Attorney grills JZ Knight about ex-student

OLYMPIA — Yelm channeler JZ Knight testified Tuesday in court that she was so "disturbed" and "bothered" about reports that Rainier spiritual teacher Whitewind Weaver had "moved next door, taken my school's teachings, changed them around a little and then started teaching them" that she authorized a lawsuit against her.

"It wasn't anything I wanted to do," Knight, founder of the Ramtha School of Enlightenment, said during the second day of a civil jury trial in Thurston County Superior Court. "We usually tend to assume people are impeccable."

But Weaver's attorney, Robert Kilborne of San Diego, grilled Knight about how the channeler could have taken such strong legal action when Weaver had been so supportive of her and the school.

Weaver, founder of Lacey-based Art of Life Coaching Inc., sent a letter to her students in Oregon telling them she was moving to Washington to study at the Ramtha school, urged the students to do the same, and enrolled in more than $8,000 worth of classes, Kilborne said.

"If you were aware of all the facts, would you have still done what you did?" Kilborne asked Knight during intense cross-examination. "Why couldn't you have just called her (Weaver)?"

Knight, self-proclaimed channel of a 35,000-year-old male spirit warrior entity Ramtha, was the second witness in her case accusing Weaver of breach of contract in connection with a seminar Weaver taught in August 2006. Knight claims the seminar violated terms of a registration form Weaver signed that says teachings at the Ramtha school are for the students' personal use only and cannot be disseminated or taught for commercial gain.

Weaver's attorneys deny the allegations.

Seattle attorney David Spellman, representing Weaver, pummeled school administrator Mike Wright during cross-examination in an effort to establish that the registration form was inconsistent from year-to-year and lacked specifics. Spellman tried, in particular, to show that the teachings seen by Knight as appropriated by Weaver could easily be items of public domain.

Knight's attorneys claim Weaver copied seven school processes, including Fieldwork, an exercise designed to improve the ability to focus attention and intuition by finding a symbolic card on a fence while blindfolded.

"Is 'Pin the Tail on the Donkey' focused attention?" Spellman asked Wright.

"It could be," Wright replied.

"So, then is it Fieldwork?" Spellman said.

"No, it's 'Pin the Tail on the Donkey,' " Wright said.

Knight, under direct examination by Tacoma attorney Rick Creatura, told the jury the fabled story of how Ramtha first appeared to her in 1977 on a Sunday afternoon in her kitchen in Tacoma. In visits during the ensuing years, Ramtha used Knight's body to speak at seminars, in books and on tapes around the world.

"He revealed that his plan was to teach people that God was within them and that every human being was divine," she said.

Kilborne, on cross-examination, was not impressed.

"Isn't it the flat truth that there is no Ramtha?" he asked.

"That is incorrect," said Knight, who hosted a conference of scientists at her school to investigate the Ramtha phenomenon. "And science proved in 1997 that Ramtha was not me."

The trial is expected to last through Thursday.

Keri Brenner covers Thurston County for The Olympian. She can be reached at 360-754-5435 or kbrenner@theolympian.com.