The cruel charade of Channeling

Bombast and Flitterflop fish the poisonous pool of New Age Channeling and expose the piranhas of poppycock who swim in its murky waters

PART SEVEN of Astral Conversations—an unusual series of investigations into the occult with a humorous twist.

Introduction

Channeling is simply a new word for mediumship. It is in no way different from the 'spirit' messages received by spiritualists in the 19th and 20th centuries. The deceitful entities responsible for such communications, wrongly perceived as 'spirit guides' and 'extraterrestrials', swarm like a shoal of hungry sharks within the Astral gloom; ever on the look out for easily influenced and gullible individuals, in order to unload within their untrained minds the fantasies they can no longer hold themselves.

This is not to say that elevated spiritual teachings may not be communicated through the agency of discarnate beings, as you can read in our afterword. But such communications are very rare indeed and require conditions far removed from the mephitic mental atmosphere and emotionalism of the average New Age channeler. As we shall see, the messages that are received by channelers range from the nonsensical through the blindingly obvious to the almost wise. The latter are the most dangerous of all, for in mixing up a few basic occult truths—widely known to many occultists and mystics—with fantasies, the seeker is more completely deceived than if they were the victim of downright lies.

Regular readers of Astral Conversations will welcome the reappearance of 'M' in this discussion, whom we first encountered in the fourth article in this series, Consciousness after death. Then he did much to clarify the muddled thinking of our two intrepid explorers. We hope his presence will once again shine a clear light upon the cruel charade of channeling, for that is just what it is.

BOMBAST (warily eyeing an enormous pile of papers balanced precariously on Flitterflop's knees): "What on earth have you got there? Not a magnificent octopus on the cult of credulity?"

FLITTERFLOP: "Close. . ."

BOMBAST: "Your autobiography?"

FLITTERFLOP: (shaking his head): "Very droll. No, I doubt whether anyone would read it. This (tapping the pile), on the other hand, is a just a very small sample of what millions of people are reading around the world."

BOMBAST (intrigued): "So what is it?"

FLITTERFLOP: "The Law of One."

BOMBAST: "One what?"

FLITTERFLOP: "Good question. It consists of a series of communications from a non-human intelligence named 'Ra', claimed to be a group of individual souls at a 'higher level of spiritual evolution', that were channeled by Carla L. Rueckert in the early 1980s."

BOMBAST: "I know that law."

FLITTERFLOP (surprised): "You do?"

BOMBAST: "Yes, the law of one born every minute."

FLITTERFLOP: "So you don't think there's any truth in this material?"

BOMBAST: "That remains to be seen, but I have yet to read any channeled messages that contain anything that hasn't been said better before or that reveal any scientific or occult facts that aren't already known."

FLITTERFLOP: "Perhaps you're right."

BOMBAST (smugly): "I usually am. So how was this enormous pile of prophetic piffle produced? Automatic writing? Table rapping? Crystal gazing?"

FLITTERFLOP: "Tuned trance telepathy. Carla L. Rueckert, Jim McCarthy and Don Elkins formed a paranormal 'research group' which disseminated 'The Law of One."

BOMBAST: "Ah—'tuned trance telepathy'. That sounds so much more scientific than mediumship, doesn't it? Who wants to hear messages from a discarnate dustman from Doncaster who misses his pet moggie 'Tibbles' and worries whether his missus is getting too fond of the postman?"

FLITTERFLOP: "Ironically, it was Spiritualism that developed Carla's mediumistic abilities through her participation in séances at her local Spiritualist Church."

BOMBAST: "So how did she come to cook up 'Ra'—sorry, slip of the tongue—hook up with 'Ra' in the first place?"

FLITTERFLOP: "She prided herself on her credulity, and in the 'Law of One' transcripts freely admits that: 'almost anyone can play a joke on me because I do not catch on quickly. I have a way of taking things as they come and accepting them at face value and only afterwards analysing what has occurred. This gullibility is a vital factor in obtaining good results in paranormal research.' She was completely unconscious during the channelings and didn't remember anything she had said when she awoke."

BOMBAST (sarcastically): "One couldn't wish for better qualifications in a light-worker for Truth."

FLITTERFLOP: "Well, if that rings an alarm bell, the second séance Carla attended before she channeled 'Ra', should ring a whole peal of them. (Reading from his pile of papers): After the traditional Spiritualist preliminaries—the Lord's Prayer and a happy-clappy rendition of 'Rock of Ages'—the usual spooks materialised, followed by the sudden appearance of what Carla describes as 'an especially inspiring master', whereupon the room grew very cold. The 'master' delivered an inspirational message which Carla doesn't mention for reasons best known to herself, after which he told the circle that he would touch them so that they would know that he was real. He did so with enough force to bruise Carla's arm. Then he told them that he would walk through them so that they would know that he was a spirit. After he had blessed the suitably impressed circle, he walked back through them again, and congealed down into a small pool on the floor—of what we are not told—and vanished."

BOMBAST: "I could tell you what it was, but it might offend your delicate sensibilities. What you've just read out could have come straight from one of H. P. Blavatsky's own accounts of the séances she attended in America in the 1870's. It's a pity none of the people who believe in Carla's messages have ever read Blavatsky's books, or they'd recognise all the tell-tale signs of the presence of an elementary from the lowest astral realms. Cold invariably precedes the presence of negative entities as every good 'ghost' hunter knows."

FLITTERFLOP: "Surely even the most credulous believers in channeling should be convinced by this that there is nothing good in such contacts?"

BOMBAST: "I only wish that were true. Sadly, credulity knows no limits. Glittering, crystal spaceships whizzing to distant star systems on vital missions and the thrill of unimaginably advanced technologies which will save mankind from the hole we've dug ourselves into are irresistible to today's switched-on generation. They feel drawn towards aliens for the same reason Spiritualists were attracted to the departed spirits of their loved ones. Both pander to the universal desire to be loved and rescued from the results of our own stupidity, greed and selfishness. But aliens are much more appealing than a dead dustman from Doncaster because they foster the naive hope that technological progress alone will save us and the planet."

FLITTERFLOP: "Will it?"

BOMBAST: "Probably not. So what earth-shattering messages did Carla and her chums channel which even you found appealing?"

FLITTERFLOP: "Well...the Law of One states that there is only one, and that one is the Infinite Creator which 'Ra' also calls 'Infinite Intelligence' and 'Intelligent Infinity'.

BOMBAST: "And you think this is a 'new' revelation, do you?"

FLITTERFLOP: "Not really, no. Hermes said much the same thousands of years ago. So did the Buddha."

BOMBAST (stifling a yawn): "Precisely—next."

FLITTERFLOP (rifling through his pile of papers and selecting several sheets): "A lot of the 'Ra' material is in question and answer form."

BOMBAST: "Such as?"

FLITTERFLOP (reading): "If we already are the Creator, why do we have to choose a path back? Answer: It's a matter of becoming more and more of that which we already are."

BOMBAST (drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair): "A typical mixture of truth and fantasy which is symptomatic of most New Age pronouncements. Next."

FLITTERFLOP (reading on): "What choices do we have for paths? Answer: Service to self or service to others. Or neither."

BOMBAST: "Brilliant! Blavatsky must be gyrating in her grave! So what happens if we choose neither according to 'Ra'?"

FLITTERFLOP: "We reincarnate until we do choose one of the two paths."

BOMBAST: "Priceless! Don't these numpties know that this is the ABC of occultism, not to mention the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta? It was taught thousands of years ago in India and forms the basis of many Theosophical teachings from which the charming Carla, or her two confederates, clearly filched it."

FLITTERFLOP: "I doubt that they can even spell 'Advaita Vedanta', never mind know what it is. It gets better, or worse, depending on your point of view."

BOMBAST (leaning forward): "Out with it. I'm agog to know what other threads of truth this trio of transcendental tautologists have stolen from their betters and twisted out of shape to befuddle their listeners."

FLITTERFLOP (reading): "In order to choose the positive path, at least 51 per ent of our thoughts and actions must be dedicated to the service of others. For the negative path, at least 95 per cent must be self-serving. Between the two lies 'the sinkhole of indifference'. If we choose one of the paths successfully we graduate to a planet of service to others or a planet of service to self."

BOMBAST: "Fascinating. How long do we get to choose?"

FLITTERFLOP: "75,000 years apparently. They probably plucked that number out of their own heads."

BOMBAST: "I rather think they extracted it from a very much lower part of their collective anatomy!"

FLITTERFLOP (laughing): "Very likely. After that, they say the earth will be a service to others planet. Those who have chosen service to others will work together in the manner that seems best to them. Those who have chosen service to self will go to planets dedicated to their path. Those who have not yet chosen will go to other third-density planets."

BOMBAST: "What on earth is a 'third density planet?"

FLITTERFLOP: "Good question. According to 'Ra' the 'third density' has an infinite number of levels and there are seven 'densities' in all."

BOMBAST: "If there are an infinite number of levels why are there only seven densities?"

FLITTERFLOP (leafing through his papers): "Er...just a minute...let me find it...Ah, here it is. 'Ra' says the ways of the octave are without time; that is, there are seven densities in each creation infinitely."

BOMBAST: "It seems to me that these purveyors of poppycock have hijacked a few basic occult facts known to even the dimmest Theosophist and deliberately obfuscated them by giving them different names. Either because they do not know the true facts, have misunderstood them, or, if I were to be unkind——"

FLITTERFLOP: "——which you never are."

BOMBAST: "——Which I never am—because they deliberately want to mislead and deceive people. The seven 'densities' have been lifted straight from H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine where they are described as the seven astral planes or realms that surround the earth. Actually, there are twelve such realms described in the Vedas, all named and described in minute detail, six above the earth and six below it, making seven in all if we include the earth when we count them in either direction. This has been known by Theosophists for the past 120 years, and was known to the Sages of India thousands of years before that, as you can read in The Book of Sa-Heti and The Quest of Ruru. What other pearls of wisdom are there in your papers?"

FLITTERFLOP: "Ra' says to serve the self is to serve all. The service of the self, when seen in this perspective, requires an ever-expanding use of the energies of others for manipulation to the benefit of the self with distortion towards power."

BOMBAST: "If that isn't a justification for the worst kind of self-indulgence I don't know what is!"

FLITTERFLOP: "There's more. Listen to this: 'This transitional body is one which will be able to appreciate fourth density vibratory complexes as the in-streamings increase without the accompanying disruption of the third density body. If a third density entity were electrically aware of the fourth density in full, the third density electrical fields would fail, due to incompatibility."

BOMBAST (clutching his head in mock agony): "Stop! My vibratory complexes are falling into a third density sinkhole of indifference!"

FLITTERFLOP: "But we've barely got through a tenth of the material I've collected on New Age channeling! Don't you want to hear about Ramtha, Seth, Abraham and Bashar?"

BOMBAST: "No—please, no! There is nothing new in this nonsense. I know all about 'Ramtha' but wish I didn't. This 35,000-year-old dead Lemurian warlord is the creation of J. Z. Knight, an American ex-rodeo queen and cable TV saleswoman, who claims to channel him. She has pretty much sunk into a sinkhole of her own making by claiming that the Jews started both world wars, Mexicans breed like rabbits and that gay men are reincarnated Catholic priests. I'm surprised she hasn't claimed to channel Jesus."

FLITERFLOP: "I think she did. Then she didn't. Then she sued a former follower for saying she had or hadn't, I'm not sure which. Or did they sue her?"

BOMBAST: "Does it matter? Lawyers have to eat too and a good few are eating a lot better thanks to Knight sharing some of her hard-earned millions with them."

FLITTERFLOP: "What surprises me is that none of the people who believe Knight's nonsense ever question why Ramtha has not provided any information about the history, culture, sciences, arts and geography of his alleged homeland?"

BOMBAST: "Why would they want to when Ramtha has far more important things to reveal to them such as the fact that extraterrestrials brought grapes to the earth 450,000 years ago, cabbages scream when you cut them and the soul looks like a soap bubble? I blame Jane Roberts for starting the whole New Age channeling craze in the early 1960's with the empowering messages that 'consciousness creates matter' and 'you create your own reality'. The sad part of it all is that we do create our own reality, as every genuine spiritual teacher from Gautama Buddha to Jesus taught, but not in the way Robert's imagined or her followers believe. If we did, this unfortunate woman would not have died in miserable pain from chronic arthritis at the young age of 55. She could simply have changed her 'reality' by using her consciousness to remove the disease from her body. Sadly she couldn't and didn't."

FLITTERFLOP: "What's even sadder is that people like Esther and Jerry Hicks are still milking Jane Robert's Seth material today by claiming it comes from a group of 'non-physical entities called Abraham' and charging a pretty penny for peddling it to the same gullible audience."

BOMBAST: "Ah, but these two snake-oil vendors have gone one better than Roberts or Knight by cunningly combining self-empowerment, motivational speaking and channeling, without hitching themselves to any particular bandwagon. It's the perfect marriage between Madison Avenue and Mystery Street, all neatly packaged in bite-sized morsels for easier consumption by the unthinking and inept."

FLITTERFLOP: "What about Bashar? Darryl Anka claims Bashar is a male member of a civilization called the Essassani who live on an 'alternate dimensional' planet 500 light-years away from earth."

BOMBAST (rolling his eyes): "Funny you should mention 'male members', for the one thing all these knobheads have in common is their penchant for channeling extraterrestrial nonentities who live in 'alternate' dimensions where no one can possibly get at them. A neat trick they picked up from Lobsang Rampa and his imitators who located their 'Ascended Masters' in faraway Tibet."

FLITTERFLOP: "You would have thought that by now people would have woken up to the fact that these channelers all follow the same formula and trot out the same mantra, endlessly recycled and re-packaged."

BOMBAST: "Joseph Goebbels explained why they don't when he said: 'If you repeat a lie often enough it becomes accepted as truth.' Channeling is big business, and like every good snake-oil salesman, Darryl Anka employs the time-honoured methods of businessmen the world over to flog his recycled fantasies. There is nothing new in any of the messages these brokers of balderdash pedal. In 1956, a London cabbie called George King had a strange experience. He was washing the dishes when he heard a voice which said: 'Prepare yourself. You are about to become the voice of Interplanetary Parliament.' He went on to found the Aetherius Society—which still exists today—to spread the messages he received from his 'Cosmic Masters.' Like all the other channeled teachings we have discussed, King's 'revelations' were filched from Theosophy, and combined UFOs, Hinduism, Buddhism, Yoga and ecology into a creed that has been parroted by almost every channeler ever since."

FLITTERFLOP: "How depressingly familiar..."

BOMBAST (sighing): "Isn't it."

FLITTERFLOP: "If only one of these channelers would admit that the source of their messages was not extraterrestrial, the spell which holds so many millions in thrall might perhaps be broken."

BOMBAST: "Unfortunately, you will never get a turkey to vote for Christmas. What is needed is a fearless, trained occultist like Blavatsky, who can explain what goes on behind the scenes and so expose the whole miserable charade."

FLITTERFLOP: "M could do that if he were here."

BOMBAST (chuckling softly): "How do you know he isn't?"

FLITTERFLOP (dropping his papers whilst rapidly looking around the room in bewilderment): "Is he? Where?"

M: "Here."

(With that, the benign figure of M stepped out from behind a bookcase which separated our investigators' cosy sitting room in the astral world from their small library.)

FLITTERFLOP: "Have you been here all the time?"

M (smiling): "Are you sure you are here, my friend?"

FLITTERFLOP: "Am I not?"

M: "That you must discover for yourself. Now, you wished to know what goes on behind the scenes when channelers ply their trade, did you not?"

FLITTERFLOP and BOMBAST: "We did——we DO!"

M: "Very well. Let us first consider the type of messages produced and their likely sources. I say 'likely', for it is impossible to state categorically where a particular message comes from unless one is actually present at the time and place it is received and is able to look into the mind of the person or persons who receive it, or in very many cases, concocted it themselves without the help of any outside agency."

BOMBAST: "Splendid! That's just what we want. It might even make our readers think; always assuming we have any readers at all!"

M: "I'm sure you do, and more than you realise. To begin with, it is worth pointing out that the most simplistic and sentimental messages often purport to come from the highest and most advanced spiritual beings. This is sufficient proof that they are false. Such messages either arise from the medium's own mind, the minds of others, or unevolved elemental beings of all kinds. I will come back to this later when we consider the types of entities contacted during channeling sessions.

"The second type of message consists of sensationalist pronouncements of some impending event which invariably turn out to be wrong. The erroneous claims made for 21 December 2012 are an example of this. The same prophets repeatedly fail to predict important events that do come to pass, such as the tsunami of 2004 that resulted in the deaths of 230,000 people, proving that such messages are also false.

"Messages that contain meaningless buzzwords and popular catchphrases such as 'Ascended Masters', 'Galactic Federation', 'DNA activation', 'planetary ascension', and so on and so forth, invariably arise from the medium's own mind. The most insidious messages of all are those which distort and misrepresent the ancient wisdom, as well as those which subtly glorify materialism and encourage selfishness. But of real truth, such as we may read in the sublime visions of such seers as Enoch and St. John there is none to be had in any channeled messages."

FLITTERFLOP: "Why is that?"

M: "Because it is as difficult for an advanced spiritual being dwelling in the higher astral world to communicate with mankind on earth as it is for a diver to descend into the depths of the deepest ocean. In both cases, the material density is so great it almost chokes them. Only when the mind of a human being is so pure that no trace of selfishness remains within it, and for very special reasons, is it possible to receive messages from the dwellers in the highest realms of Light."

BOMBAST: "What is the real source of channeled messages?"

M: "There are five main ones. Firstly, the channeler's own mind. If the messages are of a spiritually elevated nature—and very few are—they emanate from his Higher Mind. If they are the usual mixture of fantasy and mystical mumbo-jumbo, they emanate from his lower mind. If he is aware that he is the source, he is an unconscious or conscious fraud, and there are many such who prey upon the gullibility of people for their own selfish purposes, generally for money, fame, power or sex.

"The second are the minds of other human beings, whether living or dead, or temporarily separated from their physical bodies, such as during sleep, or astral projection, as you are. Such messages range from the nonsensical through the almost wise to the profound, but again, truly inspiring messages are very rare. Most, as you have discovered, are chaotic, simplistic and fantastic, especially when they are delivered with an air of pompous authority or purport to come from important sounding personages in order to lend credence and verisimilitude to them. Other deceased human beings simply wish to deceive and delude people on Earth and to wreak havoc and spread mischief.

"The third sources are the disintegrating shells of deceased human beings—now bereft of any semblance of the light of the Higher Self that once illuminated their erstwhile personalities on earth. Filled with malice and confusion, they will stop at nothing to obtain a vicarious existence on earth at the expense of their victims, who welcome them as messengers from Heaven, or outer space, little realising the foul nature of the entities they embrace. They also suck the life-force from their victims in order to prolong their own existence, and this is the principle reason many mediums feel drained of life after a séance. This is the most common source of the vast majority of channeled messages.

"The fourth sources are the elementals proper, which have never been men, but belong to one of the occult elements of Fire, Air, Water and Earth. It is these beings who animate and vitalise the thought forms projected by the channeler and so deceive him into thinking he is in contact with Ascended Masters, angels, or extraterrestrials. Some elementals do this quite unconsciously, for they are the workmen of Nature who shape all material forms. They are at work now, shaping this room and clothing my thoughts in sound so that you can hear them. But other elementals are mischievous, such as the playful sprites we read about in fairy stories, and they like nothing better than pulling the legs of the human beings who invite their attention, whether through channeling, séances, or any other type of psychic activities. But such beings are not evil, though they may produce evil results.

"To find real evil, we must look to our fifth and final source; human beings, whether alive on earth, or dwelling in the astral world between incarnations, who consciously follow the left-hand-path. Their intention is to put out the light of truth by distorting, undermining and misrepresenting the true teachings of the great spiritual Messengers of God to man. They do this by diverting people's attention away from truth into the chaotic realms of fantasy and fiction. Such beings will use anyone they can to attain their ends and have no qualms about passing themselves off as Masters, archangels, or even God Himself. Neither prayers, hymns, nor confessions of faith in Jesus avail to protect the gullible channeler from these fiends in sanctimonious clothes. Fortunately for the channelers, such contacts are very rare."

BOMBAST: "Why is this knowledge not more widely known? Surely it would dissuade some channelers from their dangerous practises?"

M: "For several reasons. Firstly, although I have presented you with the true facts about channeling, I have not explained all. To do so would mean revealing certain occult secrets, which in the wrong hands could do untold harm. Secondly, unless one can actually see the entities which we have been discussing, no amount of reading will convince people of their existence. Thirdly, the explanations I have furnished would make little sense to those who have no occult knowledge or training, which applies to the vast majority of channelers, and even more to those who believe in their messages."

FLITTERFLOP (sadly): "So, we're no better off than we were."

M: "Not so, my young friend. The information you have collected, and your honest discussion of it will reach those it is intended for."

(M's eyes twinkled with merriment as he regarded the confused look on the faces of Flitterflop and Bombast.)

M: "Your channelers got one thing right, even though they haven't the slightest idea what it really means."

FLITTERFLOP: "What is that?"

M: "The oneness of ALL things. This applies to thoughts also, for thoughts are things and have substance, weak or strong, according to the strength or weakness of the thinker's will and imagination. The Astral Light in which we dwell preserves, as upon a photographic plate, all the thoughts that man has ever thought, and those whose minds sincerely seek the truth of all things, will contact the thoughts of other thinkers, and so obtain the knowledge they are qualified to receive."

BOMBAST: "How simple it all is when you explain it like that."

M: "The truth is ever simple, my Friends. Which is why it eludes the mind of the intellectual who is enmeshed in the complexity of material thinking and reasoning."

FLITTERFLOP: "How comforting it is to know that no effort we may make to enlighten the minds of others is ever wasted."

M: "Like unseen seeds from Heaven, do the wise thoughts of good men and women descend from the higher realms to earth, entering the minds of those attuned to their Divine harmonies, to blossom in kindly deeds and noble aspirations, whether in this life, or lives to come. Such, my dear Friends is the power of thought, which may bless or curse, depending upon the wisdom or ignorance of the thinker and the intention behind the thought. Always remember this when the tongues of the foolish offend you and tempt you to send forth like for like, so adding to the ocean of wrong thinking which infects the minds of men, instead of dispelling it."

"Have pity for the perpetrators and victims of channeling and not censure, for we were all such fools once. Have charity for those who do not know the taste of genuine things, having fed all their lives on fantasy and drunk from the muddied waters of forgetfulness, ever seeking, never finding, because they do not know where or how to look for Truth. Stretch forth a helping hand to them, for in this way you liberate both them and yourselves from the bonds of ignorance."

(So saying, M smiled upon our two fearless investigators and vanished as suddenly as he had appeared.)

There are many people who long for truth and only await a kindly word in order to hear. Tell them, dear reader, if such is your earnest desire. It will be heard by the dull and the brilliant, the coarse and the refined, the stupid and the wise, and those in between such conditions of mind, who all need what they are qualified to take of the Wisdom of the Ages our actors have presented to you.

Until we hear from Flitterflop and Bombast again, we pray that the channels of their minds, and yours, dear reader, may always receive the pure waters of Truth.

You can find a complete list and brief descriptions of all the conversation between these two colourful occult students on the introductory page to these Astral conversations. Although these conversations can be read on their own, they are best read in chronological sequence as they form an ascending scale of revelation.

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Spirits of Deception

In this afterword we examine the dangers of channeling and mediumship

If we critically examine the messages received from channeled sources we find nothing that has not been said before. Two hundred years of channeling, or Spiritualism, call it what you will, has not furnished one new scrap of scientific, philosophical or spiritual knowledge, or advanced mankind a single step on the path to enlightenment.

These are facts anyone may verify for themselves by taking the time to critically examine the messages of channelers. A tree is known by its fruit. The fruits of channeling, like Spiritualism, have led to greater confusion, argument and ignorance, not to clarity, harmony and knowledge.

The very few sensible messages received, as we have seen from Bombast and Flitterflop's investigation, are nothing more than the distorted spiritual teachings of the great Masters and Philosophers of the past. Repackaged for modern consumption inside a pseudo-scientific wrapper of New Age neologisms, they are swallowed without a critical thought by those too lazy or ignorant to go to the original sources from which such teachings have been stolen.

Sadly, as we have stated in so many of our articles and especially in these Astral Conversations, the vast majority of seekers never stop to question anything they hear, read or see provided it is delivered with sufficient gravitas and authority. It is for this reason that books encouraging people to start channeling and explaining how to do it are some of the most popular in the New Age genre, as are books which contain messages and teachings received through channelings.

Just as Spiritualism failed to produce anything in the way of elevated spiritual teachings, profound philosophical ideas, reliable revelations or accurate facts, neither has New Age channeling. What it has done is to deceive millions of otherwise sane and rational people, make fortunes for a few and driven others to depression, mental illness and suicide, just as Spiritualism did in the 19th century.

Should you doubt these facts, it is noteworthy that Don Elkins, one of the three 'investigators' who channeled the 'Law of One' material, so thoroughly debunked by Flitterflop and Bombast, committed suicide in 1984 by shooting himself in the mouth with a handgun. Prior to his death, he had suffered several months of mental, emotional, and physical deterioration to the point where he was unable to sleep or eat solid foods. Elkins is only one among many unfortunates who have taken their own lives through their involvement with the cruel charade of channeling.

In Mediumistische Psychosen (Mediumistic psychoses), Parapsychologist Hans Bender mentions four cases of people who were told to commit suicide by the spirits they contacted. One case involved a young woman who began by channeling messages by automatic writing and heard voices demanding that she take her own life. She was prevented from throwing herself from a balcony by friends while saying "it was a force that I had to obey."

John D. Pearce-Higgins, the leader of a Christian psychic society, mentions a case of two girls engaging in automatic writing. "At first it went well. One girl believed she was in contact with her dead father, who appeared to know all about her, and gave good evidence. Then a friend of her father came through and claimed to have been her 'guardian angel' for many years. Having got her hooked by what appeared to be good evidence, the 'spirit' told her that 'Life does not hold much for you really, dear, it is such a lovely world over here, you had better come over and join us. So the girl threw herself under a bus. Mercifully, she wasn't killed. She was taken to hospital and after a year, although she was well enough to come home, she remained obsessed by the spirits she had channelled."

Another case involved a well-known American channeler, who, as she is still alive, we will simply call 'X'. She began to receive increasingly disturbing messages that contained a number of sensational prophecies about the future of humanity. Alarmed by this, the next time the unknown entity came through, X ignored it. That night she had the most terrifying nightmares. The next day the entity became more forceful in his commands and X informed it that she had changed her mind and no longer wanted to channel it. X became so unbalanced by the entity's psychic attacks that she tried to jump off her apartment balcony and had to be committed to a psychiatric hospital. She is still there today.

These tragic tales are not new. Thousands of people who might have led useful and happy lives but for their involvement with Spiritualism ended their short lives in mental institutions during the last century and many more descended into depression, alcoholism and drug addiction.

Demonic possession

Joan Grant, in her autobiographical novel of a life lived in the 16th century—Life as Carola—describes the deceptive allure of channeling and the dangers of demonic possession with chilling accuracy when she encounters the witch, Sofia.

"Suddenly Sofia sat bolt upright. She dug her fingers into the turf; her eyes were shut and her body twitched convulsively. She sucked in great gulps of air as if she were thirsty. Then she began to speak; a babble of words, too fast for me to understand. I was frightened. I wanted to run away from the voice that came from Sofia's mouth. Then the voice changed. It was a voice I knew. The words came slowly, as if they were formed with cruel effort. 'Carola, Carolissima, listen to me! It is so long since I have spoken to you. . .'

"Could the voice really have been my mother's? Why did I doubt it? She alone had called me Carolissima. I knew that men could be possessed of devils; why could I not believe that they might be possessed of angels? Why was I afraid instead of eager? I wished that I could believe that Sofia had tried to trick me, that she had disguised her voice. It was impossible to explain how I knew that the voice which had spoken to me was not Sofia's. Surely it was right that I should listen to this voice which spoke to me through Sofia?

"For the next few days I was kept very busy; and when I was returning through the woods at dusk I heard a voice calling me, 'Carola, Carolissima, where are you?' I forgot that I was grown up, forgot that my mother had been dead nearly seven years. I ran along the path in the direction whence the sound came, frightened, though I knew not why, yet strangely drawn to it. I met Sofia walking towards me. She looked surprised to see me, and said she had passed no one on the way.

"The next time that I knew Sofia's body was being used by a familiar, we were in her cottage. We had been talking, but now Sofia had fallen silent and I thought she was asleep. Suddenly I realised that her breathing had altered. Her hands had grown rigid and her eyes were rolled back under the half-open lids. Then my mother's voice issued from her mouth, 'Carola. Why do you not answer me? Have you forgotten me? I made your body, Carola—will you not let me use it now that I am a lonely ghost? You used to trust me, Carola. Perhaps you do not believe that it is I? Could Sofia know of the little chest with the fifteen drawers where the jewels were kept? Or the scarlet collar your father gave you for Mimetta. Let me use your body. Unbar your will that closes it against me. I am so lonely without you. . .'

"I called, 'Mother! Mother!' But the room was empty except for Sofia snoring by the fire. I had no clear memory to guide me, and yet an echo of an older knowledge warned me that the voices of angels do not come forth from the mouths of men, though devils can command the tongues of their servants on earth. It seemed that this warning was suddenly clear before me, as if long ago I had heard it spoken by one whose voice I had never forgotten.

"But what if my intuition were untrue; if my mother had spoken to me from the other side of death and I had closed my ears to her? Had it been pain and torment to her to clothe herself in flesh so as to speak to me—and I had not listened? The voice had been her voice and not Sofia's; the words her words and not Sofia's. Why did I deny her with the innermost part of me—when my heart and my reason believed that she had returned?

"I began to think I was keeping my mother away from me not through wisdom but through cowardice. I lay down in a glade and prayed that my mother should enter my body, and that as a sign that she had used it, I should return to find my body in a different place and with no memory of how it got there. . . I thought of a calm, enfolding darkness; darkness that wrapped me round; deeper and deeper; warm, soft, impenetrable.

"Then a terror came upon me. Terror fiercer than vipers, more consuming than fire. I was in the ultimate darkness. Round me clustered the spiders that spin shrouds for the damned and the toads that echo the footsteps of the condemned. The wings of bats were loathsome on my flesh and I could not move. I tried to scream, but my mouth was choked with the feathers of dead carrion birds. I tried to force my heavy eyelids open with my hands. . .

"I was no longer in the dark. I could see the sky, the sky that had forsaken me. I lived with horror till I was wide awake; then I ran to the river and tore off my clothes. I swam upstream, trying to cleanse my body from the filth that had come with the evil that had entered it. I knew how the lepers felt, unclean, unclean. Because her familiar had tempted me into evil I never wanted to see Sofia again. I kept away from all the places where we had been together, and avoided the path to her house as if it were a lepers' walk."

So ends Joan Grant's chilling account. This is not to say that all mediums are possessed by evil entities, or that channeling inevitably leads to such possession. But the danger is ever present, for as Joan Grant also tells us in the same book, quoting her previous occult training as an Initiate in ancient Egypt:

"It is written in the Laws of the Gods, 'To one spirit there shall be one flesh.

He that puts on the flesh of another shall suffer Our condemnation; and with him, he that alloweth this betrayal of the tenement of the Host shall suffer also."

By 'tenement of the Host' is meant the body of course, which 'suffers' in the way of mental illness or some other disability, whilst the 'Host' itself, the Higher Self, suffers too, being unable to perform the tasks for which it entered its new incarnation due to the defects of its vehicle.

You may well ask why so many people who profess to be 'spiritual' and say they long for truth are so very reluctant to study the ancient Wisdom? Why do so many listen excitedly and eagerly to the spurious channelled messages purporting to come from 'Ra', 'angel guides' or extraterrestrial supermen yet express no interest whatsoever in reading the sacred literature of the world, where they can find the sublime truths of Life? Why, too, are people who are otherwise highly intelligent, sensible, and educated, gullible and naïve enough to blindly swallow the rubbish churned out by channelers without bothering to investigate its source?

The answer to all these questions can be stated in one word: thinking. It is almost as if we are in the midst of a worldwide epidemic of mental inertia which has infected mankind with an aversion to THINKING. So long as this continues, mankind as a whole, and seekers after truth in particular, will continue to mistake the psychic for the spiritual, and fantasies for facts.

Channelers may announce the coming glory and wonder of the New Age until they are blue in the face, but the sober truth is that in daily breeding superstition, ignorance, delusion and mediumship, they themselves are the greatest hindrance to the dawning of a New Age of enlightenment and peace.

So much for the deceptions and dangers of channeling. As we mentioned in our introduction to Flitterflop and Bombast's investigation, it is possible to receive elevated spiritual teachings from the dwellers in the higher astral realms, and this may come about in several different ways, such as we discuss and explain in the afterword to our occult studies course article on meditation.

But however it comes, it brings with it great spiritual exaltation and the absolute certainty that in that moment we have touched something holy, true and utterly beyond all normal consciousness. Such experiences are rightly called transcendental for they leave us filled with Life, Light and Love and an abiding inner peace of mind and body. This, you will agree, is the very antithesis of the nervous, excitable mental state and physical exhaustion which those who claim to channel messages from spirits, extraterrestrials or 'masters' experience during their communications.

In Isis Unveiled, H. P. Blavatsky gives an example of one way in which elevated spiritual teachings may be received.

"In one of the principal cities of India, there resides a noble Hindu, whose official rank and standing is by no means commensurate with his extreme poverty. Bound by the latter restriction and a careful observance of the forms and ceremonials which belong to his nation, he is compelled to hide in the depths of his highly spiritualised nature the extraordinary revelations that have been made to him from invisible authors through the mediumship of his little niece, a child of some twelve years old. In the presence of this little one, whole quires of blank paper are rapidly filled up by no visible hands and without even the ordinary appliances of pens, pencils or ink.

"It is enough to lay the blank sheets on a tripod, carefully screened from the direct rays of light, but still dimly visible to the eyes of attentive observers. The child sits on the ground, and lays her head on the tripod, embracing its supports with her little arms. In this attitude she most commonly sleeps for an hour, during which time the sheets lying on the tripod are filled up with exquisitely formed characters in the ancient Sanskrit. Over four volumes of these writings have been thus produced, and that in something less than a period of three years."

Here we have an example—not of the possession of one mind by another such as happens during channeling—but the communion between minds wholly attuned to one another. It is the innate purity of the child that allows her Higher Self to go forth during sleep and temporarily blend her consciousness with that of the authors of the teachings she is writing down.

In this and similar ways have the great occult truths and laws discussed in our many articles been communicated to mankind. From Enoch to Jesus, a mighty chain of trained seers stretches back to the very beginning of sentient life on earth and the days when the Sons of God dwelt among men, imparting to them the Wisdom of the Ages.

Seek then, that wisdom in the many books and sacred writings we refer to and recommend on this website. In the degree that you are able and willing to do so, will the portentous pronouncements of channelers cease to hold any interest or attraction for you. You will have acquired a love for genuine things, which once tasted, will render the so-called 'teachings' of 'The Law of One', 'Seth', 'Ramtha', 'Bashar', the 'Interplanetary Parliament' and all the rest of the crafty crew of cunning rogues who make up the pantheon of pious prophets of channeling, utterly unpalatable.

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