taught to her by a group of highly enlightened yogis which she called the Mahatmas or Masters of the Ancient Wisdom. These Mahatmas, she claimed, were physical beings living in the Himalayas, usually understood as Tibet: After Blavatsky's death in 1891, the concept of the Mahatmas was developed by her successors in the Theosophical Society leadership, Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater, who described them in great detail and added Master Jesus and Maitreya. In Leadbeater's book, The Masters and the Path (1925), the Masters are presented as human beings full of wisdom and compassion, albeit still limited by human bodies, which they choose to retain in order to keep in touch with humanity and help in its evolution. Later organizations that used many of the teachings of Theosophy for their own purposes developed concepts of Ascended Masters which bear some important differences with the Theosophical one. Peter Mt. Shasta, who claims to be channeling the ascended master Saint Germain, has been releasing the ancient teachings in a more modern and simplified form, emphasizing the teaching that the Masters can work with those who have an open heart and the desire to benefit humanity. Beliefs about ascended masters Originally presented by Helena P. Blavatsky in the 1870s, the idea of the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom or Mahatmas was adopted by people who at some point had had a connection with the Theosophical movement, such as Alice Bailey, Helena Roerich, and Manly P. Hall. Later on many other organizations, especially in the United States, developed the concept of Ascended Masters, which departs from the theosophical one in several aspects. Adherents of the Ascended Master Teachings believe that this wisdom was partially released by the Theosophical Society beginning in 1875, by C.W. Leadbeater and Alice Bailey, and began to have more detailed public release in the 1930s by the Ascended Masters through Guy Ballard in the I AM Activity. The term Ascended Master was first introduced in 1934 by Guy Ballard with the publication of Unveiled Mysteries, a book which he said was dictated to him by the Ascended Master: St. Germain. Other Ascended Master Teachings are contained in The Bridge to Freedom (1951), The Summit Lighthouse (1958), (Known also as The Church Universal and Triumphant<ref name="Lewis, James R. 1942">{{cite book |last= Melton |first= J. Gordon |author-link= |date=1994 |title=Church Universal and Triumphant in Scholarly Perspective |url= https://archive.org/details/churchuniversalt0000unse |location= |publisher= Stanford, Calif.