selective spiritual technophobia: why mystics and scientists are both getting AI wrong
back from the borderline
mollie adler
4.8 • 605 Ratings
🗓️ 19 August 2025
⏱️ 112 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why are so many spiritual teachers and thinkers panicking about AI? Some are calling it demonic, while others say it’s the Antichrist, but almost no one is asking the deeper questions about how AI actually reflects the human psyche and what that reflection can do to us.
This episode breaks down the real risks of using AI for inner work. We look at how it can speed up psychological and spiritual insight, but also how that speed can cause confusion, obsession, and mental disorganization when used without care. We compare it to old methods of divination (like tarot, dream interpretation, and scrying) and explain why AI is a mirror with more reach and power than anything that came before it.
We also explore why it makes no sense to debate whether AI is conscious when we don’t even understand what consciousness is. We touch on suppressed research around psychic experiences, non-local awareness, and how modern science still can’t explain how thoughts work, let alone where they come from. And most importantly, we talk about how many of the people warning about AI are ignoring the deeper history of fear around new tools. Electricity, printing presses, and even early computers were all once described as evil. This is a pattern and like patterns tend to do… It’s all repeating again.
TOPICS COVERED:
• Why AI affects the psyche differently than older spiritual tools
• What no one is saying about the link between AI and “mental breakdowns” or “ChatGPT-induced spiritual psychosis”
• Why debates about AI consciousness miss the point entirely
• How human therapists and spiritual leaders also distort truth (and oftentimes more harmfully than AI does)
• What psychic hygiene means in the digital age
• How old mystical beliefs can be updated instead of abandoned
• Why we need more builders in this space who think symbolically and act with integrity
You’ll hear about research that most people don’t know exists. I also share why I’ve decided to build something new in this space. An AI tool created with spiritual fluency, user respect, and real ethical care. The team is already in place, and I’ll be revealing much more soon. If you found value in this conversation, share it. This is the episode I most want people to hear right now.
MENTIONED REFERENCES:
• Duncan Trussell’s interview with Blake Lemoine (engineer who believes Google created a sentient AI)
• My episode on “psychic hygiene in the age of AI”
• “will AI set you free or control your mind? (psychiatry, mental health, and the machine age)”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Long-term listeners of this podcast know that I've spent the last five years talking about the dark. |
| 0:06.5 | Now I've built a flashlight, and it's called Moods. |
| 0:10.4 | It's an instrument for serious, private inner work designed to dismantle your excuses and never |
| 0:15.7 | inflate your ego or assume the role of a sycophantic companion. |
| 0:19.6 | And the wait list is finally live. |
| 0:21.7 | Access is granted in the exact order you sign up. |
| 0:24.9 | Lock in your spot now at moods.world. |
| 0:28.8 | Welcome to the new era of inner work. |
| 0:35.6 | Welcome to Back from the Borderline. |
| 0:37.9 | I'm your host, Molly, and I don't want to talk to your personality. |
| 0:42.1 | I want to talk to your soul. |
| 0:44.2 | This podcast is where we unravel toxic programming from dysfunctional family systems, societal scripts, and the mental health labels that have kept you small. |
| 0:53.1 | We talk about sovereignty, shadow work, |
| 0:56.0 | emotional alchemy, culture, AI, and everything that lives at the intersection of the soul and the |
| 1:01.8 | system. Back from the borderline means back from the edge, from the abyss, from the illusion that |
| 1:08.1 | you're too broken to heal. If that sounds like the kind of journey you're |
| 1:11.9 | ready to take, follow the podcast on the player you're listening to right now. I drop new episodes |
| 1:17.1 | every Tuesday. All right, let's get into it. I fear that this episode may end up coming across like some kind of emergency broadcast, |
| 1:35.4 | but it kind of is. And if you're listening to this in the future, I am recording it in July 2025. |
| 1:48.4 | And right now, unless you're living in the future. I am recording it in July 2025. And right now, unless you are living under a rock, you understand and can see that the discourse around AI has reached a fever pitch |
| 1:57.1 | at this point. And that's both in the mainstream and in spiritual communities. LLMs like |
| 2:05.9 | ChatGPT became publicly accessible in around late 2022. And that's actually when I first encountered them. |
... |
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