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A Review by Someone Somewhat Involved
In the spring of 1990 one of America's most controversial
new religious movements, Church Universal and Triumphant
(also known as The Summit Lighthouse) went through its most
defining moment of its now 50-year history. During the Cold
War its leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet had always been very
concerned about the rise of communism, the possibility of
nuclear holocaust and the naïve, inadequate US defense
strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction. This was based on
geo-political analyses, plausible prophecies and explicit
warnings coming from the Masters, for whom she claimed to
be an emissary. Consequently it was only logical to engage
in some form of civil defense preparation, especially in
the late 80s when some journalists and experts were convinced
that the USSR was implementing a devious play of strategic
deception through Gorbachev's Glasnost and Perestroika policies.
The organization, and many members in private capacity,
build fall-out shelters and prepared for the worst.
In March of 1990 the word came down to realistically test
the just completed facilities in a 3-day 'drill,' which
was understood as the signal for the high possibility of
nuclear war in the form of a first strike by the USSR and
possible Blitzkrieg to take over Europe. Fortunately nothing
happened and shortly afterwards the USSR, instead of militarily
exploding, it imploded by the weight of its own contradictions.
Though the communist party was dissolved, the other two
pillars of the USSR, i.e. the military and the KGB, went
underground and arguably re-emerged later with Putin. But
that's a different story.
The aftermath of this 'drill' was very challenging for
the organization. The press had already come down heavily
on them and many members had a hard time coping with the
'failed' prophecy and the effects of the decisions they
had made during the preparation like maxing out on credit
cards, giving up jobs and taking children out of school.
Many left, recriminations proliferated and even her own
children decided to distance themselves from the perceived
follies. This period, which ran between ca. 1987 and 1992,
went down in the annals of the organization as the Shelter
Cycle and can be seen as sandwiched between the organization's
ascendancy in the 80s and its decline in the 90s.
Personally I experienced all this from the vantage point
of lecturer and board member of The Summit Lighthouse of
Holland Foundation. I got involved with them in 1986; gave
workshops on geo-politics, economics (predicting and explaining
the 1987 crash) and conspiracy theory; became member; and
when most of the leadership emigrated to the USA in 1988
I filled the vacant position of treasurer till I emigrated
in late 1990 and settled in New Mexico. Those days in Holland
were both fearful and exhilarating. We did not construct
fall-out shelters, but did research on reasonable measures
to mitigate any exposure to different weapons of mass destruction
and made some of these items available to the membership.
Some members did have spots in US shelters, took leave in
March 1990 and came back later. Most of us in Holland slept
in our own beds during the 'drill' and I spend one night
on a mattress under the staircase of the building I used
to live in. After it was over I remember that we were neither
perturbed nor elated by the 'failed' prophecy and we just
went back to our daily lives.
Last year October Erin Prophet, Mrs. Prophet's daughter,
published the memoirs of her life in the organization and
gave an inside account of the Shelter Cycle. I was neither
really shocked nor surprised by her revelations, as I already
knew much information through the grapevine and from the
manuscript "Purely for Prophet" which her sister
Moira had written in the 1990s. The only really big new
things (much small stuff is in the book I obviously did
not know) was the fact that it was Erin Prophet who had
made the decisions on the 1990 dates to go underground during
the Shelter Cycle and that she was the source of the indeed
bizarre imagery of the astral battles occurring around the
Royal Teton Ranch in those days. I often had a hard time
with these fantastic imageries, though dutifully transmitted
them to the Dutch membership.
Later I engaged in research on those days to look for possible
scenarios that might have given a sufficiently serious reason
for the 3-day 'drill' of going underground. I found that
the very tense India-Pakistan situation was many times on
the brink of getting completely out of hand that fateful
spring and saw the dangerous possibility of escalation to
the point of nuclear exchange between the super-powers.
One of the most dangerous days was on the 13th of March,
which was one day before the 'drill' started, when the Prime
Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, went to Kashmir and
delivered her most belligerent and provocative address regarding
the Kashmir problem with India and promised India a "thousand-year
war" over Kashmir if necessary. The situation needed
then some deft diplomacy by Robert M. Gates (US Secretary
of Defense under both Bush II and now Obama) to get temporarily
defused. So, though Erin Prophet might not think so now
nor even then, she might have been in spite of herself 'inspired'
to call the correct dates and in that way she was an instrument
of divine intervention.
I do appreciate the fact that Erin Prophet wanted to share
her story, and, given her new agnostic worldview, I do understand
her effort to make sense of her past. I think she tried
to be honest and respectful, and also critical where she
thought it was necessary. The only criticism I have, while
I continue sharing her agnostic point of view for the sake
of argument, is that she did very poor in contextualizing
her story. She did a poor job in giving a more balanced
view of the life-world inhabited by her mother and her followers
(often called 'Keepers' as they almost all were member of
the Keepers of the Flame Fraternity). No mention of the
many rather sophisticated researches and lectures, which
Mrs. Prophet and her staff had conducted regarding world
events, the international power elite, parapolitics, UFOs,
AIDS, Soviet communism and its false liberalizations during
Glasnost and Perestroika, and the actually then, and still
now, existing danger of a nuclear holocaust. The world we
lived in as Keepers was more real, complex and rich than
that of average people, because of the (for us) illusion-shattering
interpretative political paradigm that came with The Summit
Lighthouse doctrines on the nature of evil and Mrs. Prophet's
processing of many diverse prophecies. From an average,
mainstream, mass-conscious perspective it was of course
quite wild what The Summit Lighthouse was saying and doing
and I'm still grateful to Erin that she mounted a good fight
in those days in defending the organization by challenging
the many myths that were out there distributed by the mainstream
media, sometimes maliciously so as I saw happening in the
Netherlands. So, without this contextualization of her mother's
and her followers' life-world we do indeed look like a bunch
of sheep at the beck and call of a delusional leader, all
living in a fairy-world full of imaginary dangers and incapable
of critical thought. Erin of course doesn't say so, but
she leaves the door wide open for this inference and might
have done so intentionally, hopefully not with malice, probably
done to evade the great complexity to put her story in a
metaphysically neutral, but in-depth perspective.
For whatever reason, she might have reflected too much
on her past and opened herself probably too much to editorial
and sibling pressure to produce a metaphysically correct
and commercially acceptable book, that the effect, and that's
just my personal assessment, is that it reads as coming
from her own overly subjective bubble into which she seems
to have retreated. Again, her book lacks this contextualization
to come to a more balanced perception of the point of view
of her mother and us, members of her different organizations.
No robust discussion of her mother's political and metaphysical
ideas like her brother Sean Prophet does, though his aggressive,
atheist epistemology is quite questionable in its own terms,
leave alone from an esoteric perspective. Instead we are
treated with complaints about the unfortunate side effects
of Mrs. Prophet's geo-political realism and her human frailties.
Sure, many eggs get broken to cook a big omelet and many
things, in the heat of the moment, were hard to predict
or prepare for during the Shelter Cycle, like the fear-
and panic-factor, the stress on families and their budget,
and the thing that is thrown into the face of The Summit
Lighthouse most, the 'failure' of the prophecy afterwards.
Well, I do remember that part of the dire prophecy was its
possible, and hoped for, failure. Actually, all the preparedness
engaged in was not only to reasonably survive nuclear catastrophe,
but also to prevent it from happening in the first place!
Its failure would have been enabled by the sheer fact of
being prepared and face the 'beast' eyeball to eyeball.
And with the 'beast' we meant the hidden combo of Soviet
and Chinese communism and the malignant meta-empirical powers
behind it, which we belief can be engaged and bound through
theurgic mantra-yoga or, what we call, mantras and calls.
But all of this is probably only fully understandable when
seen from the esoteric point of view, which Erin has tossed.
I think though that she is smart enough to see the rationale
from that esoteric perspective even while not believing
it anymore.
I think we did stare the 'beast' down, for a while; at least
to have us bought another 18 years or so of relative peace
to get regrouped and finish the job, though the still unsolved
9/11 false flag terror attack and the Iraq war were very
disturbing exceptions. Unfortunately we are facing another
financial meltdown, even worse than the 1987 crash and the
1930s depression, with the real possibility of the rise
again of fascism, militarism, Chinese communism (still in
secret league with the Russians), and local and global war.
Just look at the enormously dangerous situation the ongoing
Indo-Pak crisis moved into again after the Mumbai terrorist
attacks, blamed on Pakistani elements and possible help
from high-placed officials. To have Erin's book published
in the middle of one of the worst months ever [October 2008]
in international financial markets might be actually a good
thing, for it will force Keepers, ex-Keepers and many others
close to the Ascended Master and Theosophical movements
to confront again the current world and the Shelter Cycle
in the past in more realistic, spiritual, geo-political
terms and take again appropriate spiritual and physical
measures, not only to be prepared for the most dire possibilities,
but again, to be able to face down the 'beast' as it sees
great opportunities to make further headway to enslave humanity
in poverty, ignorance and tyranny. The other side of the
coin is of course the opportunity for Lightbearers (i.e.
people of goodwill regardless of their metaphysical background)
to step up the plate and contribute to the possible reforms
of society which now become so obviously and painfully necessary,
especially the hardly understood devastating nature of our
monetary system, about which the Masters and Mrs. Prophet
tried so hard to educate and warn us.
Giving this timing it makes me wonder if Erin Prophet isn't
still helping her mother's cause, despite her outer agnosticism,
and is just driven by her higher self, or even (imagine
this!) the Masters, to still fulfill some of her higher
calling, which she abandoned in a free-will decision. If
she had kept to her candidacy and training for messengership
things might have been quite different of course, but like
Krishnamurti, she passed the opportunity. At least she had
the decency to give something of an accounting. It was probably
too much of a strain on her psyche to push through with
a task that can only be imagined as enormous, frightening
and utterly demanding as she saw up close her mother's travails,
successes and failures. And now I'm sorry to see that she
switched horses and joined the pack of 'average agnostics.'
I think we just were very fortunate with a 30-plus-year
run of Mrs. Prophet as messenger, warts and all, fulfilling
the role of arguably the Blavatsky of the 20th century,
as she was the emissary of the Mahatmas for that 'centennial
cycle.' And we are fortunate that we still have some competing
candidates in the wings, any of whom might be legitimately
carrying her mantle. And now Erin's book came out to remind
us of the possible very serious consequences of the current
political-financial situation and the fact that Lightbearers
are facing this without the inspiring rallying figure of
neither Elizabeth Clare Prophet nor any of her offspring.
Govert Schuller
Wheaton
April 9, 2009
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