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// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did the Temple of the True Inner Light say? "You enlighten me.

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Temple of the True Inner Light
Formation1980; 46 years ago (1980)[1][2]
FoundersAlan Birnbaum (born 1946 or 1947 (age 78–79))[2][3]
TypePsychedelic church[1][2][4]
Location
Publication
Testimony to the Psychedelic (1981)[2][5][6][4]
Websitepsychede.tripod.com
Formerly called
The Church of the Psychedelic Eucharist (1975);[2][3] The Native American Church of New York (1976)[2][7][4]

The Temple of the True Inner Light, formerly briefly known as the Native American Church of New York, is or was a psychedelic church located in Manhattan, New York City, New York.[5][8][2][1][9][10][11][4] It employed the psychedelic drug dipropyltryptamine (DPT) as its eucharist and believed the drug to be God in physical form.[5][8][2][11][12] However, the church also used other hallucinogens such as cannabis, peyote, LSD, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), and psilocybin as "angels".[2][9][5][12][4]

The Temple of the True Inner Light followed a kind of revisionist Christian religion that incorporated the use of psychedelic drugs.[1][2][11][5][13][12] It believed its founder Alan Birnbaum to be Christ and its members to be reincarnations of his disciples.[6][2][13] The church has been described as a cult.[11][2][4]

It was founded by Birnbaum in 1980, though earlier versions by Birnbaum existed under other names starting in 1974 or 1975, including the Church of the Psychedelic Eucharist (1975) and the Native American Church of New York (1976–1979).[1][2][7] Despite the latter name, the church was not actually Native American nor affiliated with the Native American Church (NAC) and had few or no Native American members.[2][4][7][14] The Native American Church of New York sued for the right to use various psychedelics for religious purposes in Native American Church of New York v. United States in 1979, but largely lost the case.[2][7][14][15] In addition, the church was raided and Birnbaum arrested for having a large amount of peyote in 1979, though the case appears to have never gone to court.[2][4] The Native American Church of New York claimed to have 1,000 followers in 1979, though the church's true membership over time is unknown.[2] The church renamed and turned their attention to still-legal psychedelics like DPT in 1980.[2]

The Temple of the True Inner Light became largely defunct by 2018, though it still exists as of 2023.[2][4][16] It has been covered in modern times by journalist Hamilton Morris in the late 2010s and 2020s.[4][16]

See also

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References

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  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Elcock, Chris (15 May 2023). Psychedelic New York: A History of LSD in the City. McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 255. ISBN 9780228016724.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Marinacci, Mike (4 July 2023). "Temple of the True Inner Light: A DPT Eucharist on the Lower East Side". Psychedelic Cults and Outlaw Churches: LSD, Cannabis, and Spiritual Sacraments in Underground America. Simon and Schuster. pp. 219–231. ISBN 9781644117088.
  3. 1 2 "Two Are Arrested Here at Park 'Freepot' Party". The New York Times. 3 September 1974. Those arrested were Alan Birnbaum, 27 years old, of 437 East Ninth Street, and Lawrence Berg, 31, address unknown. They were "observed handing out cigarettes from a bag," the police said.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Morris, Hamilton (31 May 2019). "Finding Hide-and-Seek". The Museum of Modern Art. Supplemental Video
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Lyttle, Thomas (1988). "Drug Based Religions and Contemporary Drug Taking". Journal of Drug Issues. 18 (2): 271–284. doi:10.1177/002204268801800212. ISSN 0022-0426. Retrieved 21 June 2026.
  6. 1 2 Stuart, R. (2002). "Entheogenic Sects and Psychedelic Religions" (PDF). MAPS Bulletin. 12 (1): 17–24. Temple Of The True Inner Light. [...] This Manhattan group asserts that anybody who is not a member of their church is doomed to be endlessly reincarnated in horrific hell realms. The members believe that their leader Alan Birnbaum is Jesus, and that they are the reincarnation of His disciples. [...] The public is invited to the Temple to participate in guided communion with DPT. The session occurs in a dirty room, sometimes with the gurgling sound of the toilet perpetually flushing in the background. [...] The public is invited to the Temple to participate in guided communion with DPT.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Lekhtman, Alexander (7 September 2017). "Does the First Amendment Protect Spiritual Cannabis Use? A D.C. Activist Plans to Argue For It". Psymposia. But is this same protection afforded people who are not members of the Native American Church? This question came up in Native American Church of New York v. U.S. (1979). Here, a church in New York sued for their right to use psychedelics in a religious context. The Church, founded by Alan Birnbaum, was not affiliated with the Native American Church and few of its members were of Native American descent. However, they believed that all psychedelics—including peyote, cannabis, LSD, and more—were deities and wanted to use them freely in their practice. The court concluded the law cannot restrict the peyote exemption to one particular church or group, and that any organization who used peyote sincerely in a religious context would be protected. However, the court would not let Birnbaum claim the exemption to use and distribute other psychedelics in his church besides peyote. The court noted the danger to society posed by psychedelics, and found that "[the plaintiff's] interest still must be subordinated to the important purposes served by the Controlled Substances Act."
  8. 1 2 Shulgin, Alexander; Shulgin, Ann (September 1997). TiHKAL: The Continuation. Berkeley, California: Transform Press. ISBN 0-9630096-9-9. OCLC 38503252. https://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/tihkal/tihkal09.shtml "There is a rather remarkable religious group known as the Temple of the True Inner Light, in New York City, which has embraced as its Eucharist DPT which they refer to as a powerful Angel of the Host. Their communion is confirmed by either the smoking or the drinking of the sacrament, and they have been totally unbothered by any agency of the Federal Government, as far as I know. It is not as if they were unknown. Quite on the contrary, I had on one occasion received a request for information on the drug from a reporter who was writing a story on DPT and its use in the church. [...] I wish the True Inner Light congregation Godspeed, if you will excuse the expression. My impressions of them from our correspondence have left me totally convinced of their integrity and dedication. [...]"
  9. 1 2 Jim DeKorne (26 July 2011). Psychedelic Shamanism, Updated Edition: The Cultivation, Preparation, and Shamanic Use of Psychotropic Plants. North Atlantic Books. p. 81. ISBN 978-1-58394-290-1.
  10. ↑ Kaplan, Eric (October 1987). "Still hippies, after all these years". Spy Magazine (October 1987): 61.
  11. 1 2 3 4 Macaya, Cristina (25 April 2024). "Religious Groups Fighting to Legalize Psychedelics". Uptown Radio. Walking by the Alden building on Central Park West it looks just like any other luxury property on the Upper West Side… But it's also listed as the address for The Temple of the True Inner Light. The temple, which also refers to itself as a church, practices a revisionist Christianity and uses psychedelics such as DMT, cannabis and mushrooms as a sacrament. If you google them, you won't find more than a brief Wiki page so I stopped by the building to try to learn more. No luck. But, what I did discover on an online forum called "shroomery.org" is that the Temple of the True Inner Light is sometimes referred to as a "cult." Mike Marinacci is the author of "Psychedelic Cults and Outlaw Churches." He wrote a chapter on the Temple of the True Inner Light in his book. [...]
  12. 1 2 3 "Report: Church lures converts with 'designer drug'". UPI. 2 July 1988. Retrieved 21 June 2026.
  13. 1 2 Gorman, Peter (January 1990). "Divine Smoke and God's Flesh: Psychedelics and Religion". High Times. No. 173. pp. 41–44, 75.
  14. 1 2 Fisher, Louis (2003). Congressional Protection of Religious Liberty. Nova Publishers. p. 56. ISBN 9781590336694. In 1979, a federal district court in New York read the peyote exception differently. In addition to the NAC, it ruled that the exception covered the Native American Church of New York, which was not affiliated with the NAC, and only a few of its roughly one thousand members were Indians. Also, the Native American Church of New York expresses a belief that all psychedelic drugs, including LSD and marijuana, are deities. 34 The district court concluded that the exemption for peyote is available to any bona fide religious organization that uses peyote for sacramental purposes and regards peyote as a deity.35
  15. ↑ Dawson, Alexander S. (31 December 2019). The Peyote Effect: From the Inquisition to the War on Drugs. University of California Press. p. 202. doi:10.1515/9780520960909. ISBN 978-0-520-96090-9. Retrieved 29 June 2026. A 1979 court ruling in New York affirmed that if he could establish that his church had a bona fide belief in peyote as a god, Alan Birnbaum's Native American Church of New York qualified for an exemption under the law (the case had begun with an exemption granted by the state of New York but later denied by the DEA), Native American Church of New York v. US, 468 F. Supp. 1247, 1251 (1979). It was affirmed in 1980.
  16. 1 2 Hamilton Morris (13 October 2023). "POD 89: September Patreon Q&A". The Hamilton Morris Podcast. Patreon. Event occurs at 30:11–33:23, 45:40–50:20. The Temple of the True Inner Light is a New York City-based religion that worships the psychedelic tryptamine DPT as their sacrament. They have existed in some form since the 1970s and in a extremely reduced capacity exist to this day. And it's been brought up a few times that I was working on a big project about the Temple of the True Inner Light. I actually spent the majority of the year 2018 intensively involved in researching them. [...] I navigated [these difficulties] in part by not publishing the article. [...] I will publish something one day. I do have the article basically written. I just need to navigate some of these remaining issues.
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