Since that time, the teachings purportedly from the same entity have continued to accumulate and expand via a growing number of channels based in other locations.
[2] Beginning with a few friends gathered in Sarah Chambers' living room seeking answers to their own questions, there are now more than 40 books published[3] about the body of work that came to be called the Michael Teachings.
[6] Websites in other countries evolved to cover the material in the United Kingdom, Germany, South Africa, Brazil and Czechia.
[12] Klimo reported that more than a dozen people in the San Francisco Bay Area claimed to channel the same "Michael", using a variety of methods, ranging from automatic writing to speaking while in a trance.
[12] Olav Hammer, an expert on new religious movements, describes the Michael Teachings as a "fairly well-structured set of doctrines, expressed in a distinct vocabulary".
Hammer states that the channelers of Michael study the earlier "transmissions" and use similar terminology, making it easier for readers to accept the new material as part of a doctrine.
An anthropology and Latin American studies professor at Williams College, he was living in Santa Fe temporarily and working on a book about a Peruvian guerrilla movement when he became interested in some drumming from his next door neighbors.
[15] In 2014, Brown was named president of the School for Advanced Research, after shifting into emeritus status as Lambert Professor of Anthropology and Latin American studies at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
[...] In The Channeling Zone, Michael Brown has provided us with a lively, easy to read, yet scholarly look into a spiritual movement whose critics see it as Satanic and evil but whose followers are among the best-educated people in the country.
Those who seek the guidance of channels are those who have found dissatisfaction with organized religion yet feel the need for the spiritual in a complex and changing society.
"[21] Nancy Piatkowski was the Archivist of the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York[22] and Archive Coordinator of the Department of Anthropology, Buffalo State College.
[25] Dr. Alber commented on the similarities of the various Essence and Personality systems: "When I asked him [Dr. Jose Stevens] why the Michael teachings and Personessence™ were so strikingly similar to Fourth Way and Arica programs even though the founders claim to be uninformed by the other, he explained that their commonality reflects the underlying truths about consciousness and its development.." (p 166)[24] ... "To test the appeal of the Michael system approach to self-understanding in my community, I developed and taught a workshop at a regional conference that I entitled The Keys to Self-Mastery in which I gave the revised I-MAP introductory presentation to a group of twenty individuals.
From these experiences, I have direct awareness of the important insights that this system offers to individuals beyond the integral paradigm originally embodied by the IMAP.
[31] Starting in August 1973 and via a Ouija board, Sarah Chambers "brought through" information about personality and how to get along better in the world in answer to questions that members of the group asked.
The information they brought forth provides the foundation of the body of knowledge, which has now expanded as more teachers are trained and students develop more advanced skills.
[31] One concern of the early group was how they would be perceived by others as many of them were professionals such as doctors, lawyers, teachers, scientists, psychologists, community leaders and business people.