Gerald B. Bryan was an I AM
Student in the 1930s. He became concerned about the Ballards as he started to
discern their inconsistencies, their arrogant manner in dismissing criticism,
and the teaching's destructive effects on many followers. During the 1930s, he
wrote a series of pamphlets revealing these problems, which he published as a
book in 1940 titled “Psychic Dictatorship in America”.
Copyright on Bryan's book has
entered the public domain, so you can download the book in pdf format here, or read online a significant
excerpt here.
This book tells the fascinating
story of the I AM movement. The I AM group claimed it had over one million
members. Psychic Dictatorship in America traces the history of the I AM group,
leaders, beliefs, legal problems, and their members.
Anecdote
When Gerald Bryan published
booklets questioning the I AM Movement, the Ballards told students to go and
burn them. This was a stupid thing to do, not something one would expect from
an all knowing Ascended Master or their embodied Messiah.
The students had to go and buy
the books to burn them. Naturally, Bryan and the bookshops profited from this
and the printing presses kept rolling. Eventually, the Ballards had to change
their ill conceived, bad tempered strategy of stupidity, and tell their
automaton followers to stop buying the books.
Publisher’s Note
Just before this book came off
the press the amazing cult which it exposes was indicted by the Federal Grand
Jury at Los Angeles on charges of fraudulent use of the mails. We quote below
excerpts from Associated Press Dispatch of July 24, 1940:
"A federal grand jury today indicted 24 leaders of the "I
AM" Foundation, a nationwide movement reported to have attracted a million
converts, on charges of fraudulent use of the mails
"Testimony by postal inspectors resulted in 16 counts of misuse of
the mails and one count of conspiracy...
"Norman Neukom, assistant United States attorney who presented the
case to the grand jury, said the "I AM" cultists had collected close
to $3,000,000 since the movement's inception in 1930."
Psychic Dictatorship in America reveals
heretofore unpublished and startling facts about this subversive cult.
Preface
This is a history and psychological
study of one of America’s most astounding cults. An incredible story of the
strangest dictatorship now current in our land.
It recounts how an unseen,
psychic potentate dominates the minds and actions of thousands of patriotic American
citizens, who, today, meet in closed, secret study-groups in most of the cities
throughout the United States.
It relates how two self-styled “Accredited
Messengers” of invisible “Masters” rose from obscurity to fame and fortune by bringing
forth a new Messiah — allegedly an actual historical character who had
considerable political influence in Europe during the middle of the 18th century.
But this book is intended to be more
than just an interesting history of a curious faith, or recital of an ever-recurring
Messianic complex. It is a study of strange psychological forces revealed mainly
through the history of a single subversive cult, but which have their influence
also on other movements operating in America today.
It shows, in these days when panaceas
parade the land and people reach out for straws to save themselves, how
American ideals of freedom and independence are being supplanted by a slavish
dependence upon odd sorts of deliverances. And oddest perhaps of all current movements,
and loaded with special brands of psychological and political dynamite, is the
cult this book exposes.
Similar movements, no doubt, have
occurred in the past, but none of them has shown the sheer audacity and careless
dealing with the truth as the one whose incredible and fantastic history is here
recorded — a recital which serves so well to typify, in some respects, the
peculiar history of the time through which America today is passing.
The author hopes that its amazing
story will serve to reveal subversive psychological influences which are
producing widespread mental confusion in the United States, from which some form
of political despotism may sprout and jeopardize constitutional principles of
Freedom and Liberty upon which this nation is founded.
It is his hope, too, that such a
history and study will be an example and warning should, now or at any future
time, other subversive movements, using similar psychological methods of regimentating
the minds of credulous people, get underway in America.
To those who after reading this book
find sad disillusionment concerning a movement which so long has held their
earnest and devoted allegiance, the author can only express the wish to see them
happily using their aspirations and talents elsewhere in God’s great kingdom.
With many, no doubt, there will be felt a glad release, a sense of freedom to be
cut loose from servile obedience to pretended “Masters,” to be freed from the hypnotic
domination of a “Psychic Dictatorship.”
Gerald B. Bryan
Los Angeles, California. July, 1940.
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