Channeling

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Channeling

Channeling might be broadly defined as an individual receiving or transmitting information through a consciousness not his or her own. By this definition there are certain continuities between channeling and many other forms of religious revelation, including those of shamans, oracles, and prophets. Channeling's closest predecessor in American religion is perhaps spiritualism, a nineteenth-century movement concerned with contacting the spirits of the dead.

But if channeling is more narrowly defined as a person (the "channel" or "channeler") inviting an entity to speak through his or her body for a certain period of time, then channeling is best seen as a late-twentieth-century phenomenon. Noted scholar of the New Age J. Gordon Melton has argued in his New Age Almanac that the term itself dates to the UFO contact movement of the 1940s and 1950s, and the use of radio and television as metaphors, when contactees would claim to have received messages "channeled" from the flying saucers.

The era of modern channeling might be said to have begun in 1963, when Jane Roberts (1929–1984), a housewife from New York state, began channeling "Seth." Roberts's books, such as The Nature of Personal Reality and Seth Speaks (in which she writes as Seth), have sold in the millions.

Channeling became part of American popular culture when it played a part in Shirley MacLaine's series of New Age autobiographies and the TV movies based on them. The channeler Kevin Ryerson played himself in MacLaine's 1987 TV movie Out on a Limb.

The most successful channels currently active are J. Z. Knight and Jach Pursel, who channel the warrior from Atlantis Ramtha and the disembodied entity Lazaris, respectively. Their organizations gross millions of dollars annually. But for every high-end channel there are thousands of small-scale ones, who might channel for a few people at a time and work free or for donations.

A typical channeling session might begin with the channel closing his or her eyes, perhaps first making an invocation. Then the "entity" would speak from the body of the channeler, often using different mannerisms, vocabulary, and accents from the host. The "entity" might lecture on a specific topic, or take questions from the audience. The content of channeled information varies somewhat but actually is fairly consistent and might include alternative histories (Atlantis, etc.), individual psychic readings, predictions of upcoming events, and techniques for healing the mind and body.

Anthropologist Michael Brown has pointed out that channeling has spread across America and is "now a well-established form of religious exploration that is likely to be with us for a while." One 1987 estimate was that tens of thousands of people had consulted channels and millions more had read up on them ( John Klimo, Channeling). "Do-it-yourself" channeling is increasingly popular as more and more classes and books are available for getting in touch with your own spirit guide.

See alsoLazaris; New Age Spirituality; Occult, The; Psychic; SÉance; Shamanism; Spirit Guides; Spirit Possession; Spiritualism; Trance; Unidentified Flying Objects.