Knight, JZ (1946-)

Channel of "Ramtha," a 35,000-year-old warrior spirit from the lost continent of Atlantis, and head of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment. JZ Knight was born Judith Darlene Hampton on March 16, 1946, in Dexter, New Mexico. She grew up in poverty and was unable to go to college; after high school she married and became the mother of two children. The marriage ended when she became unwilling to continue to countenance her husband's alcoholism and infidelity. She became a businesswoman and her career led her eventually to Tacoma, Washington, and a second marriage. Along the way, a cryptic psychic reading told her that one day she would meet "the One." She did not understand, for several years, but the words proved true when in 1977 she encountered Ramtha.

Ramtha appeared to her one Sunday afternoon in 1977. Shortly thereafter he began to speak through her and there was an immediate response from people who attended her initial sessions as a channel. After she became relatively comfortable as a channel, she began channeling Ramtha regularly in weekend "dialogues" held at various locations around the United States. Knight eventually took the dialogues to Canada, England, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand. In the 1980s she became the most successful of the channels that grew up around the New Age movement.

In 1987 she discontinued the dialogues and opened Ramtha's School of Enlightenment in Yelm, Washington, on land previously used as a ranch. Many of the students moved to northeast Washington and have gathered periodically in the years since for more systematic teaching by Ramtha, who continues to speak through Knight. Approximately three thousand students are connected with the school.

During the early years of the school, Knight went through a period of intense criticism from the media, largely caused by the obvious success and built around the criticisms of former followers of Ramtha's teachings. About that same time, Knight released her own autobiography. The negative publicity continued into the 1990s, in large part occasioned by the breakup of her marriage to Jeff Knight, who contested the terms of their divorce and charged that the guru used mind-control tricks. However, these issues have been largely decided in Knight's favor and the school has continued to grow and prosper.

Over the years of the dialogues, transcripts of Ramtha's talks were compiled and published, and several videotapes of dialogue sessions were released. While these cover some major themes in Ramtha's teachings, a more systematic presentation of Ramtha's basic philosophy and instruction on the spiritual disciplines is currently available only to students of the school.

Sources:

Knight, JZ. A State of Mind: My Story. New York: Warner Books, 1987.

Ramtha (as channeled by JZ Knight). The Ancient Schools of Wisdom. Transcribed by Diane Munoz. Yelm, Wash.: Diane Munoz, 1992.

——. I Am Ramtha. Edited by Cindy Black, Richard Cohn, Greg Simmons, and Wes Walt. Portland, Ore.: Beyond Words Publishing, 1986.

Ramtha (The White Book). Edited by Steven Lee Weinberg, with Randall Weischedel, Sue Ann Fazio, and Carol Wright. Eastsound, Wash.: Sovereignty, 1986.

Ramtha's School of Enlightenment: The American Gnostic School. Yelm, Wash.: JZK, 1994.