Who Is Bashar? An Introduction to the Channeled Teachings
If you've spent much time exploring channeling, conscious creation, extraterrestrial consciousness, or the nature of reality, there's a good chance you've come across the name Bashar.
Bashar is the name given to a consciousness channeled by Darryl Anka, who has been publicly sharing the Bashar material since the 1980s. According to Anka and the official Bashar teachings, Bashar is an extraterrestrial being from a civilization existing in our future who communicates telepathically through Anka.
Whether you believe Bashar is literally an extraterrestrial consciousness, another aspect of Anka's consciousness, or something else entirely is ultimately up to you. In fact, Anka himself has said that people don't have to believe Bashar is an extraterrestrial being; what matters to him is whether the information is useful and helps people make positive changes in their lives.
And perhaps that's a good place to begin.
How Darryl Anka Began Channeling Bashar
Anka's story began long before he became a channeler. According to his account, in 1973 he witnessed unidentified triangular craft on two separate occasions within the same week, experiences that sparked his interest in UFOs, psychic phenomena, spirituality, and eventually channeling.
About ten years later, Anka joined a channeling class—not because he intended to become a channeler, but because he wanted to understand how the process worked. During the course, he says he received a telepathic communication from a consciousness he came to know as Bashar, and he began publicly channeling in 1983.
Interestingly, Anka says he initially questioned the experience himself. He wondered whether he might be hallucinating or accessing some unexplored part of his own consciousness, but ultimately decided that if the information was constructive and useful, it was worth exploring regardless of its source.
I appreciate that perspective because it leaves room for curiosity without requiring blind belief.
What Does Bashar Teach?
Although Bashar speaks about extraterrestrials, parallel realities, consciousness, metaphysics, life after death, spiritual transformation, and many other fascinating subjects, much of the core teaching is surprisingly practical. It comes back again and again to knowing yourself, examining your beliefs, living in the present, making conscious choices, and becoming more fully who you truly are.
One of Bashar's central ideas is that our beliefs, emotions, and actions influence the reality we experience. Rather than seeing ourselves simply as passive participants in life, the teachings encourage us to become aware of the beliefs through which we're interpreting our experiences and to recognize that we have choices about how we respond.
If you're familiar with conscious creation, you will probably recognize quite a bit of common ground.
Follow Your Highest Excitement
Perhaps Bashar's best-known teaching is what is commonly called the Follow Your Excitement Formula.
The basic idea is to notice which option available to you contains the greatest excitement, passion, curiosity, or aliveness and take action on it to the best of your ability. Then continue following what feels most exciting as new possibilities appear—without insisting that your actions must produce a particular outcome.
That last part is important.
Following your excitement isn't necessarily about chasing whatever feels good in the moment or assuming that every exciting idea will turn into exactly what you imagine. Bashar teaches that the thing that excites you may simply be leading you toward the next step, connection, realization, or opportunity.
In other words, you follow the energy and allow the path to reveal itself.
Your Beliefs Shape Your Experience
Another major theme throughout Bashar's teachings is the power of belief.
We don't simply experience reality, according to this perspective; we experience reality through the beliefs, definitions, expectations, and meanings we bring to it. Two people can experience the same situation very differently because they're interpreting it through completely different belief systems.
This is where the teachings become particularly useful for conscious creators. Instead of only asking, How do I change what's happening? you begin asking, What would I have to believe in order to be experiencing this the way I am?
That question can open an entirely different doorway.
You Are Always Free to Choose
Free will and self-empowerment are also central to the Bashar material. The official teachings emphasize that we always have freedom of choice and that one of the highest purposes of life is to be ourselves as fully as possible.
That doesn't mean controlling every circumstance or forcing life to unfold according to our plans. It means becoming more conscious of the state of being, beliefs, choices, and actions we're bringing into the experience.
To me, this is one of the most empowering aspects of the teachings. The focus continually comes back to you—your beliefs, your choices, your alignment, and your relationship with yourself.
Parallel Realities and the Present Moment
One of the more mind-bending aspects of Bashar's teachings involves parallel realities.
Bashar describes reality as consisting of countless parallel versions and teaches that what we experience as movement through time is related to shifts between different versions of reality. The teachings also emphasize that past and future are experienced from the present and that the present moment is where our creative power exists.
You don't have to fully embrace the metaphysics of parallel realities to find something useful in the underlying idea. Every moment gives us another opportunity to choose who we are going to be now rather than allowing our past to determine our future.
What Are “Permission Slips”?
Another phrase you'll hear frequently in the Bashar material is permission slip.
A permission slip is essentially a tool, ritual, technique, practice, or belief that helps you give yourself permission to enter a different state of being. Meditation, visualization, affirmations, crystals, spiritual practices, and countless other methods can function this way.
The power, from this perspective, isn't necessarily contained in the tool itself. The tool helps you access something already available within you.
I particularly like this concept because it allows us to use spiritual tools without giving our power away to them.
You Don't Have to Believe Everything
As with any channeled material, I believe discernment matters.
You don't have to accept every statement Bashar makes simply because it is presented as channeled information. You can listen, explore, experiment with the ideas that resonate, question what doesn't, and see what actually proves useful in your own life.
Anka's own position leaves room for exactly that. He acknowledges that he cannot prove Bashar's existence and is comfortable with people viewing the information as potentially coming from another part of his own consciousness instead.
That leaves us free to explore without having to decide exactly what we believe first.
Why Bashar's Teachings Continue to Resonate
After more than four decades of channeling, the Bashar material has developed an extensive body of teachings covering everything from personal transformation and conscious creation to extraterrestrial contact and the nature of existence.
But underneath all of those subjects is a surprisingly simple message: know yourself, examine what you believe, follow what brings you alive, act with integrity, release your insistence on how things must unfold, and allow yourself to become more fully who you really are.
Perhaps that is why the teachings have continued to resonate with so many people.
You don't have to believe that Bashar is an extraterrestrial being from the future to explore the ideas. You don't even have to call the information channeling.
You can simply ask: Does this help me understand myself more deeply? Does it help me live with greater freedom, joy, awareness, and alignment?
And then, as always, you get to decide what feels true for you.