1995 article on JZK

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Caterpillar
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1995 article on JZK

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Here is an excerpt of an excellent article from Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Neil Modie P-I Reporter, July 26, 1995.

Knight is being advised by a Beverly Hills publicist for singer Michael Jackson and actress Linda Evans, a Ramtha student and close friend of Knight's. And she has opened the secrets of her movement to a researcher in religious studies who is writing a book about her and Ramtha.

Some of the author's conclusions, however, won't be what the New Age channeler would like the world to believe about her and her spiritual alter ego.

J. Gordon Melton, an adjunct professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara, neither dismisses Ramtha as a highly profitable hoax nor accepts the guru's existence as reality. He has a third theory.

?I think that what we have in JZ is a very extraordinary example of . . . what we would call a multiple personality phenomenon," Melton said in an interview.

Knight emphatically denies that she has multiple personalities - although, ironically, she has touted Melton to reporters as a ?totally authoritative" expert on Ramtha.


He believes Ramtha represents a chunk of Knight's buried memories and experiences that has become a secondary identity. He thinks Knight sincerely but mistakenly believes that Ramtha exists as a separate being.


She likes to point to the celebrities who share her faith in Ramtha, such as actress Evans, who lives on exclusive Gravelly Lake near Tacoma. Knight bears a striking physical resemblance to Evans, with her designer clothes and long, blond tresses.

The spiritualist claims to have a former astronaut and a Hall of Fame pitcher among the students of her school. Several baseball major-leaguers reportedly have been followers.


However, ex-students say Ramtha has delivered apocalyptic messages, too, through Knight's voice and body.

They say the spirit has warned his flock about ?gray men" - evil agents of government and a new world order - and to be prepared for ?earth changes" - a New Age term for natural catastrophes.

?There's this group of bankers and political figures that supposedly control everything that's going on," said a former Ramtha student, Cindy Osborne. ?You were always supposed to have two days of food and clothing packed in the back of your closet so that you could grab it and move."

Another ex-student, Grant Allen, who left in 1992, added, ?I think the biggest fear was government, and government falling apart and being extreme in its militancy, and perhaps its enactment of martial law."

After about 1990, Osborne said, students weren't allowed to discuss Ramtha's teachings with outsiders. Along with the apocalyptic messages, ?this all led to being more cloistered and secretive. . . . There was talk of spies being there, and CIA."

But the students are also told they can gain the power, insight and freedom to control their own fates. Osborne said the talk of a coming apocalypse was part of a broader message about ?living life for the moment and being prepared for it."

Knight acknowledged that Ramtha has spoken of ?earth changes" but said: ?Actually there is no end of the world (predicted by Ramtha). That is not our doctrine."

Many of Ramtha's followers moved here from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, across the United States and elsewhere to be near their guru's school. Knight opened it at her ranch in 1987 and abandoned the ?Ramtha Dialogues" lectures she - or Ramtha - had given around the world.

Knight said she quit the dialogues after a bomb threat at an event in Estes Park, Colo. When she moved the operation to her ranch, she and her then husband, Jeffrey, were in an abyss of debt after the failure of their Arabian horse-breeding business.

According to 1992 court records, when the couple separated in October 1988 they owed $4.3 million, including a $1.78 million federal tax debt.

?When I met her (in 1987) she was $7 million in debt," said Knight's longtime boyfriend, J.O. Alt. He said she became debt-free in 1993.

Ramtha's dire warnings to his flock may have helped her out.

?As the school got started, Ramtha would say things like, `The earth changes are coming and the school is one of the safest places you can be,' ?said Melton, the researcher. ?(Ramtha) advised people to move to Washington (state), and over the years about 1,000 to 1,500 people have done that."

At Ramtha's suggestion, most of the newcomers moved to within a two-hour walk or bicycle ride from Knight's ranch. Many settled in the Yelm-Rainier-Tenino area.

The influx helped assure heavy attendance at Ramtha events, where students learn about self-fulfillment and psychic powers from the guru who Knight says first presented himself to her in 1977.


On the surface, some see similarities to the human-potential messages of pop-psychologist authors. Michael Hall, a Ramtha student from 1981 until he grew disenchanted in 1989, said Knight merely does a skillful job of packaging the message.

?The real point of the teaching . . . was to recognize that you control your reality, to take responsibility for it and to stand up and live your life," Hall said. ?It's all available in books, in other people's offerings. . . . But (Knight) does an excellent job of integrating information.

?And if you didn't want to read books, it might easily be worth $300 at a seminar to have (had) her read the books and integrate the information."

Melton terms the Ramtha teachings a nondogmatic, New Age ?blending of ideas" from Hinduism and spiritualism.

Ramtha followers are mostly in their mid-30s to early 50s and mostly well-educated, Melton said. Many are in ?that first stage in the midlife crisis," going through major transitions in their lives, frequently including divorce.

Whatever Ramtha's philosophy is for its adherents, it's a remunerative one for Knight, who besides the school has a stable of mail-order and retail businesses, investments and real estate holdings. Some of the heavily attended Ramtha sessions apparently gross well over $1 million each.


-- Knight's boyfriend, Alt, 26, said Jeffrey Knight introduced him to her in 1987 after Alt and most members of his family had become Ramtha followers. He said Jeffrey Knight was gay, ?and (JZ) was trying to help him with that because he said he wanted to overcome it."

?JZ and I just sort of fell in love. . . . I've known JZ for eight years, and we've been together for seven years," Alt said. ?We're a generation apart, but that's never been a problem."

Knight said Alt manages her estate, does odd jobs there and has become an expert in telepathic and other psychic skills taught by Ramtha.

Knight's older son, Brandy, 30, works for her as a grounds guard. Her other son, Chris, 27, works for a Seattle-area computer firm.


Knight doesn't like other channelers and mediums invading her turf.

Ex-Ramster Hall said he and about 100 other Ramtha followers went to a gathering with another channeler near Mount Adams in the mid-1980s, ?and (Knight) came down as Ramtha and broke up the session."

Last year Knight sued an Austrian medium in Austrian courts for claiming to be a channeler of Ramtha. The Yelm spiritualist charged copyright infringement.

A panel of judges ruled in her favor, finding that Knight ?has parapsychological contact with `Ramtha.' "

Knight recently retained criminal lawyer F. Lee Bailey, currently a member of O.J. Simpson's defense team.

She hired Bailey to guard her interests in a government investigation of a management training consultant who is a Ramtha student, and to represent her in a continuing dispute with the lawyer who represented Jeffrey Knight in the couple's post-divorce property settlement case in 1992.

The consultant, Gregory May, a psychologist who moved from Sacramento to Yelm, was accused in March of using Ramtha teachings to train employees of the Federal Aviation Administration. Knight termed the assertion ridiculous. Federal investigators said some of May's methods were psychologically abusive.

Knight was labeled the head of a ?cult" in an ABC-TV ?Nightline" newscast about May's training contracts. In March she went on CBS' ?Late Late Show With Tom Snyder" to disavow any association with May or his training.


Robert Kohlenberg, a University of Washington clinical psychologist, said a dissociative disorder involves ?a real disconnection of memory" in which a person in one identity ?may not remember what the other (identity) did."

But he said most dissociative personalities, unlike Knight, typically conceal their alternative identities from other people.

Richard Wetzel, a medical psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of a textbook on multiple personalities, was even more skeptical after hearing a description of the interaction between Knight and Ramtha.

?There are people who really believe in Ouija boards and people who really believe in fortune telling, and this sounds much more similar to that. . . . People get very good at believing what they want to believe, especially if they make good money believing it," Wetzel said.

He said Knight sounds ?different from the vast bulk of people who have multiple-personality disorders or dissociative disorders." It would be ?very atypical" for a person with a multiple personality to believe she is possessed by an ancient spirit, he noted.

Although Knight claims that Ramtha can do things she can't, Melton is skeptical of that.

?In terms of what (Ramtha) has taught, certainly his teachings and his erudition are far beyond that of JZ in her normal waking state," Melton said. ?However, they are not anything that couldn't be gotten out of books, and out of the books at JZ's house.

?JZ finished high school and went no further, and in her normal waking life it shows. Now, she's done a very good job of training herself. . . . Ramtha has a breadth of knowledge that is not available to JZ."

Knight said: ``I have learned more than any college student ever could. I am a very bright woman. I have read lots of books."

Some aspects of Knight's life seem consistent with those of someone with multiple personalities. Others don't.

Kohlenberg said 95 percent of identity-disorder cases have been traced to ?severe, early childhood trauma." And in ?Multiple Personalities, Multiple Disorders," the book co-written by Wetzel, the authors said ?rates of childhood sexual abuse are higher than rates of physical abuse" in such cases.

On the first page of her best-selling 1987 autobiography, ?A State of Mind: My Story," Knight said she was raped when she was 4. The assailant was her uncle, who was drunk, but the little girl's mother refused afterward to believe her.

Knight speaks of herself as a victim of a traumatic childhood.

?I was prejudiced against by my own family. That's one of the reasons I give away all this money" to needy high school students, she said. As the daughter of a migrant farm-worker mother, ?I know what it is for people not to like you, and I know what it is to have people being prejudiced against you."

The spiritualist was born Judith Darlene Hampton. ?JZ" stands for Judy Zebra, the latter a nickname stemming from an early fondness for black and white clothes.

She showed none of her impoverished beginnings last month when she arrived at Yelm High School in her champagne-colored, top-of-the-line Mercedes Benz 600 SEL sedan, accompanied by her lawyer, her executive secretary, her son Brandy and a television film crew.


A big event at the Ramtha school can involve big money.

And overhead is low. Alt, Knight's boyfriend, said the ranch has a regular staff of eight and relies mostly on volunteers who work to earn free admission.


Melton said some Ramsters abandon careers, move to Yelm, get subsistence jobs and stay on and on, ?prolonging their transition period" through whatever midlife crisis may have prompted them to join the movement.

Hall, the former student, added: ?A lot of people don't move on. . . . It is difficult to leave it."


http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1995/j ... ight-self/
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Dove
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Unread post by Dove »

?I think that what we have in JZ is a very extraordinary example of . . . what we would call a multiple personality phenomenon," Melton said in an interview
He believes Ramtha represents a chunk of Knight's buried memories and experiences that has become a secondary identity. He thinks Knight sincerely but mistakenly believes that Ramtha exists as a separate being.
Although Knight claims that Ramtha can do things she can't, Melton is skeptical of that.

?In terms of what (Ramtha) has taught, certainly his teachings and his erudition are far beyond that of JZ in her normal waking state," Melton said. ?However, they are not anything that couldn't be gotten out of books, and out of the books at JZ's house.
Fascinating article - thanks for posting. So here's one of the "so called experts" obviously not believing that Ramtha is a separate identity, hmmm not quite the story RSE is telling students is it :-?

Knight doesn't like other channelers and mediums invading her turf.

Ex-Ramster Hall said he and about 100 other Ramtha followers went to a gathering with another channeler near Mount Adams in the mid-1980s, ?and (Knight) came down as Ramtha and broke up the session."
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: I can just picture it - too funny!!
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