Channelling to other worlds

Can ordinary people really communicate with entities in another realm? JILL MALCOLM investigates the phenomenon of channelling.

In a perfectly normal and pleasant Auckland suburban home a rather extraordinary event is taking place. Judy Humphreys, sitting in a brocade armchair with a print of Claude Monet's poppies in the field on the wall behind her, closes her eyes and turns her palms to the ceiling to try to summon the entity Balthazar.

There is nothing discernibly different about Judy. An attractive, slim woman, about 40-ish, with short, dark hair, a healthy skin and clear blue eyes, she is dressed elegantly as if she were a corporate marketing consultant heading for the office on a summer's day.

As Balthazar "comes in" her head jerks back, her right hand jabs the air, her voice changes pace and tone and the language becomes more formal.

"I am Balthazar and it is a pleasure to speak to you," says the voice. "I welcome you here. You may ask questions and we are happy to assist you."

I have a question ready. "Well, yes Balthazar," I say, feeling slightly foolish. "What would you like to say to the people who read the article I am about to write?"

"We would wish you to say that we are here to provide clarity and simplicity and impart much support, love and guidance to all. That channelling is part of going home to the Godself within."

Next question: "Can you tell me why the things that have happened in my own life have occurred?"

"All the things that you have experienced have been part of your learning in order to make you strong and clear so that you can do the work that is your soul's path.

"If you choose you will be able to work with us who are here to assist and empower individuals for change. We are here to help to take the people of this planet into a new awareness of multi-dimensional reality outside of themselves. If you choose we can assist you to write this article."

I was grateful for that.

Writing about such things is fraught with the possibilities of deception and misunderstanding. Was I really witnessing the breaking of the veil between this world and the next or was this pleasant woman sitting opposite me endearingly out to lunch?

It would be quite something to believe that higher beings have noticed me and offered to guide me. And also an enormous relief to know that my essential self will transport to other planes when I have shuffled off the mortal coil.

But to watch an ordinary person seem to go to sleep and then suddenly begin to speak in a different voice claiming to be a spiritual entity is hard for a mere mortal to swallow.

What I believe, however, is not the point. In matters of faith we shape our own reality. To try to convince anyone one way or the other is futile. What is interesting, even if you don't believe a word of it, is the phenomenon of channelling.

Calling upon a higher source of wisdom is nothing new. Forms of channelling-like phenomena are at the root of most of the world's religions and many people have claimed to have communed with spirits or heard the voice of God.

In its simplest sense, a channel is a means of transmission of information that appears to come from outside one's own learning or experience. Intuition, imagination, dreaming can all be construed as types of channelling.

But the usual understanding is that it is a form of contact with discarnate spirits. The variety of names given to those who make contact - mystics, clairvoyants, psychics, spiritualists, channellers, faith healers, shamans, soothsayers, seers and mediums - make it difficult to work out who does what. Some seem highly credible, others well-intentioned and others are frauds.



Modern channellers may give comfort to the bereaved, provide evidence of the continuation of life after death or see the content of their clients' past lives, present life or future. Some claim contact with entities from the God Force which offer details of the lives of the individuals attending a session. They may give advice about problems with relationships, health, family, work, finances. Or they may impart truths about the nature of the universe.

Channelled personalities often have names such as Seth, Shamir, Lazaris or Emmanuel, with ancient or biblical overtones. They are less often called Bill or Jill. The messages can be translated by writing (automatism) or speech (voice channelling).

Seeking advice from paranormal realms, outside organised religion, is not generally considered a respectable form of counsel. But try to book into any of the well-known channels and you may have to wait from six weeks to several months for an appointment.

Pathfinder book store in Auckland says that its biggest-selling books are Conversations with God which were channelled by Neale Donald Walsch.

Roz Burkitt, who runs The Ex Factor, which helps women to restart their lives after separation from their partners, says that a lot of women, in the turmoil that follows such partings, seek advice from a psychic. She did (an appointment took three months) and was told that she would be surrounded by a lot of women and be in a counselling position.

Hers is not an unusual story. Clients of channellers report various degrees of credible, and incredible stories, of relatives contacted or snippets of personal information that the channeller could not have known, and of advice that turns out to be prophetic. Some people continue to regularly consult a disembodied guide to help them to sort their problems.

Computer programme manager Dyan Harland took a course in 1999, where she learned how to channel a guide for herself. "My attitude has completely altered," she says.

"Now I trust that I am always in the right situation at the right time and I don't fret about life's dramas. I just work them out with the help of my guide. It makes life a lot simpler."

Chris Ellis is an electrician in the IT industry. Before he started channelling he would sometimes come across technological problems that he did not know how to fix. Now, he says, his guides provide solutions with astonishing clarity. He says he only has to ask and he gets "a sort of picture ... which explains what is required".

Not quite knowing what to expect, I sat at a Formica table in a Mt Eden coffee bar across from a thoughtful, athletic-looking man in a faded green shirt. Gerald Kember, a former All Black and former lawyer, uses channelling.

"My partner had been to this person who had channelled an identity from another dimension and had come home pretty blown away by it. I was studying psychology at the time and I thought that the explanation for her experience was telepathy from one human being to another.

"Curiosity drove me to visit the same channel she had used and that changed my belief as to the underlying nature of the encounter.

"It might sound a bit odd, but what I experienced was a profound sense of being known - that the channelled entity knew me in a highly accurate and empathetic way. The guidance, wisdom and compassion I was given at the time really worked on a practical level, and that continues.

"I no longer have any doubts about the fact that we are in essence spiritual beings in physical human form who have split away from a kind of Universal Consciousness or God Source, and who come here mainly for the purpose of learning and growth. This seems much more probable to me than just being a collection of physics, biology and chemistry that has no reason to exist.

"I consult an entity mainly about things I am having difficulty with in my life. It's a bit like having a very wise uncle who lovingly guides me. The entity I am in touch with through my channeller is tactful, insightful and a highly skilled communicator, who has an elegant and courtly style of speech.

"I've not found that I can channel this or any other entities for myself even though I meditate a lot."

Judy Humphreys, who teaches channelling and energy healing at Tranquillity House in Grey Lynn, channelled her own entity from the start.

"I went to a channelling course in Browns Bay and as we meditated I started to feel this strong masculine energy overlaying me. I got a bit frightened and shut down to ask the instructor if it was safe.

"As I continued I got this strong mind-picture of a tall, dark man with black eyes and a small beard dressed in purple robes. I asked for the name of the energy and got Balthazar quite clearly. That was not a name I consciously knew.

"I thought, 'Oh, I'm just making this up.' That's what everybody thinks at first. It takes a huge leap of faith to accept that you might be communicating with something in another dimension. But I believed the experience and acted on Balthazar's guidance and I have had the most amazingly positive changes in my life.

"His advice is always gently and lovingly presented so that there's never been any conflict between what he suggests I do and what I want to do. A high-level guide will never make it sound as if there is no choice.

"Now I believe that everybody can learn to channel and that they are probably doing it at some level anyway. But as with everything else there are different levels of skill.

"The communication is by means of energy. There are energy messages flowing all around us all the time like radio waves and all we have to do is to learn how to receive them. It's hard to describe, but when I channel Balthazar it is a bit like receiving a parcel of light that I am able to translate into words. But I know I am not consciously thinking up the words myself."

Lindsey Dawson is another DIYer and her channelling resulted in her writing the messages down and turning them into a book: Pearls. Words of wisdom from the ocean of life. For the previous 17 years, Lindsey had been editor of More, then Next and Grace magazines. She was well respected for her logical and reasoned take on things.

"I am well aware that not everybody is going to be interested in what I've written now," she says. "Most people will probably think, 'What bullshit'. I'm quite prepared for that. I wondered myself if I was going nuts. On the other hand, my mailbox is full of messages from people saying that the book has been helpful.

"My first channelling experience was very unnerving. It was during a period of some turmoil after I had left the magazine world and was wondering what to do next.

"Other people say that their introduction to channelling began when similar changes were happening in their lives.

"I wondered if I should go and see a woman I'd heard of who was this thing called a channel. Apparently she was also a great counsellor. But I was also nervous about it. I mean, channelling, for heaven's sake? I didn't know how to think about it.

"I'd heard she talked about past lives and how that reverberated into current life but I wasn't really interested in that either. It seemed a bit fairyland to me. I'm not really interested in whether I was someone's concubine or a slave in Roman time. I can't see what difference it makes.

"As I mulled over all of this, I had a very clear thought: 'You can do this yourself.' It wasn't a voice. It was a strong thought. It was at night but I was wide awake and I went downstairs to see what happened.

"I'm no great meditator but I sat down and breathed deeply and calmed myself down and I had this very strange sensation about being aware of a sort of outer force as if I was in a kind of force field.

"I felt a kind of prickling of the scalp, as if there was some sort of inpouring at the top of my head. I know this sounds very odd. It was the feeling of being in the presence of something - really weird but a powerful experience. I tried again a few nights later and it happened again and then words came. I never heard a physical voice, just a stream of consciousness which I began to speak into a tape recorder."

Even after the book was finished Dawson remains undecided as to what this experience was.

"Perhaps," she said, "it was just imagination. When you're on shifting ground it is easy for that sort of thing to pop into your mind.

"On the other hand, was I plugging into a collective consciousness sort of thing, embedded into human memory?

"It's also possible that it came from a separate entity or maybe connection with a higher, all-knowing part of myself, that we all have and can access at certain times.

"The thing that scares lot of people about the thought of channelling is that they feel they are being taken over but it's not like that at all. I only did it when I felt like doing it. There was no compulsion to sit down and 'log on'.

"The presence always felt benign, expansive, loving and compassionate - all the things you might connect with going to visit a wise old relative who has a lot of the answers to life. But if I didn't want to go to Aunty Wise Person that day, I didn't go."

Dawson believes we live in the middle of an ocean of ideas which we can plug into.

"I think artists, scientists, writers and composer all draw on this from time to time," she says, "and just because we don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

"We can't see radio waves or microwaves either and yet we accept them and I'm sure that there are other force fields that in time we will come to know about but as yet we are too primitive to understand.

"One thing I'd like to point out, though, is that there is channelling and channelling. Some of it can be quite wise and beautiful and some of it is quite clearly nonsense."

I've read about channelling, talked to more than a dozen people who use it and remain fascinated and perplexed.

The easiest path would be to vigorously defend myself against the things I don't understand and denounce them as garbage. But it seems like a double standard to accept the beliefs and practices of organised religion (which also claim to communicate with non-physical and spiritual realms) and dismiss belief systems and practices outside them (such as channelling).

For me the mystery remains. I've decided to follow the advice of philosopher and author Jacob Needleman who wrote: "You should be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out."