Common Ground July 1995 Vol.X No 1

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Common Ground July 1995 Vol.X No 1

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David McCarthy
Joined: 06 Jan 2008
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Location: Yelm

Common Ground July 1995 Vol.X No 1. Part 1 of 2
Here's the article printed in the now defunct Common Ground newspaper - July 1995.
A rare case of investigative journalism of RSE.
Although it is pre RSE ‘wine ceremony abuse days’.
John Cruncher’s reporting is the most accurate and honest description of the workings of RSE I have ever read.
The article was also published in Spectrum magazine (USA).

Thank you Joe’

David.

**************************

Common Ground July 1995 Vol.X No 1.

Part 1 of 2

By John Crutcher.

RAMTHA The Enlightened One’
Common Ground takes an in-depth look at the controversial 35,000-year-old teacher and the woman who channels him.
Few people living in the Pacific Northwest have not heard of Ramtha. Like the Space Needle, he has become a fixture upon the diverse, futuristic, and stubbornly alternative landscape of Bastyr, grunge, and the New Age. And few have not been aware of the cloud of controversy that has swirled about him over the years: the apocalyptic teachings, the accusations of fraud, the infamous divorce trial.
But in recent years, things have been pretty quiet down in Yelm. That is, until a few months ago, when Ramtha was yanked back into the limelight, this time in connection with a well publicized Federal Aviation Association (FAA) training scandal. Gregory May, a student of various human potential and New Age teachers, had until two years ago, been contracted by the FAA to train its executives. Gregory May's training methods were reportedly very strange and abusive. One of Gregory May's teachers happened to be Ramtha, and when the media caught wind of this fact, they began drawing a lurid link between May's training methods and Ramtha's bizarre reputation. Due to the renewed media attention on Ramtha set in motion a series of events that led me to inquire into the nature of this enigmatic New Age figure.
For those who have not heard of Ramtha before, he is, by his own admission, outrageous! And one of his many outrageous claims is that he is a 35,000 year old ascended master who speaks through a 50 year old woman named J.Z. Knight.
Long ago, he was a Lemurian slave living in the lost continent of Atlantis. After years of being oppressed by his Atlantean captors, he led an army of fellow slaves on a brutally successful revolt, and then a barbaric campaign to conquer the world. In the course of events, he suffered a nearly fatal wound, and was compelled to retire to a mountain, where for seven long years he sat on a barren rock and contemplated the sun, the moon, the stars ‘ life itself.
Eventually, he became enlightened, and in full view of his army which numbered in the thousands, he "ascended" into super consciousness, where he assumed the mantle of archangel-dom sitting alongside Gabriel and Michael. Supposedly, he was "Rama," the ancient Hindu deity whom the people of India worship to this day. He also hails from a race of extraterrestrials, inter-dimensional beings known as Andromedans who have come to the aid of humanity at various times in history, inspiring all the world's great messiahs and teachers, from Buddha to Jesus ‘ and who have come now to help humanity over the looming millennial hump.
He is Ramtha, the Enlightened One.
Or so the story goes.
He says that his message is simple: You are God. Become sovereign and self-sufficient. Take back your power. Just be. Become super consciousness. But for all the glittering wisdom of these purple homilies, Ramtha tends to provoke more puzzlement with the vacuous answers he so readily dispenses.
One thing is for sure. He has come to teach, and for those eager to acquire his pearls of wisdom, he is the great one. For actress Linda Evans claims, ‘Ramtha is the greatest teacher I’ve ever known.’ For most people, however, Ramtha is an ‘enigma’.

JZ Knight is a beautiful, 50 year old woman with long blonde hair, who in 1977, was experimenting with "pyramid power" in the kitchen of her then home in Tacoma. On a lark, she placed a cardboard pyramid on top of her head, and a seven foot tall, angelic entity with coal black eyes materialized in the kitchen hallway.
"I am Ramtha the Enlightened One," the imposing figure announced. "Beloved woman, I have come to help you over the ditch."
Ramtha continued to appear to Knight and engage her in face to face conversation for months afterward. Eventually, however, Ramtha requested that Knight let him utilize her body, a request that she resisted at first.
"When I began to understand that the process would be: You abdicate your body, says Knight, "I had a problem with that because I was my body."
Scholars acknowledge that channeling has a long, though relatively unstudied, history. Many revelatory and poetic passages in the Bible are suspected of having channeled sources.
J. Gordon Melton, a renowned scholar of religious history, believes that channeling provides the source material for many Gnostic sects which emerged at various times in history since the 2nd century A.D.

Channeling is often compared to or considered synonymous with trance mediumship, which is a form of communication with spirits who are either dead or believed to be from other dimensions. The form Thai channeling takes, however, varies from channeler to channeler. Some channels remain conscious during the process while others do not. Jane Roberts, who channeled the "personality essence" Seth, and Edgar Cayce, who gave medical and prophetic advice to hundreds, both required the loss of conscious awareness during the channeling process in order for the spirit entity to come through.
Knight insists that her channeling process is significantly different from that of Cayce or Roberts, labeling them mere "mediums" who pick up messages from discarnate entities much as a radio picks up stations on the dial. Ramtha explained to Knight that she would not be doing that form of channeling. Rather, she would be a "channel" for more than just a message, she would channel an entire other consciousness.
But other channels claim to do this very thing. How this can be characterized as something wholly other by Knight or Ramtha is puzzling, if not arrogantly misinformed.
According to Knight's autobiography, A State of Mind, Ramtha acknowledged the debt the world owed to Knight for selflessly allowing portions of her life to be used up by another. She has been specially chosen because Ramtha regards her as a "perfect channel" ‘ and it does not hurt that in that epic past life in Atlantis she was, Ramaya, one of Ramtha's 10 children.
"It's like a death process," says Knight of the channeling experience. "I go through a tunnel, and there's a whistling sound and a light at the end. As soon as I hit the light, I come back." And over the past 17 years, with almost daily channeling sessions, she has "died a thousand deaths."
On purely here and now material terms, Knight has managed to capitalize smartly on the entity speaking through her ‘ to the tune of millions of dollars. Not bad for a woman who grew up in abject poverty and a troubled home. Born Judith Darlene Hampton (The "Z" in "J.Z." came from her childhood nickname of "Zebra," because she wore black and white clothes), Knight had to contend with an alcoholic and absent father, an abusive stepfather, and the trauma of being raped by an uncle.
But destiny seemed to beckon her practically out of the crib. In A State of Mind, Knight tells of a time, two weeks after her birth, when a Yaqui Indian woman came to the house. The woman picked up baby Judith, stared intently into her eyes, and said, "This li'l girl of yours will see what no one else sees ... her destiny is important."
If part of her destiny was to have extraordinary experiences, she has certainly claimed her share. She has been struck by a bolt of lightning. She has witnessed a UFO encounter. She has healed herself of cancer. And she has healed one of her sons of crippling allergies. She has married five times, though in her autobiography she only mentions four of them. And today she heads up seven businesses, the largest of which is J.Z.K. Inc., the parent company for all of her Ramtha-related enterprises. Her base of operations is her 50 acre, $ 3 million estate known as "the Ranch," in Yelm, Washington.
"J.Z. is a very nice person," says J. Gordon Melton, after numerous interviews and visits to her house. "She is a very strong, assertive woman. The more I've gotten to know her, the more I've gotten to like her."
In Yelm, she is appreciated for her largesse. Every year, she offers all graduating seniors at Yelm High School fully paid tuition to the college of their choice. Over the years, she has contributed $800,000 of her own money to this project.
Educationally, however, Knight's biggest pride and joy created right in her own backyard.
A sign over the registration window just outside the Great Hall reads, "You cannot fail this school. You can only quit."Ramtha's School of Enlightenment is unlike any other school you will encounter. Modeled on the legendary mystery schools of ancient Egypt, Ramtha's School of Enlightenment is a Gnostic school, a mystery school, a school for studying sacred, revealed wisdom. "Gnostic" is derived from the Greek "gnosis," meaning knowledge. Gnosticism is the study of mystical, divinely obtained knowledge.
The brochure for Ramtha's School of Enlightenment (RSE) claims the school is engaged in the study of "the knowledge of God, of mind, of reality" in order "to gain direct experience" through the subconscious mind. Here a "student becomes a disciple of his or her own mind ... and rediscovers that one's own mind is the source of divine truth!" You are God, you are responsible for your life, etc.
J. Gordon Melton spent two years studying the Ramtha teachings, taking classes, interviewing Knight and Ramtha, and active students. He has written a soon-to-be-published book on the subject. Melton concluded that RSE is an authentic heir to a tradition of Gnostic mysticism dating back to the 2nd Century A.D.. He believes the revealed word of Ramtha is a natural extension of a lineage defined by the Cathars, the Rosicrucians, the Kabbalists, and 19th Century Theosophists. Melton considers RSE exciting because it radically revises some of the brilliant metaphysical constructs of Theosophy.
For example, RSE delineates the same seven cosmic planes of existence as Theosophy. But armed with knowledge of modern day quantum mechanics, Ramtha introduces the idea of a "radical break at the third level." Picture a pyramid with seven layers, the lowest layer being the first level (Earth plane) and the triangular layer at the top of the pyramid the seventh level (Super Consciousness or "the Void"). Theosophy considers the third layer to be just another plane in the evolutionary progression toward higher consciousness. But in 1989, Ramtha introduced what became known as the "Light Teachings," in which he explained that dwelling at the third level of existence are Light Beings who strip you of your emotional memory when you die. These are the beings of light at the end of the tunnel who are so often reported as Christlike helpers during Near Death Experiences. "It goes beyond Theosophy," says Melton.
Melton also finds it interesting that Ramtha teaches a powerful tantric breathing technique called "Consciousness and Energy" (C&E) that seems related to breathwork used in Hindu Buddhism, but with a twist. Ramtha's method departs from traditional meditation by incorporating extremely loud music into the process, using it in conjunction with the breathing.
"She says, 'This is not meditation,'" reports Melton. "'It's concentrated focus, attention. It raises Kundalini."
She says’ Or he says’

Despite Melton's claims that Ramtha's C&E is a radical departure from Kundalini breathing, it is not a radical departure at all from Stanislov Grof's Holotropic Breathwork.
Grof, the famed LSD researcher and one-time Esalen Director, searched diligently for the best non-drug method of inducing altered states of consciousness. He wanted a method by which to induce the kind of powerful transformational response he effected with psychotropic drugs. After years of experimentation, he discovered that hyperventilation in conjunction with extremely loud music produced altered states of consciousness in which powerful healings could take place. He also found that it was helpful for the person doing the breathwork to express any energy in the body that the person fell needed to be expressed ‘ be it yelling, chanting, dancing, or crying. The similarity between Grof's Holotropic Breathwork and RSE's Consciousness and Energy breathwork is uncanny. CIasses at RSE depart radically from the standard academic curriculum. Here there is only one teacher ‘ Ramtha.
The teaching takes place in the Great Hall, a wood frame horse arena that has been converted into one gigantic classroom. The Great Hall is carpeted with Astroturf which has been marked off into about 1000 numbered rectangles, one rectangle for each student. Students sit in the rectangles or pillows, zafu cushions, or "Happy Hovel" canvas lawn chairs purchased from the store of the same name. All lectures are given by Ramtha, with two exceptions: Knight's introductory speeches at the beginning of events, and guest lecturers, invited to the school to talk about everything from survivalist lore to ufology. When Ramtha speaks, he can spend hours expounding upon seemingly deep metaphysical issues. During the day I attended the Beginner Consciousness and Energy Weekend, Ramtha talked for hours explaining the relationships between various parts of the brain and the seven levels or planes of existence. The knowledge seemed very impressive. But what appeared to be a sophisticated dissemination of knowledge to an all too grateful audience might well sound to a neurologist like a simplified rehash of the latest theories on brain function. While I could not form an opinion on brain theories, I also could not help forming one on the manner in which Ramtha presents his information. On the one hand he addressed us as "an august body." And on the other hand, he treated us like ignorant children. He told us that he loved us and he told us that there was a lot that we did not know ‘ and that he knew a lot. He built us up and put us down in the same breath. I found his demeanor at times arrogant, and his humor disparaging. Ramtha seemed to suggest that he had a vast reservoir of knowledge that he deigned to impart, and we would be foolish not to grab for every golden ounce.
Lectures are followed by "field work" where students can put their special knowledge to action. The basic purpose of most field exercises is to develop "mind over matter" skills. On the one hand, students strive to manifest things in their life. They visualize them, practice their C&E breathing technique, and strive to become one with whatever they visualize. It is believed that through the intense C&E breathwork we can successfully enter the void, the seventh level of existence. The absolute focus we maintain on whatever we hold in our mind's eye causes us to merge with the thing visualized, and voila! It manifests, because we and it are one. The concept of manifestation occupies a fundamental place in the Ramtha teachings.
It serves as a demonstration of one's proficiency in the Great Work, and it helps peel away the tenuous illusion of our material, earth-bound lives, the greatest illusion being our identity as physical creatures. The manifesting principle is part of an overall package of concepts, techniques, and exercises known by the acronym "C&E." Students often refer to "doing their C&E," which means the breathwork, the visualization, and the ascent into the void. The work is progressive. First, they work at overcoming gross matter, where C&E refers to everything from psychically knowing how to find things that cannot be seen with physical sight, to making gold coins materialize out of thin air. Then, on subtler levels, C&E refers to merging with higher and higher dimensions of existence, raising the vibratory rate of the Self. Ultimately C&E leads to ascension, what Ramtha experienced 35,000 years ago before thousands of his awe-struck army, and according to Ramtha lore, what Jesus did on the cross. Various kinds of field work have been established at the school to start people on the path toward ascension. The most well-publicized is the card work practiced in the "Field of Miracles," the void work played out in the Tank, and the sitting required at Paradise Beach. The field of miracles involves drawing a symbol on a card, exchanging cards with
other student somewhere on the fence rail of the pasture. Then, along with hundreds of other blindfolded students, you practice the breathing and follow your knowing to your card. Whenever you bump into the fence rail, you peek under your blindfold and pull up whatever card is there to see if it is yours. If it is not, you continue on until either you succeed or the exercise ends. This exercise usually lasts for 2-3 hours at a time.

The tank follows the same guidelines as practiced in the card work. The student slips on his blindfold, practices his C&E rapid breathing, and then gropes his way through the maze of rooms and tunnels to the center of the tank. Students strive to become one with "the void. In the tank, the thing visualized is the center of the maze. So the idea is to thread the maze by "seeing" your way to "the void."
Paradise Beach is a little different. Here the mind must work to overcome the severe pain and discomfort of sitting without eating and without moving for two days at a time. Ramtha was able to sit on a barren rock for seven years. "Now that was a long time!" says Ramtha. So two days does not seem so bad by comparison.
For someone setting out to develop magical powers, the opportunity to learn and practice these skills can be very enticing. Many at the school view field work as a playground for practicing mind over matter skills. And there is no other place like it on the planet.
In the early days of the school, however, students were frequently injured through poor facilitation of field work exercises. In the Field of Miracles, 500 people would line up on each side of the field. Then with a signal from Ramtha, all 1000 blindfolded people would take off at a run. A former member described the scene as "carnage." Jeffrey Knight, J.Z.'s former husband, in an affidavit filed in their 1992 divorce trial, stated that students suffered broken bones, broken teeth, bruises, and in one case, a detached retina. A former employee of the Ranch told the Tacoma News Tribune in 1992 that 38 people were taken to local hospitals for treatment of injuries.
Critics charge that RSE kept the extent of the injuries quiet by secreting off the injured in a waiting golf cart. Everyone was so focused on their own endeavors, between the heavy breathing and the blindfolds, they rarely clued in to what transpired during the exercises.
Barbara Wood, a former who student who spent three years working personally for J.Z., told the Tacoma News Tribune that she suffered a dislocated retina after someone stepped on her face in the maze. "There have been people who have had heart attacks, broken arms, broken noses, broken legs," she told the Tribune. "If someone got hurt, they'd be put in a little go-cart instantly and taken away and no one would even hear their name. I couldn't stomach it anymore. I had been witness to too many bodily injuries."

Another curious aspect of the field work is the fact that neither J.Z. nor Ramtha ever demonstrate or test their own abilities in the field. Rumors have circulated for years about J.Z. doing this or Ramtha proving that. But in fact, former students have determined that these were strictly rumors with no basis in reality. Before exiting the community, it was common to swap stories about Ramtha and J.Z.'s proficiency at the Work, attributing stories to something someone else had seen. But after leaving the community, and after comparing notes, they realized that nobody had actually ever been there when Ramtha or J.Z. had supposedly proven themselves. On one occasion, with hundreds of students intently working away in the field, one student became incensed over the way J.Z. stood outside the field, making snide remarks at everybody as they bumped blindly into each other. From that day forward the student harbored deep resentments toward J.Z., because the channeler, despite claiming to be a student ‘ Ramtha's "number one student" ‘ never descended down into the ranks of the common student population. She never tested herself.
As for increasing proficiency, J.Z. says that at a recent event, "everyone except 5 people out of 1100 got their cards." Having observed hundreds of advanced students move stoically around the field during the Beginner's C&E Weekend, I saw nothing like that kind of success. J.Z. seems to be suggesting a 99% rate of proficiency. Percentages and rates mean nothing, however, without sophisticated analysis to determine the law of averages, according to Paul Sampon, a statistician at the University of Washington. To say that virtually everyone found their card, one would have to ask how long a period the participants were allowed to work. During the hour and a half that I watched, only about 15 out of roughly 300 people found his or her cards. That may be above average or below. The fact is, we do not know where this level of success lies. But to hear J.Z. talk about it, you would think the students are exploding with new found siddha powers.

According to several former students, this is patently not the case. Even J. Gordon Melton agrees that proficiency among individual students in the field does not seem to increase over time. Rather, he suggests that the students benefit not from increase psychic power, but from dealing with their frustration and whatever comes up of themselves during the long hours of often fruitless psychic labor. He observed an interesting shift in goals among the students. Whereas they initially wanted to magically manifest physical things out of the air, over time, they began to realize that the exercise offered a more profound opportunity for dealing with whatever psychological issue arose during the exercise.
But from the literature, and from J.Z., and from Ramtha's own golden tongue, RSE is not about an adaptive, Taoist philosophy that Melton suggests bubbles up naturally as a consequence of field work failure. Rather, a great deal of emphasis is clearly placed on being able to manifest and to cultivate mind over matter powers, god-like abilities. Ramtha's decidedly proactive approach to spirituality squares off directly against the more neutral, middle path approach of Taoism to which Melton seems to be alluding.

Herman Gabriel, one of the most proficient students in field work at the school before he left in 1991, claims that from his experience, people actually grew worse. When he first arrived at RSE, he possessed great psychic proficiency; he consistently found his card, and he was one of only 12 students who regularly reached the center of the tank. Within weeks, months, however, all that changed. It was as if something in him began shutting down. An increasingly competitive atmosphere was developing at the school and an increasingly authoritarian Ramtha undermined student confidence by thrusting them into ever more challenging and impossible circumstances. Rather than increasing siddha powers, RSE's field work seemed, almost by design, to disempower student psychic prowess claims Gabriel.

More troubling is the claim by former students and employees that the Tank is rigged. According to Vicky Cady, J.Z.'s right hand person, "Ramtha reads the bands that are around the people. He sees where they're at." Therefore, if anyone ventures near the void by sheer luck, he can tell. When this happens, Ramtha instructs an assistant to close a gate installed for the purpose of preventing the student from stumbling into success. In turn, Ramtha indicates when the gate should be opened for those individuals who, according to the band Ramtha reads, have arrived at the void by their knowing, and are therefore deemed worthy.
Supposing that Ramtha actually has this ability to weed out the unworthy students, some question the pedagogical benefit of not even allowing a small victory brought on by luck. A more serious charge, however, is made by former students who claim that a particular type of student consistently succeeded in reaching the void. In all other field work conducted at the school, field work over which no one could control the results, women proved predominantly more capable. In the Tank, however, the opposite proved true. Young, handsome, "hunk" men consistently outperformed their female counterparts.
The question is, who was visualizing what in the void’

In the early to mid-80s, Ramtha appealed to the spiritually weary by shunning ritual, dogma and faithful obedience.
'From the beginning it was said there would be no dogma or ritual," says Linda Baker who spent seven years in the community. "You are god. You are perfect. You don't have to do anything to become greater," says Nancy Barr-Brandon, who entered the teachings in 1982. She felt such love and acceptance from Ramtha, "after a few minutes of being in that presence, I was hooked." You did not have to meditate or fast or embark on long progressive journeys of growth. You just had to "be" yourself and get in touch with the God within.
Joe Kramer and Diana Alstad in their study of authoritarianism in spiritual movements entitled, The Guru Papers, argue that the fall of many gurus from god-like stature following revelations of deceit and corruption has helped elevate the appeal of the disembodied. They seem free of corruption, as corruption makes little sense without a body to profit from its results.
"The thread running through these assumptions," say Kramer and Alstad, "is that disembodied entities are reliable, trustworthy, benevolent authorities with a deeper understanding of the nature of things. Here channeling, like gurus, creates a context of privileged knowledge that essentially cannot be challenged." One of the great teachings of Ramtha concerns the "image." Image refers to our self-enslaving identities, the most pernicious of which is the conviction that we are physical beings. By being "outrageously" disembodied, Ramtha provides the perfect teaching for shocking us out of this illusion. In Ramtha, we have no body to worship. When he departs at the end of a channeling session, we cannot follow.
J.Z., on the other hand, is as fallible and imperfectly behaved as anyone else enrolled at RSE; for she is Ramtha's "first student." This dichotomy between the ostensibly enlightened spirit and the unenlightened channel has a long history, and according to J. Gordon Melton this phenomenal relationship is characteristic of most gnostic traditions. Typically, a simple, uneducated, unsophisticated individual channels information and knowledge that she or he cannot possibly possess. J.Z. Knight says in her autobiography, A State of Mind, that her "formal education extended only to business college and the rest of my learning had come from experiencing life ‘ the highest form of education there is."
"The assumption that the spirit and channel are separate entities," say Kramer and Alstad, "means incongruities between the channels' behavior and the channeled words are not seen as significant or relevant. A channeled message can never be questioned or challenged because of the impurity of the messenger.... The channel is not necessarily even supposed to be the entity's best student or exemplar, unlike those in the guru's inner circle."
And as to the unenlightened behavior of J.Z., stories abound, the most public of which was exposed at the divorce trial between herself and her fifth husband, Jeffrey Knight.

The divorce trial, which made the headlines of local papers for most of 1992, was a very public affair. Jeff Knight wanted it that way. After years of living under the spell of Ramtha and J.Z., he wanted to finally stand up to both and take his power back. (A strange manoeuver of assertiveness given all the years of personal training by Ramtha in the arts of developing sovereignty and recovering one's power.)

In 1980, J.Z. was browsing through a tack shop when a magazine on Arabian horses fell open to an advertisement for a horse farm. A photo of a handsome cowboy dominated the ad. Despite being married at the time, J.Z. fell instantly in love with the man in the photo, Jeffrey Knight.
Within two weeks, J.Z. had located Jeffrey by phone and invited him to a Dialogue at Richard Chamberlain's Beverly Hills home. Jeff told a People magazine reporter in 1992 on that occasion, "J.Z. and Ramtha seemed to be giving me a great deal of individual attention." Ramtha prophesied that a conflict would arise shortly in Jeff's life and that as a result, he would be forced to make a difficult decision, following which he would make a great journey "beyond the mountains." After that Dialogue, J.Z. made Jeff a standing offer of a job taking care of her horses in Tacoma, WA. When Jeff had a falling out with one of his co-workers, he called J.Z. to say that he was ready to go beyond the mountains, and he accepted the job.
For nine months J.Z. and Jeff lived under the same roof with J.Z.'s husband and two children. J.Z. coyly played upon Jeff's heartstrings, and he resisted out of confusion over his sexuality and concern for J.Z.'s family, for which he had grown fond. A few days before Christmas, Ramtha gave "Master Jeffrey" a special, one on one audience, in which Jeff confessed to Ramtha the confusion he felt about his desire for women. Ramtha proceeded to discourse on "soul mates" making it clear that he and J.Z. were eternally matched. Sanctioned by Ramtha, Jeff and J.Z. moved out of her husband's home, and three years later they married.
For years, the two lived in an apparently blissful union. Ramtha Dialogues went on a rocket launch of popularity. In the early 80s, Ramtha became the "channeler to all the stars." Richard Chamberlain, Joan Hackett, Shelley Faberes, and Shirley MacLaine all found something in Ramtha's messages that struck a chord. Jeff and J.Z. began building their lavish estate in the then rural backwater of Yelm. Part of the plan was to create a lucrative Arabian horse business for Jeff and J.Z. while J.Z. submitted herself to the Great Work of Ramtha. But as the years progressed, problems plagued the soul-mate marriage, for as Jeff would later confess, he was gay. J.Z. claims to this day that she never knew he was gay until late in the marriage. Jeff contradicts that claim to friends, saying that J.Z. knew from the beginning his sexual orientation.
A Ramtha intensive in March of 1986 entitled Soul Mates expanded upon the discourse that had begun with Jeff during his private Christmas audience with Ramtha in 1980. Now Ramtha was telling the world that homosexuals were confused entities, the product of decadence. Since the beginning of time, said Ramtha, entities on the earth plane were split in two, a male half and a female half. As the two halves reincarnated through many lifetimes, there came a time when some females, weary of being oppressed for eons by their male counterparts, desired to incarnate as men. Hence, they "crossed over" and became homosexuals. This, Ramtha averred, was a mistake; it was perverse and wrong.
Ramtha had the temerity to actually suggest that many who suspected themselves of being homosexual were actually confused by the pressure of society to be gay. "Many are confused because others say they are crossovers because they are soft, non-violent. And yet they are not; they are aligned. When they cease listening to social consciousness ‘ and be who they are ‘ they will realize that through this science, they are thus complete. Complete."

One wonders what Jeff was thinking when he heard this. Ironically, it is just this sort of political incorrectness that many find attractive in Ramtha; such comments are construed by some as both a voice of authority ‘ for who would risk making such unpopular statements in today's politically correct climate’ ‘ and a confirmation of what they as heterosexuals subconsciously think, or as homosexuals subconsciously fear. Unfortunately for Jeff and J.Z., Ramtha's persuasive arguments failed to win the war for Jeff's sexual soul. Jeff learned in 1985 that he was HIV positive, an unfortunate consequence of sleeping with a man prior to the marriage. (Fortunately for J.Z., she has subsequently tested negative for the HIV virus.) By late 1987, the 41 year old J.Z. became involved with a handsome, 19 year old Mormon named J.O. Alt, the man who remains her partner to this day.
The dissolution of the marriage peaked in 1988 when J.Z., in a fit of rage, threw Jeff's possessions out of the second story window on to the lawn below. After years of daily, one on one audiences with Ramtha, J.Z. cut Jeff off completely, saying that until he made peace with J.Z., he would not be allowed to see his teacher. Jeff depended on Ramtha to help heal himself of HIV, for which he had, at Ramtha's urging, never sought medical treatment. He believed that without Ramtha's assistance, he would surely die.
At the divorce trial, Jeff accused J.Z. of having forced him into a meager settlement in their 1989 divorce by threatening to out his homosexuality and keep him cut off from Ramtha, as well as by persuading him that the empire they had jointly built was crumbling under the weight of enormous debt. Jeff settled, taking only $119,000 in cash from a vault in the basement of the house, a few of his personal possessions, some appliances, and a luxury automobile. Unbeknownst to Jeff at the time ‘ J.Z., he claimed, handled all the finances ‘ the various Ramtha businesses were grossing $240,000 per month ‘ close to $4 million a year.

J.Z. counters that the debt was real and overwhelming: $7 million, of which, $2.5 million was owed to the IRS which was "ready to come in here and do a firesale." Jeff, she claims, did not want the responsibility of having to climb out from under that debt. She met with the IRS and said, "Look, I have never not paid anybody in my life." Together, they worked out an ambitious schedule of repayments; and she began the long, arduous, but impeccable process of paying everything off.
When J.Z.'s finances recovered, she says Jeff, who was now living with another man ("who was Catholic!" ‘ meaning he would naturally be unsympathetic to anything connected with such a heretical teaching as Ramtha's) ‘ "they came to me," says J.Z., "and basically said, 'Look, I'm sick and I want you to give me $360,000.' I didn't have $300,000! ... the idea was, Give it to me now because I deserve it."
J.Z. says Jeff threatened that he would tell the world what she had done to him. JZ. said, "You go right ahead and do that, because it's not true." At the trial in 1992, Jeff's lawyer, Mary Gaudio, argued that J.Z. had hidden assets from Jeff, that over the years, through the persona of Ramtha, she had brainwashed him, and that Ramtha was, put simply, a fraud.
Jeff failed to prove that he was brainwashed, or that Ramtha was a fraud. But, at least temporarily, he won the argument that she had hidden assets from him at the time of their divorce, and Jeff was awarded $792,000. J.Z. appealed this decision before she ever had to pay and won. Evidently, however, a later settlement may have been reached. Jeff's lawyer, Gaudio, would not speak to us due to a confidentiality agreement related to the case.
Following the trial, Jeffs AIDs advanced, and in 1994 he died. In response to saying I was sorry to hear about Jeff's death, J.Z. responded, "Well, that's okay. It's what he chose!"
Those close to Jeff before he died say he made peace with J.Z. in his heart. J.Z. however, still chafes at the thought of what Jeff did--to her and to Ramtha. In her mind, he took something that was beautiful and sacred, and he trashed it.
Former students of Ramtha note several time periods during which the teachings "shifted" from a more benign to a more sinister aspect. The first shift occurred in May of 1986 with an Intensive in Denver, CO. J.Z. is aware of the impact of this particular teaching had upon the fold. "Ramtha delivered a teaching called, Changes, the Days to Come," she recalls. "It was on satellite, and he lost half the people who came to see him." Ramtha told a mesmerized audience that before the end of the millenium the world would undergo cataclysmic earth changes during which most people in the world would perish, and for which those fortunate enough to hear this warning would prepare.
Pamela McNellNeely is one of the many who left the community following that event. She told the Seattle Times in 1987 that she became increasingly troubled by a barrage of negative, homophobic and controlling messages." California would fall into the ocean; New England would choke on its own pollution; and the Southeast would flood. "Cities are doomed, and everyone should move to the Pacific Northwest, stock food and become self-sufficient."

In 1987, Ramtha's message grew paranoid, saying that the international financiers and powerful families called the "gray men" were involved in a global conspiracy to set up a New World order. The gray men would instigate total financial collapse in may of 1988, following this the populace would be issued debit cards with the number 666 inscribed on them---"mark of the beast"--and through which the gray men could control and rule the world. This same conspiracy theory fueled the anti-government hysteria of the militia groups in recent years; it is practically their religion. It is also the same anti-semitic rhetoric that catapulted the Brown Shirts into power in the early days of Nazi Germany; thirteen, mostly Jewish families who pull the purse strings of the world.

To survive the coming economic collapse, Ramtha advised his followers to buy gold and bury it on their property. The price of this precious metal would skyrocket to $5000 per ounce after the predicted collapse the following year. Banks were institution of the gray men and should not be trusted, so they should bury the gold underground. Following his advice, believers sold property, unloaded nest eggs, and borrowed money, all to invest in this sure thing. Ramtha was getting this stuff from a pure and unassailable perch in the ethers, from the pinnacle of the pyramid, the seventh level.
Ramtha could not be wrong.
And so Ramtha followers buried thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of gold bars and coins into the ground. They fully expected to dig it up in June, and sell it at an astronomical profit, providing them with the opportunity to reach the state of American independence that Willy Loman referred to as "free and clear." In Yelm, they called it being "sovereign."
May 1988 came and went without incident. No collapse. No crash. No blip. In fact, the stock market continued inching up toward record new highs. Surprise and consternation quietly wafted through the community. Ramtha had failed them. How could this happen’ Questions about Ramtha's infallibility began to surface. Could Ramtha have been so wrong’
Not missing a beat, however, Ramtha explained away the inaccurate prediction by saying that the collapse was avoided by all of the great work his students had been doing. They must simply continue to do the work, and miracles would continue to happen. And then he would preface a new set of predictions with, "As it is seen now ..." and a new line on the future would emerge.
One former student claims an accountant friend of his later helped over 100 couples cope with bankruptcies that the accountant attributed directly to the gold buying fever of that year.
Many former students cite the second half of 1988 as another major shift into the fear mode of the teachings. The C&E breathing technique and the blindfold were introduced, and RSE started up with the controversial field work and the dividing up of followers into hierarchical levels of advancement. Overnight, the community culture turned competitive and elitist.

But nothing prepared anyone for the year that followed. In 1989, fear and paranoia kicked into overdrive, the likes of which, the community had not seen before, and has not seen since. Consider that during 1988 and 1989, J.Z. was navigating the complicated pratfalls of separation and divorce. Her marital dream into which Ramtha had even invested his teachings, had been shattered. Ramtha had now been publicly humiliated by the unaccounted for economic prosperity of the times. And as if that were not enough, someone wanted to blow Ramtha and/or J.Z. up.
Just as an event was getting underway in Estes Park, Colorado, the hotel where the event was staged received a bomb threat. J.Z. and her entourage immediately packed their things and flew back to Yelm, stranding those who had flown from around the country to see Ramtha.
Again, students consider that date in the calendar significant in that it demarks another discernible shift "into the fear."
This time, the shift was in the direction of greater secrecy. Video and audio tapes were no longer made available for sale.
"It became a secret school," says Nancy Barr-Brandon. "Everything became mandatory and secret. We weren't allowed to talk about anything that went on at the events. There was tremendous fear, about everything from aliens, conspiracy, and the water."
At one event, J.Z. talked about a book entitled The Egyptian Mysteries, a book about ancient mystery schools, and one that emphasized the vital importance of keeping a code of silence regarding the school's sacred teachings.
"J.Z. personally held up the book," says former student Herman Gabriel, "and made the comment that people who broke the code of silence were murdered. Then she said that we would not do anything like that." But the point was made. RSE was an authentic mystery school, and its code of silence was a serious matter.
For a couple of years, Ramtha had broached the issue of UFOs and aliens, portraying them as genius brothers from other constellations and dimensions. He talked about two races, the giant, Nordic, benevolent aliens and "the grays," spindly shaped, almond eyed visitors who abducted Whitley Strieber and the popular imagination. At one event the year before, Ramtha claimed to know which students had been implanted with alien probes. To carry a probe inside you was a badge of honor. You were one of the chosen. But that was in 1988 when being an abductee was fashionable. Now a year later, parts of that scenario fell into disfavor.
On one chilling occasion, according to Gabriel, J.Z. herself announced that some students had been implanted with nuclear devices that could explode. "She would search out those who had the probes," says Gabriel, "because she could not risk the school being destroyed. She would kick these people out."

The school reached a bizarre and feverish nadir with an ultra secretive teaching students refer to as the "UG" teachings. UGs are "underground" bunkers for which students were urged to drop everything and start digging. On top of the New World Order and the coming earth changes and the nuclear implants, there was now a third species of alien called the Reptilians who enjoyed eating humans (In fact, the only thing they enjoyed more than eating people was gold; another reason to keep gold buried at the ready in case you had to trade for your life.) and a government that had nothing better to do than hunt down students from RSE. Ramtha predicted a war for dominion of the planet that somehow involved the U.S. government and the reptilians. The UGs would save the faithful from certain annihilation. When reptilians came looking for a snack or the government buzzed by in a black helicopter, you could plop down into your UG, like a prairie dog zipping into his hole.

"My roommate came home pale from one of these talks," Herman Gabriel recalls. "She walked around the kitchen table a dozen times. 'Why did you have to pick tonight not to go’' she blurted out. 'Ramtha has sworn me to absolute secrecy.' "She couldn't sleep that night. The next morning, she couldn't keep it in any longer and she told me what Ramtha had said. I burst out laughing. There was such paranoia and fear."
Gabriel says that Ramtha told students that they were not ready to be dragged out of their home and through the streets. "He would have the tapes stop recording, take off his microphone, and have everyone swear to secrecy. He would explain that the government had listening devices at the Ranch." Initially, students were told to build their UGs by hand. "If anyone found out where it was," says Nancy Barr-Brandon, "we were to cover it up and dig another."

One former student who had left the community but remained living in the area, stumbled upon a UG at a friend's house while taking a walk. "I didn't tell him, because I was afraid he would start all over again and build it someplace else."

After some of the events during which UGs were discussed, the sense of eminent Armageddon was so great, people went home and stayed up all night digging holes in the ground with their bare hands. But the first UGs proved a disastrous waste of time. Without proper knowledge of how to build underground bunkers, they either collapsed outright or filled up with water. When the second phase of the UGs kicked in, students relinquished hope of being able to dig their bunkers by hand and resorted to hiring expensive independent contractors, shelling out between $6.000 and $20,000 for the construction of these supposedly ultra-secret survival homes. One former student claims he knew a couple who sold their home in order to pay for the construction of their UG. One of the more disturbing aspects to this entire UG affair is the fact that students were instructed during an early event to build their UGs on National Park or Forest Service land. Former students claim that many UGs were, in fact, burrowed into public forest land. Rumors of two UGs high up on Mt. Rainier have drifted quietly through the community.
During one memorable event, Ramtha said prophetically, "When the Dragon marches, be prepared to hibernate." The "Dragon" represented China, and "hibernate" meant retire to your UG. When rumors began to fly about the Chinese massing just below the Mexican border, the community broke into a collective panic. Never mind the logistical impossibility of keeping such a massive maneuver under wraps, especially from the Mexican government. A similar incident happened in Okanogan County earlier this spring when survivalists mistook Forest Service trucks for a UN takeover; and mobilized everyone within a Bo Gritz grasp of reality into a state of military alert.
"After one UFO talk, " says Gabriel, "we were told to carry backpacks with us, so we would be prepared at a moment’s notice to abandon our cars and go off into the woods."
When the end of the year came, and Armageddon did not, once again the community breathed a confused sigh of relief. Linda Baker remembers well how surreal that time was. "Everybody was scrambling in fear to build and bury and horde," says Baker, "and we'd think ‘ sense of urgency ‘ get the anchor out of your butt ‘ get moving here!

"Then J.Z. would come out with new beginning classes for next year. You'd get the updated schedule of events, and there's new beginning C&E ‘ and you'd think, my god, we've still got some time." "When Armageddon didn't come," says Herman Gabriel, "Ramtha would say, 'You people are so lethargic! I had to prepare you well in advance so you would be willing, ready and waiting.' There was an excuse for everything." Near the end of the year, Ramtha introduced the "Light Teachings," a radical understanding about the 3rd level of existence, and about what happens when you die. "When you died," says Linda Baker, "if you went to the light, you went to the Light Beings who would strip you of all your emotions. It would feel like being stripped of skin. And then you would reincarnate with no memory of past experiences and emotions. "It was the icing on the cake as far as the control factor went. Even death was out of your control."
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Continued...


Part 2: Ramtha the Enlightened One?
by John Crutcher

Common Ground August 1995.

Toward the end of 1989, the mood in the Ramtha community had reached a feverish pitch of paranoid terror and euphoric anticipation. The denouement of events as Ramtha had predicted, Armageddon, earth changes, the New World Order ? it was all just around the next momentary bend of the Ram's necromantic calendar. And as much as the thought of cataclysmic change induced fear, it also carried with it the thrill of being the modem epoch's Noachian dreamers and acolytes of the apocalypse.

Followers of the Ram fancied themselves as both standing on the edge of the abyss, and on the avant garde of an emerging, new spirituality. The tired conformity of the dismal everyday had been left behind. No longer the gray drudges of the walking dead, they were fast becoming exemplars of a conscious new sorcery, of creating their own reality, and of fashioning a new world.

Ramtha had told followers that in the ?days to come?, a magnetic field or band that surrounded the earth would catch fire and wipe out all the electronic media in the world ? computer data banks would be swept clean. In one fell swoop the technological hubris of modernity would be brought to a screeching, humiliating halt; and a soft humanity would be thrown back into a chastising state of nature. No more banks, no more credit cards, no more supermarket shelves full of food. No more welfare checks, FEMA, FICA, 1099s. The world as we have come to depend upon it would cease, superseded by a new renaissance of consciousness, one in which the Ram in all of us ruled.

One woman in the Ramtha community so embraced the prophetic fervor, she believed the expletive would hit the fan within the month. So she embarked on a massive credit card spending spree, purchasing as much as the limits on her various credit cards would allow. After all, she reasoned, by the time her bill arrived, her credit card history would have been erased in the global magnetic fire predicted by Ramtha. What an impeccable ploy.
Another woman came home after a talk on aliens, and in a grand gesture of faith that was reminiscent of the 1993 film, The Rapture (in which Mimi Rogers drives to a desert campground and waits interminably for the "rapture" of Revelations to sweep her up into the heavens), she held a garage sale and sold everything she owned, only to sit and wait for a conflagration that never came.

The ETs did not come to feast upon the unprepared. And the great Armegeddon-istic battle did not light up the sky. And California did not slide into the ocean like a gigantic glacial ice fall. And the economy remained relatively robust. And J.Z. calmly printed a schedule of events for the following year that included classes for beginners in a school that was thought to be on an urgent date with destiny. Clearly, there was more time than anyone had thought.

But when, in the latter part of 1989, the teachings fell forward with a faltering sense of urgency and vague un-fulfillment, as if to put in place the final hedge against slackening loyalty and thinning devotion, Ramtha introduced the capstone of his archway, into fear, the Light Teachings.

Extraterrestrials and UFOs had for many years figured prominently in the teachings. ETs had run the gamut of yin/yang roles, from benevolent gods to ravenous reptilians. A cluster of UFO sightings in the Bald Hills near Mt. Rainier from 1986 to 1988 created quite a stir among followers. They swapped tales of sightings and encounters at the many wine and cheese socials held at the time on their gentrified farms.

At one such gathering in 1987, a normally skeptical student related how the week before, while chopping wood by the side of his house, a UFO passed closely overhead, near enough to discern a human figure wave at him as it sped by. Stories like this added to the milieu that was cultivated in the community, that of living a charmed, extraordinary life, albeit, one that stretched beyond the limits of this earthly sphere Ramtha people were on a great journey, a grand adventure full of miraculous healings, materialized pearls, and surreal salutations from the Ashtar Command.

In late 1989, J.Z. Knight invited Barbara Bartholic, a UFO researcher and hypnotherapist who regressed individuals claiming to have been abducted by aliens, to speak at the Ranch about her work. In behalf of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment (RSE), Nancy Barr-Brandon arranged for Bartholic's visit. The event was a big success, and whetted the appetite for regression amongst many students. Barr-Brandon invited Bartholic back for a workshop that Barr-Brandon would host herself, independent of the Ranch. Many RSE students eagerly signed up, and the intense interest unsettled J.Z..

"J.Z. went ballistic," says Barr-Brandon. "She held a one thousand person talk entitled, 'FEAR.' She said it was a threat to the school."

Later, Bartholic gave Barr-Brandon a printed transcript of a telephone conversation that supposedly took place in February of 1988 between Whitley Strieber, the famous UFO abductee and author of Communion, and a UFO researcher named O.H. Krill. Strieber and Krill apparently talked about dimensions of reality, the Buddhistic "void," and the idea that when we die, there are beings of light who await our soul's passing in order to strip us of our emotional memory, compelling our return for another unenlightened incarnation on the earth plane.

"I gave it to J.Z.," says Barr-Brandon. "Two weeks later, the information on that transcript turned up in the teaching. It became a major teaching on the forces of light and dark."

The teachings suddenly and mysteriously performed an about face. "Whereas prior to that the forces of light were good guys and the forces of dark bad guys, now this was reversed," says Barr-Brandon. "The light beings were trying to feed off of us. The dark was the void. Students changed their clothing from light to dark."

Before J.Z. obtained the transcript, Ramtha had always said, "Go to the light!" Now he warned, "Do not go to the light! Go to the dark!" And when he said this he was practically quoting from the transcript. The light beings at the end of the tunnel who Near Death Experiences compare to a Christ-like figure of love and acceptance, was denigrated by Ramtha as an obstacle to enlightenment. Only weeks earlier, these light beings had practically been exalted colleagues of the Ram. Now they were cosmic personas non grata, following like the school's alien abductees, the fashionable whims ? or the literary passions ? of whomever was writing the Ramtha script. Barr-Brandon is emphatic that the information in that transcript was parroted by J.Z./Ramtha.

"That was something that really influenced me," Barr-Brandon says. "It was the first time I saw how blatantly some material ended up in the teaching, as well as how my friend Barbara was turned on and made this big enemy."
For Barr-Brandon, this was the decisive blow to her faith in Ramtha, who had been her whole life for over seven years. She left the school soon thereafter.

Back in 1988, Ramtha had begun dividing students into various groups; first creating the "Elohims" and then the "Ak Men Ras." The Elohims were comprised of those who had been in the teachings longest, and the Ak Men Ras were established as the next oldest group of students. And newer groups were created in 1990 to incorporate newcomers.
Former students claim these divisions between students created an atmosphere of competition and jealousy. The field work, which tested a person's paranormal abilities, became a prestigious proving ground, with students vying for attention from Ramtha,
or currying favor with J.Z.. RSE's aura as a mystery school was cultivated by holding out rewards for field work well done; greater, deeper, more profound, more challenging secrets. Everything was a test. One former student recalls how in 1990 he was tapped as one of an elite group of students who excelled in the field work. Ramtha had a new discipline for them to try, a practice called "Tahumo." It involved developing the ability to be able to raise or lower one's body temperature at will. In Tibet, lamas demonstrate this form of mind over matter mettle by wrapping their naked bodies in frozen blankets in freezing weather. The idea is for the lama to melt the blanket by raising his body temperature, a feat that is actually performed several times in the same sitting.

IN LINE WITH RAMTHA'S GRANDIOSE ANGST FOR CONSPIRACIES, RSE STUDENTS WOULD NEED TO BE ABLE TO LOWER THEIR BODY TEMPERATURES AT WILL IN ORDER TO AVOID DETECTION BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT SENSORS OR REPTILIAN ET?S WHO WOULD ANY DAY NOW COME HUNTING FOR THE ILL-PREPARED.


?It was under 40 degrees, evening, dark, raining, quite windy," says the former student who had been selected along with 35 others to try this new technique. "We stripped down to our jockey shorts. Initially he said you are going to stay there until you accomplish this. We saw all the cars driving away. We were just sitting out in the fields freezing. He asked us to perform something which he never taught. He just said, 'Raise your body temperature,' and that was it. Of course, nobody accomplished this."
The purpose behind RSE students learning this discipline was two-fold. The ability to raise body temperature at will would be crucial for survival in the Days to Come. And in line with Ramtha's grandiose angst for conspiracies, RSE students would need to be able to lower their body temperatures at will in order to avoid detection by the U.S. government sensors or reptilian ETs who would any day now come hunting for the ill-prepared.


For the next two years, rather than a continuation of the near constant fear and loathing messages which had characterized the previous two years, or the related siege mentality, the urgency of Ramtha's apocalyptic message began to subside. Instead of arousing raw fear and keeping everyone perpetually off balance, the forces behind RSE seemed intent on consolidating control over the school and the community.
"This was the beginning of a stage of RSE," says Barr-Brandon, "when anyone who went to a lecture or teacher not sanctioned by RSE, was brought to the ranch and interrogated. There was a control thing over what people were learning. Whereas the opposite had been true in the early days. Before, if you got the message, you never had to come back. Now it all changed."
Linda Baker calls it the, "Thou shalt have no other god before me phase."

Lee Harris, a former student of RSE and a personal growth facilitator, began holding weekend therapy workshops in the Yelm area in the fall of 1991. Evidently displeased with the competition, J.Z.'s partner, J.O. Alt, informed Harris that he should discontinue his workshops. Harris refused. At the behest of J.Z., a chiropractor named Robert Provasoli signed up and attended one of Harris's workshops in order to find out what Harris was up to. J.O. Alt then summoned Harris to the Ranch for a meeting, at which Alt gave Harris an ultimatum: either cease teaching the workshops or leave the school. Alt's extensive knowledge of Harris' workshop content was so uncanny, Harris pressed Alt into admitting that the Ranch had employed Dr. Provasoli to attend a workshop as spy. Disgusted by these shocking and unsavory machinations, Harris wrote a letter to Alt in November of 1991 saying: "That you have issued me ... an ultimatum in regard to this work, I have been driven much deeper within my own being to look at my choices and the reality that is created in the making of them ... In this process, I have come to clearly understand the distortions that are born from the great insecurity that surrounds these teachings both from within and from without ... When 1 contemplate aligning myself with a collective un-even-ness that has been and is currently present in the manner in which I have been spied upon, inquisitioned, and dictated to, it does not bring me greater joy ... My best wishes to you and J.Z.... Sincerely, Lee Harris." J.O. Alt has never responded to Harris's letter.
In that same year, a channel named Phillip was invited by one of J.Z.'s neighbors to give a talk in a house directly across the road from J.Z.'s estate. Word of Phillip's scheduled appearance impelled the Ranch to issue a stern warning: anyone attending this event would be asked to leave the school. The rationale for this restriction was the contention that Phillip's teachings were corrupt and inferior to Ramtha's. Only Ramtha came through on a pure and unsullied wavelength of truth. All other channels including Phillip muddied the waters and compromised sincere seekers.
On the night that Phillip was to speak, two women in the school were driving into town on Yelm Highway. As they were passing the house where Phillip was giving his talk, the women spotted somebody stirring in the bushes across the road. Their first thought was that it looked like an injured person who may have fallen into the ditch. So they pulled over onto the shoulder and jumped out of the car to see what was wrong.
What they found shocked them. Cowering in the bushes was a woman they knew only too well ? a very embarrassed Vicky Cady, J.Z.'s close friend and number two person in charge of the Ranch. Cady was sporting a pair of binoculars and a notepad into which she had been recording the names of RSE students she espied entering the house where Phillip was appearing.
Out of curiosity, five students did attend Phillip's talk. All five were summarily summoned to the Ranch where they were given an ultimatum: either disavow themselves of Phillip and promise to never attend a talk by another channel again, or be expelled from the school. The five refused to comply and the Ranch made good on their threat, excommunicating them for their disobedience.

For weeks, the rumor spread that J.Z., not Ramtha, had expelled the five. People knew that J.Z. had a volatile nature, and they thought of Ramtha as above the fray of this petty conflict.
Also, among the banished, were individuals of unimpeachable character and devotion to the teachings. One woman, Joy Cunningham, was as one student put it, "a sweet, middle-aged woman well known for her integrity." 'No way,' they thought, 'could she have done anything to warrant being kicked out of the school. It must have been J.Z.'s doing.
"One guy was such a fanatic of Ramtha," says one former student, "he wouldn't even tell his wife what went on at a Ramtha event."
A month later at the next RSE event, Ramtha stood before a packed arena and said he knew what everyone was thinking: that it was J.Z. who had banished the Phillip Five. It was time to correct that misconception. "It was I," he said. "I am the one who did this." The audience was perfectly stunned.
Ramtha launched an invective against the Phillip Five that was spiteful, petty, and distasteful. He spoke of the five in bitter, disparaging terms, calling them "traitors," and saying that they had betrayed the sacred trust of the school.
"Ramtha dragged these people through the mud," says a former student. Given the guileless reputations of the five, and the realization that Ramtha, not J.Z., had been the heavy, about one thousand students quit the school the next day, half of whom lived in the Yelm area. They comprised a significant percentage of the local student population, many of them Ramtha's most devoted followers.
"Most of the Elohims dropped out," says a former student. "There were less than a hundred left. J.Z. replenished them by allowing many of the Ak Men Ras to convert to Elohims."
Overnight, the school had imploded. Ramtha, or the forces that be Ramtha, had outstripped themselves in a major convulsive act of jealousy and control.

Joe Sumrall was a tall, handsome, congenial man who moved to Yelm in the mid-80s to be near the outrageousness of Ramtha. He left behind the California rat race and a lucrative career as a graphic designer. Free of the strictures of social consciousness, he was able to pursue a playful passion for cartooning in Yelm. He published a popular book of cartoons in 1988 and syndicated his work through numerous New Age publications, including Common Ground (1989-90). His cartoons were known for their superb draftsmanship and playful satire of New Age eccentricities.

In January 1992, Sumrall attended an event at the Ranch. During a lunch break he drove home to eat. He was later found dead at his house, having been beaten and strangled to death by an unknown assailant.
Disgruntled former students suspected foul play by elements at the Ranch, some even accusing J.Z. of settling a score against Sumrall for satirizing her in some of his cartoons. But according to those close to the investigation, police do not think the killers were in any way related to the Ranch or anyone in the Ramtha community. Police believe there were two perpetrators who probably knew that Sumrall had, like many in the Ramtha community, buried gold on his property, and that the killers severely beat an uncooperative Sumrall into revealing the location of his buried loot, after which he was eliminated as a possible witness. J.Z. was so upset about the murder, she proclaimed a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible.
It is ironic, however, that J.Z.'s gesture, though well intended, trails a tragedy in part catalyzed by Ramtha's advice to avoid banks and bury valuables, such as gold, on one's property. Not only did many followers relinquish financial solvency when they followed this reckless advice, but for his parley at sovereignty, Sumrall lost his life.

The Sumrall tragedy presaged a year that quickly became one of the worst in J.Z.'s life. For 1992 was the year of the divorce trial and the subsequent public exposure of the inner workings of RSE, the Ramtha community, and J.Z.'s personal life. Through Jeff's affidavits and testimony, the testimony of former students, as well as J.Z.'s testy behavior in the witness box, the press made much of the bizarre context of the trial: a gay man suing to reopen the divorce settlement with his former wife who happens to channel a 35,000 year old disembodied warrior. Spirituality, greed, New Age weirdness; The angles were plentiful and delicious. And the press feasted on every juicy morsel.

A consequence of all this negative attention and ridicule, J.Z. and RSE lay low for the next two and a half years, choosing to regain control of the foundering community. She spent the time working to refine the teachings and to teachings, that RSE & J.Z. were thrust back, into the limelight. Though little connection seems to exist between May's controversial training methods and the curriculum at RSE, the assumed connection was leaped upon with salacious ardor by a scandal pandering press. And though J.Z. and current students would prefer that people, such as the writer of this article, leave the past behind and focus on the school and what it is today, the group's tumultuous history and its teeming contradictions render a close examination of the culture, of the people, the teachings, and its illustrious leader, necessary. For as Shakespeare said, "What is past is prologue." And the Ramtha community's prologue is a foundry of inconsistencies and ironic plot twists that begs evaluating.

A major inconsistency is the very existence of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment. As the school developed, it quickly grew into an increasingly ritualized and dogmatic institution, two things Ramtha repeatedly warned against because of the belief that ritual and dogma enslave the unwary.
"I wasn't attracted to any kind of meditation or ritual," says Linda Baker. "And Ramtha said you could know god without ritual and dogma. When C&E came out, I put the brakes on, and thought, 'This is ritual! You said you weren't going to do this.'"
One of the great ironies about the Ramtha culture is that Ramtha spends a tremendous amount of time enchanting his students with stories and explications of life beyond the known world, of extraterrestrials, inner earth people, unicorns, ancient civilizations, past lives, the future, seven planes of reality, all juicy stuff to think about, and all completely unverifiable, and most of it highly improbable. But RSE's students believe in Ramtha, and they structure their lives around this information without ever once stopping to consider that this unquestioning gullibility is as dogmatic as the irrational superstitions of the Catholic Church that Ramtha so sarcastically maligns as "the Great Whore."

For many years, Ramtha would end talks with the admonishment, "Do not return to this audience if you get it." He discouraged followers from becoming followers. With RSE one could say the reverse has become true. Students are now asked to commit to seven years of regular, periodic attendance (3-4 times a year).
"Any time you follow someone else," says Ramtha in Soulmates: A Ramtha Intensive, "or you become a groupie or sect or dogmatic creed or cult or whatever you call those things, you give away your power. You are asleep."
The followers at RSE do follow someone else. They follow Ramtha. They follow his every word. Students have changed their clothing, posture, speech, mannerisms, and financial stability based upon what Ramtha says. Following one UG event, students scrambled home and desperately began digging holes in the ground with their bare hands. And based on what? If Ramtha says it is so, it must be so. So dig. That is dogma. When Ramtha enters the arena, all eyes feast fawningly upon him, as though his mere presence were a miraculous event.

And from what we observed during our day at the Beginners C&E Weekend, man Ramtha students behave like groupies. When it was announced that students could spend the night sleeping in the arena on the uncomfortable astroturf floor, many in the audience hooted and hollered with pathetic gratitude. Clearly they found the prospect of sleeping in Ramtha's Great Hall of learning, within earshot of where their teacher would be bedding down for the night, an indescribable thrill.
"At the Ranch," says Ramtha critic Joe Szimhart, "they feel they're participating in Ramtha's energy. They feel energized, protected."
Ramtha published a book in 1983 titled Love Yourself into Life, and in it, Ramtha
warns readers to never let anyone to put a blindfold over their eyes nor plugs in their
ears. And he eerily states that we will never learn anything in "great halls of learning."
According to former students, there was no doubt that the school's seven year
curriculum established in the fall of 1988 was originally intended as only one, finite
seven year term that would end in the fall of this year. And at the end of that seven year cycle a student would be graduating into the turbulent world of the prophesied tribulation, armed with a paranormal mastery of this temporal world. The forecast for tribulation, however, is looking pretty slim for the fall. And if there are to be graduates leaving the school, from what we have been able to determine, no one is ready to levitate, or materialize gold, or ascend into the heavens ? not yet. "It took me two years to find my card," says Vicky Cady, J.Z.'s right hand person, and Ramtha's number two student. "I'll be in the school forever, because I'm always learning. I never stop learning."
Even J. Gordon Melton recognizes the problem with the school's prescribed time frame. "The problem the Ramtha group has is that there is the possibility of arriving at enlightenment in this lifetime," says Melton "At this point, the Ramtha group is very young, only seven to eight years at applying the teachings. Ramtha has not laid out the whole system yet."

There are numerous inconsistencies in the teaching themselves.
The Light Teachings reversed themselves. The Soul Mate teachings conveniently followed the course of J.Z. and Jeff's relationship, changing as their relationship changed, and always in ways that served J.Z., but not Jeff. Extraterrestrials were fashionable and then they were not. The "Undergrounds" (UGs) were ultra-secret (Not even one's spouse was supposed to know.) until, due to the insurmountable difficulty of building a UG alone it became tacitly acceptable to hire and pay a contractor thousands of dollars to build it - rendering the UG no longer secret.
As fear was a major obstacle to reaching enlightenment, a persistent theme running through all the Dialogues and lectures was the value of being fearless. And fear was equated with identification with separation from anything that was god; from other people, nature, or the unseen.
But as the chronicle in Part 1 illustrates - from the dialogue, Changes, the Days to Come to the Light Teachings - Ramtha spent five years fanning the flames of fear. Even through interactions with students, Ramtha assumes an arrogant, paternalistic demeanor, continually undermining student confidence through subtle and not so subtle put downs. Ramtha used the created fear to control followers, to foster a dependency upon Ramtha's latest revelation.

And what of Ramtha's god-like claims of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence? Ramtha often compares himself to the wind; he is everywhere, all things seeing, hearing, knowing all, and able to create, fashion, or make anything manifest that his heart desired. But there are innumerable proofs to the contrary.
As an all-seeing prophet, Ramtha fares rather poorly. While he has enjoyed occasional psychic success, he has more often failed to divine the future accurately, an otherwise compromising situation were it not for his readymade escape clause, "As it is seen now..." The 1988 economic collapse never came, nor many of the earth changes he outlined, nor the New World Order, nor Armageddon.
If Ramtha is all-seeing, how is it that he did not pick up on Jeff s HIV status until after a blood test? When Joe Sumrall was murdered, why did J.Z. find it necessary to put up a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killers? Why couldn't Ramtha offer any clues? And what about this article? How is it that J.Z. allowed herself to be interviewed without some intuitive prescience that it would end up such a critical piece? Many psychics would have picked up as much.
At the C&E Beginner Weekend we attended, Ramtha selected advanced students to sit on stage and demonstrate the C&E breathing technique. He marched deliberately around the arena picking out students one by one, pointing his finger and saying, "You... You... You..."
One woman, evidently demurred as he approached.
"Do not hide your thoughts from me," he said to her. "You thought you could keep your thoughts hidden from me." Ramtha turned to the entire audience and said, "You cannot escape me!" The audience laughed heartily. Ramtha had a humorous way of letting everyone know who was the boss.
But this was also a not so subtle reminder that Ramtha was all seeing and all-powerful. You cannot escape me! Consider the psychological effect such claims have on people predisposed to believe what Ramtha says. It is that of absolute control. To think that we could not escape an all seeing teacher. Big brother with little need for technology.
Whenever Ramtha's predictions failed or his teachings contradicted themselves, the apparent inconsistencies have been rationalized by the Ranch or by Ramtha himself. The students were not ready to hear the whole truth until now, Ramtha would say. Now the truth can be revealed, and while it may seem like a contradiction, it is actually a deeper truth.
These rationalizations are part of an effort to protect Ramtha's stature of infallibility; for Ramtha cannot make a mistake; Ramtha is pure and perfect. Being "the Enlightened One," Ramtha has a lot to live up to.
" He has the infallibility of the Pope," says one former student. "In the school, Ramtha takes on, without question, the identical role of the Pope. He is purely infallible in all issues of enlightenment."
The irony is that most educated people do not believe that the Pope is actually infallible. They see a man who has been crowned as the titular head of a global religion. But in the case of Ramtha, students do not regard him as human. Hence, he assumes a genuinely superior station of infallibility, and correlating power.
"Wanting to believe that spirits have a direct line to the truth ties into a deep yearning for something truly pure that one can trust," says Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad in their book, The Guru Papers. "When values of purity have been implanted, it becomes difficult to trust oneself as one is never pure enough. So looking for someone or something more fits neatly into people's deepest 'pure-itanical' conditioning, which instills self-mistrust."
But regardless of the exalted status bestowed upon Ramtha, he is eminently fallible, as has been proven by his shaky credentials as a clairvoyant and inconsistent teacher.
One of the most significant inconsistencies in the Ramtha community is that it sings the praises of sovereignty but cultivates a culture of dependency.
The term sovereignty has meant many things for Ramtha students through the years. Generally speaking, it means self-sufficiency and independence; materially, psychologically, and spiritually. It means paranormal, mind over matter mastery of the temporal world; financial prosperity; survivalism; self-esteem, wholeness, and self-empowerment; active versus passive spirituality (passive being eastern mysticism frequently disparaged by Ramtha as limited); enlightenment and ascension. Though students might deny that RSE is about personality worship, sovereignty really means to be like Ramtha.
The sexiness of sovereignty is enormous, especially the part about mastery over material existence. We are talking about superhero-like powers. Ramtha says we can learn to grow back severed limbs, become invisible, raise and low our body temperature at will, and materialize gold coins and pearls out of thin air. Current students at RSE claim to have already accomplished some of these feats. Two women purportedly have begun to grow back lost teeth. J. Gordon Melton was impressed by one of the women making this claim. Although not a dentist, he claims that the teeth do appear as though they are coming back in.
But regardless of the accounts of miraculous healing and manifestation, Ramtha students by and large dilute any empowering success with a deepening dependency upon Ramtha's wisdom and perceived power. How else can one explain the gold buying spree of 1988 that devastated so many financially, or the hysteria over building bunkers in the ground, or the many students who spend every dime they can spare to attend the next event? These are not the actions of sovereign, empowered individuals.
The most fundamental inconsistency is that Ramtha preaches empowerment while he simultaneously disempowers those to whom he is preaching. He says that we create our own reality; but that we have been giving away our power to create ? to social consciousness, religious and political institutions, friends and family. Ramtha frequently reminds us that it is time to take our power back, and begin creating anew, "dreaming a new dream."
The only problem with this seemingly benevolent message is that it is Ramtha who kept his students preoccupied with fear during the late 80s; and it is difficult to feel powerful when living with a siege mentality, which is what he created during the fear and fright period. Instead of taking back their power, students gave it away to these many consuming, external pursuits.
Ultimately, students give most of their attention and power to J.Z. and Ramtha. JZ gets the money, and Ramtha the credit. For all the good things that happen in student's life, from miracles to achievements, it is Ramtha who makes them possible; it is Ramtha, not themselves, to whom they are grateful. And when bad things happen, it is the student who attracted these bad experiences, but Ramtha who sent the runner that caused them in order to help the student grow. Ramtha cannot lose and the students cannot win.
Instead of instilling confidence through his dialogue with students, Ramtha does the opposite, chiding them for being thick skulled, slow witted, primitive, and "pathetically" in need of his superior knowledge and wisdom.
One former student describes Ramtha's attitude toward students as: "You need to trust me. I can see forwards and backwards and you can't.
There are tough times ahead and you can't see them. I can. Rely on me and live. Don't and die."

J. Gordon Melton claims that RSE is a legitimate Gnostic school. He talks excitedly
about Ramtha's unique contribution to an evolving Gnostic tradition, picking up where
Theosophy left off. But Melton's colleagues regard his overzealous interest in groups such as RSE unbalanced in that it seems wholly uncritical. Several colleagues we spoke with regard him as a "national treasure" for his encyclopedic work at cataloging new religious. But they also brand him an "apologist" for the religious groups he examines. Interestingly, Melton does not believe, as J.Z. maintains, that Ramtha is a separate personality and entity from J.Z.. He maintains that the two are cut from the same biological cloth.
"We've gone several rounds with this," says Melton. "She's convinced Ramtha is not a part of her. I'm convinced Ramtha is a part of her. But I'm not sure it makes a whole lot of difference, because I think Ramtha is related to a transcendental part of herself."

According to Melton, Ramtha falls into that tradition of gnostic spirits who speak through humble mediums; mediums notable for their lack of sophistication and limited education. Melton theorizes that mediums of this sort have been channeling Gnostic teachers since the 2nd Century. Melton refers to the fact that J.Z. finished high school and only part of a business college curriculum. Someone with this background could not possibly expound upon the complex and subtle issues Ramtha delves into. It must be coming from a higher source than her waking awareness. Maybe not a separate being, but from that transcendent part of herself that is tapped into cosmic consciousness.
That J.Z. has the ability to tap into a preternatural part of her mind is well established. In State of Mind, J.Z.'s 1988 autobiography, she describes an incident in which she spontaneously sat down and played the piano like a maestro. Her fingers moved wildly up and down the keyboard, passionately pouring her soul into music that, from her description, must have been channeled. She woke everyone in the house up, and they all crowded outside the doorway to the room in which she was playing. Everyone, herself included, was astounded by her mastery of an instrument of which she had only a rudimentary knowledge. Her husband at the time blurted, "You sound like Beethoven."
When we visited J.Z. at the Ranch, she gave us a tour of her lovely home. In one room she pointed out a large still life that she had painted. It was impressive. The painting looked like an oil study from the 18th Century. Sensing our astonishment, she quickly qualified the work by mentioning that she had copied it from a photograph. Apparently, J.Z. is known for painting exacting copies of other paintings, which is all the more remarkable given that she has no formal training in the fine arts.
What do we make of a person who has a preternatural ability to copy and mimic others in the creative arts? This is a woman who on a whim can play like Beethoven and paint like Ingres.
According to former employees, J.Z. also has a talent for reading that is prodigious. Many attest to her photographic memory, and her ability to speed read through books with near absolute retention. Former employees say she reads everything she can get her hands on. Jeff Knight stated that his wife would retire every night to bed with an armful of books and pour through them for hours. Her remarkable talent as a reader, as well as her photographic memory, become significant in light of how some detractors say she has used those talents.
For years Windwards Bookstore was the information depot for the Ramtha community. Located in the one-block town of Rainier, about five miles east of Yelm, this independently owned bookstore carried, in addition to all the Ramtha literature, all tangential material related to the Ramtha teachings: survivalist books, farming how-to?s, apocalyptic literature, the conspiratorial rantings of Lindsey Williams. But the most vital function that Windwards filled was as the publisher of a monthly newsletter called Windwards. It was the unofficial community newspaper, and in 1988, they printed a Letter to the Editor that accused J.Z. of borrowing the Ramtha teachings from other sources.
"One of the things the owner at Windwards told me," says one former student, "is that they would order these new books, and they would send them over to J.Z.. And then they would find out that Ramtha was talking about a lot of the stuff in the books."
"Yeh, Judy at Windwards had a strong suspicion," says Linda Baker, "that J.Z. was borrowing from books she ordered. She introduced them to J.Z. and next thing, Ramtha would be teaching it."
Soon thereafter, J.Z. opened her own bookstore in Yelm, eclipsing Windwards' role as the community hot spot outside of the Ranch. By the end of 1989, Windwards had lost nearly all of its business to J.Z.'s store and they had to close down.
Craig Hulet, a policy analyst in the Northwest, also accuses the Ramtha community of lifting his research for their own purposes. Hulet is famous for publishing "white papers," each a compendium of official documents that makes the case for a conspiratorial set of policies within the U.S. government that threaten citizens' rights. Hulet claims that the Ranch would order a white paper and then, within the month, he would hear that Ramtha was talking about things he had documented in that very white paper.
In 1985, one former student who was at that time on staff at the Ranch recalls attending a strategy meeting. J.Z. asked those present, what it was that people wanted to know or hear about? The former student said they wanted to hear about "changes" and about "the days to come." Shortly afterward, the dialogue, "Changes, The Days to Come," was given by Ramtha. The staff member left the community in disgust.
Another former student recalls an event at which Ramtha was giving a talk. At one point, she had the strangest feeling that she knew what he was going to say next. To her horror, she realized that her prescience arose from just having read the same book that Ramtha evidently had read, as Ramtha was quoting parts of it almost verbatim.

The mind is an amazing instrument. A person with prodigious reading and retention skills could very well lift ideas and knowledge from other sources and then regurgitate them in a charismatic and convincing manner. Geniuses, psychics, multiple personality disorders (In a case of multiple personality, an individual's blood pressure, body temperature, and biochemistry can all change dramatically in an instant. One personality can possess genius and another paranormal, even telekinetic prowess.), and idiot savants all demonstrate talents that the average person would characterize as extraordinary, superhuman, and, in the right context, divine. That a woman such as J.Z. could possess prodigious abilities and put them to work in a captivating way may be nothing more phenomenal than biological happenstance at its most chimerical. And even if there is an authentic spirit behind the Ramtha persona, that still does not account for the suspicious origins of the Ram's teachings ? nor does it excuse some of the Ram's unwholesome activities.
Students in the community counter such speculation as irrelevant given the value of the teachings themselves. Some go so far as to say, it does not matter where the teachings come from, so long as they are true and they work. They recite a catalog of miraculous healings and paranormal experiences that prove the teachings' worth.
The stories are very likely true. But they are also not unique. Many spiritual communities report similar phenomena. Catholics report Marian visions, born-again Christians Jesus visions, devotional communities meet their gurus on the road, students of ascended masters slip out of their bodies at night and dance among the stars. That all spiritual communities produce experiences among their faithful is a fact. That the leader of the community, the teacher or guru is somehow responsible for those experiences is open to debate. That the experiences happen regardless of the teacher should be enough to give one pause.
Furthermore, what is often overlooked in discussing this phenomena are the many people who, in spite of their best efforts, fail at producing miracles. In the Ramtha community, former students express distaste for the way those who failed to engender miraculous recoveries from life-threatening illnesses died ignominiously by virtue of being unable to overcome the material obstacle of illness. After they died, friends and fellow students reasoned that the individual died because they wanted to die; otherwise the miraculous would have occurred.
In medieval times, if we were branded a witch, a stone would be tied to our person, and we would be tossed into the river. If we sank and drowned, our executioners would be vindicated, for indeed truly we were a witch. If we performed the miraculous, however, and floated to safety, we would be vindicated as virtuous. The poetic irony of this perversely futile logic struggles to make sense of life and death and the manner in which reason works within the Ramtha community.
Who is Ramtha? For the faithful, Ramtha is a divine teacher, an enlightened entity who bestows pearls of wisdom on the willing student. But for many former students, the Ramtha of today is not the same Ramtha who attracted them to the community initially. The early Ramtha, say former students, preached love, acceptance, and empowerment, the later Ramtha fear, competitiveness, and dependency. Early Ramtha was the teacher who preceded the Changes, the Days to Come Dialogue in 1985; for with that fearful teaching, the descent into fear-based activity and control began. But many students who began the school in the late 80s make a similar assessment, saying that the teacher they knew in, say, 1987 was different from the one they knew in 1991. As recently as two months ago, two friends of a former student left the community complaining that the Ramtha of this past year is different from the previous year; they were convinced that Ramtha had left and that it was now all J.Z. impersonating Ramtha. The notion of two Ramthas, the pristine, pure, benign early persona of some earlier period versus a later, corrupt, unwholesome persona, or a real Ramtha versus J.Z. impersonating Ramtha has become a relative issue depending upon when one entered the community and when one soured on it. Furthermore, the idea of then having been a truly virtuous Ramtha in the early year overlooks a significant and telling episode that unfolded during that time.

In 1982, a psychologist named Dr. Jamei Manganiello attended a Ramtha seminar. Ramtha singled out Manganiello during a session, and told him that he had been a student and follower in a past life. Ramtha said he was glad to be reunited with him. The psychologist felt special and "euphoric."
A week later, J.Z. called Manganiello on the telephone with a proposal. How would he like to invest in an Arabian horse? Ramtha himself had created the investment for his people, and by investing in it Manganiello would obtain "financial freedom." The horse's name was Palantir, and Manganiello could buy shares at a cost of $10,000 per share. Manganiello was undecided. It was a lot of money, and he knew nothing about the horse business.
A few weeks later at a seminar in California, Manganiello was approached by somebody on J.Z.'s staff who told Manganiello that Ramtha wanted a personal audience with him. The audience was to be free of charge, a significant gesture in light of Ramtha's $500 per hour fee for "personals."
Ramtha told Manganiello that he had personally "created" the horse Palantir, and encouraged him to invest in it. Ramtha explained that the horse would earn $29,000. He repeated J.Z.'s earlier assertion that the investment would bring the psychologist "financial freedom." There were about thirty investors in the syndicate who would each own shares of the horse. Manganiello bought two shares for $20,000.
As time passed, Manganiello became concerned about his investment, but Ramtha personally assured him that it was sound, saying "I keep all my promises."
In November of 1985, Jeff and J.Z. sheepishly announced that Palantir was not making a profit. They offered, "allegedly out of the goodness of their hearts," to buy back Palantir.
What J.Z. and Jeff neglected to mention was the fact that the Washington State Securities Division had issued a Cease and Desist Order in January of 1984, while they considered possible racketeering charges against the two for possibly defrauding investors of their money. The magnanimous gesture to repay the investors their money had little to do with moral rectitude and everything to do with pressure from the state.
There were four syndicates mentioned in the Cease and Desist Order. Each involved a different horse into which multiple investors had apparently been cajoled by J.Z., Jeff, and Ramtha, in a fashion similar to that experienced by Dr. Manganiello, into investing tens of thousands of dollars.
When Manganiello realized that J.Z. and Jeff had been less than forthright in the syndicate affair, he sued. As a consequence of his lawsuit and pressure from the Washington State Securities Division, J.Z. and Jeff paid all of the investors in the four syndicates back. In 1991, J.Z. stood before a full arena of students and apparently proclaimed that she had paid everyone in the horse syndicates back.

She talked about the importance of having integrity and being impeccable in everything we do. She proudly proclaimed that she always paid her debts.
When we talked with J.Z. at the Ranch she expressed a similar sentiment in talking about how she recovered from years of indebtedness to the IRS. She claims that an abiding faith in Ramtha and an impeccable, virtuous outlook helped her dramatically turn her finances around and honor her debts. "Look," she said, "I have never not paid anybody in my life."
But what about a fifth syndicate not listed on the Cease and Desist Order of 1994? Somehow the state never found out about the fifth syndicate. Nancy Barr-Brandon was an investor in that fifth syndicate, and she invested $20,000 in the horse named Prince. Later she was asked to throw in another $6,000 for upkeep.
Fashioned in the crucible of Ramtha's omnipotent creativity, Prince, the horse destined for more lucrative exaltedness than Palantir, slipped ignobly out the side door of destiny.
"We were going to make great gold," says Barr-Brandon. "The horse had leg trouble, and was eventually given away." To this day, Barr-Brandon has never received a dime of her original investment.
"The only people, to my knowledge, who were reimbursed," says Barr-Brandon, "were the people who sued her. And they didn't get the full amount. None of the people in my syndicate got paid back."
So who really is Ramtha? For one thing, he is not early or late Ramtha if early or late are supposed to imply true and false respectively. For both early and late Ramtha are controversial, inconsistent and of questionable integrity as a teacher.
Perhaps there is a clue in the fact that he is a channeled personality. It is common for mediums to channel more than one personality during the life of their mediumship. And like most channels, J.Z. has done that. ABC's 20/20 program broadcast a segment on Ramtha in 1992. In researching J.Z.'s background, a reporter for the show found a childhood friend who remembers J.Z. channeling a demon named "Demias" in church as a teenager. J.Z. denies this incident ever occurred. Former students claim that J.Z. channeled a 19th Century equestrian named "Charles" for advice for the horse business. According to the RSE catalog, J.Z. channeled Jesus Christ on an audiotape entitled "Jesus Speaks." Apparently, this Jesus sports an angry and reproachful personality. And there are claims among former employees that J.Z. often drifted visibly in and out of different personas, sometimes in mid-sentence.

So who really is Ramtha? That question may best be answered by asking the question, who is he not? And for one thing, he is not wholly unique in the channeling world. He is not consistent. He is not accurate with his predictions. He is not all-powerful, all seeing, or all-knowing. He is not omnipresent. He is not the wind. He is not responsible through "runners" for anyone's experience. And if he gets his knowledge from books, which seems to be the case, then he is not wiser than any mortal with a pair of eyes. And if J.Z. does have other personalities playing in the shadows, Ramtha is probably nothing more than a "grand" and "outrageous" act of creativity.
In the fall of 1994, a strange lawsuit in the annals of copyright law played itself out in Linz, Austria. A German woman named Ravell was successfully sued for copyright infringement by J.Z. Knight. Ravell's transgression? Channeling a German speaking Ramtha. J.Z. hired Johann Hintermeyer, an Austrian attorney to sue the woman and protect her, evidently, copyrighted personality.
"Ramtha the spirit gave her my address," Hintermeyer said to a Canadian Public Radio interviewer. "A friend of mine heard that she is looking for an expert in this. Mrs. Ravell and Ms. Knight, they are in a big competition about the spirit. But my client, Ms. Knight, is the first to channel the spirit. It's not possible that Ramtha was talking through both women. That's not possible. The German woman is lying."
Hintermeyer won the case for J.Z., and set a precedent for copyrighting a supposedly channeled personality.
"If she did pursue and win such a case," says Kerry S. Buklin, a Seattle copyright attorney, "then J.Z. Knight has for all intents and purposes admitted that Ramtha is not a product of spirituality, not a spirit, but a creation."
Copyright law, which is pretty much the same in Austria as it is in the United States, defends things that one creates, not something spiritual that emanates out of oneself. You cannot copyright Jesus Christ or Buddha.
"When you register a copyright," says Buklin, "you are admitting it's a fictional character. You only get a copyright if the thing being copyrighted is a fiction, something made up.
"She's admitting that she's full of it. To say that no one else can imitate this performance, this creation, this style, she's acknowledging that she is a fraud."
The enigma is not Ramtha.
The enigma is a woman named J.Z.

Rse's students believe in Ramtha, and they structure their lives around this information without ever once stopping to consider that this unquestioning gullibility is as dogmatic as the irrational superstitions
of the Catholic Church that Ramtha so sarcastically maligns as "the great whore."
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Mon Feb 11, 2008 6:45 am

See&E
Joined: 05 Jan 2008
Posts: 25



Good Evening, David

Thanks for your recent (re) posting of the long article about the school.
It was very accurate in the information that I was ever aware of, and I felt
it raised appropriate questions for those who are ready and willing to reason
the verisimilitude of the 'whole enchilada'.

As I read the article, it came to mind (yet again) how credible it might be if
Shirley M or others of the original era, might ever post or share here. Did they continue
to believe in the channel, and their past incarnation? OR did they discover and find other
explanations? We might suspect, but do not know.

The possibility that a photographic memory, sharing all manner of words, ideas, truths,
many of which, indeed clearly touched the heart and mind of all who ever curiously
attended, or purchased books, tapes or events, is remarkable.

It reminds me of the reputed author of the Masters of the Far East. He too had a photographic memory, and benefited from a genuine ability to at least remember anyone he'd ever met by name!

Often associated with where, and one or more associated details. That was all it took, and like the Ballards, and the Spiritualist/Theosophist/I AM era, with the draw toward spirits, India, Egypt, and those who proclaimed to have answers to life (And benefited from being from one of those places!) we have a pattern at last.

While we do not find the results that participants invested heavily in, hoping to they themselves master, improve or acquire the 'gifts of the spirit' (telepathy, levitation, telekinesis, healing, communication with God and the ascended beings Masters) there is a curious phenomenon which seems to happen through the power of belief.

The shared information here and elsewhere about investment and shares, and being reminded of the similar horse share investment, does seem to add greater likelihood, that this was always a money-making venture or business, through the guise of having the answers to the mysteries of life, does not make this a unique situation. That it brings, if but for a time, happiness and meaning to those who go there, or remain there is not surprising. It is a very expensive long-term therapy or school for the working class. Perhaps to the celebrated and wealthy attendees it was a lark or fad, an entertainment and puzzling collage of mystical potential.

It is unfortunate that in time, it seems even the hand-selected teachers are eventually dismissed, and found guilty of being unworthy to remain teachers, representatives, and forbidden to utter words and experience.

As a school, as a purposeful, divinely sponsored teacher and place, it is a puzzlement if any explanation could be given from the Teacher and founder as to what it all was about...
From a skeptics vantage point, the business or revenue stream is not unique by comparison to other televangelists, religions or groups. The alternating direction, explanation and teachings released by the school are clearly periodic and result in the mass exodus (over time) of those who otherwise might have continued the rest of their lives, if it were more consistent and affordable.

If we take the possibility that there ever was or is truth in what was once promised by the channeled Teacher, and the teacher or Heirophant was indeed willing to do whatever it takes to enlighten or wake up the human need to seek outside themselves for answers, well, it is expensive, and in the wake produced very damaging social consequences, financial stress or worse, and many relationships severed. It is a long-shot, but either it was true or it was always contrived.

Historically speaking, when we view individual, community, and even global belief systems in religion, dogma, and the various 'representatives' who claim sole authority to speak and direct in the name of God, when life is over, all that remains is the belief in the same.
Believers somehow find comfort and meaning, and atheists shake their heads in wondering why the believers keep on believing even though their prophecies and expectant return never happens.

The danger comes then, to him, who like Don Quixote de la Mancha, is surrounded by the Knights of Mirrors, to have their belief in their Dulcinea and in the Giants which always were windmills confront them...

Don Quixote de la Mancha

*****************************
Tue Feb 12, 2008 3:34 am

David McCarthy


Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 43
Location: Yelm



Good morning See&E,


Forgive me if my response is a little condensed, I just have a short window of time to reply.
You mentioned that the article was a re-posting on EMF..
Where have you seen this?
Maybe it would be interesting to hear from Shirley McClain on EMF
But from what I understand of charismatic showbiz personalities.. it is always about them..
And seldom about the truth..
After all..
In The Light of All Eternity?
Truth Does matter..
Chuckle.
I listened to an NPR interview recently, a brain neurologist spoke about people with photographic memory
as often a cause of mental illness, I have always considered photographic memory as a gift,
but not so,
one can observe this fact in Judith?s imaginary RSE world that can only be sustained with a photographic memory.

Nothing personal but..

C&E..
Does not cook the rice?.!

David.

**********************
Tue Feb 12, 2008 7:04 pm

joe sz
Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 53
Location: Douglassville, PA



See&E wrote:
"It reminds me of the reputed author of the Masters of the Far East. He too had a photographic memory, and benefited from a genuine ability to at least remember anyone he'd ever met by name!"

If I may add this since there is a lot of confusion among New Agers about Spalding:
Baird T Spalding was the author of "Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East" series, not the "reputed" one. He could not have had a 'photographic' memory because he remembered nothing--he was not there in India in the 1890s. He made it up. How do I know? There is No evidence to support that he was there and he admitted as much to another theosophist when he did finally visit India:
Here's something I researched and wrote many years ago:

Baird T.Spalding (1924, 1964) Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East. Spalding?s recent publisher, DeVorss, in a forward to the series, acknowledges that there are no corresponding evidence, photographs, or maps to support Spalding?s claims. More damaging to Spalding is the testimony of Paul Brunton: ?An American, Baird T. Spalding, wrote 3 volumes on his visits to Tibet and about the lives and teachings of the ?Masters of the Far East? before he had ever left the American continent. He attached himself, with a party of 14 disciples, to me for a couple of weeks when I was in India at the time [after 1935 to 1940 as the third volume came out in 1935]?He finally admitted that the books dealt with visits made in his astral body, not in his physical body as readers were led to believe.? (The Sensitives, Vol. Eleven, The Notebooks of Paul Brunton (1987), 252). Although there is no reason to disbelieve Brunton as Spalding?s volumes read like western occult fantasies unrelated to any Tibetan religions, Brunton himself has been exposed as a charlatan, most notably by Jeffrey M. Masson (1993) My Father?s Guru: A Journey through Spirituality and Disillusion. Masson?s autobiographical book describes growing up with Brunton often living in his household as a guest of his parents who were Brunton?s disciples.
In his forward to the first (1924) volume of the Far East series Spalding unequivocally states: ?In presenting The Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East I wish to state that I was one of a research party of eleven persons that visited the Far East in 1894.? It is not a stretch to see why Ballard felt he could do likewise without mentioning that these adventures with Saint Germain were in his ?astral body.?
The Golden Ass by Apuleius (2nd century CE) is an ancient precedent for magical autobiography. In the 19th century, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote Zanoni, a novel he based on an anonymous manuscript left mysteriously in his office. Zanoni is a Rosicrucian adventure that influenced Blavatsky and Ballard. In the 20th century in this same genre, T. Lobsang Rampa (Cyril Hoskins) wrote The Third Eye and a series of ?true? occult adventure books. Carlos Castaneda wrote a popular series based on his imagined adventures with the mythic sorcerer, don Juan Matus. More examples of fiction written as if the story is the real adventure of the author:
The Tiger?s Fang by Paul Twitchell (founded Eckankar)
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield
Surfing the Himalaya by Frederick Lenz, Ph.D. (a.k.a. Rama, founded an ?American Buddhist? cult)

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Tue Feb 12, 2008 9:51 pm

Oldone
Joined: 06 Jan 2008
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Location: Nevada



Hello guys
Just finished those 2 articles,Since I was in Yelm during that time (1990-1995),It was like a trip dowm memory lane,now that I have my critical thing back I can see the stupidness of it all.

I do remember the Phillip 5 well and I do remember lot us Blaming JZ for it but do not remember Ramtha taking the blame for it, it may have been at an event that I missed but did not misted a lot of them durring those days.
An cetainly do not remember at all that a 1000 students quit the school because of that, an half of them from the Yelm area . If I remember well the Ramsters population living in the area durring that time was hoverring around 1500. 33% of them leaving would have been very noticable My wife and I was pretty involved in the community during those days, and surely we could not have blanked that out . OR WAS MUCH MORE BRAINWASH THEN WE TOUGHT.
Maybe someone else remembered that specific time and events and could shed some light on it
Oldone
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Re: Common Ground July 1995 Vol.X No 1. Part 1 & 2

Unread post by seriously »

That's a great, well researched article. It upsets me for a lot of reasons. There's a lot of history there that hits really close to home. The late 80s were so full of fear and dread for me because my parents were and unfortunately still are fully entrenched in R$E. I was 16 and thought there was no future. The markets were going to collapse. Devastating earth changes were right around the corner. Alien abductions were real. My folks were dumping their savings and buying gold. They sold their house. It made my high school years unstable and extremely unsettling. Unfortunately, I still hold some resentment over it. My family eventually moved to the Yelm/Rainier area. I followed after a year or two and tried to embrace the R$E teachings for a time. In retrospect, this was by far the worst period in my life.

I remember the bookstore in Rainier. Lindsey Williams, OMG. I actually read several of his books and believed him. He's a doomsday guy mainly focusing on secret elite groups and financial collapse. I drove up to Puyallup to meet him at a conference. Uhhhhh. I remember the teachings on not going to the light. So much fear. I hate JZ but you've got to respect the formula. Everyone was so fearful and worried they wouldn't know what changes were coming, as destruction was right around the corner, it made her a lot of extra money.

Thanks again for posting David. I heard my own thoughts and words in a lot of what was said. It was a disturbing but good read.
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Re: Common Ground July 1995 Vol.X No 1. Part 1 & 2

Unread post by forever »

I quake and shake within and break out in a sweat to think of lives i impacted. I believed the illusion and concerned for others tried to get someone to go to RSE. Thank God he had the insight not to go. At the time it was devastating to me that my family ...they despised it, Jz/RSE, i didn't dare open my mouth. Over the years i have taken an unimaginable beating mentally and emotionally. Simultaneously finding out about RSE? Now I am weak with relief that none of the people i care about have gotten into RSE.

For weeks i read everything i could find on JZ/RSE. Up all night after night. Falling onto a sofa head reeling. Afraid and confused. VERY afraid. What had i gotten involved in? I didn't want to believe it. Kept reading. How can it be? The more i dug....

I called my family and told them. All got was silence... from their end of the phone.

I do not want to think about what could have happened to them. My kids that i wanted to be able to help? So they do not go through life as i have trying to figure it out. As i have.

All that i have read on here, EMF is amazing. The tank is actually rigged by the Gods above looking down? :lol: It hadn't crossed my mind. I hadn't figured out how anyone could possibly cheat on the field and was confused about grandmother. The icon mascot of RSE? She got too famous with students?

The lesson is, other than saying i believe that an essence, something unexplained/undefined we call God does exist. And "the kingdom of heaven is within". IMO. Beyond that to ever again get involved with anyone/thing professing to have the answers to God and such...? :oops: All i care about is coming out of the RSE experience clean, intact, free and wiser.


All of us got into cults thinking it had the answers. Not only to our questions about God but also healing for our lives. Ironically, i thought it must have something unique because after all look how much it costs? How many thought that? The lesson (humbling) is that as much as i wanted someone to give me the answers -no one has the answers. It's something we all have to dig out for ourselves and that's the hard part.

I saw the Phoenix Rising. Heaven help the kids.
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David McCarthy
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Re: Common Ground July 1995 Vol.X No 1. Part 1 & 2

Unread post by David McCarthy »

Revisiting this topic.
It occurred to me that I have never thanked all those brave souls who contributed to John Cruncher's 1995 Common Ground article.
Perhaps the only real case of investigative journalism into RSE to date
that details the most accurate description into the hidden world and workings of RSE I have ever read.
If you haven’t read in full John Cruncher's article, I highly recommend you do so.
My profound thanks to all those that spoke out in this article, for your integrity, courage, compassion and truth,
the hallmarks of 'enlightenment'. :idea:
But he has nothing on at all, cried at last the whole people....
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