Customer Reviews

Psychic Dictatorship in America

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In the early 1980s I interviewed Gerald Bryan's widow at her home. By her account he was a kind-hearted man with a yearning to find truth. G Bryan was a chiropractor who dabbled with the I AM beliefs until he noted the extensive harm the Ballard's perpetrated not only through their wild claims about channeling St Germain and the power of I AM decrees, but also for leaving behind so many broken families and financially and psychologically damaged ex-members.

Bryan addressed these issues in pamphlets he distributed himself then compiled into a self-published book. Sure, this was not academically peer-reviewed scholarship but the evidence to support what he wrote is there if one cares to look. Every Ballard plagiarism he cited I have confirmed on my own. During the late 1970s I knew many I AM members and read every one of their books as well as dozens of I AM "Voices." In my view Bryan could have gone much further in deconstructing this quasi-fascist Theosophy sect had he the resources. His book has been a blessing to all who yearn for a clearer idea of just what was behind the Ballards and their bizarre movement.

After many years out of print, I applaud the publisher putting Psychic Dictatorship in America back into print. Without Gerald Bryan's book, the history of the Mighty I AM would be lost. Unfortunately, history has gotten repeated over and over again with the continuation of belief in the cockamamie ideas espoused by the Ballards and the Mighty I AM.

Psychic Dictatorship in America is a sometimes hilarious, incredible, and sad story of how an out-of-work broke couple decided to start their own religion and following of sycophants who jumped when they said jump.

It's always amazing to me the credulity of believers who swallow this pap.

Jim Rizzo

When I found this book was available, I ordered it quickly. I had heard some of the stories and have a couple of Gerald Bryan's tracts that he handed out in the 1940s. These tracts were assembled into Psychic Dictatorship in America.

This book is like a 2 x 4 on the head in its effect on the psyche. How do people get swallowed into to these movements? What's been done in the name of religion is to be remembered.

If you read this book, I highly recommend as companion works, 400 Years of Imaginary Friends, Madame Blavatsky's Baboon, Ancient Wisdom Revealed, Purely for Prophet, and Lambs to Slaughter.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Kala Ardis

This is a marvelous book, for which I actually paid a lot of money for a first edition years ago when it was out of print. It was brought to my mind by the recent event on the National Mall, the apotheosis of Glenn Beck's fraudulence. But when I heard Beck on Fox News later trying to justify his event to Chris Wallace I became aware of the probable source of a lot of his rhetorical style. The Ballards, too, were very fond of telling people to discover the truth of themselves. Quite amazing, given their doctrinal assertions which were dictatorial. They would say things like....Don't accept what I am saying, find out for yourself. Of course that came with the quick de facto auto-suggestion that you might as well accept the outlandish truth they are putting forth. It is the psychic bait- and- switch of Beck's that reminds me so much of the Ballards'. And that is why I think this book is an important historical corrective for the blandishments that once again tempt this country. Add to it the very right-wing hyper-Patriotism that the Ballards used and you have Beck's real play-book. Whether or not he studied the Ballards themselves in the religious quest he undertook, he is in touch with religious huckstering playbook they developed. (Blavatstky may be in the background, but she was more of just an ultimately benign party girl, she didn't have the crowd control ambitions.) This explains a lot in a way. Beck in fact doesn't sound like many other Mormons I have ever heard. And that is meant as a compliment to Mormons, But I realize now he sounds a lot like the Depression era cult leaders described in this book. It really devolves more to a nexus of stylistic tropes. Again, especially the constant invocation of "thinking for yourself" when in fact the point of the whole rhetoric is that you are put into an infantile state where you don't need to. History does tend to repeat itself. Those tempted by Beck's rhetoric, and those working against it would do well to heed the historical warnings this book provides. And for those more specifically drawn to the esoteric aspect of such things, we would do well to emulate the reasonable and, yes, enthusiastic yet critical scholarship of Manly Palmer Hall. Manly Palmer Hall shows that this whole realm of human experience could be parsed by an enthusiast with much more responsibility and real patriotism. But more importantly without the the theocratic grandiosity and attempts at mind control.

Post Scriptum: By the way, I love the negative reviews given here by others. They indulge in the favorite pastime of right-wingers these days claiming everyone else is not logical. (e.g. the infamous Professor Robert George a great example, who is a devotee of Glenn Beck's and appeared on his show.) This is the tendency of cultic reasoning, which even professors are given to nowadays. This book is a great corrective. Also the Ballards were very much into Gold, and Goldmines and the Gold Standard. There is no surprise that all these types have the same interests and obsessions.

This book was written from a typical skeptical viewpoint. The stuff claimed about the Ballards is hogwash. I found it laughable at times and sad at other times. It's just a pure shame how far skeptics will go to try and drag others down. I'd like to find out how many years the Bryan practiced meditation. I have performed many things that defy logical explantion myself, but it was only after I condition myself through many years of meditation and I became sensitive to subtle energies.
Anyway, nothing in this book proved anything to me...Feel free to read the book yourself, but just remember, I warned ya! : )
love and light..........

In the Preface to this 1940 book, Gerald B. Bryan wrote, "This is a history and psychological study of one of America's most astounding cults. An incredible story of the strangest dictatorship now current in our land. It recounts how an unseen, psychic potentate dominates the minds and actions of thousands of patriotic American citizens, who, today, meet in closed, secret study-groups in most of the cities throughout the United States. It relates how two self-styled 'Accredited Messengers' of invisible 'Masters' rose from obscurity to fame and fortune by bringing forth a new Messiah---allegedly an actual historical character who had considerable political influence in Europe during the middle of the 18th century."

The "I AM" movement was the acknowledged predecessor to the Church Universal and Triumphant of Elizabeth Clare Prophet.

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"The easily observable fact that ALL these numerous 'Gods,' 'Masters,' and even fair 'Goddesses' say the same things, use the same phraseology, slang, and idiom, doesn't seem to reveal the fake to these trusting, heaven-bent souls." (Pg. 44)
"The first Ballard book, Unveiled Mysteries: Secrets of The Comte de Saint Germain (Forgotten Books)... (has) no mention whatsoever of the 'Mighty I AM.' ... Now, why didn't Saint Germain mention these 'magic words' to Ballard on Mt. Shasta in 1930 instead of waiting two years to speak them over the marvelous 'Light and Sound Ray' in his home in Chicago?" (Pg. 87-88)
"And now in this latest Fascist-directed movement, popularly known as the Mighty I AM... It is a 'PSYCHIC DICTATORSHIP,' and it functions by means of the purported power and authority of a score or more of unseen 'Ascended Masters,' who have for five years used as their mouthpieces two earth-plane fuehrers!" (Pg. 167)

This collation of brief and so-called historical sketches certainly reminds me of a peculiar sort of literature in which an individual is first drawn into an organization, later renounces it, and decides that's not quite enough. No. The individual then decides to write some sort of scathing review and set oneself up as some sort of expert on the topic, as if rejecting a philosophy and poking all sorts of logical holes in its tenets were, of itself, anything more than mere reactionism. Many are the roads which mankind elects to travel to the divine, and many are the voices for or against each of these roads. It would certainly be so much easier if the author of this collation would notice his own sneering self-righteousness in these matters and cease to puff himself up as an authoritative biographer.