JZ Knight

JZ Knight (born March 16, 1946 in Roswell as Judith Darlene Hampton ) is the founder of a new religious movement around the so-called divine spirit being Ramtha , as whose medium she has been acting since 1978. The movement is organized primarily in the Knight-run Ramtha's School of Enlightenment , based in Yelm, Washington, where she lives. Her teaching combines ideas from Hinduism , Gnosticism and Neopaganism with explanatory models from physics and psychology .

Knight is the author of several books about Ramtha, some of which have been translated into different languages, and has been a guest on well-known television programs. Of her followers, more than 6,000 attended Ramtha's School of Enlightenment in 2008, and celebrities like Linda Evans and Shirley MacLaine professed Ramtha. Critics refer to Knight as a manipulative "cult leader" and Ramtha as a fraudulent construct for making money.

Life

Judith Darlene Hampton was born in 1946 to a farm laborer and raised a Baptist . She graduated from high school and was denied college. Instead, she married and had two sons. After the divorce in 1969, she began working in the television industry, remarried and settled in Tacoma . In 1978 she began speaking as a channel on behalf of a spirit entity that she described as a 35,000-year-old Lemurian named Ramtha, who was enlightened after a life as a warrior and had various incarnations as an "ascended master," including Rama . He has chosen JZ Knight to help mankind to enlightenment and, like Ramtha, "to become one with the God within". JZ Knight began holding public sessions and gained popularity in the years that followed through television appearances, touring, celebrity support, and her autobiography A State of Mind: My Story , published by Warner Books in 1987 .

JZ Knight had first tried to organize their teaching in the form of Church I Am , and then in 1988 founded Ramtha's School of Enlightenment , which offered spiritual courses. In 1989 she divorced her husband, Jeffrey Knight, who married in the mid-1980s, and who later sued her for a higher share of the school's income and sales of Ramtha products. In 1997, Knight fought for sole rights to the name Ramtha at the Austrian Supreme Court after another woman had appeared as Ramtha's medium at seminars.

In 2004 an interview with JZ Knight appeared in the film What the Bleep do we (k) now !? made by students at her School of Enlightenment .

Web links

• JZ Knight website
• Ramtha's School of Enlightenment website

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Gail M. Harley: From Atlantis to America: JZ Knight Encounters Ramtha. In: James R. Lewis, Jesper Aagard Petersen (eds.): Controversial New Religions. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-515683-8 , pp. 319 ff
2. ^ ^{A b} David G. Bromley (Ed.): Teaching New Religious Movements. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-19-517729-9
3. ↑ ^{a b} ramtha.com: Who is JZ Knight? ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 13, 2011.  
4. ^ Library of Congress: Knight, JZ (Judy Zebra), 1946- Retrieved May 13, 2011.
   Distribution Goldene Sonne: All available German original Ramtha books. ( Memento of the original from April 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 13, 2011. casadellibro.com: Ramtha. Retrieved May 13, 2011. macrolivres.com: Author : Ramtha. Retrieved May 13, 2011.  
   
   
5. ↑ newrealities.com: JZ Knight and Ramtha on the Merv Griffin show 1985 (archival).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   Retrieved May 13, 2011.
6. ↑ CNN: CNN Larry King Live: Change Your Mind, Change Your Life. Retrieved May 13, 2011.
7. ^ The Seattle Times: Ramtha school opposes Yelm housing development . Article dated January 22, 2008. Retrieved May 13, 2011.
8. ^ ^{A b} Timothy Egan: Worldly and the Spiritual Clash in New Age Divorce. The New York Times , September 25, 1992.
9. ↑ Stephen Rae: Yes, they're still at it! Cosmopolitan , August 1991. On rickross.com ( Memento of the original from May 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
10. ↑ Joseph M. Khattab: Ramtha's School of Enlightenment ( Memento of November 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) . Article posted on the Religious Movements homepage of the University of Virginia
11. ↑ ^{a b} J. Gordon Melton: Religious Leaders of America. Gale Research, 1999. ISBN 0-8103-8878-2 .
12. ↑ ramtha.com: Ramtha's School of Enlightenment: The American Gnostic School. Media background questions & answers. ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 13, 2011.  
13. ^ Sabrina P. Ramet: Nihil Obstat: Religion, Politics, and Social Change in East-Central Europe and Russia. Duke University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8223-2070-3 . P. 322 f.
14. ↑ Kate Connolly: Medium wins channeling right. Article in The Guardian , June 9, 1997. Quoted on rickross.com ( Memento of the original from May 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Retrieved May 13, 2011. 
15. ↑ Harriette Yahr: Let's get metaphysical. Article from September 9, 2004 on salon.com . Retrieved May 13, 2011.