Are We Becoming A Drug Culture?

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 discussion of where the world and Christendom are headed according to the Scriptures as history draws to a close.

Carl: Good to be back, Tom. Looking forward to this discussion.

Tom: Yeah. Carl, as you know, and hopefully many of our viewers recognize that we’re—what we’ve been presenting in this series is taken from four books: your 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. 

We’re now focusing on Carl Teichrib’s book Game of Gods: The Temple of Man in the Age of Re-enchantment. But last week, Carl, you gave us an explanation of the subtitle of your book. But it reminded me that when we discussed America, the Sorcerer’s New Apprentice, we didn’t address a part of that title, which is “sorcery,” which is a major part of the end times. It’s a conditioning process. It incorporates much that ultimately leads to communication with demonic entities. 

Carl, I’ll start with the definition of sorcery, and you take it from there and we’ll go back and forth on this, because this is a huge, huge issue.

Sorcery, as it’s used in the New Testament Scripture, is the Greek term pharmakeia, from which we get our words pharmacy, obviously a place that dispenses drugs. Well, hallucinogenic drugs in particular have been used to enter into altered states of consciousness, which we’ve talked about, which is the doorway to communicating with spirit entities. In the Old Testament, sorcery is related to witchcraft, magic, and having a familiar spirit, and that would include everything involved in ancient and present-day shamanism, which we’ve gone over, as well as the beliefs of Eastern mystics and New Age pantheists.

So, Carl, what’s your input for this?

Carl: It’s a topic, Tom, that is large, it’s vast, it has a scope that impacts, and in…and it’s important. We have to discuss it within the Christian context, within the Christian community. 

I’ve never taken mind-altering substances. I’ve never become experienced in the realm of psychedelics. I have friends who have, but I have watched the culture. I’ve watched specifically how the new drug culture has become an important part of alternative spiritual movements. 

In fact, I just read an article this week from Vice, and the article was about how ayahuasca churches are being set up and sanctioned by my government across Canada. And the Vice article was interviewing somebody from an ayahuasca church in Winnipeg. Now, for those who are unfamiliar with that term, ayahuasca is a tea that you drink which unlocks DMT, and it takes you into an altered state. In fact, it’s a place where you go in to visit your plant spirits, or to have plant spirits or elves or some other type of entity visit and impart information to you. It’s an important aspect of the new spiritual movement of our time, Tom. 

What I find interesting is when you dig into Hinduism, and I talked a little bit about this in my book—I’ve got one small section where I dive into the Rigveda, and the songs and the psalms that are written in the Rigveda to soma. Soma was an elixir. It was a drink. It was some type of substance that you would ingest, and then through that experience you would have divine enlightenment. Your eyes would be opened. You would now come face to face with the gods, so to speak. I find it ironic, because the Rigveda is, in a way, pre-Hindu text. It’s what Hinduism is built upon. I find it somewhat ironic that as we’ve been discussing Eastern mysticism, that the Hindu experience may have started through psychedelic encounters.

Tom: And, Carl, you remember that, and I gave the assignment to our viewers, to check out my interview with a Yanomamo shaman, and even pre-teenage, this young man, pre-teenage, was given hallucinogenic drugs to get him into that connection with the spirit entities.

And, Carl, I don’t care how many times the psychotherapists try and relate this to, “No, no, it has nothing to do with actual spirit entities.” You talk to a real shaman, they’re going to laugh at you. 

As a matter of fact, Shoefoot, the chief of the Yanomamo tribe that I interviewed—changed his name to Baptista, by the way, because he converted to Christianity. But he came to the United States, and he would…you know, it grieved him, but he would laugh at the obvious interaction with spirit entities that he saw, whether it be through movies, whether it be through TV, whatever it might be. 

Or talking to the anthropologists and so on, they’d say, “No, this is a pure cultural thing. This is purity at best.” 

He said, “No, it’s not.” And it just…a reasonable way of addressing this and showing that all this veil, pseudo-scientific veil, is trying to make this the subconscious and altered states of consciousness. But not certainly in the Jungian sense, although he may buy into some of that. But it really has to do with false science being promoted, which makes it more acceptable to the masses. 

Carl: I find it interesting, Tom, how today there is such a renewed interest in psychedelics. Specifically when I go to Burning Man, I’ve been…at Burning Man there’s a lot of talk of psychedelics, okay? There’s a lot of people who are engaging in psychedelic and mind-altering substances, including a lot of workshops that you can take on what is happening in terms of the future of psychedelics, and I’ll probably end up jumping back into this a little bit later at the end of the program. 

One of the things that is striking is how Silicon Valley tech gurus are now microdosing, and that’s a big thing, Tom! Microdosing—taking small amounts of LSD, small amounts of psilocybin, to boost creativity levels. And so the science, the so-called science of this, has moved now into the realm of creativity. It’s no longer just simply talked about in terms of looking for a new way of bringing about one’s consciousness, but now a new way of opening up your creative juices. Steve Jobs was very open about his use of LSD as one of his creativity gateways in developing Apple products. 

So if you don’t…if you think that this is something abstract, something out there, something on the other side of the railroad tracks, mm-mmm! Sorry, the world of drugs and the drug culture community, the spirituality associated with it, the impact it’s had on our culture is far larger than what most Christians would realize.

Tom: Uh-huh. So in terms of this creativity, they’re thinking it’s their thoughts, but you talk to a shaman, and they will—I mean a real shaman—they will say, “No, no, this comes from spirit entities.”

Now, I mentioned the Old Testament with regard to dealing with sorcery. Let me read to you from Deuteronomy:18:10-11 [10] There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, [11] Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.
See All...: “There shall not be found among you anyone that maketh his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or uses divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.” 

So this is the realm of shamanism. This is the realm of sorcery. This is what it’s about, and we’re going to get more specific about that when we talk about some of the verses from the, you know, from the New Testament.

Let me give you another one—Isaiah:47:9-10 [9] But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood: they shall come upon thee in their perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments. [10] For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me.
See All...… Well, this give us—excuse me—this gives us the connection of sorcery to the pantheist and Eastern mystical lie of godhood for mankind, which you just referred to earlier. 

“But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood: they shall come upon thee in their perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments.” I can see why you picked up that word for the title of your book, Carl. “For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee [Steve Jobs, okay?]; and thou hast said in thine heart [here we go], I am, and none else beside me.”

There’s godhood…

Carl: Yes.

Tom: …with the Scripture laying it out very clearly.

Carl: Yep. The realm of psychedelics, I believe, is a significant gateway to opening up new forms of spirituality. And one of the things I find very important in terms of the messaging that comes through the realm of psychedelics is a message that you just simply read right there, Tom. That is this idea that now we have entered into a new phase of our spiritual evolution we can become godlike. We can become as gods. It’s the same messaging all the way through, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter if you read the writings of channeled UFO entities, if you take a look at what the New Age teaches, what Eastern spirituality gives us, or what the messages that come through the psychedelic experience show us. It always points back to Genesis 3: “We will be as gods.” This is a gateway. This is the way to open up that forbidden—it’s a form of forbidden fruit.

Allow me to read a little section out of Game of Gods on the work that Rick Strassman did in the early 1990s. Now, Rick Strassman was a medical…he was doing clinical experiments on DMT. “During the early 1990s, Strassman received US government approval to conduct clinically controlled DMT experiments on voluntary human subjects. One of the more troubling aspects of his research was subject contact with other entities, […] interactions with nonmaterial life forms. Test patients described encounters with angelic beings and alien creatures. Strassman had previously heard of strange lifeforms seen in psychedelic visions, but the doctor was unprepared for their level of involvement. These beings were communicating with and manipulating his subjects.” 

Then Strassman goes on to say, “Their business appeared to be testing, examining, probing, and even modifying the volunteer’s mind and body. One patient described it this way: ‘It’s more like being possessed. During the experience there is 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.’ Strassman tried to understand these experiences through a scientific framework, chalking it up to brain chemistry and psychological conditioning. But the visitations were too interactive, and the experiences too invasive, strongly hinting that a threshold had been crossed between drug-induced imagination and something else.”

Tom: Wow. You know, folks, if you’ve been following our interview sessions, we talk about Carl Jung. And at the beginning, he…well, his terms were to take the experiences that he had, but now to change them into science, pseudoscience, and so on. He talked about his interaction with Philemon. And as you look to the end of his life and this came out in some of his writings as well as other people talking about this, Philemon, he…Jung said, “It was more than just my imagination. This was an entity that was different from me.”

Now, what did this entity do for him? It gave him, according to Jung, it gave him the concept of the altered…not altered state of consciousness, but the collective unconscious, all right? And that came from a demon! There’s no way around it. So we’re seeing this more and more.

Now, Carl, you quoted from your book; I’m going to quote from your book, okay? Because it’s a terrific book. All right, here it goes—you ready? 

“In calculating the financial side of the altered state’s economy, broadly interpreted and characterized under drugs, therapy, media, and recreation, Kotler and Wheal estimated that $4 trillion annually goes to what he calls the ‘Church of the Ecstatic.’” It’s not a church, it’s a mindset! It’s a culture. We’re…he goes on to say, “We are willing to pay handsomely for temporary bliss, often incurring costs that go far beyond the monetary.” 

Well, you know, Carl, the Church of the Ecstatic, or you could call it the “religion of whatever it takes to make one feel good.” Four trillion dollars. 

Now, I don’t know when you got that quote, but…how many years ago would you say? Can you remember?

Carl: I believe Wheal and Kotler wrote that in 2017.

Tom: Okay, so the numbers are really close to our day.

Carl: Yeah.

Tom: But, Carl, Bend, Oregon, where I live, it’s the recreation capital of the Northwest. There’s everything to do here. And the state of Oregon is accommodating the recreation with its drug mentality. On the one hand, it says, “Well, it’s for medicinal purposes, okay? We’re all right there.” But now it’s moved on to recreational drugs and so on. So you come to this beautiful little city, little town of Bend, Oregon, and there is a cannabis, a marijuana shop on almost every corner. It’s…not only that, but the farmers in the area are turning to, you know, the plants that support that and so on. So it’s—it’s becoming…not just Bend, but, you know, you talked about your part of Canada and so on. It’s everywhere. 

The other thing that I thought was interesting, Carl, is I watched the debate between Harris and Pence. Now, we’re not going to get political here…but, yes, I am going to get political—not so much for the persons involved, except for their platform. Harris, she promoted marijuana at the beginning of the program, and then she ended with that. She wants to see it decriminalized. Well, here we go! We are in the realm of sorcery, big time. New Testament sorcery.

Carl: Could I add something to that, Tom? 

Tom: Please do!

Carl: And this goes back to originally when I talked a little bit earlier in this conversation about Burning Man, I specifically go to a lot of the workshops that are presented at Burning Man on the rise of psychedelics as a cultural, medicinal, spiritual movement. And this brings together some of the most important advocates, lobbyists, some of the most important people connected, those who are involved at doctorate level work regarding the rise of psychedelics. 

Now, this is what’s interesting, what’s so important, is marijuana. The very people who have been advocating for its legalization, those are the same people who are at these workshops who are giving presentations at these workshops. And they have said it, I’ve heard it with my own ears on more than one occasion, that what the legalization of marijuana does is it opens up a gateway—not because of marijuana! That’s not even actually the end goal. That’s not the end goalpost. What it is, is it’s the gateway to open up the legalization of psilocybin. It’s the gateway to open up the legalization of DMT substances, ayahuasca. It’s a gateway to open up the legalization of psychedelics for this end, not for recreation, though that’s there, not for medicinal, though that could be argued, that’s there too—no. They recognize that human evolution can only take place through a spiritual reawakening via the psychedelic substance. 

So they are focused. They understand that really this has a spiritual evolutionary principle, a context to it. And the legalization of marijuana is just that open door to begin taking Western civilization down that road. And this is discussed, Tom, in very open, very informal kind of ways, settings. When you’re listening to the discussions, the panel discussions at Q and A sessions, and just the discussions in the workshops that take place afterwards, and the realization for myself—again, I’ve never used psychedelics, but walking away from it you’re going, “Oh my goodness! You were talking about an agenda to open the Western mind up to spiritual evolution via spiritual entities.” And the realm of pharmakeia becomes that gateway. 

Tom: Carl…

Carl: It’s soma! It’s soma. We’re back to soma. 

Tom: Right. And as I think about it, I went through the ‘60s, and somehow, you know—the “hippie ‘60s”—and I never got into the drug scene. You know, I didn’t know the Lord back then, but I think it was definitely His grace that just…I observed it, I watched it. Friends were into it and so on, but it never was something that was of interest to me. I guess I didn’t want to lose control. Maybe I was a control freak in terms of, “No, no, I don’t want anybody messing with me!” from that standpoint. But that was my flesh.

But here’s the thing: we’ve been talking about those who have turned against Christ—call it antichrist. We’ve been saying that they want to fix the problems themselves. They don’t want anything to do with Jesus Christ. They want their own deal, and they’re going to solve their problems themselves. And what have they said throughout this? Well, part of our problem is not only that we were gods, but that we forgot that we’re gods, so we have to relearn that we’re gods. 

But something even, to me, more important than that in terms of what they’re promoting is that—hey, Carl, just regular consciousness, that’s a low-level thing!

Carl: Mm-hmm.

Tom: You know? Your thoughts and so on, they may have a little value here and there, but it’s not really helpful. We have to move to a higher consciousness. If we’re going to solve our problems and be as gods, we have to move into the realm of higher consciousness. And that’s what drugs, as you said, as you’ve articulated, that’s what drugs do there. It’s the gateway. It opens the door, and what they’re not realizing—and maybe some are, but for the most part they’re not realizing that they’re dealing with demons. They’re dealing with spirit entities, and that’s the whole heart. We’ve been talking about this over and over again about shamanism. That’s what it’s all about. 

You know, I’ve got a scripture here from the New Testament. This is in the Book of Acts [chapter 8] verses 9-11…here’s an example, folks, of, from the Scriptures, of sorcery: “But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched [how about that word?] the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God.” Whoa! There we’ve moved up from Genesis 3, right, into the New Testament. Just one example, and there are many, many others. “And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries.”

Now let’s go to the Book of Revelation—Revelation:9:21Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.
See All...: “Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries [again, the term is pharmakeia], nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.” 

Now here’s one that goes back to the—what was the amount of money that I mentioned from your book? Four trillion?

Carl: Four trillion.

Tom: Four trillion. How about this one—Revelation:18:23And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.
See All...: “And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants [did I say merchants?] were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.” 

You can’t lay it out any plainer than that, Carl.

Carl: I know, I know.

Tom: And it grieves us! You know, I read an article for The Berean Call not too long ago about—talked about psilocybin, how they were…the gist of the article had to do with people who were worried about death, so they gave them psilocybin. So now they’re entering into a Christless eternity on drugs just to make them feel better. But I’m telling you, the end thereof is the lake of fire, separation from God forever. That’s…it’s worse than heartbreaking. It’s a tragic thing.

Carl: It is, yes. 

In 2018, I can’t give a lot of the details because we dealt with it, but I want your listeners to hear the importance of how the drug culture even looks to be influencing Christendom. 

In 2018 I was at a workshop with one of my campmates. We were at a workshop where there was a panel discussion on ayahuasca. A very well-known, nationally well-known American attorney who has a number of legal products that are marketed across the US was there giving her take of the ayahuasca experiences she had had. 

And then she dropped a bombshell in our lap—she talked about how a certain conservative Christian organization wanted to use her legal products and promote those products to their audience, and how a contract had already been signed. Now, the legal products are good in and of themselves, no question! But what she was so excited about wasn’t the sale of her legal product, it was about how it would open up the Christian conservative world to her so that she could begin now to offer them a new product, and that was her testimony: her experiences, and specifically her experiences with psychedelic substances, and how that opened up a new form of spirituality. And all of a sudden within this workshop, we had literally a roadmap laid out for us of how potentially thousands, hundreds of thousands, of conservative Christians could potentially be impacted in a subtle way to pursue this new spirituality. 

We left that workshop, Tom, pretty shaken up. What was beautiful, though, was that my campmate, her pastor was friends with the head of that particular Christian organization, and so we could send out a message of warning up the chain of command, so to speak, so that they could be alerted what this was really all about. 

Okay, that’s pretty wild! That’s an example though of how it can be very subtle, but here we go—we’ve got a wonderful product. It’s going to help you. By the way, here’s another way that this is going to help you, as well. Maybe it’ll help you in your spiritual walk. And for a few minutes we had a glimpse of what the salesmanship of spirituality looked like, potentially to the Christian community. 

Tom: Well, what can we say, except it’s out there. Certainly, I don’t know how the election’s going to play out in our country. But I do know, as I described the platform for the democratic side—and, you know, if that happens, if that takes place, things are going to change—well, not just change, but what we’ve been talking about is going to go ahead exponentially. And, you know, we’ve been using the term “it’s hidden in plain sight.” Well, we’re dealing with some of the stuff that’s in plain sight, that people aren’t recognizing. But again, if the platform of the democratic party takes over, you want to talk about an open gate, reinforcement of their ideals, so-called?

Anyway, Carl, we’ve got just a couple of minutes left. You know, I want to read a couple of other verses from Revelation so people get the gist of this. These are not my words, folks. They’re not Carl’s words, this is the Word of God. 

Revelation:21:8But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.
See All...: “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolators, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”

Carl, you know, I’m sure you know the phrase, “Born once, die twice. Born twice, okay, die once.” And that being born again is Jesus. It’s His solution. He paid the full penalty for our sins. He offers it as a free gift, eternal life, to be with Him forever, as opposed to the fire, “the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone” in the second death.

So it’s, you know, it’s a serious point, folks. I hope that you’re—you know, our viewers are taking this to heart. 

Carl: I hope so too, Tom. It’s important for us to recognize that. In a way, Revelation unfolds and fulfills and demonstrates Genesis 3. The first lie, the very first lie of Genesis 3, becomes magnified and expanded as we see—as we see the clock ticking. And as you just read and what we just saw through the Book of Revelation, it is man seeking to build his own temple, isn’t it? 

Tom: Amen. Okay, brother, we’re out of time here, but thank you for your wisdom. And, folks, I can’t say enough about Carl’s book. It takes—you know, I mentioned this to somebody—it takes a book that Dave and I…I had the pleasure and privilege of helping Dave with America, the Sorcerer’s New Apprentice 32 years ago. Carl, you’re bringing us not just up to speed, but hopefully people will be able to recognize the things that you’ve been talking about and that you’ve addressed. 

So thank you, brother. Can’t wait till…

Carl: Thank you.