In the summer of 1987 just out of high school, while waiting tables at a restaurant, I met a woman who introduced me to books published by The Saint Germain Foundation, an esoteric religious organization. The Saint Germain Foundation, also known as the “I AM” Foundation, which some pundits claim to be a cult, was started in the 1930s by a man named Guy Ballard who walked with and received channeled information from angelic beings and professed to be the reincarnation of George Washington.

I was fascinated by Ballard’s writings and accounts of “Ascended Masters” whom I had never heard of, outside of Jesus, and their teachings. These masters have incarnated on our planet over the millennia, including Jesus and the foundation’s inspiration, a French alchemist named Saint Germain, and were ultimately able to raise the vibration of their bodies through meditation and other means to an “Ascended Master” state, conquering the mandate of our fallen state: “birth and rebirth” or karma.

I learned that these beings in cooperation with galactic organizations and higher dimensional beings have assisted and continue to assist our planet and inhabitants evolve to a greater spiritual awareness.

This was news to me! The organization also offered books of decrees that purportedly help an individual raise his or her spiritual awareness through repetitive decrees and affirmations. I tried the decrees for a while on my own and attended their services at a Saint Germain Foundation location in Houston for a short time.

I never progressed very deeply into their group, and quickly became disenchanted with the prospects of furthering my commitment with the organization, when I found a blank form in a drawer on the premises that signed away one’s possessions and estate to the organization upon one’s death. Just another church I thought! And even though I never became a card-carrying member of The Saint Germain Foundation, I was so influenced by their teachings and their affirmations, that I even had a tattoo inked on my upper back of an old illustration of “The ‘I AM’ Presence” from their books which depicts a person’s higher self, resembling an angel with a rainbow emanating from it and hovering over a person’s earthly body.

Over the years I have carried this possibility of physical ascension around with me even though I had no family or friends that shared this view. It certainly seems unattainable to most everyone I have talked to, with the prevailing view that death and leaving your mortal remains behind is not up for negotiation. Generally, whatever one believes comes after death is certainly up for discussion, but not “the final nail.”

I did encounter some hope for understanding this process through Drunvalo Melchizedek’s Flower of Life books which investigate and reveal much about the hidden history of ancient civilizations including Atlantis and Lemuria, and the Merkaba — An ascension vehicle that took Old Testament figures like Enoch and Elijah, and possibly Jesus into the higher dimensions. The Star of David is a two-dimensional representation of this sacred Merkaba star-tetrahedron geometry, according to Melchizedek and others. After being inspired by those teachings I even got a Star of David tattoo on my left forearm.

I had not previously been familiar with the documented evidence of thousands of highly attuned monks in the Tibetan Dzogchen tradition who have been witnessed in modern times, shrinking their bodies at death and attaining a rainbow body. Amazing! I was already familiar with the avatar Babaji from Paramhansa Yogananda’s seminal “Autobiography of a Yogi” who is essentially an ascended being that instructed the “param-guru” or “guru’s guru” of Yogananda, a householder named Lahiri Mahasaya who later became a yogi. Yogananda even wrote about his own personal contact with this divine being Babaji in his book.

Later I read a report that Yogananada’s body had stayed in an incorruptible state weeks after he had died, and that he showed no signs of decay. There is no record of which I am aware that he raised his body and left no mortal remains behind, as his body was embalmed and eventually buried. After attending some services years ago in Los Angeles at a Yogananda “Self-Realization Fellowship” church (directly adjacent to a Scientology compound in East Hollywood, no less), and taking some written correspondence courses from Yogananda’s organization, I did not feel like I was getting any closer to my understanding of physical ascension awareness or process. And by that time in my early thirties, I had long fallen out of step with the Christian church and could not seem to find a group of like-minded seekers.

Maybe it is inherently a greater challenge to find spiritual truth, living in our western world of fast-paced commerce and disposable commodities. Especially it seems so here in the US. Perhaps this type of frenetic, media-driven culture, and the decline of traditional religion, is also what is driving the growth of a new consciousness industry of which Gaia and other similar companies are an integral part.

From my experience having lived in Berlin, Germany before and after 9/11 and spending time in Europe, there is an appreciation of the past and generally a more leisurely daily pace, but I can’t say people are any more spiritual across the pond. I have yet to visit India or Asia to gain more first-hand understanding of Eastern spiritual traditions and their currency in that part of the globe, but look forward to at some point — hopefully soon.

So here we are now in the Internet age, and for all of us living in countries that are fortunate to have relatively unrestricted access, we can share and discover a wealth of knowledge about all things spiritual. And it is certainly my deepest hope, that maybe for some greater concentration of people in the near future, there will be a quantum shift, possibly with the aid of external, even “other-worldly” technology or galactic influence, or possibly on a more subtle level, where we shift toward a seemingly utopian “post-Fall” evolutionary dimension.

I feel the urge now more than ever to find answers to my quest, since my wife and I are in the process of raising children. I know it’s hard for humanity to envision a world where we are not limited by dense, physical bodies. Most people seem satisfied to return back to such a place after passing through the mystery of death!

I try to imagine what would daily life be like here if we were somehow able to undertake some sort of mass ascension?

What could the inhabitants of such a world create and manifest? Sometimes It feels so close, and sometimes so far away. Is it really just a matter of loving everyone unconditionally, all the time? Let’s see if we can make it a reality.