http://www.timeslive.co.za/lifestyle/ar ... s-in-Karoo
Knight blindness in Karoo?
Julia Beffon looks at the woman behind the New Age Ramtha School of Enlightenment
Jan 23, 2011 11:45 PM | By Julia BeffonThe manhunt for French couple Philippe Meniere and Agnes Jardel, which ended in a hail of bullets on Thursday, brought Ramtha's School of Enlightenment to the attention of the South African public.
RSE is based in the small town of Yelm, Washington state, but the school and its leader, JZ Knight, followed the events in Sutherland closely.
Within two hours of sending some questions via e-mail to a South African representative of RSE, a reply was e-mailed from Yelm.
It offered condolences to relatives of the victims, eschewed violence and reiterated an earlier press release: "The school has had no contact with [Meniere and Jardel] since they last attended a seminar in Johannesburg in January 2004. As reported by the Du Plessis family to the media already, their change in behaviour happened only within the last year, so their recent actions are unrelated to RSE or its teachings."
So what is RSE and its teachings?
The school started in 1988 after Knight began spreading the teachings of Ramtha, who "lived as a human being on Earth 35000 years ago.
"In that lifetime, he discovered the true nature of the human person, the power of the mind, and the malleable nature of physical reality."
Ramtha was no simple Pleistocene-era philosopher, living in a cave with his Cro Magnon family.
He was a warrior in the fabled city of Atlantis, part of an evolved civilisation that came to Earth to impart knowledge to its backward inhabitants - and then disappeared.
Atlantis was on the continent of Lemuria, which has also disappeared.
Ramtha waited patiently through the millennia to choose Knight - an attractive blonde - to be his medium.
He first appeared to her in the kitchen of her trailer home in 1977.
According to the Skeptic's Dictionary (skepdic.com), Ramtha is also a feminist. It quotes Knight: "So women have been abused by men, and herded by men through religion to perform according to those religious doctrines, and in fact, women were despised by Jehovah.
"So, he said: 'It is important that when the teachings come through, they come through the body of a woman.'"
The RSE denies it is a cult - and has gone to court over the issue - particularly not a survivalist or doomsday cult. That appears to be true. JZ Knight is much more L Ron Hubbard than Jim Jones.
She was born Judith Darlene Hampton in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1946 to a poor family, though she completed high school and dropped out of business college.
She was married to Jeff Knight at the time Ramtha first contacted her, but they went through a messy divorce in 1989. She has had at least four husbands since.
Jeff Knight died of Aids in 1995, still engaged in a bitter court battle with JZ.
Colleagues apparently nicknamed her "Zebra" for her black-and-white decision-making ability, and when she rose to fame she took the initials JZ - Judy Zebra - for her name.
The RSE has about 50 formal employees and holds seminars (what it calls "events") for about 5000 people a year. The events cost at least $1000 to attend.
The organisation is registered in the US as a corporation and derives a lot of its income from DVDs and book sales.
According to Wikipedia, JZ Knight made more than $2.6-million in sales alone in 2007. She also owns a shop in Yelm that sells ordinary items, such as kitchen utensils.
A UFO allegedly carrying aliens crashed at area 51, on a secretive defence force base near Roswell a year after she was born, though Knight has claimed no credit for this.
She does claim credit for the way the blue people are depicted in Avatar (that's just how Ramtha described the northern Lemurians); the modern interpretation of the term "channelling"; and medical breakthroughs (her concept of the body's physical and spiritual "housekeeper", who she calls Gladys, is similar to Nobel prize-winning work done on telomeres - but without the science).
Knight has copyrighted the name Ramtha and many other things.
As follower and "distance healer" Carol Hathor says on her website: "I also beseech you to not re-teach the Ramtha teachings, when you begin to 'turn on' to fabulous Knowledge.
"Not only is it a copyright violation, which it should be, but you'd be doing a disservice to people . Be a righteous Runner: advocate Ramtha materials and his fabulous School." (Auric Clearing $85. Karmic Sessions $120.)
Meniere and Jardel were apparently penniless during most of their time in Sutherland, so it's doubtful whether they could have afforded to maintain their links with RSE.