I've known Alex Murray for more than fifteen years. He is a well-known trance channeler, and we were neighbors for many years on the Upper West Side of New York . Alex caters to an international clientele as well as being a respected teacher and lecturer across the globe. Any time I'm in New York I always manage to stop in fo rone of his séances, and I enjoy being able to connect directly with the spirit as a result. (A trance channeler leaves his body and allows high level spirit entities to come in and use the equipment, so to speak, letting those in the room speak directly with them.) During my last stay in New York , I was able to attend several sessions and to sit down with my old friend and discuss his work as a psychic and the coming millennium.

NANCY : I guess thet first question is the obvious question: when did you first discover you were psychic?

ALEX: You know when I discovered it, I didn't really know what it was. We didn't even have the word psychic when I was a kid—it existed, but who used it? But I was, you know, a good guesser; I knew what people were thinking and could finish their sentences for them. I could see what was going to happen to them and I'd say, “You know, you better watch out.” And sure enough it would happen. I guess I was probably eight or nine. I was aware then I could do it.

NANCY : Where did you grow up?

ALEX: California , the Bay Area, Oakland .

NANCY : That's right, I knew that. Well, there it's snot so unusual.

ALEX: California is a little advanced (laugh). It was a little bit eccentric, bohemian, kooky, and the other thing I realized was that my family was a little bit screwed up, I used to keep one jump ahead of them…in a dysfunctional family, it's a survival mechanism. I wanted to anticipate what my parents wanted and I used it to ingratiate myself with them, so it was just a part of the family interaction.

NANCY : Interesting. Of course have to leave the family eventually.

ALEX: Yes! People outside said, “Oh yeah, you're kind or weird.” See once I got out and around and when I left home then I realized that this was not what everyone else did. I studied art and music in school and became a professional musician and to be a musician, of course, you have to use your intuition about the music you're playing.

NANCY : Yes, Neptune , the planet of music and psychics.

ALEX: Exactly. So I grew up having to use my intellect, you know, the yang and the yin, the emotional, because the technique of music is so precise but the interpretation of music is imprecise, you know it's felt, it's sensed. So I think I got a training in using my psychic abilities.

NANCY : In music you have to be open, any artist has to be open, so it's the same kind of thing for psychic stuff.

ALEX: Absolutely, and if you can imagine playing in a group of musicians you have to be able to read each other's minds, be in the same place together.

NANCY : It's very exciting to collaborate.

ALEX: Yes. As far as being a professional psychic, that was never my intention. When I came to New York , for my musical career in my early twenties, I met someone who was interested in it and I said I was interested in it, too. We didn't talk about psychic things at first, but astrology, cause I was interested in my horoscope because I was interested in that, you know, what does it all mean.

NANCY : Yes, that's what interested me as well.

ALEX: then I was introduced to this woman, Agatha, and she was a medium, and oh boy, you know a channel and she was a teacher, and she had group sessions and she taught us to do little readings with psychometry (holding objects and getting impressions). Then she'd go into a trance and the guides would come and talk to everyone and that was wild!

NANCY : Yes, the first experience with trance channeling is very intense.

ALEX: Yes, the first time I thought it was amazing because I always wanted to talk with the spirit world. I'd always been sort of visited by spirit entities since I was a child but I never had a chance to talk to them through somebody else.

NANCY : Yes. You can hear voices.

ALEX: Sometimes. More of an impression really. So anyway, Agatha would channel and …I'd be sitting in her class and I'd start to go to sleep…I'd drift off…I would say, “Agatha I don't know what's happening to me.” And she said, “You're going into trance, you're a medium, you're a channel.” Once you start to get into that place, you start to drift into it, it becomes a natural thing. Then, she encouraged me and also she was looking for a protégé and she wanted to teach someone how to do it. So she worked with me. I wasn't willing to give up my musical career to become a medium, though. She insisted, said, “You'll see, you'll see, it's your destiny and blah, blah, blah.”

NANCY : And you were making a living as a musician in those days in New York ?

ALEX: OF a kind. I was freelancing. And surviving. And I though I couldn't depend on income as a psychic. But I had free time and I went to her classes and sure enough I did develop this trance ability and also automatic writing, and at first I didn't know what to do with it, and she said, “You'll see, you'll see.” Then Agatha sent me to Clifford Bias who was then kind of the king of psychics in New York . He was a grand old man. Great guy.

NANCY : I knew Clifford.

ALEX: So she sent me to Bias and Bias gave me a reading and he said, “You'll be doing what I'm doing one day.” And I said, “Well, if I knew what you were doing it would help…” I said, “I don't quite understand what you are doing in fact, but I'm here to find out.” He explained that I was a medium and that the spirits want to talk through me. I said, “Show me where to start.” So between Agatha and Bias, I got some terrific training.

NANCY : I bet!

ALEX: I guess I was the only one of their students who was ready and willing to become their protégé.

NANCY : It's hard to be a medium. A lot of people don't like to give up their ego.

ALEX: At first I was a little concerned but in music I was a performer, I was in the giving role, and used to being in front of an audience, so it wasn't such a big shift--I joke—I say from playing an instrument to being an instrument.

NANCY : (Laugh.) That's good. That's what it is.

ALEX: I always tell a story about Clifford inviting me to talk in his little Sunday church. I had been going there for a long time and he was a great speaker and he always spoke witho;ut notes and he was wonderful. So he said, “I want you to talk in the church on Sunday…” and I asked, “What do I talk about?” And he answered, “Talk about twnty minutes.”

NANCY : So you had somebody to push you.

ALEX: I have to really thank them because they were quite old. That was a very special thing for me and of course I continued in music for quite a while and then all of a sudden, without even looking for clients, clients came to me. I start ed to notice the time I was spending and there was money coming in, in those days I didn't charge very much money, first of all I didn't need much, my rent was low.

NANCY : And you weren't that confident.

ALEX: Yes. So in those days I realized it was time to make a decision. I couldn't travel with a show and devote myself to this, so I decided that if the Universe really wanted me to do this work, it would have to show me for a period of three months that I had enough money coming in the door to pay all my bills and it happened. And I realized that I loved spiritual work, and it felt new and exciting, scary in the sense, you know, where does where does all this come from and can I know that it will be there when I want it to be, or will I one day sit down in the chair and have nothing happen and have to say, “Oops sorry.”

NANCY : Yes, that could be scary.

ALEX: So for a while I lived in a kind of terror, what happens if it doesn't happen, but there was always something there. A great deal of it is what we call routine. It's being used to showing up to do the work and then guides and the Universe provide the rest. Your mind is always prepared to go into that place. Works very well for me, and the result was that I had a combination of things happening. I was channeling and teaching ESP development, and I learned to be very thorough. In fact, I discovered that I liked teaching more than anything else because it combined a number of things, inspiration of course, and a bit of the performer; in a way I was on stage. Channeling I was losing consciousness, I'd wake up, everyone would say, “Oh we had a wonderful session.” But I got less out of the channeling than out of the teaching. I was better known as a channel, people would come and pay me a lot of money to be a channel but I liked the teaching.

NANCY : I was going to ask you about that. Like being a dumb blonde—people only want you for your body.

ALEX: (Laugh.) That's right—there's a little bit of that.

NANCY : I would have a hard time with that.

ALEX: I think some people do with channeling. In the beginning I was conscious, but the more I did it, the less and less I was there and after thousands of hours of channeling…out! It was something I did and I felt very committed to it and my guides affirmed that it was the thing to be doing but it wasn't as rewarding to me as the teaching, which was something I really wanted to do, so I tried to build that up.

NANCY : Plus you can't channel unlimited hours of the day. You have to be back in yourself.

ALEX: People say, “Where do you get your information, how do you do what you do…?” Once I realized that I got my information from an outside source. I know what people want me to tell them and I have to stick to what my sources tell me. I have to be careful that I'm not just being a telepathist, telling people what they want to hear, or trying to please people. I like to make people happy, of course, but I'd rather give them something useful and true. The other thing is that in the teaching part, I realized that even in a reading I was doing a bit of teaching. I would help people get in touch with their own psychic abilities and guides.

NANCY : Yes.

ALEX: I have started some writing projects. I realize that there are a couple of books in me, not just channeled books, but books that Alex wants to write. The synthesis of all my experiences as a student and as a teacher.

NANCY : Your memoirs.

ALEX: In a way. In that is my whole life really, experience in music and art, a life story, so it is my memoirs, you're absolutely right. I've some to some conclusions that can be useful to people who might want to look at their lives in a new and creative way.

NANCY : that's the most important thing. The people that I know who are the most dense never examine their life at all.

ALEX: Yes. There is a new consciousness manifesting on the planet. There is still old consciousness and plenty of it, but the other consciousness is the kind of new thinking, which is new because it doesn't borrow from religion or academics. It doesn't repeat the old errors and suggest that we do things according to ancient traditions. New consciousness is what Jesus asked us to do years ago when he said we should think for ourselves. And explore, ask a lot of questions, and examine everything that you do and say. Ask is this really what you want to do, is this really right for today, don't just do it because others did it. Either we live up to our potential, our possibility, or we don't. I believe in a Universe that has cosmic laws. I can fulfill it. Do it to the fullest and that's what I hope other people will do, too.

NANCY : It's nice to do what you do with your whole self, with conviction.

ALEX: Right, to be a co-creator. So today a lot of people are taking responsibility for creating their own destiny.

NANCY : I'm always teaching this.

ALEX: It's important to be open like Einstein who said, “Every day that I get up I'm prepared to discover that everything I thought was true isn't.” That's new consciousness.

NANCY : That's great.

ALEX: I try to help people get into that. I watch people discover how they can think for themselves. It's exciting. They blossom. It's gratifying for me as a teacher to see the success of my students.

NANCY : Yes, you're helping people fulfill their destiny and to integrate their energy and to best express themselves.

ALEX: Yes. I want to give people things that will help them work on their own. So that way the students are independent and have their own experience. Not that I could write a book to replace a teacher, but it is good to have something written that people can refer to.

NANCY : yes, it's always good to have a text. Can you help people learn who's a good teacher?

ALEX: Sure. Try them. Some people teach you what's what and some people teach you what not to do. Sometimes we meet a teacher who had a lot of followers then turned out to be a crackpot, a fake. Well, after that, you have a frame of reference.

NANCY : Yes. I've known a lot of psychics and I can tell.

ALEX: People always ask me from what [do] I take my inspiration. I read a lot. Poetry. Philosophy. The classics. Fiction, sometimes. Biography. I'm always looking for truth and understanding. One of my most memorable book was a diary of singer Dame Janet Baker who wrote that she felt a performer needed to be as a medium in a séance. And I thought that was like her coming out of the psychic closet as it were and saying that she channels when she sings. It convinces me that channeling is really a part of everyone's life. We can all plug into it and let it raise the quality of our lives.

NANCY : You're very intellectual and observant. That's a nice quality and it balances your sensitivity.

ALEX: Thanks. People ask if it's difficult to read, and I answer, “No not if your eyes are open.” You watch people and you see. People are constantly revealing themselves in an infinite variety of ways. It's not a logical thing, just that they radiate the energy, radiate their thoughts, emotions, body language, how they move, facial expression, they're talking all the time about who they are, whether they're happy, concerned, if they're free.

NANCY : And how much static.

ALEX: Absolutely. The aura is amazing and you cdan feel some people when the door opens, way before they come in the room. Not everybody, some people's aura is collapsed, and I have to touch their hand. Encased in cement. And other people just radiate warm energy.

NANCY : You're doing workshops. What are you teaching now?

ALEX: I teach channeling spirit guides, what they are, how that works. Start as a introduction. Then we go through the basic steps to opening up, energy in the body, guides coming into the body, communications and messages, writing, movement, voice work as an introduction. Then people work on their own for six months to a year. Then there is amore advanced level, which is more about how to channel professionally.

NANCY : And how long are these?

ALEX: I teach this is English and in other languages with help from a simultaneous translator. These are intensive workshops of several full days. Sometimes we do it as a number of evening sessions.

NANCY : I'd think the time helps. Breaks, coming back over several weeks. But intensive is good, too.

ALEX: Also I'm teaching psychic development, psychometry, telepathy, that sort of thing. I'm also teaching a workshop on how to change your karma, changing your way of seeing things and understanding what you're projecting onto others.

NANCY : What else are you teaching?

ALEX: I'm teaching how to interpret your dreams and psychic symbols. Healing with the power of sound. Tones, musical types of sound, not singing, deep breathing and working with vowel sounds. Notes of the scale. It's quite fascinating.

NANCY : In other words, you hit on a certain resonance that the body needs and you focus on that?

ALEX: Yes. Also with color. Then I'm doing one on [getting yourself] together again, about getting the various pieces of yourself together, harmonizing within, and then connecting to soul mates and to your spiritual family. And also how to resolve the conflict of twin soul relationships, people who are too connected.

NANCY : I don't know anything about that…

ALEX: Well, a twin soul is really another piece of yourself that you have not reincarnated in one body because you were so conflicted in the previous lifetime that your soul elements have become disassociated, have split, and they've become separated. And when you incarnate, those pieces of the soul try to find each other and each one tries to manipulate the other to be itself and it's a cat fight. It's an interesting process because it mirrors inner conflict and the roles can be eliminated and harmonization can occur, so that's a powerful workshop.

NANCY: From what I know of reincarnation, we are part of a larger pool, like of soul energy with many qualities and you pick and choose, like at a buffet and all those things become me in this life and then when I'm dead I can re-project who I am when I'm dead but all those qualities go back to that pool which is not Nancy here and then Nancy, Jr. in the next life.

ALEX: There are some ego identifications that go with that.

NANCY : You could have two. Two people born from that soul group—and that's what you're talking about.

ALEX: Absolutely.

NANCY : What else are you teaching?

ALEX: Prosperity. Traditional ceremonies. I also teach creative magic. Relationships and love. I sometimes combine Love and Prosperity since many of the rituals are similar, basic magic exercises. I do a lot of work in Europe now, Scandinavia . I go where there is a good organizer, a networker, because that takes work, and then I can teach the class.

NANCY : So if someone could get a group together for you, you'd go there?

ALEX: Sure. I'm always open to suggestion. I seem to spend nearly half the year abroad.

NANCY : It sounds to me like you're going to do two books, your memoirs and a textbook.

ALEX: Yes, and then maybe I will publish transcripts of my channeling sessions.

NANCY : Yes, you channel many celebrated entities and people will want to read about what they had to say. It seems to me that you're now in this transition point in your life, you're about to turn a corner, write your book. Then what? What do you envision next?

ALEX: There's always somewhere I want to see, something to learn, someone to meet. No retirement certainly.

NANCY : No I didn't mean your retirement. It seems to me that your work is going to take another turn.

ALEX: Yes. I may want to do more creative things. To stay home more. I have to work all this out. I'm not clear on this yet. I know it's coming, but I don't know exactly how it will unfold.

NANCY : Are you going to continue doing readings?

ALEX: Oh, sure, I like that, always good to help people. A little bit of everything, variety, I like to do it all.