J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda) is an internationally known author, lecturer, and composer. Widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on meditation and yoga, he has taught these principles and techniques to hundreds of thousands of students around the world.
An advocate of simple living and high thinking, his more than 80 books emphasize the need to live wisely by one’s own experience of life, and not by abstract theories or dogmas.
In 1968, Walters founded Ananda Village in Nevada City, California, dedicated to spreading the spirit of friendship, service, and community throughout the world. Ananda is recognized as one of the most successful intentional community in the world. Today, over 1,000 people reside in five Ananda communities throughout the U.S. (Seattle, Palo Alto, Portland, Sacramento and Ananda Village) and in Europe. The European retreat and community located in Assisi, Italy, also serves Ananda meditation groups in Europe, Croatia, and Russia. Both the Nevada City and Assisi communities have world-renowned guest retreat facilities where thousands of visitors annually visit for renewal or instruction in many aspects of meditation, yoga, and the spiritual life. Walters has also established "Living Wisdom" schools for grades K-12 in Nevada City, Sacramento, Portland, and Palo Alto.
Mr. Walters books and music have sold over 3 million copies worldwide and been translated into 28 languages. He is the author of more than 80 books on a variety of topics including leadership, education, creativity, and moral values. His Best-selling titles include Awaken to Superconsciousness, Meditation for Starters, God Is for Everyone,The Art of Supportive Leadership, The Path – One Man’s Quest on the Only Path There Is, Money Magnetism, The Essence of Self-Realization, Affirmations for Self-Healing, Education for Life, and his best-selling Secrets gift books.
A composer since 1964, Walters has written over 400 musical works. His music is inspiring, soothing, and uplifting. Many of his new albums are instrumental works with brief affirmations or visualizations. Chuck Dilberto, of Awareness Magazine says, "Walters’ words and music are full of his life and light. His sole intention is to heal, something we could all use during these chaotic times". His recent albums include Secrets of Love, Music to Awaken Superconsciousness, Windows on the World and Surrender: Mystical Music for Yoga. As a composer, Walters is best known for the top-selling albums Mystic Harp and Mystic Harp 2, featuring the legendary harpist Derek Bell, of the 5-time Grammy Award-winning group The Chieftains.
Chapter 4
What Is Channeling?
What is channeling? Simply put: Channeling is the transmitting of inspiration received from a source other than the ego.
This inspiration can be of many kinds; it doesn't take only the form of words. Often it finds expression in music, in painting, or in the form of healing energy - to name only three of the best-known types of channeling.
Moreover, channeling needn't be divine. People can also be channels for lower entities, and some times even channels for dark ones.
There are two ways to receive channeled inspiration. One is passive; the other, magnetic.
Passive receptivity, also, occurs in two different ways. In one of these, the thoughts are blanked out, and the mind is simply held open to be used as a channel, in the trust that whatever comes through it will be good.
In the second form of passive receptivity, there may be no conscious effort to blank out the thoughts, but there nevertheless will be a kind of blankness: the over - susceptibility of a weak will. Astral entities may find it easy to gain control of such a person. Indeed, possession is more common than is generally realized. Possession is a factor to consider, especially, when treating the insane.
Magnetic channeling is the result of a magnetic appeal, offered with full consciousness, and with the strong initiative of the will, on a vibrational level similar to that of the inspiration it receives. An example of this sort of magnetic appeal is what Jesus called "prayer, believing."
Another example is the courage my mountaineering friend showed in exerting his own will to the utmost to reach the mountaintop. It was his courage that attracted the help he needed to succeed.
Magnetic channeling is the power displayed by a true healer; it is drawn to him by his compassion for the ill. Such channeling is displayed even more perfectly by a saint, as he allows divine grace to flow to others by his own upliftment in grace.
Magnetic channeling always occurs as a result of some conscious magnetic appeal. One may not consciously realize that he has ever sent out such an appeal. It may even seem to him that what is being channeled through him has been imposed on him without his conscious desire - possibly without his consent! But it seems so only because, in opening oneself to a higher power, one also invites the operation of a wisdom greater than one's own.
Thus, prayer is sometimes answered in ways very different from what we originally asked, or perhaps, even wanted. Time, in such cases, however, always reveals that the answer given us was the best - in fact the only right one for us and for our own and other's true happiness.
Such unrecognized magnetic attraction exists, for example, in the case of one who receives healing powers without having thought to ask for them. The gift is given him purely because of his compassion for others in pain.
Such unrecognized attraction exists also in the case of a person who receives a poem or a song, perhaps even while thinking of something else. He seems not to have asked for the inspiration. And yet, there certainly have been something in his attitude that invited the inspiration. He must at least have some deep inclination towards music, in order to attract true inspiration in the form of music. He must love poetry, in order to receive a beautiful poem - as opposed to the sort of doggerel that might come to a prize fighter.
One little-known aspect of this subject is that the magnetic appeal, and the conscious preparation that makes it possible for one to become a channel, may have taken place in a prior life.
A case in point is that of the three children at Fatima, Portugal, who received miraculous visions of the Virgin Mary, followed by a channeling of world prophecies and a number of amazing miracles.
Another case is that of Bernadette Soubirous, to whom the Virgin Mary appeared at Massabielle, outside Lourdes, France. At the end of those appearances there appeared the miraculous spring, in the waters of which countless people have been healed.
None of these children actively sought the divine experiences they received. Many biographers, indeed, have described them as perfectly normal children in every way, though probably their motive for doing so was primarily to discourage anyone from thinking the children abnormal. Otherwise, no one has ever suggested that they were in any way unworthy of the graces they received. And all agree that they were exceptionally pure in heart and mind.
We may assume that there was a magnetic appeal in their very purity, born of who knows how many devotional practices in the past. It was this quality, surely, that drew to them the graces they received.
For divine grace flows only into those channels where it has been invited to come. To do otherwise would be to flout the most fundamental principle of divine law: the right of every intelligent being to the exercise of his own free will.
Thus a peasant may receive the divine guidance to lead an army. Far from inviting such guidance, he may even reject it - at least at first. And yet he may go on to become one of the famous generals of history. Such was the story of St. Joan of Arc.
A mechanic may suddenly receive the inspiration to write beautiful music. Or an unlettered person may receive deep insights into the Scriptures. Always, in such cases, there will have been a period of preparation in prior lives - as well as, in this life, eventual recognition of the fitness of that which has been received.
