New Age Part II: Channeling, Messages by Remote Control.

Don’t Touch That Dial!

by Eric Pement

They close their eyes and lips. For a minute or two, sitting with quiet focus, they breathe in great volumes of air, sucking up strength for a momentous journey. Suddenly, another personality takes over and an alien voice speaks.

Channeling has become one of the paramount landmarks of the New Age movement, eclipsing herbal cures, mundane astrology, and floatation tanks. Now an integral part of the Aquarian scene, channelers seem to have multiplied geometrically in the past fifteen years.

Trying to monitor this wave is an incredible task. Its influence is propagated through multiple avenues‑radio and TV interviews, private channeling sessions, cassette distribution, videotape sales and rentals, newsletters, magazines, mass seminars, conferences, and an endless stream of channeled literature. (They don't call it "automatic writing" for nothing.). Net profits on all this have been estimated at $100 to $400 million annually.'

Exactly what is it? Jon Klimo, author of a sympathetic yet thorough survey of channeling, says it "is a phenomenon in which otherwise ordinary people seem to let themselves be taken over by, or in other ways receive messages from, another personality who uses them as a conduit, medium, or channel for the communication‑hence the term medium or channel. 112

One of the more popular channelers is J. Z. (Judy Zebra) Knight. She channels Ramtha, also known as "the Ram," supposedly a 35,000‑year‑old being from Atlantis, beyond good and evil, who is part of "God." Ramtha has made Knight a millionairess several times over; she, in turn, has had Ramthals name copyrighted to prevent anyone else from channeling him.

Penny Torres and Jach Pursel are the two most popular rivals to J. Z. Knight. Penny channels Mafu, "a highly evolved being from the seventh dimension, last seen on earth when he incarnated as a leper in first­century Pompeii."‑' Mafu, like Ramtha, speaks with a Slavic accent. Meanwhile, Jach Purse] channels Lazaris, a "group being" from beyond time and space who has (have?) never been embodied in our dimension. Lazaris speaks with a lisp.

The range of "entities" supposedly being channeled today is virtually unlimited. A valuable critique by John Ankerberg and John Weldon notes that the personalities being channeled 66claim to be various aspects of the human mind or the 'collective' mind of humanity .... They also claim to be the Holy Spirit, troubled ghosts, the spirits of animals and plants (dolphins, trees, flowers), multiple human personalities, the inhabitants of mythical cultures (Atlanteans, Lemurians), and even a possible alien computer that exists in the future. Critics ... have come to conclude the sanity of the nation is at risk. 114

Channeling, understood in its wider sense to include spirit possession in general, can be traced back to the earliest times and civilizations. The acceptance of animism (the belief that spirits are present in all of nature, including plants, inert objects, and seasons) or the practices of ancestor veneration and shamanism provide primitive cultures sufficient groundwork for the rise of spiritism.

Channeling was prevalent in ancient Egypt, India, and the Near East; thus, we should pay special attention to the biblical injunctions on this topic.

The commandments given to Moses after the Exodus (about 1400 B.C.) expressly forbid communication with "spirit mediums" (Lev. 19:31), or going to one who "inquires of the dead" (Deut. 18:11). Mosaic law prescribed the death penalty both for the medium and for the person who sought out the medium for advice (Lev. 20:6, 27). Indeed, one of the chief reasons King Saul, Israel's first king, was slain was for "going to one who had a familiar spirit, to inquire of it" (1 Chron. 10:13).

In New Testament times, possession and control by discarnate spirits were accepted realities, The actions of Jesus in casting out "demons" and 66 unclean spirits" are mentioned repeatedly in the Gospels (Matt. 8:28ff, 9:32ff, 12:22ff, 17:14ff, etc.). Jesus likewise commissioned his apostles to cast out demons (Matt. 10:1) and gave this authority to others (Luke 10:17). The early church continued to conduct exorcisms (Acts 8:7, 19:12).

An interesting incident regarding a channeler appears in the sixteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. While Paul and Silas were evangelizing in Philippi, they were persistently followed by a slave girl "with a spirit of divination" (Acts 16:16). The Greek text literally reads a "python spirit" [Gk. pneuma puthona] a reference to an entity named The Python, which inhabited the high priestess Of the temple of Apollo at Delphi (the famous "oracle of Delphi"). A "python spirit" later became a generic term for a discarnate entity which predicted the future. The apostle Paul finally "turned and said to the spirit, 'I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.' And he came out that very hour" (Acts 16:18).

It bears noting that this spirit of divination evidently could provide some genuine information. This was not a natural ability, nor was the woman using methods of fraud, because when Paul cast out the spirit, she lost her powers and the ability to make money for her owners (v. 19).

For centuries, among monotheistic cultures spirit communication was usually limited to spirits of divine origin (God, Jesus, one of the angels, etc.). Muhammad claimed multiple encounters with the angel Gabriel, whose messages are preserved in the Qur'an. In the Middle Ages, Roman Catholic mystics were permitted visions and appearances of Jesus or the Virgin Mary. Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688‑1772) founded a major cultic movement after countless visions and encounters with angels. In nineteenthcentury America several cults, such as the Mormons and the Shakers, claimed communion with angels or spirits of the dead.

Mary Baker Eddy often sought to distinguish Christian Science from spiritualism. Yet she herself acted as a trance medium briefly before her "discovery" of Christian Science (1866). Georgine Milmine's biography of Mrs. Eddy relates that she channeled the spirit of her dead brother Albert in 1864 (or claimed to, at any rate). Milmine reproduces a photograph of automatic writing, purportedly from Albert, in Mary's hand.5

The channeling floodgates opened in this country in the mid­ nineteenth century with the advent of spiritualism, the attempt to communicate with spirits of the dead. Historians almost universally trace the origin of this movement to 1848 in Hydesville, New York, with Margaret and Kate Fox.

Margaret was fourteen and Kate was eleven when they first heard the sounds of knocking, furniture being moved, and other sounds in various rooms of their home, in late 1847. On the night of March 31, 1848, twelve year ­old Kate challenged these unseen powers to repeat the snaps of her fingers, which they did. Each number of snaps would be followed by the same number of raps, and so the communications began. News spread rapidly, and the family‑home was visited by interested writers and curiosity seekers. The sisters began to hold seances, communicating with the spirits by means of a simple code.

The first message the Fox sisters received was this:

Dear friends, you inust proclaim these

truths to the world. This is the dawning of

a new era, and you must not try to conceal it

an ‑ y longer. When You do your duty , y,

God will protect You and good spirits

will watch over ,,. 6

Fascination with spiritualism spread like wildfire, and within thirty years there were tens of thousands of spiritualists in the U.S. and Europe, and national organizations were formed. In 1855 the first national spiritualist newspaper was issued in England; in 1866 a national conference was held in Rhode Island, where spiritualists passed resolutions that citizens should abandon all Christian ordinances and worship and close down all Sunday schools. In 1870, Sir William Crookes, famed scientist who invented the Crookes tube (forerunner of the modern picture tube), asked England's scientists to investigate spiritualism.

Queen Victoria consulted several mediums, hoping to speak with her late husband Prince Albert. Seances were held at the White House under Lincoln's presidency. British prime minister William E. Gladstone, Canadian prime minister MacKenzie King, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes) were all converts to spiritualism.

Renowned magician and escape artist Harry Houdini tried to prevent Conan Doyle from being duped by crank mediums, but Doyle remained convinced that the spiritualists had true supernatural powers. He believed spiritualism was "a new revelation" to mankind.

"Christianity must be modified by this new revelation," Doyle wrote. Messages from the spirit world persuaded him that, "One can see no justice in a vicarious sacrifice, nor in the God who could be placated by such means. 117

Houdini's 1924 autobiography, Houdini: A Magician among the Spirits, is a fascinating account of the origins and numerous frauds connected with nineteenth‑century spiritualism. After over thirty years of research, he wrote, "I have accumulated one of the largest libraries in the world on psychic phenomena, Spiritualism, magic, witchcraft, demonology, evil spirits, etc., . . . but nothing I ever read concerning the so‑called Spiritualistic phenomena has impressed me as being genuine."8

It was not Houdini, however, who struck the greatest blow against spiritualism. A shattering revelation had come a generation earlier, from Margaret and Kate Fox themselves.

Forty years after the Fox sisters first told the world of the spirit rappings, both confessed they were frauds. On October 21, 1888, fifty­four‑year‑old Margaret Fox gave a public confession at the New York Academy of Music, before an audience of over two thousand people. Standing in her stocking feet on a small pine table on the stage, she produced loud, distinct raps which could be heard throughout the building. Her sister likewise gave consent. That same year, she told a crowd, "I am here tonight, as one of the founders of Spiritualism, to denounce it as absolute falsehood ... the most wicked blasphemy the world has ever known."

One year later, they changed their minds, and both recanted their previous confessions! They claimed the spirit manifestations had always been genuine, retracting all they said previously. The Fox sisters had become alcoholics in the 1860s, and fellow spiritualists claimed their confessions had been bought off. The last years of their lives were spent in drunkenness, and their public speech now contained little more than profanity. Both died as alcoholics, Kate in 1892 and Margaret in 1893, both cursing God as they died. 10

Spiritualism eventually diversified into various spiritualist sects, ranging from the vehemently anti‑Christian to the strongly religious, complete with sacraments and baptism. The spiritualist movement also gave impetus to the study of psychic research and parapsychology. The early quarter of the twentieth century witnessed the epiphany of a few shining stars in the astral firmament. Two of these were channeled books, the other was the socalled "sleeping prophet," Edgar Cayce (1877‑1945).

In Cayce's case, he would fall asleep and a voice would take over, initially diagnosing and curing diseases. in time, questioners asked about spiritual matters, and the channeling promoted reincarnation, monism, astrology, gnosticism, Atlantis, and mediumship. Cayce's followers recorded over 14,000 trance sessions with him. The transcriptions of these "readings" form a vast body of occult reference material which has been used for decades.

Equally potent has been The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, published in 1908. Channeled through Levi Dowling, this book describes a reincarnated Jesus who attained "Christ consciousness" after visiting Egypt, Greece, and India, during the so‑called "silent years" before his public ministry.

For a book supposedly transcribed from flawless "Akashic records" (a scribal form of the Universal Mind, containing all the history of the universe), The Aquarian Gospel is riddled with error, beginning from its first verse. It says "Herod Antipas was ruler of Jerusalem" when Jesus was born. That should have been Herod the Great, not Herod Antipas. It has Jesus visiting Lahore in Pakistan (31.1); Lahore didn't historically exist until six hundred years later. It shows Jesus visiting magicians in Persepolis (39.1); Persepolis was destroyed by Alexander the Great in 330 B.C. and was never rebuilt. Nonetheless, this book has been adopted by innumerable readers as "proof" of a secret occult past for Jesus Christ. I I

The Urantia Book was also obtained through trance channeling. Its unknown author served as a medium for dozens of extraterrestrial intelligences, beginning in the early 1900s. Though not published until 1955, The Urantia Book has also had significant influence in promoting New Age beliefs.

It would be hard to say just when "modern" channeling began, but many point to the Seth material, channeled through the late Jane Roberts (died 1984). Jane, a housewife and would‑be writer, first encountered "Seth" through a spontaneous experience in September 1963. Jane said "a fantastic avalanche of radical, new ideas burst into my head with tremendous force," not unlike an LSD trip. 12

Jane transmitted this material for over twenty years; it is eminently New Age writing. Jane Roberts was the first contemporary channeler to gain widespread acceptance in the 1970s, and since then the volume of channelers and channeled writings has saturated our society.

How does channeling fit in the larger picture? We interviewed Joel Bjorling, author of a forthcoming bibliography on channeling. We asked how contemporary channeling differs from its nineteenth­century predecessor. He pointed out that in terms of content (i.e., what is taught), both have the same philosophy and share a common root.

'The outward phenomenon is also similar: a disembodied entity speaks through the channeler, usually in a trance state.

One difference this author has observed is that the spiritualist movement focused on dimly lit seances and supernatural manifestations‑table lifting, "direct voice" phenomena, ectoplasm, materialized writing or faces, etc. By contrast, today's channelers do everything under bright lights, and the only visible event is when an alien personality takes them over. The channelers usually don't exhibit the powers or physical phenomena, such as levitation, that were part of spiritualism.

The basic emphases have also differed. In spiritualism, the emphasis was on "proof of survival" after death, and the public largely sought reassurance that their deceased loved ones were happy in the Great Beyond. In modern channeling, the focus is on "higher intelligences" who have come to teach us Truth, showing us how to alter reality and achieve self‑fulfillment.

Modern channeling centers around certain themes: (1) we are all God(s), (2) there is no death, (3) reality is a product of the mind, (4) prosperity is our divine right, and (5) we must preserve the earth from nuclear or ecological catastrophe. (The channelers pick up on most matters of widespread concern.)

Despite the differences between the two movements, both spiritualists and channelers are agreed that the traditional Christian concept of God is false. Consider the following statement:

Agreement [among channelers] can be said to exist on one point only, namely, that the historic Christian doctrine respecting the nature and character of the Deity is an imposition, the fabric of an artificial scholastic philosophy, and contradicted by sound reason as well as by the unanimous testimony of the spirit world. It is certainly a remarkable fact that on this point the higher intelligences are strangely unanimous and emphatic in their statements, and all spiritualists are agreed.¹³

Though this observation seems strikingly contemporary, it was actually written over eighty years ago, in an analysis of the spiritualist movement. The parallels are too close to be coincidental.

Is all channeling satanic?

In the direct sense, no. Many channelers are not communicating with any spirit, but are simply hucksters who have "learned the rap" and are capitalizing on the current fascination with discarnate intelligences. J. Z. Knight may be one such person‑former followers testify to having seen her practice Ramtha's mannerisms, speech patterns, and accent.

Personally, I have adopted Occam's razor when dealing with most supernatural claims. Named after William of Occam, this principle states that when several explanations to a problem are possible, the simplest is to be preferred to the more complex. As he phrased it, "Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity." William was using "entities" as a synonym for explanations, but in this context I rind the phraseology exquisitely apropos.

Some channelers may not be intentional fakers, but self‑deceived instead. I have known people who couldn't tell the difference between their own wayward thoughts and the voice of God. Selfdeception of this sort can range all the way to outright mental illness.

I also don't discount the possibility that some trance channeling may arise from one's own unconscious self‑will. For instance, a voice which claims to be Sushi from Napaj, a deity of great power and pomp, may simply spring from the inner fantasies of the unregenerate mind. Those who believe in man's depravity should consider that man's own evil heart may well be the source of the channelers' vulgar pronouncements.

Yet we cannot deny the reality of the spiritual realm. Both Scripture and experience show that certain phenomena must be accounted for by demonic spirits. History records intrusions of the demonic throughout all times and cultures, and we have no less an authority than the Lord Jesus Christ himself who testifies to the reality of this fact‑and to his own power to save men from the powers of darkness.

In the preceding discussion, though Satan need not be the immediate source of a channeled message, he may be the remote cause behind it. Jesus called Satan "a liar and the father of it" (John 8:44) and Satan's parentage of occult sin is sure even though it may not be immediate.

On one level, whether channeling is "real" or "faked" is immaterial; the person who seeks after "mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them" will be alienated from the presence of God and subject to judgment (Lev. 20:6). Remember that one may forfeit his soul for either "real" money or counterfeit. In a case such as this, in the last analysis it's not the medium of exchange which matters but the consequences of the transaction.

REFERENCES: 1. Ka tharine Lowry, "Channelers," Omni, Oct. 1987, p. 50. 2. Jon Mira,!, Channeling: Investigation, on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources (Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1987), p, 1. 3. Brooks Alexander, "Theology from the Twilight Zone," Christianity Today, 18 Sept ' 1 987, p. 22. 4. John Ankerberg and John Weldon, The Fact., a. Sprint Guides (Eugene. Oreg.: Harvest House Publishers, 1988), p. 16. 5. Georgine Milmine, The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Ch.. Science (1909: rpt. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1971). pp. 64‑68. 6. Raphael Gasson, The Challenging Counterfeit (Plainfield NJ: Logos, 1966). p. 48; also in Klimo, p. 99. 7. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The New Revelation (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1918). pp. 70, 71. S. Harry Houdini. Houdini A Magician among the Spirit., (1924: rpt. New York: Ara. Press, 1972), p. i.. 9, Gasson, p. 49. 10. Casson. p. 49. 11. Per Beskow, Strange Toles About Jesus (Philadelphia: Fort­press. 1985). 12. Klilmo, p. 30, 13. J. Godfrey Raupert, Modern Spiritism London: Sands & Co., 1904), pp. 210‑211.