she was promised saucer “sightings” at or near her home, but was disappointed. The strongest test of her convictions and her loyalty to her teachers, however, came as a result of a prediction she received late in July.
On the morning of July 23, Mrs. Keech’s pencil wrote this momentous message: “The cast of light you see in the southern sky is of our direction and is pulsating with a turning, spinning motion of the craft of the ‘tola’ [space ship] which is to land upon the planet in the cast of the day of August first—at the Lyons field. It will be as if the world was coming to an end at the field when the landing occurs. The operators will not believe their senses when they see the craft of outer space in the midst of the field.” This message concluded: “It is a very accurate cast that we give.”
In further communications, Mrs. Keech got word to be at Lyons field — a military air base — by noon in order to witness the landing. A number of her acquaintances learned of her plan, apparently through the offices of the friend who was currently typing copies of the lessons. Mrs. Keech subsequently made it plain that she had no intention of gathering a crowd for the occasion, yet she evidently did not regard her mission as a secret one. “I didn’t want to start a traffic jam by telling anybody that there was going to be a landing at Lyons field on August the first, because I knew that if all the saucer enthusiasts got on the highway to see the saucers there would be a jam. So I wasn’t going to say anything about it.” But the news leaked out and several people asked if they might join the expedition or meet her at the field. Dr. Armstrong and his wife were in Lake City at the time, as weekend guests of Mrs. Keech, and asked if they might accompany her. The three of them reached the field just before noon.
Near the main gate of the field, the Armstrongs and Mrs. Keech were joined by another car or two of acquaintances, and the whole group sought out a lightly traveled road that bordered the field. Selecting a place that offered a good view of the runways and the sky, they parked and prepared to wait. “We didn’t know what we were looking for; we were looking for saucers,” Mrs. Keech once said, in describing the incident. “As we stood there eating our lunch from the back of the car, just standing in the fields alongside the road and looking up at the sky through our polaroid pieces that we had brought with us, we must have looked very silly to the ones who didn’t sit around the table [outsiders, or those who did not share the feast of knowledge provided by the Guardians].”
Suddenly Mrs. Keech became aware that an unknown man had approached the party. Although the road was long and straight and the fields bordering it offered neither cover nor concealment, she had not seen him walking toward them; it was as if he had materialized out of thin air. He crossed the highway toward the group and, as he drew nearer, she sensed something strange, almost eerie in his appearance and manner. She recalls a somewhat strange “look in his eye” and a curiously rigid bearing.
One of the ladies in the party was alarmed, and urged Mrs. Keech to “be careful; that man is crazy.” But, instead of fear, Mrs. Keech felt only curiosity and sympathy for the stranger on this hot, dry road far from comfort or refreshment. From the back of her car she got a sandwich and a glass of fruit juice, and offered them to him, but he declined, slowly and politely.
“I couldn’t imagine anybody that time of day on a lonely highway not wanting a cold drink. I asked him again, but he just said: ‘No thank you.’ I looked at his eyes — eyes that looked through my soul—and the words sent electric currents to my feet. Yet I wasn’t on the beam. As we stood there looking in the sky for saucers, he would look up and then he would look at us, at me especially. After I had offered him food, he turned and walked away. I felt very sad. I didn’t know why at the time. I thought ‘what can I give him to eat? What else have we got that I can give him?’ I turned to my car [to get a slice of watermelon] which was about twenty feet away. As I reached it, I looked back and he was gone —just gone. He was no place to be seen. And I felt, I became — oh I can’t tell you; there’s no word for it. I knew something was going on that I didn’t understand. I knew I was close to something.”
The remainder of the vigil was uneventful. No saucers landed at Lyons field in the next two hours and an air of disappointment pervaded the assembly. Mrs. Keech was grave. “I thought to myself: That message did come through my hand. I am more or less responsible if I have misled anyone today.” And she prayed for guidance. The group dispersed, and, when she was again alone with the Armstrongs and another friend, she began to probe their collective feelings: “I said: ‘Well, what do you people feel?’ Everyone agreed that something had happened on the roadside, but we didn’t know what it was or how to explain it. We were all sensitized to that degree — that something had happened though we had no mental concept of it.”
She was not to remain in ignorance long. Early on the morning of August 2 her pencil traced these words: “It was I, Sananda, who appeared on the roadside in the guise of the sice.” Although this word may be unfamiliar to the reader, Mrs. Keech recognized it at once. She had first encountered it in a curious story, transmitted to her on July 28, whose significance was not immediately apparent to her.* But when the message of August 2, from Sananda, reached her, she drew the conclusion that “the sice” was the Guardians’ term for “one who comes in disguise,” or “one whose true identity is unknown,” and she immediately attached significance to the fact that the “story of the sice” had been transmitted to her before she went to Lyons field.
[*As it will probably not be to the average reader, either, for whose edification the account is reproduced here, verbatim, from the mimeographed lessons: “Sara and Justine were cast as the boy and the girl; to each a love of the Creator. As they came to the great city of the center of the Earth, which is called the CITY of the self — the child, Sara, asks Justine: ‘Which way to the Father’s house?’ To Sara, Justine said: ‘To be a Carter, or one who finds his way, is the great cast for which he was created’ As they journeyed to the city of the Self, in the center of the Earth, they were overtaken by the coy little scice [variant spelling for sice], which was a mink. He was in disguise of the rabbit, which was a cousin to the grouse.
“‘What a coy little sice is the rabbit,’ was the girl Sara’s cry which, as the sice had said, ‘a cousin of the grouse — the GROUSE — the RABBIT — the SCICE.’ WHAT WAS WHAT?’ cried Sara. The boy Justine cried, ‘We have arrived in the land of thinking! The sice thinks he will cast a spell of thinking upon us in the darkness of night while we are lost.’
“To them the gates of the treasure of the kingdom swung open, where the greatest of all treasures were found — the scice in the garden of increase, where he was only the scice-NO COUSINS-NO ANCESTRY. He was just Mr. Scice, WHO was himself, as the girl and boy, to the great Creator of the City of Self. Each to his own, as a silent witness of the CITY in the Middle of the Earth . . . Scice and Child alike in the Creator’s City. Each found his way to the GARDEN OF SELF, each in his Creator’s Garden.”]
This explanation of the “something” that had happened by the roadside appears not only to have satisfied Mrs. Keech intellectually, but to have brought to her a special joy, an exultation that far outweighed the disappointment over the disconfirmed prediction. For, although no saucers had landed at Lyons, a greater gift had been bestowed upon her. She had looked upon Jesus (in another body, of course, and in disguise), had talked with him, and had performed the simple Christian act of offering hospitality to the casual, undistinguished stranger. Her enlightenment was ecstatic, and tinged with awe. Why should she have been chosen to receive the reincarnated Son of God? More deeply than ever the conviction overcame her that she was especially selected, that the voices she heard and the presences she felt were real, were valid, were the very stuff of transcendent life —and she their humble earthly vehicle.
On August 3, Sananda prepared her for possible future visits when he said: “While the guest of Earth is in the seen, he has many guises — as the sice he comes — as the giver of love he comes — as the one who calls by telephone — the glad in heart for the proferred bread and drink.”
