The "Theory of Cognitive Dissonance" is born.

A housewife from Chicago, Dorothy Martin, had mysteriously been given messages in her house in the form of "automatic writing" from alien beings on the planet Clarion[1] . It reveals that the world would end in a great flood before dawn on December 21, 1954. The group of believers, headed by Martin, had taken strong behavioral steps to indicate their degree of commitment to the belief.

They had left jobs, college, and spouses, and had given away money and possessions to prepare for their departure on the flying saucer, which was to rescue the group of true believers.

Leon Festinger and his colleagues saw this as a case that would lead to the arousal of dissonance when the prophecy failed.

Leon Festinger and his colleagues infiltrated the group and reported the following :
• December 20. The group expects a visitor from outer space to call upon them at midnight and to escort them to a waiting spacecraft. As instructed, the group goes to great lengths to remove all metallic items from their persons. As midnight approaches, zippers, bra straps, and other objects are discarded. The group waits.
• 12:05 A.M., December 21. No visitor. Someone in the group notices that another clock in the room shows 11:55. The group agrees that it is not yet midnight.
• 12:10 A.M. The second clock strikes midnight. Still no visitor. The group sits in stunned silence. The cataclysm itself is no more than seven hours away.
• 4:45 A.M. Another message by automatic writing is sent to Martin. It states, in effect, that the God of Earth has decided to spare the planet from destruction. The cataclysm has been called off: "The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction."
{Her husband was upstairs sleeping through all this}

The "Theory of Cognitive Dissonance" is born.

Dorothy Martin left Chicago after being threatened with arrest and psychiatric commitment. Dorothy Martin continued to receive messages from the Guardians, who told her to change her name to ‘Sister Thedra’ and to travel to Lake Titicaca in Peru. Once there, she established - along with Charles and Lillian Laughead and seminal mystic and contactee George Hunt Williamson [one of the "four guys named George" among the mid-1950s contactees] - the Abbey of the Seven Rays.

From this base Dorothy Martin began to prophesy the coming of the ‘Time of Awakening’ when Atlantis would rise from the deep and a new Saviour would rescue the righteous. In 1961 she returned to the United States, as “Sister Thedra”, claiming to have undergone initiation at the Abbey of the Seven Rays. She continued to preach her message until her death in 1988.

There are various new age accounts of Peru:
 Dorothy Martin lived in Peru for several years before returning to Arizona. In 1965, she founded the Association of Sananda and Samat Kumara. Under her new name of "Sister Thedra", she continued to act as a channel for Sananda and was prominent in the UFO contact community until her death.
 ” One women of the group, Sister Thedra, spent five years at the abbey undergoing intensive spiritual training and initiations. She had been sent there by Jesus Christ who had physically appeared to her and spontaneously cured her of cancer. He introduced himself to her by his true, esoteric name, "Sananda Kumara," thereby revealing his affiliation with the Venusian founders of the Great White and Solar Brotherhoods. When Thedra eventually left Peru, she traveled to Mt. Shasta in California and founded the Association of Sananda and Sanat Kumara. Through the work of Sister Thedra and her organization the Kumaras have disseminated information concerning their history and the coming Earth changes.”
 “ … In 1954 Sister Thedra of Mount Shasta, California and Sedona, Arizona, in her 50’s at the time, suffering from terminal cancer, days numbered had Jesus suddenly appear in front of her and instantly healed her. From that moment she addressed him as Sananda Kumara. She began receiving messages from him and he sent her to the Peruvian Andes in 1956 for protection and to study at an ancient monastery, The Monastery of The Seven Rays, the early records and teachings of the Kumaras. Founded by the Lemurian sage Aramu Muru to preserve the records of Mu, and the golden disc the Kumaras brought from Venus. She remained there 5 years returning to Mount Shasta, a powerful vortex ethereally connected to the Kumaras, in the US in 1961. Later to keep her safe he orchestrated her move to Sedona, Arizona. In Sedona her Association of Sananda and Sanat Kumara was headquartered in a house on a road with the strongest vortex in the area. After she passed the ASSK returned to Mount Shasta.”

[1]On Sept. 24, 1953, Redondo Beach resident Truman Bethurum(1898 – 1969) told a Daily Breeze reporter that he saw them, the Clarions. In fact, Bethurum did a lot more than see them. According to several articles, he rode on their flying saucer 11 times. And its captain, Aura Rahnes, promised to take Bethurum to visit Clarion in the near future. Capt. Rahnes was a beautiful woman who had a "slender Latin-type face" and wore a radiant red skirt, black velvet short sleeve blouse and a black beret with red trim. And they didn't refer to their ship as a saucer. They called it a "scow." And they enjoyed polkas and square dances. The ship itself was 300 feet in diameter, 6 yards deep and made of burnished stainless steel. It hovered silently inches above the ground.

Another thing Bethurum noticed: The Clarions all dressed like Greyhound bus drivers. And, not only did they speak perfect English, but they also spoke in rhyme. At the time of his encounters, Bethurum, was working on a construction job in the Nevada desert when the Clarionites, as he called them, stopped by for a visit.
He refused lie-detector examinations, and also refused to provide physical evidence he claimed to possess, such as supposedly unique items given to him by Captain Aura Rhanes.

I noticed a hypnosis convention this summer where one workshop was on "Ascended Masters". Does hypnosis really have anything to do with that?
In the 30’s Guy Warren Ballard introduced the concept of "Ascended Master Teaching”s and the “Ascension”. Borrowing from Theosophy and “A Dweller on Two Planets or The Dividing of the Way” by Frederick S. Oliver, he claimed to have met St. Germaine at Mount Shasta and spread the word. At it’s peak his followers numbered 1 million. His death in 1939 created a quandary in that his body remained. This was rectified by the concept of “levels of mastery”. Between Ballard and Elizabeth Clare Prophet from the 60’s to the 90’s more than 200 "Ascended Masters" were named.
This book is openly acknowledged as source material for many new age belief systems, including the once-popular "I AM" movement (whose founder, Guy Ballard, read more

Unveiled Mysteries by Godfré Ray King (pseudonym of Guy Warren Ballard)[1934] see text