One of the most extraordinary and controversial cases of channeled writing is that of Jane Roberts, who claimed to receive volumes of writing from a spirit personality named Seth.
Her story begins in 1963 when Jane, a writer, and her husband Rob, an artist, began experimenting with a ouija board in an effort to develop ESP powers. To their surprise, the Seth personality came through and began telling Jane, letter by letter, the most extraordinary information about life, the human condition and the potential of the human experience. Eventually, Jane was able to channel information from Seth directly, without the use of the Ouija board. "A fantastic avalanche of radical new ideas burst into my head with tremendous force," Jane said, "as if my skull were some sort of receiving station, turned up to an unbearable volume, my body sat at the table, my hands furiously scribbling down the words and ideas that flashed through my head."
The result, over many years and as many as 1,500 channeling sessions, were seven books that Jane said were dictated by Seth, including Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul, The Nature of Personal Reality and Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment.
(See Seth & His Many Offspring)
A Course in Miracles
It may not be commonly known that Helen Schucman's now-famous book A Course in Miracles was also the result of trance spirit channeling. The book has been distilled and popularized by the interpretation of the work by Marianne Williamson in Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" and subsequent books.
Helen Schucman was a Columbia University professor and psychologist who claimed to channel the text of the book in trance states that she experiences over a seven-year period. The author, she said, was none other than Jesus Christ himself, who dictated to her this "new gospel" in an effort to correct errors in commonly accepted scriptures and certain teachings of the Church. As you might expect, this claim has led to the denunciation of A Course in Miracles by mainstream religions (some have even called it demonically inspired), but has enjoyed a growing interest among many others, primarily through the books and lectures of Williamson. Its message is hardly demonic, essentially being one of love, forgiveness and spiritual growth.
How can these amazing accomplishments of these writers be explained? There are several possibilities:
- We can accept the women at their word that spirits of the dead or other dimensions wrote through them; that they were chosen for some unknown reason to write these works via an unknown conduit to another plane of existence.
- The women were somehow able to receive the knowledge (which they are said not to possess) telepathically from living artists or autors who did have a faculty for such work.
- The women had the ability to tap into the collective unconscious and collective memory that may permeate all of us and create these specific works.
- The women were remarkable savants. Like savants who have an incredible, unexplained faculty for mathematics, for example, the women had extraordinary development or activity in certain parts of their brains that allowed them to create these works of art with apparent ease... and even while being mysteries to themselves.
