Book Excerpts

As I pulled off the freeway and entered the small town of Mount Shasta, I realized a circle was completing. Saint Germain had told me on the Mountain the summer before to return to India. There, Sai Baba had told me to meditate on “I AM GOD,” the Divinity within my own heart, and the guidance that came from following that Presence had brought me back to Saint Germain and the Mountain.    After driving all morning, I was hungry and wanted to find a place for breakfast. As I cruised down the main street, I recalled how Mount Shasta was known for its mystical lore of the Masters, Lemurians, and UFOs, but that morning the tiny town at the foot of the Mountain seemed quite ordinary. It was like so many other logging towns in the Northwest at the time, isolated and desperate for business, with neon “open” signs in every shop window. Yet, despite those illumined invitations, I was about to learn that the local inhabitants were not as open as the signs advertised.    I parked my van and walked down the street, aware of the eyes of passersby probing me, as though I had just gotten off a spaceship. My long hair hanging over my shoulders, a mala of prayer beads around my neck, and the loose white clothes from India must have put me in the hippie category in the eyes of the local ranchers and mill workers.    Midway down the bleak main street I caught sight of a lurid sign flashing on and off “Breakfast House,” and I walked toward it with grumbling stomach. In the door I was accosted by a red-lettered, plastic sign, “We do not solicit hippie patronage.”    I had never liked the term hippie, for many who used that term seemed to feel that by growing their hair and wearing baggy clothes they were making a leap in consciousness. As a teenager, I had worn a black turtleneck sweater and hung out in Greenwich Village and read Kerouac’s Dharma Bums, meditating on Zen koans such as “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” But I was fourteen then, and now I tried to dissociate myself from both the Beatnik and Hippie labels and avoid being put in a category of any sort.    Hippie seemed a diminutive of the Beatnik hip, but I didn’t find out until later that the word comes from an African dialect, meaning one who is aware. I could have lived with that if I had known the true meaning, but I had rejected the label and now felt that the sign in the door forbidding hippies didn’t apply to me.    I pushed open the door of the restaurant and stepped inside. The packed room became silent, like the scene from the film Easy Rider where two freedom-loving bikers enter a restaurant and are confronted by southern rednecks. Standing in the doorway, I was frozen to the floor by a room of icy stares.    Here’s the part of the movie where the lumberjacks throw me into the street and cut off my long hair, I thought, knowing how hippies who crossed the line were sometimes treated in rural areas in those days. Driven by my ravenous hunger, however, I moved into the room and sat down on the only empty stool, between two burly guys in flannel shirts and logger boots. I could feel them bristle as they turned their backs when I slid in between them.       “What’ll it be, honey?” the waitress said, walking up and standing in front of me with her pad and pencil, ready to take my order, defusing the bomb of hostility that had been close to exploding. I felt a wave of gratitude toward her. Once everyone saw the waitress was going to serve me, they all went back to eating and talking. Is it really that hard for these people, who no doubt think of themselves as Christians, to show tolerance and compassion to a stranger? I wondered.    Soon the fear in the pit of my stomach was gone, as I began devouring a large stack of buckwheat pancakes smothered in butter and maple syrup. As I was finishing breakfast, a radiant, blue-eyed fellow about my own age, whom I had not seen in the back of the restaurant, popped up beside me and thrust his hand into mine.    “Hi, I’m Stephen,” he said cheerfully. “I own the health food store around the corner. Come on over when you’re done.” Was this the one the Master in Muir Woods told me to see, who would tell me what to do next?    As soon as I paid my bill, I walked over to Stephen’s store, where I found him busy filling plastic bags with sunflower seeds. He looked up as I walked in, and without a moment’s hesitation looked me in the eye and said,    “You’re supposed to see Pearl!”    “Are you sure?” I asked. “Who’s Pearl?”    “Someone who knows….” “Knows what?”    “Knows what you want to know…just call her, you’ll find out.”    Following his instructions, I used his phone to call Pearl.    “Come right up,” a motherly voice spoke sweetly in my ear.    A few minutes later, I was parked at the end of a dead end road, outside what appeared to be the gingerbread house from the story of Hansel and Gretel, complete with a tall hedge and sheltering pine trees. Walking through the rose-entwined trellis in the hedge, I felt as though I were entering a temple. A flagstone path led to the door, which was round at the top, and standing before it, I let the iron knocker fall with a thud. The door was opened by a kindly woman in her sixties with piercing, hazel eyes. She stood in the doorway, peering intently at me like an owl.    “Come in,” she said, “I’ve been expecting you,” and stepped aside for me to enter.    “What do you mean, you’ve been expecting me?” I asked, after being shown to a chair opposite hers in the cozy living room.    “The Master, Saint Germain, came to me this morning and said that he was sending someone to see me,” she said in a matter-of-fact way, as though used to the daily appearance of this renowned Master, who had reportedly been guiding the affairs of humanity for centuries, if not longer.    “He did?” I swallowed hard.    “Now, tell me who you are and what brought you here,” she said, drawing her chair closer and beckoning me to pull forward, trying to put me at ease. I looked at the Reader’s Digest on the table beside her and the tapestry of deer wandering in the forest on the wall and wondered how, after all my experiences in India sitting at the feet of dust-covered, often naked, gurus, whose faces were smeared with ash, sandalwood paste, or vermilion, my wanderings in search of spiritual guidance had brought me to this ordinary-appearing woman in an ordinary house in a northern California mill town. I told her of my experience in Muir Woods and of the mysterious stranger who had appeared out of nowhere and taken me out of my body to the ecstatic realm of the Great Silence, and how I had decided to return to the Earth to be of service, and how the stranger had transformed himself into a being wearing a white robe who told me to go to Mount Shasta.    Without skipping a beat, this little grandmotherly lady, who looked like Yoda from Star Wars, asked, a mischievous twinkle in her eye, “And who do you suppose that was?”    I looked up and saw a picture of Saint Germain on the wall and nodded toward it, still hardly daring to speak of my encounter with this legendary being only hours before.    “Yes, and he is very close by and is indicating that he wants to help you.”    “What is he saying?” I asked, astonished that Saint Germain was here, too, and showing such a sudden interest in me. Where has he been all my life, during all my ordeals, and why has he waited only until now to appear? I wondered. Where was he in the past, when I prayed to God and no one answered?    “I cannot tell you what he is saying, because I do not channel the words of the Masters,” Pearl responded. “The Masters do not allow their students to channel, except on the rarest occasions, because the Masters— who are God beings—can convey their wishes directly to you through your own heart. You may not hear the words they are saying with your ears or your mind—for your mind would only argue with them and seek to interfere. Instead, they convey information to your higher body, which you access intuitively as needed, later perceiving that information to come from yourself.”    I remembered now with great embarrassment how I had argued with Saint Germain the year before when he had come to me on the Mountain and told me to change my name—a name I swore to him I would never use! He had spoken directly to my mind, words which I had dismissed because I had not yet met the Master who was their source. Now Pearl was telling me how I could contact that Master and experience his consciousness within my own field of awareness.    She paused and continued, “If you will go within, turn your attention to the center of your being, and send love to Saint Germain—affirming his presence within yourself, knowing that his heart and your heart are one—you will feel his presence, and that will open the way for him to work directly with you through your heart.”    I shut my eyes to meditate until Pearl ordered, “Open your eyes! You do not need to close your eyes to meditate. Simply turn your attention within to the center of your being and say silently to yourself, I AM the presence of Saint Germain! Feel the sun within your heart, and within that sun feel his presence. You are not claiming to be the Master but learning to recognize the oneness of the Master’s consciousness with yours.    “The Masters are not separate from you,” Pearl said. “There is no distance or time for them—wherever you are, they are also. Oneness with Saint Germain is possible because the energy of the Seventh Ray, of which Saint Germain is Chohan—the master or director of conscious activity—is already within you. That energy is the spectrum of your own inner rainbow you are invoking, the part of yourself to which the Master corresponds.    “Just as daylight is composed of all seven main colors of the spectrum, so, too, are you composed of all seven rays of creation. There is an Ascended Master who is the Chohan, the head, of each ray, though now we are invoking only the Seventh Ray, that of Saint Germain.    “He is watching you, and you should call on him if you want his help, if you want to invoke him in your life. The same way you would invoke Jesus, to contact Saint Germain, you need only go within and open your heart. These two are brothers, working together. The Master sees you not as separate, but as a part of himself, and so you should see him and not hesitate to call upon him. When you say, I AM here, I AM there, and I AM everywhere, you touch on his consciousness—the awareness that within the One is the many, and within the many, the One.” I did as Pearl instructed, repeating over and over to myself, "I AM the presence of Saint Germain."   I felt nothing at first, only embarrassing silence. Then, in a few minutes, I began to feel a spring of happiness beginning to bubble up in my heart, accompanied by an electrifying presence in the room, whose atmosphere had begun to fill with violet light.    “That,” said Pearl, acknowledging the shift, “is the Master Saint Germain—and he is very happy. He has verve—a word that combines vitality and nerve. Verve means ‘Let’s get with it!’—but with a sense of humor.”    Indeed, I could swear that the Master was laughing, but I questioned incredulously, Do Masters laugh? I thought they were always serious.    “Yes, Masters do laugh,” Pearl affirmed, hearing my thought, “though, perhaps not audibly.”    As I let go of that thought, a stream of energy poured down through the crown of my head into the center of my chest, filling my body with light, and I heard within me the resounding affirmation repeating over and over, “I AM THAT I AM…I AM THAT I AM…I AM THAT I AM”— and the consciousness of that source became anchored in my heart. The violet hue of the room intensified as I continued to look into Pearl’s eyes, watching, amazed, as her physical form seemed to dissolve into a luminous ball of golden light. In that timeless awareness there was no past or future, only the eternal now, and I basked in the light of that sun.    As the light faded, I again became aware of my body, and of Pearl sitting across from me. It was hard to believe that this transformation had happened sitting with a grandmotherly lady in her quaint living room in the mountains, not at the feet of a saint in India, and I looked at the herd of deer grazing blissfully in the tapestry on the wall, and the wooden elves staring mischievously at me from their perches on the bookshelves. She began to speak, commenting on my inner experience as if she were seeing my mind.    “Even though you heard no words of direction, you have been given guidance, encouragement, and nourishment, which the Master has imparted to your higher mental body in the form of liquid light. As the occasion calls it forth, you will be able to access the information he has given you. For him to give you a more direct message would only cause your mind to question and interfere. Such direct channeling would weaken you, cause you to look outside yourself, when what the Masters want is for you to go within for your answers. In that way, you will become a Master rather than a perpetual follower of Masters.”    No wonder they don’t tell us what to do more often, I thought, remembering with embarrassment how I had argued with Saint Germain the year before on the Mountain when he had told me to change my name.    Pearl continued, giving me a further explanation of what I could expect if I were to pursue this path of mastery, “Only rarely does a Master say anything to the human self, and then not through channeled intermediaries, but directly to the student. The Masters are all-knowing, all-present, and all-powerful, very able to convey their thoughts to you in your waking or dreaming state without having to go through others. Give them credit for being what they are—literally Gods—well able to communicate to you in a way that you will perceive. But be prepared, for they will not always tell you what you want to hear, rather what you need to hear.    “On rare occasions the Masters have given spiritual discourses through highly developed individuals who have been well prepared over many years, such as my teacher, Godfre Ray King. However, at those times, the Masters were giving spiritual law and imparting a radiation that strengthened the self-awareness of the individuals present, not prophecies that fill people with fear or keep them coming back for ever more information and high sounding initiations that keep them in their heads by making them feel superior to others.”    I was astounded that Pearl had known and worked with Godfre Ray King, the author of Unveiled Mysteries. This was the book I first saw in India while a guest of the Theosophical Society, and, although skeptical at first, I was later to read this amazing account of the author’s inner experiences with the Masters many times, for the energy I felt radiating from its pages was tangible proof of the Masters’ existence and a validation of their teachings.    “All true contact with a Master takes a person closer to the source within, leaving one feeling empowered. Only false prophets try to turn attention to themselves or barrage their followers with a never-ending stream of supposedly essential information and prophesies, addicting them to the need to come back again and again to get the latest message—which is frequently rubbish.    “As for charging money to hear a Master speak through a supposed channel,” Pearl went on, “no one who has ever been so graced as to stand in the presence of a Master would ever charge others money for that same privilege, assuming that the privilege was theirs to dispense. That is one way to tell if someone has truly met a Master. To charge others for that which they received by grace would be to fall from grace themselves. When money is charged for spirit, you know spirit is absent. I am not talking about charging for food, lodging, and the need to pay to rent a hall; but when an individual is denied access to the Masters and their teachings because of lack of money, or people are pressured to pay, you know that you don’t need to waste your time there, for the Masters are not there either.  Further, many sincere channels think they are hearing the Masters’ voices, but most are merely hearing their own minds at best; at worst they are contacting disembodied spirits masquerading as Masters, that drift about sucking the energy of their followers. Even though the information these channelers give may sometimes be accurate or inspiring, it may also be largely untrue—giving rise to fear, false hopes, mistaken expectations, and often outright harm. These earthbound entities know they will catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, so they often lace misleading information with accurate observations and flattering comments that appeal to the ego, telling you how great you have been in past lifetimes, or how great you will be in the near future.”        I didn’t realize at the time that this was not merely theoretical knowledge, but that years later, while working in the movie business, I would come face to face with one of these dark beings, not merely a discarnate entity, but a false prophet from another world, seeking to mislead his followers. This encounter, chronicled later in the chapter “The Battle for Hollywood,” almost cost me my life.    “Getting guidance through signs, omens, dreams, tarot card readings, and Ouija boards,” Pearl continued, “while fascinating, are all practices that are open to various interpretations, due to the subjectivity of the human mind influenced by desire. The highest form of guidance manifests as spontaneous action, free from thought. It flows intuitively from the center of your being, without any mental interpretation. You simply do what is right! You know what you need when you need it and act spontaneously from your Higher Self with no interpretation or intermediary.”    Pearl paused, and then continued her explanation of how the Masters work. “The Masters guide and direct, most of the time without people knowing, allowing their guidance to be perceived as intuition or simply the spontaneous desire to act. This is because you become a Master by learning to tune in to your own Higher Self, the I AM THAT I AM, not by getting information channeled through someone else. “How do you think these beings became Masters?” she asked, and then answered her own question, “By becoming conscious of their Higher Selves, the same process by which you too become a Master. There is no other way.    “This is not the work of a day,” she continued. “People read a book, attend a seminar, or have a channeling, and they think they are Masters and want to give workshops and charge money. No, it is not the work of a day. It takes time and effort to overcome the lower nature, and strict obedience to the Higher Self and to the Masters for the individual to advance on the path of Mastery. Strict obedience is the key. Saint Germain told Godfre Ray King, ‘If an individual will give total obedience, I can help anyone— even a shoe shine boy in the train station—clear his karma and achieve liberation in three years.’”    Seeing me sit up in my seat at this offer from Saint Germain, Pearl glanced at me with a knowing smile. “But let me caution you. Once you embark on this path, you will be severely tested—of that you may be sure. You must walk the razor’s edge. Woe to the one who once embarks on this path and tries to turn back, for there is no turning back. To begin and to fail would be to regress many lifetimes, because the power you accumulate as you advance amplifies your every thought and feeling, so any discord would be amplified as well, creating negative karma. It is not a path on which to embark lightly.”    Pearl finished, and I sat very still in my chair. I knew now why I had been brought here. I had been led around the world to prepare me for this moment. I understood that the Masters were making me an offer. I was being called to the Great Work, that of self-mastery. The seed had been planted when I read The Impersonal Life; now I was embarking on the path to which that book had led me, one starting at my own feet. The book says to forget about Masters, who may be a distraction from the real work of becoming a Master, and to meditate instead on the I AM— the very message the Masters proclaim. Replace worship of deities by becoming one.    The words she had spoken resonated so deeply within me as truth that I vowed then and there to make whatever sacrifice was necessary, to discipline myself in whatever way was needed, so I could become a being who could help others—like the magnificent being who had appeared before me in Muir Woods. Little dreaming how difficult this was to be and the startling adventures I would have under the Masters’ tutelage, I took a solemn vow to give total obedience to them and to the I AM Presence, through which their guidance would come. Still feeling his presence, I requested Saint Germain to take me as his apprentice in his great service to humanity. I had vowed only that morning in Muir Woods to return to Earth to alleviate human suffering. Now I was being offered the training that would give me the means.    A pristine energy that was the essence of divinity filled the room—and I knew that Saint Germain had heard me. Little did I realize, though, how soon the lessons would begin and how severe the tests were to be, over the next several years. At that moment, sitting in Pearl’s living room, I felt only elation that after so many years of searching—for what, I didn’t even know—I had at last found the sacred path to perfection, and a true Master who had accepted me for training.    I felt a profound gratitude toward Pearl for being a wayshower and opening this doorway for me. I didn’t realize at the time that Pearl could have Ascended years before but had stayed in her body only to serve as a teacher to those whom the Masters would send her. She, too, had made the same decision as I, to stay on the Earth to alleviate suffering and to guide to the Inner Presence all whom the Masters would send her way.    Pearl concluded our meeting by telling me a parable that hinted at the level of dedication that would be required of me:    In the remote mountains, a seeker found the teacher for whom he had been searching his whole life. “Master, at last I have found you,” he said. “I beg you accept me as your disciple and teach me the path to enlightenment.”    “Come with me,” the Master said, walking to a nearby stream, the seeker following. In midstream, the Master grabbed the seeker and held his head under water. After what seemed an eternity to the would-be disciple, the Master raised him, gasping, to the surface.    “Now, tell me,” the Master asked, “when your head was under water, what did you want more than anything else?”    “Air, air,” the student gasped, filling his lungs gratefully.    “Then go away,” the Master said. “Come back only when you want what I have to teach as much as, when your head was under water, you wanted air.”