Mark L Prophet – The Man, the Adept

Mark Prophet was born on Christmas Eve 1918 in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.

Annice Booth shares the magic and mystery of a friendship and student/teacher relationship with the man who was a twentieth-century prophet. She shows us that Mark was a man of mysticism, miracles and tremendous spiritual mastery, yet he was still profoundly human. He was always the friend of the common man because he recognized God's divine spark in all whom he met.
In an era when the world decries its lack of true leaders and heroic role models, one of the greatest was right in our midst—Mark L. Prophet. As is often the case, he was not recognized by the many for being the great soul, which, in reality, he was.

He said, “Ours must be a message of infinite love and we must demonstrate that love to the world.” That was Mark Prophet.

“All of life is God. All of being is God. All of consciousness is God.” Not only was this his philosophy but he also lived that love every day in his personal life. We see him as altogether human, as we all are, and yet all the while he fulfilled his divine potential.

I think the most important aspect of Mark's message to us is that love, God's love, is victorious. It is meant to be, and if we claim it, then it will be. And love is what this world needs most today.

Mark Prophet was one of the greatest examples of that love that I can ever hope to see. And I am grateful for the opportunity to have lived and worked with him for seven years in Colorado Springs at our world headquarters known as La Tourelle and in Santa Barbara at the Motherhouse. I was given an opportunity daily to see and benefit from his love in action.

Mark was indeed a holy man for the people. He did not hide away in a cave in the Himalayas and pray and meditate (although he did have the attainment to do so). He came forth into the midst of the people, sponsored by the Ascended Masters El Morya and Saint Germain. He loved to mingle and chat with everyone he met.

There could be no question about the fact that Mark was a devotee, and yet he was firmly grounded on earth. El Morya once remarked that “your spirituality is expressed by your practicality.” Mark was a very practical man who had a tender concern and loving care for every person on his staff and, in fact, for everyone he met.

I have often thought that Will Rogers' observation “I never met a man I didn't like” applied equally well to Mark Prophet. He would show his concern for others on an everyday practical level and yet be able to inspire them to seek a higher level of spiritual attainment.

Mark was a master psychologist. He could read the heart and soul of a man and always seemed able to give that person a very balanced, down-to-earth message that was just exactly what that soul needed at the moment.

I soon realized that no matter how much I loved and respected Mark as a person, I also saw that he was a great adept and that a part of him was always close to heaven. In later chapters I shall relate some examples of his contact with the ascended masters^* and his own God Presence.

Mark Prophet was a messenger of God, sponsored by the Great White Brotherhood to set forth the teachings of the ascended masters for the Aquarian age. He said that it was his assignment to found a movement that would encompass the entire world, or at least lay the foundation for that expansion so thoroughly in his lifetime that the mission could be fulfilled in the next few years by his twin flame, Elizabeth.

In a previous embodiment he was the author of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament. And he was also sent in this age by the ascended masters to proclaim the climax of the two-thousand-year mission of Jesus Christ in the Piscean age. In addition, his assignment was to bring the message of Jesus' second coming in the hearts of lightbearers.

When I lived back at La Tourelle in Colorado Springs, the headquarters of The Summit Lighthouse that Mark founded, I don't think many of the staff recognized the great adept with whom we were living. Some saw him as a human man and criticized him for his human frailties and failings. I don't believe they realized the great powers and spiritual attainment Mark possessed until it was too late and he had ascended.

Mark said that the masters had forbidden him to use phenomena (i.e., supernatural powers) in this lifetime, and because of this some people were blind to the true significance and attainment of his lifestream and mission. El Morya said that the founders of the Theosophical Movement in the late nineteenth century had performed feats of phenomena in their attempts to make known to the world the reality of the inner planes. That experiment failed to produce the receptivity that the masters had desired. Many people were caught up in the glamour and outer manifestations that they saw and failed to see the true inner meaning of the teachings.

I have often thought that if Mark Prophet had been presented to the world as an Indian guru in a robe and turban, that many more would have been attracted to the movement. However, that was not the masters' plan for Mark's mission this time around.

Mark Prophet and his Guru, El Morya, were so closely identified that I could never separate the two of them and discern which of them was speaking at the moment. I soon stopped even trying. Morya lived in Mark's aura.

One of my earliest recollections of conversations with Mark that illustrate this point occurred when we had just returned from our trip to Europe in 1968. I was not even on the staff of The Summit Lighthouse at that time but had been granted a few glimpses of the adept that Mark really was on the European tour.

I remember that I said, “Mark, I have just finished reading in Saint Germain's early books from the I AM Activity [Unveiled Mysteries, The Magic Presence, and The “I AM” Discourses] that any of us who sincerely apply ourselves can make our ascension either in this lifetime or the next.” And I said, “But what puzzles me is, if we all need to have your attainment before we can ascend, how are any of us are going to make it?”

He answered, “Well, Mrs. Booth, I want you to know that ‘all things are relative except the Absolute.'” While I was pondering that for a moment, he added, “Now, you remember that the master wants you to know that.”

I was in a state of total shock to realize that the Ascended Master El Morya had actually given me a message. That sentence was an excellent summation of Mark's philosophy: God is your Absolute, and everything else is relative.

One of the most important benefits of the teaching I received from Mark, as I think back over the many conversations I have had with him, were just these isolated instances of short sentences that remain in my consciousness even today.

Another little sentence that I shall always remember was spoken at a time in 1969 when we were repairing our new focus in Santa Barbara and preparing it for eventual use as the Ascended Masters' Motherhouse.

The building was in a sad state of disrepair and neglect, and the best and fastest way to prepare it for painting was a thorough sandblasting operation.

I had been serving back at La Tourelle, helping prepare the final manuscript of Climb the Highest Mountain for publication while a crew of four men remained in Santa Barbara to work on the reconstruction of the Motherhouse.

One time Mark, Elizabeth, a few staff members and I drove out to Santa Barbara to see how the repairs were progressing. I was absolutely horror-struck when I entered my house on the property for the first time in several months and found a two-inch-thick layer of sand dust covering the entire place, both inside and out.

When Mark saw my dismay, he said, “Mrs. Booth, this was necessary in order to have a truly beautiful ascended master focus. And the master wants you to know that ‘a man cannot be perfection until he sees perfection.'” Apparently my sense of perfection at that moment was not as clear as Mark's and Morya's.

The name “Mark” means “Mother of the Ark,” and, indeed, Mark did mother all life. He nurtured every soul he met in order that that soul might rise up and be one step higher on the Path. The Ascended Master Kuthumi paid him a tribute in a Pearl of Wisdom^® dictated after his ascension: “They sing of Mark, whom they call the Mother of the Ark, for he nourished the flame of the ark of the covenant and drew therefrom the eternal message of salvation to God's chosen people.”

One of the things I remember most about Mark was his childlike humility and compassion. He was no respecter of persons—a humble man who truly loved life and yet he would not stand for anyone's human nonsense, no matter who they were. He was completely uninhibited, spontaneously speaking whatever was in his heart at the moment. You never knew what was going to happen next or what he was going to say.

We read: “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 18:3) Well, Mark Prophet was certainly one of Jesus' little children. He had this childlike quality of adoration, of absolute dedication to the will of God, of absolute obedience to the ascended masters. He was childlike but certainly not childish. There is a world of difference.

Mark was never afraid or ashamed to allow the Holy Spirit to express through him at any time or in any situation. It was often those of us who were with him who were embarrassed, not Mark. There are many anecdotes in his life that I would love to share with you about his unexpected actions, and perhaps I shall in succeeding chapters.

I've never experienced so much love in any one individual—love for both God and man. It just radiated out from him in every way—in his prayers and invocations, his sermons and talks, the dictations that the ascended masters delivered through him in poetry and song, in his cares and concerns for practical living, in business decisions and in just plain loving life and loving people, including, of course, his beloved twin flame, Elizabeth.

Along with the love he had for the masters, he also truly and deeply loved the so-called ordinary and common folk, or as the Bible says, “the meek and lowly.” I think one of the reasons he loved jokes and anecdotes was that, like Jesus' parables, anyone could understand them. His sermons and lectures were replete with these. He was drawing from memories of his former lives as Aesop, the teller of fables, and the poet Longfellow.

Mark had the distinct ability to deflate the pomposity and overstuffiness of the outer self. He would never let you miss the great seriousness of life and its true initiations, but neither would he allow you to take yourself too seriously. For instance, at any moment he could suddenly burst out singing the theme song from the radio show of Little Orphan Annie, including Sandy's dog bark at the end, or start wrestling with you, or suddenly leap up into the air, slap you on the back, pull a laughing bag out of a drawer, tell a joke or recite some nonsensical line of verse such as:

The Chevy is my auto;
I shall not want another.
It leadeth me beside the repair shop.
It vexeth my soul.
I anoint its tires with patches.
Its radiator runneth over.
Its rods and pistons annoy me.
It has a breakdown in the presence of mine enemies.
And if this thing shall follow me all the days of my life,
I shall dwell in the bughouse forever.

For those of you who did not know Mark Prophet in person, as a contrast to the previous “nonsensical lines of verse,” he also wrote beautiful prayers and decrees that were a sublime poetry evoking the presence of God.

Mark Prophet was a twentieth-century master, interpreting for us the Lord's mysteries while at the same time, remaining strongly tethered to this physical plane. He would teach us that we, as well as he, are both human and divine. As he wrote when he was Longfellow:

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
—A Psalm of Life, Stanza 7

Then one day, February 26, 1973, Mark took his leave of us. He told Elizabeth when he married her that he would not be here very long and that one day Saint Germain would transfer to her the mantle of messenger.

And so, after twelve years, he personally demonstrated what he had been teaching. He accelerated his consciousness into the light of the ascension. He lived in the modern-day world, as we do. He faced the same problems we face daily. He overcame his limitations and, by his great love, ascended back to the heart of God—victor over time and space.

Mark is a wonderful example to all of us and a wise counselor on the path of initiation. We are grateful for the depth of his communion with the Lord's hosts, for the love and wisdom of his heart and for the disciplines of life without which no one can be victorious on the Path, as he was.

He now stands with us as the Ascended Master Lanello, the Ever-Present Guru. He is saying to you and to me that we can make it in this very life—if we TRY!

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Excerpt from Chapter One, Memories of Mark – My Life with Mark Prophet, by Annice Booth.