Chapter Two

Why Channel?

You can see that there is a plethora of channeled material available to the student, beginning with the most ancient Vedic holy work and reaching to the very latest wisdom from the world of the invisible, from whatever source. The information has, or tends to have, pervasively common themes such as the ascendancy of the rightness of peace between peoples and good will among nations, and the nearness in time of a planetary transformation.

The typical content of such messages was covered in a book previously written by Donald T. Elkins and me in 1976, SECRETS OF THE UFO.

In addition, each body of channeled information usually contains some concepts peculiar to it, often in direct contradiction to other bodies of channeled material. Not only is the amount of this information staggering, but also enormously confusing, if one attempts to make every fact of even two instruments’ channeled material fit into any kind of congruency.

There are many adherents of any orthodox body of channeled material, such as Jews and Christians, who would suggest that the truth has already been given. (No arguing here: if you do not think of your favorite holy work as having been channeled, you have thinking to do, not talking!) At the very least, people who have come to believe in the doctrine presented by a body of channeled material will be very puzzled about why in the world people would want to engage further in this activity of channeling when the truth is already known.

In accepting one body of channeled material, many people come to feel that all other bodies of material are outlawed. This bias isolates the self from others and predicates the assumption that man can know something, not only for himself but also for others, in the world of faith. But we can not. Simple faith finds inspiration wherever its discrimination tells it that a spirit of truth dwells. My discrimination is not anyone else’s, and what works for me, works for me alone. Nevertheless, those who believe in a doctrine, and rightness by literal fact, to be legislated for all, have always outnumbered those who feel that the truth is expressed in mystery through personal faith.

Moreover many, especially in the Christian tradition, feel that all latter-day channeling is Satanic in nature. There is scripture to support almost any point of view—Southerners before the war between the states used scripture to rationalize and support the practice of slavery—and it is not surprising that one may find scriptural passages both to commend the careful use of discernment of spirits and to condemn the same channeling as a mediumship which is punishable by death.

The acceptance of either point of view without discriminating thought is not recommended; however, any student who wishes to explore the possibility of becoming a channel needs to reckon with the probable reaction of the very ones who love you the most: if they are fundamental Christians, and perhaps even if they are not, they will find such activity somewhat frightening, and may interpret what you are doing as a form of Satanic possession. If your desire to channel is strong enough to withstand others’ bad opinions, fine.

If you are potentially ready to lose a husband or a family, a friendship or a job, because of your desire to channel, then stop and think, perhaps you are on the track that you should be on. If you are serene and humble, your family will gradually relax. It is especially to be pointed out that those who do become channels and do encounter this reaction from those they love need to refrain from defending themselves, for it is totally unethical for a channel to present itself as a stumbling block in the way of another seeker’s spiritual path. That’s just not fair.

You do not feel happy when you are criticized. Avoid criticizing others. If what you are doing is being done in the spirit of love, your words and your love will speak for themselves to most.

Many people who are reading this book are possessed by nothing more than curiosity about this very interesting phenomenon, channeling. There is nothing wrong with curiosity. It is commendable. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with skimming the surface of a large variety of things, testing the waters, seeing what is for you and what is not. I can only suggest that in sampling the gift of channeling, you who are merely curious seek a controlled group situation in which you have a structured way of going about learning the mechanics of this gift’s manifestation.

Take the waters, in a short burst. It is centrally important, if you do not intend to persevere in the discipline of vocal or written channeling, that you go no further than will satisfy the curiosity, because any longer exposure will, if the contact is a poor one, tend to cause disintegration of your personality and your experience; if the contact is a good one, any longer exposure will bring about new understanding and, thereby, place you under the responsibility, which is that what one knows, one is responsible for reflecting in one’s life.

Sue Leonard, a friend of mine who teaches Free Soul in Colorado, was talking to me on the phone the other day about people’s seeming reliance on her when she was doing channeling. She asked her class, she said, whether, if they had a difficult financial decision to make, they would call ten people at random on the telephone and ask their opinions, without knowing whom they were calling. The class immediately recognized the folly of such a procedure. How, then, she asked them, could they consider her extra-special because she was a telephone? Rather severely, she suggested that they all stop gold-plating the telephone and start seeking their own inner senses of recognition which would be able to discriminate regarding new information.

If you do not want to change your life; if you do not wish to live the life in which channeling has its best environment, do not persist past satisfying of your curiosity in channeling. Stop immediately and go on to something else, for there is indeed a great “supermarket” in the realm of the psychic and occult, and metaphysical truth is sold in many packages these days, as it has always been. There is no penalty in skipping about from discipline to discipline. The penalty is for remaining in one discipline long enough to learn from it, and then not using this knowledge in the service of others.

It should be said here that I have a strong bias towards service to others. It is possible to channel in a negative sense, and there are negative entities and principles in the universe which are most delighted to make contact with a human channel. As in any positive channeling, this type of channeling has many subdivisions and teachers. However, my bias against negative information causes I me to refrain from describing sources of such information.

I come to channeling from the mystical Christian tradition. I was born a mystic and very probably had the gift of faith at birth. Consequently, my motivation for channeling was to be of service to others. Of those who are serious about channeling, this is an almost constant attitude. Regardless of how efficacious a person may be as an instrument, regardless of the relative beauty and inspirational value of the channeling, the motive of most instruments is the old white magical motto, “I desire to know in order to serve.”

A large number of human beings seem to be able to go through their lives asking nothing more than to have a peaceful and happy home life, enough money to buy what they need for themselves and their families and some gusto to grab. Others of us, for no clear reason, have a bug in our ear. Christian or not, mystics are convinced that we have some work to do in this lifetime; some feel that they came to Earth to accomplish some mission.

When one weeds out the seriously neurotic or psychotic people who are deluding themselves first and others secondly, one still has a very large and pretty committed body of people who wish to be servants of humankind. Common beliefs among such people are that it is possible to push the envelope of mystery back a little further and still a little further so that the noumenal, though infinitely receding before us, can be to some slight extent asymptotically approached.

Another assumption is that the unseen overshadows the seen, has created the seen world, and is far more real than that which we see with our physical eyes and touch with our physical senses. The third assumption among mystics is that other people are worth serving, and that it is possible to serve them. These assumptions, put together, give to the student who wishes to be of service by channeling the feeling of reaching out to all of humanity as a shepherd would reach out to those sheep he so carefully tends and to whose care he is dedicated.

It is clear from this image that one of the great dangers of deciding to channel is that one will become self-important. Instruments (another word for channel) are not an elite. An instrument knows no more than the person who hears the channeling. This is not only a truism; it is also true. We are all bozos on this bus. Remember the analogy of the pipe and the water. Instruments are pipes.

Everything that they do, they do prior to receiving the water that flows through them. That which flows through them may well be from a higher source. The channels themselves, however, are sheep, except in the exaltation of the self by the One which overshadows it and speaks in the spirit of love and truth.

Would you believe that I know no less than three people—albeit slightly— who have channeled their own destiny as that of bearing the Christ child and being His mother in His second Earthly pilgrimage after two thousand years? It’s true. No end of folly has been perpetrated by people who accept the falsehood that because they are channels they represent an elite and, in some way, have a leg up on the rest of humanity. Please examine your motives. If you are channeling for reasons other than curiosity or a desire to be of service to others and to the Creator, it would be well to avoid the practice of channeling, for, as I have said, it can really land one in the soup emotionally, mentally and even physically.

There is the capacity in each of us to lose contact with waking reality as it is perceived by the bulk of humankind. The possibility of the disintegration of the waking personality is made far more probable as one opens the integrated personality to the incursion of deeply impersonal, often external personalities. Channeling’s no joke. Why do you want to channel? Why are you channeling? Please use some discrimination!

The lack of discrimination can have heavy penalties, and perhaps an example or two would be in order. If you are channeling, and any of these seems somewhat familiar to you, you may be able to do a little work in this area and begin to experience a far more efficacious career as a channel.

Example one is a student I had in 1975. She was an intensely intellectual, likable sort of a person, approaching 30, prematurely middle-aged and dressed in that manner, and extremely swayed by whatever she was experiencing at the moment. Every time the L/L doors were open, Millie was there (not her real name). She began to try to channel on her own, and received information almost immediately.

She was, for instance, one of the three “Virgin Mary’s” of which I spoke. Later, she called me in a state of nervous excitement with the information that a presidential candidate was about to get onto an airplane which would crash, killing him. She wanted me to call a psychic (Jeanne Dixon, whom I didn’t know) with this information so that she could warn the candidate. My attempts to explain to her why I was not going to fulfill her request were not comprehended, and she rang off convinced that I had turned against her.

Not very long afterwards, a Catholic priest called us and told us that she had sought sanctuary in his church because she was being attacked by Satanic forces. She felt that her mother and father were possessed and she did not trust anyone except us. He wanted to know if we could come get her, because she had had nothing to eat for days and had refused even water for the 48 hours that she had spent in his church. Reluctantly we went and got Millie, brought her home, and attempted to feed her a light meal. It was after midnight.

She was too tense even to lie down. When we suggested that she relax, she accused us of attempting to control her mind, and ran from the apartment before we could stop her. We went after her but could not find her since we lived close to a park with many winding, hilly roads and too many turns for us to be able to guess which way she had gone.

We notified her favorite professor, the priest who had called us, and her parents that she was loose in the city, clad in nightshirt only, driving a car that was almost dry of gas and penniless. It was all that we could think of to do. Millie ended up in triage at a mental hospital, where she was in therapy for some months. Upon her release from the hospital she brought the leaders of Ananda Marga, a spiritually oriented Buddhist sect, to see us. She wished to prove to them that we had evil thought-forms which were influencing our work and disturbing her.

The orange-robed Ananda Marga teacher had a good deal of psychic ability, and a sense of humor as well. After demonstrating that he could tell us things that he could not possibly have known, thereby reaffirming to Millie his skill, he told her that we did not have any such presences about our benighted heads.

“But they believe in magic,” said Millie. The leader humorously picked up the remote control for our television. “So do I,” he said. “Let me show you some magic.” He pointed the device at our television and across the room it sprang into electronic life. “Magic,” he said in his charmingly accented voice. “You see.”

Millie was not pleased. I am happy to say that she gradually got better.

I had scrupulously counseled Millie from the beginning, as I do all of my students, to avoid any thought of learning channeling on her own. This is not a pursuit to be undertaken in solitude. When she began anyway, I continued to counsel her against it. She interpreted my counselings as insults, feeling that I was attempting to “corner the market” and do all the channeling myself.

Example number two: A long-established channel whom I will call Susan wrote us after the first Law of One book came out, asking for advice on how to improve her meditation group. She had been teaching channeling to her students and, as always, she had succeeded in teaching this easily transmitted gift. (It is the improvement of quality in channeling that is the true gift and life-work, not the ability to learn the mechanics.) She had intended, she said, for these students to remain in the group. However, they were leaving the group and starting their own meditation and study groups. She wondered what she was doing wrong.

I really couldn’t diagnose any problem from the information in her first letter, and wrote describing the way my meetings are run and the expectations I have of listening gladly to those who wish to share the responsibility and honor of being instruments with me. “I am so much happier to listen than to channel that I consider it a great boon to be able to enjoy other people’s channeling,” I wrote.

Her second letter was far more revealing. She had, she said, the hope not of listening to others’ channeling, but of using other channels to confirm the virtue of what she had already channeled. When I wrote back suggesting that perhaps her ego was getting in the way, she became defensive and said that I was a very judgmental person. Not too long after that, she began getting large amounts of information having to do with the “terrible catastrophes” that are to come, suggesting that it would be well for the chosen ones who were listening to her words to band together in a remote area for survival purposes.

The channeling even included suggestions as to the supplies needed, including diapers. Note the twist of “love and light” information into messages of doom and the movement from universal love to the establishment of an elite group, which then must defend itself against outsiders who do not belong.

I do not shrug off the channeled information concerning the coming transformation of our planet or ourselves; however, it seems to me that we who are aware of the possibility of such remarkable events, if we are functioning as light workers, will be far more interested in how to excite and engage our own consciousness in work which will be helpful to those who have long known what it is that we do, but have not felt the need for metaphysical study. This would seem to me to mitigate strongly against the whole concept of survival places for a few.

I honestly believe that there are many people within this country who are in positions to be responsible for the safety of governmental leaders and people important in one way or another to the world which they and their predecessors have created, in finance, science, research and so forth, who will provide handsomely for the repopulation of the planet in the event of an actual global catastrophe. What we have to give is ourselves, now, in the time of trouble, not ourselves at a later time, when the world will be quite different and those skills which we have been studying in this experience will undoubtedly be quite irrelevant.

Perhaps my attitude is too heavily colored by my being a Christian, but it seems to me that we deal, when we speak of life and death on the Earth plane, with “the valley of the shadow of death.” I hope to spend my life and my death well, not in terms of how I survive, but in terms of how much of what I had to offer I was able to offer.

It is true that in the second case Susan had the potential of affecting the spiritual journey of others, in that they might well be swayed into putting a great deal of energy into the following of the instructions of her channeling. However, none of us is primarily responsible for other peoples’ spiritual evolution; we are responsible for our own. Everything that comes to us is our responsibility in that we can filter and interpret events as we choose, not as we must. Therefore, the primary victim of Susan’s difficulties was and is Susan.

If you see anything of yourself in either of these examples, or if you are taking this opportunity to examine your motives for channeling or for wanting to channel and finding that there is a bit of ego involved, don’t be hard on yourselves or panic. It is intrinsically human to have motives like this. Inside information, especially if confidential, is always alluring. Finding out that you have some refining to do is a good thing, not a condemnation of what you have done in the past.

Through the use of tools such as meditation and contemplation you can begin and enable the process of refining your motives for seeking to be of service by channeling, and, meanwhile, the knowledge that such motives do not serve one well as a channel will help you to recognize times when you have gone a bit astray. In the spiritual evolutionary process in general and in the practice of channeling in particular there is no time at which you cannot turn and begin completely anew.

I think that the best of us have to do that every day, if not more often than that. In no way do I wish to suggest that my motives are always pure. Indeed, before I began to write this book, I went through several weeks of indecision and paralysis, asking myself the question,

“Who do I think I am, setting myself up as an expert?”

Obviously, nobody deserving; like Arjuna in the BHAGAVAD GITA, however, I counseled myself in the end to go ahead and act, but to attempt to keep this action free from the dedication to an outcome.

So each of you has the opportunity at all times to examine your motives and actions, discern any missed steps and turn to a more refined or enlightened consciousness. It is a complete waste of time to be angry at yourself, so if you find yourself to be a little moved by considerations of ego, give a laugh at the human condition, and keep on trying.
 

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