Continuous Revelations

One of the key ideas I am emphasizing is that of continuous spiritual revelation. Thomas McFaul in an article on “Religion in the Future Global Civilization”[1] introduces this concept as a potential approach to bring the Abrahamic religions of the Middle East (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) to a more productive interaction. Currently, each of these religions practices progressive revelation, where latest one claims to have the more complete, and final story; and earlier ones deny the validity of the later ones. With continuous revelation there is openness to the value of each religion’s revelations. An obvious question (and the proverbial elephant in the living room) is why would it stop with Islam?

Much of American New Thought is built on the foundation of Christianity, with a practice of digging in and finding the deeper spiritual meanings of earlier revelations that have been captured in the Christian bible. An example is Fillmore’s “Metaphysical Bible Dictionary” [2] that explains the deeper, hidden meaning of key biblical words and phrases.

The question that has always bothered me is: why would meaningful revelatory messages have stopped 2,000 (or 1,400) years ago? Obviously they have not. It is just that we don’t have good tools for separating the “wheat from the chaff”. When we attempt to add major new spiritual knowledge and sources to the body of human spirituality, we face the need for a quality screening and control capability. My next blog will sketch out the beginning of a system that could accomplish this.

[1] Thomas R. McFaul, Religion in the Future Global Civilization, The Futurist, September-October (2006).

[2] Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, Unity School of Christianity.

How to Evaluate and Use Channeled Information

In our world today there are many channeling sources; and most have very interesting information about life, nature of reality (including the spiritual realm), etc. The question we all have is this true? Henry Reed in Edgar Cayce on Channeling Your Higher Self (1) summarizes an interview by Entertainment Tonight host Mary Hart with Daryl Anka, who claims to channel an alien named Beshar. Anka explained that channeling is actually a normal process that we all engage in. He defined channeling as any type of creative expression. During the program Beshar was brought “forward”, and Mary asked, “How do we know you’re what you say you are”? Beshar’s response was: “You do not, and that is not the purpose at this time. The idea is not for us to prove we are who we say we are. We would prefer, in actual fact, that you not care who we are in that sense….that you focus on the idea of information itself. If the information serves you, use it. If it doesn’t; do not”.

The other test that I will be describing later is to test it for consistency with other sources of spiritual information. This can include information from other spiritual channels, hypnotic regression information, and others.

1: Edgar Cayce on Channeling Your Higher Self, Warner Books (1989) pp 8-9.