Notes on Dark Channel
I live in far northern California near Mt. Shasta. In the shadow of the mountain is a quaint little town that looks like it belongs on a postcard. Mt. Shasta is — and always has been — a New Age mecca. There's a great deal of mythology about the mountain: It's a refueling spot for alien spacecraft, there's a large city beneath it occupied by the former residents of the lost continent of Lemuria, it's a vortex of energy, mysticism and magic ... to say nothing of tourism.
In 1987, New Age guru Jose Arguelles came up with what would be the first worldwide synchronized meditation, which was correlated with an unusual astrological alignment which signified, to people who dwell on these things, a shift in the planet's energy from one of war to peace. This global meditation was called the Harmonic Convergence, and the plan was to gather people at various "power centers" around the world. Arguelles believed that if 144,000 people were to meditate at a scheduled time in all of these "power centers," this new age of peace and enlightenment would be launched. One of those "power centers" was Mt. Shasta, less than an hour's drive from me. Well, there was no way I was going to miss out on a day of people-watching like that.
Mt. Shasta was the most crowded I've ever seen it that day. People came from all over the world to ... to ... well, to do whatever the hell it was they planned to do. Meditate, vibrate, massage each other's chakras, whatever. A lot of these people were dressed like they'd just flown in from Calcutta. Other were dressed like they'd just flown in from 1970. The town's main street was lined with vendors selling crystals, jewelry, mystical drums, all kinds of New Age literature about everything from meditation to past life regression to communicating with the inhabitants of other planets. There were a lot of demonstrations planned, and I was eager to see one in particular. It was a "channel" — a woman who claimed that an ancient entity spoke through her to impart the wisdom of the ages.
Channeling had been made quite popular by a woman named JZ Knight, who, at that time, was appearing on daytime talk shows and was getting the attention of celebrities like Linda Evans, who played Crystal Carrington on Dynasty, and movie star and professional believer in just about everything, Shirley MacLaine. Knight channeled a 35,000 year-old warrior named Ramtha, who sounded like a cross between James Mason and Yul Brynner.
The woman I saw in Mt. Shasta was not nearly as accomplished in her performance as Knight. Her accent was unconvincing and her overall presentation lackluster. There was a good reason this woman was performing for a tiny audience in Mt. Shasta and Knight was appearing on Sally Jesse Raphael and getting lots of media attention — because Knight had showmanship. She poured herself into her Ramtha performances, stomping across the stage, squatting and swaying, waving her arms and gesturing with her hands as she did her Ramtha shtick. But as entertaining as Knight was, I found her no more believable than the amateurish channel I saw in Mt. Shasta. Their message was pretty much the same: There is no death, we are all spirits, and we are all gods.
As I watched that performance at the Harmonic Convergence, I asked myself, What if she really were channeling some ancient entity? If that were the case, then the next question would be: Why should I believe anything this entity says? And that's when I began to get the feeling that I was onto something.
That line of thought led to Dark Channel, the story of people who fall under the spell of Hester Thorne, the founder and leader of the Universal Enlightened Alliance and a channel for a centuries-old entity named Orrin. Some people say that Thorne is an accomplished fraud. But they are wrong. Others — people who are troubled, damaged and dealing with serious problems in their lives — find hope in Orrin's message of peace and unity. The only problem is ... Orrin is lying.
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