How did New Age channelers claim to communicate with spiritual or extraterrestrial entities?

Within the New Age movement, channeling emerged as a prominent practice for personal and spiritual exploration. Practitioners, known as channels, claimed to establish communication with various preternatural or extraterrestrial entities to receive guidance on a wide array of spiritual, philosophical, and psychological subjects.1

These individuals performed this communication in one of two ways:
* Conscious state: The channeler remained aware while receiving and relaying messages from the entities.1
* Trance state: The channeler entered an altered state of consciousness, allowing the entities to speak directly through them.1

Some of the entities who purportedly spoke through these channels, such as Seth, Ramtha, and Lazarus, gained significant followings and became popular teachers in their own right. In some instances, the most successful channelers went on to establish their own organizations to disseminate these teachings. This practice is closely related to mediumship, a traditional occult practice that was integrated into the movement as a tool for personal transformation.1