By Gerald B. Bryan
Along the boulevard the crowd gathers in front of the
well-lighted building.
“This must be the place,” you say to yourself, falling in
line with others hurrying along the street.
A friend has been urging you to attend, and last night’s
radio broadcast has further intrigued your interest. So here you are.
It is early, but already nearby parking lots are filled.
Nicely dressed men and women exchange greetings as they hurry to get into the
meeting, but some are rather curiously attired. A woman swishes by in a long
white gown which trails the ground. Another goes by in flaming violet. One in
golden yellow. A wheel chair bearing a cripple is being pushed through one of
the entrances.
“Registration cards at window to the right!” someone
announces. Soon, with one in your hand, you edge through the crowd and are in
the brilliantly lighted auditorium.
A courteous white-robed attendant greets you with a
smile, presenting you with a colorful song book and a little envelope marked “I
AM Love Gift.”
“God bless you,” she says.
Taken a bit by surprise, you return the greeting. A male
usher, dressed nattily in a white suit, conducts you officiously down the
aisle.
Ensconced in a comfortable seat and still holding on to
the little love gift envelope and the peach-colored song book, you look around.
The auditorium already is well filled and presents a
colorful effect with its gathering of the faithful in their habiliments of pinks
and purples and yellows and other shades and hues of color. The women are in
predominance, but the men, mostly dressed in white, are far from being
inconspicuous. Good-looking male ushers, all in dressy white, stand at
attention at certain points in the aisles, or politely conduct the incoming
streams of people to their seats.
You hear music and sit back relaxed, waiting for the
lecture to begin. But there seems to be no hurry about it. Like a gala event,
the crowds have assembled long before the scheduled appearance of the speakers.
A peace settles over you, but not the sleepy kind. The
atmosphere around you is vibrant with expectancy.
The stage is banked with gorgeous flowers. You can almost
imagine the smell of their fragrance. Makes you think of the last wedding or
funeral you attended. Yet the scene before you is different from either.
A forest of pine trees at the extreme ends of the stage
lures you into dreamy recollections Colored lights play between the trees.
Reminds you of Christmas.
In the center of the stage is a large colorful chart of
two human figures, one placed above the other. The upper figure, resplendent in
its glory of many colors, has radiating streamers like a miniature borealis.
The lower one is less spectacular perhaps, and is bathed in a constant flow of
radiations which stream up from the feet. This you later learn is the “Violet
Consuming Flame,” a purifying and destroying element. Oddly enough, this human
figure and its restless cloud of violet are enclosed in a white outline
resembling a milk bottle.
The complete ensemble —the heavenly figure above and the
more human one below— you later learn is the “Chart of the Presence.” An
absolute essential in this cult’s system of salvation.
Shrouded in a bower of flowers to your left, by the side
of the central chart, is an easel and picture. This you make out is the
portrait of Jesus. A mild-visaged creation, with marcel-waved hair and beard.
To your right on the other side of the chart is a
companion picture, also in its bower of flowers. A golden bearded and mustached
gentleman with piercing eyes. This you soon learn is the “exact likeness” of
the great “Ascended Master Saint Germain.”
This bearded master with peculiar eyes seems to exert a
strange fascination. You turn to the mild Jesus on your left. And now your gaze
shifts to and fro like a pendulum between the two portraits. A queer feeling
settles over you.
To break it, you look at the central chart with its two
human figures and radiating streamers. Your eyes now travel perpendicularly up
from the lower figure to the upper one, and back again. Again that peculiar
feeling. You wonder about it.
The sudden appearance of someone on the stage interrupts
your contemplations.
It is a man dressed in dazzling white. Advancing toward
the footlights, he holds up his hands in greeting. He is now at the microphone
radiating his love and blessings. You settle back in your seat again, for he is
but an announcer, not the prime mover of the show.
It is a first night, and there is much exchange of
greetings. He holds up telegrams from other cities in the United States. There
are greetings from Canada, and even a cable-gram. He reads some of them. They
all send love and blessings to the new class which has just started. The
announcer goes on to say that marvelous happenings took place at the class just
closed in the last city visited. But this one, he says, is simply to be
“Transcendent!”
“Blessed Saint Germain has promised it,” he adds, lifting
his eyes heavenward with awe and reverence. And a hush settles over the
audience.
Not knowing just where to look for Saint Germain’s
apparition, your eyes travel to his bearded and mustached portrait on the stage
to you right. His eyes hold your attention. With an effort you switch to the
portrait of Jesus, and you realize with a start that so far everything has
centered around the “Mighty Master Saint Germain.” You cannot help but wonder
at it.
Specific references are now being made to the “I AM Love
Gift Boxes” located at the rear of the auditorium. You find later that they are
very conveniently and advantageously placed for the reception of the little
“Love Gift” envelope you hold in your hand. “Dear ones!” says the announcer
earnestly. “Blessed Mr. and Mrs. Ballard do not need these offerings; they are
merely for you beloved students to ‘open up channels’ for blessings from the
great Ascended Masters.”
The eyes of the announcer again look heavenward as though
showers of blessings had already accompanied this reference to the unseen
“Masters.”
“Unless you give freely,” he adds, still very earnestly,
“you cannot receive.” Then very emphatically, “That is the Ascended Master’s
law of life!”
The smooth-voiced announcer still runs on in his talk as
though playing for time. You wonder when the scheduled lecturers will appear on
the stage. There seems to be no hurry about it so far as the announcer is
concerned. But you now want ever so much to see and hear the “Accredited
Messengers of the Great Ascended Master Saint Germain” — which you remember was
the way the lecturers were referred to over the radio.
References are now being made to the need of working and
“decreeing” for the United States of America and the Constitution.
“We must save America!” says the announcer. You learn
there are “vicious forces” within her borders and without. These are all to be
destroyed! They are to be “blasted” from the face of the earth by the “decrees”
of the students. Saint Germain, the mighty “Cosmic Master,” has commanded it!
Like other movements which have as their credo the
“saving of America,” the flag of the American republic is displayed prominently
on the stage. But you notice there are two large flags on the stage instead of
the customary one. You think Saint Germain’s Americanism leans a little
backward here. Also, little American flags are displayed prominently on the
lapels and white dresses of men and women in the audience. The man on the stage
has his little flag too. Everywhere there seems to be flags —little stripes of
red and white and rectangles of blue— adding more color and sentiment to a gala
event.
But you soon learn to your surprise that the color red is
simply intolerable to Saint Germain and his “Accredited Messengers.” It is the
color of the communists and all that is vicious, says the announcer. “You
students should not wear it... No Ascended Master ever uses it.” The only
exception seems to be the flag of our country.
“Some day, however,” the announcer quotes Saint Germain
as saying, “when the Ascended Masters take charge of the affairs of this
country, there will be gold stripes instead of red ones in the flag of the new
American republic!”
“This is not a religion,” the announcer adds, “but a
patriotic movement.”
He goes on to extol the “marvelous” patriotic work of the
“Minute Men of Saint Germain.” This you learn is a men’s patriotic organization
within the parent body which has dedicated itself to fly to the rescue of
America, as did the minute men of 1776.
You learn also of the activities of the “Daughters of
Light,” a sort of ladies auxiliary, with similar patriotic aims and purposes.
The audience you observe is accepting all this in perfect peace and
contentment. They evidently have heard it many times before, and it is easy for
them and the announcer to go through it again. Tolerant of the easy and lulling
voice of the announcer, they nevertheless appear to be expectantly waiting,
waiting for something to happen.
You, too, sit back complacently; but you do wonder about
such things as the gold stripes in the new American flag — and just when it
will be that the “Ascended Masters” will take over the affairs of the country.
In the midst of thinking about all of this, suddenly
there is a resounding note on the pipe organ and a trumpet sounds from back
stage. The audience is rising to its feet almost in a body. Rather uncertain
what to do, you rise also. There seems to be nothing else to do. You don’t want
to be stared at.
Sweeping forward on the stage come the three individuals
responsible for all this fanfare. The great moment is here!
A woman, blond, radiant, and sparkling with jewels,
dressed as for the opera, takes the center of the stage and showers the
audience with her love.
A gray-haired man of about sixty attired in a white
tuxedo, smiles beatifically at the audience and bows with her. Diamonds flash
from his hands and other parts of his person.
A youth, dressed also in white, the son of this startling
couple, stands at a sort of diffident attention on the stage while all this is
going on. He seems for the moment not to be a part of the performance.
With the electric appearance of Saint Germain’s
“Accredited Messengers” on the stage all is changed. The audience comes to
life. It is galvanized into action. Soon, led by this gorgeously-gowned,
throaty-voiced blond woman, who has taken the center of the stage, “decrees”
are being shouted in unison throughout the crowded auditorium.
Staccato-like sentences are hurled into the atmosphere. .
. . Hands are raised. Thoughts are sent
sizzling through the auditorium. One can imagine them going like projectiles to
their destination.
There is perfect timing and rhythm in the “hurling forth”
of these decrees. Certain it is that these people are in deadly earnest. The
spirit of the mob prevails, orderly, but easily recognizable for what it is —mass
hypnosis— concentrated and directed by one mind, one power, one overweening
personality, psychic and unreasoning in its effect.
And so amidst applause, blessings, and “decrees,” another
“Mighty I AM” class is now well under way. It will run for ten full days, or
perhaps seventeen, both afternoon and evening, and part of it will be broadcast
to listening thousands beyond the big city.
The author leaves the reader with this picture, and will
pass on to the moving series of events that led up to such an assemblage, which
will explain, he hopes, the idolatrous devotion of the large and applauding
audience for these people, and why so many patriotic Americans have embraced so
earnestly and so vociferously the strange cult of the “Mighty I AM.”*
 |
*The author hopes that the reader will bear in mind that
any
criticism of the so-called “Mighty I AM” instruction of
Guy and Edna Ballard is directed at this cult’s false conception and misuse of
the “I AM” philosophy and not at the “I AM” itself, which, to many, is a symbol
of the “Higher Self,” the God Within. It is regrettable that so often a
legitimate philosophy us made to bear the burden of illegitimate use.
(Psychic Dictatorship in America, chapter 1)
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