Millionaire Mystics: Paul Chek Edition
When we think of enlightened leaders, we tend to imagine outcasts, penniless prophets, or somebody like Jesus, Buddha, or the monks of the medieval times. We believe that anyone who gains personal wealth from their teachings is probably a scam artist with ulterior motives. Mega church pastors, motivational speakers, and the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church thinly disguise their obscene wealth by laundering it through their organizations, so that their wealth is not categorized as “personal.”
In the New Age, the hypocrisy of millionaire mystics takes on new heights.
As you probably know by now, New Age mystics believe that people “manifest” their own futures, and thereby blame all suffering on the victim, and credit the predatory class with having a good relationship with cosmic forces. It is a Satanic inversion of reality, where injustice is called karma, and everyone is just one choice away from falling ass-backwards into luxury, so it’s their fault if they don’t.
Of course, in terms of real income sources, these millionaires almost always get their money from the poor people themselves, not from the cosmos or producing anything of value. They are salesmen, capitalizing on the envy of the downtrodden by promising a bright future to the desperate if they buy books, courses, and training sessions. In this paradigm, rather than being discredited for being hedonistic and greedy, they are only demonstrating the power of their wisdom. The less logical it is, the more obviously the Universe is favoring them with mystical gifts!
I was introduced to Paul Chek via Matt & Shane’s Secret Podcast, a comedy duo podcast where—without it being the explicit premise of the show—Matt McCusker humbly explores the mystical and absurd, while Shane Gillis tries to bully and debunk him. When Shane is away from the podcast, Matt invites on wacky New Age guests and talks to them about their big ideas and secret knowledge. Paul Chek was high on the list of people Matt wanted to interview.
Galaxy Brain
I don’t recommend watching the whole episode, but if you do, here’s some of the highlights you’ll find:
Paul Chek toured the world doing paid seminars, where he hooked up with countless women while married and convinced them he was genuinely in love with them and would support them;
When the women he deceived began asking for help with their personal problems, he dumped them;
He eventually married a second woman, and the three are polygamous together;
He saw visions of a giant mansion that the Universe wanted him to have, and his wives happened to discover it in their travels and find out it was on sale at a major discount, proving that it was destiny for him to own a huge estate;
His children go to a Waldorf School to learn Rudolf Steiner’s system of holistic development and exploration;
He sexualizes his own daughter;
He hates Christianity and the Bible;
He has his own definition of God;
He believes people should not be selfish, greedy, or own large areas of land.
Yes, he preaches that “taking more than is necessary is a threat to another being,” and that science has destroyed our natural harmony with nature. In a rambling, incoherent New Age conspiracy theory, he ties together Western civilization’s abandonment of ancient shamanism with the CIA’s deception campaigns. Paul Chek’s own obscene lifestyle, which is only possible due to capitalist innovations and modern science (allowing one person to travel the world yearly on fuel-burning jets, print tens of thousands of books from chopped trees, broadcast to millions, and collect money online) is somehow not in violation of this timeless wisdom. I’m sure the ancient shamans would approve of his “hustle.”
But hey, for tens of thousands of dollars, you too could enjoy such jewels of wisdom as:
“…spirituality is a progressive expansion of your sense of wholeness to your connection to what makes you feel whole and what you are.”
—Paul Chek
Wow. Expanding your sense of wholeness to your connection to what makes you feel whole, and what you are? I can almost feel my “spirituality” improving already! He goes on to explain that, by noticing that we’re dependent on infinite other systems that connect and support each other…
“…all of a sudden you realize you're part of a Galactic Family. You say, wait a minute, the Galaxy is part of the Universe, so now you reach what's called ‘Cosmic Consciousness,’ and you realize that all of it is a dance, all of it is a Being that's alive, all of it is something so magical and so mysterious that all you can do is stand there and go ‘Oh my God, it took the entire Universe to create me.’”
—Paul Chek
A Galactic Family? Are we subtly introducing alien consciousness worship, Paul?
It’s always interesting to me how, whenever a New Ager really delves into the big picture of the universe to try to impress their dumb audience, they appeal to it being “magical and mysterious” instead of rational and sensible. That’s the thing about Mysticism: it is designed to disarm the intellect, not improve it. It is meant to inculcate a trance-like state of wonder, awe, confusion, and mystery, not to sharpen one’s real understanding of anything. That’s why they ramble, change topics, and refuse to finish a thought. They want their audience to be overwhelmed, lost, and impressed, not steadily follow a clear chain of logic.
Blowing smoke
Paul has plenty of advice about diet, exercise, work ethic, and more, but his “Spirit Gym” is really about transforming your own self into a person who is free from baggage and negativity, who can “work with Source energy.” You don’t meaningfully work for anything, you just become a vessel for good things and manifest them. He explains that he and his wives manifest their fortunes by creating a Vision Board in their house, and they pray to the Cosmic Consciousness like so:
“…all three of us and I would vaporize some tobacco and herbs, and I'd blow smoke into it—which is a sacred practice to energize it with our Consciousness—and you know, so we we actually poured our intention into it.
“You know, if you think of God as unconditional love, that's pure potential. There's no condition. There, the answer is always ‘yes’ from Source. God says ‘yes’ to being an idiot, and God says ‘yes’ to being a wise man. Obviously. Look around. Okay, so if God is unconditional love, then you must have an intention to create the movement of potential into actuation, and the flow of that energy and information is what we call ‘Spirit.’ So Spirit is the flow of energy and information. What people don't realize is, you're constantly moving energy and information into Potential from Spirit. But most people are doing it unconsciously, which is almost always based on what they don't want—most people live by their fears not by their dreams.”
Strange that despite helping thousands of people tap into the Source God and unlock the infinite Potential of the Cosmic Consciousness, these people have not become equally rich and famous as him. Why not? By his logic, the Universe always says “yes,” so wouldn’t you expect at least a few of them to use this power in order to become billionaires and mega stars? I guess they must not be doing it right. They probably need more advanced and expensive courses!
Esalen Institute
Paul Chek was a member of the Esalen Institute, a California-based hotbed of New Age incubation, full of shamans, psychedelic drugs, military veterans, and millionaires. It’s the Vatican of the Aquarian Conspiracy. I suspect he was personal friends with Jim Channon, the founder of the First Earth Battalion, a US Army project to blend New Age mysticism into military entrepreneurship—developing rich and powerful contacts in the private sector and pushing toward the Age of Aquarius together behind the scenes. Aldous Huxley was spiritually reborn there, and they have a room named after him. Marilyn Ferguson was another notable of this group.
Listen to my podcast with
on Marilyn Ferguson and the Aquarian Conspiracy here:
Final notes
As with any Aquarian Conspirator, Paul Chek’s worldview reveals a deep hatred of Christianity, the Bible, and especially the moral constraints on sexuality. Clear-cut morality does not suit them at all. Everything should be open, negotiated, loose, flexible, shrouded, unclear, and open to interpretation. Restrictions and rules are not cool, and a judgmental God is completely out of the question. The “Ancients” (who do not have the ability to argue otherwise, thankfully,) always agree with them. These people often own and terraform prime real estate in the most beautiful, expensive, and delicate ecosystems in the world, but insist that they are the protectors of nature, the stewards of Mother Earth, and the least selfish of all.
However, unlike those who preach Oneness in terms of the negation of the individual, it may be interesting to know that Paul Chek strongly promotes Duality. It seems that, once again, modern American “gnosticism” is more about exploiting cynicism about modern civilization being corrupt, fallen, deceptive, and restrictive so that they can justify pure hedonism and unrestrained self-indulgence, or otherwise call for an apocalyptic reckoning against the Church. They do not hearken back to the true Gnostic views of the ancients, who tried to incorporate Christianity and stoicism, but rather LARP as neo-pagan gnostics in order to contrast themselves against the puritanical Christians and the collectivist Atheist intellectuals. Both of these groups are harsh, judgmental, and attempt to restrain others. The neo-gnostic seeks to liberate themselves from all rational ideologies precisely because these lead to some form of accountability.
I came across this guy's work a decade or so ago, while I was doing health-related research for myself. I looked into what he was doing, smelled a rat, and moved on. Nothing you said here would make me want to take another look. 😊
Several decades before that, in the 1980s, I visited Esalen a couple of times, taking a class each time. I was exploring stuff, and that was one of the things did. I don't recall there being "members" per se. One could sign up to take classes and such. And it's not that many hours from here by car.
So there I explored and then moved on. I wouldn't care to repeat any of what I did back then, having learned my lessons, and I don't endorse it, but Esalen was milder than some of the other things I have gotten myself into. I didn't know enough, then, to see the major problems with it, but after those two trips I couldn't find a reason to return again.
Later in that decade I explored other aspects of New Age, and found lots of problems. Maybe what I heard at Esalen contributed to seeing those things; I don't know. I ended up rejecting everything New Age and re-discovering God. That was a good trade, though far from the end of the journey.
A new voice in the medical freedom lecture group is Jason Christof. He makes compelling presentations and mentions being a follower of Paul Chek. Having now heard from the man himself, I must re-evaluate what Jason says, most memorably that coffee is poison.