The Ascended Masters are those Beings who are wholly Divine, for They have made the Ascension as Beloved Jesus did. They are the elder brothers, the teachers of mankind on this Earth.
For the I AM followers, an Ascended Master is a person who has gone through the process of ascension and has a high state of spiritual awareness. This concept is derived from the teachings of Theosophy, which believes that Ascended Masters belong to the Great White Brotherhood. Similar beliefs in Ascended Masters exist in Elizabeth Clare Prophet’s Church Universal, Triumphant, and New Age channelers.
An enlightened person, in the Buddhist sense, is different from an Ascended Master. Enlightenment implies that a person has no more need for further lifetimes. Ascension is an alternative to death, where people are in command of the physical realm and can manipulate their energy to shapeshift. Therefore, the goal of life was ascension to God, which would result in immortality.
In Unveiled Mysteries (1934), Ballard writes about how he assisted a man at Mt. Shasta in making his ascension. Additionally, Ballard’s The Magic Presence describes a golden chair called the “Atomic Accelerator” that helps people make their ascensions into heaven.
It isn’t for me to determine if this is a cult or not, but, ummm…nice enough people when I meet them around town. For whatever reason, they mill around the post office and the coffee shop. You can spot them because they all wear purple clothes.
Further Reading
Guy Ballard, Unveiled Mysteries, free resource
Guy Ballard, The Magic Presence, free resource
NPR wrote an article here: “A Mountain of Many Legends”
A chapter from the College of the Siskiyous notes all published materials on this subject.
Author: mountshastamyths
Lurking around here with more questions than answers