Vol. 34 No. 6 - I AM the Witness - February 10, 1991
I AM the Witness
Anatomy of a Deprogramming Attempt
It was a rainy, cool summer day. My parents and I had just visited Dr. Lonnie Gieser, a psychiatrist in Montclair, New Jersey. Afterwards my father told me he had some clients in the area he wanted me to meet. He said he needed my help in securing a big contract for the interior design work of several homes in the area.
After we had lunch we went to our appointment. As we drove into the driveway of the prospective customer we passed a series of pine trees that concealed the entrance. We quickly entered to avoid the rain.
A smiling young woman greeted us at the door and ushered us downstairs to the basement. As I passed by the living room, two young men were watching MTV. When I arrived downstairs, my parents immediately introduced me to a tall, burly man dressed in a business suit. My parents, trying to make a quick exit, hopped up the stairs like jack rabbits. As I shook his clammy hand he said, “Henry, we’re here to discuss your relationship with Church Universal and Triumphant.”
I raced up the stairs and was promptly grabbed by the two men who were watching MTV. They were football players. My father was there also holding me. I yelled, “Mom, mom. Let me out!” My mother incredulously asked, “Henry, what’s the matter? What’s the matter?”
I realized it was futile to fight and so I took hold of myself and tried to reason with them. “OK,” I said. “You want to discuss my religion? Fine, but let’s do it upstairs where it is more pleasant.”
I feared the basement. But of course they didn’t listen to me. They wanted me downstairs where they could control me. I, being outmuscled, had no choice.
It took me a year to be able to remember the details of what happened in that basement. Psychologists say that people suppress bad experiences so they can escape the pain. Yet, since then I have realized that it was important for me to remember them and I have worked at it diligently.
To this day I cannot remember the exact sequence of events but I do remember what happened. I may not have been physically tortured or beaten up as others have been during deprogrammings but I was subjected to a strategic assault on my mind and soul. This type of abuse is perhaps equally if not more dangerous.
If I look at things from my parents’ perspective, I think I can understand why they tried to have me deprogrammed. My parents are survivors of the holocaust–the lone survivors from their respective families. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, my mother walked the proverbial “Y” in the road on the way to the concentration camps. She was lucky and went to a labor camp. Her sister was not so fortunate. My father fought with the Polish Army and rose to the rank of captain. He never formally accepted the rank because he never thought of himself as a member of the Polish Army. He was there to fight the Nazis. My father was the oldest son in his family. When the Germans were approaching, his father told him to leave so that at least he might survive.
Because I had embraced a religion that accepted Jesus, my parents felt that I was rejecting them and Judaism. What they endured surviving Hitler naturally made my choice of religion particularly hard for them. They felt angry and betrayed by their son, the youngest of three.
Members of the Citizen’s Freedom Foundation (now known as the Cult Awareness Network)–many of them psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, lawyers and rabbis–manipulated my parents by playing on their fears. They did this by portraying my Church, as they do all the new religious movements, as a neo-Nazi-type activity.
I love my family, which is why I had agreed to work for them in their business and later to meet with some of these psychiatrists two months before the deprogramming. I met with the psychiatrists with the understanding that I was there to help resolve some of the problems my oldest brother, Jeffrey, was having. This proved to be a ruse. The real purpose of these “counseling sessions,” as Dr. Hardat Sukhdeo, an anti-cult psychiatrist later confided in me, was “to determine your level of integration with your family to see whether deprogramming was necessary.”
Moments into the deprogramming, a short and ominous fellow stepped into the basement room. He appeared Rasputin-like, with long hair and glazed eyes, and was slightly hunchbacked. His name was Rory Ingalls and he commanded the respect of the security guards and all present. He was the “expert” on Church Universal and Triumphant, the Church I belonged to. He claimed he had been close to Mother. Now he was the main deprogrammer.
The short pit-bull-like woman who greeted me at the door was Mary Alice Chronaloger. Mary Alice had been kidnapped and deprogrammed a few years earlier by Ted Patrick, the acclaimed father of deprogramming and a convicted felon, as she was on the way to the airport to attend the Church’s university in Malibu. Later, Debra Jaynes entered with my brother. Debra had been deprogrammed by Mary Alice several months earlier. This was her first case. Together with Galen Kelley, a former private investigator, Rory Ingalls and my brother Fred, they psychologically battered me non-stop for five days, in teams of two. In between sessions, they held strategy meetings.
The deprogrammers threatened to hold me captive for “as long as it took.” They mocked and denigrated my religious beliefs. They compared my beloved spiritual teacher to Hitler. They showed me anti-cult films, a video called “The Wave,” which played up the alleged Hitler/cult leader theme, and another called “Cults: Choice or Coercion,” a film that depicted an actual deprogramming.
During one session in which my mother participated, Rory fully exploited the anti-Semitic angle. He told me that those in my Church believed in the authenticity of Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a book which details the supposed gory and vile Satanic practices of Jews. The book alleges that Jews kidnap and sacrifice Christian babies on their altars and drink their blood. These accusations, which my Church did not promote, were not new to my mother. She had heard them in Poland just before the Nazis came. Those statements had been used to justify the slaughter of her loved ones as well as six million other Jews.
My mother broke down and cried. Her grief fell on me like a lead weight. Despairingly she pleaded, “Henry, we have two synagogues praying for you. Henry, open up your eyes...”
When Mary Alice’s turn came, she immediately brought out some ridiculous photos of herself before she got into the Church and after she left as proof that she had been brainwashed. She yelled at me telling me that I was brainwashed and was a fool to believe in the “cult.” She also wanted to videotape the deprogramming session. The woman had no tact or sensitivity. Even one of the security guards was shocked by her vulgarity. I felt like throwing her out of the room but I was too civil and I foolishly remained silent.
When I prayed silently, they threatened to keep me in the basement longer. I could barely sleep. In fact I felt worse after I slept. Food didn’t sit well. One of the guards followed me to the open air bathroom. They feared I might try slitting my wrists, as others have done, simply to get hospital attention and the chance to escape.
I would go to the bathroom and throw water on my face. I tried exercising, something I have done my entire life, but my body felt like lead and I could only do a few push-ups. The two security guards slept within a few feet from me. I felt humiliated, overwhelmed and exhausted. I tried praying at night but it was extremely difficult.
At times I’d pace the room, but Rory or my brother Fred would follow me, continually attacking my beliefs. Fred lorded it over me during these sessions. Jeffrey came down on one occasion. He didn’t have much to say, but in a perverse way he seemed to like the fact that everyone thought that he wasn’t the only one with serious problems.
Even Dr. Gieser came by to visit and counseled me to “revel in the confusion”! A few graduate students in psychology from the university dropped by to interview the deprogrammers for a term paper they were writing. I felt like a caged animal in a zoo. I was very angry but kept it inside. I urged them to let me go. It was a violation of my constitutional rights to hold me captive, I told them.
It turned out that my parents had been preparing for this event for more than one year. Nearly 75 people were contacted, including nearly all the former members of my Church who left disgruntled. People all over the United States were “praying” for me to leave my Church. Months before the deprogramming, psychologists studied me: they analyzed everything I wrote, as well as photos of me and articles about my political activities at Columbia University. I remember well the period preceding the deprogramming attempt. Often I would get up in the middle of the night to pray because I couldn’t get decent sleep. My health deteriorated. It was then that my digestive problems began, problems that still bother me today.
In addition to my responsibilities at the Church’s New York Teaching Center, I was working very hard for my parents as I had done intermittently for many years. They own a lucrative interior design store in Larchmont. While they plotted my deprogramming, I was holding their business together. And so, by the time they got me to the basement, I was exhausted and vulnerable. I have yet to regain the vitality and physical strength I once had.
It wasn’t necessarily what the deprogrammers said that affected me, it was the intensity behind it. I didn’t challenge it in turn with enough intensity. At times I was passive. Passivity and silence can be a very subtle form of agreement. I felt as if I was in a void of emptiness, of death itself.
Once Debra and Rory came down together and decided to mock my Church’s belief in celibacy before marriage. Rubbing her arm, Rory declared, “In the Church, you don’t even have genitals!” Debra turned red. She was attractive and somewhat innocent looking. When I first saw her in the basement I thought to myself, “What are you doing here?” The deprogrammers were obviously trying to exploit any attraction I may have felt toward her.
My Church’s leader was cursed and denigrated by all the ex-members. To Rory she was just like any other woman.
As this continued round the clock, I began to wear down, psychologically and emotionally. I lacked the strength to challenge them. I also felt that any fight would be useless.
On the fourth night I began pacing the adjacent basement room. The others were partying upstairs on wine and pizza. I refused to eat. First Rory came down and walked with me. With his head slightly tilted and his glazed eyes feigning sincerity, he told me his personal anecdotes about Mother and how he was “deceived.” Then Fred relieved him and told me what an idiot I was for falling for this trash and that I had all the capability in the world to succeed as he had done.
I was being forced to make the ultimate decision in my life under the tremendous pressure they were creating. Either it was the Church or my family and career. I was torn by it. I could barely even think straight. How could I make this decision? Dear God, I wanted more time. I wanted to be out from under this pressure, but they refused to let me out.
I did have one chance to escape, I thought. It was day five. The basement door was slightly ajar. The two security guards were outside and my mother was upstairs somewhere. The girls were probably flirting with Fred, and Rory and I were alone. The sun peeped through the small basement window. A breath of fresh air passed through its slight opening. It was summer and how I loved the outdoors. I thought of bolting.
“I can make it,” I thought. “I’ll run, scream and yell for help. A neighbor will hear me. Maybe a car will stop. Go for it! Do it now!”
But there was another voice active inside of me, saying, “I’m at least 10 miles from town. I don’t know where the town is located. I am barefoot and Rory, a long distance runner, has his sneakers on. Suppose it is just a trap, to see if I have any resistance. Suppose I got caught. Then what?”
I decided against trying to escape because I feared being caught and breaking under the additional pressure. Then I remembered what Davies, the Church’s Teaching Center director, had told us one night at the dinner table. “If I was ever in a deprogramming situation, I’d play along with it and the first chance I got, I’d leave.” I decided to try to play along with it. For months after the deprogramming, I would have visions of trying to escape, of dodging past the football players as they tried to tackle me, of trouncing Rory on the street or of driving a car straight through the evergreen bushes and anything else in my way. It took me months to get over feeling humiliated.
Playing along was not as simple as it seemed. Deprogrammers can be very penetrating. Without understanding their tactics, I was like a lamb led to the slaughter.
Galen and Rory read me articles from local Los Angeles papers about the Church’s alleged financial improprieties and the criminal activities of people affiliated with the group. I began to argue with them, but I didn’t have enough facts.
They also read from Robert Lifton’s book, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of “Brainwashing” in China, which is the deprogrammer’s Bible. The book dealt with the brainwashing of American POWs during the Korean War. The deprogrammers compared chapter five, “Psychological Steps,” with C.U.T.’s alleged brainwashing tactics. This time I was quiet. The material was not new; I had already studied this book and others on brainwashing and religious conversion experiences.
Later that day Galen decided I could come out from the basement. It was a little odd. I had never broken down or “snapped” like the girl in the video I was shown earlier. Maybe Galen felt that he had earned his money and needed to get on to some other cases. After a brief celebration that night, I was taken the next day on a whirlwind series of visits to so-called anti-cult experts. The first visit was with Bill and Lorna Goldberg, two well-known sociologists whose parents were also involved with the anti-cult movement. Bill served me some potent coffee and got me to talk about C.U.T. Before leaving, Bill extracted a handshake agreement. If I ever felt like returning, I would give him a call. Weeks later and in the middle of the night, I would mentally wrestle with this agreement every time I felt like returning.
The next day I was taken to the residence of Rabbi Yehuda Fine and his wife Elliesheva in the Hasidic section in Brooklyn. Rabbi Fine was a young man who decided to become a rabbi after visiting Auschwitz and praying to the dead. According to Galen and my parents, his life typified a genuinely spiritual and Jewish lifestyle. It was odd to see a wall full of ancient Hebraic texts that belonged to these ex-Haight Ashbury hippies who had become ultraorthodox Jews.
That evening we went to Woodstock, New York, where I spent a few days “rehabilitating.” We stayed at a hotel where Galen regularly performed deprogrammings. One morning I tried calling my friends from Church in New York but I hung up before they answered. At night I was left alone at the hotel and I thought about stealing their truck and taking off for the city but fear overcame me. I was literally at war with myself.
A few days later, I was delivered to my parents’ store in Larchmont as fully deprogrammed and restored. My dad was so happy he began showering everyone with gifts. Rory became like one of the family.
When I returned back to work at my parents’ store a week later, I could barely function. Simple decisions or minor tasks were confusing to me. I felt like I was stripped of my identity and without form or protection. It was an odd and frustrating feeling.
In the following weeks I was introduced to many members of the anti-cult movement. Almost immediately I was recruited to assist in deprogrammings. Although I thought I was “playing along” I didn’t know which way to go. At times I would slide and speak out against my Church when prodded. I even tried getting drunk a few times to bury the pain but that didn’t work. When thoughts of returning to my chosen religion crept up I would smoke a cigarette, something I never liked. I dated several women but found satisfaction in none.
Nothing would stem my burning desire to find out what was true. I determined to find out whether the deprogrammers were right and trusted in my strength of mind to be able to discriminate. I knew if I just hung in there, God would eventually show me the way. Each morning, I would go running as hard as I could for exercise. At work and at home I would try to keep myself busy in order to drown out the pain. I deeply missed my Church friends. Each time I looked at my watch I would think of what they were doing.
As I got to know some of the people in the anti-cult movement I began to see through their facade. There were parents whose fears and anxieties allowed them to be manipulated to kidnap their own children. Professionals including lawyers, psychiatrists, and businessmen jockeyed for power in the anti-cult hierarchy.
The saddest people in the anti-cult milieu were the other deprogrammed souls who seemed lost as if they were in a twilight zone–not knowing who they were or where they were going. There were parents who sought status in the anti-cult movement and still others whose love for their children turned to fear, desperation and hatred.
It was sickening to see these two-bit hustling deprogrammers ripping off fear-stricken parents! I did not see anything redeeming in these deprogrammers. “How can they call themselves ‘counselors’?” I asked myself. Most didn’t have any formal training in psychology, yet they were dealing with the most tender and sensitive elements of a person’s psyche.
I cried, after God opened my eyes to my enemies and those caught in their midst. Then, I was angered by the deprogrammers who posed as saviors to fear-ridden parents, ready and willing to “ride the White Horse and recapture their children from the throes of the cults.”
I was in pain, seeing young people my age who were so lost and hurt after being deprogrammed yet who still yearned for a meaningful spiritual life. It was a con game played by men and women with big egos who paraded around like gods with parents following them, practically begging them to snatch their adult children. One time when I shared some of these thoughts with my mother, I broke down and cried.
I even took a look into Judaism and visited my parents’ rabbi as well as Rabbi Fine. As I had discovered when I was younger, there was nothing there for me.
“After all, why should I follow a religion merely out of guilt for what my parents endured?” I thought. To me, the teachings I had left were magnificent.
I asked the deprogrammers, the psychiatrists, those in the clergy and everyone who participated in the deprogramming what they thought I was feeling when I experienced my God with me as the All who was One, and I was at Peace...when I felt the descent of my beloved Holy Christ Self upon me.
They could not give me a satisfactory answer. “Oh, it was just within you. Whatever you experienced was within you and you just projected it out to someone or something else,” was their best response. Some thought I was just going through “post-cult trauma.” But that was not it at all. My soul hungered for that direct experience with my Mighty I AM Presence again.
I did not find it amongst the deprogrammers. All I experienced there was anguish and pain. They were mostly deceivers and the self-deceived–manipulators who wanted to make a fast buck on the fears of others. They enjoyed destroying the soul’s ability to recognize God and got paid handsomely to do it.
I was also very angry with my parents. I yelled at them at one of our counseling sessions with Dr. Sukhdeo. “I took care of you and your entire business while you plotted to destroy me. I shared with you my love and all that I had. And what did you give me in return?” I yelled.
Dr. Sukhdeo was shocked and somewhat fearful. I was about to verbally assault him, but he sensed my intention and quickly pointed out that he had opposed the deprogramming and thought I didn’t need it.
At other times I felt helpless and would enter periods of depression because I could not see a way out. At night in bed I would think about my friends and the life I once enjoyed.
After four agonizing months, I finally realized that I was at the end of my rope. I had to make a decision yet it seemed so hard to make. But the deprogramming attempt had taken its toll. My health had deteriorated as my faith had wavered. Now I didn’t know what to do and I just couldn’t make a decision.
I vividly remember that day in October 1982. I was working at my parents’ store. One of my friends from the New York Teaching Center, where I had previously lived, called asking for me. My mother answered the phone. As soon as the call came in, my body literally jolted back 10 feet. I asked my mother if it was Elaine. She said, “No.” I knew it was not the truth.
I then tried hard to lose myself in my work but it was no use. I was barely functional. Finally, I got into my parents’ delivery truck and went to their home. I remember thinking to myself as I drove off, “My friends are praying against me and I can’t stop its effect.” I realized that in not taking a stand for them I had actually become their enemy.
I reached my parents’ home and I went down to the basement. I made the loudest invocation to Saint Germain, to Hilarion, Guru Ma and Lanello and every Ascended Master who I knew, to help me, to show me the way, to show me clearly whether the Teachings were real, whether the Messenger was real. I knew God would show me the way.
Later, I drove to the shore and fell asleep under the sun. I woke up a couple of hours later silently praying to Cyclopea. I meditated on the sober decision that I was about to make. Whatever I decided, I knew it would be painful. It would affect many people, particularly my parents, and I would suffer for it as they would too.
“How could I live a life as a broken and tattered soul like the others who had been broken, as half a man?” I asked myself. “Do I not have the courage to stand up for myself? Must I live my life for someone else?” I couldn’t. I had to return!
That night, I finally mustered the courage to call the New York Teaching Center. I called from a local gas station. Daniel answered the phone and remembered my voice. He handed the phone to Elaine. A day later, I visited the Teaching Center.
When Mother found out that I had returned, she said it was the best Christmas gift she had ever received. Mother invited me out to Summit University for the Winter quarter. This was my greatest Christmas present.
But before I left New York, I was determined to find out as much as I could about the anti-cult movement and the deprogrammers as well as their plans against our Church, which I did, thank God. Under the guise of having been deprogrammed, I attended their anti-cult conference.
The deprogrammers told a lot of lies. One of their most pernicious ones was that once I “left,” the cult would never trust me to return because “I knew too much.” They said “cult” as if it were a curse word. How wrong they were! I was received with open arms by Mother and her staff and was treated with great love and care.
Shortly after arriving at Camelot, I participated in a seminar thoroughly exposing deprogramming and the anti-cult movement. I also warned two Church members that their parents intended to have them deprogrammed. (On the last day of the anti-cult conference, two deprogrammers had tried to recruit me to assist in those deprogrammings!) Most of our members were shocked to hear of the intensity of the attack I had undergone. I don’t think people realized how insidious, how vicious and personally directed the forces of evil are. We were so used to decreeing to transmute conditions that were outside of ourselves at a safe distance from us.
I feel personally indebted to Mother and to my friends who were in New York City at the time, who never gave up and whose prayers to Cyclopea gave me the vision and the insight I needed to see through this dark night of my soul. They hadn’t been decreeing against me, they had been decreeing for me! I am also grateful to Archangel Michael and El Morya, who protected me and never left my side despite my foibles and the many mistakes I made.
I also want to share with you the pain and sorrow this incident caused me and my family. Naturally, my relationship with my parents suffered. I believe it took me nearly two years to really begin to heal the breach. Had it not been for my uncle, I don’t think I would have been able to see them again. To this day, nearly nine years later, we are still working on forgiving each other. Ironically, it is the anti-cult movement who claims that “cults” separate families whereas before the deprogramming, I had worked for my parents and enjoyed it. And my parents, without realizing it, subjected me to the same Nazi tactics they had endured.
It is my prayer that by sharing my experience with my brothers and sisters in this Community others and their parents will never have to endure such agony themselves.
Lastly, I am grateful for the experience, for those who tried to destroy my soul actually made me stronger. The deprogramming attempt and my subsequent return to the Teachings helped shape me as a person. I learned what it was like to be without the thread of contact with God. And let me tell you–it was sheer hell! I learned how it is, by the grace of God, to be once again under my own “vine and fig tree” (Micah 4:4) following the spiritual path of my choice. And I love it.
I can’t even remember when my search for expanded Truth began. As a child I believed that everyone felt the sweet presence of Jesus Christ that I experienced. I was interested in visiting other churches to compare the rituals of worship.
When I brought my questions to my mother, she told me that I shouldn’t question, that all of the answers were in the Bible. The Book of John was my favorite and the only one I understood.
Through the years my children became interested in other churches and we left the Baptist Church and established ourselves in the Presbyterian Church. My search began in earnest after our Presbyterian Board of Directors asked me to represent the church at the annual synod conclave, which was held at Ohio University. Following the group session one night, I was invited to join an exclusive group of ministers, their wives and several laymen.
These people had experienced the Holy Spirit through different situations following prayer–in their work, for their families, etc. Since this experience was not included and accepted by their hierarchy they met secretly as they found other seekers.
I began to be invited to attend groups who were delving in the psychic, spacecraft, the Camps Farthest Out, which were charismatic groups attended by Jews, priests, nuns, ministers and laymen of all faiths.
I was invited to attend a Full Gospel men’s group who held their dinner meetings at Cincinnati University. Here I learned that when ministers approached their hierarchy to describe their spiritual experiences, they were told that they were not to describe them from the pulpit and unless they could follow church dogma they would be dismissed.
Their lifelong training and service had been in their church but many of them resigned rather than give up their search for the living God. When a minister resigned we would form a circle around him and sing a freedom song that was written by members of the group. Then we would march and sing “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”
By this time I had also become quite active in the Unity Church where I had learned something of reincarnation and one of the ladies began to give me her Pearls of Wisdom.
My soul was crying out to be free but I wanted to be free of organization and structure so I scarcely scanned the first two Pearls I received. I was sitting in my dark meditation room one night as I held the third Pearl in my hand and I began to demand that God help me. The Pearl seemed to move in my hand. I turned on the light and began to pray to Jesus to help me understand its message. This was in November 1967. El Morya spoke of the first Christmas and talked about the Wise Men and how they had gone before the Holy Family to clear the way and to lay a forcefield of protection for the birth of Jesus Christ.
Throughout the coming month I fulfilled my duties as wife and mother but it was obvious that I was in a world all my own. Christmas took on a new meaning and I was feeling like a child again. Soon after, I received a copy of The Overcoming of Fear through Decrees, which is now entitled The Science of the Spoken Word. I ordered the Pearls and soon became a Keeper of the Flame. I continued to attend Unity Church and went to a retreat at the Lee’s Summit, Missouri Unity Farm where I met Madame Caspari, who directed the Wee Wisdom School there.
I tried to share my enthusiasm for the Ascended Masters and their Messengers. I became aware that a number of people in the church were receiving the Pearls and the minister was using excerpts from them in her sermons without giving any credit to the source of her information. I became disenchanted and left Unity.
I was a seeker without a church and I became intense again. One day I felt exhausted and I cried out to God to get in or get out of my life. I remember thinking as I fell asleep that according to my Baptist background I would probably be struck by lightning. Sometime later I awakened and the room was full of light. I was wrapped in the warmest feeling of Love I had ever experienced and I whispered, “God, you really got in.”
I received a copy of the Beacon, a monthly newsletter published by The Summit Lighthouse. It contained a lecture that had recently been given in Colorado Springs, Colorado, by Mark L. Prophet and one by Mother. So many of my questions were answered and I felt much better about reincarnation having read them.
A friend had been giving me publications by a Mark-Age group based in Florida. At that time there seemed to be a confusing resemblance between the two teachings so I decided to go to see for myself. However, I found that my budget would cover but one conference so I decided to attend the New Year’s Class 1971 in Colorado Springs at The Summit Lighthouse.
I made preparations for the trip but the day before I was to leave I awakened feeling very dizzy and I began to have hallucinations. My husband knew that I had not received drugs of any kind because I had not seen a doctor for years. I did not use alcohol so we were both frightened.
Our family doctor was a Catholic and understood better than we did that something unusual was happening, but since he didn’t know what to do about it he went to talk to his priest. My young daughter brought her stereo into my room with a record that I had ordered from the Summit called “The Archangels.” As she dashed off to school she said, “Listen to the angel music, Mamma, and you will feel better.”
I played the record over and over. It was dictations from the Seven Archangels.
I cried my river that day and I did in fact feel so much better that I got out of bed, showered, finished packing my clothes and prepared a huge meal for my family.
As my husband drove me to the airport the next day he grumbled, “What if that should happen again in some motel room where you don’t know anyone out there?” As I left to get on the plane I kissed him and said, “You have Julianne play the angel music for you and you will know that I will be fine.” When I heard my first live dictation by Archangel Michael at the class I wondered if my family had been courageous enough to continue to listen to the record after his salutation, “ALL HAIL! I AM MICHAEL, THE ARCHANGEL.”
I met Mark Prophet as I came through the door at La Tourelle. He greeted me, started to say something and refrained. I remember thinking, “I’m sure I am wearing the correct color of dress for today.”
From the beginning everything seemed like a dream. The people were lovely and the music and lectures were wonderful. Then I began to feel disoriented and so uncomfortable that I couldn’t eat. Voices seemed to be telling me I was out of place, that I should leave. Werner Zotter had come to the class from the slopes of the Broadmoor Ski Resort next door. He was a ski instructor and seemed aware that I needed comfort. He may have been as uncomfortable as I was but his sense of humor helped.
I finally decided about the third day that I would slip away and go home. As I started for the door I saw a young man making a call to God as he looked straight at me. He came and talked to me and I decided to wait until the end of the session to leave. I picked up my decree book and when it was time to leave I found that I felt wonderful again. Somehow then and there I knew I would never leave the organization.
I had read the Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East and I was convinced Mark was an unascended Master. I had never met anyone who was such an expression of love and who was so masterful a teacher.
It was Mother and Mark’s custom to shake hands with the people as they left the class. I had just witnessed Mother being the instrument to deliver a dictation. As usual, I was speechless but much to my own surprise I knelt before Mother with the full realization of the mantle she wore as an expression of the Christ. I recognized something that was not limited to the human despite her loveliness. Mark looked at me with a puzzled expression and I was embarrassed because I had never had such an inclination before. I felt the same warmth of love coming through her that I had awakened to several years before.
During the last session of the class Mark lectured on false teachings. At that time he told us that Mark of Mark-Age was his false-hierarchy impostor and that his teaching was dangerous and linked to the fallen ones in spacecraft. I always wished I had thanked him more personally because as I traveled home I felt he had battled for my soul. I was very careful what I read for many years until I was secure emotionally.
Yes, I do bear witness to the legitimacy of the Messengership of Mark and Mother. I am eternally grateful for the dedication of their many lives to God that such as I might have the opportunity to know the joy of giving and receiving the magnificent blessings of our Father through Christ, in service, surrender and sacrifice (which is no sacrifice) and to know that life is ongoing and that by God’s grace we can ascend back to our Father-Mother God and continue to serve life.
Dear Mother,
I would like to witness to the great presence of Jesus during the “Watch with Me” vigil on Wednesday nights. On the night of the staff meeting (Wednesday, November 21), I walked into the Jesus’ Watch in the court still undecided as to what I should do in the difficult situation I was going through, and was very burdened by it all. By the end of the service I knew exactly what course of action to take and I felt completely at peace for the first time in weeks. I cannot say exactly what happened, but I feel that some rift in my consciousness (at an unconscious level) was healed. I was not aware of it actually happening–I just feel the result. I am grateful to Jesus beyond words.
Thank you so very much for all you do.
Love always,
When my girlfriend became pregnant, neither of us felt we were in any way ready or qualified to get married or raise a child. I was 22 years old. The traumatic experience led us to the decision that an abortion was the only answer to our troubles.
Shortly before the planned abortion, we received a letter from Elizabeth Clare Prophet. In the letter there was a paragraph that stated the serious spiritual repercussions to those who have abortions.
That paragraph was compelling enough to convince both of us to cancel the abortion plans and goaded us to make a supreme contact and to surrender to God in prayer.
The happy ending of this story is that we did get married and our son is now 16 years old. He is a strong, respectable teenager of whom we are proud.
Thank you, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, for writing that timely letter. Our son lives today because of it.
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