Jastrow, for example. Robert Jastrow, the founder and director for many years—I think he recently retired—of the Goddard Space Institute in New York that put Voyager and Pioneer out into space. Dr. Jastrow, one of the world’s leading astronomers, says, “Well, life could have been evolving on some planets out there ten billion years longer than on planet Earth. And so those entities, when we meet them,” which they expect to someday, “they would be as far beyond man on the evolutionary scale as man is beyond a worm. They would seem like gods to us.” So the materialistic scientist—he’s an agnostic, Jastrow is—the materialistic scientist still has his gods, created by the forces of this universe and by the evolutionary process. Then he says this—staggering statement. Robert Jastrow says, “And some of those entities could have evolved beyond the need of bodies. They may be pure intelligence.” And then he says, “What religious people call spirits.”

So now we have scientists trying to communicate with spirits! And they think that they’re highly evolved, extraterrestrial intelligences. By the way, if you haven’t read my novel The Archon Conspiracy, that’s where I begin with a scientist who developed a machine for making contact and you find out what happens and who they are. But anyway, this is where we’re heading.

There’s another dimension, a spiritual dimension. Materialism is out. Forget it. It doesn’t answer our questions; doesn’t meet our needs, and now there is a dabbling and experimentation in this spiritual world and science is not equipped. They don’t have the machines; they don’t have the formulas to deal with demons. And that’s the problem. And Jesus predicted it. He said a great explosion of interest in the spiritual, religion. Just to give you a few other quotes. I’m quoting again from the New York Times. Or, I think maybe it was the Wall Street Journal. I’ve got a footnote but it doesn’t tell me what it is here. “A new day is dawning at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon and Congress. The New Age has arrived. Highly placed officials are consulting psychics and engaging in past-life regressions, consulting mediums. At any given time about one-fourth of the congressmen are engaged in exploring psychic phenomena, according to Representative Charles Rose of North Carolina. That would be healing, prophecy, remote viewing, or physical manifestation of psychic powers such as bending spoons or erasing computer tapes. Reportedly, both the CIA and the Pentagon use psychics to spy on Soviet arms development and to locate hostages in Iran and Lebanon.”

This is from the Chicago Sun Times. It says, “The first newspaper horoscope leaves Soviets starry-eyed.”

The New York Times headline, a major article on “Exploding Occultism and Interest in Spirituality.” It’s a great day in the Soviet Union. The Wall is down. I’ve smuggled Bibles into the Soviet Union. You don’t have to do that anymore. You can take them in. You can preach the Gospel on the street corner. Praise God for the opportunity. But, at the same time, they are open to everything, and the New Age is flooding in, Satanism, and you’re getting a lot of reports of this in the media.

The New York Times headlined a major article on “Exploding Occultism and Spiritual Renewal in the U.S.: An Unnamed Healing Source Debuts on Soviet TV.”

The Washington Post said, “If there is a new cult of personality in the Soviet Union, it is not centered on Mikhail Gorbachev but rather on a Ukrainian psychologist who by visualization applies anesthesia from a distance and has an audience of up to 200 million people whenever he appears on ‘Good Evening, Moscow.’” Okay?

I mean, I could go on and document it for you. “An Exploding Interest in the Soviet Union in the Psychic World,” the world of spirit beings.

Norman Vincent Peale, new book that he coauthored with Kenneth H. Blanchard, called The Power of Ethical Management, and I’m not certain whether that was the final title. But anyway, they have five principles and, well, he ends it up by saying, “You’ve got to look to this higher power. You can’t dodge the spiritual questions.” So again, they bring spirituality into this but without the truth of the Word of God.

Now, you start talking about spirituality but you don’t have the Bible to guide you, you are in trouble. And that’s exactly what’s happening out there in our world today.

So, the world is being prepared for the Antichrist, literally, as never in its history. And the Church is being prepared for the Antichrist. An apostate bride for the Antichrist. The real Christians are leaving and we’ll talk about that in our last session. That’s going to leave on this earth an apostate church and I think the churches will be more crowded after the Rapture than before with people who “think” they’re following Christ and who, in fact, are following Antichrist and who call themselves Christians. We’ve talked a little bit about that in the past and we will document it more in the future.

Well, what is this New Age occultism, then, that is literally exploding? This religion of the Antichrist? What is it? Well, it’s the old lie. There’s nothing new about the New Age, and I’m sure that you all know that. Occult means “hidden; a secret power.” You used to get involved in the occult in a darkened séance room. It’s something that you are initiated into behind closed doors. It involves secret powers that are not openly known and therefore this word “occultism.” It is, in fact, the old lie. It’s been around for thousands of years. In fact, you can trace it back to the Garden of Eden and just very quickly, it involves, this philosophy, this lie, has four parts to it.

Number one, God is not personal but a force. Now, you say, where do you get that from what Satan said to Eve in Genesis 3? Well, he doesn’t say that explicitly, but that is the foundation of everything that follows and it is implicit in what he tells Eve. In other words, Satan is saying, this voice that you think comes from God, that you think says, “Don’t eat of this tree,” I mean, God’s not like that. “Don’t do this and don’t do that.” I mean, you say this tree will kill you? You eat all the other trees in the Garden. They all grow out of the same ground. Why would this tree kill you and the others wouldn’t kill you? God is not somebody up there that says, “Don’t do this and don’t do that,” but it’s like a force that permeates everything. And this force is in all of the trees; it’s in the ground; it’s in you; it’s in everything.

And therefore, second lie, because this force is in everything, you don’t die, you just get recycled—reincarnation; spirit survival. Second lie: “Thou shalt not surely die.” And the third lie, “You can be like God.” Reincarnation. Evolution.

I was sharing with some friends this morning, one of the chapters in America: The Sorcerer’s New Apprentice is entitled “Slime to Divine,” because evolution is not a scientific theory. It’s been around for thousands of years. It’s been part of the occult for thousands of years; part of Eastern mysticism. It is, in fact, …evolution is the vehicle by which karma and reincarnation work. There’s no point in coming back to this world endlessly unless you are progressing. So evolution has been part of this. And the goal is, ultimately, if we’re being recycled and we keep coming back and we’re being reincarnated, then we’re heading for godhood, okay?

Now, I’ll just give it to you in a nutshell. Let’s take Scientology, which is a mixture of science fiction and Eastern mysticism and psychotherapy and so forth. Scientology, in just a one-minute statement, if I can give it to you that fast, says we are all uncreated, omnipotent, omniscient entities called Thetans. Somebody says that’s Satan with a lisp, you know. That’s basically what it is. And eons ago, we created this space/matter/time continuum in which we function now. And then we created little creatures and we became so intrigued with these little creatures that we incarnated them, and as they died and evolved higher and higher, we reincarnated. You see the connection. Until finally, so much time had passed, we were so far removed…by the time we reached human status, we were so far removed from our origin as Thetans we forgot who we were. Isn’t that interesting? See? The goal of all yoga is self-realization. We’re all gods but we’re funny kind of gods because we forgot that we were gods. And we have this incredible potential. It’s inside of you. All the power you need is inside of you, but you just don’t know it. Isn’t that amazing?

So, I mean, there’s some basic ideas that you can present to your New Age friends or whatever and try to witness to them. Look, if I’m God and you’re God, that would explain why the world is in a mess. That wouldn’t offer any hope, you know. And, look, what good is it going to do to get into an altered state of consciousness—the goal of all yoga is self-realization, to realize who I am—what good is that going to do if I’m God and I forgot that I was God, what good will it do to remember that I’m God? Won’t I forget it again? That doesn’t make too much sense, you know?

But anyway, that’s what Scientology is all about. That we’re so removed from our origin as Thetans we forgot who we were. So, Scientology puts you through this psychotherapeutic process with this E meter where you go back into past lives. Hey, we’ve got psychiatrists taking you back into past lives. Even the Russians have been doing this. You go back into your past lives, you peel off these “engrams,” these traumas that you’ve picked up in prior lives and, finally, when you get rid of all of that, you break through to clear and beyond and now! I’m an “operating Thetan” again! Yeah, but I can’t do anything that I couldn’t do before. Well, you just don’t understand, you know. So, anyway, this is basically what Scientology is about. You see, we are Gods and we just forgot that we were Gods.

Okay, so, the goal of evolution is to reach godhood, get back to where we started.

Then, the fourth lie is, the secret is in the tree of knowledge. There’s nothing wrong with you, it’s the way you think. You just don’t realize who you are! And so basically the New Ager says, “Look, we are not separated from God by sin, we are separated from our higher self by ignorance of who we really are. You don’t need to get in touch with Jesus, some Savior out here, and invite Him into your heart, into your life. What you need to do is look inside and tap into that power that is already within you. Now, that idea, these ideas have been in the occult since the Garden of Eden and they are simply being revived today.

I’ll just give you some quotes. I’m quoting William Tiller, Ph.D., Professor of Material Science at Stanford University. He says, “There are new energies which we have never dealt with before in physics. We have within our organisms sensory capacities for cognition of these energies. At some level in the universe, we’re all connected. That’s Carl Jung’s “universal unconscious.” Space, time and matter are all mutable. We can perceive events out of our fixed location in space. That’s remote viewing. We can perceive events out of our fixed location in time. That’s precognition. So you don’t call it prophecy anymore. It’s precognition now. Some people can materialize and dematerialize objects. If one can do it, eventually all can do it. This is a top scientist. So it’s “scientific” now, you understand. You don’t have to feel “spooky” about this sort of thing. That’s what psychology has done for us. And we’ll come back and perhaps deal with that just a little bit more. Carl Jung. You don’t have to feel like you’re making contact with spirit beings and so forth. I mean, these are deeper levels of the psyche. You don’t have to feel like you’re trying to get in touch with some God out there. Forget that stuff. I mean, it’s “you,” you see? You’re tapping in to who you really are.

So, at a Holistic Health conference in San Diego, Everett Loomis, M.D., declared, “Expanded consciousness depends upon the inflow of primal energies.” Here’s a challenge that the Church is going to face, believe me, in the days ahead, depending on how long before the Lord returns. And I tell you, they will succumb to it after we’re gone. There’s nothing wrong with tapping in. It’s not demonic to tap into the energy of the atom. And if there are these energies in that 90% of the brain that they say we’re not using, in the deep psyche, in the deep collective unconscious, why, there are powers here that we just haven’t tapped into. This is all scientific. Don’t give us this demonic stuff, you know. What’s wrong with tapping into that and developing this and using it for contact with God and using it for spirituality. You see? If a witch doctor comes dancing down the aisles in our churches in his paint and feathers and fetishes and rattles, we’d throw him out or we would at least witness to him and try to convert him. But if he walks in in a business suit with a clerical collar, he’s got a Ph.D. in psychology, he’s giving you the same witchcraft but it’s not recognized anymore. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? So now it comes under the umbrella of science and it’s legitimized. But it is the old occultism.

So he says, “this expanded consciousness depends upon the inflow of primal energies variously referred to by different cultures as the logos, prana, chi, ki, Buddha nature, the Word, Holy Spirit, cosmic energy. Who can say that these words are not synonymous?” Okay? Now you’re being led down the primrose path to destruction.

At the same conference, Rev. Jack Lindquist—at that time he was president of a San Diego Ecumenical Council. He expressed the hope in his prayer that “the healing power of the universe which many people call God would move through the conference.” You see, it’s the old “Star Wars” force. It’s not a personal God anymore. This is a very popular idea, the idea that God is some impersonal energy source because a force isn’t going to hassle you with morals. A force isn’t going to tell you what you did wrong. You don’t have to account to a force, but you, in fact, can manipulate the force and use it for what you want. Another basic problem with the New Age, you can say to your friends out there, people you witness to, and just ask them simple questions about these things. Look, if we have this infinite power within us, and instead of some God out there whose commands we must obey and who is in charge of this whole thing, we are gods and we’ve got this power within us and this psychic power, I mean, there are powers of the mind that are even greater than atomic power. And every Tom, Dick and Harry and Jane and Joann out there on the street is going to have this incredible power, man, that’s not any solution. You’ve got my knees knocking. I’m scared. Look, we have a handful of nations that have atomic power, and you tell me that there’s something even greater and we’re going to turn it over to everybody and they’re all going to have it?! Man! You’ve got just a bunch of Obi-Wans and Darth Vaders out there zapping one another with psychic power. It’s going to make Scanners look like a Sunday School picnic, you know? That’s not going to solve problems, that’s going to make it worse. But it’s all ego centered: Me, empowering me, getting in touch with me, finding out who I am. Getting in touch with my feelings, you know? That’s the whole thing.

And that’s exactly the lie of the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Nothing wrong with you—fourth lie, you just don’t know who you are. You get initiated into this knowledge, gnosis, this secret knowledge with a dark and a light side of evil and good, and then you can run your own life. You can do your own thing. See, it wasn’t that you find out what is good from God, but now you have within you the power to decide what is good and what is evil. So you do your own thing. You decide. You set your own standards. There isn’t nobody going to tell me what’s right and what’s wrong, you know, but I’m going to decide that for myself. So we’ve got a bunch of little gods running around in this world. In fact, we are little gods, as Kenneth Hagin and Copeland teach. But they think it’s good. It’s bad. We’ve got about 5 billion little gods running around this world, each one trying to rule over his own empire. And the problem is, what one little god wants to do doesn’t agree with what one other little god wants to do, which may mess with this little god’s husband or wife or parent or child and we’ve got a clash of egos that won’t quit. And there is no hope, no solution, until all these little gods abdicate the throne of their lives and come under willing submission to the one true God. Okay? But that’s the basic lie back here that the whole world is buying into and that’s what is behind New Age occultism.

Now, the New Age goes by a number of names. It’s the Human Potential Movement is one of the names for it. We talked about that. This infinite potential supposedly within.

Another name for the New Age Movement is the Holistic Movement. Spelled either Wh or just H. Holistic. We’re going to put the whole thing together, and you’ll see a triangle: mind, body, spirit. Wholistic medicine, let’s say. Three simple questions you ask your doctor who is involved in holistic medicine. “Doctor, mind, body, spirit—holistic medicine. What kind of medicine do you give to spirits? Doctor, did you really study how to diagnose and treat spirits in medical school? Now, doctor, ‘spirit,’ isn’t that really a religious term? Would you please be honest enough to tell me, doctor, what religion is this that you are passing off on your patients in the name of the latest medical science?”

Now, don’t take my word for it. This critic, Dave Hunt, that sees a demon under every bush, so some people think, but let’s take Michael Harner, one of the world’s leading anthropologists with the Academy of Science of the State of New York. He’s a practicing shaman/witch doctor. He’s into this thing. And listen to what he says. Shaman—if you’re not familiar with the word and the subtitle of America: The Sorcerer’s New Apprentice is The Rise of New Age Shamanism. That’s what it’s all about. If you’re not familiar with the title, Michael Harner tells you in the introduction. He says, “Shaman is a word that comes from the Tungus tribe in Siberia. It’s what they call their witch doctors, their medicine men.” So, anthropologists have adopted this word “shaman/shamanism” internationally for what we used to call witchcraft, sorcery, wizardry and so forth. Now, he says, “You can travel around this world and you can visit cultures that have been isolated for thousands of years by hundreds of miles of ocean, culturally they’re as different and day and night, and when you investigate their shamanism, their witchcraft, it is identical. Everywhere on the face of this earth. Always has been, always will be. Oh, they may have some different rituals, some different fetishes, but basically underneath the thing is the same.” Well, obviously, you’ve got a common source of inspiration. Nobody dreamed this up. Everybody got it from a common source, and I have verified this in my own research around the world. Now, I think it’s about page 132 or 138, thereabouts, that Michael Harner says, “Holistic medicine”—now, you want to know what holistic medicine is. He’s going to tell you. He’s a believer, not a critic like me. He says, “In holistic medicine we are seeing a remarkable amount of resurgence of reexperimentation with the basic methods long practiced in shamanism.” So the man says holistic medicine is simply witchcraft revived in the Western world, in our modern world, under new terminology, such as—and he lists five things.

Number one, visualization. I want to talk about that and we’ll get into it more in the next hour. The most powerful occult technique. Visualization. [Number two]: Psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, positive thinking, positive expression for health or healing, positive confession: every day and every way I’m getting better and better and so forth and so on. These positive confession people like Hagin and Copeland and Frederick Price and so forth, you must always make a positive confession from the Word of God. Hey, wait a minute, how are you going to make a positive confession of Armageddon?

I was being interviewed on the radio with one of them and… well, the owner of the station, and he said, “I call the Bible the foremost PMA, Positive Mental Attitude, book in the world. What do you say to that?” I said, “I don’t want to embarrass you on the radio.” He said, “Go ahead.” I said, “Look, you look it up in your Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. You won’t find the word positive, you won’t find the word mental, you won’t find the word attitude. Now, doesn’t it seem a bit odd that what you call the foremost positive mental attitude book in the world doesn’t even know that concept? Where do you think that idea came from? It came from the demons,” and we’ll get back to that when we get to Napoleon Hill somewhere on my notes here I think. But the holistic movement. We’re going to deal with the whole person: mind, body, soul, spirit, intellect, emotions. Good idea, but you don’t want a witch doctor tinkering around with your spirit. And that’s where these people are literally coming from.

Now, that brings us into something else. And I’m just going to talk as fast as I can and try to cover as much ground as I can and then when we move into the New Age within the Church in the next hour, we’ll just have to carry on from there.

They tell us that in the not too distant future the action will no longer be in theaters, will no longer be confined to the big screen, but you’re going to have three-dimensional entities running up and down the aisles and all through the audience hanging in mid-air. They call them holograms. You saw primitive forms of them in “Star Wars” and some of our recent movies. You can look at them from 160 degrees and there they are. They call them holograms because no matter how many pieces you cut it up into, no matter how small it becomes, although the resolution becomes distorted, every tiniest piece of a hologram has the whole picture. Now, consequences for that, so they think. And I’m just telling you that there are ideas that are coming down the pike that the Christian church doesn’t have the apologetics for unless you get one of my books. But you go into your Christian bookstore and pick up a book on apologetics, I mean, they’re just outdated. You have people like I could name Nobel Prize winners. Let’s take Brian Josephson, for example. Nobel Prize in physics. Brian Josephson seriously says he’s going to explore the entire universe from the farthest reaches of the cosmos to the innermost depths of the atom by looking within himself through yoga. Of course, look, he says the basic structure of the universe is holographic. The universe is one huge hologram. All right, what does that mean? That means every one of us is a tiny holographic image of the whole. That means you have within you everything in the universe: past, present, future; all wisdom, all knowledge, all power. You are God! Okay? It’s the lie, back from the Garden of Eden.

Self discovery. Self. It’s in the church. Jesus said, “Deny self.” We’re being taught, “No, you’ve got to love, accept, esteem, self-development, self-acceptance, self-ad nauseum. It just goes on and on. The whole thing is centered in self.

Now down here it says, “Whenever you make a mistake, remember, you are God. God doesn’t make mistakes, God only has experiences.” What a lie. What a delusion. But these are some of the ideas that these people are embracing these days.

Edgar Mitchell, ex-astronaut now, doesn’t live too far from here. I think over in West Palm Beach or somewhere like that. Sixth man to walk on the moon. Commander of Apollo 14. He was engaged in telepathy experiments on Apollo 14 back to planet Earth. He had a mystical experience of unity consciousness. If any of you have been on drugs, LSD, you know that’s one of the “I am the universe.” There’s no categories. There’s no divisions. I’m it. The whole thing. The rocks are breathing. It’s all alive. Gaia, mother Earth. It’s a living organism and I’m just part of it. He had an experience of unity consciousness that so transformed his life that when he came back to planet Earth from Apollo 14 he abandoned the outerspace program to join the innerspace program, which is the new frontier of modern science because that’s where it all is: inside of us. We’re all part of this thing and the connection is here in our minds and inside.

I could talk about systems theory. Let’s take somebody like Russ Acof, professor I think at Pennsylvania Graduate School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. He goes around talking… let’s say that I’m one of these trainers now and I’m talking to you and you’re IBM executives. And I’m saying, “Look, we are not into analysis anymore, we’re into synthesis. We don’t try to take things apart and find out how they work, we see everything as part of a system.” And “the problem is, as in medicine, for example, we’ve had these specialists—eye, ear, nose and throat specialists or internal medicine specialists, or somebody specialized in this little part or that little part or the body. No, you’ve got to put the whole thing together. We’re into systems. So, instead of trying to analyze the liver, you see the liver as part of a larger system, the body. Now, the body, instead of trying to analyze the body, you’ve got to see the body in its context as part of a larger system, the eco-system, the earth. But the earth is part of a larger system, the solar system, and the solar system is part of a larger system, our galaxy, the Milky Way. And our galaxy, the Milky Way, is part of a larger system, the universe. And the universe is part of a larger system.” And I pause to let that thought sink in. God. Ah. So systems theory leads us to the Hindu concept of God is everything. We’re talking about New Age occultism and the Christian and in our next hour we get into it “in the Church,” but let’s just take a little step here for a moment.

Let’s talk about Paul Yonggi Cho, pastor of the largest church in the world. In his book The Fourth Dimension he says this: “A line is one dimensional; a plane is two-dimensional; the two includes the one. Draw enough lines infinitely close together, you’ve got a plane.” He says, “A cube is three dimensional. The three includes the two. If you’ve got enough planes infinitely close together, you’ve got a cube now.”

Then he takes a leap, neither warranted by logic, science or the Bible. He says, “The fourth dimension is spirit.” Now, you have no basis for putting spirit in that kind of a dimensional cause and effect relationship with the physical universe. But having done that, following his analogy, he says, “And the four includes the three.”

What have we got? We’ve got a Hindu concept of God. God is everything. God doesn’t create the universe out of nothing out there, separate from Him, God is the universe. He creates the universe out of Himself. And how does He do it? He does it by visualization, says Paul Yonggi Cho. He gets a clear image of what He’s going to bring into existence, He incubates it. That’s what he says. Like a hen hatching an egg. And then He gives birth to this idea, this visual image, in the physical dimension and there it is. And then he says, “You can do that, too.”

And he tells us…see, … it would be bad enough if Cho got this idea, dreamed it up on his own. But he tells you it was the Holy Spirit that told him and he gives you the conversation. He’s been in touch with a Spirit that told him some lies. And he calls it the Holy Spirit. And he says he was told this by God. When you ask God, “How come the Soka Gakkai and Nichiren Shoshu, the positive confession that they chant is Nam Myoho Renge Kjo. This is their chant and they’re creating miracles with this. And he says, How come these Buddhist occultists, they’re seeing miracles and the Christians aren’t?” And he says, “The Holy Spirit told him they’re fourth dimension beings. Satan’s a fourth dimension… he says there are three entities that operate in the fourth dimension: there’s man, Satan and God. So we’re in the same class as God. Ever heard that from Hagin and Copeland and these guys? We are in God’s class. And he said these sinners are simply developing the laws of the fourth dimension. Okay, now we are back into occultism which all runs by laws: there are basic forces, and when you know how to master these forces, you become God. Okay?

Let me give you, wow, we’ve really run out of time here. Try to give you an illustration. Let’s say that I land on a South Sea island where they’ve never seen anybody from the so-called civilized world and I’ve got a gun and these natives start approaching me with their bows and arrows and I shoot up in the air to frighten them off. And then finally we manage by sign language to talk a little bit. I’ve got my man Friday here. And now I’m going to teach him how to do this thing and I shoot birds out of trees. This is magic. I flew in in an airplane. They think I’m a god. And I say to my man Friday here, “Look, let me explain it to you. Let me tell you how it works. Mercury formulated that little silver thing there and it detonates something called gun powder and explodes and expands into a gas and it shoves this projectile out of there and all you’ve got to do is just pull this trigger and aim. And tentatively and a little fearfully at first he pulls the trigger several times. And pretty soon, “I’m a god, too. I know how it works. I’ve got a handle on this thing. I know the power and I know the laws and now I can make it work.” That’s occultism. There are secret forces in this universe and when you know how they work, and that’s exactly what Paul Yonggi Cho teaches.

There are laws of this fourth dimension, the spirit world, and that encompasses everything. And when you get a handle on that, whether you are an occultist… Kenneth Hagin in his little booklet, for example, “Having Faith in Your Faith,” said, “It used to bother me when I saw sinners getting miracles and my church members missing out and I asked God how come, and He said, They’re spirit beings, just like you’re a spirit being and any spirit being, those sinners, are simply developing God’s laws of faith.” Now it works by laws. It’s science, religious science. It works by laws. You don’t have to be a born again Christian to make it work. You don’t have to be a Christian to fly an airplane or to flip a switch and have an electric current run through there. See, that’s the problem. We’ll have to come back with that.

Let me just try to give you some other ideas here. This was on the… I didn’t pick it up there. I had it somewhere else but I was visiting the C. G. Jung Institute outside of Zurich and this was a poster on a few years ago when I was there. “International Transpersonal Association. The speakers are M.D.s, Ph.D.s, scientists, psychologists. The one person that they show is the Dalai Lama of Tibetan Buddhism. And conference workshops. These were people… this was at Davos, Switzerland. A very beautiful place. They came from all over the world. These are leaders. We’re going to solve the world’s problems.

Conference workshops: Adventures—the first one listed—adventures in self–exploration. The method of holonomic integration developed by the workshop leaders and so forth and so on. Exactly what I’ve been explaining to you. “The Shamanic Journey: Power and Healing. Participants will undergo an experiential initiation into the journey aided by traditional drumming and dancing techniques designed to achieve the shamanic state of consciousness.” Who do you think is teaching it? Michael Harner. I just mentioned The Way of the Shaman. “The shamanic state of consciousness.” See, it’s all dependent upon this altered state of consciousness. Let me explain why that is.

Let me quote Sir John Eccles, Nobel Prize winner for his research on the brain. Dr. Eccles describes the brain as “a machine that a ghost can operate.” Now, as Christians you would believe that. We’re not lumps of protein molecules wired with nerves. You’re not just a piece of educated beef steak. But we have a spirit inside of us. There’s a ghost in the machine. And you would find his tapes and his books fascinating. If you’ll listen to how Dr. Eccles has uncovered what he calls the connection in the brain between the spirit and the brain, how it operates this thing. So in a normal state of consciousness, your spirit is operating your body. Psychokinesis, telekinesis is going on right now. Incredible. My spirit is ticking off the neurons in my brain and operating my body and it’s the same with you. That’s in a normal state of consciousness. In an altered state of consciousness, reached under yoga, hypnosis, being used by hundreds of Christian psychologists, so-called Christian psychologists, drugs.

In the New Testament God comes down on something very hard that He calls sorcery. In the Greek there are two words that are translated sorcery in the King James: magia, Simon the Magician, in Acts 8; pharmakeia. A sorcerer is a person who takes consciousness altering drugs in order to gain supernatural powers and to make ultimately contact with spirit beings. My alma mater, U.C.L.A., gave Carlos Costaneda his Ph.D. in anthropology for the manuscript “A Journey to Ixtlan” which was a story of how don Juan Matus, a Yacci Indian sorcerer, initiated him into the sorcerer’s world on peyote, mescaline, a derivative from the cactus bud, and he met Mescalito, the god Mescalito, okay, and developed these supernatural powers and out of body experiences and so forth. This has been around for thousands of years. The sacred mushroom. It’s a religious ceremony. It’s an explosion of an awakening interest in spirituality that Jesus predicted in the last days. And so in the altered state of consciousness, however you reach it, that loosens the normal connection between you and your brain and allows another spirit to interpose itself, tick off the neurons in your brain and create a universe of illusion. That’s where the out-of-body experiences come from, the psychedelic experiences, the psychic powers and so forth. You’ve got a demon playing a videotape in your brain because you’ve loosened the contact and this is a delusion. And so one of the signs of the last days that Paul gave in 1 Timothy 4:1, he said, “Now, the Spirit speaketh expressly.” Pay attention to this. “In the latter times some will depart from the faith and give heed to seducing spirits, doctrines of devils.” The demons are not around just to trip you out on the astral plane, you know, and have fun out there like Shirley MacLaine talks about, but they are teaching a philosophy.

In fact, one of them… I’ve just got too much stuff here and I can’t get to it. I picked this up in Australia. But he’s an American. Terrence McKenna. This is the new Timothy Leary. I wish I had a large picture of him but I didn’t bring that along. But this is a brilliant young man. He has traveled around the world. “Sacred Plants and Mystic Realities, an Interview with Terrence McKenna,” and he has traveled around the world ingesting all kinds of plants and things that will put you into this psychedelic state. And he says, what is so fascinating, in fact, DMT, a natural drug is what he’s pushing. Well, they all come from nature and I kid with these people and I say of course anything that is natural has got to be good for you like natural disasters, you know. But anyway, he says what is so fascinating about these drugs, these plants, is they put you in touch with entities, spirits, and they, they are the inhabitants of this other dimension. And then he says, “They are teaching us something. And if I’m not completely crazy,” McKenna says, and he’s not. He’s a brilliant genius. He says, “If I’m not crazy, that’s big news.” Yes, it is big news. A fulfillment of 1 Timothy 4:1: “They will depart from the faith, give heed to seducing spirits who will bring doctrines of devils.” And what they teach is very consistent. It’s this old lie that goes right back to the Garden of Eden. That’s what’s happening in our world.

One of the most powerful teachers of this, and by the way, you don’t have to… I wanted to read to you from The Cult Explosion here and just off of a tape that… where is it? I’ve interviewed people around the world like this. He said, “When I first took LSD, I just was having fun seeing colors, psychedelic patterns. When I started taking really heavy doses I entered into a relationship with some spirit being. I got a spirit guide.” Then he goes on and tells us what these spirits began to teach him. Hinduism and astrology and the powers within and so forth.

One of the most powerful teachers of this is the Dalai Lama. Oops, this is the December 1989 issue of Whole Life Times. It says, “Peace on earth.” You’d think this would be something about Christmas, a Christmas edition. Something about Jesus. There is absolutely nothing in here about Jesus. And these words “peace on earth” that have always been associated with Jesus Christ since the angels made that announcement at His birth are now associated with the Dalai Lama who receives, in fact, the Nobel Peace Prize. What is he doing? He’s going around the world, and here’s a full-page article and he goes around the world initiating people into what he calls Tibetan Deity Yoga. He says, “Through visualization”—and we’ll have to come back and talk about that because it’s in the church. It’s rampant in the church—says, “through visualization you can become a “bodhisattva.” You can become a little god and you can create your own reality with your mind, okay? And this is the way we’re going to bring peace to the world. Visualize peace. We’ve got it in the, well, I can’t find it. Pentagon Meditation Club get in the spirit of peace. And they’re going to create through visualization a peace shield around the world. This power of this other dimension that they’re going to tap into, spiritual, scientific, and, oh, it doesn’t need to contradict the Bible. Why, you can incorporate it with your Christianity and it’s literally coming into the church and that’s what we’ll have to come back and finish and talk about that in the next hour.