Nuggets from Occult Invasion—An Astonishingly Broad Acceptance

Celebrities are the leading promoters of occult “spirituality.” Merv Griffin promoted Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and TM in the ‘70s. Ten years ago Oprah Winfrey revealed that the “secret of her incredible vitality and energy [and] success…is her personal relationship with God.” The illegitimate daughter of a Mississippi Baptist minister, her mother couldn’t handle her and sent her to her father. “He drove the devil out of this hellraiser,” says Oprah. Unfortunately, her idea of the devil and God is unbiblical. Her “god” is Phil Jackson’s god of the occult. Winfrey “has embraced A Course in Miracles and on her show has agreed that ‘all religions lead to God.’” Says Oprah:

“I center myself each morning by trying to touch the God light I believe is in all of us. Some people call it prayer, and some call it meditation. I call it centering up. I get boundless energy from that…. It is because of this God-centeredness that I am where I am.”

In her embrace of the occult, Oprah is joined by many other celebrities. As earlier noted, Robert Stack and Della Reese are involved in Science of Mind. Actress Demi Moore follows the occultism of holistic-medicine guru Deepak Chopra. John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, and Kirstie Alley are involved in Scientology. And the psychic hotline is promoted by Dionne Warwick who thereby “encourages people to consult mediums to determine the future.” The list goes on and on, from ex-Beatle George Harrison and the late John Denver to Elizabeth Taylor and Shirley MacLaine.

Governments, too, pursue the occult! Ingo Swann, one of the founders of the remote-viewing program, explains that the United States became involved in psychic research because “the amount of money and personnel involved in the Soviet psychotronics clearly confirmed that they were serious about it and had already achieved breakthroughs which justified the increases in expenditures and tightest security.” He continues:

“Several quite respectable sources have informed me that two major nations are making advances in psychoenergetics applications…. [and] a third smaller nation, with well-known hatred of the American way of life, is also making progress. I know that liberated Russia sold for big bucks the Soviet psychic secrets three times over in order to acquire needed foreign exchange…. Remote viewers did help find SCUD missiles, did help find secret biological and chemical warfare projects [in Iraq], did locate tunnels and extensive underground facilities and identify their purposes.”

There has also been apparent cooperation between the United States and the Russians in the field of psychic experimentation, much of it sponsored by Esalen, the New Age center south of San Francisco where the Human Potential movement was spawned in the 1960s. The Pentagon has had its own Meditation Club headed by Edward Winchester. He talked the Soviets into jointly “visualizing peace” during the height of the Cold War, and on a goodwill tour he meditated ‘inside the Kremlin…and distributed…meditation kits…to peace committee officials in Moscow, Kiev, and Leningrad….” On a TV program “allegedly seen by 150 million Soviets, Winchester ran a public meditation in front of the Kazan Cathedral” in Leningrad.