Religious and spiritual writings, myths, and folktales portray a supernatural dimension occupied by forces and beings and happenings that lie outside of, or beyond, the normal natural materialistic universe. We know about this because some humans down through the ages have reported that they received information from this dimension. When communication flows from the Divine to humans the process of communication is called revelation. The concept of revelation is a fundamental one in every religion that in any way traces its origin to God or a divinity.
Revelation in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is the basis of religious knowledge. Humans know God and His will because God has chosen to reveal Himself to them.
The myriad of world cultures are also filled with accounts of communications or information from supernatural sources or entities that don’t fall into the realm of God or the Divine. A huge number of such nonphysical entities have been mentioned.
Klimo, in his book Channeling, places both of these forms of communication together in one generic process.
Channeling Klimo defines as:”the communication of information to or through a physically embodied human being from a source that is said to exist on some other level or dimension of reality than the physical as we know it, and that is not from the normal mind (or self) of the channel.
Given this definition Klimo claims that channeling is a universal phenomenon that can be found in most or all religions throughout history. Thus, he believes, the study of channeling as it appears in the modern New Age sense appears to give us a new and exciting perspective on the real nature of old stories about revelations found in sacred writings.
Historian Hanegraaff takes strong exception believing that religious revelations and channeling phenomena cannot be explained in terms of one single process. We don’t know enough about revelation, he pointed out, to reduce it to channeling. Channeling is a cultural specific (emic) term used by New Agers to refer to the general cultural neutral (etic) category of what he calls “articulated revelations.”
It is no more and no less than that. The attempt to present channeling as an etic term must be dismissed as an apologetic strategy for convincing the public of the validity of New Age channeling. (Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture, 1998)
Whether or not channeling can be considered a valid source of religious revelation in general, Hanegraaf emphasizes that it is of central importance in the creation of New Age spirituality. Many of the fundamental New Age beliefs were first developed from channeled messages.
Klimo points out that a distinction is sometimes made between mediumship and channeling. In his approach, the term mediumship is restricted to communication with deceased human beings. Channeling includes all other communication with any intelligence not occupying an embodied mind or associated with physical reality such as the channel’s higher self, ascended masters, nonhumans from angelic and other realms, extraterrestrials, group entities, gods, God, the collective unconscious, and the universal mind.
Channeling may be intentional with the individual deliberately initiating and controlling the phenomena, or it may occur spontaneously in an intrusive manner. During channeling the individual may enter a complete trance state during which he or she has no awareness of what is taking place, and a source entity takes control of the channel’s voice or body (automatic writing). On the other hand, some individuals enter only a light trance or remain fully conscious while channeling.
The range and variety of channeled information is vast. In addition to the personal information delivered through mediums to their sitters, Klimo identifies the following categories of channeled material: Ageless Wisdom, descriptions of the realities experienced by the sources, information about the future and past, “proof” of the identity of discarnate sources, subject matter for creative expression, and scientific and medical/healing information.
It is the Ageless Wisdom that primarily links channeling with other forms of visionary experience. Ageless Wisdom refers to a common view of the greater reality running through world religions, and the various esoteric, metaphysical, and mystery schools. Klimo summarizes the broad features of this reality as follows:
“There is a consensus within the channeled material of all ages that the universe is a multidimensional, living Being, which some call God. Within it as aspects of itself are sentient beings of consciousness existing on many or all of its other dimensions besides the physical as we currently experience it. We have continually received messages about, and from, the etheric, astral , mental , causal, and other dimensions of this expanded nature. Wherever a being, personality, or entity may be within this cosmological hierarchy, that entity is always in a process of learning for the purpose of evolving toward greater unity with the one being that is the source and destiny of all separate beings. Reigning over wisdom, light, and pure force or energetic power is love, the supreme reality of all creation. We humans on earth are in a kind of classroom in which we are slowly learning to be loving beings that reflect the nature of our creator. Essentially we are of the same quality or nature as our creator and thus undying with many opportunities and contexts for this learning and evolution to take place. There is a recurrent theme of reincarnation, or multiple projections ourselves as the experience-gathering vehicle of consciousness”.