How I Found The Teachings of the Ascended Masters

(Or How They Found Me)

By Thomas Gulick

This story really begins in a mud brick house in Niger, West Africa, where my two-year hitch as a Peace Corps volunteer with a well-digging program was coming to an end in 1971. Another volunteer, who had already departed Niger for the United States, left behind a large box of books for whoever wanted them. I, book-hound that I am, looking through this book box, spotted a paperback by Alan Watts, the well-known British apologist for and teacher of Zen Buddhism. I knew nothing about Watts or Buddhism but what caught my eye was that Watts was comparing what he claimed were the many similarities (!) between Buddhism and Christianity. Aha! An East-West connection hidden somewhere in my deep subconscious had surfaced! Now note that up to this point in my life (I was in my mid-20’s at the time) I was a lapsed Catholic and an agnostic with a pretty strong commitment to “riotous living.” You know, the usual vices which, ironically, I was finding to be increasingly empty.

So, about a year later a middle-aged African-American lady colleague of mine, in a San Francisco reading program for inner city kids, handed me a book by Edgar Cayce on reincarnation. Why she did that I have no idea. Again, I knew nothing about Cayce or reincarnation, but as I read this book another light bulb in my subconscious mind went on with 100 watt brilliance. I felt I was suiting up with the armor and the weapons of truth – to wit: east meets west to merge the sciences of the spirit with the sciences of nature; and we do return in succeeding incarnations to finish up unfinished business. From these revelations, seeds of a new reality were planted in my mind and lotus flowers were gradually blooming.

Then I started to take an interest in astrology, numerology and face-reading (reading personality traits and talents in the human face.) Next I practiced several years of a simplified form of Hindu meditation. And finally a friend of mine, a black man from Panama, rather prophetically named Tyrone Claudio Church, or T.C. to his friends, invited me to join him and some of his comrades at this undoubtedly cool spiritual conference at Mount Shasta. It was the summer of 1975. T.C. knew some people at Shasta we could stay with for free. I wasn’t teaching school that summer, so I said “Sure, why not. I’ll come but I’ve already got a guru, mind you.”

So we come into this conference after dark on the first day and as we approached the main circus-sized tent, I distinctly heard what sounded like large cannons firing in the distance and, strangely, the sound seemed to be coming from that big circus tent. This was my introduction to the science of the spoken word and the form of prayer called decrees. The “cannons” were actually the merged voices of several thousand people doing these odd chants together. Very impressive, I thought.

Now remember that I was raised very Roman Catholic from baptism as an infant through sophomore year in college; both my parents were very active in the church. So it came as somewhat of a shock for me hear at this new age conference that: 1) Lucifer had been judged and was gone, 2) the leader of this Church Universal and Triumphant, Mrs. Prophet, had just been declared “the Vicar of Christ” and 3) that Francis of Assisi would be giving a dictation at this gathering as well. These claims presented me with several problems. All this sounded suspiciously Catholic to me who had just left that church behind. How did we know for sure that Lucifer was gone for good? Likewise, every Catholic boy knows from catechism class that the Vicar of Christ is one of the titles of the Catholic pope. Was God starting the Catholic Church over again from scratch and installing a first-time lady pope!? Also, in the Catholic lexicon, the term Church Triumphant means the saints in heaven. Were we saying here that this new church with the lady pope was a ticket to heaven or what? And how did St. Francis of Assisi fit in here? Did he now belong to both churches?

Much to my surprise I got the answer to my St. Francis question later in the conference during St. Francis’ dictation. During that dictation I decided to close my eyes and do my silent mantra meditation that I got from a Hindu guru. As Saint Francis dictated through Mrs. Elizabeth Clare Prophet I experienced a very high spiritual state of consciousness unlike anything I had ever experienced before. Saint Francis had made his presence known to me. Here’s an odd fact for you. Students of the ascended masters know that this master, Saint Francis, is now called Kuthumi, a name taken from his last incarnation in the far East as Kuthumi Lal Singh. I have since been to dozens of ascended master, Church Universal and Triumphant conferences and I have never seen Kuthumi listed in a church program as St. Francis of Assisi since that Shasta conference in 1975! My guess is that there were maybe quite a few ex-Catholics like me in the Mt. Shasta audience.

In any case, that was how I found the ascended master teachings – or how they found me – many years ago. By the way, my buddy T.C. Church left that Mt. Shasta gathering after one day saying: “I’ve already experienced this in past lifetimes.” So, what did I do? I stayed for the whole conference, fascinated by this new church and its teachings. T.C. meanwhile, the guy who had practically dragged me to Mt. Shasta, sailed on with his friends to the beach.