~Speaking of Seth~

Hi All,

I recently purchased the book, "Channelling" by Jon Klimo. It's really amazing.
It's about 500 pages long and basically its all about channeling and the history of channeling; from many different perspectives. It has a lot of interesting things in it.

I'm curious, as to whether anyone else here has ever seen or read this book?
If so, what did you think?

jbseth

Quote from: jbseth
I recently purchased the book, "Channelling" by Jon Klimo. It's really amazing.

Dang you must be smart. I can't believe how much you read!

The book does sound interesting. And it's co-authored by Charles Tart. His name sounded familiar to me and it took me a while to figure out why. He wrote The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bridging Science and Spirit Together. I'd bought that years ago, only go so far into it, but I think I enjoyed it.

From the Amazon description:

"Science seems to tell us that we are all meaningless products of blind biological and chemical forces, leading meaningless lives that will eventually end in death. The truth is that unseen forces such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, psychic healing, and other phenomena inextricably link us to the spiritual world, and while many skeptics and scientists deny the existence of these spiritual phenomena, the experiences of millions of people indicate that they do take place."

So much to read, so little time!

Please share any nuggets of information you come across in The Channeling. It's something that interests me because while I'd always thought it was bogus, Jane/Seth changed my mind. At least as far as they are concerned. I'm still skeptical about other so-called channelers, but I have to admit there are few explanations when it comes to some people, such as Edgar Cayce.

Hi All,

I recently purchased a copy of the book, "Channeling, Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources" by Jon Klimo. This is the revised and updated version published in 1998. The original version was published in 1986.

I purchased this book because recently I began to wonder why there are, in fact, so many channels and why so many of their messages are very different from each other. I thought that this book might give me some insights into this issue, independent of what Seth has to say on the topic.

Years ago I came across this book in a bookstore and while briefly reading through it, I came across a section of the book where, what I thought was the author, was talking about channeling itself. In this section, the author seemed to be taking a scientific reductionist / materialistic view of the topic. As a result of this, I was kind of bummed out. I put this book back down on the shelf and didn't bother to purchase it. However, I did this with much misgivings because the author really seemed to do a good job of covering many of the channels that I knew to exist at the time.

More recently I discovered that this author actually seems to be rather open-minded about channeling. There is a part in the introduction of this book, where the author documents the beliefs that others have about channeling. My guess is that this was probably the section that I had read years ago, which I thought was the authors beliefs.



Here's some of the interesting points in this book that have caught my eye.

In the preface to the second edition, the author says that Charles Tart argues that consensus reality is really a consensus trance. That's an interesting perspective.

Then in the introduction the author talks about channeling and addresses the question, What is Channeling?  This is an interesting question.  Do mediums channel? What about people who perform automatic writing? Is that a form of channeling? Did Mohammad channel?   The author takes on this question and answers it for the readers so that they can understand, in this book what is and isn't considered to be channeling; at least as far as what the authors addressing in this book.

In the first chapter, the author begins a review of many of the "current" channels, starting from around 1960. He talks about Jane Roberts and Seth and says that Jane was one of the most well-known channels. From what I have read of the Seth information, I'd say that he seems to give a pretty good assessment of the Seth information.

He then talks about the Findhorn Circle, which I personally don't know muc about.

It sounds like this started out as a small group of friends, most of whom were good at channeling or getting in touch with their inner selves. These people formed a small community, Findhorn, where they let their inner guidance lead the way on how to work together as a group and do things. They also got in touch with nature spirits and these spirits gave them some suggestions on how to grow vegetables in their gardens. The results of this were incredible. Perhaps there are other people here in this forum, who know more about this Findhorn community and would be willing to share what they know about them.

Then he talks about Helen Schucman and the "Course of Miracles" that she channeled.
It sounds like Helen, who was a psychologist, was also a general disbeliever in the paranormal. However there seems to be some question as to whether the spiritual and mystical nature of the beliefs that she was brought up with, may have influenced her somehow into being open to channeling this type of message.

The author then talks about J. Z. Knight, the channeler of Ramtha, Kevin Ryerson and Jach Pursel, who channels Lazaris. After this he continues on with the Messages from "Michael" channelings. Apparently Michael is some sort of group of many "old souls" who talks of the "Tao" instead of either All That Is, or God.

Then he talks about, From Heaven to Earth, the "Returns" Series, which I've never heard about.  So far I'm only up to page 50 of a book that's about 500 pages long.

jbseth

Quote from: jbseth
Perhaps there are other people here in this forum, who know more about this Findhorn community and would be willing to share what they know about them.

About 10 years ago, I stayed at a B&B in Findhorn with one of my daughters. I had a synchronicity while there, and that is described in the synchronicities thread here. Briefly, this involved three rapid-fire references to dreams with the last one being that the owner of the B&B saying that she built the B&B because she was told to in a dream. One of my motivations for going there in the first place was that a high school friend who had gone to Harvard Law School decided after graduating that he didn't want to be a lawyer and decided to move to Findhorn, where he explored alternative lifestyles for several years. Some of the old-timers there said that they remembered him. While there, we paid for the "privilege" of working in the communal kitchen helping to prepare vegetarian dishes. If I remember correctly, the community has about 400 residents. Another small synchronicity is that I had noticed a particular style of treatment of a door and other architectural touches of a main building. It turns out that these details were designed by a California architect whom I had met during a tour of some of his homes.

Hi Larry H,

Hey, thanks for your reply.

Would you say that I captured the some of the correct ideas about this group; were there other things that I should have, or could have said about them as well?

I'm curious, what was it like when you were there? Did you sense any special energy in either the place or the people? Was it uplifting, being there, or just like normal everyday life.

Often when I go to the New Thought Church that I attend, both the people and the energy of the place is very spirituality uplifting whenever I'm their. I feel like I'm home, if you know what I mean.

jbseth

Your comments were accurate. I did have a sense that it was a special place with great energy. Very environmentally aware. Great interesting architecture. Here's a link to get a sense of their current activities: https://www.findhorn.org/programmes/experience-week/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIueWM6ML14AIVhrbACh22DwqzEAAYASAAEgK48_D_BwE

Findhorn in Google images: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1522&bih=706&ei=w_CDXNj_J5GsswWxxpXwBQ&q=Findhorn&oq=Findhorn&gs_l=img.3..0l10.5067.6230..7255...0.0..0.75.562.8......0....1..gws-wiz-img.1Q5gMio-Zfk

Hi LarryH,

Thanks for the links. I checked out both links the images and the programs.

Experience week looks absolutely awesome.  It seems to me, that Findhorn would be an awesome place to live.

Again, thanks a lot for sharing.

jbseth

While the name Findhorn sounded familiar, I didn't know anything about it until now. It looks fascinating and I'd love to experience it. I need to read more about it, but I've been wanting to go to Scotland and I have no travel plans for this year. I find the UK as a whole a very magical place. My first visit was maybe 30 years ago, involved an interesting synchronicity, which I'll add to that topic later. England feels like home to me and has such ancient history that it feels very spiritual and, like I said, magical. I've been to Ireland, love it too, the feeling is very wildly nature-based for me, but it feels different than England.

So the Channeling book sounds really great! Glad you figured out what must have turned you off to the book the first time. You were meant to read it now. 

BTW you might also look into The Scole Experiment/Scole Report. It was the first book I think I ever read on channeling and was the accounting of many, many meetings in a home in Scole, England, that involved the use of psychics in trance to channel other beings. I found it fascinating reading. They also experimented with camera film in a lockbox and there are images in the book from the resulting film that are really interesting. They also had a lot of things apport during the sessions such as really old newspapers (not yellowed, mentioned on the page), coins, jewelry, etc. Thomas Edison is supposedly on the other side working to set up more efficient communications.  There are some pictures on the website of the film and some objects.

From the link above: (1993-1998) The Scole Experiment Overview: Context and Background... A five-year, 500-session, 1000-hour, multi-country, multi-disciplinary experiment testing paranormal evidence for 'life after death' and 'other dimensions' of conscious existence.

Looks like they're working on a movie now.

Hi Deb, Hi All,

I can remember, very many years ago, reading something about someone or someone's who were able to put blank film in a camera and then make images from their minds appear on the film.

Unfortunately I don't remember who it was that did this, and I'm thinking that it may have been from this Scole experiment.  Thanks for that Deb.


jbseth 

jbseth, I believe you are thinking of Peter Hurkos.

Hi LarryH, Hi All,

Thanks LarryH. Yes, it may well have been Peter Hurkos; I do remember reading about him.

Here's a Wikipedia link about Peter Hurkos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hurkos


I also just found a Wikipedia link on Ted Serios. While this name seems to be vaguely familiar to me, this article seems to be a better fit for what I recall reading from very many years ago. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Serios



There's an interesting sync event here too. The Wikipedia link on Peter Hurkos, says that Charles Tart, tested Peter for his abilities. Charles Tart is the person who wrote the Forward of this "Channeling" book. 

jbseth

Hi All,

I just completed reading Chapter 1 of this "Channeling" book by Jon Klimo.

Wow, there were way more contemporary channels between the 1960's and the late 1990's than I ever realized. While I was aware of maybe 20 – 30 of these, the author lists about 100 of them and suggests that these were just the more well-known channels.

In this group of channeled material, there seemed to be 3 separate categories of channeled information. First, there were channels like Jane Roberts, who seemed to channel some type of personality. Then there were also other channels whose channeled personalities claimed to be God, Christ, or Jesus, the Tao, Mahatma or some sort of reference to an All That Is type of being. Finally, along with this, there were also channels whose personalities claimed to be some sort of ET (Extra-Terrestrial) or group or confederation of ET's.



In talking about channeling, the author makes several interesting points.

First in regards to those channels who claim to channel Jesus, he points out how in our society, there seems to be a double standard. While it's OK for a Christian to claim to talk to or hear messages from God or Jesus, it's not OK if a person from the New Age culture channels God or Jesus.

Then he says that for some of us, while the messages from one or some channels may seem to be uplifting and feel right on the mark, the messages from other channels may seem to be silly, crazy and/or presumptuous. The author also points out how we each choose for ourselves what we opt to believe and how the channeling literature often seems to point out our deepest beliefs.


Apparently, there is at least one other book on channeling. This book is called, "With the Tongues of Men and Angels: A Study of Channeling" by Arthur Hastings.


In this book, the author discusses many channels. For a reference, he says that the Seth literature was extraordinary.  He also makes some really interesting comments about another channel who goes by the name Ceanne DeRohan. He said that her channeled information was some of the most fascinating, perplexing, overwhelming and disturbing material that he has read.

Another channel that I found interesting was Karen Alexander, who channels "Daniel". Apparent Karen found Daniel, a 7 year old boy sitting next to her on a plane trip. However, when she "woke up", the stewardess told her that the seat next to her was unoccupied for the entire flight. Then Karen goes and gets into a taxi and once she realizes that the taxi isn't moving, she opens her eyes and finds that Daniel is behind the wheel of the taxi. Daniel starts talking to her and now she regularly channels his messages.

In the next chapter, the author talks about channeling as a historic phenomena. I'm intrigued to discover what he has to say about this.

jbseth

I think maybe you were thinking of Ted Serios, and I was incorrect with the Hurkos suggestion.

Quote from: jbseth
Then he says that for some of us, while the messages from one or some channels may seem to be uplifting and feel right on the mark, the messages from other channels may seem to be silly, crazy and/or presumptuous. The author also points out how we each choose for ourselves what we opt to believe and how the channeling literature often seems to point out our deepest beliefs.

Wow, I'm liking the author, he's one sharp cookie. His point about the double standard is so true!

And the above, about our deepest beliefs, explains why I can accept some things channeled and others just don't sit right with me. And my interest in Seth is because what he said resonates with -- apparently my deepest beliefs.

It's true, everything in our personal reality, on every level, is all about our beliefs.

I looked into Ceanne DeRohan and her books got excellent reviews on Amazon. I've added her Right Use of Will to my wishlist. And the Channeling book as well.

Hi All,

I'm presently reading the last chapter of the book "Channeling, Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources", by Jon Klimo. It occurred to me that I should have previously mentioned something about how this book is organized, as it illustrates what the author had in mind, when he wrote this book.


This channeling book, which is over 400 pages, contains the following 4 sections.

Section 1 is all about the personalities involved in channeling. This section consists of chapters 1, 2 and 3 where the author talks about channeling as a modern phenomenon, channeling as a historical phenomenon and who does it.

Section 2 is all about the channeled material itself. This section consists of chapters 4, 5 and 6 where the author talks about what the channelers have to say, who are they channeling and how do they do it.

Section 3 is all about possible explanations for channeling. This section consists of chapters 7 and 8 where the author talks about psychological explanations and biology and physics.

Section 4 is about the potential that exists in regards to channeling. This section consists of chapters 9 and 10 where the author talks about open channeling (the ability that each one of us has to tap into our own sources of intuition and creativity), and your turn, a chapter on what each of us might be able to do to determine if we could channel.



As you can see, this book is organized very well and it's also very well written. As I have read through the previous 9 chapters, I have picked up a lot of new interesting insights and it has given me many interesting ideas to think about.  I would highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in this topic.


When I first started to read this book, I was specifically looking for answers to the question, why are there so many channelers and why are there so many different channeled messages? I don't know that I've gotten an answer to these questions directly from this book, but I do think that I may have gotten some sort of indirect answers by reading this book and thinking about this topic. In a way, I think the answers to my questions are probably similar to the answer to the question, why are there so many different ways to express ourselves?

This book definitely gave me a lot more to think about in regards to channeling and all that's involved in it. I learned some very interesting things that I wasn't aware of, in reading this book and I also picked up a lot of interesting insights and ideas as well.

I'll share some of these, in some following posts.

- jbseth

Hi All,

I recently finished reading the book "Channeling, Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources", by Jon Klimo. Wow, this sure was an interesting book.

While I thought I knew quite a bit about channeling, there was a lot of information in here that I didn't know. Not only did this book contain a lot of information about channeling, but it also contained a lot of information on many other related topics such as psychology, psychiatry, biology, physics, intuition and creativity to name a few. In addition to this, on several occasions this book gets into some rather deep psychological / philosophical discussions about the nature of reality.

Here are some of the interesting thoughts, ideas and facts that I learned, while reading this book.



Channeling in History: (and its relationship with religions)
It turns out that channeling really isn't new or even relatively new. It has been with us for a very long time. For example, consider the following. In ancient times, Moses and the prophets appeared to have channeled messages from God. Zoroaster may have channeled some of the texts of that religion. In ancient Greece, the oracles at Delphi channeled their information and it appears that Muhammed may have channeled messages from Allah.

Then, in the middle ages, the following people also appeared to have channeled some of their messages or material, St. Hildegarde of Binge, Joan of Arc, Nostradamus, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross.

In more recent times George Fox and Emanuel Swedenborg also channeled some of their information. Along with this, Joseph Smith appears to have channeled, "The Book of Mormon".

In the 1800's others who channeled include the "Fox" sisters, Madame H.P. Blavatsky and many people from the "Spiritualism" movement.  Then in the 1900's Pearl Curran channeled "Patience Worth" and people like Edgar Cayce, Alice A. Baily, Ruth Montgomery and Jeane Dixon also appeared to have channeled as well.



Unhappy Childhood:
There seems to be a correlation between people who are channels and people who have unhappy childhoods. That is, there apparently are many channels who've had an unhappy childhood.  There is some discussion about this subject and these relationships in this book.



The Challenger Research Project:
Apparently shortly after the space shuttle Challenger accident, the spirits of the dead crew members started to communicate through a channel named Jeannie Love. A team of researchers decided to investigate of the results of these communications which seemed quite favorable. However, this team finally opted to not follow up on this, due to the perceived privacy needs of the surviving families.



ITC:
Electronic Voice Phenomena, EVP, is now referred to as Instrumental Transcommunication, ITC. ITC is the ability to receive messages from the other side using various electronic equipment such as radios, televisions and computers. Maggy and Jules Harsch-Fischbach of Luxembourg have received some amazing results from an otherworldly group who identified themselves as "Timestream." These results were very good. This book contains some discussion on ITC and these "Timestream" results.



Schizophrenics:
There are some interesting correlations between people with schizophrenia and people who channel. There is some discussion on this topic, in this book. Both groups appear to recognize voices in the head and sense the presence of "others". However, the people who channel, typically are in general agreement with the rest of us regarding our overall consensus reality and they also have a strong presence of overall mental health. This is not true for those people who are schizophrenic.



DID:
Multiple Personality Disorder, MPD, is now referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder, DID.  There are some interesting correlations between people with DID and people who channel. There is an interesting discussion on this topic in this book. Both groups appear to speak as other personalities. However, the channels appear to have much more control in regards to inviting "in" the other personalities. In addition to this, most people with DID have very young personalities, while those who channel, typically don't.



Open Channeling
The author more or less defines Open Channeling, as the ability of a person to open themselves up to receiving information that is outside of our normal range. Intuition and creativity are some of the most universal kinds of open channeling.

In this section, there were many interesting quotes from inventors, poets, writers, musicians and dancers, who say that they have tapped into some "other source" for their various creations. These include people like Chester Carlson, the inventor of the Xerox photocopying process. Others include, poets, Shelley, and Keats. This list also includes writers like Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Steven and Thomas Wolfe.

Friedrich Nietzsche apparently received the material for "This Spake Zarathrustra" in one massive flood of inspiration. To me, this sounds very similar to how Jane Roberts received, "The Universe as Idea Construction" from Seth.

Alice Walker explains how the characters in her book, "The Color Purple" seemed to possess a life of their own and would come for a visit. This sounds something like how Jane Roberts explains how Cyprus and Oversoul 7 contributed to her "Oversoul 7" books.



Discernment
There's several layers of discernment and these are discussed in this book. There's discernment in terms of whether some information that comes up is coming from the self, the ego, or if it's coming from some other internal intuitive source.  Then there's discernment in terms of, if the information is coming from an internal intuitive source, can it be trusted; is it repeatable and reliable. There's also discernment in terms of, if the information is coming from an external source, like a channel, can it be trusted.



Warnings:
Here there is a good discussion about opening yourself up to the risk of mental dissociation and breakdown as a result of prematurely altering your consciousness before you have a well-developed ego.



Bibliography:
Finally, this book has a bibliography that's nine pages long and many of these books are very interesting. If you own or have access to this book, you may want to check out some of these books.


- jbseth

Quote from: jbseth
Friedrich Nietzsche apparently received the material for "This Spake Zarathrustra" in one massive flood of inspiration. To me, this sounds very similar to how Jane Roberts received, "The Universe as Idea Construction" from Seth.

jbseth, I can well believe that about Zarathustra. I have only dipped into it, couldn't read much of it.

Hi Sena,

Yeah, I didn't know this about Friedrich Nietzsche. I wonder how many other famous writers have a similar story.

-jbseth

Quote from: jbseth
Hi Sena,

Yeah, I didn't know this about Friedrich Nietzsche. I wonder how many other famous writers have a similar story.

-jbseth

you remind me of Richard Bach and Jonathan Livingston Seagull.     

Hi Chasman,

Yeah, that's a great example.  Thanks.

- jbseth

hi jbseth,
        thank you.   

Just started reading the Channelling book this afternoon. 300-something pages with small type—Klimo sure can pack a lot of words on a page. I really enjoyed the description of Jane Roberts/Seth, Klimo did a great job getting to the heart of the Seth materials and in a positive light. It will take me a while, but I'm looking forward to reading more of this book. He really is informed and while open-minded is very methodical and analytical about the subject. Thanks for the heads up!

Quote from: chasman
Richard Bach and Jonathan Livingston Seagull. 

Good one Chasman!

thank you Deb.
wow, I just googled and read a little about Jon Klimo.
he sounds like a fascinating man.
I'm going to look him up on youtube.