4

My professor friend didn't hear much of the I Am people after that episode with his aunt.

A year or two after he told me this -- 1993? -- I was puttering around a less respectable part of Burbank. While looking for some other store, I stumbled on a decrepit bookstore.

I made my way in and fished thru an appalling collection of moldering paperbacks and outright junk. The building was from the 1930s as the latest; the place had somehow, miraculously, survived the 1989 earthquake. Like the way boxes will get if you leave them in the garage, the books (most of them the sort of things you'd have bought at supermarkets in 1970) had taken on the air of having been left outside for all of November, without actually having being rained on.

While I rummaged around, I heard the proprietress, a women easily in her seventies, bickering with either the phone company or the electric company, explaining to them that since she had simply no money, it was entirely unreasonable of them to expect her to pay her utility bill, now wasn't it?.

Rummage rummage. I found a worn and wonderful copy of Fowler's Modern English Usage for only eight dollars. I had about twelve dollars in my pocket. Must get it.

Rummage Rummage. I thought to myself: "This stock is crap, and it's physically disintegrating; when she closes the store she'll never be able to sell it to any other store; someone'll just haul it away and use it for compost. Then they'll push this little building down and put up condos or something."

Rummage rummage rummage. A boxed set of something, of a relic of the dubious American tradition of subscribing to worthless periodicals and putting them in particularly designed hardcover binders -- for easy reference? I opened it and flipped thru. It seemed to be some sort of motivational rant about Our Youth... lots of stuff about the coming war in Europe... Victrola record players that emit messages from the Beyond?... dates in the late 1930s... I looked at the cover of one of the issues.

This was a bound volume of a journal called something like The Voice of The "I AM". It was my old pals the I Am folks! I'd forgotten all about them.

The stuff in the Voice of The "I AM" issues was priceless; and the whole thing was only $20! I vowed I would come back when I had more than $12 in my pocket. I got the Fowler book and left.

I should have gone to the bank right then, and come back and gotten the I Am volume. I didn't.
I should have come the week after. I didn't. I forgot.
Distractions... an illness... I moved to another part of the city... a few months passed...

purple orb and Earth

In 1994, there was a big earthquake in L.A.; even if somehow the store had stayed open until then, it would never have made it thru the quake, and I'm sure the books, including the hardbound I Am folder, were taken off someplace and buried, mulched, or burnt for kicks.

THE WALL OF BLUE FLAME - Voice of the "I AM"
February 1938, Page 31, line 1-7 page 32, First edition;
Page 32, line 1-3 page 33, Second edition.
Our Blessed Sanat Kumara has said: "Among all the Students, Discrimination is so important; because Individuals sometimes in their enthusiasm, rush in where they release tremendously destructive forces upon themselves unnecessarily! I plead with all the Students, do not do that! Would you like someone of your so-called enemies, to come into your midst! and create disturbance; or silently be there to do work you felt was against you? Do you see? These things are important, very important! WHERE THE PRESENCE IS ACTING FULLY, GREAT DISCRIMINATION IS ALWAYS DIRECTING. THIS IS ONE OF THE GREATEST NEEDS OF THE STUDENTS-TODAY.
"Enough tragedy, enough destructive qualities are already acting, and if one stirs up a sleeping tiger, he is very apt to have a battle on hand. Let Me urge all, Students, Group Leaders and people who discuss This Work, to remember the ground has been broken. THEREFORE, THE IMPORTANT THING IS TO PRESENT THE TRUTH THROUGH THE POWER OF DIVINE LOVE; AND DO YOUR WORK IN GROUPS IN YOUR OWN ENVIRONMENT; WITHIN YOUR OWN CIRCLE OF FLAME, WHETHER IT BE IN YOUR GROUPS HERE OR INDIVIDUALLY.
"You are within This Circle of Blue Flame. If you saw It, a Circle of Fire, which is the Blue Flame, you would be delighted. I would suggest, and We will cause It to be brought forth, that all Individuals and Groups henceforth be conscious they are always surrounded by This Invincible Blue Flame which is outside your Tube of Light! It is a Wholly Different Activity from your Tube of Light! While both are Protective, yet This is a Special Definite Activity of Protection!"

I just assumed that the I Am folks had disappeared or gone on to bigger and stranger things, like maybe mescaline, or Jonestown; and, like dinosaurs, no longer roamed the Earth, in spite of having left fascinating artifacts behind.