Talking with the Other Side invokes challenges.

Extracts from the book "Talking with Leaders of the Past" with permission of the publisher, Celestial Voices, Inc.

By Peter Watson Jenkins

I plunked myself down opposite my hypnotist colleague Toni Winninger and said (rather skeptically), “What’s all this channeling stuff about?” I wasn’t quite that ignorant, but spirituality was novel to me in 2003, though I had read Brian Weiss and Michael Newton, devoured books about past-life regression, and had even started writing my own past-life book, Christy’s Journey Through 12 Past Lives. Toni gave me a clear but expected explanation. Unexpected was that my casual question would change my life forever.

Next I volunteered to “help” Toni practice her craft as a channel each week. I asked lots of questions and the Masters replied through her. I discussed personal issues, client issues, even world issues with them. Toni shared her growing pains as a psychic with me. We became good friends with a no-nonsense attitude to our work. Then one day I asked the Masters if we could actually talk to someone famous. The name Carl Jung came into my mind (these days I know who put it there!) and they agreed.

As “Ascended Masters,” they insist, they just have a role to play as senior guides.

Needless to say, I knew nothing about the great psychologist, so I frantically researched his life and wrote out a set of questions which I fired off at his soul the following week. We recorded the dialogue with this lovely person. Then I went home for a well-deserved nap. Later, when the typescript was done and we had reviewed his comments on his concepts of the Collective Unconscious and Synchronicity, we noted major modifications in his soul’s current opinion of these issues. The unexpected had happened again. We now had a paper that spoke of a deeper wisdom, a clearer appraisal of the truth by a great mind. We had expected an interesting document. What we got was the beginning of a book.

Actually, we found our material divided best into two books: the Masters’ answers and comments on health issues became their dynamic little booklet Healing with the Universe, Meditation, and Prayer; the other was the first in our series of dialogues with famous people, Talking with Leaders of the Past. We started on the Masters’ mission, and five years have now been spent researching, interviewing 57 souls, typing, and massaging manuscripts. We take great care with the transcripts. Every finished dialogue has been shared line by line with the soul involved. Most souls have added a phrase or two or clarified meanings. What we had seen as a publishing job turned into a delightful cooperation across the spiritual divide.

The Masters remind us of the equality of all souls. As “Ascended Masters,” they insist, they just have a role to play as senior guides. Souls do a variety of jobs at Home on the Other Side. Anne Frank, interviewed for our book Talking with Twentieth-Century Women, said she is now a researcher working with the Akashic records. In the companion volume (soon to be released), Talking with Twentieth-Century Men, we discovered that Elvis Presley (smartly dressed with short hair!) is entertaining little children who are transitioning fearfully and are in need of a cheerful welcome.