Gary Tillery: The Secret Life of Elvis Presley

anyone who knows anything about Elvis Presley knows that he was a very religious man but most people tend to think of him as a conventional Christian actually the truth is far more interesting he was brought up in the Assembly of God Church in Tupelo Mississippi which is it was just down there at Mae it's a very small town still this was Bible Belt Christianity they were fundamentalist so every word in the Bible was the literal word of God and they were Pentecostal so that you expected to see people jumping around with the Holy Spirit in church and speaking in tongues the Presley family moved to Memphis when he was 14 the mother and father his mother and father attended services there but they never joined the church he did a little later in his teens but it perhaps was more social than religious movement motivations there the church there had one of the most noted choirs gospel choirs in the south the if you've ever heard of the Blackwood brothers their family lived there and so they attended quite often I would sing as part of the service so that's probably what helped motivate him to do that he was it was also a good place to meet girls I want to point that out bird eye office was a shy guy and as a teenager he would often go to the the East Trigg Church he would go to the First Assembly of God Church in Memphis and after the service was started he would slip out the back with his girlfriend and they would drive a few blocks to the there's a black church down at the East Trigg Church he really liked the gospel choir there so he would go and whatta wait and watch listen and then just before the end he we drive back and show up at the end of the service of his own church but even he loved the gospel music so much he even tried out for the choir the the First Assembly of God Church they had a splinter group of the main choir called the song fellows when one of the members moved away elvis auditioned the pastor's son gave him the bad news telling him he just didn't have a good voice elvis he said why don't you just give it up no we all know how that worked out in 1956 Elvis didn't just become famous what happened was unprecedented for him maybe Frank Sinatra maybe Rudolph Valentino could understand what happened to him but they weren't in his league for the response and the fanaticism only the Beatles a decade later really came close to what happened to Elvis I mean he was at the top of the mountain pursued by everybody with the hysterical fans there's a across a great quote by Elvis's guitarist Scotty Moore about that year in 1956 he said we were the only band in history it was directed by an ass it was like being in a sea of sound he was just totally swamped just like the Beatles were later he loved being at the center of the craziness he never understood it but he accepted and enjoyed it Elvis was grateful to God and he had the feeling that he had been singled out for some purpose some reason the way things unfolded he quickly became known as the king of rock and roll that over shattered his love of gospel music but it was always there the last song he sang and that Sullivan was peace in the valley backed by the Jordanaires and at Christmas 1957 when the RCA wanted a Christmas album to promote it Elvis insisted on one side being religious music by the way to this day it's the best-selling Christmas album of all time he was drafted in early 1958 a few months later before he was to be deployed to Germany his mother died very suddenly of heart failure 46 it was the single most traumatic event of his life before or after he was totally devastated when he went to Germany with the people who knew him recalled his interest in reincarnation in parapsychology the brush with mortality must have had a big impact on him he read the Bible daily an awful excuse me and he often gave him prompt to sermons to his friends and assistants he'd get up on a table at home and preaches though from the pulpit one of his first albums after leaving the army was his hand in mine we've just heard a couple of tracks from that here it was a gospel album he put all the favorite songs of his youth onto that album outside his career in music Elvis had a dream he wanted to be a great actor the new James Dean most of his early films were the kind the Dean would have made if he hadn't died so young I take a look at King Creole which was actually developed with James Dean in mind and directed by the man who won an Oscar for Casablanca but Elvis's fans didn't share his dream they associated him with fun and music his box office suffered his manager Colonel Tom Parker convinced him that if he didn't give the fans what they wanted he was going to lose them so he started to make the frivolous films that we all remember they were hugely popular at first he quickly became the highest-paid actor in the world he had the world by the tail but he found it unsatisfying ever since he shot to fame in 1956 he had the gut feeling that God had singled him out for some special purpose but after several years he had to ask himself for what to make girl happy and kissing cousin that's where things stood in April 1964 he was in Hollywood to film roustabout his hairstylist moved on and he tried out a new one man named Larry Geller all of us had heard that the Geller was a person devoted to spiritual and mystical subjects when he was called to Elvis's home Geller was surprised when the King started peppering him with questions about spiritual matters when he showed surprise Elvis reassured him I really need to hear this you have no idea what this means to me Geller told elvis about the books he had read and one in particular the impersonal life I'm sure it's a familiar title to many of you Geller brought a copy on his next visit the impersonal life instantly became one of Elvis's favorite books you order 200 copies he started giving them away to his friends and often with passages underlined del Del R also introduced him to autobiography of a yogi' and beyond the beyond the Himalayas in the books of Madame Blavatsky Isis unveiled and The Secret Doctrine Elvis went on to study over a thousand books on esoteric subjects books by Krishnamurti or Spence key Leadbetter Manley Palmer Hall and others wherever he traveled his men had to lug around a personal library of 200 books one of the books he found most interesting was the initiation of the world.there Bureau Stanley alder Elvis came to believe in the great white Brotherhood I'm sure many of you are familiar with the group they're alleged to be a band of advanced beings who were living the Himalayas and direct the evolution of human race trying to make sick a sense of his own success Elvis concluded that he was being guided by masters one of whom was Jesus he was a voracious reader and he kept studying but what he really hoped for was a revelation that came in March 1965 he was driving from Memphis to Hollywood to begin filming harum-scarum Elvis didn't like to fly so he would drive to the coast in a customized Dodge motor home he and a few of the Memphis mafia were on route 66 near Flagstaff Arizona Elvis was at the wheel and Larry Keller was sitting up front with him suddenly Keller Geller heard him say whoa do you see what I see eller looked ahead to see what had caught Elvis's attention there was only one cloud in the sky a very strange cloud it was in the shape of a face and the person that resembled was unmistakable Joseph Stalin you have to imagine yourself back in that era to get the impact in those days Stalin was seen as every bit as evil as out of Hitler he was responsible for the deaths of millions of people ordered the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Russians created artificial famines that killed Ukrainians the cloud gradually began to lose its shape but suddenly Elvis hit the brakes and pulled off the road he opened the door of the motor home and went running into the desert calling for Geller to follow him Elvis could barely speak he said that he kept asking himself why the cloud had taken the form of Stalin was God trying to send him a message if God meant that he was evil like Stalin then he silently asked God to destroy him he didn't want to live with something evil he wanted to be filled with kindness and love and then it happened he told Geller the face of Stalin turned right into the face of Jesus and he smiled at me and every fiber of my being felt it for the first time in my life God in Christ or a living reality Geller didn't know what to say he had only seen the face of Stalin but he could plainly see that Elvis was experiencing some kind of religious ecstasy actually there was much more to the Epiphany of April 1965 but at the time Elvis was too shaken to confide it to anyone even Geller it wasn't until 9 years later that he finally confessed all that he had experienced while he was filming harum-scarum Elvis reread autobiography of a yogi' the book had a profound effect on him one day he looked up from reading and told Geller that he felt he was ready to be initiated into create yoga the world headquarters of the self-realization fellowship happened to be near Hollywood Elvis met the head of the group Sheree died Amata she was a direct disciple of Swami Yogananda Elvis was immediately fond of her because she looked so much like his mother Gladys he told diamante that he felt called to be a spiritual leader to his fans he said he was prepared to turn his back on his career and start a commune diamante persuaded him not to do anything rash she loaned him her personal lesson books and coached him on meditation techniques and spiritual development for the next couple of years he committed himself in work to develop his powers one of the members of the Memphis mafia George Klein recalled him practicing telekinesis Klein said Elvis once made him watch while he waved his hands above a bush Klein allowed that it might have been coincidence but the bush did move Elvis also practiced faith healing one of the Memphis mafia Jairus Jerry Schilling got into a motorcycle accident and was confined to a hospital for two weeks in excruciating pain Elvis visited and waved his hands over Jerry's back for 20 or 30 minutes the pain almost completely went away Elvis's grandmother many claimed that he could reduce her arthritis by making passes over her body his wife Priscilla said he often stopped her headaches but just the laying on of hands another member of the Mafia Sonny West made light of Elvis's new spiritual direction and was skeptical of his efforts to develop his spiritual powers even so when his baby son had a high fever one day he led Elvis see what he could do when Elvis left half on a half hour later the boy's temperature had dropped from 103 to below a hundred Sonny and his wife said they were amazed actress Deborah Walley co-starred with Elvis in the 1966 film spin out she said later that her conversations with him altered her life she recalled him saying one day I'm not a man I'm not a woman I'm a soul a spirit a force I have no interest in anything of this world I want to live in another dimension entirely I had no idea this Elvis was like this it's all I got studying him but part of the lesson in the impersonal life was the importance of focusing on spiritual things on breaking attachments to the material world Elvis had always been a generous person there's a story about him at the age of five his parents who were quite poor gave him a tricycle they managed to cope with money for a tricycle for Christmas he rode it around the yard a few days and then they noticed it was gone one day they asked him what he'd done with it you know what had happened to leave it somewhere and he said he gave it away to a friend so the father went over and talked to the family and got it back and a day or two later it happened again you know he gave it away because he thought this other kid didn't have one and so finally the family the parents let it go after all do you want to take a child with a big heart they teach him to be possessive Elvis's generosity is legendary he gave away jewelry clothing cars motorcycles boats trailers even houses to his staff and his friends but that was just the beginning he heard that a record producer he liked was an under a less and having trouble getting a kidney he gave $100,000 to speed up the process singer Jackie Wilson suffered a heart attack on stage and spent years in a comatose state before he passed away Elvis gave $40,000 for his care in a nursing home an old army buddy developed cerebral palsy Elvis bought him a specially equipped car paid a nurse to take care of him and hired the man's father as a gate guard at Graceland one of all of us as men came across an article about an elderly black woman in Memphis who had no legs and went from place to place on boards with roller skates on the bottom Elvis ordered the best electric wheelchair on the market and personally delivered it to her home without any warning on top of all that every Christmas he divided 50 to $100,000 among 50 Memphis charities Elvis worked hard and becoming more spiritual but he kept hoping for some dramatic change some feeling that he is achieving what he was supposed to and living up to his potential that change didn't come and he got discouraged on top of that in the late 60s his popularity as an actor was beginning to wane he bought a ranch just across the border from Memphis in Mississippi he brought all the Mafia there and set up his own version of a commune it didn't really work out the way he wanted but still he was relaxed and he was living in the country surrounded by his friends he kept putting off going back to Hollywood to film clambake Colonel Parker has been unhappy with Elvis's religious kick ever since Larry Keller came into his life the colonel didn't like Elvis to be focused on anything but his career he obviously had a vested interest in keeping him focused on that you finally put his foot down he called and demanded that Elvis honor his contract but after Elvis arrived in LA shortly before filming started he had an accident he will come not walk excuse me I woke up one night to use the restroom and tripped and fell and hit his head on the bathtub gave him a severe concussion he began having dizzy spells the studio had to delay a start of filming for two weeks Colonel Parker did what he had never done before which was to intervene in Elvis's private life he blamed Elvis's personal dissatisfaction and decline on popularity on his religious kick he accused Yeller of putting things in his head playing mind games with him he forbade Gellar to discuss spirituality with Elvis and Geller was shocked to see all of us go along with the Colonel's commands soon afterward he quit and moved on prodded by the colonel Elvis married Priscilla and refocused on his personal life Priscilla had never really shared his interest in the new spiritual direction it bored her she urged Elvis to burn all the books he had been reading nine months later lisa-marie was born and all the settled into a reasonably normal life but this was the era of Vietnam and Haight Ashbury and Easy Rider Elvis's music had lost its edge and his movies were considered fluff his career was in the doldrums then Colonel Parker got him a deal for a TV special for Christmas 1968 the colonel had in mind that he would stand on stage and sing Christmas carols but Elvis and the director of the special both saw it as an opportunity to show America how great a performer he really was the title of the show was simply Elvis but within days afterward people refer to it as the comeback special Elvis resurrected his career we followed followed that up with some remarkable new songs suspicious minds and in the ghetto and all of a sudden he was back at the top then the colonel made a deal for Elvis to perform in Las Vegas the International Hotel that really really Disqus for his great voice in his charisma but no one really understood how incredible a performer he was until he came out on stage and showed them he became a phenomenon all over again but just like before he still felt that something was missing and after every show he after every show he'd call his gospel singers to his suite and sing with them for hours this is after sometimes two shows a day he started buying new copies of the books that he had burned the women in his life at that time recalled nights with him when there was no sex just reading aloud in bed from the profit and the employment in personal life he renewed his friendship with diamante he told her he still wasn't satisfied with his role being wildly popular as a performer was not enough I want to feel God's love he said I want to give back I want to awaken and all these young people a closer relationship with God after years of drifting apart Priscilla divorced him in October 1973 his downward trajectory started that same year he performed in 168 shows around the country to keep up the pace he took greater and greater amounts of medication his pill problem has started in 1958 in the Army sergeant offered him some amphetamine so that he could stay awake for his guard duty after we returned to the states he kept taking them to avoid being tired and to stay slim for the movie roles he had no concerns about the artificial boost they gave him after all weren't they made by pharmaceutical companies didn't doctors prescribe them were they completely saved 1973 is when the crazy stuff began he developed severe insomnia and depression he started firing pistols indoors at lamps TVs and toilets he started cancelling shows on a regular basis they made a habit of dashing backstage to use an oxygen bottle it took staggering amounts of pills in those last few years just for the period from 1975 through mid 1977 his family doctor prescribed five thousand four hundred and fifty eight amphetamines 9567 sedatives in three thousand nine hundred and eighty eight narcotics over a two and a half year period and that was just Memphis in Los Angeles there was dr. Shapiro in Palm Springs dr. Kaplan and in Las Vegas dr. Ghanim he also received medication from his dentist dr. Hoffman of course we all know how it ended the abuse caught up with him but he continued to be a seeker right up to the very end when his body was discovered on August 16 1977 there was a book neck lying next to him on the floor the scientific search for the face of Jesus was a book about the Turin Shroud I mentioned earlier that Elvis didn't reveal everything about his epiphany in northern Arizona when he saw his the face of Jesus in a cloud Layden's career he finally did he had renewed his friendship with Larry Keller and they were sitting outside his Palm Springs home one night when he sheepishly admitted the whole truth it wasn't just that he had seen the face of Jesus the message he received was that he himself was Jesus that he was meant to be the Messiah for our time now a curious thing is John Lennon had the same experience he came into a meeting one day with the other Beatles and told them that he was the Messiah of course they knew he'd been taking huge amounts of LSD they just took it in stride but Elvis had no one to share his feeling with he kept it to himself and carried the burden of that realization for nine years if you think about it in 1967 it must have been a relief to assume that the colonel was right the Geller had been planning strange ideas in his head it gave Elvis and out an excuse to slip back into a normal life to marry Priscilla and be a father to Lisa Marie given time given the hindsight of a few more years he was able to distance himself from Elvis the into entertainer people treated like a deity he reinterpreted what had happened that day he saw himself instead as a man charismatic but still human who had been singled out for a mission his mission was to uplift people he admitted as much when he said I'm not a preacher I'm an entertainer a singer that's how God and the Brotherhood are helping and using me that's my role and I love it after Elvis died a lot of his fans just what didn't want to accept it there were there was a rash of Elvis sightings I'll leave you with the one I found most interesting this was the story of a Georgia police officer it was recorded by a psychiatrist who interviewed him interviewed him and the psychiatrist city came across is a very level-headed man the psychiatrist gave the policeman the fictitious name of Harold Welch and called his estranged son Tony both were Elvis fans Harold and Tony had a heated argument and the son took off from Atlanta for Los Angeles he had $2,000 in savings and the father worried he'd get involved with drugs for two weeks the family didn't hear anything from Tony so Harold and another son decided to fly out to LA to try to find him before leaving Harold had a dream Elvis came to his office wearing a police jacket and showed Harold a badge which is funny because Elvis always had this fascination for badges he told Harold that he was worried about Tony he wanted to show Harold where to find him there was a map of Los Angeles on the wall in the dream and Elvis pointed to a spot but Elvis had trouble focusing on the street names excuse me Harold had troubles focusing on street names in the dream then Elvis somehow took him there and showed him the location pointing up a corner drugstore with a small hamburger stand just across the street then he led Harold up the street to a rooming house there were similar buildings beside it in Elvis made him focus on the front door of one of those when Harold kept losing focus Elvis grabbed him by the arm and shook him look man you've got to look at this this is important he told him his son was on drugs Harold memorised the front of the building and thanked Elvis and woke up with a headache and ringing in his ears Aaron flew to Los Angeles with Tony's brother they checked with local police to learn the best neighborhoods to scout didn't rented a car and started to search 6 days later at 2:00 in the afternoon Harold recognized the corner drugstore from stream he looked across the street and sure enough there was the hamburger stand midway down the block Harold found three similar-looking rooming houses he studied the front door of each one carefully until he recognized the door Elvis had shown him when he knocked on that door an elderly woman answered Harold asked her ma'am do you have a Tony Welch living here she replied well yes I do he introduced himself to Tony's father and she directed him upstairs to the boy's room to the boy's room Harold knocked and he heard Tony tell him to come on in he was lying on his bed Tony went white to see his father in the doorway after only a few moments of conversation he confessed that he had was ready to come home just as Elvis had said in the dream Tony had turned out to be on drugs as of yet Harold hadn't told either son about his dream but that evening while they talked in a hotel room before they went back to Atlanta Tony confided dad it's the funniest thing two times since I've been out here I've had dreams about Elvis Presley in both dreams he told me you would be coming to get me he said he was worried about me he said he would work it out thank you for all thank you all for coming tonight sir I've heard on several occasions that Elvis was singing and his fans would put up a sign poster Elvis's king and then Elvis would publicly correct them yes and say Elvis is not King Jesus Christ is king those anecdotes true but am I for my research yes there was what I read was a woman had brought him a crown on a pillow and said you're the king and he says no I'm not is it I'm a singer said the king is Jesus so yes any other question Oh way back past scuse me it makes me think of people who are bipolar this kind of I attend a support group for depression and bipolar central to Paige and we've had a go there for their speakers and one guy talked about when he thought he was Jesus and anyhow now I'm really interested in looking up the astrology of all this and I've written down the dates to I don't really have a question but I mean amphetamines I didn't know that you know he was on all these kinds of drugs and that will that will that will pull out parts of you we were pressed so much and I remember when I took LSD I react spear Ian sting a baby but it was in symbolic form I dream I felt I was a baby crying for my parents who were royal MIDI we were in a medieval castle that's what I imagined and my parents were in another room and they couldn't hear me and in my own life I was left alone a lot as a baby so I think with the LSD it drugs can remove defense mechanisms and what lies underneath can then be symbolized or whatever the word repeat any comments Gary yeah I think part of it certainly had to do with his drug use I mean it was medication use really but I think a lot of it was the adoration the adulation that these guys got I mean it was they were always treated like a deity I mean the ones that the very top and speaking of Lenin - you didn't mention in your research did you find was Elvis ever under the care or did he ever seek the care of a psychiatrist or somebody other than what he thought the reading and the Geller and so forth that did he ever question his own sanity or that maybe he was delusional I didn't see anything like that except he kind of shirt or shrunk away from that in the late 60s on his own thinking you know something something maybe you know I've been misled you know but no again I found no reference to no reference to a psychiatrist no did the group around Elvis use drugs and did they encourage him to use drugs or was who was the leader concerning the drugs my understanding is he was the leader I mean he was the one who tried the amphetamines first got his guys to use them because it helped him keep up with his pace he did try marijuana he did try LSD but he had one of his guys try it first just to make sure and he he observed and was there for safety safety with the guy and then later on it was turn about the that was Sonny West who ended up taking care of him when his turn came but I got the feeling that Elvis was always in charge and led the direction my question has to do with his understanding of some of these readings the books that you mentioned I'm not familiar with them but I believe his education was quite limited and yet he was able to comprehend some of these very deep readings I find that very interesting yeah all he had was a high school education but he had a very curious mind and was a voracious reader so I guess he acquired this plus one of his one of his mafia members was Jerry Schilling who was a college guy and eventually graduated so he talked with him and I believe Geller was a college guy too so you know obviously just because you haven't gotten any formal education doesn't mean you don't have a bright mind so I think you did maybe a little bit off the wall I don't know the his performance style was very loose and different than other performers the swiveling of hips and everything yeah a lot of people that was really kind of shocking you know what it was almost pornographic what he was doing the other was it was like the wool this is wonderful this is a real loosening you know the usual very conservative way of a singer performing here what what was he doing what was that about was did that come naturally to him or was it something he developed you know in my understanding of it it came from his youth first of all in in the Pentecostal church when you got the spirit he moved you know and and you didn't worry about if you look funny or not if you were moving to the music and or whatever else what's mayor thought there oh but the influence of black culture till he was a big fan of rhythm and blues music and it occasionally got to the clubs for blacks done in South and that was their style you know they didn't they didn't stand on a stage like Pat Boone and saying you know they got loose and he did too so he kind of took that naturally it didn't mind showing it in front of an audience there was big stir and exclusively white and I think that's what you know electrified people and caused the change use the term Memphis mafia no do you oh I'm sorry I thought people were aware of that not mafias in New York God okay there was a story and I think it was in Las Vegas but for a while all these guys dressed alike they had the same kinds of suits and the same kinds of hats and they there were all his henchmen you know his close aides and they were like eight or ten or twelve of them so they came piling out of limousines one had a hotel one time and somebody was standing there with a newsman we didn't know it was a newsman at the time and he says who were these guys mafia and the the newsman said no that's the Memphis mafia you know and so it's stuck and he used it in print and then it took over so it was a funny this an aside the Elvis liked to refer to his guys as the twelve at one point there were 12 to lots of questions good I wonder what your own motivation has been in in looking into these people that have had kind of mystical aspirations my motivation curiosity I've always been intrigued by people who are off the charts somehow so that started but the John Lennon book started it and that was mainly just discovering what an incredible guy this this person was I mean we just tend to think of him as a Beatle and a songwriter and yeah he got into the peace movement but the more I studied him the more intrigued I got and it was only after I started delving into his spirituality that it realized in the second book or as I was doing the first book that George Harrison was more spiritual oriented than linen so that led to the second one and then but it to answer your question curiosity I don't understand a lot about musical rights but does somebody have the rights to his music this time and they're very jealously guarded I can imagine who has the rights the actually a lot of it now was who was it one of the big labels bought his early stuff in 1975 or six they don't know all of the Elvis music but I can't remember who it wasn't right no article was at RCA the Colonel Parker was always trained to work out deals where they made a big influence influx of money instead of collecting over twenty thirty years because you never know if you're going to get it and so he cut a deal with the record people recording studio company to buy the rights all at once and of course he got rich the colonel was always thinking of the colonel you

Channel: Theosophical Classics

Views: 390,660

Rating: 4.7403574 out of 5

Keywords: theosophical society, ancient wisdom, Elvis Presley, Yogananda, Swami Yogananda, Faith Healing, Numerology, Telekinesis, Gary Tillery (Author), Theosophical Society in America

Id: mex9owS4zwY

Length: 40min 17sec (2417 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020