The Screen Test

Years ago I read a slogan which has always stayed with me: “An open mind is like a window; you have to put up a screen for the bugs.”

As someone who has always been interested “fringe” concepts – conspiracy theories, New Age spirituality, holistic medicine, reincarnation, acupuncture, telepathy, numerology, homeopathy, precognition – I’ve looked into ‘em all – that slogan has been important, reminding me to keep myself centered with a healthy skepticism. I fully agree with Hamlet’s famous statement to Horatio, but I’ve still always examined each of my interests using the Screen Test.

As a result, the first time I encountered material that was supposedly channeled through a human from a “higher being” I hammered my skeptical screen tightly into the window of my mind.  The higher being was described variously as an evolved soul, an angelic being, or a spiritual master. Why, I wondered, would such a being need or even want to speak through a human voice?  I’d read extensively about the phenomenon of the subconscious mind producing alternate personalities, and was aware of just how easily this could happen, especially when the mind was in a trance or hypnotic state.  Nevertheless, I decided to read the book anyway,  wondering if it might convince me that channeled materials were actually teachings from higher source, and not just the product of someone’s untethered subconscious.

The book failed the Screen Test.

If this material was the revelation of an Evolved Master, I decided, I would just have to stay a spiritual amoeba. Decades later, I still recall some of the passages that set my teeth on edge. In one segment, the Teacher told a sort of parable about a married man who fell in love with another woman.  The two of them nobly refrained from an affair while he stayed with his  wife, whom the would-be lovers referred to as “the Vegetable”.  A few years later, the Teacher explained, their self-sacrifice and noble morality were rewarded when “the Vegetable” passed away, leaving the path clear for them to marry at last.

Now just a cotton-pickin’ minute! “The Vegetable”? This man mocked the woman whom he’d promised to love, honor, and cherish by referring to her using that scathing nickname?  His would-be paramour did the same?  Exactly how was it possible that his scornful attitude never affected his marriage – that his wife never felt his disrespect, never felt unloved or belittled? Exactly how was it better or morally right that she was never released from this sham of a marriage to possibly find happiness with someone who genuinely loved her?  How was it even decent that her death was viewed as convenient?

And this was an example of morality as taught by a spiritual Master?

In another paragraph, the Teacher referred derisively to “young men who refuse to fight for their country”. The Vietnam war was raging at the time this book was published, so this was clearly a reference to those who dodged the draft or protested the war.  But I personally had no quarrel with the courageous young people who protested and marched and held sit-ins and burnt their draft cards.  They had the courage to declare that this was an unjust war; an undeclared war forced on a generation of youngsters who, at that time, were underage to legally vote for the very leaders who were sending them away to die.

Right then and there I made up my mind that this material was representative of nothing but the personal prejudices of the supposed Channeler. This dreck in no way represented the teachings of an angelic being. Teacher, my right hind rump!

I’ve encountered other purportedly channeled material in the years since. Unlike that first encounter, much channeled material often seemed truly spiritual, wise, even beautiful.  So perhaps it is only owing to that first unhappy experience with channeling that I have never been able to accept channeled material to be other than the subconscious product of the Channeler. It saddens me that such sagacious people fail to trust their own wisdom and teach directly from it, but instead feel they must insist that it comes from a being beyond their own spirit.

I will never doubt that there are highly evolved spiritual beings on both sides of the Veil that separates human life from the hereafter, and I can even accept that those in spirit sometimes speak to us.

But I truly doubt that they speak through us.