THE RISE OF A DICTATOR

 

 

By Gerald B. Bryan

 

During the spring and summer of 1935, while yet in California, the Ballard metaphysical machine made good progress, as was to be expected in a land where the milk and honey of strange doctrine flows so freely. From the early and more simple presentation of the Saint Germain teachings the movement gradually took the form of a complicated ritualism, wherein decrees and taboos were rigorously enunciated by a feminine dictator.

 

At first this authoritative control over lives of its members was not so apparent. The individual students and class leaders were allowed a certain freedom of thought and action, but this personal liberty the leaders no doubt found to be a weakness which worked against their long cherished personal ambitions.

 

Perhaps, too, a certain incident, which will now be related, brought strongly to their attention the need for central control over their rising kingdom of “I AM” worshipers. Then again, doubtless, they had in mind the “New Government” Saint Germain had promised to set up in his beloved America with an “Ascended Master” on the throne at the White House. All this of course would require central control and dictatorship, not individual freedom.

 

Expanding audiences in Los Angeles necessitated the Ballards on three successive occasions to seek larger halls, until “Saint Germain” decided that the large Shrine Civic Auditorium, seating over six thousand persons, was the place for his prospering Messengers who at last were coming into their own. A ten-day class was scheduled there in August of 1935, which closed in what was designated as “a blaze of glory.” Since then, this auditorium which has been headquarters for great national conventions of Shriners, has also been “Convention Headquarters” for I AM-ers, attracting the faithful in large numbers at least twice a year from all parts of the country.

 

This “Shrine” meeting was the eighth large class held on the Pacific Coast during the Ballards’ first surprising circuit. They had lectured also in San Francisco, Seattle, Pasadena, Long Beach, San Diego, and were flushed with victory, money, and Messianic fervor. Then their show moved eastward for engagements in Kansas City, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington.

 

It is interesting to note that these two people and their son Donald arrived in Los Angeles in a none-too-prosperous condition in an unpretentious car, but when they left, they zoomed away in a couple of flashy cream-colored Chryslers. Following in their wake were a number of the beloved students, seeking through a sort of psychic induction process to partake of the radiance of the “Ascended Masters.”

 

While the Messengers were absent, the work on the Pacific coast was to be organized by a gentleman whom Saint Germain appointed as head of a “Sevenfold Committee.” But despite the fact that these seven individuals had been personally selected and approved by the unerring Saint Germain himself, there was much dissension and argument among the members of this committee as to how the work should be carried on during the Messengers’ absence. It seems that Saint Germain himself was not very certain just how it should be done.

 

The mushroom growth of numerous “I AM Classes” and the sudden ascension into power of many leaders —each a little uncertain what the “I AM” was all about— and each no doubt with certain personal ambitions of his own, brought on a condition of Ascended Master affairs which the decrees of the students could not correct nor the imagined presence of the great “Saint Germain” straighten out.

 

It seemed for a while as if the whole movement on the Pacific Coast was due to go up in smoke from so much friction of personal dissension among the members of the divinely appointed “Sevenfold Committee.”

 

Then it was that Edna Ballard displayed her, as yet, untried capacity for autocratic leadership and domination over her “I AM” family. Dispatching one of her characteristic “Saint Germain signed letters” to the head of the Sevenfold Committee, this surprised gentleman was summarily dismissed without a hearing and the cosmically-approved septenary forthwith dissolved.

 

Suspicious, too, that their own manager, who was then with them in the east, had gotten under the influence of another teaching and was somehow involved in the disturbed Los Angeles happenings, another “Saint Germain letter” was handed to this gentleman which caused him to resign as their second officially appointed “Associate Director.”

 

Then canceling some of their eastern engagements, the Ballards hastened to the scene of the Los Angeles dissension to straighten out a condition which Saint Germain could not handle from the psychic plane —or, as the credulous believe— from the Ascended Masters’ “Seventh Octave of Light.”

 

Appearing more or less unexpectedly at a meeting of prominent students and class leaders at the Sindelar Studios, the Ballards electrified their audience by the power and authority with which they spoke.

 

Edna in particular rose to the height of a feminine dictator. In characteristic pose and eloquence she flayed the discharged head of Saint Germain’s “Sevenfold Committee,” impugning him of base motives, and by threat and intimidation warned those within reach of her voice what terrible things would happen if they did not follow the instructions of the Ascended Masters as given by their three and only “Accredited Messengers.”

 

“The great Law” she said, “would no longer protect those who were disobedient, and any violation would be quickly punished —  and be felt in the next two or three embodiments.”

 

She caused the distribution of the two assertedly dictated “Saint Germain letters” among the class leaders to be read to their classes to further show that the Ascended Masters really meant business. The letter sent through the U.S. Mails to the head of the Sevenfold Committee in Los Angeles is reproduced here in its entirety, with the exception that all personal names are left out. “Saint Germain” is responsible for the grammatical construction, misspelled, and misused words.

 

Washington, D.C. November 26, 1935

 

You are now dismissed from any further privilege or authority to serve the Messengers, Myself, or any other of the Ascended Masters in this embodiment.

 

To willingly try to deceive earnest students seeking their freedom in the Light is unpardonable. You have made yourself a claw of the sinister force in coming into the association [naming two leaders of two other movements]. My pity goes out to you and [naming their own manager], for your complete freedom for both of you was at hand when the Messengers were in Long Beach. There was so much good in both of you and now to allow it to be so distorted as has been done. Too late will you cry out in agony for the mistake you have made.

 

Your earth span is very short. Make peace with your God and call on the Law of Forgiveness while there is yet time, less you deprive yourself of opportunity in the next embodiment. Do not try to bluff such deception through any longer, less you do this thing again in the next two embodiments.

 

When you willingly put yourself under the red Light, you cut off the White Light.

 

My Love and hope goes out to you, that you may yet face about and calling on the Law of Forgiveness, call sufficient assistance to cut you free of this sinister claw.

 

I AM the making this one last attempt to help you.

 

Choose. The All-seeing Eye of God is upon you.

 

SAINT GERMAIN.

 

 

This interesting little “Ascended Master” document was sent from their hotel in Washington, D.C., with the Ballard name on the envelope. No doubt the fact of their being in the National Capitol, which was Saint Germain’s field of political operations in his efforts to bring about his “New Government,” gave these people an added sense of dictatorial power — and a legal protection from sending a threatening letter through the mails.

 

Just two months before, the Ballards had written this same gentleman that for his wonderful service to the “Light,” he would be “forever blessed,” and that they and “Saint Germain: knew the “motive in his heart” was as “pure and true as a diamond.”

 

This later letter from “Saint Germain,” with its threat, “Your earth span is very short,” was surely not intended to “bless” this gentleman quite “forever.” Neither was the additional threat, “Too late will you cry out in agony,” intended to be a helpful morning thought.

 

The I AM-er’s god known as “Saint Germain” is a revengeful god, visiting his wrath upon his errant ones not only in this present embodiment, but even unto, as he says in his letter, the “next two embodiments!”

 

The prophecy —if such it can be called— of this gentleman’s early death was made over four years ago, but unfortunately for Saint Germain’s prowess as a soothsayer, the gentleman in question is still very much alive.

 

The effect of these threats, however, on the general mass of followers, was all that could be desired. The scattered group leaders, some of whom had been teaching unauthorized doctrines not countenanced by the Accredited Messengers or who had otherwise been disobedient, were so impressed by the power and authority of the Ascended Masters as displayed by Edna Ballard and the Saint Germain letter that they very readily acquiesced this assumption of divine authority. Indeed most of them feared to do otherwise, and were glad to have this new papal protection from all the terrible things that would happen to those who disobeyed. Very few troubled themselves about really finding out what crime these two individuals had committed to deserve such Ascended Master wrath. It seems that they had merely been guilty of doing a little thinking on their own, and along with this forbidden sin they had presumed to show some interest in a similar teaching. Such a thing, of course, was not to be countenanced in a dictatorship. In addition to this, the Ballards seized upon their “sin” as an opportunity to make them the goats, as it were, of this Los Angeles upheaval — an occasion for the dictators to demonstrate a new and more dominant assertion of their papal power.

 

The “humble Messengers” of Saint Germain made the most of their opportunity, and since that early crisis in California their control has become more and more dominant and their movement increasingly autocratic, intolerant, belligerent, and tyrannical.

 

Thus, Guy and Edna Ballard’s long cherished ambitions for gold and power were at last about to be realized, even though they had sometimes to ride roughshod over those who had faithfully served them. A dictator cannot be squeamish about friendship, particularly when that friendship does not sub-serve certain ends. And so through this Los Angeles incident Edna Lotus Ray King Ballard, Priestess of the Mighty I AM movement, rose to new heights of dictatorship and achieved in part her long cherished ambition to be ruler over the lives of many.

 

 

 

(Psychic Dictatorship in America, chapter 5)