http://selectsmart.com/twyman.html
A CAUTIONARY COMMENTARY TO MY COMMUNITY, ASHLAND, OR.
(AND TO THE WORLD)
INDIGO: THE COLOR OF MONEY
by Lorie Anderson
Many are excited about the upcoming New Age movie,
"Indigo," written, produced, and directed by three
renowned individuals who now live in Ashland - James
Twyman, Neale Donald Walsch, and Stephen Simon.
Appealing are the career opportunities, the
camaraderie of movie-making, the promoting of
spirituality and messages of peace and love. Promoters
say it will stimulate the local economy and help our
schools. But after examining the Indigo Child
movement, and specifically the activities of
co-writer/producer James Twyman, I see potential
consequences for the community -- and for children.
INDIGO CHILDREN
The Indigo Child concept was first popularized by the
book, "The Indigo Child," written by the husband and
wife team Lee Carroll and Jan Tober. Carroll also
portrays himself as a channeler for "Kryon," a
spiritual entity who predicted the coming of the
Indigo Children - will wonders never cease?
The authors say that "the Indigo Child is a boy or
girl who displays a new and unusual set of
psychological attributes, revealing a pattern of
behavior generally undocumented before." For example,
they act like royalty, have difficulty with absolute
authority unless given choices or explanations, are
easily frustrated, e.g. when waiting in line, are not
shy, have difficulty with guilt-based discipline, are
non-conformist, may seem antisocial and prefer to be
with their own kind, and may have social difficulties
in school. I, for one, see nothing new, unusual, or
unheard-of here.
The Indigo Child concept may appeal especially to
parents of children with mental health challenges,
e.g. ADD, ADHD, autism, bi-polar disorder, conduct
disorder, or a difficult temperament. Proponents
target these label- and medication-wary parents. So,
what is the harm in giving parents a positive spin on
their children for a change -- like Indigo?
Besides parents possibly foregoing beneficial, if not
life-saving, treatment for children with mental or
neurological disorders, some proponents of the Indigo
movement infuse children with a false sense of human
superiority and a bizarre paranormal identity.
Mutilating science while claiming scientific proof,
children are led to believe by trusted adults that
they were born members of a new breed of the human
race, the next step in human evolution, that their
genes were somehow altered -- perhaps as a result of
divine or extraterrestrial intervention, or
spontaneous genetic mutation accomplished by non other
than the children themselves. Some children come to
believe they are endowed with extraordinary powers
such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience,
healing powers, pre-birth and previous life recall,
etc. Tober and Carroll tell us that Indigo Children
don�t fit in and feel uncomfortable when not with
other Indigos. Small wonder!
Similar to the Indigo Child model, you may hear about
The New Children, The Masters, Ascending Children,
Star Children, Crystal or Chrystalline Children,
Metagifted Children, Millennium Children, Children of
the New Dream, Children of the New Times, Children of
Aids (genetically altered child beings who are immune
to all disease), and Super Psychic Children, etc.
James Twyman seems to prefer the terms Children of Oz
or Psychic Children (and as of 10/2003, "The Mystic
Children").
NOT JUST ABOUT PEACE AND LOVE
Twyman, and other Indigo Child proponents, may try to
shift our focus to the children�s message and mission
of peace and love, but Twyman, for one, readily
capitalizes on his own and children's purported
paranormal abilities.
Twyman sells books and Internet course based on the
Psychic Children. He holds pricey Psychic Children
conferences, camps, and fairs, charging about $300 for
adults for the main conference. He offers an Internet
course on telekinetic spoon-bending. He purportedly
conversed with Jesus ("Jeshua") who revealed to Twyman
through a "Divine Partnership" the "secrets of Heaven
and Earth," which Twyman turned into an Internet
course for required donations -- with a suggested
retail value of $150.
He purports to have frequently "conversed"
telepathically from abroad with a Psychic Child he
calls Thomas from Bulgaria, and other Psychic Children
- providing more content for books and Internet
courses. A "secret society" of spiritual masters
called "emissaries of light" purportedly revealed
themselves in the flesh to Twyman in Bosnia (before
they disbanded) -- more content for courses and books.
He doesn't always make a distinction in his writings
between his purported mystical interactions and
actual, in-the-flesh interactions. When confronted
with suspected and admitted misrepresentations, he
conveys that he would rather we focus on the truth of
his messages than the truth of his experiences - and
this seems to satisfy many people, but for others
honesty is a prerequisite for credibility.
In response to a question posed by a New Age
organization (see NHNE link, below), for an
investigative report on Twyman in 1999, Twyman wrote
reassuringly: "�as I have been telling those who
inquire, Emissary of Light is not an organization, and
I am not a guru. I am not asking for donations, and I
do not seek either fame or adoration. This is not
about me. It is about peace."
Well, certainly Twyman has asked for and collected a
wealth of donations (sometimes with a required minimum
donation and collected using guilt-pressure) and fees.
He says that his organization, The Beloved Community,
is now a "registered church organization." He
purchased 42 acres of property in the local area, (for
which he solicited donations to buy), for psychic
children retreats, to start a Emissary of Light type
of monastery, and to house workshops for his new
"Seminary of Spiritual Peacemaking." He recently
announced a five-year goal of 50 churches worldwide.
After graduating from the seminary, Twyman suggests
graduates can work with the Indigo and Psychic
Children.
I believe adults are responsible for deciding what to
believe, but as paranormal claims are key to Twyman's
growing popularity, and income, and as he targets
minors around the world, I think we owe it to the
Children of Oz to pull the curtain on the wizard by
scrutinizing his claims.
MISLEADING REPORTS OF SCIENTIFIC PROOF
Twyman reports scientific proof of several spurious
claims, including that children develop ESP at his
fairs after Brain Respiration (BR) training. BR was
created by ILChi Lee, AKA Seung Heun Lee, founder of
Dahn Centers and many other organizations. (Lee and
Walsch are also affiliated). Twyman and Lee have
reported that the University of California at Irvine,
specifically the Center for Aging and Dementia, has
researched and "confirmed" the effects of BR. However,
this department at UCI tells me they have not
conducted any studies on Lee's BR program, per se --
let alone confirmed its paranormal claims.
OILY-SKINNED PSYCHIC CHILDREN
At Twyman's psychic fairs for children, kids are
persuaded to believe that sticking a lightweight spoon
to their forehead is a result of psychokinetic power.
The fact is that everyone can stick a lightweight
spoon to their forehead if they first rub the spoon on
their skin, especially the forehead and chin, coating
the spoon with slightly sticky sebum.
X-RAY VISION
At Twyman's psychic children's fairs, parents paid for
their kids' ESP powers to be tested (charging subjects
is almost unheard-of in scientific research) before
and after participation in ILChi Lee's BR training.
The children were asked to identify certain shapes,
colors, or simple words while blindfolded. Lee shows a
video at his website of blindfolded children reading
books held close to the face. But, the blindfolds were
provided and the tests conducted by the program's
staff. Naturally, Twyman and Lee report amazing
results.
Magicians and paranormal investigators have
continually exposed "x-ray vision" as flimflammery,
e.g. perhaps the blindfolded person can see through a
space between the blindfold and the nose, a pinhole in
the blindfold, cloth that appears opaque but is
translucent when held close to the face, or verbal
cues are provided by testers or shills. Sometimes it�s
a matter of working with probabilities. For example,
when asked to pick a number between one and ten, most
people pick seven.
USING HANDICAPPED CHILDREN
Twyman presents severely handicapped children and
young adults at his psychic children's fairs - e.g. a
young woman called "Grandma Chandra," who is known for
her psychic readings using an alphabet board or mental
telepathy (even over the phone for a mere $100) and a
six year old boy named Nicholas, who has purportedly
written a book full of spiritual adult-level insights
(since age three) with an alphabet board. Twyman also
offers telepathically received messages from a
severely handicapped boy from Japan named Koya.
Telepathic powers can easily be imagined, or
fabricated, especially when the purported sender is
not able or available to object. Claims of telepathic
powers are not hard to test and have been discredited
many times. Mental telepathy is implausible, and as
such, the burden of proof (or at least of solid,
credible evidence) lies with the claimant. Without
compelling evidence via unbiased, carefully
controlled, and replicated tests, deception or
delusion is fairly assumed.
Facilitated Communication, whereby someone physically
assists a handicapped person in using a communication
device, has so often been shown to convey the thoughts
of the facilitator (often unintentionally by hopeful
parents) that this method simply cannot be trusted.
Imagine how frustrating, if not cruel, to have someone
else claim that his/her own thoughts are yours while
you remain helpless to protest. Telepathic and
facilitated communication engenders high risk of
subjugating a helpless person's true thoughts,
feelings, needs, and wishes -- and high risk of
defrauding a trusting audience.
SPOON-BENDING
Through ILChi Lee's Brain Respiration training and
Twyman's own Internet course, Twyman teaches
psychokinetic spoon-bending. Twyman says that if you
can bend a spoon mentally, you can bend the world
toward peace mentally, the logic of which eludes me.
There are possibly dozens, or more, ways to perform
spoon-bending, e.g. an invisible cut or weak spot in
the spoon, special prop utensils sold to magicians,
chemical metal-softeners, slowly revealing a hidden
bent spoon, sleight-of-hand, distraction - with new
methods devised as old ones are suspected or exposed.
Even the elusive mentalist Uri Geller, much admired by
Twyman, was rendered inept after Johnny Carson on The
Tonight Show secretly switched Geller's own prop
spoons with regular silverware.
Spoonbending ala Twyman's Internet course involves
sheer power of suggestion -- choose a thin metal spoon
to begin with, bend it manually again and again
(weakening the metal), and shake it to, as Twyman
says, "use the force of gravity." Psychological yes;
kinetic yes, but obviously not psycho-kinetic. In
week-four, readers are instructed in the same cadence
to take out a $10 or $20 bill, hold it tightly, feel
how it will help children connect with each other,
fold the bill in a piece of paper, put it into an
envelope, and send it to Twyman's organization to pay
for his Psychic Children gatherings.
On his website, Twyman provides a fork-bending
demonstration on video where he bends a fork without
his even touching it, just by coaxing it a little bit
with his finger - amazing! Amazingly deceptive, that
is. Hank Lee�s Magic Factory sells online a melting
fork for a costly $695. Keep those peace and love
donations rolling in, folks.
PUT YOUR MOUTH WHERE THE MONEY IS -- $2.5 MILLION!
The James Randi Educational Foundation offers over a
million dollars to "anyone who can show, under proper
observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal,
supernatural, or occult power or event." Similar
organizations offer additional large sums of money,
totaling about 2.5 million. I implore Twyman, ILChi
Lee, and their cohorts, or just one of the purported
millions of psychic adults and children to come
forward and take the scientific challenges. You owe it
to children around the world, as it is the children
who ultimately will pay the price if they are being
deceived or used to deceive others.
If Twyman can really bend spoons with his mind, which
he reports he couldn't even stop doing after he met
his first Psychic Child, he can certainly pass
relatively easier scientific challenges. Twyman can
use the money to further his stated goals of world
peace and love, to save the dolphins. Winning would
create a shock-wave throughout the scientific
community - as none of the few who have ventured to
apply has ever proceeded beyond the preliminary test.
As the New Age movement grows from marginal to
mainstream, we need programs for New Age consumer
protection. We must caution educators and parents
about, and object to, programs with paranormal
underpinnings, like the Indigo Child and Brain
Respiration, which are fervently marketed to private
and public schools. We need age-appropriate
critical-thinking skills programs in education,
starting in the early grades. We must educate
ourselves and our children on the scientific method of
inquiry, how to evaluate studies and spot
pseudo-science and pseudo-scientists. We must help our
children to develop radar to detect and avoid
deceptive New Age profiteers - no matter how noble
their stated cause.
Meanwhile, I take one statement of Twyman's as a
certainty, his quote to the Medford Mail Tribune:
"�anyone that would want to make me their leader is a
sick person."
For further reading about James Twyman or the Indigo
Child movement on the web, go to:
NewHeavenNewEarth
The James Randi Educational Foundation
Center for the Scientific Investigation of the
Paranormal
SkepticReport
The Skeptic's Dictionary. "The Indigo Children"
The Skeptic's Dictionary. "reader comments: Indigo
children"
HoustonPress. "Alien-ated Youth"
Scroll down to "Reader Michael Hopkins shares this
with us" for a true story illustrating how some
children are harmed by a paranormalist upbringing.
Other commentaries by Lorie Anderson:
Bert Hellinger's "Movements of the Soul" Therapy
Applied/Specialized Kinesiology; Applied Neurogenics
DID JAMES TWYMAN REALLY SPONSOR, ESTABLISH, OR FUND A
CHILDREN'S HOME IN IRAQ?
Pre-diabetes
� 2003 Lorie Anderson SelectSmart.com All Rights
Reserved
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