Sinnett, and others) and the current concept of Ascended Masters, developed by Guy Ballard and Elizabeth Clare Prophet fifty-five years after the Theosophical Society was founded. They added more than 200 new "Ascended Masters" that they claimed to receive dictations from in addition to receiving dictations from the original Masters of the Ancient Wisdom of Theosophy. The Ascended Masters, as their name suggests, are supposed to be Masters who have experienced the miracle of ascension, as it is said Jesus did. The original teaching, channeled by Guy Ballard, was that a new Ascended Master would not die but would take the body up with him. This teaching of ascension is in direct opposition to the Theosophical teachings. Mahatma K.H. refers to the idea disparagingly in one of his letters to Sinnett: Blavatsky also rejects ascension as a fact, calling it "an allegory as old as the world." In the Theosophical view, the Masters of Wisdom retain their physical bodies. The Masters of the Wisdom are not like the Ascended ones, who are said to become Godlike, all-powerful beings beyond the laws of nature. In their teachings, the Theosophical Masters even denied that such beings exist. Mahatma K.H. wrote: In their letters, the Mahatmas constantly talk about the "immutable laws" of the universe, and that they can help humanity only within the limits of these laws. Proponents of the Ascended Masters sometimes attempt to account for these discrepancies by claiming that when the Theosophical Society (TS) was founded most of the Theosophical Mahatmas were still "unascended Masters". This leaves room to detach the Ascended Masters from the limitations. However, the Mahatma K.H. wrote: "We are not infallible, all-foreseeing 'Mahatmas' at every hour of the day." As he explained: "An adept—the highest as the lowest—is one only during the exercise of his occult powers." In fact, according to the Theosophical teachings, the higher the adept, the less we are likely to hear from him: In the Theosophical view the Masters do not pay attention to personal desires. Theosophy teaches that the psychological ego is false, that the idea that we are this body, emotions, and mind is a mistake of perception and the source of sorrow. It says that real happiness comes only as an unsought by-product of reducing rather than increasing our attachment and identification with the personal. Blavatsky wrote that "Occultism is not . . . the pursuit of happiness