Are Hallucinogens a Path to Enlightenment?, by Jac Marino Chen

Are Hallucinogens a Path to Enlightenment?

By Jac Marino Chen Aug 10

If we were to rewind back in time and see the voices that influenced me toward [my LSD] trip, psychedelic proponents of the mid- to late-twentieth century would stand out. I was deeply impacted by the lectures and writings of Terence McKenna, Alan Watts, Richard Alpert (also known as Ram Dass), and Timothy Leary. I loved Timothy Leary, so let’s take a closer look at him. At this point, I was a psychology major in college taking a class with a far-out teacher on the psychology of identity (lots of Carl Jung, a proponent of alchemy). When I discovered the Harvard clinical psychologist Timothy Leary, he stood out to me like a kaleidoscopic beacon of fun. He was brilliant, bold, trippy, and rebellious, and he both believed and taught many of the things my New Age guides were showing me. It was like we were on the same far-out vibrational frequency, living in the same tripped-out reality and seeing magic in the mundane. I wanted to sit at his feet and take in his otherworldly knowledge. Like me, he loved supernatural experiences and yearned for more than this monotonous world. He seemed like he would fit right into the festival scene (one of us)! (Shocking aside: The Beatles wrote their famous song “Come Together” as a campaign song for Timothy Leary who was running for Governor of California against Ronald Reagan. A world of weird connections.)

Leary was a strong proponent of psychedelic drugs, and getting high on marijuana and listening to his lectures and interviews felt like mind candy. He heralded sexual liberation, the expansion of consciousness, and transcending ego (a fancy way of saying that you come to experience and know that all is one, and any separation is just an illusion).

On the subject of God and self, Leary taught,

Who am I? The perspective on this question comes only when you step off the TV stage set defined by mass-media-social-psychology-adjustment-normality. I exist at every level of energy and every level of consciousness. Who am I? I’m you…I am the universe…I am God of Light. Who am I? I’m you…I am God of Life. I’m you…I am the Resurrection of the Body. I’m you…Almighty Ego, set I free!”

In other words, he taught that the world is a big illusory show (or TV stage set), and that you need to step off the stage to learn who you really are—God.

In addition to all sense being intensified, there was a commonality in nearly all psychedelic experiences that Leary spoke about. The intro for his book The Psychedelic Experience explains, “A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness. The scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its characteristic features are the transcendence of verbal concepts, of space-time dimensions, and of the ego or identity.” Through Leary’s teaching, I was encouraged to be prepared for and accept that there is a “limitless range of awareness for which we now have no words” that goes beyond time and space, and that, through tapping into that awareness, I could transcend my own ego (sense of individual self or personal identity) and dive into something beyond this realm of perception.

But where did this tripping lead Leary? Heavily influenced by Aleister Crowley, Leary himself believed he was carrying on Crowley’s work to the next stage while following Crowley’s explicit instructions left about the completion of his work (specifically, his work on tarot). Unsurprisingly, given his influences, Leary ended up immersing himself in tantra, tarot, Egyptian mythology, and believing he was God. Timothy Leary’s collaboration and work at Harvard with Richard Alpert (otherwise known as Ram Dass) led me to Alpert’s book Be Here Now. A good capture of the book is a page with a quote by Swami Rama Tirtha imposed over a drawing of a monarch butterfly. It reads, “I am without form. Without limit. Beyond space. Beyond time. I am in everything. Everything is me. I am the bliss of the universe. Everything am I.”

Ram Dass explains his profound conclusion in his book Be Here Now: “The final place that the game leads to is: Where you live consciously in all of it which is in nothing…and yet, seeing all that, you still chop wood and carry water. You still do your thing.” Great. In other words, just be here now. It sounded so profound at the time. Dear friends, I pray we can all see this as the vapidness it truly is.

Beliefs About Drugs

Given my influences, I had many beliefs about psychedelic experiences. First, I fully believed the visual, auditory, and physically stimulating effects that psychedelic drugs brought on were not merely products of the imagination but instead were due to the heightening of perception beyond the usual limitations of our senses. This meant that when I saw the highways of UFO interstellar travel at the [festival where I took LSD], I was not hallucinating in the sense of my brain making up something that wasn’t there, but instead, the LSD was granting me the abilities to tap into usually unused parts of my brain and heighten my senses to perceive reality beyond the confines of normal human space-time limitation. Instead of just chemical reactions in my mind putting on some sort of drug-induced show, my realizations were because the psychedelic medicine was acting as a key, giving me the ability to open a new door to help me evolve as a being and commune with God. This trip was used to push beyond mundane consciousness into something far greater and more real than the illusion of day-to-day life and ego. This, I believed, was enlightenment.

Another common belief that I held was that psychedelics brought upon the dissolution of ego, which, in a sense, was the great goal. In my mind, day-to-day life was lived in maya, a Sanskrit word for illusion. This was the illusion of separation or duality. For example, let’s take you and me. I thought that the reason why I perceive you as you and me as me is because of maya, the illusion of separation. In reality, I was taught, we are all one with everything. Any separation or duality is just illusion, or maya. In what I thought was a profound revelation after many experiences with drugs, meditation, and trance-like states, I came to the conclusion that “God is what is is.” Although I called this grand consciousness (or is) “Source,” the idea of maya as illusion comes from Hinduism (specifically, the Advaita Vedānta philosophy). The Hindu word for this grand consciousness is Brahman. I didn’t know it yet (later in my life, I read the Bhagavad Gita As It Is with all its commentary), but I was coming into agreement with the foundational Hindu phrase tat tvam asi, meaning “thou art that.” This is called the “great magic formula” and has to do with becoming free from ego. Or, as the influential psychedelic proponent Alan Watts taught, you are the universe experiencing itself. When you boil it all down, I had come to believe that all is God and God is all. This meant that I, too, was God.

That Old Lie

In view of all we have discussed, let’s start by looking back at the lie that Satan told in the beginning that led to the fall of mankind:

The serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4–5).

Dear friend, are you able to see the similarities between what the psychedelic proponents promote and the lie of Satan himself ? The deception is that taking these chemicals and pursuing supernatural, psychedelic experiences will not kill you but instead heal and teach you. Not only that, but once you eat of it, your eyes will be opened to knowledge beyond this realm, and your consciousness will expand to something far greater than words. What’s more, you will be like God to the extent that you will realize that you are God. Sound familiar? Who wouldn’t want all this? It sounds colorful and enticing, no? Would you eat of the fruit? Not so fast! Let’s dive into the glorious truth that counters these deceptive teachings.

A False Enlightenment

When we become enticed by worldly philosophy, empty deceit, human traditions, and the elemental spirits of the world, we are being drawn to something opposed to Christ (Colossians 2:8). It is of paramount importance that we know the Scriptures well so that when smooth speech comes around that sounds alluring, we can recognize the evil lies behind the captivating veneer.

Colossians 2:3–4 describes Christ as the one “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” and goes on to clarify, “I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.” What plausible arguments? Let’s look at the context (again, this an important thing to do while reading the Bible to make sure you understand the verse in the context of the surrounding verses, rather than reading the verse in isolation). Paul continues in Colossians 2:8–9,

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

Driving this point home, Colossians 1:19 says, “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” As the late minister Matthew Henry wrote,

There is a philosophy which is vain and deceitful, which is prejudicial to religion, and sets up the wisdom of man in competition with the wisdom of God, and while it pleases men’s fancies ruins their faith… Under the law, the presence of God dwelt between the cherubim, in a cloud which covered the mercy-seat; but now it dwells in the person of our Redeemer, who partakes of our nature, and is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and has more clearly declared the Father to us…The fulness of the Godhead dwells in the Christ really, and not figuratively; for he is both God and man.

If your desire is to be enlightened by truth, get to know the Lord Jesus Christ as He has revealed Himself in the Bible. In Him is hidden not some wisdom and knowledge, but all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. It doesn’t get deeper or more profound than God revealed through His Son, in whom the whole fullness of Deity dwells bodily. This is because, as 1 Corinthians 1:24 says, “Christ [is] the power of God and the wisdom of God.” We can look to Jesus’s words in John 14:9 where He proclaimed, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

— Jac Marino Chen was saved by Jesus out of a past of abuse, addiction, the New Age, the occult, hermeticism, ritual magick, and deep depravity. She is passionate about exposing the darkness she formerly pursued while pointing to freedom through faith in Jesus Christ. When not serving at church or doing occult outreach on her YouTube channel, you can find Jac writing worship music with her husband under the name Jac and Josh Music.

---

Excerpted from Ensnared: Overcoming the Darkness of the New Age and Occult with the Light of God’s Truth by Jac Marino Chen (Harvest Apologetics, 2026). Used by permission.

Jac Marino Chen was a drug-and-alcohol addicted, self-described sorceress practicing ritual magick in a masonic temple. Trapped by darkness, deception, and hopelessness, she didn’t think there was a way out—until Jesus rescued her.

In a world where occult and New Age practices are becoming increasingly mainstream, Ensnared will help you

• understand the basics of New Age and occult teachings and see what really happens behind closed doors
• identify the demonic elements behind occult practices involving numerology, crystals, tarot cards, alchemy, alien contact, witchcraft, and more
• break free from false promises of connection, identity, and control, and be empowered to reach out to others caught in deception

Brimming with the hope only Jesus can bring, Ensnared reveals not only what occurs in the darkness, but how to proclaim the glorious gospel, exalt Christ, and rightly wield the Word of God.

“Ensnared addresses an issue that has long suffered from a dearth of biblical clarity and, conversely, theological credibility. Balancing courageous transparency with a genuine concern for souls, Jac Marino Chen exposes readers to the very real spiritual perils that are inherent with New Age occultism, while offering freedom and hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ, which alone is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes (Romans 1:16).”
— Darrell B. Harrison, shepherding and teaching pastor at Redeemer Bible Church in Gilbert, Arizona

“I’m so thankful for my friend Jac and her transparency in writing Ensnared. In this book she reveals through her own experiences the darkness of the occult and New Age practices. She shares how lies ensnared her, and then she hammers those lies with the light and truth of God’s Word. By the end of the book, I was in tears at the goodness of God and the power of His Spirit to save someone most would have cast off as too far gone. If you know anyone wrapped up in this world of lies and darkness, you will want to read this book to help them see how truth and light can set them free.”
— Erin Coates, director of GraceLife Women’s Ministries, Edmonton, Canada

Find Ensnared at Harvest House, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Christianbook.com, Books-A-Million, and Walmart.

*sponsored