This post is the second in a series on how Christians should approach psychedelics. The last post, which you can access by clicking here, described some basic facts about psychedelics including what they are, what they do, and how they are different from ordinary “drugs.” It also described the thesis of this series, which is as follows:

Psychedelic substances are doorways into what Christians ordinarily call “the spiritual world.”

But if psychedelic substances are doorways into “the spiritual world,” what is exactly is that “spiritual world”? That is the subject of this post.

There is a lot of ground to cover, and as such, this post is divided into seven parts:

• Passing Beyond the Curtain with Joe Rogan
• WHAT is the Spiritual World?
• WHERE is the Spiritual World?
• HOW Do the Spiritual World and Physical World Interact?
• BIBLICAL EXAMPLE: Saul and the Medium of En-Dor
• WHY Psychedelics Should Matter to Christians
• Terence McKenna and the Machine Elves

So, let’s get started.

Passing Beyond the Curtain with Joe Rogan

But first, let’s go back to Joe Rogan. This four minute clip comes from his JRE episode 1179. In it, he is asked about his experiences with psychedelics.

At the 1:20 mark, this is what he says about how he discovered psychedelics and what it means about the world we live in.

I was relatively famous back then and not “famous” famous but I was on television and I had done some things. So people would want to like turn you on to things. You know, and I would go to parties or meet people and they would say “Hey man, have you ever done mushrooms?” You know, “Hey man, you ever heard of DMT?” And then there’s a few different things that would happen and you would be around these people who had gone to jail for it or you know there were like real psychedelic heads. And once I was around a few of those, I realize: Well, there’s a whole ‘nother world out there.

And then, I discovered Timothy Leary and John Lilly and and the flotation tank became a giant part of my life and then, you know Terence McKenna and Dennis McKenna and all the various psychedelic wizards that are out there that have sort of been expressing that there’s a whole world out there that you’re not seeing. It’s like we’re living life inside this very strange tent. There’s a very thin membrane tent, and if you just unzip that tent and step out, the entire wilderness of the universe exists. But most people live their life inside this very thin walled tent and they think that that tent sort of defines the actual universe itself when it’s so small and so limited.

Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan Podcast, Episode 1179 with Nikki Glaser.

And that’s Joe Rogan’s best description about what it DMT actually shows you. It shows you that we’re living in some sort of weird tent, where everything inside looks so natural and ordinary, but everything outside is the true universe of psychedelic space. And for ordinary people who think that psychedelics are “your brain on drugs,” you might be able to dismiss that as the ravings of a mad lunatic who came to fame by coaching people to eat roaches on Fear Factor.

But a Christian who reads his Bible very carefully may have noticed something very strange about the metaphor he chose. He said that the world we live in is a “tent,” and the prophet Isaiah used exactly the same metaphor to describe exactly the same reality when he said this more than 2,600 years ago when talking about the LORD God:

To whom then will you liken God,
    or what likeness compare with him?

. . .

Do you not know? Do you not hear?
    Has it not been told you from the beginning?
    Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
    and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
    and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
who brings princes to nothing,
    and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.

Isaiah 40:18, 21-23, ESV

Isn’t that strange? It is especially strange in that Joe Rogan is not a Christian, and isn’t very familiar with Christian concepts. he certainly isn’t familiar with a very off-the-wall, very-much-ignored simile in the book of Isaiah. So what is going on?

Well, what I claim is that both Joe Rogan and Isaiah have the same simile because they are describing the same reality. Isaiah, as described in Isaiah 6:1-13, had a vision of the LORD God in which he was present in the throne room of God in the heavenly places. Joe Rogan took a big hit of DMT. Isaiah saw God. Joe Rogan did not. But both of them experienced something and understood things through that experience that they both described in a very similar way.

So, let the reader understand what I am claiming in this post.

Psychedelic substances are a doorway outside of “the tent” that is our ordinary, normal, physical, mundane world.

Though the Bible says there is “one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus,” that does not mean that there is only one doorway into the unseen realm. So let’s talk about that.

WHAT is “the Spiritual World”?

To understand the spiritual world, you must first understand what the Bible means when it describes the “spiritual world.” This is something we have forgotten in modern times. Therefore, the first thing we’re going to do is explore an two important words – soul and spirit. These are very necessary to understand what the “spiritual” world is. Then, we’re going to take a broad view of the scriptures to see what and where the spiritual world is.

What is a Spirit? What is a Soul?

To understand what the spiritual world is, you will need to understand the important semantic metaphors behind the words “soul” and “spirit.” As you likely know, the Bible is written in both Hebrew and Greek, with the Old Testament being originally written in Hebrew and the New Testament being originally written in Greek.

Despite being written in different languages, both the Old and New Testaments have a consistent of terms that we translate into English as “soul” and “spirit.” Both of these words are important to understanding what “spirit” means:

	Soul	Spirit
Hebrew	נֶפֶשׁ (nephesh)	רוּחַ (ruach)
Greek	ψυχή (psuché/psyché)	πνεῦμα (pneuma)
Literal English Definition	“breath”	“wind”

The following list is a short sample of the use of either ruach and pneuma in the Old and New Testaments. The English words that are translated from either ruach or pneuma appear in bold:

• For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. (Genesis 6:7, ESV)
• And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite: Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah. (Genesis 26:35, KJV)
• So Moses stretched out his staff over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day and all that night. When it was morning, the east wind had brought the locusts. (Exodus 10:13, ESV)
• You shall speak to all the skillful, whom I have filled with a spirit of skill, that they make Aaron’s garments to consecrate him for my priesthood. (Exodus 28:3)
• And when the queen of Sheba had seen the wisdom of Solomon, and the house that he had built, And the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel; his cupbearers also, and their apparel; and his ascent by which he went up into the house of the Lord; there was no more spirit in her. (2 Chronicles 9:3-4, KJV)
• All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord. (Proverbs 16:2, NIV)
• Amid thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, dread came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake. A spirit glided past my face; the hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes; there was silence, then I heard a voice (Job 4:12-16, ESV)
• And to which of the angels has he ever said, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”? Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation? (Hebrews 1:13-14, ESV)

As such, when not translated as “spirit,” we see that the biblical concept includes mental thoughts, living breath, tactical skills of dexterity, motivations, and ordinary breezes or air. When translated as “spirit,” we see that it covers one’s inward motives and intentions, as well as angels and what we would typically call “ghosts.” But there is one clear connection between all of these seemingly disparate concepts:

Every time the scriptures use the word “spirit,” it refers to an invisible influence that has an effect on the visible world.

And that’s precisely what a “spirit” is. These influence can be rather physical and natural, like the wind. They can be internal and mundane influences on a person, like emotions. They can also be a more sinister influence like an unclean spirit or demon.

This brings us to the Hebrew nephesh and Greek psyché, which we translate as “soul,” but also means “life.” These Hebrew and Greek words both of these words mean “breath” and also mean life, specifically the non-physical part of life that we all can recognize, but sometimes struggle to describe in our modern age that wrongly denies anything non-material.

Note the difference between “soul” of a person and the flesh of a person. If you want a doctor to work on the physical part of your brain, to remove a tumor or to relieve nerve pain, you would want a NEURO-surgeon. This is a doctor who works on the physical stuff of brains and sensory experiences like sciatic pain. But if you wanted a doctor to assist you with the nonphysical part of your experience, you would want a psychiatrist. This person works not with “the brain” but rather “the soul.”

This understanding of “breath” and “wind” might help you understand exactly why Satan – an unseen adversary for Christians – is called the following

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit (pneuma) that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Ephesians 2:1-3, ESV

Satan is the “prince of the power of the air” because he is the spirit/wind that pushing souls/life. Do you get it? There are strong things of many different types in the “spiritual” realm of air like tornados, breezes, hurricanes and other forms of “wind” and there are weak and personalized things in the “spiritual” realm of air, which is your breath. That is the coherent metaphor being utilized by both the Hebrew ruach and nephesh and the Greek pneuma and psyche.

Unfortunately, modern man has nearly forgotten due to our scientific way of viewing the world. Luckily for us, however, we have preserved the meaning of this underlying metaphor in words like “pneumatic tube” and “psychology,” and “pneumonia,”

Additionally, this metaphor is preserved in the word “psychedelic.”

WHERE is the Spiritual World?

Modern Christians make the mistake of thinking that the spiritual world is a stand-in for heaven and hell. Heaven is “above” (whatever that means), while hell is “below” (whatever that means). This is somewhat true, but very misleadingly false.

Christians tend to think that heaven and hell are separated from us by “distance.” But this is not the case. It’s far more complicated than that. Both heaven and hell are located in a particular realm (to use a neutral word). Heaven is in one part of that realm and hell is in another part of that realm.

Also, in the Bible, “hell” is actually a word for the SECOND DEATH which appears in Revelation. When people die, they go to “the grave” or into “the Earth.” This is not the same thing as hell. While everyone who dies will EVENTUALLY go to heaven or hell, it is not the case that everyone instantaneously goes to heaven or hell. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, those who have faith in Jesus can immediately go to heaven, but those who do not believe in Jesus have a mezzanine level of “the grave” which the Greeks called “Hades.” It’s just the realm of the dead. All of these places are in that “realm” that I spoke of before. This is the spiritual world.

But where is it?

To answer that question, I will give a short answer, and then explain it with a diagram.

The Spiritual World is above, below, and to the side of the physical world, in a different dimension.

This “different dimension” is described in the scriptures, and able to be seen if you look.

For example, when Jacob had his famous “Jacob’s Ladder” dream in Genesis 28, he sees heaven opened up, with angels ascending and descending a stairway into heaven. This is clearly a dream, but Jacob associates that dream with a particular location: the rock upon which he was laying his head. He sets up an altar and makes THE ROCK the centerpiece of the memorial. Strange, isn’t it? Not when you think about it deeply.

To understand this “dimension” thing, I have decided to use a simple and simplified mathematical diagram. First, I am going to take the four directions you can move – left, right, forwards, and backwards – and condense it into a simplified version of two directions, forward and backward, as can be displayed on a simple number line:

For those familiar with number theory, you should know that every Real number is located on that number line. It extends into infinity. Next, I want you to add the dimension of up and down into this diagram, giving us a recognizable X/Y graph:

Importantly, everything in the physical world is located on this simplified X-Y graph. Every location and every place in the physical world is somewhere on the X-Y graph.

But the spiritual world is not the same thing as the physical world. To understand the spiritual world, one must understand a more advanced concept of mathematics that gives extra dimensions to this X-Y graph. These are known “Imaginary” numbers, which are different than “Real” numbers. For a simple explanation of this concept, I provide a link to the following video, which explains how imaginary numbers are real:

As you can see in that video, it explains that “Imaginary” numbers are not actually limited to the imagination of mathematicians. Instead, they are very real concepts that have an inherent role to play in fully understanding the world of mathematics. We can visualize the extra dimension by adding a Z axis to our X/Y graph, which I will make purple, hopefully indicating that the line is coming TOWARDS you and AWAY from you going in and out of the screen:

When traveling on the X/Y graph, a line of travel between point A and point B would in the spiritual realm be made up of a three-dimensional band of experience that exists not only in the physical plane but also in thoughts, memories, emotions, and feelings of consciousness for the person actually experiencing life in this world.

So, that’s how to get to “the spiritual realm.” That is not the same thing as getting to heaven. In scripture “heaven” is a word for both the sky itself and a special place beyond the sky that is more “up” than normal “up.” In addition to the description above in Isaiah 40:22, where it says that God sits “above the circle of the earth,” we see things like this:

You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you.

Nehemiah 9:6, ESV

Importantly, that’s not a description of a long distance. That’s a description of a DIMENSION. As such, just as we have Z axis for the X plane, I’m going to add an Omega axis as an “imaginary number” for the Y dimension on the graph:

This is a complicated diagram to make on a two-dimensional screen with Microsoft paint, but I hope you can understand what is being illustrated here.

God himself exists at the end of the Omega axis and I suppose the “outer darkness,” where Hell is eventually located, exists at the other end. Both the Z axis and the Omega Axis are the spiritual world. They quite literally overlap with our physical world in a different dimension.

That is the way that the spiritual and physical world overlap. They overlap in different dimensions on the same place.

It may be a little confusing, but I hope that is clear.

This overlap and lack of understanding is something that Jesus specifically notes in his conversations with Nicodemus in John 3, in which Jesus explains “spirit” and how it interacts with the visible physical world:

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit [pneuma] is spirit [pnemua]. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind [pnemua] blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit [pnemua].”

Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

John 3:5-12, ESV

Importantly, Jesus makes the point that “the Spirit” a forgotten category of things that even Nicodemus, a teacher of Israel, could not understand. It is an unseen and invisible realm.

HOW Do the Spiritual World and Physical World Interact?

With that explanation out of the way, we can now understand how the the unseen realm of spiritual world interacts with the ordinary world we can see.

“The Spiritual World” is at work when memories are either hidden or come to light, where dreams either provide wisdom and motivation or only fleeting sensation, where words provide wisdom or obscure knowledge from the mind, where desires and emotions of the body and heart begin to move and retain their power, and where mental understanding either joins with or departs from ordinary sight and hearing, and when entities from the spiritual world brazenly make themselves plain in the physical world.

These unseen and invisible things – memories, dreams, insight, thoughts, understanding, emotions, desires, loves, hatreds, etc. etc. all move and affect the visible physical world. While modern observers tend to think of basic aspects of cognitive function in terms of bland and non-personal science, this is not how the scriptures describe the situation.

We should also note that the Bible makes clear that there are also spiritual entities that can take more drastic action. For example, look at the real event that is described in 2 Kings 6, sometime in the middle of the 9th century BC, when Israel is invaded by the Syrians in the days of Elisha :

When the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city. And the servant said, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” He said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. 

2 Kings 6:15-17, ESV

Notice that the chariots of fire were always there “on the mountain.” The story goes on to show how these chariots of fire have an effect on the visible world, and it comes through “blindness” – not an actual inability to see, but rather a complete and utter mental ignorance. This is what happens and when a spiritual power wields a spiritual weapon:

And when the Syrians came down against him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, “Please strike this people with blindness.” So he struck them with blindness in accordance with the prayer of Elisha. And Elisha said to them, “This is not the way, and this is not the city. Follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom you seek.” And he led them to Samaria. As soon as they entered Samaria, Elisha said, “O Lord, open the eyes of these men, that they may see.” So the Lord opened their eyes and they saw, and behold, they were in the midst of Samaria. As soon as the king of Israel saw them, he said to Elisha, “My father, shall I strike them down? Shall I strike them down?” He answered, “You shall not strike them down. Would you strike down those whom you have taken captive with your sword and with your bow? Set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink and go to their master.”

2 Kings 6:18-22

The closest mental category modern Christians have of this event is a Jedi-mind trick, except that it actually happened. I will also note that there is a verse about the siege of Jerusalem by Sennecharib, and the outcome of the siege is summarized as follows in the book of 2 Kings:

“Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it. By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the Lord. For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.”

And that night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went home and lived at Nineveh. And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, struck him down with the sword and escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place.

2 Kings 19:32-37, ESV

And the same is described elsewhere in 2 Chronicles:

And the Lord sent an angel, who cut off all the mighty warriors and commanders and officers in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he returned with shame of face to his own land. And when he came into the house of his god, some of his own sons struck him down there with the sword. So the Lord saved Hezekiah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem from the hand of Sennacherib king of Assyria and from the hand of all his enemies, and he provided for them on every side.

2 Chronicles 32:21-22, ESV

I once had a friend, who was not a Christian, tell me that this event with Sennecharib and the “angel of the Lord” is an error in the Bible. He says that in reality, we have good evidence that it was a combination of rat-borne plague and a revolt within the Assyrian camp that caused Sennecharib to depart, not an “angel of the Lord” who “drew his sword.”

What my friend failed to notice is that “rat-borne plague” and “revolt” are both the result of invisible influences that have an effect on the visible world. He and the Bible (assuming his history was correct) were describing exactly the same thing in two equally true ways. A similar story of spiritual help assisting the enemies of Judah is described in 2 Chronicles 20:13-23, where the internal mental deliberations of the enemies of the Jews are turned to their own self-destruction:

Meanwhile all Judah stood before the Lord, with their little ones, their wives, and their children. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel the son of Zechariah, son of Benaiah, son of Jeiel, son of Mattaniah, a Levite of the sons of Asaph, in the midst of the assembly. And he said, “Listen, all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat: Thus says the Lord to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s. Tomorrow go down against them. Behold, they will come up by the ascent of Ziz. You will find them at the end of the valley, east of the wilderness of Jeruel. You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them, and the Lord will be with you.”

Then Jehoshaphat bowed his head with his face to the ground, and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell down before the Lord, worshiping the Lord. And the Levites, of the Kohathites and the Korahites, stood up to praise the Lord, the God of Israel, with a very loud voice.

And they rose early in the morning and went out into the wilderness of Tekoa. And when they went out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, “Hear me, Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem! Believe in the Lord your God, and you will be established; believe his prophets, and you will succeed.” And when he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the Lord and praise him in holy attire, as they went before the army, and say,

“Give thanks to the Lord,
    for his steadfast love endures forever.”

And when they began to sing and praise, the Lord set an ambush against the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah, so that they were routed. For the men of Ammon and Moab rose against the inhabitants of Mount Seir, devoting them to destruction, and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, they all helped to destroy one another.

2 Chronicles 20:13-23, ESV

That is a part of the spiritual world in action. It exists parallel to our physical world, all around us. And it has very real effects on human beings.

BIBLICAL EXAMPLE: Saul and the Medium of of En-Dor

One of the most important episodes in the Bible as it relates to psychedelics is when Saul visits the Medium of En-Dor. It is found in 1 Samuel 28. In the story, Saul visits a medium – a shaman of sorts – and summons the dead spirit of Samuel to ask him a question. To the surprise of most modern Christians with a very flat view of the supernatural, the shocking thing is that the ceremony actually works. It is worth reading the relevant passage in full:

Now Samuel had died, and all Israel had mourned for him and buried him in Ramah, his own city. And Saul had put the mediums and the necromancers out of the land. The Philistines assembled and came and encamped at Shunem. And Saul gathered all Israel, and they encamped at Gilboa. When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly. And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets. Then Saul said to his servants, “Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her.” And his servants said to him, “Behold, there is a medium at En-dor.”

So Saul disguised himself and put on other garments and went, he and two men with him. And they came to the woman by night. And he said, “Divine for me by a spirit and bring up for me whomever I shall name to you.” The woman said to him, “Surely you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the necromancers from the land. Why then are you laying a trap for my life to bring about my death?” But Saul swore to her by the Lord, “As the Lord lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing.” Then the woman said, “Whom shall I bring up for you?” He said, “Bring up Samuel for me.” When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice. And the woman said to Saul, “Why have you deceived me? You are Saul.” The king said to her, “Do not be afraid. What do you see?” And the woman said to Saul, “I see a god coming up out of the earth.” He said to her, “What is his appearance?” And she said, “An old man is coming up, and he is wrapped in a robe.” And Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground and paid homage.

1 Samuel 28:3-14, ESV

Now, every time I have heard a sermon on this passage (which is once in person and several times on the internet, as few pastors like to broach the subject), I have heard it said that the medium was not expecting the ceremony to work, and that she is shocked when Samuel actually shows up. I do not know why people say this, because the narrative of the text says something completely different. I suppose the pastors want to attribute the supernatural power to Samuel himself, and not to any malign forces.

The text is very clear. The magic ceremony actually does work, and this woman is able to see into another dimension. As it relates to the diagram of the spiritual world we made, it seems she is looking down the Z axis of our previous diagram:

What is also important for our purposes is the following: By looking into that alternate dimension, this medium/sorceress gets information about the actual world that she did not otherwise have. Her perception into this reality that provides her with the knowledge that Saul was actually Saul, despite his disguise and despite him never revealing his identity to her prior to her realization. As such, we should understand what this means:

Looking into the Spiritual World can provide humans with real-world knowledge that they wouldn’t otherwise have in the Physical World.

And believe it or not, this phenomena of information from the spiritual world coming into the real world to have an effect is actually quite common. But that is a story for a different post. The point is that these entities are real and the information they provide has an effect on the real world.

And so with the scriptural confirmation of non-heavenly spiritual powers being able to access spiritual realities, I now need to talk about WHY Psychedelics matter.

WHY Psychedelics Should Matter to Christians

As we’ve already claimed, psychedelics allow users to access the spiritual world directly. But most Christians are not doing psychedelics, so why should it matter to them?

Well, you may not be doing psychedelics, but many people are. Without going into personal stories and individualized experiences (which I will cover in future posts), I will merely explain the recognized effects of psychedelic drugs in the context of controlled, medical studies.

In 2016, Richard Schiffman reported on a study with some rather surprising results about the effect of psychedelic substances. This is what he wrote:

In one of the largest and most rigorous clinical investigations of psychedelic drugs to date, researchers at Johns Hopkins University and New York University have found that a single dose of psilocybin—the psychoactive compound in “magic” mushrooms—substantially diminished depression and anxiety in patients with advanced cancer.

Richard Schiffman, “Psilocybin: A Journey Beyond the Fear of Death?” The Scientific American. (December 1, 2016). Accessed December 4, 2022. Available online: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psilocybin-a-journey-beyond-the-fear-of-death/  

That seems pretty significant, but that is not all. In 2014, a different Johns Hopkins study found that a single dose of psilocybin had an powerful outcome in assisting smokers in quitting their smoking habit. As the reader should know from what we have stated before, desires which are manifested through habits fall into the category of “spiritual” things. But it is this additional finding that is so curious:

At 12-month follow-up 13 participants (86.7%) rated their psilocybin experiences among the five most personally meaningful and spiritually significant experiences of their lives.

Matthew W. Johnson, Albert Garcia-Romeu & Roland R. Griffiths (2017) Long-term follow-up of psilocybin-facilitated smoking cessation, The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 43:1, 55-60, DOI: 10.3109/00952990.2016.1170135

But it does not stop there. The same researcher, R.R. Griffiths, who conducted the study on the fear of death in patients with advanced cancer, has done other studies with psychedelic substances, as well. The research revealed certain curious observations in those who partook of the psychedelic substances, including:

• “God encounter experiences.”
• “Psilocybin-occasioned mystical-type experience in combination with meditation and other spiritual practices produces enduring positive changes in psychological functioning”
• “mystical-type experiences” which produce “immediate and persisting dose-related effects.”
• “mystical experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance.”

That list comes from the profile of R.R. Griffiths on the webpage of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins University, website (accessed December 4, 2022), which unfortunately was taken down upon Griffiths death on October 16, 2023. But here is a link to the study authored by Griffiths on the use of psilosybin, in which participants described “the psilocybin experience as having substantial personal meaning and spiritual significance and attributed to the experience sustained positive changes in attitudes and behavior consistent with changes rated by community observers.”

But it does not stop there. Research is ongoing. As Michael Pollan describes in How to Change Your Mind, psilocybin is now being tested to treat depression in the general population. As he describes on page 376 of his book about a study at the Imperial College of London:

In the study, the initial results of which appeared in Lancet Psychiatry in 2016, researchers gave psilocybin to six men and six women suffering from “treatment-resistant depression” – meaning they had already tried at least two treatments without success. There was no control group, so everyone knew he or she was getting psilocybin. After a week, all of the volunteers showed improvement in their symptoms, and two-thirds of them were depression-free, in some cases for the first time in years. Seven of the twelve volunteers still showed substantial benefit after three months. The study was expanded to include a total of twenty volunteers; after six months, six remained in remission, while the others had relapsed to one degree or another, suggesting the treatment might need to be repeated.

Michael Pollan. How to Change Your Mind. Kindle Edition. Penguin Press. 2018. (pp. 375-376 of 465)

There are many reactions one may have regarding these findings, but what is clear is that these substances have a very real power over people’s mental faculties and perception. This fits in perfectly with what we have already described about the Christian concept of a spiritual world, as well as what we described in the previous post on this subject, which is that psychedelics give their users access to very real but “mystical” and “religious” and “a higher plane of reality” or even a “god-like” experiences.

And if you want to know why Christians should care, I want to point you back to the recently-deceased pioneer researcher, formerly at Johns Hopkins. Though he died, there is a foundation supporting his work in the future, namely, the THE ROLAND R. GRIFFITHS, PH.D. PROFESSORSHIP FUND which is offered “In Psychedelic Research On Secular Spirituality And Well-Being.”

Wait… did that say secular spirituality? Yes. You read that right: Secular spirituality.

Let the reader understand, with the following letter that I received from a reliable source:

My dear Wormwood,
I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics. At least, not yet. I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in which the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The ‘Life Force’, the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work — the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls ‘Forces’ while denying the existence of ‘spirits’ — then the end of the war will be in sight. But in the meantime we must obey our orders. I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that ‘devils’ are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.

C.S. Lewis. The Screwtape Letters (1942). Harper Collins Edition (2001). Chapter 7, page 31-32.

Let the reader understand: Psychedelics can create materialist magicians. This is a very real thing. And as you can see, I have already raised the idea of “entities” that you meet when doing psychedelics. So let’s talk about that fact.

Terence McKenna and the Machine Elves

Earlier, when Joe Rogan was talking, he mentioned “Terence McKenna,” who was a Berkley educated author and lecturer who advocated psychedelic experiences, until his death on April 3, 2000. He was the author of Food of the Gods: the Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge – a Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution. He was an early voice and influential advocate on the use and benefits of psychedelic experiences. I will be talking about his work and observations extensively in the following posts. If you, as a Christian, want to know why Christians should care about psychedelics, I think you need to hear what Terence McKenna get a sense of what he has said and observed. A Christian should not take his interpretations of what he has seen at face value, but we must recognize that the things he has seen are the things that he has seen, and that the things that he has seen are real, because others have seen them, too.

I encourage you to watch the video below (with some psychedelic imagery overlaying one of the many talks on psychedelics that he gave during his lifetime):

A transcript of that talk is here, which you can either read or listen to in the video:

Well, I always think of Dr. Leary’s marvelous advice, which was “When in doubt, double the dose.” [Laughter] We, uh, we did a very interesting survey which was, we surveyed about 370 people who had taken psilocybin and — and in fact, were more involved in that. They were actually people who were involved in attempting to grow it. 370 people. And that– one of the questions in the questionnaire was “How much do you take.” And the other question buried at some other portion of it was “Do you hear voices?”

When you plot the ascending dose, you discover that the more you take, the more likely you are to hear voices. And that, I think, is the problem. You can have outrageous experiences and not have reached the core, and people always want to stop too soon, and say “Well, this is it! We’re not going to get any higher! This is fine, you know.”

And just very recently, I had an experience– someone who came to my salon thing that I did in February, who was also at a mushroom conference that I did last fall, and we’ve sort of had an ongoing discussion, because he says, “You don’t give enough credit to LSD, and I don’t understand what you mean by the vast differences between these things,” and this and that. So he called me the other day and said, “I finally got it, and now I’m a convert. I saw them, I heard them, I talked to them,” and it was nine and a half grams necessary to put this guy into the correct perspective.

Nine and a half grams is an appalling dose, in my book. I mean, I’ve done eight grams, and it’s okay, you know, but you’re way, WAY over the limit. So it is not the first phenomenon you encounter, or the second or third, but down deep, this thing can come.

And also, I’ve noticed with it, is uh, it has to be sort of invoked. The first time I ever encountered the voices was in the DMT flash. The very first time I smoked DMT, I mean a friend of mine brought it to me. I remember it was a rainy evening in February of— 60– [19]66. And he came to my house and he was a very odd person to begin with, and he said “I have something you might be interested in.” I had just taken LSD for the first time six months before and was all gung-ho, and I said “Oh, wonderful. What is this?” and he said “It’s a new drug.” “Great. Great. Drag it out. What is it? What do you do?” And he said, “Well, I don’t want to say too much about it. Let’s just sit down and do it.” And he had this glass pipe and I said, since I hadn’t heard of it, I couldn’t imagine it was going to be a bigger deal than LSD, because I figured, you know, Life Magazine keeps me informed of these things. It’s not going to take me by surprise.

And I took a huge hit, and it was without a doubt the greatest compressed moment of growth I ever hoped to go through in my life! I mean, I stopped being a Marxist. I stopped being a materialist. I stopped being a rational, and it took, you know– what? — five seconds? It just killed those things. It cauterized them. It burned them out beyond any possibility of ever– uh — reconstructing them– just, they were gone! The evidence was too overwhelming!

You know, and uh, when I came down, I said “I can’t believe it!” and that was all I could say for about 20 minutes. It was like ideological shock. I said “I can’t believe it! I cannot believe it! I just can’t believe it!” He said, “Well, keep doing it! You’ll believe it!” But see, the truth was I could believe it. I couldn’t stop believing it. And yet I had not been prepared.

I had not thought that magic ruled the world from top to bottom, side to side, atom to atom from first to last. It had just not been in my conception to conceive of that. But that’s a very violent way to contact the LOGOS.

What I notice on mushrooms is I come into the place where the potential exists, and I can recognize it. It’s when the hallucinations have made the transition from geometric to visionary. You say “Aha! Now we’re getting close to the place,” and then:

I call them.

And I think “elf calling” is actually a tradition in certain cultures. You set your mind in a certain way and then you say, you know “I’m here! Come in! Little green men, come in! Little green men!” And it begins like a– like a, like a self— um— like a self-driven thought. A thing. It’s far away. It’s like the tinkling of bells. It’s the elf caravan.

It’s coming closer and closer. [I] Say, “Here I am. Come in. Come in!” And then usually a good deep hit of Mazar-i-Sharīf hash at this point will usually do the trick, and you just take an enormous hit of hash, clamp down on it, close your eyes, look deep in, and they will– it will– there will be what Mercilead – God bless his heart, since he’s not a psychedelico – what he calls a “Rupture of Plane” will occur.

This is what you’re after. The Rupture of Plane.

It means that you pass through a membrane of some sort, and you’re in a place. (Question from someone: Is it a cognitive membrane that’s holding you from seeing what’s beyond? ) Yeah! Like that, you’re just like pushed through, and you see the– “the tykes” is the technical term that I evolved for them: The self-transforming machine elves that are singing in the hyper dimensional language. And they surround you and say “Welcome! We’re so glad to see you! You come so rarely! It’s so nice that you’re here! We love you!”

And they’re sort of climbing all over you, and– and this “Kitney” thing [JCJ Note: though I do not know what a “Kitney” is, it appears to be a slang term for “A transparent or shady person; Frequent teller of lies and exaggeration of self image.”], and after having experienced it many times, I’m convinced it’s someone’s idea of a– of a receiving area or playpen. It’s someone, very odd, has the idea that this is a reassuring environment for human beings.

And it– you have the feeling of being in a playpen. It’s padded and there are these glittering, fascinating, transforming things, plus elves. Who could wish for more in a play camp? And the elves are playing with these things and saying, “See what we’re doing? See what we’re doing? Do you want to do this? You can do this! Watch what we’re doing!”

And they are speaking a language which is somehow puns, which are visual, which are multiply-perceived by you on many levels. They are doing something, in other words, as– as– as beyond language as language is beyond the inarticulate croak of the loon, you know. And they’re saying “You can do this! There’s nothing special about this making objects with our voices.” Freestanding objects which are changing and transforming themselves, and in fact, themselves beginning to sing and speak and produce more objects. “We want you to do this, and because it will make you happy, because you will feel good, isn’t this a riot? Have you ever felt better in your life?”

And then, you know, the sinking back. The fading out. The– and they always– the final farewell, they sing “Deja vu!” [laughter]

Terence McKenna, How to Talk to Elves, available on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8ocbqwSzP4

This is extremely important. As you notice, just as the Bible described “a tent to dwell in” in Isaiah 40:23, so Terence McKenna describes an experience in which one passes through a “membrane.” And when one passes through this membrane, it is a “Rupture of Plane,” which is a geometric description, just as we described before:

All of these people are describing the same experience. Most importantly, once one ruptures that plane, one can encounter “entities” that will speak to you. And once you encounter those entities, it is one of the most meaningful and powerful experiences that one will ever see.

And the reason this is important is because of another thing that Terence McKenna says in the following talk, which is longer, so I pulled the video clip at the right moment:

The relevant part of the talk above is transcribed below:

If you were to go to, uh, shamans in the Amazon or the hills of New Guinea, or somewhere and say “Describe the DMT thing,” and ask “What’s going on here? What’s this about?” Without hesitation, I think most shamans, most shamans would just say “Oh, well, um, those are the ancestors. So that’s the bit with us shamans. We contact the ancestors and then we cure and find lost objects.”

Well, this is in all the- In all the psychedelic voyaging I never really entertained the possibility that with all this boundary dissolving, we were going to do, that we were going to actually flirt with dissolving the boundary between life and death itself.

Is it possible that there is some kind of ecology of souls over yonder? Is it possible that the hundred thousand-year-old claim of shamans — that they can pass from here to there and back again — is so –uh– this, I mean we feel weird about death! We don’t know how, exactly, to look at this. But, if we are conservative in our hunt for the source of the alien voice and the steering mechanism of history, if we’re conservative in our search for the source of that — we shouldn’t reach the conclusion that galactarians from uh — you know zenebelgenube [JCJ Note: this appears to be an incorrect pronunciation of “Zubenelgenubi,” which is a star in Libra, from the Arabric phrase meaning “Scorpion’s Southern Claw.”] are in charge of things.

It’s far more likely that– you know — our dead ancestors are in charge of things. After all, after us, they are the only human thing we know. There’s nothing else.

Do you remember the story before about Saul and the Medium of En-Dor? That was extremely significant.

It is extremely significant that when you pass into the spiritual realm, you regularly meet “entities.” These entities have a serious and significant effect on the people who see them. These entities and the world that people see when on psychedelics appears more real that the “real” world we inhabit now.

And Christians should take note, if nothing else, because of the uncertain identity of these beings that are encountered. Do people contact the dead? Do people contact beings that are far more dangerous than the dead?

But even if one does not encounter entities, Christians should understand that people who use psychedelics ARE SEEING THINGS. They are not “dreaming” things or visualizing randomized images from the material operations of their brain. Users of psychedelics see a reality that they – from ancient times to the present day – repeatedly and consistently describe as being “more real” that the “real” physical world.

This has an effect on both apologetics and evangelism. It has an effect on how psychedelic users view YOU. While you may be quite well-versed in science and logic and rationality, many psychedelic users have encountered a world that is more fundamental that the logic that human beings converse with using an ordinary human language. The fact that they cannot describe it is not a consequence of anything incoherent.

Instead, the difficulty that psychedelic users have of describing what they have ACTUALLY EXPERIENCED is just as limited by language as my own a four-dimensional diagram of five-dimensional spiritual space is limited by Microsoft paint and this two-dimensional drawing.

As such, Christians must understand that psychedelics are SERIOUS and POWERFUL, but no Christians are seriously talking about how powerful they are.

CONCLUSION

That’s enough for now. We will return to Terence McKenna and the “Machine Elves,” as the next posts will explore the entities that you meet, attempt to identify them, and answer questions about how Christians should approach them. After all, “elves” are not the only entities that people meet. Angels reside in the spiritual world, but so do demons. As Peter explained:

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith,

1 Peter 5:8-9, ESV

In these coming posts in this series, I hope that Christians will understand just how serious of a matter psychedelics are. I hope Christians will understand precisely how literal Paul was being when he said the following:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.

Ephesians 6:10-13, ESV

Stay strong, and more posts soon.