After seeing the report of a pedophile teacher in Florida
I've been reading up on Rabbi Simeon Ben Yochai and his teacher Rabbi Akiva.
It seems to me that these Tannaim who originally wrote the Talmud and the Zohar, were actually channelling material from higher spirits, in the same way that a Voodoo priest channels Papa Legba, or a medium like Jane Roberts channels the oversoul Seth.
The perpetual problem of such channelling is the clarity of the communication. It is highly dependent on the person who is the channel because their own weaknesses or prejudices will distort any communication that comes through them. One must always be sceptical about channelled material and use our God-given reason to sort out communication errors from real wisdom.
In the Kabbalah as in Ritual Magick, the student in search of wisdom (or the magician) imagines a vivid and symbolically rich inner world and travels through that world to reach the source of wisdom. The goal is not to just imagine this symbol rich inner world but to actually hallucinate it and enter it in reality.
This inner journey is analogous to the journey of the soul in the Egyptian Book of the Dead or the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The traveller is trying to reach God's source in order to have direct access to the wisdom of God. However, as many have learned, getting access to God's wisdom is one thing. Being able to coherently remember it and communicate it is another.
In Talmudic Judaism today, we see people who simply worship those forebears who attempted the journey. Most do not seriously attempt this journey themselves, and the only critical thought is devoted to proving another person's understanding of Talmud to be right or wrong. In the end most such disputes end in an appeal to authority, which we all know is a way that WRONG INFO has of freezing itself in such a way that everyone must treat it as fact. This is an INSANE intellectual system that is obsolete in the modern world where so many are awake and can see the bullshit.
Not to mention the fact, that there are easier ways to reach God's wisdom directly through inner prayer, and no real need to accept any particular written teaching. God will guide you through life, and the wisdom will come into your awareness no matter what spiritual sources you may be exposed to.
Many are now using the tools of rational inquiry to study channelling and better understand it. Scientific papers are being written and even books. I have attached 3 such papers and one book on Spirit Possession and Trance.