Burning Man 2023: Stories from the Frontlines | Cultish

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or chat with at Shane dot Hawaii on Instagram. All right, welcome back.

00:36

Ladies and gentlemen, a cultish. My name is Jeremiah Roberts, one of the cohosts here. I'm kind of flying solo today.

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Uh, not exactly. Uh, this is sort of a, uh, camaraderie. We've got a couple of people here. I've got myself,

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Jeremiah Roberts, one of the cohosts here. I'm back with Will Spencer. You've been on the podcast before. Good to have you back. Thanks, Jerry.

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And also we are here at Carl tech take rib. They see her.

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They say correctly, close enough. Awesome. We're here with Audrey. Uh, thanks for joining us.

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And also we're here with a robber. Really. How you doing my friend? Oh, I'm doing fantastic.

01:12

Uh, I really appreciate you having us on. I honor your program. Awesome. Awesome. So we're going to be talking today about burning man.

01:20

So this is just going to be somewhat of an organic conversation. There's a lot of layers to this. So, um,

01:25

I'm going to just introduce everyone to kind of add some foundation. So we'll just tell everyone, uh, in case this is the first time ever hearing you've been on the podcast before.

01:33

I just tell them just a little bit about your background in relation to burning man. Sure. So, um,

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I was introduced to the world of, we'll call it new age, spirituality around the year 2000. The first time

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I was living in San Francisco Bay area at the time, the first time I went to burning man was in 2003. I continued participating in other various new age practices, meditations, therapies, stuff like that.

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I went back to burning man again in 2013. And then in 2015 I went the third and final time where I was introduced to an underground

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Christian ministry group there. And five years later I was baptized into the faith. Wow. All right.

02:06

And Carl, if you could just introduce yourself, tell them about, I've got your book in front of here, a game of God. So just tell them about yourself, maybe just a little bit about the book and then what's, and just talk about what you, your experience with being on the ground at burning man just real quickly.

02:20

Yeah, sure. So I've been engaged in, uh, trying to understand researching, writing and lecturing on worldview issues and social transformation since, uh, really the mid 1990s.

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And I've been doing this full time since 1997, helping other Christian ministries and authors engage in, uh, trying to understand the cultural shift that's taking place.

02:43

So that includes the political, as I've engaged a lot within the realm of global governance,

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UN events, world federalist events, then, uh, the interfaith side because there has to be a religious component to the idea of oneness.

02:57

And of course, oneness is the dominant worldview, which says that ultimately man, God, and nature all share the same essence.

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And of course, as you know, the biblical view is two -ism, which I am very thankful to Dr.

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Peter Jones for introducing that concept and making it a fantastic model to work with.

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And then, uh, I engaged in doing some of the early Christian research into transhumanism.

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I wasn't the first guy, but I was definitely one of the first few on the block with that, uh, attending transhumanist events and even speaking at one of the events with the

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Mormon Transhumanist Association as a Christian critic, um, diving into paganism,

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Wiccan, uh, witchcraft events as a Christian researcher. And then, boy, this would have been sometime, probably 2008, realizing there has to be a cultural component to oneness.

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And, uh, I knew about Burning Man since about the year 2000, though it was one of those items you just put in the back pocket, didn't really think much about.

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And then as I started to engage with trying to understand the cultural component, the artistic aesthetic components of oneness,

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I had a re -look at Burning Man. So I attended. Audrey and her husband,

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Brian, and myself went to our first regional in 2017. Uh, and we did social surveys at that regional, then attended

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Burning Man in Nevada in 17, 18, 19, did the virtual Burns in 20 and 21.

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I think in 20, I spent 65 hours in the VR headset, 22, or pardon me, 21 back at it again.

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And then I missed 2022, went back again, uh, this time into the mud and the dust, or the dust and the mud, whichever way you want to look at it.

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So all of that said, uh, is encapsulated more or less in the book as we explore, uh, basically what the crossroads of cultural transformation looks like from a political, religious, technological, and a social artistic component.

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Awesome. And Audrey, uh, Carl introduced you just a little bit already, but, uh, just tell everyone the, uh, uh, just tell our audience about yourself and, uh, what brought you to Burning Man?

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Uh, what's your interest in attending and how did you maybe talk to just a little bit how you got connected with Carl and like, why you, why do you, what, what's drawn you to go out there and to kind of be boots on the ground and in the lion's den per se, when it comes to, uh,

05:24

Burning Man? Well, I'm a fellow researcher, I believe in boots on the ground.

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Um, I've been doing this for about 10, just over 10 years, just on a personal interest.

05:39

I see all the dots, um, in the world, as far as government, World Economic Forum, um, it leads into psychedelics.

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Um, the natural progression was Burning Man. Carl did introduce me to Burning Man. He kept saying, you know,

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I'm going to Burning Man. Are you guys coming? My husband and I, Brian, we took the challenge and we went, we, we actually, we actually went.

06:02

So in 2017, we went to our regional burn. Regionals are designed as an offshoot of Burning Man, but also as a preparing ground to go to the big burn.

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So we all went to the first, um, little burn. Then the next year, um,

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I guess in 2019, I ended up going to the big burn and I audit worldviews and cultures.

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And so this is a natural progression. And, um, I've been to Parliament of the World Religions with Carl.

06:29

We've been to crazy places like Area 51. Um, we've done many things together, just watching online sessions.

06:40

And yeah, so. And so may I interject? Just half a moment here. Uh, so this week, um, as we were just, just before we begin recording, we were racing back from Winnipeg where Audrey came and sat through a 20 hour series of lectures that I was giving to Miller College of the

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Bible on, uh, secular pagan trends. And so if it wasn't for the fact that she was coming this week to take the course along with the rest of the student body, um, she wouldn't be here.

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So I'm really kind of stoked for the fact that she's able to participate in our conversation. And this is your first time in Manitoba, Canada.

07:20

No, no. Oh, you've been here before. I've been here before. Well, awesome.

07:26

Well, glad you could be a board and a last person on this, uh, fun little crazy train for the next two hours.

07:31

Uh, Robert Worley, uh, good to have you on. Tell them just a little about yourself and how'd you get connected with Carl?

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And what, why, uh, what's, what's the cause for you to be interested in being boots on the ground, uh, on Burning Man?

07:44

You've been there for a while. Tell us about that. Well, basically you've got to tell you that, uh, 1977, uh,

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I was a thug and, uh, not a very decent person.

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And, uh, so Christian started, uh, witnessing to be and flat on my back at three in the morning.

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I cried out to God to save me under conditional surrender. And I only knew one

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Bible verse, John 3 16. And I went out on the street the very next day with that one verse, knowing nothing else, right.

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Except God saved me and I had family members that were Jehovah's witnesses and they challenged me.

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And I started studying about that and ended up bringing me into ministry. So I've always been one that is, uh, compelled to share my faith.

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And, uh, so as I, you know, I got married,

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I was living in Cedarville, California, and I was told that there was some crazy things happening out on the

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Nevada desert, 90 miles from us. And so I got some of the people at my home fellowship and we drove out, uh, and it was like Mad Max during the days of 1996.

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And my wife and I were hooked. I mean, these people, I got to tell you is that with all the different ministries

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I do, this is the VIT is my favorite because you have up to 70 to 80 ,000 people who are out there and half of them are really on a journey.

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And, uh, I've always had people that would talk with me out there.

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So it's very important for me when somebody will sit down and talk for an hour or more with you and that you can learn about them.

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They learn about you. And then I can present the gospel. And so, uh, my son and I, uh, we went out with basically a ragtag team, just a few people.

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Then it ended up my son and I would go out there on our own and witness to people in like Gerlach, Nevada.

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And we'd stop and help people. A part of our ministry is to stop with people broken down on the side of the road and see how we can help them.

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I've actually had burners stay at my house because their vehicle broke down. And then in about 2017,

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I was actually on a Facebook page and I had mentioned about witnessing at Burning Man.

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And one of the things that we get doing this is that we get condemned for it.

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Why are you going out to that place? I've heard people say, uh, they don't deserve the gospel, you know, their, their deviance and so forth.

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And, uh, Carl saw my post and got ahold of me and then, uh, we decided to beat at Burning Man in 2017.

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And I'm going to tell you something. It took me maybe five minutes to realize this was my perfect partner.

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And from 2017 on, Carl came back the next year with the name camp of the unknowing

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God, uh, referencing actually act 17 with Paul. And it took off from there.

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And so it's still been a very small, uh, ministry, but I would rather have, uh, the three people, which would be

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Audrey, Brian, and Carl, uh, there with me, then a lot of people that are only half hearted with it.

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And so, uh, I ended up in, uh, going out two years ago with my wife because the

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Canadians couldn't get over the border because of COVID and my wife got there and everything went wrong.

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The wind was terrible. Our bike tires blew up in the heat. I accidentally overinflated them.

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So we only stayed, you know, less than two days. And I realized because of I'm almost 70 and because of health that I am going to work the outside of Burning Man, which is much needed with my partner that's in his seventies,

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Steve Hicks and his wife Annette. And so why am I mentioning this is that, uh, there is ministry on the inside of Burning Man and there is ministry on the outside of Burning Man.

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And it's the one time that a Christian could go out and actually engage with people who are willing to listen.

12:38

Yeah, that's no, that's awesome. And so this is, um, so this last year, this past year,

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I think Burning Man got a specific amount of attention, mainly because of what happened towards the end.

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There was a downpour and people got more stranded there and it was all over the news.

12:55

People were talking about it, but, um, yeah, just take us into, uh, just go out.

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That might be a lot of people's mind. Cause that's a recent event. Just you can, whoever wants to start, just kind of take us into what was it like this past year?

13:07

I want to give our audience just some understanding of what it practically looks like to be in on the ground specifically this past year.

13:20

Well, Audrey and I, and her husband, Brian were, we, we experienced it ourselves. So, uh, the first part actually was, uh, was really interesting as we drove in on Sunday when the gate opened to the public and there was no lineup.

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And I was used to spending hours in the lineup. Uh, Bob and I, when we went in in 2018,

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I think we spent what, nine or 10 hours on lineup just to get in. Uh, and then this time we all just drove right in and never stopped until we hit gate.

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We were in shock. Like what's going on. Right. So we were at the gate going what's happening and nobody really seemed to know.

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And then we found out later it was climate activists blocking the road, South of Gerlach and that itself made the news.

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So it became a newsworthy event right from the get go. And Sunday by Sunday evening,

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I, we were at the temple at midnight, uh, when the first big squalls hit and that was the dust storms.

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And of course that will, as you well have experienced out in the playa, we got nailed with dust storm after dust storm, dust storm until Monday.

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And then Tuesday it was cooling and Wednesday, a cool down by Thursday afternoon, the clouds were starting to roll in.

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It was one of those burns where it was like, all right, where's my sweatshirt? Cause I don't normally wear a shirt at all because it's a hot, hot environment.

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And now everything is cooled right down by Friday afternoon. We're at a workshop at, uh, camp soft landing at around the eight o 'clock zone.

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And we're capped in the five, uh, five and K zone. And, uh, we started riding our bicycles back because it's beginning to rain and we get halfway across the playa and the mud is caking on our tires.

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And, uh, we ended up going to, you know, got to our camp and of course then the rain really begins and it's mud.

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It's mud now for the next number of days. Um, I didn't realize how much of a media, how much media attention was on this until I emerged from the playa and my phone finally got some good cell service.

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And then it lit right up with everybody asking, did you get Ebola? Did you have typhoid cannibalism, vomiting blood?

15:38

Where's FEMA? Where's FEMA? The national guard is also, I mean, it was unreal.

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And I'm like, what are you talking about? Um, we were wet and people were idiots and try to drive out in the muck and got stuck.

15:52

But for the vast majority of the rest of us, all of a sudden became kind of chill. Yeah. Friday, there was people kind of freaking out going, you know, what's this going to look like?

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But by Monday it was dried up enough. Everybody's driving around and not a big deal, but of course it's media.

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So it's got to blow it under proportion. Right. And, uh, those, you know, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, they all of a sudden became a much more chill, relaxed atmosphere.

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And, uh, you just had a lot of mud on your boots and your porta potties got really full and your porta potty floors got layered with mud and there was ruts everywhere.

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But people, you know, so the normal burn happens, right? We all know what that's about, but during the time when the mud came and it like the rain and the mud and that we knew that was just going to be the norm now for the rest of the burn, the burners adapted.

16:48

They were making their own sculptures out of mud. They were having their own mud parties. They were, um, chastising those that were trying to, um, leave early.

16:59

Like what was the lines on each side? You guys are. Oh yeah.

17:05

Yeah. We, we actually had one, our street, we ended up having a choke point because somebody had tried to get out, got the

17:10

SUV stuck, created a crowd. And the crowd was booing vehicles trying to get through and chastising.

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And it became like it's this own little mini carnival of, uh, it was like a good old.

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It was fun. Yeah. And our, our cars obviously couldn't go out onto the play. So they were stuck in camp as well.

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So it just turned into their own little dance parties, little block parties, you know, burners are self -reliant, make their own fun.

17:39

Yeah. And, and if they had the food and the water, they need it. We prepared for that.

17:44

Right. We're supposed to be. Yeah. Robert, you care to give any insight what it was like this past year with all the rain and everything.

17:53

It was awesome. I was on the outside with my partner, Steve Hicks, uh, and we got to actually witness to what they call, uh, the black rock

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Rangers are kind of like, uh, people are supposed to help you and semi -security and like they're off duty and Gerlach, Nevada.

18:12

So we got to witness to all of them. That was my first time ever witnessing to black rock

18:18

Rangers. And a lot of people had come out that had been stuck. And, uh, there was a place that they put together that serves pizza and Gerlach.

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And so we were able to be in the line with people and talking, and we have a little penny, uh, that Ray comfort had produced years ago that had the 10 commandments stamped on the penny.

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Yeah. So yeah. So that's been the main thing I like to give out as a gift because it's a gifting community.

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And, uh, we received their gifts and, uh, and, and we're, we're, we want to be very respectful and, and they receive our gifts.

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And the penny had been one thing that they take home with them and they're not going to throw away.

19:08

Right. And they'll always remember us sharing with them. So for, we kept hearing about FEMA and, uh, protesting, uh, an environmentalist protesting and getting arrested.

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And we talked to law enforcement and, uh, what was going on. And so the difference between my, uh, you know,

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Steve and I is that we got to go home every night and then drive back out the next morning. And, uh, the three on the inside are more, actually, uh, canary cry was out there and, uh, they ha they had to rough it out and tough it out.

19:51

And, but we heard all the Ruby rumors, you know, with the bull eye and spitting up a blood cannibalism and the national guard.

20:00

And, uh, we didn't see anything bad. So, yeah. Praise God for that.

20:08

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21:04

Farmer bills, provisions .com. Well, I feel like I kind of see you like reminiscing maybe a little bit. What questions would you have for them?

21:10

Yeah. I mean, I guess, um, I was pretty sure when I saw the news that Ebola wasn't happening,

21:15

I was pretty sure that Campbell cannibalism wasn't happening. But I think one of the things that struck me of the social media reports that were coming out was

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Aubrey Marcus posted an Instagram reel where he said something like, it is my prayer that our higher natures prevail.

21:31

And in new age speak, what that sounded to me now, I wasn't there on the ground. It was a slow pan of the, of the festival grounds and everything was just nuked.

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Like this is Friday, Saturday at burning man, Saturday, Sunday, the high, the high point of the entire festival leading up to what would usually be the burn.

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And it's, it looks just a little bit like a desolate wasteland of people. Other social media accounts said that it felt as if time had stopped.

21:56

Some of the burners were posting this. And when Aubrey Marcus posted that he's praying for people's higher natures to prevail in new age speak, what that means is things sound pretty dire or at least he's seen quite a bit of conflict.

22:08

That was my interpretation of that. So I was less, I just was left wondering, you know, there are major camps out there like the

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Mayan warrior, a robot heart, these giant multimillion dollar sound camp cars, giant discos, you know,

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DJ setups, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of electronics and EL wire. And it's not designed for rain.

22:30

It's not designed for mud. So I just, I just kind of wonder, did you experience people's

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RVs, their cars, their electronics, their camps getting nuked by giant mud balls that turn into dust as soon as they dry?

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I got to believe that what we're not hearing about is multimillions of dollars of property damage from, from what

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I, what looks to me like God nuking the festival in their hubris, thinking we're untouchable fest partying here in the, in, in the desert and not aware that they're standing on a dry lake bed, that once it gets wet, it's not friendly to festival goers anymore.

23:03

So did you experience any of that? Well, on a

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Monday when they did finally burn the man, it was still surrounded by all the art cars. Everybody was out there.

23:14

The lasers were still going, the lights were still happening. And yeah, you know, when we were walking around on Saturday and Sunday, you would see, you'd see people having everything tarped up to try to keep the rain off and no doubt there'd be people scrambling to try to keep their equipment from getting soaked.

23:33

And, and probably were, there probably were equipment and vehicles that were damaged by the rain because it was, it was a lot of rain over a fairly short period of time.

23:44

The attitude, the attitude on the ground was kind of interesting because Saturday morning, I was up at six 30 in the morning.

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I went for a long walk. I walked way past the temple out in the deep playa with big, heavy boots.

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And I probably spent four to five hours just walking and just talking to people. And, and there was a sense of, of dejection.

24:05

And, uh, I had, I had a conversation with one lady, uh, not far from the temple who was like,

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I just had to get out of the camp because everybody's got this downer attitude. And so we ended up just laughing and, and, you know, having a good conversation.

24:19

And, and she said, she walked, as she was walking out of the city, somebody had put signs up, janitorial signs, caution, wet floor, and how it kind of made her day because it's a whimsy culture.

24:29

It's full of play. Yeah. And, and, but, but, you know, some of the dull drums kind of disappeared already by Saturday evening.

24:37

And even into Sunday, I mean, I, I walked, I continued to walk the entire playa. Um, I had contacts because again, we were in the five o 'clock zone.

24:46

I'd contacts in the eight o 'clock and the nine o 'clock zone that I was walking across the visit. Um, and you know, a lot of it depends on your own perspective, on your own attitude.

24:57

Uh, are you going to just, are you going to smile to your neighbors? Are you going to ask them how they're doing? Um, yeah, there was people with long faces and there was a lot of people who were like, okay, we're just going to suck it up and deal with it as it comes.

25:09

But I have no doubt, especially on Friday and into Saturday, uh, that there was a lot of folks, a lot of people who were like,

25:18

Oh my goodness, what are we going to do? And honestly, if it had continued for what, maybe two more days of rain.

25:24

Yeah. It would have been really bad. Cause then it would, then, then it would have been a disaster. It was like this close to being a real disaster.

25:31

If it had continued to rain for, you know, 48 more hours. Well, one of the thing that I really, that really hit home, well not hit home, but you know, when you're packing up to go to Burning Man, it's this big, long, like year long event because you literally have to be self -reliant.

25:47

In fact, that's one of the principles is radical self -reliance or self -reliance and communal effort.

25:52

And when the rain was happening, there was people going around, walking from camp to camp, just asking, do you need water?

26:01

Do you need food? Are you okay? And for the most part, everyone was fine. And if anybody needed anything, all they had to do is just ask and somebody would provide.

26:10

I mean, of all emergency situations, I think burners were the best prepared.

26:17

They should be because, I mean, you can't buy anything there. You need to bring literally everything in like everything.

26:27

Yeah. Real quick, if I could break in on that, is that, you know, we make those stumbling blocks and the stepping stones.

26:38

And so at my home in Cedarville, 90 miles away, I have a high powered washer.

26:44

And so what I did was when they were coming out and I was working Cedarville site is that I would say,

26:52

Oh, would you like your car washed? And I would bring him in to behind my house with my washer while I'm cleaning their car,

27:00

I could share with them. And so what some called the disaster, we had to look at that as an opportunity.

27:12

To help take care of the people who were in need. Yes. And then, like I said, we had stopped beside the road to help people.

27:21

And one person and we were there for an hour and a half. And they, at the end of it, they it was unbelievable to them that somebody would do what they did for them.

27:34

And plus they listened to, you know, the word of God, the gospel and, and stories of when we were out witnessing and so forth.

27:44

And they took our phone numbers and not only that, but a couple that were going into Burning Man.

27:51

I give my phone number out. When they got out, their car broke down. They called me, I got a tow truck to go out to get them back to a place that could be fixed, offered them a place to stay.

28:05

And they were you know, they were from like Seattle and so forth.

28:11

And then another odd thing that happened and, you know, was that some people stopped by my house on the way out with Carl, Audrey and Brian were still packing and they were newlyweds.

28:27

And the man was from Iran and Brian was a contractor in Iran. And I ended up giving them a copy of Carl's book.

28:36

And he was able, I said, Oh, this is the author. Right. And so Brian got to share with him.

28:46

And, you know, so we were all a team at that point, my wife, Audrey and everybody.

28:53

So the opportunities are vast out there. Yeah. I go ahead.

28:59

Now, I was just going to say when, when the mud came and the rains came, yeah, a lot of people were stuck.

29:06

The imagery was is right. There was a lot of people who were stuck. There was three, 400 vehicles that were probably trying to get out.

29:13

Saturday night, we went out to gate to watch the mayhem as people were sliding and getting stuck. Sunday, Sunday morning,

29:20

I was at the gate hanging on a line, a tow rope with a line of girls and guys.

29:25

And we were pulling out trucks and campers by hand with the tow rope. So it it was crazy.

29:33

It was definitely not that it was definitely not a dusty burn, except for the beginning of the week. One of the opportunities that actually came about because of the rain was and we heard this a lot was we actually now get to meet our neighbors.

29:49

Because at Blue Man, you're never you're never in your you're never home. You know, you're out on the playa.

29:55

You're you're experiencing the art. You're interacting, that kind of thing. But you're not meeting your neighbors so much.

30:02

So we ended up spending a lot of time just speaking with our neighbors. Right. Right.

30:07

And having great conversations. And that opens up a ton of opportunities, because when we go there, we don't hide that we're a

30:13

Christian, you know. And so because you're in a place where, you know, inclusion is another one of the principles, you know, if you can listen to them, they're willing to listen to you.

30:28

So what relational evangelism is what I call it. And I just wanted to highlight that, because I can still remember being

30:38

I was I was never I never identified as a burner, but certainly I went to Burning Man a number of times.

30:44

And and I remember that mindset. And what I really appreciate hearing from the three of you is that there's a difference of language,

30:53

I think, between Christians and new age people, where the the language of the new age is expressed in action.

31:02

And it seems to me that you guys have really learned that. Like, you know how to communicate with the people there because you can't just bring a

31:08

Bible and start banging on it. Expect anyone's going to listen there. So speaking the language of action on tow ropes and power washers and stuff like that, like that just lands in my heart as probably something that's a very powerful, as a very powerful witness and ministry to people there.

31:22

So on behalf of lost and searching people like I once was, thank you. And, you know, we did have opportunities to share the gospel.

31:30

We did have opportunities to have conversations. The one that was kind of the mind blower at the very end of the event was we were watching at midnight when

31:39

Babel, the art piece, Babel, the Chapel to Babel burned, and it was midnight.

31:45

We were all tired. Brian was especially tired. But Brian's got this kind of magnetism. Everybody comes and talks to Brian for some reason, which is really pretty cool.

31:54

And some chick is kind of poking at him going, Hey, let's talk. Let's talk. Let's have a conversation.

32:00

Brian wasn't interested. His eyes were kind of closed, like, let's burn this thing and go to bed. And they end up in this conversation about just very light stuff.

32:10

Travel where you've been. Brian's been all over the world. And she talks about how she's on a journey.

32:17

And at some point, Brian pulls out a cross because Brian does blacksmithing. Oh, Bob's going to grab his cross.

32:23

Awesome. Yeah. Love it. This is the cross I'd like to get. Brian makes these, and as he's talking to people, he hands them that.

32:35

And it's like the petties. They will never forget it because you were kind, which is a fiduciary word that you're looking for out for them.

32:46

And they know it. It's not Bible thumping. But by the time they get done, they do know the gospel.

32:54

Yeah. And so this lady and Brian have this conversation. And at the end of it, just to kind of bring it to a quick close,

33:03

Brian gives her this cross and simply says, Trust Jesus, and she breaks.

33:11

She grabs Brian's arm and the tears are streaming down her face. And she locks eyes with Brian.

33:20

20, 30 seconds, 20, 30 seconds, a long time when you're not saying anything. And then she turns and she looks at Audrey and does the same thing, locks eyes and the tears are streaming.

33:31

And she grabs my arm and I hold her shoulder and the tears are just pouring. No words are said.

33:37

Nothing. We have no idea what was going on in her mind. And either her boyfriend or her husband, whoever was behind her.

33:45

I think there's a little prompt. And the two of them got up and left. And the three of us are all looking at each other going, what just happened?

33:55

We have no clue what that girl's context is, but we know that she was on a journey.

34:02

And Brian said the thing that she needed to hear in giving the gift to her and saying, trust

34:08

Jesus. So you can have those short, impactful points of contact. One evening,

34:14

I was on a four -story art structure and I'm running into a Jewish man from Mexico City.

34:22

We end up having a 45 -minute conversation. First of all, about the art we're seeing, about just the crazy stuff we're watching.

34:28

And then from there, a transition into what do you do? And then, of course, it transitions into what camp do you go to?

34:34

And that's where the name of the camp comes in, Camp of the Unknown God. You say, I'm from the Camp of the Unknown God. Well, what's that about?

34:40

And then trying to build a bridge between his Jewish perspective and my Christian context, we jumped into Psalm 51.

34:48

And I had just a few weeks before had done an expositional message on Psalm 51.

34:54

And we had a basically a huge conversation, wonderful conversation about Psalm 51,

35:01

David's sin, the fact he had to trust in God, Yahweh alone. And we just had this awesome, incredible time in conversation, deep.

35:12

He was, you know, he was participating at a very deep level. By the time it's all done, of course, it's

35:18

Burning Man. It's a hugging economy. We're hugging, we're hugging. And, you know, he goes and walks out into the desert.

35:25

And I walk the other direction in the desert. We have no clue. I mean, we're planting seeds. We want to see a harvest, but we're not.

35:31

It's the Holy Spirit that does the work of the harvest. We're just planting seeds and then trying to garden those seeds.

35:37

We're at that opportunity. Yeah. If I could just interject and also just to kind of piggyback off of that, there is a post that was made when you guys were on the ground at Burning Man.

35:49

There's times where you didn't have cell phone receptions. I think there's times where there'd be posts. I was actually just reposting some of the stuff on our platform just to kind of see how people were how people were sort of vibing with what we're saying, because I noticed that social media, as we know, is a gift, but it's also can be a curse.

36:06

I mean, it is a platform. So many times we're just artificial communication. There's so many times you communicate in such a way you never say someone say to face to face.

36:16

Sometimes it's like inconsequential to act that way many times. And there's sometimes there's a warranted straight edge and a place for that.

36:23

But you had made a post and I'm just sort of I pulled it up here. And the very beginning, you were kind of debunking some of the conspiracy theories that had come out.

36:32

But we did make a note that a lot of on top of the conspiracy theories, there was a lot of sort of criticism, but a lot of harshness coming from a lot of Christians.

36:43

And there was a response that just said, where is your compassion for people? We're all condemned already.

36:49

Quoting John 317, if Jesus loves everyone and weeps for souls, why aren't we ambassadors of Christ?

36:55

And basically you're imploring and again, maybe you can maybe was you who wrote that,

37:00

Audrey? Yeah, I wrote that. I think I saw a girl point to you as I figure you're that person.

37:06

But yeah, expand upon that, because you kind of implored that we need to sort of drop the chip off of our shoulders.

37:12

And I kind of get that. I mean, I come from a background of purity culture and in that there's sort of this a lot of sort of shunning of anyone who kind of looked like the world and even even in Christian circles.

37:23

So what prompted you to write that? Help us understand the heart behind that and how that relates to actually reaching out to those people at Burning Man.

37:34

I think we have to remember, first and foremost, that we're all people. That we're no better than anybody else, that we all come from different worldviews.

37:44

And because I audit worldviews and cultures, you immerse yourself in many different worldviews and cultures and you get to learn to know them as people and you start to have compassion for them.

37:58

I think a lot of times, you know, Christians think they put themselves on their own pedestals for the world to judge.

38:05

And I think we got to stop doing that because we're no better. And, you know, when

38:11

I started dealing with the burn community and the spiritual community and stuff, they're searching, they're searching just as much as we are.

38:21

You know, the only difference is, is we have a hope that, you know, they don't have.

38:29

But Jesus himself said they're condemned already. So who are we to go around and continue condemning and who are we anyways?

38:37

You know, that's not our job. Our job is to go out and have compassion and grace, love people, be disciples, spread the gospel.

38:46

And you're not going to do that with this chip on your shoulder and not showing grace and having a judgmental attitude and being offended.

38:57

You know, a lot of negativity and criticism we got was, well, there's orgy tents there.

39:05

Well, so what? You send your kids to university, don't you? What do you think happens there? Are you going to pull your kids out of university now?

39:13

You know, they're not going to come and sit beside you in a church pew where you can now turn to them and start preaching the gospel.

39:21

You need to go out and you need to see them as people and love them. And, you know, when you do this and you do this with the right intentionality, there is always opportunities, always opportunities.

39:37

God always puts an opportunity in front of you to plant a seed, to water the seed.

39:44

And if the topic doesn't come up, then it doesn't come up. But you don't go out there banging

39:51

Bibles over people's heads, especially in those types of environments.

39:57

And especially when you're on their territory. Right. Yeah, there was an aspect,

40:02

I think, of being wise as serpents, gentle as doves, and also, you know, just being very mindful, like the

40:09

Apostle Paul, when he talks in the book of Colossians, which I love that whole book, because Colossi, in my opinion, just knowing the historical background behind it, it was like a 24 -7 burning man on steroids thinking about the first century.

40:23

It's not like all of a sudden everyone in the first century had it all together. This whole idea of this paganism, this is only very a recent configuration.

40:30

No, this is just the resurgence of the ancient world. But, Robert, I want to just get your thoughts on something, because I know one of the concerns and objections that Christian would have in being on the ground in Burning Man is that if you just look up the hashtag

40:44

Burning Man, you start scrolling through, you see people very promiscuously dressed, wearing little sometimes, if anything.

40:51

So a lot of times you're dealing with, I'll just say it, partially nude people or maybe

40:56

I don't know if they're fully nude. And there's fully nude people. So that's something that be out of a lot of people's comfort zones.

41:05

So, Robert, you're kind of talking about the protocols. You're very wary of that. How do you kind of deal with that?

41:10

Help people understand if they have that objection with sort of being in the lion's den and dealing with that sort of situation.

41:18

How do you navigate that? Or you guys can all chime in, too. Well, yeah, I'd actually thank you for asking that question.

41:27

In Romans 10, how will they hear without a preacher? Right. And I you mentioned

41:36

I think you mentioned Colossians, but one of my favorite verses is Colossians 113, for he rescued us from the domain of darkness.

41:46

That word rescue is a passive verb, eris, passive. And it's we're receiving the action.

41:54

God, Jesus says that I chose you. You didn't choose me. This is so he rescued us from the dominion of darkness and he transferred us in the kingdom of his beloved son.

42:08

And that's, again, a passive verb where he transferred us. And you have to you know, the one thing of the church today,

42:18

I think we don't take every thought captive, you know, the Romans chapter seven battle.

42:24

I think, you know, it's like I'm in that it seems all the time. And then, of course, the answer is

42:30

Romans eight, you know, things I should do. I don't things I don't do. I should. But.

42:36

The first thing is that have the right heart for being out there.

42:44

We are all brothers. The whole world are all brothers at Adam.

42:51

I was interviewed by the University of Germany, Berlin back in like 2018, and they kept wanting me to say that since I was a

43:00

Christian, that there were that this was evil and bad, basically to make me look probably like a goofball or something.

43:09

And I turned it on him. Right. Why are you here? I said, well, because these are my brothers at Adam and I want them to be my brothers in Christ.

43:19

And I think that that's what. Carl and Audrey and Brian and I have and others who are part of this ministry believe that they are our brothers at Adam, we have to go out.

43:32

Now, one of the first people that went out with me. To Burning Man in 1996,

43:40

I called him up a few years ago, I said, would you come out to Burning Man with with us?

43:46

And he says, Bob, I have a problem with lust. I don't belong out there.

43:52

And I said, thank you, brother, for telling me that, see, I don't want anybody.

43:57

To go out there that has a problem with something like lust, that's why we got to have every thought captive here.

44:11

But the thing is, is for me, right, I go out there and I used to party with bikers.

44:19

I used to party. I was a rock musician in the Los Angeles area. Right. There's nothing that they do that I didn't do myself.

44:30

But Christians still came to me and preached the gospel. And I'll finish it up with a quick little story here.

44:38

It's a quick story. I was camping on the outside of Burning Man back in about 2017 or 18 or excuse me, 1998, around there.

44:52

And Burning Man was wanting me out of the area. They were so upset that I had a camp three miles away.

45:00

They said people to intimidate me and my group. They came and made threats.

45:05

They called the police and said that I was selling water, which might play a name, which is the name they give you with water, man.

45:14

And I take I take ice water and give it to people. And so the police came out and they realized that they had been duped.

45:23

But one of the cops is a Christian and says, how could you as a Christian go and talk and to these disgusting people?

45:32

They're disgusting. Right. And I said, officer, you go back to your church in Reno.

45:37

He was a Washoe County sheriff. And you dot your eyes and you cross your T and you play church.

45:44

But for me and my household and my group, we're going to go out in all the world and preach the gospel, as Paul did in Acts 17.

45:54

And the only difference between them people in Acts 17 is these people might be naked and painted purple.

46:01

It's very seldom, you know, you don't really see it's not wall to wall naked people.

46:07

Right. But what I'm saying to this, if we have the answer for cancer, we should go out to all the world to cure people.

46:19

But as Christians, we seem to say we have our thing and we look good.

46:25

I like to witness to one percenter bikers, I'm going to mention any clubs, neo -Nazis and Burning Man people.

46:35

And believe me, as far as sin goes, I did as much, if not worse than what those burners did.

46:43

But Christians laid down their life to me to share the gospel of Christ, which is saving.

46:49

And God transferred me the kingdom of darkness. My eyes were open to the kingdom of light.

46:55

These people are the kingdom of darkness. And they're really no worse than our neighbors.

47:02

A lot of them are our neighbors. Go ahead, Delo. Oh, yeah. I just thank you for that, by the way.

47:08

I relate to that very much. Having been a burner and going to Burning Man and having seen many similar things, if I could,

47:15

I'd like to, I've had to do a lot of reconciling and sort of harmonizing these two different halves of my life, let's say, to try and understand how can

47:24

I communicate what's going on in this Burning Man, New Age world to Christians so that they understand, because I also saw some of the harshness and the schadenfreude of the taking pleasure in other people's pain.

47:34

And I didn't like that. And I felt it was I felt it was kind of sad. And so the way that I tend to think about it is, as Audrey, like you,

47:41

I also audit world cultures. I've been to 30 countries around the world. I took the whole oneness thing pretty seriously and I've been to places like India and went to the

47:50

Kumbh Mela Hindu Festival, as we talked about, and participated in Ayahuasca and Buddhist meditation retreats.

47:55

So I walked that road and the way that I kind of and I've been to many of the New Age enclaves like Bali and Goa and Byron Bay and Sedona.

48:04

So I've explored through this land. And the way that I think about it is a little bit like Burning Man is the

48:10

Shangri -La of the New Age, the New Age city, like Shangri -La is a mythical Buddhist city,

48:15

I think, where it appears for only a limited time during the year and then it disappears. And that's kind of what

48:20

Burning Man is. It's on earth, so to speak, for a week and then it disappears for the rest of the year.

48:26

And so that way, it's kind of like the crossroads of all these different New Age ideas. Now, as part of that New Age world, that sort of breakaway world, there are the dogmatic proponents of false religion.

48:37

There is a false religion that is being promoted, which we can have a long conversation about. And there are those, we'll say archons of that world.

48:45

There are the leaders, there are the advocates for that world. But the vast majority of people who participate in this world, and again,

48:51

I've been there on the ground myself, were like me searching for the truth. I didn't grow up in a

48:58

Christian context. I grew up in a Jewish home. Nothing could have been further from my initial experience than Christianity.

49:04

And so I just searched for long enough until I found it or it found me, however you choose to look at it.

49:09

So there are so many people out there that are genuinely searching, like the girl who received the cross from,

49:16

I think your friend Brian, she was searching. And I think, Carl, you mentioned that many people out there are searching, and that's very true.

49:23

And I think it's really important for Christians to learn to separate when looking at this world, because now we can see into it because of social media, to learn to separate in their own minds, if nothing else, who are the dogmatic proponents of that false religion?

49:35

Who are the Pharisees of that world? And who are the people who are just caught up to it, caught up in it, who haven't been exposed to the gospel?

49:42

And it can be almost impossible to tell from the surface, but to recognize that when speaking into that world, you're speaking to both of those people.

49:50

And it's better, I find, to come with an attitude of love and openness and sharing an invitation, even if some of the dogmatic proponents may receive some of that, to reach out to the ones who are lost and looking for an answer and to come at them with an attitude of the truth is this way if you just have the courage to walk in this direction and to offer that invitation rather than offering scorn and harshness.

50:13

Yeah. Can I can I build on that, Will, please? In 2019, our camp, we had a lady that was with us, her name is

50:25

Jen, wonderful lady, and she was at a camp that was dealing on psychedelics because, well, let me just back up just briefly.

50:36

I'm wearing three hats when I'm going to Burning Man. Number one, I'm coming as a researcher on worldview issues.

50:44

And so I'm trying to understand the culture itself. This year, we did surveys, worldview surveys at the man and in different parts of the city.

50:53

And then secondly, the research also is looking at, OK, what are the trends that are being discussed that go beyond Burning Man that have that broader geopolitical, technical, cultural, even economic impact?

51:05

Because this is, in many respects, a place where the world comes together to have those conversations.

51:11

And then the other side of that, of course, being what we have just been discussing, which is that Christian outreach.

51:18

So Jen was at a workshop on discussing the thrust of global psychedelics, and she ended up sitting beside—I'm not going to mention the gentleman's name, he's well known in the

51:28

New Age field—he is, as you just described, one of those leaders, one of those, yes, one of those figureheads.

51:39

Profit of a false religion. That's right. A disciple of Ram Dass, very, very well known, very well respected.

51:48

And Jen ends up having a conversation with him, and it was just a brief conversation. I believe the name of her camp came up.

51:55

Jen said what she said about her camp. He responded by saying something to the effect of, oh, the cosmic

52:01

Christ. And Jen said, you mean that's the Antichrist. And he stopped as if a bomb had dropped.

52:08

And they end up having a conversation. He said, please come back with your friend—I'm referring to myself because she had mentioned my book to him—we returned back to his camp on Saturday and had the most amazing, deep, and hard but good two -hour conversation.

52:25

And he was willing to not just listen to us, but then to wrestle with what we were discussing from a

52:32

Christian point of view with a scriptural component. And it had him engaging in a conversation where we were able to present the gospel.

52:42

And he didn't, you know, push us away. He embraced us. He wanted to find out. Jen had shook his world by saying, you're worshiping, in essence, the

52:52

Antichrist. When he said about the cosmic Christ. And so all of a sudden, there was a door that was opened.

53:00

Again, you have no idea. We don't know. And yet I've also been in—this year was a prime example.

53:05

I was a Playa alchemist listening to a speaker. I had prior conversations and engagements with him in the virtual Burns.

53:14

And I'm like, oh, I'm going to go meet this guy. And I'm listening to him as he's giving a presentation.

53:20

And as I'm listening, there's a check in my spirit. And there's a solid check.

53:26

And I'm like, no, I can't. I've got to walk away from this one for some reason.

53:32

I don't know the reason. And I don't need to know the reason. And when it was done, I'm on my bicycle, and actually

53:38

I'm running across the Playa to where mine and Audrey already were at a progressive

53:45

Christian camp having a conversation, a workshop on psychedelics and Jesus. I opened up an opportunity for Brian and Audrey to have conversations with another set of Canadian Burners, who last week finally reached back out to you guys and said, can we meet again?

54:02

Hello. Real quick, Carl. Was that the camp that we can't say the name of it because it's disgusting?

54:11

Yes. Yeah, okay. I always want to push the miraculous if it happens out there.

54:18

They talked to this camp, and they're basically pushing the psychedelic Jesus. And they're basically apostates from some major churches.

54:30

And when they got done, I think I've heard of this. Carl gets done with them.

54:38

There's a guy parked outside of my house looking at a map.

54:43

I go up, and I said, hey, were you a Burning Man? Yes, I was.

54:49

I was with the camp of da -da -da -da. And I said, well, I'm with the camp of the unknowing God. May I watch your car?

54:56

He said, oh, would you? So he pulls up behind me, and we talked, and I asked him to contact me if possible, and maybe we could get a

55:05

Zoom call and actually discuss the difference between what they believe and what

55:12

I would call the Christian faith. And so what are the chances of 60 ,000 or 70 ,000 people out there, and we talk to the same person on different days, 90 miles away?

55:25

That's amazing. That happens. Carl, I just wanted to say real quick, thank you so much for distinguishing between the average searchers, the prophets of the false religion who have never heard the truth of the gospel, and they're being exposed to it for the first time.

55:42

Because the cosmic Christ or the universal Christ is a popular term out there.

55:48

Christ consciousness is another term, very popular one. So a lot of those people have never actually heard the true gospel of Christ, and also, and I think this is probably hard for a lot of people to believe, there are actual black magicians out there.

56:01

There are actual people that have heard and consciously rejected the gospel, probably not many of them, that are serving forces of darkness in very subtle ways.

56:09

And that's the part that I try to highlight to a lot of Christians who I have met, who take a more naive approach to Burning Man.

56:17

Like, oh, we're just out there having a good time. It's like, you have to be careful because there actually are, there actually is conscious spiritual darkness out there.

56:24

I don't want to say that out of 80 ,000 people, it's a significant percentage of them, but they are there and they are willing and able to take advantage of people's naivete.

56:32

And so all of this is mixed up together in the festival. And so I just salute you for being able to make those distinctions and to be able to navigate, all of you to be able to navigate through all of that in such a high -integrity way.

56:47

Carl, can you, if you remember, you talked to one of the disciples of Jack Parson out there for about a week?

56:53

Oh, man. Yeah, they're right beside us. That actually, he's hit the nail on the head.

57:01

Will has hit the nail on the head, right? And we've experienced that. But Carl had,

57:06

I believe, a very special time out there with the disciple of Jack Parson. I'd love to hear that.

57:11

Yes, please, floor's yours. Well, no, it was interesting, because that was 2018.

57:17

We had six people in our camp, and for the most part, those who are with our team, that year we had three or four of us who had a very solid understanding of esoteric philosophy, including myself.

57:34

And so the people camped across the street from us were disciples of Jack Parsons. Yeah, absolutely.

57:40

In fact, I'm not going to go into it, but the connection with Parsons was, like, tight.

57:48

No, not super close. Oh. Yeah, tight. Yeah. And all week long we had conversations.

57:56

We were in their RV. We shared food with each other. We had conversations, and conversations, and conversations, and what blew them away was here's two, three, four

58:08

Christian guys who could speak literally at his level, and have a conversation at his level, and didn't hide the fact we were

58:17

Christians, and we were able to have those conversations, comparing and contrasting. Who knows where that goes?

58:24

I don't know. But— Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, too— Those little things happen.

58:29

That happened. Yeah, I mean, it's just interesting when you mention these people who are high level, and these are people modern, you know, modern.

58:35

But when you look at Acts 17, it talks about Paul was interacting with the top -notch philosophers of the day.

58:43

I mean, if you look at even, like, today, like, the Joe Rogan experience is kind of like the digital Areopagus of the world, where all the philosophers, you know, come together to kind of share their ideas.

58:55

And, like, in the same way, I want to get your thoughts on this, too, maybe backtracking for a second, is that you're talking about there's a time where there's someone you just felt like it wasn't appropriate to engage, like a movement of the spirit.

59:08

You know, Walter Martin, he mentioned one of our old interviews with Craig Nelson, who's Walter Martin's former producer, when he was the

59:15

Bible Answer Man. He said that—Wally said that you need to sort of—the cults are the mission for everyone should pursue, but you need to be very selective and just really understand what's at stake when you minister to the occult, because it's a lot more of a heavier spiritual battle.

59:30

I've noticed this. When I go there, like, I'm thinking of Matthew 10, and this is where Jesus says in verse 18, it says, "...you

59:40

will be brought before governors and kings on my account as a testimony to them and to the

59:46

Gentiles. But when they hand you over, do not worry how or what you are to say, but what you are to say will be given to you in that hour.

59:55

For it is not you who is speaking, but it is the spirit of your Father who is speaking in you." I notice myself, with specifically when it comes to engaging in the

01:00:04

New Age, there's this immediate, like, I don't know, like, Sauron, like, ring of Sauron pull to act in the flesh.

01:00:12

There's been times where I've acted in almost, like, anger, like Moses hitting the rock in anger, and when

01:00:18

I've caught myself doing that, I had to stop and, like, repent and realize the only time, and I've had other experiences where you're evangelizing, and it's like you're completely operating in the spirit, almost to the extent where it feels like an out -of -body experience where you're just there, you love that person, and you're like,

01:00:35

I don't care if I die right now, like, I'm going to love this person but be uncompromising in truth.

01:00:42

And so I do think there's something with reaching the New Age that you have to operate within that sphere.

01:00:48

Is that kind of what you were talking about, or what's your methodology when you speak with people there at Burning Man, given what's talked about in Matthew 10?

01:00:59

I talk to them—probably ought to say this—I will treat them the same, whoever they are.

01:01:07

If I know that the person's a disciple of Ram Dass, or I spend two hours having a conversation with a

01:01:15

European Union liaison officer to the U .S. federal government, which I did in 2019, or the person works behind the counter at McDonald's and wherever, somewhere in Nowhere, Kansas, or Nowhere, Manitoba, where I'm from, whoop -dee -doo.

01:01:35

I will speak with them. And I will have that conversation. So my perspective maybe is a little bit different because I have, in terms of the political side of the research

01:01:45

I've engaged in, I have attended and been involved, participated as an accredited participant in U .N.

01:01:53

events, global governance conferences. In terms of high -ranking individuals,

01:01:59

I've rubbed shoulders with some pretty important people, been involved in some pretty important spaces in terms of how the world will look at it.

01:02:09

And the bottom line is—and I know some of these people personally, I've had very personal interactions—they're still people.

01:02:17

That is what they are. And this is why I really appreciate when I went to Burning Man with Bob in 2017,

01:02:23

Bob taught me something that was really important. I watched him as he was hugging a man, and he looked him in the eyes and said—and

01:02:31

Bob's alluded to this—Bob says, you are my brother in Adam, but I want you to be my brother in Christ.

01:02:38

Bottom line, it doesn't matter who you are. You are my brother in Adam. You are my sister in Eve.

01:02:46

That is who you are. One week before Burning Man, I was at the Parliament World Religions in Chicago.

01:02:52

High -ranking people, like really high -ranking people. I had attended to observe the cosmic mass.

01:03:00

And I was off on the corner watching the whole thing unfold, and at one point in the ceremony, the moderator said, walk around and look each other in the eyes and recognize the divinity within.

01:03:17

And so I had three women come to me. And that's fine. Ladies first. You gentlemen.

01:03:22

Ladies first. And they're like, they look at me, and they go, I see the divinity in you.

01:03:29

And so I put my hand on their shoulder, and I said to them, I will tell you something different. I see the humanity in you, and that you are a daughter of Eve.

01:03:41

And all three of them were just—it just shocked. One of them literally shook, and she just kind of muttered, thank you.

01:03:52

And I had a conversation later on with one of the ladies, and we talked about what happened, and I just said to her, do not place this burden of divinity on my shoulders, because that is not what

01:04:04

I am. When I have this idea of divinity that's placed upon my shoulders, what a burden to carry.

01:04:12

You know, it's interesting. I observed the language, especially of some of the geopolitics around climate change, because that's a big part of the conversation in terms of global governance issues, and we're always working to save the planet.

01:04:25

Save the planet. Save Mother Earth. COP 28 is right around the corner. It's going to be happening in a few weeks in Dubai.

01:04:31

All about saving the planet. Saving the planet. Hold on. Who made you Messiah? Why are we engaging in, literally, an alternative salvation message?

01:04:41

And there's a reason why Gen Z, I believe, is one of the most anxious generations, because they have been bombarded with this message that the salvation of the planet is on your shoulders.

01:04:55

And now all of a sudden you're telling me I'm divine? My goodness. I don't even want to get up in the morning most mornings, you know?

01:05:01

I look in the mirror, and I'm like, who is this fool? Because I know who I am. Divine?

01:05:07

Come on. Not even close. I have a hard time just being a human being sometimes. You know what

01:05:13

I mean? Yeah. But we've placed this upon ourselves. That's been part of that new age.

01:05:19

And by the way, the new age intersects, again, then all of a sudden with politics, and it becomes a form of spiritual politics.

01:05:25

And this all ends up becoming religious, because it is making an alternative salvation claim. And one of the takeaways—I had this here with Burning Man, riding my bicycle across the playa, and it just blew me away.

01:05:36

It hit me so hard, was this is the blending of secularism and mythology all in one container.

01:05:47

And you don't see it really anywhere else at that level. And they're both there. Can I mention something here,

01:05:54

Jeremiah? A couple of weeks ago, or a while back, you know, we're

01:06:01

Facebook friends, and you probably saw some of my posts. Oh, this guy's a fundamentalist to fundamentalist type of guy, and whatever.

01:06:11

My kind of guy. Yeah. What really connected me with you a few weeks ago was you mentioned the issue about those who believe that, like, spiritual gifts, or the gifts had ceased, or some type of comment like that.

01:06:27

And I had been wrestling with friends of mine that believe that Satan's bound, right? Right.

01:06:32

And I got so excited when you made that comment, because you get it.

01:06:39

And what Will is bringing out is that we are in enemy territory, even in Hebrews 11, that we know we're aliens, right?

01:06:52

We're looking forward to that great city, heavenly city. But we are going into an area that is concentrated with a lot of type of evil belief systems.

01:07:10

And I think as Christians of light, we shouldn't hide that, and Will is really right on this, that we have to be careful, but we have to be spiritually ready for this.

01:07:28

And also, why am I bringing up the supernatural here again? Is that Carl in 2018 is—2017 is driving from Canada, he gets in a wreck in the middle of the night, and just wipes his car out, and he hit a deer, kills the deer, right?

01:07:51

And so his playa name is Deer Killer, Mind's Water Man. And you always get people that'll say,

01:07:59

Oh, would you talk to my daughter? She's there, not knowing the vastness of this, right?

01:08:05

So this lady hears about it, gets a hold of her daughter, and her daughter, her boyfriend is in the tech world.

01:08:15

I mean, big -time tech world. And so they felt bad for Carl, and they invited

01:08:21

Carl and I to go to dinner one night with a tech camp. These are the moguls from Silicon Valley, and there we were, two

01:08:31

Christians in the middle of the movers and shakers at Silicon Valley, and their thing was serving us, like, you know, dinner and drinks and stuff like that.

01:08:43

And I got to sit with the wives and girlfriends of these people and actually talk to them about marriage, right, and devotion in that marriage.

01:08:55

And I sat by the security guy for the Dalai Lama, right? A guy like me, right, ends up being in the middle of that camp, and Carl being in the middle of the camp, that we can have influence.

01:09:11

Again, how would they hear unless there's a preacher? So I just wanted to throw that in.

01:09:18

I'm very grateful, Jeremiah, for your comment, because I realized you did know that we live in a supernatural world.

01:09:35

Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you very—no, thank you. And even personally, like, I've seen—I've been on middle—I've been on trips to the

01:09:43

Middle East, like, on a mission trip where I've seen somebody's life—I saw someone's life transformed who was hostile to the gospel, and, like, mid -trip, he came, like, to everyone in tears saying that he saw

01:09:56

Jesus in a dream and, like, wanted to be baptized. And that was, like, something that was a huge game changer for me to see that, which is incredible.

01:10:04

And I think—it's just interesting, because I do think—you know, we'll talk, too, about worldview neopaganism.

01:10:10

Carl, you might know a thing or two about that. But I do think that, like, a lot of what typically has been reserved for, like, missionaries in third -world countries in regards to supernatural experience,

01:10:22

I think the way the world is headed, that's going to be just something that's going to be normalized, that we just—and we have to have sort of an apologetic and polemic for that as Christians.

01:10:32

So, yeah, definitely thank you for that. I wanted to—Audrey, if you could, is give your—I'd like to get your perspective, too.

01:10:42

I mean, a woman's perspective, going being on the ground and burning man. Are there certain ways that you can communicate different than, like,

01:10:51

Carl or Robert would be able to with you being on the ground? Like, just giving a woman's perspective being on the ground and how you can relate to people there?

01:10:59

We'd love to hear about that. I think, overall, women are more intuitive, more emotional.

01:11:06

We can gauge our environment. We're very sensitive. I think that is very effective out there.

01:11:15

Burning man is, you know, yes, the party's there. Absolutely. Fun and games.

01:11:20

Absolutely. But it's also a place of grief, sorrow, pain. I think, you know, no offense to the men here, but I think a woman can pick up on that more, even if it's a man projecting grief.

01:11:36

I think a woman can comfort in a different way.

01:11:43

And— You had that experience at center camp with— Yeah, yeah.

01:11:48

In 2019, there was this lady on stage, a handicapped lady, and she had just a horrendous life story.

01:11:57

So she told her story, and she was talking about how she tried all these different religions, including

01:12:03

Christianity, and she had settled on Buddhism. And I was like,

01:12:11

I'm in tears. Like, her life story was, oh, my goodness. Like, I can't even go into it. I was in tears.

01:12:17

And so afterwards, I went up to her, and, you know, I was just talking to her a little bit, and I asked if I could pray for her.

01:12:26

And she had disdain for Christians, and you could tell. And she said, yeah, okay.

01:12:32

So I did pray for her. She let me pray for her, and then she just kind of, you know, looked down and just said thank you, and then went on her way.

01:12:41

And I saw her again this year. So four years later, whatever, I saw her again this year.

01:12:48

And I wanted to go back up to her, but I got interrupted. It didn't happen. But I saw her, and, you know, and my heart went out for her.

01:12:56

And, you know, and I was praying for her, you know, silently just praying for her, that kind of thing.

01:13:01

But I think we pick up on nuances like that, that I'll pick on you, Carl, that you wouldn't pick up on.

01:13:08

It's true. You'd hear her story, and, you know, you'd be like, whoa, you know, whereas a woman can pick up and relate and sympathize.

01:13:19

There was, you know, but also being a woman out there, there's situations where, like, we were driving in the deep playa, and we came across this one lady who was off her bike leaning against a pole and had her head down.

01:13:33

Well, you don't know, is she in distress? Does she need help? That kind of thing. So I was able to go up to her as a woman and just ask if she was

01:13:40

OK, where it might have been awkward for Carl to go up, or it might not have been appropriate, you know, that kind of thing.

01:13:46

Right. Jen, in 2018, no, 2019, recognized the situation where this one burner was asking for a ride home, and she couldn't find one.

01:14:02

And this male approached her and said, well, I can give you a ride home. And most people would just think, oh, great.

01:14:11

She's got a ride home. But Jen picked up on that it was not legit and was able to rescue her and get her out of that situation.

01:14:20

Yeah, because that would have been a sexual assault. That would have been, yeah. Jen has the background to understand some of that.

01:14:27

So that was really great. Yeah, you're absolutely right. There's a lot of times with us guys, we're more like girls in a china shop, emotional sometimes, even, until you walk into the temple.

01:14:40

And then even there, it's like, oh, my goodness, the pain and sorrow. Thank you for mentioning that, because one of the things that doesn't often get talked about with Burning Man is the temple, which burns typically on Sunday nights.

01:14:52

And even most burners don't stay for the temple burn. And the temple burn is a good companion, in a sense, to the more celebratory approach of Saturday night, where Sunday night, the temple burn is actually very somber and very serious and very grave, as people are truly grieving.

01:15:08

And it's a moving portrayal of the things that people carry that aren't necessarily so obvious in this environment of celebration and hedonism.

01:15:18

Like there is actually a significant amount of grief and loss that's contained at the festival that never really gets covered, because even burners don't go to that event.

01:15:27

Yeah, we go to the temple a lot. We try to be there when it opens or near to its opening.

01:15:35

And then it's probably a daily occurrence at the temple, just interacting and even documenting what's taking place while people are pouring out their hearts.

01:15:47

And I mean, my goodness, we're at that age already. Bob's been there. I've been there, where we've lost friends, family, people we know dearly.

01:15:58

We understand the sting of grief. And so, yeah, you walk in and it's there, and you can empathize with it.

01:16:07

And I understand why they have temple guardians set up, because people lose it. It's a 24 -hour funeral, in essence, for this—of eight to nine days.

01:16:19

Paul Yeah, one thing I'd like to kind of point out, because maybe some in the audience don't know about the temple and understand what's happening there.

01:16:27

But it's time when people go, and they'll put notes on the walls or, you know, wedding dresses or whatever.

01:16:36

And they're totally—yeah, totally in grief. And one time, I think it was 2018,

01:16:42

Carl had—there was a crew out there with us, and there was a lady. And this lady, they were at the burning of the temple.

01:16:52

They were setting down, and there was a lady next to her that was crying.

01:16:59

And her psychologist or psychiatrist had told her to go there and put her burdens on that temple.

01:17:07

And she had lost her 16 -year -old son. And there were people that had been saying, let it go, let it go.

01:17:15

And there you got a Christian sitting right next to her, put her arm around her, and was able to console her.

01:17:21

And so, I just estimate this, when the burning of the man is happening, it's a big party, and it's festive.

01:17:33

But the burning of that temple is solid. It's about half, I would say, like maybe out of 70 ,000.

01:17:40

Maybe it's half, maybe it's 35 ,000. But it's hurting people. Where else should we be but in the middle of people that are hurting?

01:17:51

Right? As Christians, let's get a heart. Again, how will they hear unless there's a preacher?

01:17:58

And that's why we need women out there also. And just to kind of top that statement off, there's a kind of a big rape culture out there.

01:18:08

So we always got to be careful as far as our women.

01:18:15

And also, I stopped the situation that happened out there back in 2018 with a young couple.

01:18:27

And so, again, we're Christians. We're the ones with the gospel.

01:18:34

We're the ones with the light. We should be out there in the world and sharing the gospel and being active.

01:18:44

Praise God. If I remember correctly, Bob, that was Allie. Allie was such a wonderful asset in 2018.

01:18:53

And I believe that she was the one who was at the temple putting her arm around her. Yes. Again, if it wasn't that, like you said,

01:19:01

Audrey, that women's intuitive sense of when's the appropriate time to come alongside,

01:19:07

I probably would have flubbed it up. But Allie was awesome. One of the things

01:19:12

I really enjoy, that I am enjoying about this conversation with the four of you is sometimes coming into the world of Christianity after being in the new age for 20 years,

01:19:22

I feel a little bit like a stranger in a strange land, like a crazy man pointing like, Hey, guys, there's this thing going on out there.

01:19:28

You should really know about it. And people are like, I don't know what you're talking about. You know, it'd be a little bit like if Frodo went running back to the shire and it's like there are orcs and black riders and the people in the shire be like, what are you talking about?

01:19:39

But these things are very, very real. And to hear your understanding of them and your compassionate reflection of them and crawling,

01:19:47

I want to tell you that you were talking about this new global secular religion. You're absolutely 100 % dead on.

01:19:54

And I have had to release so much of my own grief from being a participant in that false religion and begin pulling those shards out of myself and realizing how deep it really gets into people to believing these things and seeing the world in such a way like,

01:20:10

Oh, we are God. We are the Messiah. We are responsible for everything. It is on us. It is all on me. And just how debilitating that can be.

01:20:19

And also, Robert, you said about the grief out there at the temple, the people out there, they don't even know how to properly grieve in many ways, because the ideology is telling them that their

01:20:29

God, the person who passed away is going to not exist anymore, or they're going to go back to oneness, or they're going to be reborn.

01:20:37

Like, they're confused in how to properly grieve and how to properly understand death and dying and the purpose of life.

01:20:43

And the gospel can offer so much hope to those people. And you're absolutely correct. That's where Christians need to be, to be giving that message, to be giving that message of something so much better than what death in the secular

01:20:54

New Age world kind of promises. Yeah, I think there's absolutely almost like a

01:20:59

Noah, excuse me, Jonah attitude out there and Burning Man or Nineveh, right?

01:21:06

Yeah, right. Yeah. Amen. That's a good analogy. Yeah. Yeah. So, a question in regards to maybe a transition over,

01:21:15

I think you might be talking just a little bit about some of the worldview implications regarding Burning Man, one is the late

01:21:22

Francis Schaeffer, one of my favorite theologians. In one of his books, A Christian Manifesto, and also one of his talks, he mentioned that it is more politically oriented, but he just talked about how

01:21:34

Christians are, we're looking at, at his time, this is in the 80s, almost speaking prophetically, given what's going on today.

01:21:40

But he said Christians, a lot of times, would look at issues separately from each other, whether it's abortion, euthanasia, you know, all these different morality issues, like they're all separate from each other.

01:21:52

Where in reality, they're all microcosms of a larger picture, which is an issue of worldview. And he gave the example of theism versus secular humanism.

01:22:01

I'm of the opinion that Burning Man is a microcosm of something much larger, specifically worldview.

01:22:11

Now, while we may, some of us, we may have different views, you know, eschologically, and that could be another conversation.

01:22:17

I do believe - Yeah, I know. But there is, I think that this is indicative, Burning Man is indicative of the age that we are headed into, per se.

01:22:27

What is, Carl and Robert, any of you can give your perspective, I'd love to hear from all of you.

01:22:33

What does Burning Man say about the culture now? And what does it say about where we are headed?

01:22:39

And what do we need to prepare for? I'll start, if that's okay.

01:22:45

Yeah. So, the subtitle of my book is The Temple of Man in the Age of Re -Enchantment.

01:22:53

Okay. I had that subtitle before I went to Burning Man in 2017, because I was working on the book at the time.

01:23:03

And I chose it because Burning Man in 2017 was the epitome of re -enchantment.

01:23:11

The man was placed in his own pagoda, he's placed in his own temple that year. It became kind of a controversy within the burn community.

01:23:19

And so, literally, it was the temple of man. But what is re -enchantment? And so, we just came back from this course

01:23:27

I taught, and one of the slides that my students have to memorize for the quiz—tests and quizzes, right?

01:23:34

In a college—is the breakdown of Western intellectual thought and the

01:23:41

Western mood. So, we move from the age of Christendom, which ends roughly around the 1700s, and from Christendom we move into modernity.

01:23:51

And, of course, modernity gives us materialism, the natural world, the height of human reason, man is the measure of all things.

01:23:58

We end up with Marxism, socialism. We see then, of course, the horror shows of the industrial slaughter of World War I, World War II.

01:24:07

We get Auschwitz, we get Pol Pot, we get man playing God against man, never being able to create, only being able to destroy.

01:24:17

And then, as the 1960s unfold, we have Vietnam. And, of course, that is, first of all, a

01:24:24

French war. And we see the breakdown of French civilization, or the

01:24:29

French sense of culture, and the French sense of purpose, as they lose it at Dien Bien Phu.

01:24:35

America enters the scene, and now you have a generation of men going to war whose grandfather fought

01:24:43

World War I, father fought World War II, uncle was in Korea, now either they're going to Vietnam or the brother's going to Vietnam, and you have a complete implosion in terms of where authority comes from, what is trustworthy.

01:24:58

It is a pushback against normative culture. It's a pushback not only against Christendom, but it's also a pushback against hard materialism, because materialism had stripped the soul of meaning.

01:25:12

So now we enter the age of postmodernism. But all postmodernism ultimately does is gives us questions but no answers.

01:25:21

And so the very seed that will fill that vacuum, that will flourish and create a new sense of mythos for the world, is birthed at the same time that postmodernism becomes a reality in the heart and soul of Western culture.

01:25:36

And that is something that a lot of Christians don't know about. I didn't coin the phrase. Others have re -enchantment.

01:25:42

So what is re -enchantment? It is looking for meaning and purpose within the larger collective.

01:25:48

And first, the New Age movement has this sense of—and help me, Will, if I'm off on this—but the self is looking to become divine.

01:25:57

It is that higher sense of self. It is the marriage of the human potential movement with Eastern spirituality, and it is actually a thinly spread smorgasbord of spiritual experiences to help you realize your own divinity.

01:26:11

And it becomes really a selfish orientation. Whereas re -enchantment takes it a step further and says, no, it's not the self.

01:26:19

It is the self within the we. And so it is all divine.

01:26:25

It is all enchanted. And we find our purpose and sense of meaning now in the earth. We find it in the collective.

01:26:32

And now we look for meaning and purpose in the voice of the masses, because we are all being re -enchanted.

01:26:38

We're living in the Romans' one world. And that's what Burning Man is. It is that sense of re -enchantment.

01:26:45

In fact, in 2017 I was at center camp when Rev. Billy gave his famous Sunday sermon, and he first of all talked about—and he's a well -known personality within the burn community.

01:26:56

He dresses up in a clerical collar, and he's reverend. And so he was preaching to the choir.

01:27:02

He was preaching to center camp that we had fired that patriarchal god who claims to know everything.

01:27:08

But materialism isn't the end result either. We have to find something new. And so we turn to each other.

01:27:15

We turn to ourselves, and we turn to the earth. Say a big, earth -alleluia! And everybody goes, earth -alleluia!

01:27:21

And I'm like, that's re -enchantment. We find a sense of purpose and meaning in this larger experience.

01:27:29

And it is typically grounded in—let's look at a Romans 1 perspective—the worship of the creation instead of the creator.

01:27:36

Nutshell, you just had my course. No, that's great. I need to sign up for that. You have to talk about that afterwards.

01:27:43

Me too. I can add some things to that, but go ahead. Let me—I want to be the apprentice there.

01:27:50

Audrey, do you have any additional thoughts? You want to expound on that? For you, you said you've dealt with understanding different worldviews, perspectives.

01:27:56

What does Burning Man tell about today's culture, the world as a whole? And where do you think we're just headed culturally?

01:28:05

Burning Man is a container of all worldviews, all cultural—it's a smorgasbord of everything.

01:28:15

You have everything from psychedelics, you have world economic change agents, you have the grandchildren of the elites that are there saying that we have all our grandparents' money, now what can we do with it?

01:28:31

They talk about everything from Gen to 2030 to psychedelics, like I keep saying,

01:28:39

AI. This year was heavily about AI, but workshops were canceled so we couldn't attend.

01:28:47

Because of the rain? Because—it's a container of all of those kinds of things. So if people are thinking that, oh, let's go to Burning Man again for the party.

01:28:56

Well, no, this is Silicon Valley, Google. It's a conference. It's a conference.

01:29:03

It is full of workshops with the change agents, with the gurus, with the elites, with the head of the—

01:29:12

Rick Doblins. Yeah, the Rick Doblins, Paul Stemnitz, all of those people. So Burning Man, you go to Burning Man and you learn, and you can take that back now, and you can say, look, here's what's coming.

01:29:26

So because we went, it's Jesus and psychedelics. So watch for psychedelics now being pushed in your church.

01:29:32

But I believe, though, that if you're going to engage the culture, learn the culture.

01:29:43

Learn it. Don't watch YouTube videos. Go and learn the culture. So you don't have to go to Burning Man to learn the culture.

01:29:51

What's going on in your own town? What's going on in your own neighborhood? Go to the meetings.

01:29:57

Start listening. Start learning. Because you're going to start picking up on all the spiritual stuff that's coming in, all the earth worship that's coming in.

01:30:09

Learn the culture. When you learn that as well, you learn their lingo. Start to learn their language, their doublespeak, what they're really saying.

01:30:17

And you're going to start to see how all the dots in the world connect. And all the dots in the world, you could go to Burning Man and see all the dots in one container.

01:30:29

Yeah. That's what we do as Boots on the Ground researchers. You don't just watch a YouTube video and think you're just going to Burning Man and going to be effective.

01:30:38

You've got to. It's emotional. It's mental. It's spiritual.

01:30:45

You've got to know your line in the sand. Go and learn. Go and learn the culture. Learn their lingo.

01:30:51

But also see them as human beings. Yeah. Even one thing I want to comment as well, too. And I definitely would reciprocate that.

01:30:57

And, man, I'd love to just sometime join. I'd love to join you guys sometime on the ground. That would be an honor to do that.

01:31:04

And I think that'd just be eye -opening. Because I think even sometimes for me that, you know, you're doing podcast content and even, like I said, even putting stuff together.

01:31:15

But there's such a difference between actually all of a sudden then having a divine appointment. Like, I remember it was somebody to be able to talk with them about the gospel.

01:31:24

Like, I remember, you know, we've done a couple episodes on Jehovah's Witnesses. And I feel like all that pales in comparison to one time doing a

01:31:32

Lyft ride where I had a Jehovah's Witness in the back of my car. And immediately as soon as I realized it, I had that itch

01:31:37

I had to scratch. And I said, so, did you know about like the New World Translation? Did you hear about how it actually talks about how

01:31:42

Jesus is Jehovah? Like, I had to just break the ice. I just couldn't resist. You got that itch. But yeah,

01:31:49

I really reciprocate all of that. Robert, I want to get your perspective, too. You know, you've been on the ground at least since 1996.

01:31:56

I looked earlier to see what took place. I'm like, oh, Bill Clinton won re -election against Bob Dole.

01:32:03

So I'm like, wow, that has been a long, long time. I'm old enough to remember that as a kid. But I think the culture has really shifted towards a neo -pagan culture.

01:32:13

And you've probably seen Burning Man evolve a lot since the early days when you were there in 1996.

01:32:19

You think about versus now versus 2023. Like, what changes have you seen? What do you think

01:32:25

Burning Man has reflected as a culture progressively since you've started back there in the mid -90s versus now?

01:32:34

Bill Clinton Well, what a question to ask. I'm glad you asked that. Well, in 1996,

01:32:40

I first went out there in 97, where the first time I went inside Burning Man, and it was

01:32:47

Mad Max. I mean, it was crazy. The first year

01:32:52

I was, in 1996, I think it was three or four people died, ran over by cars, and there were no rules.

01:33:03

And a little background on it, I'm a telecommunications person for a large power company, now retired.

01:33:14

So I had taken care of a radio site very close to Burning Man.

01:33:19

And the law enforcement in 1996 would not even come in the area of Burning Man because there was no communications.

01:33:28

So what I did was that I volunteered to put law enforcement communication at our site, and finally, they could come in.

01:33:42

Now they've grown, and they've got communications equipment now. But let's look at this in two different ways.

01:33:50

When I went out, I had the Bureau of Land Management would actually come out and talk to me.

01:33:57

They got my phone number, and they'd call me at home, and they'd say, Bob, we would like to put you under our insurance because what you're doing out there supplying water and helping these people out, we really support that, right?

01:34:12

And I said, I go out there, and I do this because I'm doing missionary work, and I don't think you want to hitch your wagon to me, right?

01:34:21

And they said, OK, we will still do it. But I didn't want to do that.

01:34:28

And so they would come out and talk to me about how bad Burning Man was.

01:34:34

The Bureau of Land Management, a federal agency, and then law enforcement when they got their communications equipment, they would come and condemn me for being out there or talk to me.

01:34:46

And they were against it. Well, the shift in the culture has been 2017, we watched an actual somebody in the

01:34:58

Bureau of Land Management actually gave a talk about learning what you can from Burning Man and taking it back home and teaching others.

01:35:09

All of a sudden, law enforcement has got a positive view. There's been this shift in our society.

01:35:18

And I got to tell you, I'm looking around last couple of years, and I'm thinking, it's insanity.

01:35:25

Do I really live in a world where evil is good and good is evil, right?

01:35:30

So I see the society shifting for acceptance, kind of a postmodern acceptance of it.

01:35:40

Probably, I think what Carl says, the re -enchantment time has arrived, right?

01:35:48

But let me give you an example. And it's kind of like an excellent thing that Audrey just said that I can launch off on.

01:36:02

And that is this. I was in the psychedelic movement back in the 70s.

01:36:08

So I'm very familiar with psychedelics. Now, I haven't done ayahuasca or anything like that.

01:36:15

We can talk about that. Yeah, yeah. But I think that you would know more about that than me. But so,

01:36:22

I may be a Christian, I may have gained a lot of weight, got old and ugly, this type of stuff.

01:36:27

But in my head, I still think like that, right? Except I'm a new creation, a new nature, right?

01:36:37

So I have the blessing of being able to communicate with that community, right?

01:36:45

And so, in 2017, Carl and I first meet, and we go to a class on psychedelics and medicine in the medical community.

01:36:56

They had doctors and nurses and psychiatrists and psychologists and all kinds of professional people talking about utilizing psychedelics for PTSD, post -traumatic stress, right?

01:37:14

And how they want to get it legalized. Basically, now I find out it was going into its first stage of acceptance.

01:37:26

And we're sitting there, yes, yes, yes, they want to do this. And at the end of it, are there any questions?

01:37:34

And a man raised his hand up, and he said, what about the entities that show up?

01:37:43

Carl and I look at each other like, what? Wow, right?

01:37:48

And I thought they were going to shut him down. And here you have professional people saying, well, that is a problem.

01:37:55

And that's why we want to have it controlled in the medical sphere.

01:38:03

We want to be able to utilize professionals to administer these psychedelics, right?

01:38:14

And so I thought, then other people started talking about these entities that showed up.

01:38:20

That's why, Jeremiah, I get really excited about that spiritual worldview you have, is because that's a reality.

01:38:29

And so I go back home, and my wife and I are starting to dig up things on psychedelics on YouTube.

01:38:39

When we find out about machine elves, these elves that show up in your ayahuasca or your psychedelic trip, and they could be some really bad situations, or they dance, and probably

01:38:54

Will knows more about that than I would. But why is this important?

01:39:00

What I'm saying is that we have to know the times that we're in. I'm watching the

01:39:06

Babylonian Bee. They're interviewing Elon Musk, right?

01:39:12

And I'm saying, Elon Musk, I know he's kind of like a globalist, but he doesn't fit the same as some of these other globalists, right?

01:39:24

And so he said—they asked him, what do you believe about God?

01:39:30

And he says, I believe in the God of Espinoza. So I go, and I listen to some videos and learn about Espinoza, and I go, wow, that's

01:39:41

Elon Musk. He's doing good things because he believes in doing good things, right?

01:39:49

And so it really hit me is that we have to know where society's going, what do they believe, and actually be like Christian profilers.

01:40:04

I've worked actually with an FBI profiler on some scenarios, and I learned a lot.

01:40:13

So I guess what I'm saying is shows like yours should be waking people up to start, number one, taking every thought captive where they're at, and number two, looking out at the world and knowing the time that we're in and being able to react to it.

01:40:36

And that's what the little summary kind of launching off of what

01:40:42

Audrey said. Yeah. So I sent a tweet the other day where I said, and I completely agree, sir.

01:40:49

I said a tweet. I said something like, I wandered through the new age for 20 years until I found someone who could give me a proper

01:40:56

Christian apologetic. I wondered what would have happened if I had run into that person sooner or those people sooner.

01:41:03

And of course, a lot of people said, well, it's all in God's providence and all that.

01:41:08

And I guess, okay, point taken. However, I think that Jeremiah, I think you bring up a really good point. Like there is mission work, mission field work to be done here.

01:41:17

And I think the really important point that I think Carl and Audrey have highlighted is that that mission field, you don't have to go to it.

01:41:25

That mission field is coming to you. It's coming into your church. It showed up in the Enneagram.

01:41:31

You're going to start seeing it with Jesus and psychedelics. You're going to start seeing it with talks about environmental stewardship.

01:41:38

This worldview is coming to a screen near you. And I think

01:41:44

Christians really need to be prepared for that, because the mask of secular humanism is absolutely slipping.

01:41:53

And behind the mask of secular humanism is this pagan worldview. In fact, Terence McKenna, one of the early leading lights, let's say, of the psychedelic movement, he wrote a book called

01:42:03

The Archaic Revival. And this was written in the 1990s. And so when I got introduced to New Age spirituality in 2000, 2001, that was the book that everyone was reading at the time was

01:42:13

The Archaic Revival. And it came to me. In fact, when I was on the podcast talking about Aubrey Marcus and Burning Man the first time, that was the name of the book that I couldn't think of.

01:42:22

So The Archaic Revival is actually, the re -enchantment is actually what they're going for. And I think secular humanism might have just been an interim step to the true paganization of world cultures.

01:42:33

And I think that's actually happening. And Carl, I just did flip through your book real quick. And I did see a mention of Swami Vivekananda in one of the chapters.

01:42:41

And Swami Vivekananda is someone I know a bit about. I've been to his ashram in India, and he talks about actively

01:42:47

Advaita Vedanta Hinduism being the world religion that binds them all up in a beautiful bouquet.

01:42:52

It binds the world religions together in Advaita Vedanta Hinduism. So this is happening, right?

01:42:58

And so I think Christians really need to be prepared that we're going to watch that happen, perhaps slowly, perhaps quickly, in the coming years.

01:43:07

Yes, and you know something? To that point, Will, it's been ongoing. So Swami Vivekananda's impact really happens in 1893 at the first event that truly is the tipping point to change

01:43:20

Western civilization, and that is the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in 1893.

01:43:25

And that's where things begin to change, both spiritually and politically and culturally. So we are already well, well down the garden path.

01:43:36

120, 130 years. That's right, to where this is going. A quick point regarding the change in Burning Man, back to Bob's introduction in terms of that time period from the 90s to now.

01:43:50

So in the 1990s, it was the Wild West. I wasn't there, obviously. It was. Yeah, it was the

01:43:56

Wild West. Yeah, it was very engaging in worldview issues back at the time, but that wasn't even on the radar at that point.

01:44:03

So it was the Wild West. By 2018, Smithsonian Institute devotes the entire

01:44:09

Renwick Gallery to Burning Man. Hello. Now it's full culture. That's there.

01:44:14

I mean, it's in the Smithsonian, not just as a little sideshow, the entire Renwick Gallery.

01:44:20

And then the Cincinnati Art Gallery. My wife, Leanne, and myself went there to go to the

01:44:26

Burning Man displays, and the entire gallery was given over to Burning Man. At the 2019

01:44:34

Burn, the U .S. Conference of Mayors, which has a very special relationship with the org, we had 52

01:44:39

U .S. mayors touring the city so that they could take home the lessons learned from the

01:44:45

Burn. We had four congressmen that were doing the same thing. The former chief economist for the

01:44:52

World Bank, who still is engaging in what's called the Charter City Program, was at Black Rock City looking to see how he could take and integrate that into World Bank programs.

01:45:01

So I'm sorry, if you're thinking again, back to Audrey's point, if this is just a party in your mind, you've lost what this actually is.

01:45:08

This is a world change engine, and it's running pretty hard.

01:45:16

It's almost like a counterfeit transfiguration. Where it's like, hey, the disciples in the

01:45:23

New Testament, they go up and they see this sort of unveiling of the Incarnate and the hypostatic union of the divine of Christ.

01:45:31

And they see that at the transfiguration at the top of the mountain, like, now let's go back into the world.

01:45:38

And it's almost like Burning Man is like this pagan transfiguration.

01:45:44

Let's go there. Let's be chained. Let's all unify together. Then let's go out into the world.

01:45:49

And it's almost like you get sort of this great commission after this transfiguration of Burning Man to sort of implicate this.

01:45:56

I think one thing, Carl, too, is I remember hearing that even as Burning Man has evolved, there's even conflicts when you have people who are high, people who are high ups from Silicon Valley and such, where you'd even have people with security detail.

01:46:11

And that would be conflict when all of a sudden, it's supposed to be this place full of love and warmth. And all of a sudden, you see people who are, you know, armed security, that just sort of, yeah, with earpieces, that all of a sudden, that's a change up from seeing a bunch of people, you know, just all with lights and everything.

01:46:26

And like, oh, hello. It's a little change -er -upper. That would be an example of that. Yes. Yes.

01:46:32

And the fact that, I know we were talking just about Burning Man, not just about Burning Man, but that's the center point of our conversation.

01:46:39

But really, Burning Man is the mothership of a much larger global phenomena of transformational evolutionary culture.

01:46:48

So, I mean, it's not the only event. I mean, you've got boom in Portugal.

01:46:54

You've got Ozora. You've got literally hundreds. Evolve fast.

01:46:59

Lightning in a bottle. The list goes on and on. Right. There's 108 virtual, or pardon me, 108 burns around the world.

01:47:06

And then literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other events that are part of that similar milieu.

01:47:14

From 2013 to 2016, I did a Google Maps project, which is really ironic because Google Maps are beta -tested at Black Rock City, because Google and Burning Man are integrated very, very much.

01:47:27

So I did a Google Maps project just mapping out where transformational festivals, transformational gatherings, including—I took it all the way into the

01:47:35

Wicca category, for events like Pagan Spirit Gathering, Starwood, etc.,

01:47:41

and I mapped out in only these two countries alone, my country, Canada, and yours, the U .S., 265 pins in the space of those three years.

01:47:50

I had another 50 events to vet, another 50 or so events to add, and I quit because I'm like, my map is—I mean, it already made the point.

01:47:59

I could see where the concentration of these events were in terms of geography, and each of the pins had details on it, and some of that data ends up, of course, in my chapter on evolutionary culture in my book.

01:48:12

But for me, that was a great long -term kind of exercise to see, all right, how concentrated is this idea already within the

01:48:24

U .S. and Canada? And of course, recognizing that it's part of a global milieu, it's a global change, because this isn't just Nevada, it's

01:48:34

Israel with Midburn, it's Africa Burn in South Africa, it's—I mean, the festivals are around the world,

01:48:41

Costa Rica, I mean— There's one here in Arizona. You were there. Yeah, yeah, you did them. You were there. Yeah, yeah.

01:48:47

And one thing I want to add is people need to really grasp the gravity of this, that the people who go to these festivals, they're taking very powerful psychoactive chemicals of various sorts, and they're being catechized actively in a specific worldview that is 180 degrees counter to the

01:49:04

Christian worldview. Like, it's not the same as we go into church and we sing some psalms and we hear a sermon. They're taking chemicals and being exposed to songs and music and visuals and graphics that are actively getting into the deepest parts of their mind and programming this worldview into them.

01:49:18

This is very, very serious. What's going on is it is fundamentally a religious worship that is happening around the world for an antithetical and anti -Christ religion.

01:49:26

I mean, that's happening. I don't know how else to put it. I'd like to break in here on this. People have a train of thought,

01:49:34

I have a roller skate of thought, and Carl's kind of my caretaker and brings me back to where I should end up at and I go off.

01:49:44

But one of the things, because the question was, how has it changed in the culture, is in 1996,

01:49:51

I couldn't find anybody that knew about Burning Man. In 2023, it seems most people have heard about Burning Man.

01:50:00

And Burning Man is a very deceptive situation. If you have a secular worldview and you go to Burning Man, it looks just like a party.

01:50:09

If you go there as a New Ager or a pagan, it's a spiritual event, right?

01:50:20

So in that 2017 psychedelic class that we took with the entities that showed up and the doctors and lawyers and Indian chiefs knew about, is that Carl, I know, has been tuned into it, but I started really watching for it.

01:50:39

And so they had a shaman, and Carl and I went to listen to two shamans also that year, but a shaman that showed up at the

01:50:48

World Economic Forum, there's been shamans, I've been to the United Nations, that go to the

01:50:53

United Nations. If you Google the article for the United Nations on psychedelics, you'll find an article,

01:51:00

I believe the World Economic Forum would be pro -psychedelics. But I heard a program in early

01:51:07

October of this year called Eye on Veterans, and they were talking about that mushrooms and I think one other substance that are psychedelics are at their third stage of being accepted to be legalized for medical use.

01:51:28

And the lady was talking about this being used for PTSD, right?

01:51:33

At the end of it, the gentleman said, I think everybody in the world needs this, right?

01:51:40

And I know this is probably maybe touching on a little eschatology, and I don't mean to offend anybody.

01:51:46

But I look at in Revelation where the nations are deceived by their sorcery, the pharmakia, and I got to wonder, are we kind of moving in that direction?

01:51:58

No matter what your eschatology is, human beings seem to have a tendency to repeat history.

01:52:07

And I'm just wondering if psychedelics is a part of our future.

01:52:14

And my final thought on that is you asked about Burning Man and the culture.

01:52:21

Burning Man is a telegraph telling us about what's going to happen in the future.

01:52:27

And it is a good way to keep your finger on the pulse. And that's what's so important about Audrey and Carl's research is that they go into this in depth.

01:52:41

And the reason the difference between myself and Audrey and Carl is that I've been going to Burning Man since 1996.

01:52:49

Carl shows up in 2017. And you know what he did? He gave me a tour of Burning Man and explained a lot of things that I really didn't notice.

01:52:58

Right? So I think it's important research. I think the show is important. And I think cultish has an important work in this culture.

01:53:09

Thank you. Thank you, brother. That's much obliged, I think, to even for me personally, just reciprocating off of how much even the culture has transformed the last five years since we even started.

01:53:21

One of our very first flagship episodes was with our good friend Stephen Bancars. And we were talking about second coming the new age of the occult.

01:53:28

And I remember he mentioned to me sort of talk about ayahuasca. And I was kind of like smiling and nodding.

01:53:33

And in the back of my head, I'm like, I have no idea what he's even I have no idea what he's even talking about.

01:53:39

And of course, then, obviously, I know a bit more now. And having talked with you,

01:53:44

I mean, we did it, Will and I did an episode together where we're talking about like Aaron Rodgers from the Green Bay Packers, who's really been very upfront about his psychedelic use and utilizing ayahuasca and things that normally would be reserved for places out, you know, in South America.

01:54:01

And you have people like Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox doing trips down there talking about doing these type of acid trips and being in contact with entities.

01:54:10

And that conversation of entity contact along with psychedelic use, it's normalized now when you listen to people like Lex Friedman and Joe Rogan.

01:54:18

And there's all these other shows that, you know, even in the old UFO conversation, that's where it always leads.

01:54:24

And that's why I think we have to be able to be ready to give a polemic to be able to give an answer to be able to give an apologetic and have a worldview that, in my perspective, you know, not even bringing to the spiritual,

01:54:37

I guess, but I like to talk about viewing the world through the lens of the incarnation, through the lens of the hypostatic union, where you give fully credence to the material of what's created, but you also give full credence to the spiritual, the same way that Jesus was fully

01:54:53

God and fully man. That's how I want and that's how we need to view the world. And it's more important now, more than ever.

01:55:00

Also, as I feel like we could go on for a while, we've gone on for, I mean, there's so much that we've only tapped into.

01:55:08

Like even, for example, Carter, one of the things you mentioned could be a whole nother podcast was the issue of environmentalism and even the interest in climate change and how that's connected to one ism.

01:55:17

We should probably have you back on for that. That'd be awesome. I could do that. Yeah. Yeah.

01:55:22

That'd be a lot of fun. That'd be a lot of fun. Can, you know, can I close up on the psychedelic thing just briefly?

01:55:30

I'm going to read a little section from my book. I don't have speculation in my book except for this one section, and this is kind of a work of just creative writing.

01:55:41

And my book doesn't deal on eschatology, though it may have implications, and this is the only part that I really kind of hint at an eschatological approach, but it's, again, a speculation, and I say it this way in my text.

01:55:57

So I'll quote myself. Kind of sounds weird. An interesting speculation can be extrapolated, and I stress that this is conjecture only.

01:56:06

Could a worldwide spiritual experience be the catalyst for global unity? If so, how might this be achieved?

01:56:13

Might a psychedelic agent be designed to induce human oneness? And could this agent be in the form of a mark, a personal identifier permanently placed on the hand or forehead?

01:56:22

This mark, a tangible sign of global citizenship, like a digital loyalty card, would be needed for buying and selling.

01:56:30

Possibly this mark could be tailored to interact with one's genetics and brain chemistry, unlocking a stimulant that heightens perception and induces flow, like a manageable global upper that everyone experiences together and no one wants to be without or opt out of.

01:56:44

There would be no spectators in the networked planet. Everybody would be a participant in the global myth of a brave new world.

01:56:50

Maybe this transhuman elixir would be called Soma. It was just a little bit of fun writing, a little bit of speculation in the midst of a lot of stuff to work through.

01:57:04

We're at that stage. I mean, we're at that stage where if we have this psychedelically tuned in world, all of a sudden that feeling of oneness becomes justification for the truth claims that we are all.

01:57:18

Unequivocally, Audrey, do you have any last thoughts as we wrap up here? No, just thank you.

01:57:24

Thank you for having us on the program and for tackling these topics. And Will, thank you for being the trendsetter in bringing this conversation forward to the cultish audience.

01:57:37

Absolutely. Absolutely. It was necessary. Sure. Thank you. Awesome. One parting comment here is that in Carl's book in 2017, we were at our camp and two girls drove up on their bicycles and they were lost.

01:57:53

And they said, where are we? And I gave directions. And when they drove off,

01:57:59

I looked at Carl and I said, was that an exponential question? Yes.

01:58:08

Where are we? Where are we? Yeah. Can I just add something to close off the conversation?

01:58:16

We started out talking about the rains at Burning Man. And in case people are feeling kind of dire by some of the things we've talked about and some of the omens.

01:58:28

When I looked at the rain at Burning Man, and I saw that big photo of the rainbow, I looked at that and I took that as a sign that we serve a great and glorious God who will be triumphant over all of this.

01:58:41

That for all the arrogance and all the hubris of this man -made religion of paganism, of this fallen spirituality, that their destruction is right underneath their feet.

01:58:51

And all it takes is the skies to open up. And that was a mark that like, don't worry, I still got this.

01:58:57

So that was how I interpreted those events. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, absolutely.

01:59:03

Well, this has been a really fun and insightful conversation. It's as much as I hoped for.

01:59:08

I was super excited about this conversation. Hopefully this would be another, if you guys listen into this episode, hopefully for audience, you'll just, whatever happens at Burning Man next year, you'll think it hopefully through a different lens.

01:59:19

I know for sure I will, especially just with talking with you, Carl and Robert and Audrey, thank you again so much.

01:59:27

And so all that being said, if you all have enjoyed this program, definitely let us know what you thought, comment on your social media.

01:59:33

And all that being said, we'll talk to you all next time on Cultish. Talk to you guys all soon. What's up everybody.

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