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ОглавлениеCHAPTER II
Teachings and Prophecies from Outer Space
The first contact between a prophet and the source of his revelation is likely to be marked by confusion and astonishment, not to say shock. So it was with Mrs. Marian Keech, who awoke near dawn one morning in the early winter about a year before the events with which we are concerned. “I felt a kind of tingling or numbness in my arm, and my whole arm felt warm right up to the shoulder,” she once remarked later, in describing the incident. “I had the feeling that someone was trying to get my attention. Without knowing why, I picked up a pencil and a pad that were lying on the table near my bed. My hand began to write in another handwriting. I looked at the handwriting and it was strangely familiar, but I knew it was not my own. I realized that somebody else was using my hand, and I said: ‘Will you identify yourself?’ And they did. I was much surprised to find that it was my father, who had passed away.”
Although it was her most impressive experience with psychic phenomena, the message from her father was by no means the first contact Mrs. Keech had had with the occult, either as an interested student or as a participant. At least fifteen years earlier, while living in New York, she had been invited by an Indian acquaintance to attend a lecture on theosophy. She was fascinated by what she heard, and deeply impressed with the profundity of the lecturer’s message. She attended several lectures on theosophy and, after each, picked up a mimeographed copy of the talk to study it more carefully.
In the years following her exposure to theosophy, Mrs. Keech’s deep strain of curiosity about the cosmos and about her own nature led her to explore a variety of sources of enlightenment. She read the works of Godfré Ray King (Guy Ballard), the founder of the I AM movement, and the idea that one might “walk in the light” of superior knowledge was communicated to her. During a lengthy convalescence she became absorbed in Oahspe, subtitled “A Kosmon Bible.” The Reverend John Ballou Newbrough, who held the first copyright on Oahspe, disclaimed authorship in the ordinary sense when he asserted that the contents of the book were given to him by direct revelation; he served merely as the scribe of higher forces. Oahspe challenges the orthodox Christian account of human downfall by setting forth a story of the division of mankind into two forces: the “Faithists,” who forswore war, dissipation, and drunkenness and followed God’s commandments; and the “Uzians,” signifying destroyers.
Besides her quest for cosmic knowledge, Mrs. Keech sought insight into herself. She joined a dianetics group and was “cleared” by an auditor and friend who later took up residence in Mrs. Keech’s home. Discussing this experience later, she remarked: “I prefer to call it Scientology, which is the art and science of taking someone back as far in his life as he can go. My friends have helped me take myself back to the period of my birth — in fact, even before my birth. I can remember the day I was conceived.” On another occasion, Mrs. Keech explained that everyone knew his true identity when he was born, but, in growing up, lost this clear knowledge and, thus, his true self. One of the chief advances in Scientology, she felt, was that it not only made possible an understanding of the circumstances of an individual’s conception and birth, but also gave access to knowledge of one’s identity in earlier incarnations.
At about the same time that she began to receive messages from nonterrestrial sources, Mrs. Keech had become actively interested in one of the major popular mysteries of our time — flying saucers. Her interest led her to attend one or more lectures on the subject by an expert on saucers who expounded the belief that these objects did indeed transport visitors from outer space or other planets. The connection between extraterrestrial messages and such visitors was probably immediately apparent to Mrs. Keech.
With this background of esoteric knowledge, Mrs. Keech took her first active step into the occult when she transcribed her father’s message. Like many beginnings, it was not especially impressive. It was a letter from her father to her mother giving some instructions to the latter for planting flowers that spring. There was a certain amount of information about her father’s state of spiritual health, and a brief, and rather unclear, description of his present surroundings and his “way of life” in “the astral.” Un-clarity and incoherence were characteristic of this first message as well as of several of the immediately subsequent ones. They were written haltingly and contained many indecipherable words and perplexing neologisms. Mrs. Keech concluded that the fault lay at least partially in her, and set herself the task of developing, through concentration, through prayers for help and guidance, and through constant, obedient practice, a higher level of skill in transcribing the messages from the spiritual realm.
She soon learned that the world was populated with scoffers and unbelievers. At her father’s command she had transmitted his first message to her mother, who answered by reprimanding her and ordering her to stop such nonsense or, at least, to stop inflicting it upon her living parent. Disheartened, but undeterred by this rebuff, Mrs. Keech continued to believe in her newly developed ability. She accustomed herself to sit each day for a message, or a lesson, and spent many hours in bitter frustration, often plagued by doubt, as she tried to grasp the meaning of the words and phrases her pencil wrote. On some days there were no messages at all.
As she struggled, she gradually became aware that other beings or intelligences were trying to “get through to” her. “It occurred to me,” she subsequently said, “that if my father could use my hand, Higher Forces could use my hand. I have always been interested in my fellow men and I have always wanted to be of service to mankind. I don’t mind telling you I prayed very diligently that I would not fall into the wrong hands.” During this early phase of message writing, Mrs. Keech apparently came to fear that she would “fall into the hands” of beings located in “the astral.” She explained that the astral is overflowing with spirits who are desperate for communication with those left behind, and whose insistent clamor can confuse or obliterate the intelligence available from higher beings, who dwell at higher (i.e., less dense) spiritual vibration frequencies.
Mrs. Keech’s prayers were answered. Within a short time she began to receive messages from a being who identified himself as “the Elder Brother” and informed her that her father was in considerable need of spiritual instruction in order that he might advance to higher levels. Between them, Mrs. Keech and the Elder Brother attempted to provide such instruction, but her father proved a recalcitrant pupil, overly concerned with the earthly affairs of those he had left behind. He was inattentive and mischievous, as is, apparently, the wont of astral spirits, and finally the Elder Brother gave up, instructing Mrs. Keech to turn her attention to a more feasible and important task — her own spiritual development.
Gradually, as spring wore on, she developed greater and greater facility at receiving messages, while the number of her communicators increased. Besides the Elder Brother, she began to receive writings from other spiritual beings who dwelt on the planets Clarion and Cerus. Toward mid-April she began to receive communications from Sananda, who was destined to become her most important source of information and instruction, as well as her principal link with orthodox Christian revelation, for Sananda subsequently identified himself as the contemporary identity of the historical Jesus — his new name having been adopted with the beginning of the “new cycle” or age of light.
In spite of her growing facility, Mrs. Keech was still concerned about her ability and fearful lest the superior beings abandon her as a promising pupil. On Easter morning her mind was set at ease on that point, however, when, just after she awakened at 7a.m., she received the following message from the Elder Brother:
“I am always with you. The cares of the day cannot touch you. We will teach them that seek and are ready to follow in the light. I will take care of the details. Trust in us.
“Be patient and learn, for we are there preparing the work for you as a connoiter. That is an earthly liaison duty before I come. That will be soon.
“You were directed to tell your experiences of my coming to you, for it prepares the way in their hearts. I will come again to teach each of you. They that have told you that they do not believe shall see us when the time is right.”
Mrs. Keech often commented upon the significance of this message and on the spiritual comfort she found in it. It was apparently the first unequivocal promise to her of instruction and guidance from those she came to call the Guardians; it assured her, in the Elder Brother’s own words, that her writing was genuinely from him, not from some inferior source; and it assured her again that she was to tell other mortals of her experiences in “extrasensory perception.” This last point is important for our study. This is the first indication we have of anything that might be construed as proselyting on her part. We may hazard the guess, from the message as well as from her own subsequent description of this phase, that she did not tell very many people and was not very successful in convincing them that she was indeed endowed with special powers of reception.
Such messages, referring to proselyting, were infrequent during the spring. However, since attempts to proselyte followers are one of the main objects of concern in our study, we will do well to follow the thread of promptings to this end which are contained in Mrs. Keech’s early messages, as well as to examine what we know of her behavior during this period.
A few days after the Easter message Mrs. Keech received a communication from one of Sananda’s assistants promising to teach Mrs. Keech “Many truths you do not understand.” The message continued:
“What can you do for us? Well, you can go tell the world that we have at last contacted the Earth planet with the waves of ether that have become tactable by the bombs your scientists have been exploding. This works like an accordion. When the condensation leaves the carceious level of the ether or atmosphere levels that support a large light layer of marine life, it causes a barrier to be set up. Now that the bombs have broken that barrier we can break through. That is what your scientists call the sonic barrier. We have been trying to get through for many of your years, with alcetopes and the earling timer.”
In order to help her learn and “tell the world,” Mrs. Keech was advised in another message later the same day:
“This is a new study for you and we will be lenient with you for the experience will be very shocking to you. You will need real level-thinking people around you. Get a couple of learned friends that can stabilize you. Let them know what you are doing. Let them watch with you to see that you are not misunderstood. Share what you have with each other. Share all — and be enlightened — to those who are ready.”
In another message two weeks later, Sananda reassured Mrs. Keech that her prayers for protection and guidance were being heard and answered, then instructed her: “The connoiter’s work is to spread the news, tell the story, and be fearless in the doing. The world mind is still in lethargy. It does not want to awaken.”
To the extent that these messages reflect Mrs. Keech’s own wishes rather than the will of superior beings on other planets, they tell us clearly enough that she was beginning to feel some urge to communicate the special knowledge she felt she possessed. But what did she do about these promptings?
Unfortunately, knowledge of her first efforts at finding fellow believers is scanty and somewhat confused, for both Mrs. Keech and the people who later surrounded her have been hazy about dates and places, and have sometimes contradicted not only each other but themselves. From our limited evidence, we can infer a few things, however. We know that she discussed her experiences with her husband, who was quite unreceptive. A man of infinite patience, gentleness, and tolerance amounting almost to self-abasement, he never believed that his wife could communicate with other worlds, yet he never actively opposed her activities
or sought to dissuade her from her writing. He simply went about his ordinary duties in the distributing company where he was a traffic manager, and did not allow the unusual events in his home to disturb in the slightest his daily routine.
We can be fairly sure that she acted on the counsel of the Guardians to get a couple of friends and tell them what she was doing, for by June a female acquaintance from nearby Highvale was freely devoting time and energy to typing multiple copies of some of the more important messages Mrs. Keech had received. We know that it was through conversation with this woman that at least two of the most faithful of Mrs. Keech’s followers learned about her. This same woman introduced Mrs. Keech to a small, informal circle of housewives who met in various Highvale homes to discuss dianetics, Scientology, metaphysics, and occult topics. At one or more such meetings, Mrs. Keech read extracts from her “lessons” and described how she received these messages. We have good reason to conclude that she was in intermittent contact with a second group of students of dianetics in downtown Lake City.
Perhaps most important was the occasion when she discussed her writings with the lecturer and expert on the subject of flying saucers mentioned earlier. At one of his talks in Lake City, Mrs. Keech described her experiences and showed him some of the messages. He appears to have been impressed by her, for, some time later, while he was on a lecture tour that brought him to the Steel City Flying Saucer Club, he seems to have given Mrs. Keech a favorable notice. In particular, he talked about her work to Dr. Thomas Armstrong, a frequent attender at meetings of this club. Dr. Armstrong was a physician who lived in Collegeville, a small community about one hundred miles from Steel City. Since he and his wife, Daisy, were to play highly prominent parts in the subsequent development of the group that gathered around Mrs. Keech, we shall say more about them and explain as best we can the route by which they became involved.
Thomas and Daisy Armstrong, Kansas born and raised, had served as medical missionaries in Egypt for one of the liberal Protestant churches. For about five years they spread gospel and health, returning on furlough to the United States just at the outbreak of World War II. The war prevented their return to the mission field until 1946, when they again set out, with high hopes and ideals, and with three children. This time, however, they had an unpleasant sojourn —at least Daisy Armstrong did, for she suffered a “nervous collapse” as she once described it. Bedeviled by nightmares that featured violence and bloody death, she could not rid herself of the obsession that her loved ones were in imminent danger of injury from sharp objects, especially knives, axes, swords, and the like. She had persistent dreams and fantasies of cuttings, stabbings, and beheadings. Even the simple tools on her husband’s workbench had to be put out of sight, since they terrified her.
Mrs. Armstrong’s anxieties did not yield to any of the attempts she and her husband made to overcome them. Although she recognized her feelings as unreasonable, she could not will them away. Nor did her husband’s reassurances, changes in the household regimen, and a short vacation do any good. Even prayer did not help. The Armstrongs were especially distressed by this last disappointment. As Mrs. Armstrong once put it, they could not understand why they had been singled out for persecution by such malignant emotion; after all, they had always led a good life, had tried to do the right thing, and were certainly engaged in good works. Why they then? “We finally decided there must be a reason,” she added, “and we started searching.” This may be why the Armstrongs turned to the study of mysticism and the occult, in which they read widely and eclectically. They studied some of the sacred writings of Hinduism, the Apocrypha, Oahspe, and books and pamphlets on theosophy, Rosicrucianism, New Thought, the I AM movement, and the mystical (though not, apparently, the political) writings of William Dudley Pelley. The ideas they encountered in this literature, and discussed at length, seem to have opened their minds to possibilities that many people regard with incredulity. They believed in the existence of a spirit world, whose masters could communicate with and instruct people of the earth; were convinced that extrasensory communication and spiritual migration (without bodily change or motion) had occurred; and subscribed to many of the more common occult beliefs, including reincarnation.
In 1949 they returned to the United States and Dr. Armstrong took a post as a member of the Student Health Service staff at Eastern Teachers College. His work there was evidently of a routine nature and left his mind and time free to continue exploration of esoteric literature. The Armstrongs continued to participate in orthodox Christian religious activities. They attended a nondenominational Protestant church, where Dr. Armstrong organized “The Seekers,” a group for young people, principally college students, which met once a week to discuss ethical, religious, metaphysical, and personal problems, always seeking truth. A tall man in his early forties, Dr. Armstrong had an air of ease and self-assurance that seemed to inspire confidence in his listeners.
Any topic was grist for the Seekers’ mill, so it may have been no surprise to most of the members when Dr. Armstrong began to show considerable interest in flying saucers. Just why his attention was drawn to this phenomenon is not clear. But one winter he found reason to visit southern California. While there he sought out George Adamski who, in collaboration with another, had recently published The Flying Saucers Have Landed. This book related Adamski’s meeting with a being who is alleged to have landed in a flying saucer near Desert Center, California. Adamski says that he talked with the man and his book contains a drawing of the footprints that the visitor left behind when he climbed back into the saucer and blasted off for Venus, his home base. Dr. Armstrong enjoyed a lengthy interview with Adamski and came away convinced that flying saucers were real, not illusory, that they came from other planets, and that they carried men, or beings, who were visiting the earth on missions of exploration and observation. He also came away with an enlarged copy of the drawing of the Venusian footprints, whose curious interior markings seemed to him symbols of a mysterious sort.
Upon Dr. Armstrong’s return to Collegeville, his wife also became interested and charged herself with the task of interpreting the message carried by these footprints —a task which she had completed to her satisfaction by May 22 of the year they met Marian Keech. Her interpretation of the footprints forecast a rising of the submerged continents of Mu and Atlantis, an event that would be consistent with the flooding of the North American continent. Much later on, in August, when Marian Keech received the prediction of a flood on December 21, Daisy Armstrong emphasized that this prediction was all the more likely to be correct since her own interpretation, arrived at independently, was corroborative evidence.
Sometime during late April or early May the Armstrongs learned of Mrs. Keech from the expert on flying saucers. The Armstrongs wrote to Mrs. Keech shortly thereafter, expressing an interest in her work and telling her something of their own explorations in the occult.
Meanwhile, according to Mrs. Keech, she had received a message from Sananda to “Go to Collegeville. There is a child there to whom I am trying to get through with light.” Since she knew no one in that town, she was extremely puzzled, and uncertain about what to do. She seized upon the Armstrongs’ letter with delight; it was too fitting to be a coincidence, she felt. This contact with people who had only yesterday been strangers in a town populated by strangers must have great significance. She subsequently decided that Daisy Armstrong was the “child” referred to in the instruction, a decision to which Mrs. Armstrong quickly assented since she felt that the Guardians had been trying to “get light through to her” for a long time and she felt that her own blindness and unreceptivity to these attempts had been the root of her “nervous collapse” in Egypt.
From the initial contact, developments proceeded rapidly, and not even the two hundred miles between Lake City and Collegeville inhibited the growth of a close friendship. Letters were exchanged during May and June and, in late June, the Armstrongs drove to Lake City to pay a visit to Mrs. Keech. It was evidently a meeting of like minds, for the Armstrongs not only prolonged their stay but invited Mrs. Keech to return their visit. She spent the Fourth of July weekend in Collegeville. The change in locale did not seem to interrupt the flow of communication from outer space. During July Mrs. Keech’s productivity remained high. She sometimes received as many as ten messages or “lessons” in a single day, and scarcely a day passed without a communique of some kind from outer space.
The contents of these messages were diverse, and they covered a vast range of topics from brief descriptions of the physical environment and diet on other planets to warnings and forebodings of war and destruction soon to plague the earth, intermingled with promises of enlightenment, joy, and unparalleled new experiences in store for those who would “listen and believe.” They varied considerably in length, from one or two sentences to as much as six or seven hundred words, although most were about two hundred fifty words long.
It is difficult to give a clear, simple picture of the entire belief system as it is revealed in these messages. The ideology was not only complex, but also pliant, changing this way and that in response to new influences (perhaps new people whom Mrs. Keech met, or new publications she saw). For the purpose of providing background, we shall set down the general propositions condensed from the messages, and illustrate them by extracts from the writings themselves. Wherever possible, we shall provide the “official” definitions of unfamiliar words or expressions, taken from the glossary provided by Mrs. Keech or from the usage current among believers at the time of our observations.
The first proposition is that there is a universe of planets beyond the solar system of the earth, which universe is at least partially inhabited by beings of superior intelligence, wisdom, and skill, possessing an enormously advanced technology. These beings bear some resemblance to humans but they exist at a higher “vibratory frequency” (i.e., lower density) than humans do, and are able to carry out, through thought or “knowing,” what humans must depend upon action and manipulation of physical forces to accomplish.
Thus, for example, Sananda informed Mrs. Keech on July 8 that “The Guardians are beings of the UN [intelligence of the Creator; mind of the High Self] who have risen to the density seven or eight, who are UN as the Oneness with the Creator, who can and do create by the UN the casement or vehicle they chose to use in the seen.” Another Guardian, on May 14, speaking from “the Seventh Sector Density of Creton” (presumably a planet in the “constellation of Cerus”) explained: “We are in the avagada [space ship] of light force propulsion. We are like the human beings of Earth and have much in common; though there are millions of years difference in our culture, we are still brothers. What we enjoy as natural everyday enjoyments, you of the world cannot yet imagine.” Sananda briefly commented on the planet Clarion, “It is a beautiful place to live. We have weather — snow and rain. We adjust our bodies to the temperature.” He described the diet of the Guardians as “the bread of increase, which is like a snowflake.”
On April 24 several messages provided this information: “We are coming through your atmosphere and being seen by your astronomers. They say it is large sun spots. The various methods of communication with the people of Earth can be explained by the various frequencies that we operate on. Our systems are very complicated to you; in reality they are very simple. . . . I am coming via inter-conscious-perception, which you call telepathy . . . It is our common means of communication and is used between our own planet and all the others we have communication with. How many you ask? We cannot number them for you have not enough paper to write the 000s on. This is staggering to you, for we have been learning for millions of years. . . . We know no death, as you do. It is as a cocoon turns into a moth — very consciously and voluntarily — when we need or desire the change. We never go back to the former lear [our Earth body].” Sananda further described the communication technique in these words: “The thermin [“that which records our thoughts, actions etc. in the Losolo”] you heard was really from Cerus. It is the engine-like affair that we use for timing the vibratory impulses that come from your Earth. This communication is being recorded by your thermin. It looks much like a large looking glass and your thoughts are recorded on it as quickly as you think. And we beam back our impulses in the form of magnetic energy. It is done with a celecoblet, something your scientists have not yet imaged.”
The second major proposition is that the Guardians are instructors or teachers in a school of the universe, called “the Losolo” (located on Cerus), who are communicating with Mrs. Keech in order to teach her —and, through her, other humans —those principles, ideas, and guides to right conduct that are necessary to advance the spiritual development of the human race and to prepare the people of the earth for certain changes that lie ahead. Thus, Mrs. Keech was told that “It is ignorance of the Universal Laws that makes all the misery of the Earth”; and that “We see and know that you struggle in darkness and want to bring real light, for yours is the only planet that has war and hatred. . . . We feel no sadness but are interested in the progress of the people of your Earth. Why? We are all brothers. Need I tell you more?”
Elder Brother encouraged Mrs. Keech with a report of progress: “Since we have been in contact with your planet, your people have been responding to our forces of light for the advancement of the human race on your Earth.” “Surely,” remarked Sananda on a later occasion, “there is light and it shall be revealed to you. You are coming to the end of the age of darkness. The light of the world shall be made manifest by the coming of the earlings. The earlings are the beings who are inhabiting the regions you call the atmosphere. The atmosphere is alive with beings of such a vibratory rate that the dense people of Earth cannot see them.”
A number of messages promised visitation from outer space and gave some hint of the visitors’ interest in earth. Early in April Sananda said: “The saucers are over West Virginia taking Listings of the world’s industrial people that make war material and profit from war assets. They are going to land and make contact with you people of Earth in May. . . . It may be June when they land in West Virginia.” In mid-May Elder Brother mentioned that “we are coming into your Earth vision in numbers and will be seen by many over the city of New York, Washington, D.C., Seattle, and Chicago. We will land in various places, including West Virginia, the Carolinas, and Vermont. We have contacts there.” Elder Brother also promised an even more interesting project —visits to other planets: “We are planning to take some people for a trip to our plane — that is, planet. We are trying to make arrangements for a party of six from Westinghouse to visit our territory. Is that a surprise to you? We have had people from your world with us. There is one in Syracuse, New York, one in Schenectady, New York, one in Rockford, Illinois, one in California—there are more than one in California and Arizona and Oregon. Two of them are now on our planet Union. They were there on Earth for a special mission.”
By early summer portents of the flood prediction had already made their appearance. It gradually becomes apparent, as one leafs through the messages of that period, that the teaching of Mrs. Keech and the schemes for interplanetary exchange of persons have behind them the rationale of averting or mitigating an expected universal disaster.
The earliest messages hint darkly of trouble ahead for the earth but they are vague in intent. On May 23, however, Sananda came right out and said: “We are planning to come in great numbers in the weeks ahead, as the war preparations are being formulated . . . [certain earth dwellers] will be gathered up and relieved of the experiences of the holocaust of the coming events.” The theme of war is adumbrated in a number of other messages during the late spring and early summer, and there are many references to the blessedness of harmony and peace, to the misery, futility, and madness of conflict. In several places, the Guardians promise Mrs. Keech that those who “instruct the people of Earth in slaughter” will meet a dark and awful justice soon, and warn: “the people of Earth are rushing, rushing toward the suicide of themselves. . . . To this we are answering with signs and wonders in the sky.” There are, however, no explicit references to the nature of the “holocaust” or to any specific catastrophe on the earth during May, June, or July. It is not until late August that the messages begin to warn her more directly of what is ahead for humanity.
There are many other interesting lessons in the collection — far more than we have space to cite. In part the contents reflect the events of Mrs. Keech’s daily life —the presence of guests and visitors in her home, the appearance of a new inquirer (for whom there is almost always praise and promise of great things to come), or the disappearance of a former disciple (usually with rueful comments from the Guardians on the difficulty of enlightening the people of the earth). There are messages of reassurance, of protection against “the dark forces” around her. There are fulminations against warmongers, scientists, nonbelievers, and materialists. And there are many, many messages of exhortation: to love thy neighbor; to “seek the light”; to cease thinking (“To think is of the second density” and “There is no advantage to thinking when we are studying the teaching of the Creator”) and “to be still of the five senses” so that there may be “direct knowing” or “inner knowing,” achieved by believing in the words of “the Father,” or “the Creator.” Above all she was urged to be patient, obedient, and faithful. These qualities were often put to severe tests.
From time to time the Guardians had given Mrs. Keech predictions of specific future events, such as the landing of flying saucers and visits by space people. She had also been issued a number of “orders” to carry out simple tasks or to go to certain places. Thus, in April, Sananda told her: “When you go to the lecture you will be contacted by a man from Langley Field. He has been on our planet for a brief stay. He will say to you: ‘You are early.’ That will be his sign to you that he knows you. He came through the atmosphere on a beam of light.” On another occasion she was “ordered” to go to a certain street corner in downtown Lake City, and she waited there for nearly an hour, wearying, although nothing unusual occurred. Several times she was promised saucer “sightings” at or near her home, but was disappointed. The strongest test of her convictions and her loyalty to her teachers, however, came as a result of a prediction she received late in July.
On the morning of July 23, Mrs. Keech’s pencil wrote this momentous message: “The cast of light you see in the southern sky is of our direction and is pulsating with a turning, spinning motion of the craft of the ‘tola’ [space ship] which is to land upon the planet in the cast of the day of August first—at the Lyons field. It will be as if the world was coming to an end at the field when the landing occurs. The operators will not believe their senses when they see the craft of outer space in the midst of the field.” This message concluded: “It is a very accurate cast that we give.”
In further communications, Mrs. Keech got word to be at Lyons field — a military air base — by noon in order to witness the landing. A number of her acquaintances learned of her plan, apparently through the offices of the friend who was currently typing copies of the lessons. Mrs. Keech subsequently made it plain that she had no intention of gathering a crowd for the occasion, yet she evidently did not regard her mission as a secret one. “I didn’t want to start a traffic jam by telling anybody that there was going to be a landing at Lyons field on August the first, because I knew that if all the saucer enthusiasts got on the highway to see the saucers there would be a jam. So I wasn’t going to say anything about it.” But the news leaked out and several people asked if they might join the expedition or meet her at the field. Dr. Armstrong and his wife were in Lake City at the time, as weekend guests of Mrs. Keech, and asked if they might accompany her. The three of them reached the field just before noon.
Near the main gate of the field, the Armstrongs and Mrs. Keech were joined by another car or two of acquaintances, and the whole group sought out a lightly traveled road that bordered the field. Selecting a place that offered a good view of the runways and the sky, they parked and prepared to wait. “We didn’t know what we were looking for; we were looking for saucers,” Mrs. Keech once said, in describing the incident. “As we stood there eating our lunch from the back of the car, just standing in the fields alongside the road and looking up at the sky through our polaroid pieces that we had brought with us, we must have looked very silly to the ones who didn’t sit around the table [outsiders, or those who did not share the feast of knowledge provided by the Guardians].”
Suddenly Mrs. Keech became aware that an unknown man had approached the party. Although the road was long and straight and the fields bordering it offered neither cover nor concealment, she had not seen him walking toward them; it was as if he had materialized out of thin air. He crossed the highway toward the group and, as he drew nearer, she sensed something strange, almost eerie in his appearance and manner. She recalls a somewhat strange “look in his eye” and a curiously rigid bearing.
One of the ladies in the party was alarmed, and urged Mrs. Keech to “be careful; that man is crazy.” But, instead of fear, Mrs. Keech felt only curiosity and sympathy for the stranger on this hot, dry road far from comfort or refreshment. From the back of her car she got a sandwich and a glass of fruit juice, and offered them to him, but he declined, slowly and politely.
“I couldn’t imagine anybody that time of day on a lonely highway not wanting a cold drink. I asked him again, but he just said: ‘No thank you.’ I looked at his eyes — eyes that looked through my soul—and the words sent electric currents to my feet. Yet I wasn’t on the beam. As we stood there looking in the sky for saucers, he would look up and then he would look at us, at me especially. After I had offered him food, he turned and walked away. I felt very sad. I didn’t know why at the time. I thought ‘what can I give him to eat? What else have we got that I can give him?’ I turned to my car [to get a slice of watermelon] which was about twenty feet away. As I reached it, I looked back and he was gone —just gone. He was no place to be seen. And I felt, I became — oh I can’t tell you; there’s no word for it. I knew something was going on that I didn’t understand. I knew I was close to something.”
The remainder of the vigil was uneventful. No saucers landed at Lyons field in the next two hours and an air of disappointment pervaded the assembly. Mrs. Keech was grave. “I thought to myself: That message did come through my hand. I am more or less responsible if I have misled anyone today.” And she prayed for guidance. The group dispersed, and, when she was again alone with the Armstrongs and another friend, she began to probe their collective feelings: “I said: ‘Well, what do you people feel?’ Everyone agreed that something had happened on the roadside, but we didn’t know what it was or how to explain it. We were all sensitized to that degree — that something had happened though we had no mental concept of it.”
She was not to remain in ignorance long. Early on the morning of August 2 her pencil traced these words: “It was I, Sananda, who appeared on the roadside in the guise of the sice.” Although this word may be unfamiliar to the reader, Mrs. Keech recognized it at once. She had first encountered it in a curious story, transmitted to her on July 28, whose significance was not immediately apparent to her.* But when the message of August 2, from Sananda, reached her, she drew the conclusion that “the sice” was the Guardians’ term for “one who comes in disguise,” or “one whose true identity is unknown,” and she immediately attached significance to the fact that the “story of the sice” had been transmitted to her before she went to Lyons field.
[*As it will probably not be to the average reader, either, for whose edification the account is reproduced here, verbatim, from the mimeographed lessons: “Sara and Justine were cast as the boy and the girl; to each a love of the Creator. As they came to the great city of the center of the Earth, which is called the CITY of the self — the child, Sara, asks Justine: ‘Which way to the Father’s house?’ To Sara, Justine said: ‘To be a Carter, or one who finds his way, is the great cast for which he was created’ As they journeyed to the city of the Self, in the center of the Earth, they were overtaken by the coy little scice [variant spelling for sice], which was a mink. He was in disguise of the rabbit, which was a cousin to the grouse.
“‘What a coy little sice is the rabbit,’ was the girl Sara’s cry which, as the sice had said, ‘a cousin of the grouse — the GROUSE — the RABBIT — the SCICE.’ WHAT WAS WHAT?’ cried Sara. The boy Justine cried, ‘We have arrived in the land of thinking! The sice thinks he will cast a spell of thinking upon us in the darkness of night while we are lost.’
“To them the gates of the treasure of the kingdom swung open, where the greatest of all treasures were found — the scice in the garden of increase, where he was only the scice-NO COUSINS-NO ANCESTRY. He was just Mr. Scice, WHO was himself, as the girl and boy, to the great Creator of the City of Self. Each to his own, as a silent witness of the CITY in the Middle of the Earth . . . Scice and Child alike in the Creator’s City. Each found his way to the GARDEN OF SELF, each in his Creator’s Garden.”]
This explanation of the “something” that had happened by the roadside appears not only to have satisfied Mrs. Keech intellectually, but to have brought to her a special joy, an exultation that far outweighed the disappointment over the disconfirmed prediction. For, although no saucers had landed at Lyons, a greater gift had been bestowed upon her. She had looked upon Jesus (in another body, of course, and in disguise), had talked with him, and had performed the simple Christian act of offering hospitality to the casual, undistinguished stranger. Her enlightenment was ecstatic, and tinged with awe. Why should she have been chosen to receive the reincarnated Son of God? More deeply than ever the conviction overcame her that she was especially selected, that the voices she heard and the presences she felt were real, were valid, were the very stuff of transcendent life —and she their humble earthly vehicle.
On August 3, Sananda prepared her for possible future visits when he said: “While the guest of Earth is in the seen, he has many guises — as the sice he comes — as the giver of love he comes — as the one who calls by telephone — the glad in heart for the proferred bread and drink.”
Twelve people stood by the roadside at Lyons field that hot August noon, but only five remained disciples in December. To all of them, in various degrees, the failure of the predicted saucer landings must have been a disappointment; some never recovered, apparently, and dropped Mrs. Keech forthwith, as a false prophet. Two disappeared from her influence for a time, but returned later; only the Armstrongs remained steadfast throughout. They were with Mrs. Keech in the immediate aftermath, when they “all agreed that something had happened” at the field, and remained with her, as her house guests, the next day when the revelation from Sananda was dictated. If they had had doubts of Mrs. Keech’s extraordinary powers on Sunday afternoon, these must have been dispelled by Monday when they read Sananda’s message and noted Mrs. Keech’s radiant confidence, her renewed faith, and her touching humility. Indeed they seem to have felt the same sentiments themselves.
Theoretically, we would expect an increase in proselyting following the disconfirmation of the Lyons field prediction. Unhappily, our report of this incident suffers from the same lack of data as do most of the historical examples we discussed in Chapter I. There were no observers present to report Mrs. Keech’s activities during August and we have no direct evidence of what she did. Although the messages she received during that month contain some urgings to proselyte, our collection of messages from this period is so fragmentary that we can hardly draw any conclusions.
A couple of weeks after the incident of the sice Mrs. Keech went for an extended visit to Collegeville. There she continued to receive extraterrestrial messages and wrote sometimes for as many as fourteen hours a day. Lengthy discussions with the Armstrongs about esoteric matters seem to have affected Mrs. Keech’s beliefs. One notices an increasing emphasis in her lessons on religious matters, such as the nature of heaven, the crucifixion of Jesus, the power and glory of God, the relationship between “the God of Earth” and “the Creator.” There is a lesson devoted to comments on the identity between angels and “higher density” beings from outer space, and, in this connection, a discussion of “the miracle of Fatima in the land of California.” More and more frequent references to “the Father” and “the Father’s children” (believers) occur in the lessons. Simultaneously, there begin to appear in the lessons references to geophysical prehistory, especially accounts of the submersion of Atlantis, and of its sister “continent” Mu, in the Pacific Ocean (which occurred during a deadly war of “atomic” weapons between Atlantis and Mu).
An account of the origin of the earth’s population also begins to emerge. It seems that eons ago, on the planet Car, the population divided into two factions: “the scientists,” led by Lucifer, and “the people who followed the Light,” under the banner of God and in the command of Christ. The “scientists,” having invented something analogous to atom bombs —in those days, the name was “alcetopes” — threatened to destroy the hosts of Light and, through their fumbling cleverness, succeeded in blowing to pieces the planet Car. The disappearance of Car, as an integrated mass, produced enormous disturbances in the balance of the omni-verse (“all universes”) and nearly caused complete chaos. Meanwhile, the forces of Light had retreated to other planets, such as Clarion, Uranus, and Cerus, where they regrouped and considered their next strategy. Lucifer led his troops, their minds now obliterated of cosmic knowledge, to earth.
Since that prehistoric day, “the cycle” has begun anew, and threatens to repeat itself. Lucifer is abroad today, in disguise, and has been leading our contemporary scientists in their construction of ever greater weapons of destruction. If the headlong plunge into fission is allowed to continue, the tragedy of the destruction of Car may be repeated: Earth will be fragmented and the whole solar system disrupted. The forces of Light have not been idle; Christ’s visit to earth, as Jesus, was the initial attempt to reclaim mankind, to persuade them to desert the Prince of Darkness, and it was partially successful. There is a portion of the population of the earth who are open and receptive to “the Light,” who can hear the still voice of the Creator, or God, and act rightly in His service. But the forces of evil (and science) are extremely powerful, and the followers of Light may not be able to conquer in time to escape another explosion.
This sketchy account cannot do justice to the complexity of the rationale that the Armstrongs and Mrs. Keech appear to have assembled during July, August, and September, but it may orient the reader to the view they had of the future. It may also explain, to some extent, their deep concern with both the dimmest events of the distant past and the most awful possibilities of the immediate future. We have had to confine ourselves, in this account, to only the most salient features of the ideology and have omitted many of the elaborations it contains. Thus we have perhaps given an impression of greater orderliness than actually exists in the lessons themselves, for they contain an extraordinary range of material complexly interwoven from a whole host of sources. If nothing else, the Armstrongs and Marian Keech were eclectics.
We use this term advisedly, for we must make it perfectly clear to the reader that the ideology was not invented, not created de novo, purely in Mrs. Keech’s mind. Almost all her conceptions of the universe, the spiritual world, interplanetary communication and travel, and the dread possibilities of total atomic warfare can be found, in analogue or identity, in popular magazines, sensational books, and even columns of daily papers.
The notions of reincarnation and spiritual rarification (through changes in “vibratory density”) are likewise echoed in many “modern cults and minority religious movements.”* There have been numerous accounts of the “continents” of Atlantis and Mu, and attempts to explain their “disappearance” into the oceans. The idea that heavenly representatives will visit earth to instruct mankind through chosen instruments and to rescue those whose conduct and beliefs have marked them for salvation is older than Christianity.
[*To borrow a phrase from the subtitle of Charles S. Braden’s book These Also Believe (New York: Macmillan, 1949), which see for an objective, scholarly, readable account of several marginal groups of believers in America. See especially his descriptions of theosophy, the I AM movement, Psychiana, spiritualism, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.]
Furthermore, there is evidence that all these ideas, singly or in combinations, are sincerely and fully believed by a great many people. Certainly, the books and periodicals in which they appear are widely read. Equally certain is that many of the readers engage in various actions that testify to their faith, such as joining particular groups, adopting certain ritual practices, giving money, and trying to convince others that the ideas are true.
So, if the reader has come to the hasty conclusion that the ideology constructed by Mrs. Keech’s pencil is merely the unique raving of an isolated madwoman and that only “crazy people” would be able to accept and believe it, let him take further thought. True, Mrs. Keech put together a rather unusual combination of ideas —a combination peculiarly well adapted to our contemporary, anxious age — but scarcely a single one of her ideas can be said to be unique, novel, or lacking in popular (though not, for the most part, majority) support.
The Armstrongs and Mrs. Keech had more than an abstract connection with other groups having interests similar to their own. The Armstrongs belonged to at least one flying saucer club and Mrs. Keech had often attended lectures on the subject. Both homes were on the subscriber lists for such publications as the Proceedings of the College of Universal Wisdom, the Round Robin of the Borderland Sciences Research Associates, and the Newsletter of the group called Civilian Research on Interplanetary Flying Objects. Such periodicals were often proffered to visitors at the Keech and Armstrong homes, and references to them were frequently made to substantiate Mrs. Keech’s point of view. Mrs. Keech declared that there were a number of other groups in the United States that were also receiving enlightenment from outer space, although from a different set of teachers.
It was against the background of this ideology that the prediction of cataclysmic disaster began to emerge. With Mrs. Keech in Collegeville, she and the Armstrongs had formed a team. While Mrs. Keech wrote, Daisy Armstrong busied herself typing out carbon copies of the lessons, and the doctor scanned them, adding here and there a commentary or citing some evidence from another source that threw light on the more obscure passages in the Guardians’ discourses.
The first explicit reference to the impending disaster had appeared among Sananda’s messages on August 2, the day after the visit of the sice. That message read: “the Earthling will awaken to the great casting [conditions to be fulfilled] of the lake seething and the great destruction of the tall buildings of the local city — the cast that the lake bed is sinking to the degree that it will be as a great scoop of wind from the bottom of the lake throughout the countryside. You shall tell the world that this is to be, for such it is given. To you the date only is secret, for the panic of men knows no bounds.”
This startling information was considerably expanded in a long communique from Sananda on August 15, which read in part:
“And the scenes of the day will be as mad. The grosser ones will be as mad. And the ones of the light will be as the sibets [students] of teachers who have drilled them for this day. . . . In the carting [plan] it is cast [conditions to be fulfilled] that the event will begin at dawn and end swiftly as a passing cloud — in the seen.
“When the resurrected have been resurrected or taken up — it will be as a great burst of light . . . the ground in the earth to a depth of thirty feet will be bright . . . for the earth will be purified.
“In the midst of this it is to be recorded that a great wave rushes into the rocky mountains — the ones of the covered area will be as the com [group] of the newly dead. The slopes of the side to the east will be the beginning of a new civilization upon which will be the new order, in the light. As it is recorded the three mountain ranges to stand at the cast of the guards, are the Alleghenies, the Catskills, the Rocky Mts.
“Yet the land will be as yet not submerged, but as a washing of the top to the sea, for the purpose of purifying it of the earth-ling, and the creating the new order. Yet will it be of the light, for all things must first be likened unto the housecleaning, in which the chaos reigns first, second the order.
“THIS IS DATED NOT IN SYMBOLOGY . . . THE REAL! OF REAL — REALITY YET.”
Ten days later came the third great message which made explicit the further ramifications of the great events:
“This is not limited to the local area, for the cast of the country of the U.S.A. is that it is to break in twain. In the area of the Mississippi, in the region of the Canada, Great Lakes and the Mississippi, to the Gulf of Mexico, into the Central America will be as changed. The great tilting of the land of the U.S. to the East will throw up mountains along the Central States, along the Great New Sea, along North and South—to the South. The new mountain range shall be called The Argone Range, which will signify the ones who have been there are gone — the old has gone past — the new is. This will be as a monument to the old races; to the new will be the Altar of the Rockies and the Alleghenies.”
On August 27, Sananda filled out the picture of world-wide upheaval and change in a long, elaborate message that specifically forecast that Egypt would be remade and the desert would become a fertile valley; Mu would rise from the Pacific; the “uprising of the Atlantic bottom” would “submerge the land of the Atlantic seaboard”; France would sink to the bottom of the Atlantic, as would England; and Russia would become one great sea.
We can only imagine the awe, the reverence, with which the Armstrongs and Mrs. Keech received these momentous pronouncements. Here, in the hands of three fairly ordinary people (by the world’s standards) had been placed the most important news of our time, if not of all recorded history. A grave responsibility, an incomparable privilege had been thrust upon them.
It was Dr. Armstrong who saw his duty clearly and promptly did it. On August 30, he dispatched more than fifty copies of a seven-page mimeographed “Open Letter to American Editors and Publishers.” In it he proclaimed the coming catastrophe, cited precedents from the submersion of Mu, and Christian parallels from chapters of Luke, and gave an account, with examples, of Mrs. Keech’s “ESP lessons.” The body of the letter did not mention the specific date predicted but stated in several places that the cataclysm was “very, very near.” Copies of the release that we saw in October carried a handwritten addendum: “latest release — Date of evacuation Dec. 20.” Some of the releases actually sent to the press may have also borne this legend.
The mailing of this press release marks the end of the first phase of Mrs. Keech’s and the Armstrongs’ activities. Up till now, the “lessons” had been virtually a private matter among Mrs. Keech and her friends. Dr. Armstrong’s action changed things. In one gesture, he made the news of the flood public property, he committed himself and his reputation to a specific prediction of world-wide cataclysm, and he took the first step toward the organization of a movement.
