Inside the New Age Nightmare

Randall Baer’s conversion

Randall Baer tells us how he entered the New Age Movement, the many occult techniques and practices he did because he thought to find the truth through them, and how the Lord saved him. A fascinating testimony that every New Ager should read carefully in order to understand how this Movement is a device of Satan to keep people far from the truth that is in Jesus Christ. A testimony that is very useful to Christians to expose the various works of the devil existing in the New Age.

Chapter one

1. PORTRAIT OF A SEDUCTION

Now I’d like to tell you exactly how a young man or young woman in high school, college, or post-college can become involved in the New Age Movement as they start to branch out into the world around them and explore new directions of adventure, self-development, and fulfillment. Perhaps in the reading of this story parents might be apprised of some of the strategies that the adversary uses through the glittery New Age temptations he dangles in front of young adults, and so be better forearmed to provide preventative and intervening counsel.

As well, I pray that more than a few young adults might read this story and realize the very real dangers that lay behind the oftentimes harmless-looking exteriors of so many New Age phenomena, so that they may never dabble or explore in these Satanic webs of ensnarement, and may always hold fast to the safety and victory of the Christian faith.

My own journey leading into the New Age and rising to heights of leadership is a classic portrait of spiritual seduction. Seeking after truth, I found only masterful counterfeits disguised as the truth. Yearning for inner fulfillment and peace, I found only glittering fragments and pieces that eventually would crumble to dust. So deep did the seduction lead that the bizarre became accepted as the norm, fantastical lies saturated my mind, and Satan’s demons masqueraded as my guiding angels of light.

Most people involved in the New Age Movement today are so deceived by Satan’s lies that they have absolutely no idea of the underlying sinister dangers. Personally, when I was a New Ager, such a notion would have appeared to me as patently outrageous. I thank Jesus Christ that He delivered me from the New Age brainwashing that blinds a person to the horrors that lurk beneath the surface of the New Age.

After the Lord saved me from the counterfeits and lies that held me in glittery bondage, I saw the pattern of Satan’s ever-so-cunning hand in pulling off an incredibly elaborate deception for 15 years of my life. In unraveling the thread of seduction woven into my life as a New Ager, I came to see Satan’s wiles, strategies, and ‘tricks of the trade’. I was aghast at his expert craftiness.

While this is so absolutely clear to me today in the Light of Jesus, as a New Ager who sincerely believed that he had found the truth, I was totally oblivious to the deception being perpetrated on me. When the eternal truth of the Lord seems to a New Ager to be utterly false, and the falseness of the New Age seems to be absolutely true, therein lies an intricate portrait of seduction. By sharing the portrait of how Satan seduced me, I sincerely hope that the tempting lies and clever shams of the New Age are laid bare and that it is shown clearly for the horrific abomination that it is.

An all-American Upbringing

Like many New Agers, I was brought up in a middle-to-upper middle-class home. Both parents were trained professionals – my father was a medical doctor and my mother a nurse. Family life was based on Christian morals, the Protestant work ethic, and an emphasis on education.

My father was a Navy doctor and, as a result, my roots were turned up every three to four years. This had advantages in exposing me to many types of people and situations. But I was a shy and introverted child who had difficulty adjusting to new schools, new sets of friends, and new neighborhoods.

Basically I was a good and obedient boy. Rarely did I venture into any serious transgressions, as my cautious nature prevented me from delving too far into ‘bad boy’ territory. Cub Scout and Boy Scout involvements were a constant thread of experience. And, being an industrious and goal-oriented boy, I achieved much success in Scouting and top grades in school.

I was following a model all-American boyhood track.

In early teen years my inquisitive mind started to become interested in religion. I started to feel an emptiness inside and a hunger for truth. At home, we rarely discussed religious issues, mostly leaving such topics to be covered at Sunday school and church. However, I never really felt any powerful experiences or encounters with Jesus, and my questions only multiplied as more and more doubts arose.

In pursuing a ‘God and Country’ Scouting award, I became friends with a Navy chaplain, whom I felt could guide me toward truth. One day I approached my chaplain friend with great expectations of real dialogue and asked: ‘Can we talk about why some people are agnostics and atheists? I’d really like to know God, but I have so many doubts’. His bewildered and somewhat irritated look instantly revealed to me that he was not receptive to my questions of doubt. ‘Perhaps some other time, but not now, Randall. You are too young’, he replied.

My frustrations began to increase. I had to find ‘truth’.

During the same time, I attended an adult Bible study and was the only teenager there. I was 14. One day I mustered up the courage and blurted out: ‘Why should I believe in God? Why should I read the Bible? Why should I attend church?’

The group sat in mute silence. I had asked forbidden questions and apparently no one there wanted to broach the subject because my questions were completely ignored.

Teenage Disillusionment and Exotic Explorations

Something snapped in me. I no longer wanted to attend what I perceived as sterile and lifeless church services and study groups. I suddenly knew that what I was searching for wasn’t there. In the years ahead, I would hear many New Agers telling a similar story. I started going to various libraries searching for truth on my own. The realm of books; I felt, would open up the doors to new horizons.

The TV show ‘Kung Fu’ caught my attention and, over a period of time, I became gripped by the allures of mysticism and exotic superhuman powers. Here were Eastern masters who had profound answers to the questions burning in my mind – ‘What is God?’, ‘Who am I?’, ‘Where do you find truth?’ The hero image of Quai Chang Caine vividly demonstrated how to attain inner peace, oneness with the universe, and supernatural control over oneself and life’s circumstances.

On regular trips to a bookstore in a neighborhood shopping mall, I found many books in the ‘Religion/Philosophy’ and ‘Occult’ sections on Eastern religious philosophy and ‘how to’ books on Hatha Yoga and meditation. In the following weeks and months, I devoured the exotic ‘All is Oneness’ philosophies, and taught myself how to perform yoga and meditation. This was the beginning of my New Age walk, and I had just turned 15.

I always had a close relationship with my mother and I could tell that she was alarmed. She gave me a serious warning to be very careful in my non-Christian pursuits. Though they voiced their serious concerns, neither of my parents forced me to stop my search. It was probably just a teenage ‘phase’ that would be outgrown in time.

I kept up a good outward appearance. Only my closest circle of four high school buddies knew some of the details of my consuming search. At the time I was at the top 2 percent of my high school class, a member of National Honor Society, and enjoying successes in varsity tennis.

A powerful ally helps me find the ‘force’

During this time, I found another powerful ally on my truth-seeking path - marijuana – and it opened up a whole new world. Marijuana affects different people in different ways. For me, it would help ‘expand’ my mind into many mystical types of ‘higher consciousness’. [1]

One evening I felt that I had an encounter with what I thought was ‘God’. While slowly inhaling the marijuana, all of a sudden the surrounding room disappeared. I found myself floating in the cosmos beyond all sense of time. The boundaries of my body and sense of identity miraculously expanded as I became the ‘light’ and the ‘light’ became me. Feeling like I was effortlessly soaring through infinity, I believed that I had met ‘god’ and was one with the universe. This was what the Eastern religious philosophies were talking about – pure oneness and enlightenment.

How I dreaded it when the marijuana effects started to wear off, having to return to tiny planet Earth. In the days afterwards, my inner anguish and pain returned, but now I felt that I had found the true door to ultimate truth. I had hope.

My path branched out even more as my French teacher, whom I felt was ‘cool and progressive’, formed a small group that met before school to study the works of Napoleon Hill, author of the best-selling books, Think and Grow Rich and Grow Rich! With Peace of Mind. Each of us set goals and learned the techniques for applying a ‘Positive Mental Attitude’ to create whatever we desired in our lives. Little did I know then that Hill’s philosophy was revealed by a ‘Council of 33 Masters’ that spoke to him via mental telepathy to reveal the secrets of universal success. [2]

Back-to-Nature through College

Upon graduation from high school I went to a highly respected liberal arts college near Minneapolis, Minnesota. During the first two years at this demanding academic college I chose classes that would help me understand mankind and his purpose for existence. Classes in anthropology, sociology, introductory religion, art, and biology further whetted my appetite to find the meaning of life. While studying other cultures from around the world, I became intrigued with primal cultures, American Indians, pantheistic religious views, and ‘getting back to nature’.

My searching mind became engrossed in seeing ‘Nature’ as the source of peace and truth. Somehow by mystically penetrating to the essence of Nature and becoming ‘one’ with it, I felt that my questions and yearnings would be answered. It seemed to me that the Eastern mystics and primal cultures, like some of the more mystically oriented American Indian tribes, were the ones who had kept close to their roots in Nature.

I started to see Western culture as an artificial, ‘plastic’ society that was divorced and separated from the rhythms of Nature, and was therefore increasingly sterile and lifeless.

The Transcendentalist teachings of Thoreau and Wordsworth became a major inspiration. Wordsworth wrote: ‘Come forth into the light of things, let Nature be your teacher’. This became the driving theme of my search.

At the same time, I continued to smoke marijuana regularly, late at night after studies were finished. Still quite shy and insecure, I had a few friends, but none to whom I really revealed the depths of my inner search. The roof top of the dorm became a sort of late-night sanctuary. Smoking a joint, I would commonly have mystical and out-of-body experiences that would propel my awareness into ‘higher states of consciousness’ where I would receive what I thought were profound cosmic insights that reinforced my developing New Age philosophy.

Little did I know that the seducers of Satan were laying out a red carpet of progressive ensnarement. As I took each step, a web of darkness was progressively being woven around me, weaving a spell of delusion and bondage.

Toward the end of my sophomore year, my intense yearning for a chance to ‘get back to nature’ actually materialized. I had been applying Napoleon Hill’s ‘Positive Mental Attitude’ techniques fervently toward finding such an opportunity. This was a dream come true – an opportunity to be an assistant in a field biology project carried out in isolated national forest areas of northern Wisconsin. In this remote area, I was to assist a husband-and-wife team doing field studies of fishers, a type of animal in the weasel family.

Ah, now I could divorce myself from sterile, artificial Western culture and immerse myself in the eternal peace and supreme serenity of Nature.

During this time, after a half-day of checking traps and other duties, I was often free to read books on religion and explore marijuana-induced euphoria.

Yet a nagging problem kept re-surfacing day after day. I would mentally understand the mystical religious philosophy and even experience some of it on drugs, but waking up the next morning I would still have a strong sense of inner pain, estrangement, and anguish. I felt certain that I was on the right track to spiritual enlightenment and freedom from inner pain, but it seemed that I always ended up exactly where I started.

Perhaps I should have seen that what was artificial here was the direction my life was taking, but I didn’t. In fact, every new drug experience and new philosophy book seemed to re-confirm that I was on the right track, and would find my answers if only I would persevere.

Because of the extreme isolation of the situation and my retreat into my own little mystical world, my work suffered and I experienced my first academic failure. This uncharacteristic failure should have been a red flag signalling that something was going wrong, but I ignored it and was determined to take a next major step – LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs.

Psychedelic journeys to the beyond

During the next year as a college junior, I had a chance to fulfill this desire. I moved into a college-sponsored ‘Asian studies special interest house’, a collection of 16 people who had strong interests in Oriental culture and religions. Here I found a strong support group of people very similar to myself in many ways, all of whom were searching for truth and fulfillment by a wide variety of Eastern and psychedelic avenues. We even had a designated meditation room with a blue light to signify that everyone in the house should remain perfectly silent when someone was meditating. To others on campus, our group had a mystical mystique, which we enjoyed.

Most all of us were achievers from upper-middle-class backgrounds, and very inquisitive and explorative in these strange vistas of exotic spirituality.

Being cautious by nature, I spent lots of time in the library reading scholarly books on the effects of psychedelics, and how they helped sometimes in psychological healing (which I desperately wanted) and how they paralleled the mystical experiences of Eastern religions. I knew that this was the ‘big leagues’.

The books and teachings of former Harvard professors Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass), Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley, Dr. John Lilly, and others promoting variations on the psychedelic gospel of ‘turn on, tune in, and drop out’ reverberated through my fascinated mind. I even was able to write a few papers on this research for a couple of religion classes I was taking. (I was by this time majoring in Religious Studies). Talk about having your cake and eating it too.

Now I was ready to take the next step into the big league hallucinogens. From all that I had read, I couldn’t wait.

A succession of experiences with LSD, mescaline, peyote buttons, psilocybin mushrooms, and hashish with others in my Asian studies house ‘blew my mind’. Catapulted into extraordinary dimensions beyond my wildest dreams, I rapturously explored what I felt were the indescribable ‘heavens’ of the supernatural realms. Incredible vistas of dazzling rainbow lights, beings of pure energy, and mind-expanding transformations unfolded with each new experience. I felt that the psychedelics afforded me access to the very essence of Nature and the cosmos. Here, I thought, I was privileged to know the innermost secrets of the universe known only to mystics, saints, and psychedelic voyagers.

Due to the overwhelming power of these drugs, it sometimes would take an entire day to ‘trip’ and then another day to fully come down and reorient to the ‘3-D earth-plane’, as well as to try to come to grips with these radically new experiences. When I would read some of the books in the college courses I was taking on Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Yoga, and Western mystics, time after time my psychedelic experiences matched precisely with these traditions. Being a cautious sort, I had to consider the possibility that these ‘trips’ were simply imaginary flights of fantasy or merely wild, cosmic, comic-book adventures concocted in my own mind. However, with the intellectual confirmation of Eastern scriptures and Western mystical writings, I felt that I was most certainly on the right track.

My experiences with the ‘mind-blowing’ hallucinogens are really quite typical of a great majority of New Agers. The psychedelic doorway flashing the seductive neon sign – ‘Gateway to Nirvana: Instant Enlightenment’ – has been (and continues to be) a major entry point into seeing reality the ‘New Age’ way for millions of truth-seeking pilgrims. What I didn’t realize then was that these drugs were blowing open ‘holes’ in my mind that allowed demonic enchanters to further ensnare and brainwash my mind with glamorous psychedelic frauds.

Yet, at the same time, after coming down from psychedelic sessions I still felt fragmented inside. The inner anguish and hollowness were blotted out for a while but always returned after a time. I rationalized that I was a typical product of neurotic Western society. I figured that it would take me many years to work out of all the psychological knots and the sense of alienation that I inherited from a ‘plastic’ and superficial Western culture.

But true enlightenment, according to Eastern religions, went far beyond just psychological balance and well-being. It is a much longer journey of spiritual realization built up over thousands and thousands of reincarnated lifetimes. With psychedelics, I thought that I had seen the mountaintop of spiritual enlightenment and communed with ‘god’ there. Now I felt that the long task of hiking up the mountain was my lifelong direction and goal.

A few years later, though, I had an LSD experience that should have warned me of the deceptions that I had embraced. Shortly after gliding up a crescendo into the peak of the LSD ‘high’, an overwhelmingly powerful demon-spirit took possession of me. I was no longer in control of myself and this demonic force took over the reins. While part of me watched helplessly, the demon-sorcerer cast a number of powerful spells and gave me visions of hideous darkness. After several hours of tremendous inner torture on this ‘bad trip’, the demon ‘blew my circuits’ and left me lying like a rag doll. I could not speak for two entire days, and the psychological damage took six months to heal.

In retrospect, I see that this gruesome experience should have been a sign to go no further on the New Age path. However, I made a decision that was only partly right – from that point forward, I vowed to myself never again to take any form of hallucinogenic drug, including marijuana. My goal now was to achieve personal healing and spiritual enlightenment by only ‘natural’ methods. Thus, my New Age pilgrimage continued as I abandoned the psychedelic door while hundreds of other doors lay open for the experimenting.

Buddhist chanting charms

Within my college Asian studies house there were people experimenting in all kinds of spiritual paths. Being inquisitive, I tried several of them and had some interesting experiences.

A roommate and close friend really caught on fire with the practices of a Buddhist sect, named Nichiren Soshu Buddhism. He seemed really to grow past some personality flaws and sometimes even seemed to have a glow about him. I also was taking a religion course at the time called ‘Masters, Gurus, and New Religions’. For a final paper and verbal report we were to investigate some type of unorthodox spiritual group. Figuring to kill two birds with one stone, I started to attend group meetings with my roommate every week in Minneapolis. The group would all be on bended knees, chanting to a sacred scroll in front of the room. The chants were from an Eastern scripture called the ‘Lotus Sutra’. There was a short, easy-to-learn chant which was the main focus of the religion.

I was instructed to chant this phrase for 30-60 minutes every day, and see if my life changed in any way. I did so and, to my great wonderment, I experienced a three-week time period of the most incredible luck and good fortune I can ever recall. It was absolutely uncanny. It was as though I had the ‘Midas touch’ and everything I touched turned to gold. Money, amazing coincidences, and unworldly good fortune unfolded in my life like a royal red carpet. Here was power and tangible prosperity.

After a few weeks, though, the ‘Midas touch’ that many other members of this sect also had experienced wore off. A couple of months later, having had my fill of this portion of the spiritual alternative menu, I completed a college paper on this organization, discontinued the practices, and whetted my appetite for more spiritual adventures.

Far-Out mind control

A little later, while on summer break between junior and senior college years, I saw a free introductory lecture on ‘Silva Mind Control’ advertised in the local newspaper. I had been fascinatingly absorbing the writings of ‘Seth’ at the time. Seth is a famous spirit channeled through the trance-medium Jane Roberts [3]. This spirit’s writings intellectually outlined many of the psychedelic vistas that I previously had experienced, and showed how they relate to developing all sorts of higher psychic powers. This is exactly what Silva Mind Control promised to teach in a practical, step-by-step manner.

In a seminar taught over the span of two weekends, I learned an amazing array of mind power techniques for doing things like: acquiring inner spirit guides, intuitively diagnosing the health problems of any stranger, dream control, ‘mind-over-matter’ techniques, psychic powers, using thought-power to control reality, trance-induction methods, and much more.

I tried some of these practices and they really seemed to work. Dreams could be controlled; psychic insights into people sometimes proved accurate; even clouds in the sky apparently could be influenced with mind-power. Again, like the Buddhist chanting, events in my life took a decidedly ‘golden’ turn. I did not realize until many years later that Satan often gives apparently wonderful ‘gifts’ when a person becomes involved with the New Age. With every gift received, the New Age practices seem to be validated as being true and positive. However, also, with each gift received, the New Age ‘hook’ is set deeper and deeper inside the person.

So it was with me. While every indication told me that I was on the path of truth and fulfillment, an elaborate seduction really was beginning to overtake me.

One of the most intriguing practices taught by Silva Mind Control (today called the Silva Method) is the creation of an ‘inner retreat’ or ‘inner sanctuary’. After going through an extended step-by-step trance induction technique, we were told by the instructor to imagine ourselves to be in a house or dwelling of our own design. It could be anything we wanted, anywhere we wanted.

While many in the class imagined various types of idyllic wilderness retreats, I thought it would be interesting to visualize a high-tech lounge-and-laboratory on the ocean bottom, accessible via a luxury submarine. In my case, as the trance-induction technique deepened the trance, I would imagine myself in the submarine going deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper into the ocean depths. We were instructed to create an easy chair with every comfort feature we would imagine. On the right arm of the chair there was to be a control panel with switches that regulated various functions. In front of the chair we visualized a large screen, upon which to project various thoughts and desires that we wanted to create in our lives.

Extensive instructions guided us in creating every detail and exploring every aspect of our inner ‘home away from home’. After many hours of repeatedly going through this process, the inner sanctuary actually started to take on a type of reality of its own.

The businessmen, housewives, professionals, policemen, and college students in the class started to have the distinct sensation of the ‘inner reality’ taking on an eerily ‘real’ status. We felt like astronauts of the ‘inner realms of higher consciousness’. Any time we wanted to apply mind-power to create reality in the outer, physical world all we needed to do was to go to the inner sanctuary and vividly visualize our desire on the wraparound screen in front of the control panel chair.

This may seem fanciful, but 7-million people have taken this course, a goodly portion of them businessmen and professionals, and many have reported that they have remarkable results. In fact, there’s a money back guarantee if a person is not able to exhibit certain intuitive powers by the end of the course.

Culminating this entire sequence, we were guided to go once again into our respective inner retreats and, after going through certain techniques, to invite or visualize one or more ‘inner counsellors’. These counsellors could be in any shape or form, from the mundane to the bizarre, whatever we could think of; or in some cases, they simply materialized in front of one’s awareness.

These ‘spirit guides’ were said to have access to tremendous amounts of wisdom and knowledge which they would dispense to us upon request. They were to be regarded as friends and confidants who benevolently would guide us through life in a successful and prosperous way.

The instructor stated that he had a council of nine counsellors; some of them being recognized celebrities like Einstein and Johnny Carson.

In my own experience, two guides suddenly materialized before my mind’s eye. One was a tall, strong, wise-looking American Indian man and the other was a strikingly beautiful American Indian woman. After becoming used to the idea, the group was guided to acquaint themselves with their respective guides and to start asking questions. Most people in the group later shared that the inner counsellors seemed to take on a vivid reality and that their dialogue seemed to have proven somewhat fruitful.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that everything in Silva Mind Control was based on occult philosophy. The occult was simply repackaged in a de-religion-ised, Westernized format that would be acceptable and even appealing to middle-class America. The inner counsellors are a type of biblically forbidden practice of ‘acquiring familiar spirits’; that is, inviting demons disguised as spirit-friends into one’s life.

The development of an all-American yogi [4]

Shortly after beginning my senior year in college, I made a decision to take a year and a half leave-of-absence. While doing quite well academically, my usual enthusiasm for college studies was wanting, as I was cutting corners and doing minimal work. At the same time, for all the advanced New Age classes I was attending and all the exalted spiritual experiences that were happening, inwardly, there was an alarming psychological deterioration taking place.

Greater degrees of inner alienation and anguish were building up to an intolerable degree. I always have been rather shy and quiet by nature, but now it became almost impossible to hold a conversation even with close friends. Something was fragmenting inside and I felt a desperate need for help.

During this time, I met a highly intelligent sophomore who was involved deeply in similar pursuits, and it was clear even to me that he had become quite psychologically unhinged. I went to a professor in the religion department who taught a lot of the Eastern religion courses I had taken. He had a mystique about him and was highly respected. He even had been college president for a time. Rumors among some students and graffiti in the inter-dorm tunnels speculated that he was a ‘bodhisattva’ (an enlightened one). Unfortunately, his schedule was swamped.

I decided to take time off from college to go to some yoga retreats (also called ‘ashrams’). Here, I knew from extensive reading, were places often removed from Western society out in the country where I intensively could use advanced yoga practices to heal myself. In effect, I regarded these ashrams as ‘spiritual hospitals’.

After spending a couple of months painting houses to raise money (my parents would fund a college education but not this kind of thing), I drove from Texas to California. My eventual destination was a well-known and respected Yoga center, under the leadership of a famous Swami.

First, though, the Swami was holding a weekend seminar on ‘Superconscious Living’ in San Francisco, which I wanted to attend. This was my first real exposure to the Yoga subculture. Meditation beads, astrological arm bangles, people in white or orange outfits, sitars, pictures of Yoga masters, and people in pretzel poses during breaks filled my mind with excitement at delving into new and exotic lands and peoples.

In the midst of the weekend, I happened to be browsing through the Yoga paraphernalia on sale, and came upon a completely compelling drawing of a Yoga master named Babaji. I had read of this mysterious high master in the classic book, Autobiography of a Yogi, by the well-known Eastern guru, Paramahansa Yogananda. Babaji is said to have resided in the remotest regions of the Himalayas for over 2,000 continuous years, in a 20-year-old body. A force about the picture drew my attention magnetically.

Mesmerized by the power and the strange feeling of familiarity that seemed to emanate from it, I immediately bought a copy and started to meditate on it at various times during the weekend. I felt that I was receiving a spiritual ‘call’ from this ‘high Yoga master’ to be his disciple. Even though my rational mind wanted to be cautious and reserved about this, the impact of what I was feeling in deep inner levels gave me a certainty that this was what I had been yearning for.

At the very end of the weekend seminar, the Swami stood at the exit while every one of the 300 attendees lined up to receive a ‘divine glance’ from him. As I drew nearer, I noticed that the people receiving the divine glance became limp and relaxed all of a sudden, and then a couple of moments later went away with a wide smile on their faces. When I stood face-to-face with the Swami, his eyes were completely absorbing. It was as if I was suspended in time, totally embraced by serene eyes that connected to a universal power beyond time and space. Then, in a flash, I was back within myself and needing to focus on moving my physical body away from the line. I found that I, too, had a wide, relaxed smile and felt warm and blissful inside. This, for me, was the final confirmation that I had found what I was looking for and that at the Yoga retreat I would find more answers and be healed of my psychological afflictions.

Little did I know then that I had fallen for one of Satan’s oldest tricks – the use of guru-figures as demonic puppets through which to transmit blissful forces that seduce even as they veil the consuming face of darkness behind it all. I had walked right into a web of darkness that appeared as a luminous rainbow of divine promise.

With excited anticipation, I drove for an hour and a half north-east of San Francisco to the rural area where the Yoga community sits on several hundred acres in the rolling foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. There I saw many large domed buildings, tepees scattered all about, and scores of busy people attending to their tasks. I was there on a work/study program. Half the day I was to be an apprentice in the village’s organic gardens. During the other times I would attend classes in their Yoga Teachers’ Training Program, do extensive meditation and Hatha Yoga, and have fellowship with all the yogis around.

The people there were clean, friendly, and helpful. They had their own version of the Ten Commandments – ‘Yamas and Niyamas’ (the five do’s and the five don’ts). Drugs, alcohol, extramarital sex, etc., were expressly forbidden. Days were very structured and disciplined, from 5 A.M. to 10 P.M. A Yoga church service was held for the whole community of 200-300 on Sundays. Everyone was vegetarian, with some being fruitarian (fruits only), and some aspired to breatharianism (no food, air only). (Though I heard much talk about breatharianism in many circles of the New Age, I never did find anyone who actually could pull it off.)

The rigor and discipline of the daily routine helped my own personal healing and stabilizing process to some degree, though not as much as I had wanted. The yoga system prides itself on being a ‘science of higher consciousness’ – the idea that by applying certain cause and effect Yoga practices through thousands of lifetimes a person eventually would create his own wholeness and ultimate salvation. In such a system, I realized that it might be a long, long time before I attained inner healing and everlasting peace. It wasn’t very good news.

Pocono bound

After four months my money ran out and so I went back home to Texas. After a few months of housepainting, I was keen to move on to my next spiritual adventure. The heading was eastward this time.

Destination: another well-known Yoga community situated in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.

A huge former monastery in rural backcountry, this serene setting was overseen by the guru of the entire national organization. This Swami had achieved a certain amount of renown in some scientific circles when he proved, at the highly respected Menninger Foundation, that he has certain mind-over-matter abilities. I quickly found a mystique, involving thousands of alleged miracles and mystical marvels, permeating the community. All bowed to their glorious and adored guru, who acted as a god-on-Earth, benevolently bestowing wisdom, gifts, miracles, and salvation to all his supplicants.

Again, as at the previous Yoga community, the lifestyle was regimented, orderly, clean, and in accordance with the five do’s and five don’ts. Though I now look back on these people as being deluded by a messianic pretender, their dedication, organization, sincerity, and kindness made for a pleasant stay.

The better part of every day was a routine of early morning group meditation and devotions, followed by breakfast and morning studies. Afterwards, there were a couple hours work, lunch, and then afternoon studies and group meditations. Evenings sometimes had planned activities and classes. Otherwise we were on our own and had fellowship or retired to our individual rooms for study and more meditation.

Emphasis in this community was on ‘detached self-observation’ – a kind of self-induced psychological splitting of the inner self into a totally detached observer and the rest of the self who thought, felt, and acted. To the detached observer part of oneself, it doesn’t matter what the ‘lower self’ is doing or experiencing – the observer remains totally non-involved and unconcerned.

The observer simply watches and goes ‘Hmm, that’s interesting’ to everything, no matter if the person is experiencing a third-degree burn or smelling a flower. This kind of psychological split makes for a rather emotionless, joyless placidity. It’s somewhat like having a community of people aspiring to be like ‘Star Trek’s’ Mr. Spock.

I also experienced a Yoga initiation by one of the sub-gurus of the community. As a visitor I did not merit initiation from the Swami himself. The sub-guru was in a stage of deep meditation when I entered the room, seemingly oblivious to my presence. After a time, he called me over to sit beside him in an eerily deep voice. He positioned himself so that his mouth was several inches away from my right ear. Then he enunciated a mantra [5] directly into my ear several times. There was a peculiar penetrating quality to the sounds. It was as though they were being seeded deep within my being.

He had me vocalize the sounds myself, and informed me that this was my personal mantra that linked me to the ancient lineage of this community’s gurus. Strangely enough, I felt almost lighter-than-air walking out of the room, and experienced a continuous, extremely pleasant, blissed-out state of mind for two whole days.

Again, a demonic link was seeded within me, sugar-coated with short-term bliss and peace. My seduction was growing deeper and more complex with each new spiritual adventure. While my scrap-book was filling up, I was sinking into Satan’s gilded mire.

One last skirmish in college

Having quenched my appetite for Yoga ashrams for a while, I decided to go back to college and finish up my final two trimesters. The domain of college academia seemed now to be an alien environment, somehow irrelevant to real life and quite ‘ivory towerish’. Still, the general pursuit of knowledge and the academic study of various religions was an enjoyable interlude.

In a final senior thesis paper, reviewed by all Religion department professors, I challenged what I perceived as antiquated, out-of-touch Western religious orthodoxy and presented an eclectic alternative of psychedelically expanded Eastern mysticism and American Indian shamanism. It was ill-received (though passing), but I fully expected this. My voice of defiance in the face of what I then perceived as entrenched orthodox authority was the beginning of my future New Age activism.

I walked away from college with a B.A. in Religious Studies in one hand and Yoga meditation beads in the other. In retrospect, I can’t know if it would have made a difference but I wish one of my professors (most of whom were Christians) had taken off their objective, academic hats and sat me down and given me the simple witness of the faith in Christ that even a child can understand. In all the complexities of religious intellectualism, I totally had missed the ultimate truth.

Exploring Career Options in the New Age

My dedication to becoming professionally involved in some aspect of the New Age Movement was by now firmly established. Inwardly, I still felt incomplete and in need of much healing. Combining both deep personal need and career direction, I decided to pursue the profession of holistic medicine. Also called holistic health, this is a major branch of the New Age, one that is extremely widespread and well-developed throughout America and the rest of the world.

Looking through ads in New Age periodicals, over a hundred choices of schools and learning centers in the holistic healing arts were available. I felt that by learning how to heal myself with holistic health practices, I then could apply that knowledge to helping others heal themselves in the future.

While in the midst of sorting out choices, I received a letter from the director of the Yoga Teachers’ Training Program that I had attended in California. He said that he had received my image in meditation after asking his guru for guidance in picking a program assistant. Perceiving this to be a ‘sign from above’ and feeling privileged to be asked to such a position, I agreed. Within the month, I was on the road again to California.

The assistant teaching position proved valuable as a beginning New Age leadership experience.

In unraveling the thread of Satan’s seduction in my life, I see how he provided certain ‘signs’ that I would respond to in pointing me further down the road of well-intentioned delusion. Most every New Ager can recount a long series of uncanny ‘coincidences’ occurring in their lives, leading them further and further along the New Age path. What I see today is that the adversary plots to lead people more and more deeply into the New Age by providing ‘signs’ and ‘coincidences’, like laying a trail of cheese in front of lab mice running a maze.

After finishing the three-month program assistant stint, I saw a vision in meditation pointing me to a holistic health retreat I had been reading about. Situated on Orcas Island off the coast of Washington, this remote and storybook-beautiful island was home to a small settlement of New Agers who offered various kinds of retreats and classes.

I chose a seven-week program designed to give a person the ‘full treatment’. On a diet heavy on sprouts, wheatgrass juice and morning ‘liver cleansers’ containing liberal amounts of garlic, one’s gastro-intestinal condition certainly did get the ‘full treatment’. Soon I was introduced to a wide assortment of techniques designed to ‘break you down and then build you back up’.

One practice was to get up in the morning and quickly drink an entire gallon of heavily salted water. Why? So you immediately could regurgitate it all back out. This ‘atomic cleansing’ technique was for clearing stomach mucus out of the body. If you can imagine a bathroom full of people doing this at the same time, it’s certainly a fine way to start the morning. Even then, as a New Ager, this was a bit too much for me.

During the first afternoon’s class, our group of 16 paired off and the instructor led us through a bodywork technique supposed to ‘realign our body’s energy field’. At the end of the technique each person giving the treatment was provided with a tissue, and we were then instructed to put pressure at the very tip of the tailbone of our partner. This was not sexual in nature, but it was one heck of a way to get to know someone the first day.

Then there were the ‘jackhammer’ bodywork sessions (my term for them). Some schools of New Age bodywork [6] feel that psychological traumas also are lodged in the deep muscle tissues. Therefore, to release these traumas and restore body harmony, it becomes necessary for the practitioner to grind fists, fingers, elbows, and knees deeply into virtually every major muscle group in the body of the hapless recipient.

This is severely excruciating, to say the least. The howls, shrieks, and murderous screams that would fill the air in the community eventually became ‘normal’, though during the first few weeks the place sounded at times like a torture chamber.

Then it was MY TURN. Sometimes a couple of assistants were required to hold me down while the practitioner tried to make my calf muscles ‘one with the table’ via extreme elbow pressure. This is a series of treatments profoundly etched in my memory.

There were other less-severe practices, but these were the most memorable. Everyone in the group followed the entire regimen. Looking back, so much of this appears completely ludicrous. At the time though, everything was presented professionally, with lots of rationale behind it, and it seemed to make sense. When doubts arose in my mind, I thought: ‘Since you’ve already paid your $1,700, you might as well give it a shot’.

Several small groups of 15-20 individuals were involved in different classes at any given time at this center, and it is noteworthy to point out that many of the participants were successful professionals in a wide variety of fields, New Age and otherwise.

I later discovered that the members of this community were all disciples of yet another Indian guru, supposed to be ‘God’ in the flesh. While they did not advertise it, this was their spiritual link-up with Satan’s forces. Yet again, the guru-connection had played a guiding role in my pilgrimage into seduction.

A survival school vision quest

My next venture (after a time of recuperation from all the ‘healing’ I had experienced) veered off onto a different tangent. I have had the innermost feeling since an early age that the times in which we live today are the end times. While I had a different perspective on the end times as a New Ager than I do today as a Christian, at the time I read many prophecies foretelling severe disasters and worldwide tumult in the relatively near future. I thought it imperative to learn how to survive under adverse circumstances and to live off of nature. I also was looking for an ultimate test of my personal mettle plus a chance to undergo what American Indians call a ‘vision quest’. A survival school, based in Provo, Utah, provided a perfect opportunity to satisfy this piece of my pilgrimage puzzle.

Being as enamored with American Indian religions as I was then, I felt that my spiritual journey would not be complete without my own version of their vision quest.

This quest is a ‘rite of passage’ from boyhood to manhood, in which the young Indian boy is left alone in a sacred place to fast, do rituals, pray for a ‘vision’ of his life-purpose, and to acquire spiritual powers. In many ways it is a kind of initiation into the supernatural realms. This is a fairly popular practice in the New Age, and I felt that I would find some answers to my burning desire for finding inner peace and my life’s greater purpose.

I quickly found that this outdoor survival school was indeed a kind of ‘ultimate challenge’ that would test my personal mettle to the very limit. The first three days of the program were called Impact, and this phase certainly did make an intense impact on the 50 participants. Getting out of the bus in the remotest badlands of southern Utah, for these first few days we were allowed to have only the clothes on our back, a knife, a fork, a cup, a plastic trash bag, and a sweater. This was to be a real initiation into a real survival situation, as we had no food, no canteens, no tents.

Strenuous forced hiking for 12-14 hours per day through some of the worst badlands I have ever seen and up and down mountains quickly took its toll on some of the less fit of the group. Dehydration, vomiting, exhaustion, and severe blisters, among other side effects, afflicted some, but we still had to move on. There was no food to be gathered from the badlands, and water was extremely scarce. At times we would have to brush away the layers of scum covering a small pocket of water in the sandstone. Most of us were so desperately parched that we drank such water thankfully.

On the last day of the three-day Impact phase, a 28-day program, we hiked well into the night and still had a long way to go to reach our destination. There was a stream at our destination, so we had a lot of motivation to get there. Having had no food and little water for three days under such extreme conditions, most all of us were walking wrecks.

I still was using this situation as a vision quest, and had been meditating whenever possible and calling out to the spirits of the Indians for a vision. Then, something very unusual happened. Instead of feeling severely exhausted and beleaguered like the others, I became filled with a power that completely erased all fatigue and made my steps easy and light.

When we reached the destination around 2 A.M., half the group was near a state of total collapse. Numerous people were vomiting, one was having real medical problems, and most simply drank some water and dropped asleep where they knelt. Still feeling this extraordinary energy surge, I helped some of those in need for a time. After everyone had gone to sleep, I was so energized that sleep was impossible, so I sat down in the Yoga lotus position to ride the energy out in a state of meditation. After a couple of minutes, I felt like the ‘lid’ of my mind was opened and my awareness soared into the starry heights.

This was a mystical experience of ‘cosmic consciousness’ like none I’d ever had before. I saw in my expanded mind’s eye a hawk spirit, that seemed to span the entire galaxy, come to alight over me. For what felt like hours I heard hawk cries that seemed to reverberate through every atom of my expanded consciousness. I had received my vision, and was ecstatic.

Waking up in the morning after two hours’ sleep, I felt normal again, and extremely fatigued, like the others. The energy surge had come and gone.

At the time, I felt that ‘God’ had answered my spiritual cry, and that this experience confirmed that my life was going in the right direction. I felt that truth had been revealed to me in a very special way, and that I was one major step closer to personal healing and spiritual enlightenment.

In unraveling the story behind my seduction, though, I see now that by calling out to the spirits of American Indian pantheism and following the pattern of the vision quest ritual, I again had unknowingly opened myself to the wiles of Satan. I had asked for a ‘vision’ and ‘powers’ and got both. By crossing into the Biblically forbidden territory of occult practices (Deuteronomy 18:10-12), I had ventured onto Satan’s turf.

The enemy and his demonic legions masquerade many times as angels of light and servants of righteousness (2 Cor. 11:13-15). This was a constant thread through all my New Age experiences, happening time and time again. What I was absolutely convinced was truth was actually an extended series of masterful counterfeits. The powerful experiences and elegant philosophies in the New Age can be so utterly convincing to even the most well-intentioned persons. This is what is so sad about so many people involved in the New Age.

In this experience, I had gone through yet another mystical doorway into further reaches of Satan’s New Age landscapes. I also acquired a ‘familiar spirit’ – a demon masquerading as the spirit-hawk with which I felt such a close affinity. In a way similar to the American Indians, I had acquired a ‘power animal’, my ‘spirit helper’.

This demon parasite attached itself to me in the masquerading appearance of a spirit-hawk. By now, with all the yoga initiations, guru-connections, ‘inner counsellors’ and a ‘power animal’, I was enmeshed firmly in Satan’s web of luminous darkness.

Within the next week I re-injured a problem knee, had a terrible case of intestinal problems (from the raunchy water), and had to hitch-hike back to Provo, Utah. In all fairness, the participants in this program were given fair warning about the severe conditions and steep challenge of the program. Survival we wanted, and survival we got.

A year later, still very concerned about obtaining further survival skills for the cataclysmic times I felt to be ahead for the world, I attended a two-week Security and Survival Training seminar. In it I learned about martial arts, military-style strategies for scouting, evasion, and defence, nuclear fall-out measures, living off the land, water purification, and a host of other bottom-line techniques for survival through world-shaking times. While many of my New Age friends thought that they could meditate and fast through such a crisis period, I figured to cover all possible angles, from the spiritual to the bottom-line practical.

Becoming a holistic health professional

Now I was ready seriously to pursue vocational training in holistic health. This was an area in which I further could pursue my New Age beliefs. It promised to teach me further how to heal myself, and also lead to a professional career. I found a holistic health learning center with a two-year program leading to an N.D. (naturopathic doctor) degree. The program was set up to have several in-residence learning sessions at the school each year. For the rest of the time we were given substantial assignments to do on our own.

In keeping with its ‘natural’ approach to health care, the school was located in the beautiful backwoods of northern Minnesota, with the classroom overlooking a lake were we would sometimes see bald eagles and golden eagles hover overhead and dive for fish. It was all quite idyllic.

The school was run in a very professional manner, with a serious and disciplined approach. A significant portion of my fellow students were nurses and former nurses who were disillusioned with orthodox medicine. All of us were aiming toward a fairly well-paying job in the fast-expanding holistic health field. This was and is one of the strongest and most well-developed branches of the New Age Movement, and the job opportunities were plentiful.

This program had a very different focus than the sometimes loony approach I encountered at the health retreat a while back (those wonderful ‘jackhammer’ bodywork sessions and other such practices). There were several world-renowed figures who would fly in to instruct on occasion, and several M.D.s were on the faculty. Holistic health is basically an attempt to use natural substances (such as herbs, juices, etc.) and natural treatment methods to heal the whole person – body, emotions, mind, and spirit. This movement is radically opposed to much of what orthodox medicine has to offer.

Over the two years I completed a course of study that included such subjects as: Trauma-free exercise; Iridology; Fasting; European Weight Reduction Programs; Diet and Nutrition; Stress Management; Body-Mind Integration Techniques; Swedish Massage; Postural Integration Bodywork; Trigger Point Therapy; European Health Rejuvenation Techniques; Martial Arts; Spiritual Awareness Enhancement; and Herbology.

Holistic medicine is one of the trickiest areas to sort out the New Age from the non-New Age. This is to say, a holistic professional might recommend that a person do aerobic exercise and take a multivitamin, but doing the exercise and taking the vitamin is not necessarily New Age. This important issue of discerning and separating what is and is not New Age in the field of holistic health is often a complex and subtle one requiring extensive examination [7].

The primary point here is to note that the large majority of people involved in the program, including the head instructor, had an underlying New Age philosophy. Yet never in all the school’s literature and clinical hand-outs was the term New Age used. There was a conscious and careful attempt to package and market holistic health in a more scientific and mainstream-acceptable way so as to appeal to the broadest possible number of people. This was done with good intent, as it was believed that holistic health is totally beneficial to all people. But the essential problem is that New Age philosophy lies at the core of much of the holistic health field.

My educational experienc