Alan Steinfeld interviewed by Lena Adamopoulos about his Research on Channeling

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 CHANNELING:  Contact with the Immortal Essence

Alan Steinfeld interviewed by Lena Adamopoulos for Greek Yoga World magazine

Intro:
The concept of channelling has now filtered down from metaphysical circles into the mainstream media, as an accepted idea.  For instance when an African student asked Hillary Clinton what her husband, the former US president Bill Clinton thought about a certain economic problem her response was: “I am not going to be channelling my husband.”

Just recently one of the top intellectuals, William Safire, a leading authority on the use of language had a whole column devoted to the word itself in the New York Times.
(Channelling by WILLIAM SAFIRE, September 3, 2009)

He wrote that the verb started in the 13th century with the meaning of “to guide along a pathway or though a certain medium…
Much later [the word] found a home in the transmission of electrical signals.”  Safire goes on to say that “channelling is a vestige of New Age jargon that has taken on a non-spiritual meaning….In its fresh outbreak as vogue lingo, channelling means transmitting another’s ideas or beliefs”.

Alan Steinfeld gave this interview to Greek Yoga World magazine, published in Greece, November 2009. 
This spiritual teaching about channeling conveys a modern field of insight which is both, omni human and omni present.
– Lena Adamopoulos, editor.

Alan Steinfeld:  Channeling is a phenomenon of consciousness. Due to the plasticity of our bio-neurology we can shift the pattern of thoughts to connect with other energies that are not locally found. In other words our brains are a organic inter-dimensional communication devices that can access frequencies of any consciousness we care to be in touch with.  The idea of tuning our mind towards something is how we access its vibration. 
And in a universe made of energy, everything is a frequency.   Leaning how to shift the consciousness of who we think we are and access the stream of universal wisdom is channelling.   William James, the America psychologist that came up with the term “stream of consciousness”.  He said in his lectures on The Varieties of Religious Experience, in the year 1902:
“Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”

 

 I see that there are two different forms of what we call channelling.   One is the mediumistic way, where a person accesses a consciousness that is other than his own. However this can also be a form of spirit position, which can be very dangerous.  So you really have to know and be sure of whom you are opening your frequencies to.  It is like walking down the street, it is not everyone you encounter that you want to develop intimate friendly relationships with.  They have to be at the right vibration. Generally people channel beings of a higher nature.

A modern awareness began in the 1890s with Madame Blavatsky, the later on with Alice Bailey and her wok with the Tibetan and the Arcane school of metaphysics. Then in the 1930s with Edgar Cayce it was popular.

But there was a resurgence in the 1970s with Jane Roberts and Seth. The entity Seth started coming though Jane Roberts in upstate New York and this is what I call the first modern channel.   His whole message was how to tune into other realities and access more of who we are.   I think it was Seth who actually first coined the word channelling to describe the process of speaking through his host he called for some reason Rupert. 

For me one of the best is the being Ramtha as channelled through JZ Knight since 1977.  I like his message. 
He says: “The big mystery here is not what is being channelled through this body, it is –what is that life force, personality, entity coming through your body.  That is the big mystery; what are you, and where did you issue forth from….”
In other words, we are all channelling ourselves.  When the personality gets out of the way, then a more refined frequency exists. I believe that people are like radios, which tune in a specific frequency.

This gets us to the second definition of channelling that is often popularly used today. It’s this connecting to the source; your own source, your own higher self. 
Υουr true self is what remains after the personality  gets out of the way. When we are in the creative mode we are channeling our essential nature. 

Who you are without the personality, the mental trapping and emotional dramas?  That you is the creative spark of divine creation.  When you get in touch with that then the purity of knowledge, thought and creativity flow through you.  Edgar Cayce and the work he did in healing, past lives and future prediction is an example of this sort of channelling.  He would go into a deep sleep and bring through his pure consciousness and then do readings on people. 

We are now at a state in our evolution that I think we can all start to tap into the area of consciousness that Cayce was accessing, and integrate it into our every day life.  In other words, now is the time we are awakening
 together as a planetary consciousness.  It is an amazing time with the main stream becoming open to metaphysical realities.   I am most interested in bringing this awareness of our multi being ness to the public.

Lena:  Alan you have dealt with the phenomenon of Channelling the last 25 years, and have come in contact with a lot of special people, with famous channels as Ramtha and with innumerable teachers
 of these arts. You have “worked” near channels under “possession” and have in general explored the phenomenon. Mainly however you have explored it mapping your own superior self. How would you describe the phenomenon of Channelling?

In the early 1980s when I first got into spirituality there was a popular underground fad of channels. It sort of what put the “New Age” as it was termed on the map.  And actually for me it was exactly what I was looking for.

I wasn’t drawn to the old forms of spirituality that meant following a guru and in some cases wearing his picture around your neck.  But I was shopping around at that time for a spiritual teacher.  I knew there had to be more to the world than the materialistic model the Western tradition was presenting.  Either you believed in God who lived in heaven, who was judging and watching you constantly; or it was the Eastern tradition about following a Guru so you can become enlightened in this life time or maybe the next.  That is if you followed everything your Guru said. 

Enlightenment sounded like a mini sort of heaven, but there was also something in the Eastern religions about transcending ego, and Zen Buddhism had its appeal for me for a very short period of time. I found it too dull and mindless, but I guess that is the point, the mindlessness of it. 
But when I started my spiritual search I was looking for something exciting, stimulating, out of this world!  Well, I actually heard my first Ramtha tape in 1979, where it was explained that a 35,000 year old warrior from Atlantis took possession of this bleached blond housewife from Tacoma, Washington. My first reaction was “Yeah right!?” I didn’t buy it for a second -- coming from a Western psychological model Freud’s neurotic psyche.  
At that point the whole idea of ancient beings talking through someone else now was too much for my belief system.

 I could say, it took me two years to be ready to consider the
reality that such a thing was actually possible. 
Then in 1981 someone gave me, or really my roommate at the time
left an audio tape in my apartment of this woman who channelled.
I was pulled one day to it as a curiosity.  
Plus I was actively spiritually shopping at that point so
I put it on my tape player.

 I really liked what I heard. It was a question and
answer session called Dialogues with Ramtha.  This
 thing that opened me up was when a woman asked
Ramtha, why she could not cure her skin condition after
 trying every therapy in the world.  And Ramtha says to her:
 “Have you tried loving it?” I thought, that is good that is right
 to the heart of the matter. You could almost hear a
 clicking in on the other side of the tape and the woman
 get it, and I got it.  I felt –‘yes’ this spirituality has to do
 with our ability to love.

It was some very profound wisdom about finding our divinity within and
how we create our own reality through our attitudes. Plus he called everyone
“Master”.  Meaning they were the master of their own destiny.  Something
there woke me up to a deeper knowing inside me.   I wasn’t ready to accept
the idea of channelling yet, but I thought the message is great, does it matter
about the form it takes. 

The idea is not to believe that it is true, but the door opened to another part
of me when I just considered the possibility of it. That was the first step
towards God, if you will, towards my own divinity.   What I leaned is that when
we say to ourselves: “What if?” something expands inside our consciousness.
Ramtha said in those early days that when we consider a new idea, new
neuro circuits are activated to house the new possible. When that happens
our mind expands and we grow in our awareness.  A
ll my mind expansion has happened with the consideration of
“What if?” Shakespeare said: “Your if is your only peacemaker.”

So that first tape hooked and made me want to see more. I went to an
audience with Ramtha in October of 1981. There were about 100 people
in the room and the first thing that Ramtha does as he enter the room, is to take about
20 minutes and look at everyone in the eyes,  It was amazing he was looking at
everyone.

And then he would start by saying:  I be Ramtha, the enlightened one. 
I come to you this day in your time, as you term time to be, to talk to you
about the God that you.  The divine being who you have been searching
everywhere for;  this thing called God is not to be sought outside your being,
it is to be found, in what is termed, your being… So be it!!!”

All Shakespearean type of language that I loved listening to; I was an English
literature major in college.  And when Ramtha said “I am not
interested in followers, I am already great.  If you want to follow me when
I leave this body then do so, but this woman, (meaning the channel), doesn’t
want people following her around.

And I thought; “There, there is the sort of spiritual teaching I was looking for.”
A deep profound message about who we are, why we are here and what are we
suppose to be doing.  I studied that teaching for 20 years.  It became the spiritual
foundation of everything New Realities is all about.

 

But in the meantime I was also looking at a lot of other teachers, getting a
well rounded education, in that way. I checked out all the great channels of the
1980s, either in personor on tape. There was Emmanuel coming through Pat
Rodegaster, Bashar is an extra terestial being from the future through Darryl Anka
who I have been close with and just brought to New York, Kevin Ryerson, Lazarus,
Mafu…. it was quite an industry back in the  ‘80s.  A lot of this has faded away, although
Ramtha and Bashar still get large audiences and give valuable beautiful teachings. 

Now there is also Abraham through Easter Hicks who I have not seen,
but there is a huge response to that work in the US, --Channeling a group soul known as
Abraham. So channeling as phenomenon is here to stay.  It is part of our current spiritual landscape.

Can every one practise channeling?

Channeling is the way with which conscience is revealed. It is an ancient art,
and we have proof that it existed from that far back. The Oracle at Delphi was
based on the channels for Apollo revealing prophecy. Also, in the Bible as an example,
where the prophets speak of the voice of God that is revealed to them, become themselves
“channels”…

We all have the ability to channel, and can even channel the frequency of another, or other
beings and their frequency. It is about tapping into the field of energy.  This something the
science writer, Lynne MacTaggart wrote about in her book The Field, in very
clear scientific language. Rupert Sheldrake also speaks about as a morphogenetic field.

However what we should remember is to channel the highest, because there are many
types of non material, “beings” out there, in the astral world and beyond. And we can be
tuned in a field beyond the astral and this is what we should invoke, our higher self.
Consciousness is everywhere omnipresent but we discover that we acquire this body
so consciousness is revealed on the earthy level.

To say it more simply anyone who has ever had a creative thought or expression
is channeling their own connection to the source.
In Plato's dialogue of Ion Ἴων» Socrates discusses with the title character the question
of whether the rhapsode, a professional performer of poetry, gives his performance on
account of his skill and knowledge or by virtue of divine possession. Socrates deduces
from this observation that Ion has no real skill, but is like a soothsayer or prophet is being
divinely possessed. Socrates offers the metaphor of a magnet to explain how the rhapsode
transmits the poet's original inspiration from the muse to the audience. He says that
the god speaks through the poet and thus the gods
in-spire (to infuse with spirit)  people. 

This is where creativity or the word ‘inspiration’ comes from – to bring in spirit. 
The word ‘genuis’ is to be possessed by the geni or the jinns as they say in the
Moslem world.

I think theatre as well, as it began in ancient Greece was a way of channeling of the
Gods.  Bringing them into form to communicate with the people for spiritual lessons. 
It devolved into drama and wearing masks, but in the roots of the old Greeks plays we
find the concept of channeling.

In what you are described above the difference between channeling and
possession as seen in the shamanic ceremonies… Meaning is channelling
more of a voluntary act?

Possession is a lower form of channelling and there is usually not the same
control involved.  Most peopl I have seen decide when an entity will come in and
when it will leave, they have absolute control.  They select when they will convey the
messages that they bring from the higher conscience down to us.

In other words there exists a possibility, that certain beings can attach themselves to you
and it maynot be easy to get rid of them.  These are on a lower level from those beings
that are beyond the human consciousness. But essentially we are all connected and
more coherent beings are found in the more refined spheres of consciousness.

 

Is that a kingdom of the dead? Channels are considered by many to come in
contact with thedead, and this is the opinion for who they are channelling. Is
there truth in this?

Lets just say that there exist a lot of realms and the realm of where the dead reside,
who don’t want to move on is called the astral realm.  It is only a tiny part of the all in All.

The channels that I have seen appear to have come from dimensions beyond the astral. 
There are some who have resolved all levels of being and have ascended with their
body back to the “totality of Spirit.   Ramtha was one of them, but so was St. Germaine,
Don Juan of the Carlos Castaneda teachings, Enoch from the old Testament and many,
many more. Meaning in ascension that these beings took their body with them into
another dimension.  They did not die.  Some have come to tell us how to do this ourselves.

You might ask that if they took their bodies with them why do they have to channel? 
I think because in most cases these bodies are now exist at such a higher frequency
and that the only way to communicate with the earth plane is to speak through someone
else, in order to be heard on the gross level.

But there are also many instances of people seeing ascended being.  I think the
apparitions of Mary are very real and miraculous and I think she was another one
of those ascended masters.  I think the church even recognizes this in what is
called “The Assumption of Mary”.  Even in Islam there is also story of Mohammed’s
ascent to heaven from the Dome of the Rock in Israel.  And of course there is the
ever presentimmortal being Babaji, the Mahavatar, that has attained his immortal body.

Ramtha would always say that it is easier to ascend than it is to die. It is our immortal
birthright.  But it is not to be in exchange for living.  He said it is the product of
a life welllived, not a form of escape or divine suicide.

Ramtha’s big message is that you are God and God is in you, and perhaps
some are notready to accept this, but I think we have to overcome the figure of an
exterior God in order to evolve spiritually. We are all Gods, and we are here in order to
bring into the known and these dimension that which we find in the unknown. It is our
extraordinary faculty that perhaps the inspired and creative people can express in the
material world, and it is the miraculous meaning of what it means to be human.
Perhaps at a later date with the developments we have, we can become a coherent
organism which is constituted of different individuals, but each one can accept the
differences but also its similarities, with all the other individuals, and this constitutes one
unit of conscience in which we are all connected and unique simultaneously.

All these lead us to comprehend that we can reach incredible heights with our minds and can even have contact with other dimensions. Are states like Samadhi and ecstasy related states to channeling?

I do not believe that yogis are interested in channeling. I believe that they have the fundamental motive to raise their own consciousness and indeed this in my opinion is the destiny of human consciousness, and it is not channelling. Our destiny is to merge with the higher mind. If there is some message in channelling it is that we are not our absolute highest mind.  But there is a way to be so we express our truenature.

 

Is yoga a way of autonomous contact with the spirit, unlike shamanic cultures where we see a collective attendance of members for the contact with the deities?

Yes yogis are not interested for channeling, maybe they serve as vessels of the higher kingdom but they want to merge with it while channeling has to do with our faculty to have access in the higher intelligence in order to communicate something to the rest of humanity. That is why I say, that the prophets were channels of a higher force. But it goes back to the beginning of western literature and the first Homeric verses of Iliad which begins with Homers invocation of the Muse of his inspiration: “[O], Muse speak through me…” and this is how Homer asks for the divine inspiration to guide him in the narration of a big war, between brave people, and thus back in
ancient times they could invoke the gods and the gods speak to divinely inspired men via the muses. And this is art, because the muse brought the inspiration and this is that we name creation.

The modern phenomenon of channeling and the intellectual awakening that it has brought is that, there are beings that are not material and can use the body of humans in order to give their messages to us.

Can you say that in a way it does happen daily to everybody? Are all the channels always conscious?

You can say that in some way it happens daily to everyone, but certain cases they are particularly remarkable because those individuals can separate from their body and draw information from a bigger reality. The cases that I have seen I can describe as conscious because the channels always make the choice when the being will come, in order to transmit some message - and when it is time for it to leave the body.

If I share my experience with you, will it influence you? Some teachers do not share
their transcendental experiences with their students so they do not interfere with their students’ experiences…
Anything you share with me will influence me one way or another. I believe that the teachers should share their experiences and there is no reason for wanting someone else’s experiences, we can have our own.

In the literature we find all kinds of descriptions of the abstract fields of consciousness and we also find information that does not really exist, an example is the silver cord that is described in books on astral projection. This type of information can confuse somebody that does not have experience, and lead him to search things that do not exist in order to confirm that his experience is valid… Besides isn’t the unknown a tabula rasa, on which anyone can make anything?

Yes, in the unknown you can project everything and anything and this is a big problem when we comprehend things on a surface level and do not see their genuine value. Specially with the teachers, everything they say should be received by us in a symbolic way, and not literally. What the teacher tells you is a possibility that he symbolically describes to you which you can always have but through your own perspective. Astral projection is a piece of our intellectual development and is a sign of our own personal spiritual evolution when it happens. However once again, in each experience all have their own projection, and perhaps there are techniques
that we can learn, however no one has mapped the unknown and your experiences will have to do that for you.

All these fields we are referring to, cannot be explored by somebody with logic, as is the case with quantum knowledge that we still cannot grasp and comprehend. And yet we must “perturb them in order to observe them” like Terence McKenna has said.

The beauty in all this is that there comes information of consciousness from “elsewhere” though these beings of a different consciousness,  in order for us to understand that spirituality is not local and does not have the space time  restrictions and yet exists, in fields beyond logic. And this is not something that our right hemisphere can perceive. The message is that we re evolving and the field toward which we evolve is unknown.
And this is fascinating for me because everyday and every moment we come in contact with the unknown. What I like to say, something Ramtha says, which is: “become channels for the unknown” “ you are here to make manifest unknown into the known, that is what you are here for”.

Ancient philosophers and poets have contributed to an opening of thought to “a chain of existence” and the immortality of the soul. Why, would you say primitive man `s ability of perceiving the world of spirit, had to be expressed intellectually through philosophy, and how did we become separated from an integrated world of spirit?

We began to develop the left part of our brain and we began to have the faculty of writing. As Marshall McLuhan has explained it, our writing disconnected us from our intuition, because we read and wrote of the reality, of the experiential dimension however we stopped feeling reality in some way, and we began to disconnect from the bigger picture, because our new focus of attention became the language, the means itself.

Do you believe this happened because we wanted to share knowledge and to teach others?

Teach others and also limit our own knowledge so we validate it through the experience of another, and consequently to delimit it, in order to make sure that it is valid. As all things this had its good and bad aspects. First the oral language, and then the written language, education… is all a classic example in which we observe the same phenomenon repeating itself. When humans have powerful tools in their hands, sometimes they go overboard. And thus we cannot say that there is someone or something at fault for our differentiation from the whole. It was a new experiential dimension to explore and this was the reason that we created it in the first place, in order to have this experience, and with this means.

And in our “exploration” ritual was ridiculed…and the gods were forgotten…
It was ridiculed or remained only for the few. As channeling is, open to whoever can accomplish it. But what has importance here is that it is in our nature to be spiritual, as we mentioned above.There is a non material world of which we are an integral part of. And for science this leads to the acceptance that reality is much more from what we see. Just the fact that we speak, think and evolve, is proof that we exist in a spiritual realm.

The logical brain wants us to delimit, again and again, what cant be delimited, however it is just the one of our hemispheres that is trying to outclass the other, and rather is in our natural tendency to link them and create an entirety, a complete organism.

However we continue having insights, intuitions and premonitions but do not trust our personal “experiential dimension”.
There is indeed too much fear of madness, and this has been a major obstacle in the development of our innate faculty of channeling and still, the imagination has been ridiculed, while all that exist around us, exist because we are gifted with the faculty of imagination. The true artists and particular scientists have this faculty, the creativity to let something new come into this dimension. And they are those that say “There is more from what I see, from what I know”, and will dream a bigger future and through this dream that the imagination forms, the new world is created and slowly is revealed.

Do you believe that we have spirit guides? They exist in all religions and they say they accompany you all of your life.
The name I give spirit guides is your own higher self; your contact with the source is what guides you all your life. But instead of doing that, we give some other interpretation, rather than take credit for whom they are - the All knowing wise intelligence!

That which so many religions and others have named angels, archangels, ancestor worship, spirit guides, belongs in our deep nature and is in our deep essence. So why don’t we - instead of making up some story about an energy outside of us, --start to believe at last how admirable we humans are; how connected we truly are to the source of our own being.  Let’s give this divine gift called “guide”, back where it belongs.

 We are an eternal existence and this it is the reason why channels can enter in our own dimension. We are all connected; we exist in so many dimensions at once.  It is just that our normal waking consciousness has been so conditioned by everything around us – that we have forgotten who we are. 

As the Hopi Indians say: ‘We are the ones we have been waiting for.’