TRANSCRIPTS of MICHAEL CHANNELING SESSIONS - the ORIGINAL MICHAEL GROUP (Second Edition - Updated)
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TRANSCRIPTS OF MICHAEL CHANNELING SESSIONS - THE ORIGINAL MICHAEL GROUP (Second Edition - Updated) INTRODUCTION TERMS OF USE This document is intended to be provided freely but privately to “students” of what has become known as the “Michael Teachings” – MT for short. Readers may provide it freely and privately to other students of the Michael Teachings. It is not suitable as an introduction to the MT, or for people who are not yet mature students. Note especially that word “privately.” Readers do not have permission to publicly distribute this document or any portion thereof. The reason for this is explained below. SOME HISTORY In 1973, a few spiritual seekers in the San Francisco Bay area made contact through the Ouija board with a source of information that came to be known as “Michael.” In this document this will be referred to as The Original Michael Group – TOMG for short. The messages, amounting to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pages, were handwritten or tape recorded at the time of reception. They were then typewritten, and photocopies were distributed to the members of the group. The group grew in number over the next two years until the summer of 1975, when the large group ceased their regular meetings. Afterwards, a core group of friends continued to meet occasionally to receive messages, and some private sessions were held until about 1983. This document is the actual, although incomplete, story of that group. A fictionalized account of TOMG was published in 1979 (in hardcover edition) by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro in her book, Messages from Michael (hereinafter abbreviated to “MFM”). In 1980 the paperback edition was published. Ms Yarbro was a writer of fiction by profession, so it came naturally to her to fictionalize the account of TOMG. All names of TOMG members were changed in MFM to maintain their anonymity. The dialog between these members of TOMG was also created by Ms Yarbro, as well as events in their story. The words attributed to Michael – the words in all upper case – are, however, the actual words from the transcriptions, as you will see in many places in this document. Books about the Michael Teachings published after MFM, such as More Messages from Michael (1986), Michael's People (1988), and Michael for the Millennium (1995) are not about TOMG. They are about the group that Ms Yarbro led after the breakup of TOMG. In the preface to MFM, Ms Yarbro said there were about three thousand pages of typewritten transcripts in late 1978. This fits with what is currently available. We have about 700 pages of session transcripts plus about 260 pages of compilation material, most of which is extracted from sessions that we also have. It is obvious that the first dated session in this collection (June 19, 1973) is not the first. There are undoubtedly some sessions missing from our collection through February of 1975, and we only have a few sessions from February 1975 to January 1978. This means we have only about one-quarter to one-third of what Ms Yarbro had access to when she wrote Messages from Michael. The story of how this material became available is told below. COPYRIGHT CONCERNS In 1977 or 1978, the primary channel, Sarah Chambers, provided Ms Yarbro, who was not a member of TOMG, a copy of the transcriptions channeled up until that time. You can read about this in the Preface to MFM. We now know that a contract was signed for Sarah to receive royalties for profits from the sale of any books published by Ms Yarbro based on this material. At that time, Sarah did not wish to become a public figure, but in the mid 1990s she did just that. We then found out that Sarah had lost her copy of the contract, so we do not really know all the terms of the contract. Therefore, we do not know if the contract precluded anyone else from publishing (or privately distributing) copies of the transcriptions. We do know that Sarah was not the only channel. We know others asked the questions, wrote down the answers, typed up the answers, and distributed the photocopies. The material would not exist without each of these activities. None TOMG – Page 1 of the other members of TOMG signed a contract with Ms Yarbro, giving away their rights to distribute the material that they participated in the creation of. Therefore, regardless of the terms of Sarah's contract, it is uncertain at the present time whether or not Ms Yarbro has legal “standing” to prevent private distribution of unpublished material, or have a copyright on material that was so freely available before she included it in her books. This material was freely distributed by members and non-members of TOMG to dozens of people, perhaps hundreds, during the years 1973 to 1979 (and later), so it precedes Ms Yarbro's copyrighted books. Therefore we believe that it might be legally acceptable to publish it, or at least distribute it. In the late 1990s, a member of TOMG actually made a public offering to share copies of the transcriptions. It is possible, even probable, that Ms Yarbro found out about this, but did not challenge the right to do so. Nevertheless, we do not regard the unpublished material to be “in the public domain,” which has a legal definition. We have chosen to distribute it privately instead, and then only among “students” of the teachings, just as it was always done. That way we do not affect or challenge Ms Yarbro's income stream or her copyright contract with her publisher. For us to publish publicly could also jeopardize the possible eventual publication of all the transcriptions of TOMG by Ms Yarbro. Ms Yarbro said in Michael for the Millennium (1995, Introduction, page 3) that she might eventually make some of the unpublished material available for viewing. Reliable sources and rumor suggest that this is a work still in progress, many years later. It would please the editors of this document if she would make available all the TOMG material, because we only have a fraction of what we presume she has, based on her statement in MFM mentioned above. She could also publish yet another Michael Messages book containing all the TOMG material, and claim a copyright on it if she likes, because something like that is perhaps what her contract with Sarah allows. If she ever does publish it or otherwise puts a price tag on its availability, we encourage you to purchase them from her. We will, of course, cease to make it available at that time. What really matters is that Michael's full teaching be made available to the students with whom they have Agreements. In summary, we do not want to test a copyright dispute in court and we do not want to prevent possible release of all TOMG material, so we continue to make what we do have available the same way we received it: privately and discreetly, not publicly or commercially. Our instruction to you the reader is to “go thou and do likewise.” So, the material in this document did not originate from Ms Yarbro and she had nothing to do with processing this document. A fellow by the name of Terence Powers, now deceased, tracked down some of the members of TOMG in 1993. One of them was willing to share a copy of what she had with him and the community of Michael students. This led to the discovery of other members of TOMG, who also shared what they had. (Several others in TOMG said they would also share what they had -- if they had anything, but they did not.) It is still necessary that editing of the original transcriptions be done before they are distributed widely, because many of the members of TOMG still prefer to remain anonymous. Those of course who shared their copies know about the edit and dissemination of these transcriptions. (In fact, one of the founding members of TOMG wanted the unpublished material to be published, and the actual story of the group told.) Those members gave copies freely to the editors of this document, and the editors give them freely to other students and those others give them freely to yet other students. We (the editors) believe this is just a continuation of the policy originally established by TOMG, and is in keeping with Michael's expressed directive – see next section. What you have here is referred to as the Second Edition - Update. The First Edition was distributed in late 1994. Much of the group process and irrelevant or unnecessary personal information was omitted, and names were substituted with initials. In the Second Edition, first distributed about 1998, all remaining personal information was omitted, including initials of names. This remainder was therefore entirely an “impersonal” presentation of the Michael Teachings. Upon acquisition of some additional material in 2011 by the present editors, it was deemed useful to republish the Second Edition with those updates. DIRECTIVE TO PUBLISH In the December 31, 1973 session, in response to the question, “What can I do with this?” Michael said: “Propagate the Logos. This isn't trite. We expect this teaching to reach others. We are not just hollering down the rain barrel.” Then on February 8, 1974 this came through: “We would prefer that you assemble the material here given, editorializing if you wish, and present it to all potential students in a palatable form. There are Scholars among you who are up to this task as well as Artisans aplenty who can contribute the imaginative approach.