The Original MT Group, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Restoring the Teaching.

There were five people who formed the core of the original study group that would channel the Michael Teachings — Alice and Richard Hannah, Sarah and Richard Chambers, and Eugene (“Gene”) Trout.  The history of these people and this group is quite fascinating and is outlined here.   It is important to remember that they lived in Northern California during the time when the “New Age” movement was very active.  They were also spiritual seekers –- they had sessions with local psychics, they studied the Seth material,  Alice Bailey’s Theosophy, and A Course in Miracles, among others.  They went to workshops taught by Robert Monroe (Journeys out of the Body) and got to know him very well.  Many in the group attended Werner Erhard’s EST seminars.

The core group members were serious students of the Gurdjieff and Ouspensky “Fourth Way” teaching, and belonged to a local Fourth Way group for a time. According to one of the members, after they read about Jane Roberts and the Seth material several of them wanted to see if they could get messages themselves.  They came together as a group in late 1972, or early 1973, to begin their attempts to get information through a Ouija board. In time, attendance at the group’s sessions grew larger for a couple of years until the public sessions were disbanded in June of 1975.  After that, the main channel (Sarah Chambers) continued to have sessions with small groups of friends up until about 1983.  Other regular attendees formed their own small study groups of friends, to continue their own personal growth and study, after Sarah stopped channeling publicly.

A few years after the large group sessions ended, Sarah met author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro at a Science Fiction convention.  Sarah got Ms. Yarbro interested in the transcripts although Yarbro  never attended any of the study group meetings herself. There were some special sessions done for her to help in writing her book, Messages From Michael (MFM), which used some of the transcripts.  As a novelist Yarbro created a story about what happened in the study group and fictionalized the people and their issues in order to have a framework to hang the original channeled material on.  Accordingly, in her books, the Michael material was not presented in the sequence in which it was received.  She based the a central character  of “Jessica Lansing” on Sarah, so that  readers could identify with a  central person in the MFM story.    When you read the actual transcripts, Sarah’s presence is felt less strongly than the other members of the group.  Richard Hannah, Richard Chambers and Gene Trout  dominated the sessions because they were the ones who asked the most questions and thereby elicited the “Michael Teachings.”  Those questions came out of the lives they were living and the issues they were seeking answers to.

It is important to realize that Chelsea was presenting the Michael Teachings for the first time to the general public.  She presented basic information, intended to give her readers a solid foundation in this new system.  Therefore, she left out a lot of the more advanced teachings that today’s more experienced students might appreciate.  “True teachings” function on three levels: a “know thyself” base (an esoteric psychology), an advanced spiritual teaching, and at the center will be the Logos (or Infinite Soul).  In Michael Teachings, the Overleaf System and the concept of reincarnation form the structural base.  In themselves they constitute a major portion of the teaching.  Chelsea recognized this and set about creating a way to illustrate that in her first book.  Her subsequent work continued to develop this system and did not include the more advanced teaching.   This may have been due to personal preference or, possibly, the fact that in the transcripts much of this part of the teaching was couched in very esoteric terms that were unfamiliar to her.  This level of the teaching is dependent upon Gurdjieff terminology and ideas and themes from Alice Bailey and other early 20th century mystics – none of which are reflected in Chelsea’s subsequent books.

So, this difference of perspective explains why the MFM version is different from what actually happened in the group.  Chelsea chose to emphasize reincarnation, its ramifications, the overleaf system, and a general cosmology, together with a potpourri of miscellaneous topics that might appeal to a diverse readership.  She condensed material from about 3,000 pages of transcripts (per her comments in the book) down to about 250 pages in the published book.  Truly, she did a remarkable job.  There was, however, a great deal of good information that was left out – and she omitted the fact that the people in the study group came together primarily as seasoned spiritual seekers.  They were pursuing personal growth and enlightenment, and had been down many corridors in the search already.  They were not mere social acquaintances experimenting with a Ouija board.  They became close friends who grew even closer as their work delved deeper into areas they had not explored before.  They brought people into the group who were likewise seeking.

One example of the different viewpoint presented in MFM is illustrated by the following:

The first question asked in the very first session with Michael was, “concerning the decision to go on in the search for spiritual enlightenment, to becoming an adept.” (August 12, 1973)

In the beginning of the story told in MFM, after the question of the channeled entity’s name, the first query is about the terms “entity” and “fragment,” to which the Michael reply gives an answer that describes the process of ensoulment. The difference in these two questions shows that the starting points of the actual group, and Yarbro’s version, immediately diverge.

The change in emphasis continues from there and she would adjust the text in keeping with her vision of the story.  On page 47, she quotes the text as:

• IN GIVING YOU SOME DIRECTION TO YOUR PURPOSE, YOU HAVE, DURING THE INTERVAL BETWEEN PHYSICAL LIVES, CHOSEN TO LIVE A LIFE IN SERVICE TO THE SEARCH. [MFM, page 47 – emphasis added]

There is one word here that was changed by Chelsea and that one word makes a marked difference in the meaning of the sentence.  The original text says:

• IN GIVING YOU SOME DIRECTION TO  YOUR PURPOSE, YOU HAVE, DURING THE INTERVAL BETWEEN PHYSICAL LIVES, CHOSEN TO LIVE A LIFE IN SERVICE TO THE WORD. [February 3, 1974 – emphasis added]

In Chelsea’s version, the lifetime referenced was constructed around “the search” – seeking, living the life with an emphasis on the individual process.  In the original transcript, there is a definite goal, “the Word” — and that “Word” is elsewhere called “Logos.” The word “Logos” is not a common one in our society today, but for the original group of students it was understood from the phrase in the Bible:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)   We spend many lifetimes in the search, this is true  — but a lifetime built in service to the Word suggests something far more specific.

Ultimately, there is a great deal of material given by Michael that Chelsea chose not to use regardless of the reason.   Those were her choices as a student of the entity we call Michael.  In many ways her version of the teaching has continued to drive the direction of study for Michael students.  Until now, without the transcripts freely available, and without restriction, it has been difficult to discuss, and more importantly pursue, the whole teaching.

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

In June of 2010 — 37 years after Michael first came through Sarah Chambers —  a few long-time Michael students came together to work on cleaning up the digital file of the transcripts that had been passed around in the background for many years.  The idea was to restore all of the original text as it was in the copies of the paper transcripts, check it carefully for errors, reformat it, and annotate it.

As anyone who studies the transcripts and the MFM book can see, there is a big difference between the two.  One could even say that the MFM book that Chelsea created, through her selection process, was a customized version of the Michael Teachings.  As noted above, one of the important things that makes her lineage different is the fact that Chelsea did not include or pursue the teaching on adepthood.  There is a considerable body of material that “the teacher” Michael gave in this area of advanced study because this was what the original core group was pursuing.

The project of cleaning up the digital transcript file grew  as it uncovered more about the people in the study group and the archive project members realized the depth and breadth of what they were doing.  The search began for pieces of the history of the group and of the participants to better understand their perspective and what might be driving their search and their questions.  They began to look for more transcript copies and more original members to interview.  Some of the original members have died.  Of the original core five people, only Dr Trout is still alive.  A number of other living regular members of the group have been found. Some were  excited that they could share their stories after all these years.  Some have moved on to other interests and had no interest in participating.

The archivists eventually ran into Yarbro’s assertion that she held the rights to the entirety of the transcripts and would not authorize their use.  Yet, as the reconstruction project continued it became apparent that the transcripts and copies thereof fell into the category of Public Domain, based on the copyright laws in place at the time.  The transcripts were typed, photocopied, and distributed to other group members without copyright notice of any sort on any document found.  At the time, a copyright notice on the document itself was required to claim copyright ownership.  The law seems pretty clear that in the period from 1973-1977 when the study group was meeting, the lack of any indications of an intent to claim copyright ownership of the transcripts makes them Public Domain documents. Ultimately, after retaining the services of an attorney, who consulted with copyright experts, there was legal confirmation that these documents were indeed in the Public Domain.   Public Domain documents can be freely shared, used, copied, published, etc.  Once  in Public Domain status, no person or entity can claim ownership of them.

While is it important to acknowledge, appreciate, respect, and honor the work of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro who brought the teaching to a very wide audience, it is also necessary to honor the members of the original Michael study group and the deep legacy that they left behind. The history of the group should be preserved, and the whole teaching preserved as it was given.  Each student should decide what to take from the original transcripts and decide for themselves how to use the  higher teaching in their lives.

 

___________________________________

Copyright adeptpath.net 2012, all rights reserved.