The New, Chic Metaphysical Fad of Channeling

Actress Linda Evans sat in the back on a folding chair. Joyce DeWitt, another television star, sat on a crowded sofa. About 60 other “high grade successful people” occupied the slate stairway and a dhurrie rug in the hilltop house high above Malibu where for the past hour they had been watching a young blonde woman in a blue silk lounging suit.

Now, her eyes narrowed and blinking, she said, “We will ‘Om’ thrice.”

They closed their eyes. They turned their palms up. They ooooooooooommmmmmm ed .

The woman changed the chant to unfamiliar words, ma - ra - keesh, a - ma - roosh, al - ma - me - oh , her arms undulating in martial arts and papal gestures. The sounds resonated in the living room like a slow Gregorian chant in a Gothic cathedral. Then, coming louder and faster God I am! Love I am! Light I am! the words raced to a dramatic finale with the leader’s arms raised high, wrists bent back.

‘This Was No Performance’

“I’ve been an actor,” said a commodities broker and Clint Eastwood look-alike in the group, “and I can tell you, this was no performance.”

The woman he was referring to was Penny Torres, 27, last year an Alhambra housewife and this year’s hottest new commodity in metaphysical chic.

Like the broker, nearly all those present at the Malibu gathering said they believed, or were open to the possibility, that it was not Torres who had just spoken on love and reality but Mafu, a highly evolved “entity from the seventh dimension” last incarnated as a leper in 1st-Century Pompeii. Torres, they say, is only serving as a human radio to channel Mafu’s message from beyond: love yourself; you are God.

“For a while, people were having (telekinetic) spoon-bending parties, then clairvoyant parties. Now channeling seems to be a big hot thing, especially in California,” said Marcello Truzzi, a sociology professor at Eastern Michigan University and director of the Center for Scientific Anomalies Research, a network of independent scientists and scholars concerned with evaluating claims of the paranormal.

Channels are mediums who purposefully enter a semi-conscious or unconscious trance state to communicate with the unseen “spirit realm,” which is variously considered to be long dead spirits or extraterrestrials or the “collective unconscious.” Speaking as the “spirit” in the trance, they may lecture or answer personal questions on past lives, events, romantic, business or health matters.

Looking for Alternatives

“It’s for do-it-yourselfers in the new age (human potential) movement,” Truzzi said. “People . . . are looking for alternatives and are finding they’re as capable of it (mediumship) as their gurus.”

Various skeptics have called channeling a “dissociative reaction,” fraudulent or demonic. But it’s really a “kind of religious behavior that’s been with us at least 150 years,” said J. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religions, author of the Encyclopedia of American Religions and visiting professor in Religious Studies at the UC Santa Barbara.

Channeling was faddish in the 1890s and has grown steadily since the 1950s, he said. “The new channels are mostly trance mediums,” people who are able to “tap into” an altered state of consciousness also called a waking dream state, he said.

“Their audience is people who’ve never seen a trance medium and are very impressed with it. They’ve plugged in to what we used to call the yuppies, people who have been alienated from church but are looking for something spiritual. Many of them are fallouts from earlier new age movements, people who are bored and this is the latest thing to come down the pike.”

Los Angeles is the hub for ordinary people who claim they are “channels,” or mediums, for enlightened spirits, said Margo Chandley, a former college drama professor who studied 50 channels for a Ph.D. in transformational psychology from International College, a private college in Westwood. She estimated there are 1,000 “channels” practicing locally, compared with two a decade ago.

Some of the better known are Thomas Jacobson, a psychic counselor aired over KABC radio who claims to channel “Dr. Peebles,” a 19th-Century doctor of philosophy; Darryl Anka, a special effects designer who channels “Bashar,” an extraterrestrial, and Jach Purcell, a financial investor and gallery owner who channels “Lazaris,” a “multi-dimensional energy,” Chandley said.

“Their basic message is always the same--we have the power to create our own reality, nothing is outside ourselves,” Chandley said.

Full-Body Incarnation

But only two in the U.S.--J. Z. Knight of Seattle, who as a spirit called Ramtha has reportedly drawn hundreds of followers to the Pacific Northwest, and now Torres--are known to speak their words of wisdom from an unconscious state, also called a “full body incarnation.”

Some have called Mafu a “Ramtha copy cat” since Torres and Knight use the same repetitive phrases: “indeed,” “that which is called” and “so be it,” said Al Lozano, a graphic designer who moved from Orange County to Santa Barbara to market Torres’ Mafu Teachings business organization. Torres, however, says she had never seen or heard of “Ramtha” before she started channeling early this year.

Until last February, Torres said she was shy and insecure, content to be the wife of a Los Angeles police officer and mother of a 2-year-old son. Since then, she’s become a confident, high-profile, traveling trance medium who, even though she spends an average of four hours a day “out of her body,” still runs Mafu Teachings, a soon-to-be-incorporated business firm offering Mafu-led lectures, workshops, seminars, retreats and private readings.

Weekly group meetings cost from $10 to $25, depending on the travel involved, retreats are $100 per day and private readings $200 per hour. The private readings are being phased out because they are too time consuming, Torres said. However, Mafu has said on at least three occasions that participants need not pay, Torres said.

Secretary’s Secretary

Workers in her organization carry business cards with the trademarked name “Mafu Teachings” printed in golden and blue ink. Her secretary has a secretary. There are waiting lists for readings, she said, and talk of world travel.

Torres says she “absolutely believes” in abundance. “I’m learning you manifest whatever you want. What’s wrong with manifesting comfort? I had to hire a person to be my baby’s mother and cook for my husband. If people have a problem with that, I allow them that difficulty.

“When Mafu is in my body, I don’t see a dollar sign,” she said. “I see a light.”

In August, she, her husband Tony and a nanny moved to a $2,500-a-month house on Mt. Olympus in Hollywood.

The same week she appeared for the celebrity group, Torres said she also appeared privately for Shirley MacLaine, the actress whose controversial book on her own experiences with the metaphysical, “Out on a Limb,” has been credited for the channeling boom. (The book--denounced as “spiritually lethal” by Pepperdine University law professor and Christian writer F. LaGard Smith in his book “Out on a Broken Limb”--has also been filmed for an ABC television miniseries scheduled for January.)

Treated Like a Peer

Speaking to about 50 seekers gathered recently for a $75-per-person Mafu seminar in the Westin South Coast Plaza Hotel in Costa Mesa, Torres described her visit to MacLaine’s Malibu home. “I’m thinking, this is, like, a movie star !” Torres said, sometimes sounding like a bubbly, star-struck teen-ager who’s nonetheless self-assured. “These people are treating me like a peer , and four or five months ago they didn’t even know I existed much less invite me over to their houses for decaf coffee!”

“What did Shirley think of Mafu? a seeker wanted to know. “She loved him! She wanted my private number. Can you imagine?”

Then it was time to summon Mafu for the workshop participants. Torres sat still, mumbling inaudibly and rocking her body until her head dropped forward. Less than a minute later, she growled softly, extended her chin, rose, stretched and in a stiff, clipped accent spoke: “Beloved masters, indeed .”

The men and women in the audience smiled happily and responsed in unison: “Indeed.”

For the rest of the day and into the night, with breaks for lunch and dinner, Torres spoke in the Mafu voice, an Indian-like, sometimes Irish-like accent with a flowery vocabulary and involuted construction. Torres as Mafu said she would not speak Latin or Italian, the language of Mafu’s time, because “I am not here to prove anything. I am here to remind.”

Similarly, she explained she charges for teachings because “in your Western civilization, you give importance to that which you call finance. You don’t value anything unless you put a price tag on it.”

Soul Mates and Dreams

As Mafu, Torres repeats phrases such as “so be it,” “the lot of you” and “that which is called.” To Tony, her husband: “Continue to have that which is called a great day.” She examines the hair, clothing, jewelry, perfume and makeup of the seekers: “What is thy odor, that which is called Shalimar?” She promises to send people soul mates and dreams.

One man, told he would receive his soul mate in seven days, pointed to the woman sitting next to him and told Torres, “By the way, this is my soul mate.” Torres, who claims Mafu is a “mirror” and not infallible, said the other soul mate would arrive anyway.

Beyond the basic message, the “Mafu” teachings have also included predictions such as a major earthquake in California within a month and a new era of “peace thought” now being taught to U.S. and Soviet officials by “the inner-Earth people,” who supposedly live in the Earth’s core.

When Mafu is finished speaking, Torres collapses with her eyes open, gasps and jerks.

At the Costa Mesa seminar, she blended religious images with the “own your own power, be in the moment” ethos of new age psychology to deliver a fervent sermon as Mafu--sometimes shouted, whispered or punctuated with four hard laughs.

At times, she kissed individuals on the cheeks, stroked their hair, or speaking softly within inches of their faces, told them of former or future lives. One woman heard that her hands had held Jesus. Another was told, “an aeroship will take you back to Alacon.” Another, told she had been Mafu’s daughter in the Sudan, was moved to tears.

Looking deeply into the eyes of a young nurse in a faded khaki dress, Torres/Mafu asked: “Why have you allowed such pain and self-destruction? You are loved. I have not forgotten you.” The woman breathed deeply, closed her eyes and smiled peacefully. “You are well worth love,” Torres said, taping the woman on the end of her nose. “So be it.”

“So be it,” the woman whispered and hugged her neighbor.

“Some group therapy, huh?” remarked a smiling young musician in a T-shirt.

Her new calling came as a surprise to her and a shock to her family, Torres said. Raised “very, very Catholic” in Redwood City and Grass Valley, Torres was the penultimate child of six born to her mother, a medical records librarian, and her father, a former Marine and retired real estate agent, she said.

Though her father had career plans for her, she married Tony Torres, a police officer she met while he was making an arrest in a supermarket, she said. “Mafu tells me he is my soul mate,” she said.

Two traumas marked her childhood, she said. One, she said, was when she was sexually molested. And two, she spent four “painful” years in and out of hospitals until a hypnotherapist persuaded her they could reduce a tumor on her pituitary gland with hypnosis and visualization. The process worked, she said.

According to Chandley’s study, childhood traumatic experiences were shared by 12 of the 13 channels she researched. The experiences ranged from epileptic seizures, a shock from a fall, sexual or emotional abuse, neglect or abandonment by parents or peers. She said the channels withdrew into an interior life.

Also, they all had had abnormal, or mystical, experiences--always when they were alone--between the ages of 3 and 11, Chandley said. Most had been raised Catholic. “They were already open to the idea of hearing voices. Saints have lives in other dimensions.”

Torres acknowledges that her childhood left her with “barriers to overcome.”

Before last Feb. 18 Torres said she spent her time nursing her baby, Andrew, watching soap operas and “going to Gemco to get dinner.” That day she received a call from another member of the La Leche League, an organization of nursing mothers, telling her about a meeting in Laguna Beach at the home of Pam Davis who claims to “channel” an entity called “Quan Yin,” she said.

Davis told Torres Mafu would contact her that night, Torres said. She went home. At 4:30 a.m., she said, “All of a sudden I hear this, ‘Woman!’ and I went, ‘Aaa!’

A Voice in Her Head

“I said, Tony? and he said,” her voice dropped to a soft, more adult tone, “Indeed not . It is I, Mafu.” She heard a voice in her head telling her that Mafu, one of a cluster of entities from the “brotherhood of light” would be on earth for seven years to teach self-divinity and self-love, she said.

A month and several incidents later, Torres said she heard Mafu ask to “incarnate into her body,” in order to better spread his message.

“For a while I didn’t know what was happening to me and I was afraid I was possessed by the devil,” she said. But by this time, she said she was “into the whole scene of metaphysical people” and through them met Roseann Ingraham, 39, a former restaurateur from Santa Barbara, who claims to have channeled spirits named “Godfrey” and “The Ancient One.” Ingraham reassured her the phenomenon was happening to others and advised her to “pay attention to what her heart told her.”

She also took a channeling class.

On June 22, a group of like-minded friends came to Ingraham’s house. Torres “sat down on the couch, said a prayer he taught her, closed her eyes, and before we knew it . . . the energy was so intense it was as though you were rolling around in the room,” said Ingraham.

His Chosen Teachers

“He (Mafu) stood up and sort of said some prayers to himself and took a while looking at the body and the hands and began to marvel at the beauty he saw. He came to each of us and talked to us. He explained we would be his teachers and be with him during these seven years. The first time, he was real simplistic, very gentle and childlike.

” . . . And the words he said, ‘Do you remember why you came here? Do you remember what it’s like not on the Earth plane? Do you remember what you promised to do?’ The words triggered butterflies throughout my entire body. . . . “

Ingraham said she has followed Mafu since then. “He (Mafu) has allowed me to look at myself and love myself. My life has changed, oh, 200 degrees with that simple ability to love myself.”

These days, channels are so in demand, they want only “to appear on classy shows on prime-time network” said John Pepes, an independent television producer who is negotiating with ABC for a weekly series, “Tune In,” on metaphysical issues. He has 200 channels and psychics lined up for the show as well as “a laundry list” of celebrities, few willing to be named.

Some skeptics believe seekers are dupes of deliberate or unconscious scams. But debunkers say it’s difficult to spot a fake. “It’s basically unprovable,” said Mark Plummer, executive director of the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, a multi-disciplinary skeptics organization based in Buffalo, N.Y.

‘Lack of Imagination’

As far as past lives are concerned, he said, “There are not enough past lives to go around for everybody living today. Over half of all the people who were ever born are alive today.” Of Mafu’s predictions, he said: “It shows a lack of imagination on the part of the entity to come up with a prediction of an earthquake in California. . . . “

Said Ray Hyman, professor of psychology at the University of Oregon at Eugene and member of the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal there: “It’s a symbiotic relationship. It’s like in the old way witch doctors and shamans worked. If you go to a psychic, you want to have help. You want to validate psychic powers by finding meaning in what they tell you.

“Ninety-five percent are not conscious frauds,” said Hyman, who helped pay his way through college with a mind-reading act. “Some are split personalities. Everyone has the potential. People have enough information to act out hundreds of personalities with details. Creative artists and writers have learned to tap this. Most of us haven’t.”

Torres said what makes it worthwhile to her are the changes she’s seen in herself. “Six months ago, I could never have stood before a group of 250 people and introduced myself and have my hair pulled up so my big ears are sticking out and no make up . . . I was always raised that as a woman you always wear make up, you always look your best.

“I’ve changed. I lived for my husband. I lived for him. To clean the house and cook his dinner and pay our bills and be Andrew’s mommy. And all of a sudden . . . I’m Penny . And if my husband left me tomorrow, I’d still be Penny and that’s a wonderful thing to be.”