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Watchman Fellowship
By Rick Branch
Channeling
Organization Structure: Because Channeling is an activity of the individual, there isno hierarchical structure. While many channelers will associate together atsymposiums, psychic fairs and other New Age events, each is autonomous.
Unique Terms: Higher Self is the term given to that divine part of each human beingwhich knows ultimate Truth. Ascended Master is the name given to a greatteacher such as Jesus, Buddha, Saint Germain, etc. by New Age devotees. GreatWhite Brotherhood is a name for the collective group of Ascendπed Masters.
Other Names: Trance channeling.
INTRODUCTION
Simply stated, Channeling is the process whereby a human host claims to enterinto an altered state of consciousness thereby allowing a spirit entity or alien beingfrom some distant physical or spiritual realm to take possession of their body and giveinstructions to New Age believers.
This altered state can be in varying degrees of control. Some channelers will havecomplete control of their body and simply speak the message of the spirit guide.Others will completely lose consciousness, entering a deep trance as the message isgiven from the entity. Upon their return to consciousness those who enter the deeptrance state will remember none of the message. A third group of channelers will oftenremain conscious but will voluntarily yield control of their body for the purposes ofallowing the entity to use their hands for writing messages. This form of Channeling ismore commonly known as Automatic Writings.
HISTORY
The history of Channeling can be traced back to its earlier more blatantly Occultroots of Spiritism. In the 1840’s the Fox sisters claimed to communicate with the spiritof a murdered man, Charles Rosma. Their convincing act tricked thousands until1886 when they finally confessed that they were frauds.1 Despite their confession, theSpiritism movement was under way.
Several proponents of Spiritism, Automatic Writing and other forms ofcommunication with the dead would also make their mark on the history ofChanneling. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who founded Theosophy in 1875, claimed toreceive information from spiritual “superhuman ‘masters’ or ‘mahatmas’ allegedlyliving in the Himalayas.” Another noteworthy figure was Alice Bailey, founder of theArcane School in 1923, who channeled the “Tibetan master Djwhal Khal (D.K.).” Underthe guidance of D.K., Bailey would write twenty five books.2
Though there have been others who have certainly influenced the development ofChanneling, it was not until the 1960’s and ‘70’s that Channeling began to be commonly accepted and even fashionable. “The first popularized emergence of anunseen personality was the delivery of the Seth Material through the channel JaneRoberts. Published internationally in 1972 by Prentice-Hall, Seth Speaks quicklybecame a best seller as it explored the realities of the unknown world. Seth was thefirst unseen entity who was generally accepted by a large readership, numbering inthe millions.”3
Since the emergence of the entity Seth, the spirit world has allegedly been leakingspirits into the physical world at ever increasing speeds. Some of the most popularspirit entities would include J.Z. Knight’s Ramtha, Penny Torres’ Mafu and JachPursel’s Lazaris.
Jon Klimo of Rosebridge Graduate School claims, “By many estimates, there aretens of thousands of channels throughout the world today, with as many as athousand in Southern California alone.”4 These channelers with their entities in tow,travel to New Age fairs, seminars and conferences throughout the world. At theseconferences New Age devotees flock by the tens-of-thousands to hear the latest truths.
However, it is not cheap to hear the wisdom of an Ascended Master, the departeddead or an alien being from another realm. According to Robin Westen, students whowish to imbibe in channeled truth must pay “up to $100 for a private session [and upto] $1,500 for a seminar.”5
Elliot Miller of Christian Research Institute echoes this when he writes, “In 1987for a group session J.Z. Knight charged $400 per person, Jach Pursel $275. Privateconsultations with Pursel, for which there was at that time a two-year waiting list, cost$93 per hour. Kevin Ryerson charged ‘$250 per session, [and] has had so manyinquiries at his San Francisco office that he is referring business to otherchannelers.’”6
This phenomenal growth can be attributed in part to the fact that more peoplecurrently believe that contact with the dead or the spiritual realm is possible. In themid-1980’s an “opinion poll was conducted by Andrew Greeley and the University ofChicago’s National Opinion Research Council. It reports that 42 percent of Americanadults believe they have had some type of direct contact with a person who had died.”7Notice that the 42 percent are those who feel they have had contact, not those whobelieve that contact is possible. The latter figure would most certainly be higher.
DOCTRINE
Because there are thousands of channelers throughout the world, with differententities, who have supposedly lived at different times and in different geographiclocations, it would be assumed that the messages of the various entities would bedifferent. However, to make such an assumption would be an error.
While there are differences in the messages and even contradictions between themessages from entity to entity, the basic themes of all the channelers are the samethroughout the world.
Pantheism (God is All and All is God): The spirit entity Lazaris, through his hostJach Pursel, gives this insightful information concerning the New Age concept of God.
Now, as we were saying, the New Age is about developing a new relationship withGod. Yes, God is a very important part of this New Age. Part of developing that newrelationship is to replace inaccurate or only partially accurate ideas old pictures of
God with more correct images. God is All That Is. Throughout the history ofhumankind, you have been looking to describe this Force in your attempts to getcloser to It. The Source is God and Goddess and something that is more thaneither or both. It is All That Is. Every time you reference God/Goddess/All That Is,you are supporting yourself with a new and much more correct image, picture,idea of the Source.8
Hence, the channelers’ god is the pantheistic understanding that All is God andGod is All. Lazaris’ new “image [or] picture” is the next concept that all channelershave in common.
Humans are God: Since All is God, and you are a part of the All, then you areGod. This point is clarified by the entity Ramtha, through his host J.Z. Knight.
What be you? You are God! Man expressing as God often forget that which istermed his Godhood, thus makes him grovel in the marketplace for survival. ‘Tisnot the way it is. You are a God that needs to remember. When you leave thisaudience you are no longer that which is termed mere man but you are that whichis termed the Lord God of Your Totality. God culminates himself into All That Is.When that which is emitted from himself, of thought, is felt and sent back to him,that is what you are.9
Thus, man is, according to the channeled entities, a part of God with amnesia.Once mankind is able to remember or realize that All is God and that mankind is apart of the All, then it become obvious that mankind is God. Once this is realized, thenit become equally obvious that, as God, each individual possess all truth.
Truth: There is no ultimate objective truth. From the entities of Orin and DaBenthrough their hosts Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer, respectively, this vital piece ofinformation is given,
As you read this book, we encourage you to use only that information which ringstrue to the deepest part of your being and discard any information that does not.Trust your inner guidance and messages. You are a special, unique individualwith unlimited potential. We invite you to discover more fully your own divinity.10
The general theme of the Channelers is God is All and humanity is part of All.Once accepted, this truth rules out all objective truth. For certainly, if each person isGod, then who could tell another person [God] what was right or wrong, true or false.Each individual must discover truth for themselves. Hence, truth is subjective and isto be found within each individual’s inner nature.
This truth will be found, according to the channelers, when the New Age devoteebecomes aware of their individual inner Higher Self or God nature. When this isaccomplished, the individual can then begin to manipulate their views of reality.
Reality creation: Again from the spirit entity Lazaris comes this admonition,
Work together to create your reality. Go to the abstract Higher Self and dreamyour Dreams. Ask it to work from its level to help manifest your Dreams. While working with the abstract Higher Self, build your desire. Permit your Higher Self towork with you to enhance your skill of reality creation and to improve the art ofcreating exactly what you want... Co-create your reality together. An important,but often overlooked fact: Before you can co-create you must be able to create.Once you have worked with creating the reality you want, then you can work withyour Higher Self to figure out together what reality the two of you want. You caninvolve your Higher Self in the decision-making process.11
Thus the ultimate message of the New Age is manifest in the message of thevarious channelers. That message being, All is God, you are a part of the All, thereforeyou are God. Since you are God then you can alter reality to fit your view of truth, forall truth is to be found within the individual’s Higher Self. What if the truth of oneindividual contradicts the truth of another? That does not present a problem for theNew Age believer. All believers are God and therefore all views of reality are true.
BIBLICAL RESPONSE
1) All is not God. The Bible explains there are two classifications: Creator andCreation (Gen. 1:1; John 1:2-3; Col. 1:16-18).
2) The Bible forbids communication with the dead [Necromancy] (Lev. 19:31; Deut.18:9-12, 15; 1 Sam. 28; 1 Chron. 10:13-14; Isa. 8:19).
3) Channelers are either committing fraud (faking spiritual communication), areself-deceived (2 Thes. 2:10; 2 Tim. 3:12) or in contact with familiar spirits [demons]who are masquerading as deceased spirit masters (Isa. 19:3; Eph. 6:12; 1 John 4:1-3).
RECOMMENDED READING
New Age Spirituality, James Walker. This 90 minute cassette tape and manual willprovide an overview of New Age theology and history, thereby giving a betterunderstanding of how Channeling fits into New Age theology. Availible atwww.watchman.org.
A Crash Course on the New Age Movement, Elliot Miller. Aside from providing anexcellent overview of New Age theology, this book devotes two chapters to the topic ofChanneling. Discussing the various types of Channeling, doctrines taught bychannelers and a biblical response to the message of the channelers. Hard back, 260pages, indexed, footnoted.
Notes
Profile is a regular publication of Watchman Fellowship, Inc. Readers are encouraged to begin their ownreligious research notebooks using these articles. Profiles are published by Watchman Fellowshipapproximately 6 times per year, covering subjects such as new religious movements, counterfeitChristianity, the occult, New Age Spirituality, and related doctrines and practices. Complete ProfileNotebooks containing all Profiles published to date are available. Please contact Watchman Fellowshipfor current pricing and availability. All rights reserved © 1994.
By Rick Branch
Channeling
Organization Structure: Because Channeling is an activity of the individual, there isno hierarchical structure. While many channelers will associate together atsymposiums, psychic fairs and other New Age events, each is autonomous.
Unique Terms: Higher Self is the term given to that divine part of each human beingwhich knows ultimate Truth. Ascended Master is the name given to a greatteacher such as Jesus, Buddha, Saint Germain, etc. by New Age devotees. GreatWhite Brotherhood is a name for the collective group of Ascendπed Masters.
Other Names: Trance channeling.
INTRODUCTION
Simply stated, Channeling is the process whereby a human host claims to enterinto an altered state of consciousness thereby allowing a spirit entity or alien beingfrom some distant physical or spiritual realm to take possession of their body and giveinstructions to New Age believers.
This altered state can be in varying degrees of control. Some channelers will havecomplete control of their body and simply speak the message of the spirit guide.Others will completely lose consciousness, entering a deep trance as the message isgiven from the entity. Upon their return to consciousness those who enter the deeptrance state will remember none of the message. A third group of channelers will oftenremain conscious but will voluntarily yield control of their body for the purposes ofallowing the entity to use their hands for writing messages. This form of Channeling ismore commonly known as Automatic Writings.
HISTORY
The history of Channeling can be traced back to its earlier more blatantly Occultroots of Spiritism. In the 1840’s the Fox sisters claimed to communicate with the spiritof a murdered man, Charles Rosma. Their convincing act tricked thousands until1886 when they finally confessed that they were frauds.1 Despite their confession, theSpiritism movement was under way.
Several proponents of Spiritism, Automatic Writing and other forms ofcommunication with the dead would also make their mark on the history ofChanneling. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who founded Theosophy in 1875, claimed toreceive information from spiritual “superhuman ‘masters’ or ‘mahatmas’ allegedlyliving in the Himalayas.” Another noteworthy figure was Alice Bailey, founder of theArcane School in 1923, who channeled the “Tibetan master Djwhal Khal (D.K.).” Underthe guidance of D.K., Bailey would write twenty five books.2
Though there have been others who have certainly influenced the development ofChanneling, it was not until the 1960’s and ‘70’s that Channeling began to be commonly accepted and even fashionable. “The first popularized emergence of anunseen personality was the delivery of the Seth Material through the channel JaneRoberts. Published internationally in 1972 by Prentice-Hall, Seth Speaks quicklybecame a best seller as it explored the realities of the unknown world. Seth was thefirst unseen entity who was generally accepted by a large readership, numbering inthe millions.”3
Since the emergence of the entity Seth, the spirit world has allegedly been leakingspirits into the physical world at ever increasing speeds. Some of the most popularspirit entities would include J.Z. Knight’s Ramtha, Penny Torres’ Mafu and JachPursel’s Lazaris.
Jon Klimo of Rosebridge Graduate School claims, “By many estimates, there aretens of thousands of channels throughout the world today, with as many as athousand in Southern California alone.”4 These channelers with their entities in tow,travel to New Age fairs, seminars and conferences throughout the world. At theseconferences New Age devotees flock by the tens-of-thousands to hear the latest truths.
However, it is not cheap to hear the wisdom of an Ascended Master, the departeddead or an alien being from another realm. According to Robin Westen, students whowish to imbibe in channeled truth must pay “up to $100 for a private session [and upto] $1,500 for a seminar.”5
Elliot Miller of Christian Research Institute echoes this when he writes, “In 1987for a group session J.Z. Knight charged $400 per person, Jach Pursel $275. Privateconsultations with Pursel, for which there was at that time a two-year waiting list, cost$93 per hour. Kevin Ryerson charged ‘$250 per session, [and] has had so manyinquiries at his San Francisco office that he is referring business to otherchannelers.’”6
This phenomenal growth can be attributed in part to the fact that more peoplecurrently believe that contact with the dead or the spiritual realm is possible. In themid-1980’s an “opinion poll was conducted by Andrew Greeley and the University ofChicago’s National Opinion Research Council. It reports that 42 percent of Americanadults believe they have had some type of direct contact with a person who had died.”7Notice that the 42 percent are those who feel they have had contact, not those whobelieve that contact is possible. The latter figure would most certainly be higher.
DOCTRINE
Because there are thousands of channelers throughout the world, with differententities, who have supposedly lived at different times and in different geographiclocations, it would be assumed that the messages of the various entities would bedifferent. However, to make such an assumption would be an error.
While there are differences in the messages and even contradictions between themessages from entity to entity, the basic themes of all the channelers are the samethroughout the world.
Pantheism (God is All and All is God): The spirit entity Lazaris, through his hostJach Pursel, gives this insightful information concerning the New Age concept of God.
Now, as we were saying, the New Age is about developing a new relationship withGod. Yes, God is a very important part of this New Age. Part of developing that newrelationship is to replace inaccurate or only partially accurate ideas old pictures of
God with more correct images. God is All That Is. Throughout the history ofhumankind, you have been looking to describe this Force in your attempts to getcloser to It. The Source is God and Goddess and something that is more thaneither or both. It is All That Is. Every time you reference God/Goddess/All That Is,you are supporting yourself with a new and much more correct image, picture,idea of the Source.8
Hence, the channelers’ god is the pantheistic understanding that All is God andGod is All. Lazaris’ new “image [or] picture” is the next concept that all channelershave in common.
Humans are God: Since All is God, and you are a part of the All, then you areGod. This point is clarified by the entity Ramtha, through his host J.Z. Knight.
What be you? You are God! Man expressing as God often forget that which istermed his Godhood, thus makes him grovel in the marketplace for survival. ‘Tisnot the way it is. You are a God that needs to remember. When you leave thisaudience you are no longer that which is termed mere man but you are that whichis termed the Lord God of Your Totality. God culminates himself into All That Is.When that which is emitted from himself, of thought, is felt and sent back to him,that is what you are.9
Thus, man is, according to the channeled entities, a part of God with amnesia.Once mankind is able to remember or realize that All is God and that mankind is apart of the All, then it become obvious that mankind is God. Once this is realized, thenit become equally obvious that, as God, each individual possess all truth.
Truth: There is no ultimate objective truth. From the entities of Orin and DaBenthrough their hosts Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer, respectively, this vital piece ofinformation is given,
As you read this book, we encourage you to use only that information which ringstrue to the deepest part of your being and discard any information that does not.Trust your inner guidance and messages. You are a special, unique individualwith unlimited potential. We invite you to discover more fully your own divinity.10
The general theme of the Channelers is God is All and humanity is part of All.Once accepted, this truth rules out all objective truth. For certainly, if each person isGod, then who could tell another person [God] what was right or wrong, true or false.Each individual must discover truth for themselves. Hence, truth is subjective and isto be found within each individual’s inner nature.
This truth will be found, according to the channelers, when the New Age devoteebecomes aware of their individual inner Higher Self or God nature. When this isaccomplished, the individual can then begin to manipulate their views of reality.
Reality creation: Again from the spirit entity Lazaris comes this admonition,
Work together to create your reality. Go to the abstract Higher Self and dreamyour Dreams. Ask it to work from its level to help manifest your Dreams. While working with the abstract Higher Self, build your desire. Permit your Higher Self towork with you to enhance your skill of reality creation and to improve the art ofcreating exactly what you want... Co-create your reality together. An important,but often overlooked fact: Before you can co-create you must be able to create.Once you have worked with creating the reality you want, then you can work withyour Higher Self to figure out together what reality the two of you want. You caninvolve your Higher Self in the decision-making process.11
Thus the ultimate message of the New Age is manifest in the message of thevarious channelers. That message being, All is God, you are a part of the All, thereforeyou are God. Since you are God then you can alter reality to fit your view of truth, forall truth is to be found within the individual’s Higher Self. What if the truth of oneindividual contradicts the truth of another? That does not present a problem for theNew Age believer. All believers are God and therefore all views of reality are true.
BIBLICAL RESPONSE
1) All is not God. The Bible explains there are two classifications: Creator andCreation (Gen. 1:1; John 1:2-3; Col. 1:16-18).
2) The Bible forbids communication with the dead [Necromancy] (Lev. 19:31; Deut.18:9-12, 15; 1 Sam. 28; 1 Chron. 10:13-14; Isa. 8:19).
3) Channelers are either committing fraud (faking spiritual communication), areself-deceived (2 Thes. 2:10; 2 Tim. 3:12) or in contact with familiar spirits [demons]who are masquerading as deceased spirit masters (Isa. 19:3; Eph. 6:12; 1 John 4:1-3).
RECOMMENDED READING
New Age Spirituality, James Walker. This 90 minute cassette tape and manual willprovide an overview of New Age theology and history, thereby giving a betterunderstanding of how Channeling fits into New Age theology. Availible atwww.watchman.org.
A Crash Course on the New Age Movement, Elliot Miller. Aside from providing anexcellent overview of New Age theology, this book devotes two chapters to the topic ofChanneling. Discussing the various types of Channeling, doctrines taught bychannelers and a biblical response to the message of the channelers. Hard back, 260pages, indexed, footnoted.
Notes
- 1 Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Handbook of Today’s Religions: Understanding the Cults, (San Bernardino: Here’s Life Publishers,1983) 145-146.
- 2 Elliot Miller, A Crash Course on the New Age Movement, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989) 145-146.
- 3 Ramtha and Douglas J. Mahr, Voyage to the New World, (Friday Harbor: Masterworks, 1985) 12.
- 4 Jon Klimo, Channeling: Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources, (Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1987) 24.
- 5 Robin Westen, Channelers: A New Age Directory, (New York: Perigee Books, 1988) 13.
- 6 Miller, 161.
- 7 Ibid., 141.
- 8 Westen, 91-93.
- 9 Ramtha and Mahr, 127, 144.
Profile is a regular publication of Watchman Fellowship, Inc. Readers are encouraged to begin their ownreligious research notebooks using these articles. Profiles are published by Watchman Fellowshipapproximately 6 times per year, covering subjects such as new religious movements, counterfeitChristianity, the occult, New Age Spirituality, and related doctrines and practices. Complete ProfileNotebooks containing all Profiles published to date are available. Please contact Watchman Fellowshipfor current pricing and availability. All rights reserved © 1994.
