I see that a number of board members are highly familiar with Seth, Course in Miracles, Eli and many other channeled sources. Has anyone on this board read "The Stephen Experience or The Teachings of Stephen the Martyr" by Michael Cocks?
It's not particularly well known and it was published in 2005. The circumstances around the channeling breakthrough are really interesting.St Stephen was matryred around 2,000 years ago, one of the first to be identified in early Christianity, and on several occassions spoke the language of Koine Greek. The teachings are dense but feel like higher source material. His historical perspective is also interesting.
Anyone else familiar with the book? I'd also like to hear your response to it if you have read it.

Hey there, Rick, thank you for the suggestion. I am big into channelled material but not if there's a religious bent. Michael openly admits there is a very Christian spin on his interpretation of what came through, for someone like me, that is a turnoff.

It's interesting you mention the circumstances around the breakthrough, though. I have been studying this in a very informal way. Neale Donald Walsch and Eckhart Tolle, from what I gather, were both suicidal when the channelling first occurred. Gary Renard had two apparently "physical, solid" people appear in his living room one afternoon during a meditation. Esther and Jerry Hicks were also meditating when Abraham first came through Esther, causing her to write letters in the air with her nose.

I am interested in this because I would like to channel an entity.

My son writes what I think are numbers in the air, at his side, with his finger.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Hi AeroLynda,
Thanks for the response and I fully get the Christian spin turnoff. I've worked through my "growing up Catholic" issues (I think ;>) ) and have no religious preference other than my historical/cultural interest in world religions. Actually, I don't remember Stephen's messages to be particularily Christian, although I believe that Cocks was a (retired?) minister. Esoteric Christianity and other "Perennial Philosophy" traditions found in Vedic, Sufi, Hermetic, Kabbalistic traditions do fascinate me.

I know that Tolle was very depressed when he "awakened" but I don't believe that he claims to be channelling anyone. Could I be wrong? Interestingly, Tolle adopted the last name of the Zen- like Christian Mystic Meister Eckhardt for his own first name. The term "dark night of the soul" coined by John of the Cross is the popular term used for the emergence of a deep sense of depression, existential meaningless, and void that are sometimes experienced before a enlightenment breakthrough. Read the modern Christian mystic Bernadette Roberts "No-Self" books. Ditto Suzanne Segal. I know that some but not all channel mediums experience depression. My sense is that chanellers may, or may not, be of mystic bent. Jane Roberts comes to mind as someone without a mystical bent. Yet Seth's messages seem to be higher IUOC entity teachings.
I see that you have an interest with the chanelled Course in Miracles material and that's clearly where Gary Renard's book comes from, or is in line with. I had a great deal of difficulty wading through the "scripture-like" style of Course in Miracles although I certainly resonate with it's message. I also had a great deal of difficulty accepting Renard's claim of material manifestations of the persons that appeared to him. I remember when reading the book around 2002 thinking that he was using this as kind of a "fictional conceit" to get across Course in Miracles teachings.Claims of solid materialization of NPMR IUOC beings have always tickled my boggle threshold. I have experienced NPMR apparitions, which like most NPMR phenomena (UFO, Marian visions, fairies etc) have a different quality ( see wonderful book Daemonic Reality). They are more elusive, trickster -like to pin down. I know that there is a particular Australian lawyer who claims he has first person evidence of materialization mediumship. He's a bit pugilistic for my taste.
Having said all of this regarding solid materialization of IUOC entities, I have actually been working with a client, unfamiliar and basically illiterate in psychic knowledge and understanding, spontaneously experiencing the presence of recently dead persons in his living room on a reguar basis. He states that they appear to him in the guise of the method of their (usually) violent deaths. If a person has drowned, they will show up wet. Some appear bloodied, burned, you name it. They speak telepathically to him and seem to want him to communicate to a friend or relative "some type" of a message. My client actually experiences the pain, horror and fear that the entity experiences. This will affect my client for hours afterwards and this scares and mystifies him. He doesn't know the visitors, wonders "why they come to me?" and feels guilty for not helping them. He says that they are as real as "you and me." I believe him. There are also other paranormal occurances in his life that I'll convey at some point. I have a psychiatist colleague who is also seeing him and, unlike myself, is unfamiliar with metaphysics and he uses the word "paranormal" experiences to describe my client and has never "seen this type of thing before". I have worked in my field of psychology for 30 years, 17 years as an inpatient unit director, and am highly familiar with auditory and visual hallucinations that are psychotically based. My client's experience do not have a psychotic quality. Neurologic? Maybe but EEG's and MRI's of my client's brain indicate no evidence of neurologic anomolies.
So....I'm willing to re entertain my materialization skeptic views regarding Renard's book, although the crap that a particular Australian lawyer is selling is beyond banal. I have read some interesting reputable investigations of materialization phenomena going back to the 1880's. So....who knows?

Well Rick, if your client knows you believe him then that could be enough right there, but you already knew that didn't you? I think that the ability to have some control over this phenomena would be most useful, it would be to me if it was happening to me, I think. It must be horrific to have to see that, the energy or visualization of what death looked like for the energy of the FWAU identity coming through to your client, that's what comes to me to say to you here. I know someone that sent me actual photo's of cut up bodies from Mexico, I'm not even going to go into who this person is and why they thought I would want to see those, but it was horrible and real, probably much like what you're client sees as far as death goes. Perhaps some suggestion to ask for less detail or something.

I know these people have gone "commercial", but they have books that also might help your client feel so not alone in their reality, Silva Brown and John Edwards.

Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Unfortunately Sylvia Brown has been thoroughly debunked. There is even a website devoted to debunking her that although venemous and unkind, has enough info in it for me to not take her seriously.She has made the mistake of making dramatic "prophesies" and opinions regarding missing persons on national tv shows. The website brutally points out her "misses". Unfortunately this has a negative effect on the reliability of her other purported experiences. I'm not trying to be unkind about her but she is one of the current popular mediums that I do not trust. John Edwards seems credible IMHO.

I sit corrected, you are right Rick, Tolle isn't channelling.

Ya, ACIM was tough for me to get through, it took several tries but was totally worth it. I would not understand Forgiveness and Forgiveness Opportunities so well had I not actually read that book, and Renard, Marianne Williamson and Neale Walsch refer to it often enough that I would have felt like I was missing something if I hadn't read it through.

Renard is a good introduction to the course in my opinion. I don't know how much I believe his claim. I think some video of Arten and Pursah would help me make up my mind on that.

I have never read any Seth books but everything that's been clipped and snipped from the material has resonated with me. I've always been peripherally aware of Seth, and aware of Bob Monroe the same way until very recently (about four months ago).

I haven't been back to the Values Climate thread since it tried to make my head explode, does anyone want to discuss the physical similarity between Bob Monroe and that painting of Seth?

Was Seth an incarnate being that passed and then started being channeled by Jane Roberts? Who painted the picture, where did the data for the picture/painting come from again? Perhaps the "Bob" model is a useful one, or is it the "Seth" model, or....

It sure got our attention, didn't it? :)
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Salve' AeroLynda,

Yeah, saw Seth/Monroe portrait. Cosmic humor cracks me up. Ken Wapnick has written a number of books on ACIM interpretation but he writes in the dry, detailed manner of a medieval theologian. Also read The Complete Story of the Course: The History, The People and the Controversies .......of ACIM by D Patrick Miller. Helen Schucman apparantly died quite depressed. Her collaboration with William Thetford is also interesting. They are two people who appear highly unlikely to engage in spontaneous channelled metaphysical/spiritual material. Again, like Jane Roberts, there doesn't appear to be much in the way of evolved spiritual development in Schucman. Although Roberts seems a little more evolved. Schucman didn't seem to even understand the material that she channelled. Then again, I'm not so sure that I do completely. They left that for the monkish Wapner. Again the Trickter at play ;>). WTF, Jesus channelling to a secular Jew. Gotta love it!
This channelling phenomena, which seems to have increased and deepened in Higher Understanding over the past 30 odd years, is really remarkable. I know that channelling goes back to our earliest roots in caves and campfires but something is definitely accelerating in mankind's Collective Consciousness and boy are we a part of it! Are we beginning to accelerate post -egoic consciousness? Perhaps in 1,000 years a child will be born into a post- egoic level morphic field of mankinds collective meme pool. How's that? "Meme pool"....(doing a happy dance over that one, giggling and hugging myself). Think of it. Our current collective heritage of the individuated ego seems to be only 4 or 5 thousand years, if that (see Julian Jayne's The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind and Alan Combs' work in this area). Tolle sees Jesus and Buddha as early mutations of this potential. We all be brothers and sisters in bringing more of NPMR into NPR...little IUOC bacteria crawling in the Big, Big, Big Cheese of Big Cheese's gut.

Oh, is that what that is? Heh, I hadn't realized that. Interesting, thank you.
I haven't read many of your posts yet Rick but you sure seem to have some big TOE understanding. In case you are interested in what Tom has to say on the subject, and in case you haven't seen these yet, we have a fairly lengthy thread about "that Bashar character" as some of us affectionately call him and another one about my idol, Neale Donald Walsch: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3576. Both include a few words from Tom.
Take care,
Lynda

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3067

bette,

The last known physical incarnation Seth was projecting into PMR was a guy named Frank Withers. In the first book by Jane Roberts called "The Seth Material" (where she lays out the background for the Seth emergence) there is quite a bit of info on this. According to Seth, "Frank" actually happened to live near the area where Jane and her husband Robert Butts lived. They were able to verify that Frank Withers had actually lived (and died) there. When they first began contact with the non-physical via the Ouija board, the messages they received from Frank were generally fairly misspelled and simple. After some time (to make a long story short)- Frank revealed to Jane and Rob that he was learning on the "other side" and that he was aware of a particular teacher. This teacher was Seth. Eventually, once Seth began to communicate via the Ouija board there was a noticable change in the quality and quantity of material. Seth explained that Frank Withers had been a 'fragment personality' of his own, and that he had been there to learn something pretty specific. Humorously, Seth even comments on how "dull" Frank's personality is.

The "Seth" painting was painted by Robert Butts, Jane's husband. He was very good artist, and if you've seen any of the newer Seth book printings, his paintings are used as cover art.

Hey Rick,

Have you ever read Jane Roberts' "Adventures in Consciousness: Aspect Psychology" ?

-cole

_________________
Never live so certainly as to confuse your own convictions with what is true.

Intending to find info on this- and found this immediately upon looking:

(Robert Butts' Notes: "As Seth, Jane pointed to my portrait of Seth; it hung on the wall behind me, so that she faced it as she sat in her rocker.")

Seth: Give us a moment. That was my last full reincarnation, adopted then because I loved the sea, and it served a strong purpose in spreading ideas from one country to another. The men who traveled with me also took part in the seeding of ideas. We spread them about the world as it was then known.

Frank Withers was a fragment personality of mind. We will continue, himself, to reincarnate and go his own way. Many of us leave fragment personalities as you leave children. Do you follow me?

("Yes")

And now I wish you a fond good evening.

_________________
Never live so certainly as to confuse your own convictions with what is true.

Hi Cole and AeroLynda,
I have seen references from the Jane Roberts book but haven't read it. I'll have to put it on my list. And thanks for the link AeroLynda. I enjoy our communication and hope to meet some of the MBT community in NYC in May. I read the Trilogy about 4/5 years ago and certainly have not mastered the material as I see many in the community have. MBT certainly falls in the purview of some of the areas that I do know something about and it's easy for me to resonate with it.
I didn't know about Frank Withers. That's neat.

And now I wish you a fond good evening...nice Cole ;>)

I plan to be at the May event.

I like how you said "that's neat". That's a word I really like, I like when Tom uses it too.

That, and "nifty".

How about "that's groovy"?