[*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,