According to the Great I Am, Bill Miller does not exist. This is rather hard to believe when you look at him, because his wrestler-like body most certainly does not look like a figment of your imagination. But the fact remains that, so far as I Am is concerned, he is just not there.

Bill Miller is a Nieman Fellow who for the last twelve years has been a reporter on the "Cleveland Press." Last year he got wind of a rather strange religious sect known as I Am, which had a large following in Cleveland. It did not take him long to discover that I Am was founded in 1930 by a Mr. and Mrs. Ballard in Los Angeles, and that the Ballards had previously fled from Chicago under indictment on a charge of conducting a phony gold mine racket. After attending their meetings for a few months, Miller wrote a series of satirical articles in the "Press." The response that this received from the sect was immediate and drastic. I Am declared that Bill Miller was dissolved, that he no longer existed. Miller is rather vague about the whole thing ("I was just declared dissolved, that's all").

Look in the Boston telephone book under I. The first address that you will come to is I Am Reading Room, 127 Tremont Street, a rather prosperous-looking business building; its sixth floor houses an equally prosperous-looking suite of offices. The main book cases are filled with expensively bound books, and the desk is occupied by an expensively clad librarian. If you look closely at the volumes which line the walls, you will find that they are all written by Ballard, and if you talk to the librarian you will find out about this man and the religion he founded.

The rather distinctive name of the sect is taken from the words of Christ, "I am the resurrection," and the whole creed of I Am is based on a belief in reincarnation. Ballard, for instance, claimed that he was the reincarnation of George Washington, Mrs. Ballard is Martha Washington, and their son is Lafayette. The basic pattern behind all this is a conviction that the human mind, in order to reach Heaven, must achieve a state of absolute purity, and that one lifetime is not sufficient to attain this. Therefore it is being constantly reincarnation until it arrives at the pure state. Last year Ballard (whom his followers refer to as The Master), becoming absolutely pure, went bodily to Heaven.

The patron saint of I Am is St. Germaine, who made his first appearance on earth in the year 70,000 B.C., and later as the boy Samuel in the Bible. During the Middle Ages he took mortal form in the body of the Comte de St. Germaine, whose name he liked so much that he kept it for himself. He also appeared in the bodies of Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare. This is how I Am explains the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy-they were both the same person.

Most members of I Am are female, middle-aged, and well-to-do, according to Miller. They travel around the country in large yellow Chryslers, which serve the double function of comfortable conveyances and religious observance. For believers in I Am are convinced that yellow and white are good colors, while purple is a wicked one. It seems that every person has an invisible white light hanging constantly over him, which is repelled by a purple ray generated by his evil and impure thoughts. Apparently the ownership of a yellow Chrysler helps you to live cleanly.

Perhaps the greatest achievement in the history of I Am was the recent Hawaiian incident. Two summers ago members of the sect on the islands became convinced that Hawaii was soon to sink into the sea. But I Am, by a magnificent exertion of will, resolved that Hawaii should not disappear under the waves. And today Hawaii stands strong and unsubmerged, a bulwark of national defense and a heroic monument to the Great I Am.