The Wiz of Orlando; behind the scenes at Avatar

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The Wiz of Orlando

BEHIND THE SCENES AT AVATAR
By Eldon M. Braun

PREFACE & UPDATE

"The Wiz of Orlando" was completed and first distributed in early 1991,
shortly after the first Wizard Course, which I learned included a version of
the Scientology "body thetan" exorcism process. As in Scientology's upper
levels, students were told that they were infested with many, many
possessive spirits that needed to be contacted and sent on their way.
Only last year, I got a clear idea of how dangerous this particular belief
system is become when a Dutch Scientology critic posted a transcript of a
speech Harry Palmer gave at that first Wizard course. He described these
telepathic entities as the real cause of AIDS and cancer, adding, "People
trying to treat chronic conditions with drugs or surgery are trying to heal
something that really isn't theirs at all." The future healing course he
promised hasn't been released yet, but that hasn't stopped some of his
Wizard course graduates from engaging in serious quackery.
One Avatar Master told a student with bipolar disorder that he could stop
taking lithium (the standard medication for the condition) and handle any
mood swings with the Avatar tools alone. He tried it, and the results weren'
t pretty. After a couple of months, he predictably experienced a hypomanic
episode. As a result, his career suffered permanent damage. He eventually
regained his mental stability, but only after nearly a year of psychiatric
care. Incredibly, the Wizard who told him Avatar would handle bipolar
disorder-universally acknowledged as a biochemical condition-had a PhD in
psychology, and had worked for years as a therapist under the supervision of
a psychiatrist. It's clear that Avatar radically changed her belief
system-from scientism to witchcraft.
By 1991, Avatar had outgrown its initial following of former Scientologists
to become a mainstream personal growth training, It was highly popular and
growing in France, having been one of the first Nouvelle Age trainings to
cross the Atlantic. But three years later, a scandal erupted. The name
Avatar has an ironic double meaning in French: In addition to its original
Hindu meaning of "a descended deity," the word is also slang for "a
misadventure." Two French Avatar Masters had a big one. They renamed the
course "Management Power," and a helpful enthusiast in the human relations
department of the French nuclear power agency made it available as a
management development workshop. Some managers who took the course were not
impressed. Word spread that a cult had infiltrated Electricité de France,
and a few newspapers published articles. One of the Avatar Masters then sued
the papers for libel, and all hell broke loose. Soon the scandal was
front-page news and the topic of exposés on national TV shows. Today, Avatar
is virtually extinct in France.
In 2002, a similar spate of media coverage in Germany included a cover story
in Stern Magazine and investigative features on two national TV shows. Harry
Palmer was asked for an interview, but declined. The producers of the show
did interview one of the leading German Masters, Isa Luerssen, who was asked
about brainwashing. Her answer: "We wash our bodies, why not our minds?"
Scientology is regarded as a dangerous totalitarian movement in Germany, so
Avatar Masters had tried to keep the Scientology connection hushed up as
best they could. Palmer assisted by saying he had only briefly participated
in Scientology "discussion group." When the truth came out, Avatar Masters
were banned from holding recruitment meetings and courses at public
facilities, and many hotels refused to rent meeting space to them as well.
More recently, Avatar has evolved with the times. At some point during the
mid-1990s, Palmer awarded himself a bogus doctorate degree in psychology and
a license (required to use the title, since psychology is a licensed health
care profession). So now his biography states that Avatar was created by an
"educational psychologist" in either 1986 or 1987. According to several
websites, the course is "delivered in 66 countries, 19 languages and the
number of Avatar graduates have exceeded 70,000." The number of licensed
Masters is said to be several thousand, but only slightly more than 1,000
are listed as active on the main Avatar website. Of those, only about 200
ran paid ads or directory listings in the Fall 2005 issue of the Avatar
Journal.
During the past few years, Star's Edge has elaborated on its multilevel
marketing scheme by designating an upper tier of Qualified Masters who
supervise the course deliveries of Provisional Masters for a fee. Students
recruited for the basic Avatar Course are steered toward consolidated
"international" and "cooperative" courses held at hotels in various cities
around the world once or twice a month.
Besides efforts by new Provisional Masters to recruit their immediate
families, friends and associates, a couple dozen of the most avid and
experienced Masters give introductory lectures in their local areas before
each large group course. At this writing, 43 such talks were scheduled in
the US during the month leading up to an International Course in Orlando
starting October 29, 2005-to be supervised by Avra Honey Smith. Recent group
pictures of course participants posted at the International Course website
showed about 100 in San Diego, 26 in Montreal, and a little over 100 in
Santa Fe. There is no indication of how many people in the cheering crowds
are Masters, past students repeating the course, or new students taking
Avatar for the first time. Estimates vary, but it seems likely that as many
as half might be teaching or repeating the course for another shot of
transitory enlightenment.
A survey of individual Avatar Master websites leaves the impression that few
if any of them are teaching their own courses locally anymore. The last
scheduled deliveries listed on some sites date back to 2003, and no future
course announcements were found. Most say, "call or send an e-mail for
information." Some promote the large group courses. Several of the more
prolific performers have dropped out altogether in recent years.
The Internet has changed many things about the way people interact,
particularly where personal growth trainings are concerned. Scientology,
Avatar, Landmark Education (formerly est), and other groups are subjected to
widespread scrutiny every day by people who read critical websites and ask
questions in discussion groups. Type "avatar course" into Google or another
search engine, and you'll get a mixed bag of hits. (You need to use "avatar
course" in quotes to eliminate sites about animated cartoon characters
called "avatars" in Internet gamer slang.) As you'll see, Star's Edge and
various Masters present an array of promotional websites for their services.
Next, add the word "cult" and search again. You'll find quite an array of
critical reading material about the manipulative aspects of the group.
There's one link you won't find so easily: www.AvatarScam.com/ will only
show up on Google as an alternate URL or as a link within other websites.
That's because Palmer's lawyer complained to Google about copyright
infringement. The complaint may have been valid, since owner Ronald Cools
publishes the entire transcript of the Wizard course lecture quoted above,
plus another one that announces Harry Palmer's mission of saving planet
Earth from a telepathic blight bomb that has spread across many galaxies,
destroying photosynthesis in its wake. Oops, that was supposed to remain
confidential until you paid $7,500 for the revelation at the Wizard Course.
But wait, there's more! One menu item on Cools' website reads, "Free Master
Course." The last I heard, anyone who sends an e-mail to the address
provided will receive by return e-mail a temporary web address where the
confidential Parts II and III of the Avatar Course and the entire Master
Course materials can be downloaded within 24-hours. So if you'd like a
preview before you enroll, check it out.

-Eldon M. Braun, Paris
October 24, 2006

THE END OF THE BRIDGE?
In June, 1987, I got a phone call from Al Holmes, whom I hadn't seen for
years. We had taken courses together at the San Francisco Church of
Scientology ten years earlier. A couple of days later he and Bill Offerman,
another former Scientologist, showed up. They wanted to tell me about
something new. Both of them had recently returned from Elmira, New York,
where they had taken the Avatar course. It had been developed several months
earlier by Harry Palmer, a former Scientology mission holder.
They were obviously impressed. From their description, Palmer had figured
out what L. Ron Hubbard missed during the thirty-odd years he spent
developing hundreds of Scientology processes. Or maybe Palmer had discovered
what L.R.H. purposely omitted in order to keep his followers buying more and
more courses as they followed the elusive carrot of self-realization along
the ever-lengthening "bridge to total freedom." My visitors invited me to
come to Millbrae, a suburb south of San Francisco, to hear a lecture Palmer
would be giving soon. He and a few course trainers had recently begun to
travel around the U.S. delivering courses organized by former
Scientologists. They had just completed a stint in Santa Monica, and were
due to show up in the Bay Area in a couple of weeks. When they left, Al and
Bill gave me a cassette tape of an hour-long lecture by Palmer. I had taken
quite a few Scientology courses over the past 15 years. In 1982, when the
church began using heavy-handed tactics to extort money from independent
mission-holders and became involved in scandals over its attempts to
intimidate disaffected members, I demanded the last $1,100 I had in my
"advance payment account" for future courses. To my surprise, it was
returned promptly. Then I got some more counseling from offshoot
organizations that had sprung up. By that time, there were quite a few
former Scientologists around. Those people who fled the church tended to be
the people I had most liked and respected when I met them in various
Scientology centers. Those who remained were mostly the robotic true
believer types who provide tender fodder for the first cult that promises
them an exclusive way to escape the angst of everyday human existence.

WHAT JOHN LILLY MISSED
A couple of days later, I plunked the cassette I had been given into the
tape deck. It had obviously been recorded impromptu on a portable tape
recorder by someone in the audience. I had to pay rapt attention just to
make out most of the words. Palmer's description of the Avatar course was
exactly what a disillusioned former Scientologist was ready to hear. He said
he had discovered these secrets when he undertook a prolonged series of
experiments with his own consciousness in a sensory deprivation chamber,
also known as a Samadhi tank. It was the same method used, sometimes in
conjunction with LSD, by John Lilly in the late 1960's to simulate
out-of-body experiences and achieve altered states of consciousness. In an
anecdote straight out of a TV sitcom, Palmer described the day his wife came
home to discover her dining room taken over by the tank.. While suspended in
an Epsom salt solution, floating in absolute silence and removed from all
sensory feedback from the physical universe, he saw beliefs floating like
bubbles in an "infinite sea of consciousness," and came to the conclusion
that beliefs were the key to everything. Even the physical universe was just
a solidified, generally agreed-upon belief system. The procedures he
developed using this discovery, he said, were "the end of case"--case in
Scientology terms meaning the sum total of all the mental and spiritual
blocks accumulated throughout all one's lifetimes. His basic thesis -- that
beliefs create a person's reality as self-fulfilling prophesies -- was one
that had been expressed in many places from the Vedas to A Course in
Miracles to information channeled through mediums from astral plane entities
such as Seth and Bashar. Scientologists were all familiar with the dictum,
"You are totally responsible for the condition you are in." The difference
Palmer said, was that he had discovered a profound though simple technique
for finding and "discreating" hidden negative beliefs that manifest as real
life problems. No longer was it necessary to spend years dissecting one's
case with the long, expensive and complex techniques of Scientology. Not
long afterward, I received a phone call from Margie Hoffman, the Registrar
(salesperson in Scientology lingo) of Palmer's Creative Learning Center in
Elmira, New York. She wanted to know whether I was going to take the course.
I told her I'd come to the lecture and see. She wasn't pushy in the least,
but something I got from talking to her gave me the feeling I probably
would. She was one hell of a salesperson, even though she didn't really use
any sales tactics. When I attended the lecture in Millbrae, about thirty
people showed up. I had seen most of the people in the audience at one time
or another.

AN ANTI-GURU?
Harry Palmer appeared. He was in his early forties, red-haired, with a
neatly-trimmed full beard. He wore a T-shirt which outlined a slight paunch,
blue jeans and running shoes. He spoke softly, with a persona of absolute
humility. "Aw, shucks," his manner seemed to imply, "how could such an honor
have been bestowed on me?" He began with the statement that "Avatar is what
you've been looking for." During the next hour, he expounded on the same
basic theory I had heard in the taped lecture: if you can really and truly
change your beliefs--not just wish to change them or pretend to change
them--reality will follow suit. Two basic skills were needed. One was the
ability to take the leap of faith needed to achieve a gut-level sense of
responsibility for creating one's own reality. The other was learning the
confidential technique that enabled Avatars to discreate unwanted beliefs
with ease and replace them with ones that would be more self-fulfilling. The
term "discreate" was used, he explained, because it didn't require any
effort to eliminate beliefs you didn't want. You simply decided to cease
creating them unconsciously as you had been doing all along. A couple of the
beliefs he used as examples, if their effects could be eliminated, would
indeed make conventional mental therapies such as psychoanalysis obsolete,
and would eliminate the need for all the elaborate and expensive "upper
levels" of Scientology. One was the theory that past experiences impinge on
one's everyday reality. Just get rid of the belief that the past affects
you, he said, and it won't. Another was the idea propounded by L. Ron
Hubbard, Tibetan Buddhism and various shamanistic schools of metaphysics
that people were afflicted by "entities," or other beings, whose effects
might range from inner conflicts to multiple personality disorders to mass
political aberrations. The upper levels of Scientology by this time
consisted largely of auditing actions to free oneself of multitudes of
electronically implanted beings which had been stuck together as a solution
for a population crisis on a planet in a faraway galaxy. (That's another
story, and a long one. It has been told already in the Los Angeles Times,
Forbes Magazine and several books about Scientology.) Entities are just a
belief too, said Palmer. If you don't believe they exist, they won't affect
you any longer. Palmer said he didn't want to become anyone's guru, and as
evidence laid out an ethical and humane sounding plan for delivering and
administering the course. A Masters Course was being developed for people
who wanted to teach the course. They could deliver the course in whatever
framework they chose, so long as they maintained high quality standards.
They would pay a 15% licensing fee for each student they trained in order to
support research and the activities of Star's Edge, the central licensing
and training organization. There would be a Senior Avatar Council composed
of Avatar Masters (trainers) who would vote on policy. He was considering a
limit of 100 licensed Masters in the U.S. Once enough trainers were
available throughout the U.S., Star's Edge planned to stop offering the
basic Avatar Course, and would serve as a training facility for Masters, as
well as offering free review services for any students who had trouble
"integrating," or assimilating the course materials.
The most decent and humanitarian thing he promised, from the viewpoint of
people who had spent time in Scientology, was that there was nothing after
Avatar. Palmer said he had no plans to add additional courses. If new
processes or enhancements were developed in the future, they would be
included within the Avatar Course and made available free to anyone who had
already completed it. Many people who had bailed out of Scientology had
already spent upwards of $100,000 in their attempt to reach the other side
of L. Ron Hubbard's long bridge, only to have it lengthened and restructured
every couple of years. Each new discovery Hubbard made seemed to carry a
higher price tag than that last. To them, another $2,000 (discounted to
$1,500 for the initial course offered by Palmer and the trainers) was no big
deal. Besides, at any time during the first part of the course, through the
point when you read the secret process and were ready to receive a guided
"initiation session," you were welcome to a full refund of the course fee.
It sounded fair enough to me, so I signed up with about 20 other people.
Just about all were former Scientologists, including a number of local
luminaries. One was Peter Monk, the man who had first introduced Werner
Erhard to Scientology shortly before Erhard developed the est course.

ON COURSE
The Avatar course was taught by Avra Honey Smith, who was presented as
Palmer's wife (I later heard they weren't officially married), assisted by
Susan Sweetland and Margie Hoffman. Palmer didn't participate in running the
course; he simply strolled in and out of the course room occasionally. The
women who taught the course were collectively known as the "Avatar Angels."
The course began at the El Rancho Motel in Millbrae. Later, as more people
showed up, it was moved across the Bay to the Travelodge Motel near Jack
London Square in Oakland. Students were enrolled in typical Scientology
fashion, which included signing a legal agreement not to divulge the
confidential materials of the course, and to pay $10,000 for each
infringement if they did.
We read mimeographed materials and listened to a number of taped lectures
Palmer had recorded. At the beginning of each tape was a warning delivered
by Margie Hoffman. It stated that anyone not authorized to hear this
information should stop the tape now, because the information had been known
to cause severe personality changes. Oh, boy, I thought. I was ready for a
few of those. The content of the course was pretty much the same as the one
delivered today except that the reading materials and tapes were full of
Scientology jargon. Some of the ideas were Scientological, though there was
also a heavy dose of Vedantic wisdom and a few Zen touches. At that time,
the course was delivered as a single unit. Today, it has three sections.
The first is available in book form. The Creativism workbook contains the
basic theory of the course and contains exercises for locating subconscious
beliefs that may be running one's life. The remaining two sections are
confidential. Part II, which contains two basic exercises with a number of
variations, costs $500. Part III, in which the technique for "discreating"
unwanted conditions is explained and used, costs $1,500. During the Feel-It
exercises on Part II of the Course, the student simply regains the ability
to experience the world directly--to feel things rather than translate
perceptions intellectually. This is similar to some upper level process in
Scientology called OT I and "old" OT VII (OT meaning "Operating Thetan," a
realized being).
For example, in the OT VII process, the student "places intentions" in
various objects and people and observes their effects. The Avatar exercise
consists of singling out an object, plant, person or belief (the thought
forms Palmer described as "bubbles in consciousness"). Then the student gets
a concept of the space it occupies, identifies with it and experiences how
it feels. Further variations of this exercise entail consciously switching
one's mental "filters," or judgments in a purposeful effort to change one's
perceptions. See that guy over there? Make him a saint. Now make him a child
molester. Feel any different? Finally, one consciously decides to see things
just as they are, with no judgments attached. Direct experience of this sort
gives the student a profound sense of tranquility and a perception of being
at peace with the whole of creation. The second set of exercises on Part II
consist of making repeated affirmations--a set of statements designed to
"create one's own [subjective] reality." Unlike conventional positive
thinking and visualization techniques, these exercises encourage the student
to focus on any thoughts or reactions triggered by the affirmations. These
are called "secondaries," and are seen as limiting beliefs which prevent one
from "creating the personal reality" voiced in the primary affirmation. The
secondary responses, like the perceptual "filters" explored during the
earlier exercises, are eliminated by consciously and repeatedly exaggerating
them.
These exercises are done in pairs, with one student acting as a coach in the
same manner as the Scientology Training Routines, a set of communication
exercises. The technique for eliminating secondaries is reminiscent of
familiar Scientology Creative Processes used for exploring different mental
"mock-ups," including persistent emotional states and compulsive behaviors.
The same technique is used in exercises called "Mood Drills." The person
simply practices doing whatever it is deliberately until it comes under full
control. From this perspective, it is easy to willfully stop doing it. Say
you have a tic in your eye. If you concentrates on it and cause it to occur
repeatedly until it becomes boring, chances are the tic will be gone, at
least temporarily.
The content and effect of the "Source List" set of affirmations are similar
to those of the Scientology Power Processes, which involve repetitively
giving answers to the commands, "Tell me a Source. " and "Tell me a
no-source." The end result is the same: a sense that one is source -- the
seat of consciousness at the center of the universe, creating everything
outside through conscious intent. The Power Processes were a standard part
of the Scientology "bridge" until the early 1980's, when they were declared
unnecessary for most people, when it was conveniently discovered that they
routinely "went Clear" during lower levels of auditing, and could progress
directly to the expensive upper levels. Many former Scientologists believe
the real reason the Power Processes were discontinued was that they worked
too well. People who received them often did not feel the need to buy more
auditing for years. They sometimes gained such a sense of autonomy that they
asked embarrassing questions about the motives of the organization. After a
few days on the Part II Avatar exercises, the student is prepared--and
usually raring--to start Part III. After reading a little material
explaining the Creation Handling Procedure an Initiation Session is
delivered by a Trainer. The Creation Handling procedure is the one part of
Avatar that everyone who took the course considered unique until a graduate
came across a description of a Tibetan meditation technique taught by
Tarthang Tulku. Tulku is a Tibetan lama who left the country after the
Chinese invasion, and founded the Nyingama Institute in Berkeley, California
in 1969.
His method for eliminating unwanted thought forms and their effects, as
described in the book Hidden Mind of Freedom is almost precisely the same as
Palmer's "discovery." "Working with thoughts by opening them as they arise
can bring many pleasant feelings, which--without attachment--also become our
meditation. . . . We can even go into the thoughts that judge other
thoughts, and, embracing this judging mind, become united with it." "By
relying on the light of awareness you can see that the difficulties you face
are manifestations of your own concepts. Going deeply into your thoughts,
you will see how you create your experience, how you alone are the judge who
determines heaven and hell, good and bad. " "Whatever experience arises,
stay with it, expand it, and heat it up. If you remain within the intense
core of the experience, the meditator unites with thoughts and emotions, and
everything dissolves. Then awareness grows powerful and one-pointed. As
thoughts and emotions are increasingly included within this field of
awareness, they become more useful. Instead of being a cause of frustration
or confusion, they become agents of well-being. . . . "
In recounting his sensory deprivation experiments, Palmer describes "pulling
the plug" on what he calls the circus of the mind and watching it disappear.
After that, he was left in a state of pure consciousness where his concepts
of things and beliefs seemed to float like bubbles in space. Even the idea
of "self," as he explains, is "the bubble you view other bubbles from."

A GLOBAL PRESENCE
At a Sheraton hotel outside Orlando were more than 40 people from all over
the world. They included re-birthers, yoga teachers and past life
regressionists from France; an NLP counselor from Belgium; a seeker from
Berlin; an elderly minister and his wife from Australia; psychologists,
artists, Course in Miracles students and a smattering of former
Scientologists from all over the U.S. Avatar, I learned had become a big hit
in France, where it had been introduced by several former Scientologists and
a well-known yoga instructor. There, it was called an "applied philosophy,"
and was growing roughly twice as fast as in the U.S.
Whatever was going on, the course itself was one hell of a high. While I was
there, I met a number of wonderful, often quirky, but unfailingly optimistic
people. All of them had a sense of the common mission I had experienced back
in Scientology days--to live in a world without insanity, criminality, war
and other problems caused by the baser aspects of human nature. They were
obviously intent on transforming not only themselves, but the consciousness
of the world at large. There were none of the quasi-military overtones I had
experienced in Scientology, only an atmosphere of common purpose freely
created by the participants. Telepathy ran rampant. One day as I was in my
room changing to head for the swimming pool, I got a mental image of a
French student, Dominique Rochier, biting into a Dove Bar I had put in the
freezer compartment of the mini-bar refrigerator. I took it out, got into
the elevator and unwrapped it. The elevator stopped on the next floor down
and Dominique entered. As the door slid shut, he asked "Where you get zat?"
"At the 7-11 down the street," I replied. "Want a bite?" I held out the ice
cream bar and he chomped into the corner, precisely matching the premonitory
mental image I had seen a couple of minutes before. Honest. Would I make up
something like that? During the course, it was announced that East German
refugees were streaming into West Germany via Czechoslovakia, and that the
Berlin partition was effectively over. I told Petra Shulte, the seeker who
had come from Berlin to take the course, how lucky she was to be able to
return home and watch such a large real world persistent mass dissolve
before her eyes. As before, Palmer occasionally sauntered into the course
area and chatted with people, but remained mostly aloof from the daily
activity. At the end of the course, I learned that the contract Avatar
Masters were required to sign had been revised since I first started the
course. The "licensing fee" to be rebated to Star's Edge was now 25% for the
first ten students, 20% for the next ten, and 15% thereafter. Palmer had
instituted a multi-level system. Masters whose students went on to become
Masters themselves would receive "grid payments" of 10% of Masters Course
fees paid by their protegees' first ten Avatar students, and 5% of the fees
paid by the next ten students. In my case, of course, the payments would go
directly to Star's Edge, since I had originally taken the Avatar Course from
them. The system for the French was different. They were to pay 25% fees for
their first twenty students, and 20% from then on. They also received a
straight 10% commission of $300 for any of their students who went on to the
Masters Course. I had some qualms about this payment system from a business
standpoint. The 25% initial fees to be paid at the beginning seemed almost
usurious and counter-productive. They would strap new Masters who were
trying to set up a practice with extra expenses exactly when they could
least afford them. The "grid system" commission payments were paid pretty
much at the whim of Star's Edge, and would provide a significant cash float
between the time they were collected and paid. But I signed the contract
anyway. Who wanted to dicker in an atmosphere of such limitless,
boundary-less consciousness? At least I went in knowing I would be required
to pay commissions for every student I taught. I later talked to several
Avatar Masters who went through the course totally unaware of the terms of
the licensing agreement until they came to it at the end of the course
materials on the last day of the course and were told they had to sign it in
order to deliver the course.

GRADUATION DAY
On Sunday afternoon, after the course ended, Palmer hosted a party at the
Star's Edge headquarters a few miles from the hotel. Palmer and the three
trainers live in a large ranch house situated on several acres of land,
surrounded by empty horse stables and outbuildings. The office is a
converted recreation room. There was a catered barbecue lunch, kegs of beer,
vats of iced tea and ice buckets filled with soft drinks. Entertainment
included an interpretive dance by a young woman from New Caledonia and a
"snoot flute" rendition of the Star Spangled Banner by two U.S. Masters, who
prefaced the performance with a suggestion that world leaders counter
hostile feelings by playing their national anthems on the instrument while
looking into a mirror. (The Snoot Flute is a small red plastic device played
by blowing through the nose which makes the performer look ridiculous.)
There was a performance of "Mad About Nothing," a charming one-man show by a
French Master named Michel Langinieux. He created his participatory
theatrical adventure based on the techniques developed by his friend Douglas
Harding, the English architect and Zen master, for producing an instant
sense of "the void." Susan Sweetland sang ``Amazing Grace," a tradition at
the end of the Masters Course, and brought tears to most eyes. The party was
marred by one disturbing event. A French student staggered on-stage as
Palmer was announcing something and began mumbling incoherently, though
happily. Palmer led him offstage, but he returned again, obviously
disoriented, and was again led away. I later learned that he had been doing
a considerable amount of drinking during the course. As it turned out, he
had a history of autism and acute depression replete with suicidal
inclinations. I heard that he was not licensed as an Avatar Master, but I
have no idea whether he would now be selling the course and guiding students
toward self-realization had he not caused the scene at the party. He stayed
on in Orlando for a brief period after the course. During the next week, he
was returned to the hotel by the police a few times, once after having
passed out on the shore of a nearby lake inhabited by alligators. Finally he
was put on a plane back to France by some acquaintances who called his
girlfriend to pick him up on the other end of the flight.

THE AVATAR CENTRE OF S.F.
I went back to San Francisco and published the required "fictitious business
name" ad in a weekly newspaper describing myself as the proprietor of the
Avatar Centre of San Francisco. The next thing I did was transcribe Palmer's
original taped lecture, which was still being distributed in an edited
version, and publish it as a twelve-page printed booklet. I was soon joined
by Dominique Rochier, Michel Langinieux and Philo Mourier, another French
graduate of the Masters Course I had met in Orlando. All had decided to come
and hang out in San Francisco for a while. Philo stayed for a few months
until he returned to Paris.
Things went slowly at first. I hadn't anticipated the amount of personal
growth competition that existed in the San Francisco Bay Area, or the number
of people who expected enlightenment to be free in the Eastern tradition.
But by placing ads in some weekly papers and taking a booth at New Age
fairs, I was contacted by several hundred interested seekers, and started
training some students on the course. I discovered that those who had
received previous training or counseling in mental practices breezed through
the course in 70 hours or so. Others -- particularly those who had a
tendency to rationalize, and approached philosophy from an intellectual
rather than an experiential standpoint -- had a rough time getting through
the exercises in Section II of the course. Some needed 100 hours or more to
complete the entire course thoroughly. It soon became evident to me that
everyone who took the course needed to come back and review it at least
once, if only briefly. Since the course is proprietary and confidential,
students leave with only what they can remember. No matter how blissed out
they become when they take the course for the first time, they inevitably
have more work to do after they settle back into everyday reality. Once they
do, many find that they have pretty well discreated the techniques they
learned on the course along with everything else. Many who come back after a
month or so open the course materials and say, "I don't remember reading
this. Is it new?" I also discovered that Star's Edge wasn't good for many
referrals unless I ran ads in the Avatar Journal, and that the referrals
appeared to be based on the size of ads Masters ran. Instead of running
larger ads, I wrote a couple of articles, for which Star's Edge gratuitously
paid me $100 per page. That brought in some students. The biggest advertiser
in the magazine was a man from Phoenix who ran a two-page spread in each
issue. He listed future course schedules across the U.S., instructing
prospective students to block out 30 hours of time within a four-day period.
After he made a foray through San Francisco in November and delivered the
course to several people, I got a call from one of them. She said most of
the people on the course hadn't completed it. They were told they could
finish up when the Master returned four months later. She guessed the reason
the course hadn't gone very well might have been the San Francisco
earthquake, which shaken up the Bay Area on November 17. I didn't think it
polite to point out that the course had concluded on November 16, and her
teacher had flown out of town for another engagement the morning of the
17th, only hours before the quake occurred. I spent at least 40 more hours
working with her gratis. Eventually another student from the same course
showed up. He had AIDS, and was low on energy. He said he hadn't necessarily
expected to cure himself with Avatar, but at least thought he might figure
out the karma that had caused him to become afflicted. Now he was under the
distinct impression that his teacher had ripped him off and skipped town
with his last $2,000. I worked with him as best I could over the phone and
on the occasions when he felt well enough to make it over. Then one day I
called him and he said he had been too ill to do anything. I didn't hear
from him again. I wrote a letter to the itinerant Avatar Master and told him
he had better clean up his act before a bottle of snake oil appeared in his
hand, referring to the photo in his ad which depicted him in an evangelical
pose with an outstretched hand. I enclosed a bill for $1,000, the least I
figured he owed me for the work I had done with his incomplete students, and
sent a copy to Harry Palmer. I never received a reply from either of them,
though I later heard that the wayfaring Master had been instructed by Star's
Edge to increase the time of his courses to a minimum of six days. By then,
he had been delivering 30-hour courses for about a year, and was said to
have "completed more than 80 people." Over the next year, I managed to give
the course to about a dozen people. After paying the expenses of promoting
the course and royalty payments, I didn't net much from the Avatar Course. I
was still writing ad copy to pay the bills. Teaching the course was,
however, a joy. Every time I saw students pop loose from the subconscious
dramatizations that had been controlling their lives, I got a vicarious
thrill that made it worthwhile.

My most interesting referral came from--well, I should say through--a trance
channeler in Florida. One day a marketing executive from a local financial
services company called me up. He had gotten the number by calling an
information operator. He said he had recently moved to the Bay Area. Before
leaving Florida, he went to his channeler and asked his personal astral
guides what he should do as the next step in his spiritual development. One
of the guides told him to check out the Avatar Course. When the channeler
came out of his trance, he said he really didn't know anything about the
course, but there was a bunch of information different people had left on a
table in the hall. On the table my prospect found a tape of Palmer's 1987
lecture. He stuck the tape away for some months, then came across it while
unpacking some boxes after his move to California. He had listened to
earlier the day he called while riding to work on the Tiburon Ferry. He
signed up for the course shortly after our first visit, and was ecstatic
with the results. Of the people who took the course from me, only one told
me he felt that he hadn't really gotten what he expected out of Avatar, and
speculated that might have been because he had glossed over some of the
exercises to please me. I invited him to come back for another go at it.
Along the way, I published a couple of newsletters, got together with some
other Avatar Masters from the Bay Area and started delivering "Section I
Workshops" based on the Creativism workbook, which by this time had been
republished in a glitzy four-color version with New Age airbrush art from
past issues of the Avatar Journal and a couple of new exercises. Most of the
people who took the workshops were pleased with them, and a few went on to
take the complete course. I was informed by a local Master that Avra Honey
Smith had recently remarked that anyone giving these seminars should be
getting an 80% sign-up rate. When I asked how many workshops Avra had
conducted herself, the answer was none. Was someone else achieving this
rate? If so, I'd like to talk to them. The Master hadn't heard of any. Avra
hadn't mentioned any.. She simply said that anyone not getting 80% of
participants to sign up for the rest of the course was "still stuck in an
identity."

TROUBLES WITH HARRY
In the spring of 1990, I received a call from Del (not his real name), a
friend of one of my students who lives in New York City. His friend, a
professional Neuro-Linguistic Programming counselor, had told me the course
allowed him to reach the state he had been searching for all his life. He
had talked to Del and recommended that he take the course in San Francisco.
I offered to put him in touch with someone in New York, but he said he
believed a skilled instructor was important. I had been highly recommended,
so he was pretty well set on coming out to the Coast. A couple of months
after we first talked, he called to tell me that he had decided to go to
Orlando and take the course at Star's Edge instead. I told him to do
whatever he wanted. Then I recalled Palmer's earlier statement that Star's
Edge wasn't going to be delivering the Avatar Course. They had, in fact,
recently added a fifth staff member who was hired specifically to supervise
the course there, and had run a full page ad in the last Avatar Journal. The
basic Avatar Course was obviously seen as a sideline profit center in its
own right. Looking back over my years in business, it was clear to me that
Palmer was making the short-sighted mistake of "going direct"--the
equivalent of General Motors opening a retail showroom in front of the car
factory. Legitimate companies sell products and services either directly or
through licensees, but almost never both ways. I confronted Palmer on the
subject in a way I felt pretty certain would get home to him, considering
his heavy emphasis on being paid commissions for each and every student who
receives the course. I simply waited until I owed more than $1,500 in
payments for books and licensing fees, deducted $1,500 (the $2,000 course
fee less Star's Edge's $500 commission) for the student they had recruited
and enclosed a check for the balance. In an accompanying letter, I reminded
him of his previous promise not to compete with the "network" and informed
him that a number of other people had heard him say the same thing.
Star's Edge had just announced the first delivery of the Wizards Course to
be held in January, so while I was at it, I reminded him of his earlier
statement that "There was nothing after Avatar." When he introduced the
Avatar Course, he had repeatedly assured prospective students that any
future developments would be added to the basic course and made available
free of charge. The Wizards Course, subtitled "The Avatar Materials, Part
V," had initially been priced at $20,000. Part I was now offered at a
special introductory rate of $5,000, to be increased to $7,500 the next time
it was offered.
In my letter I asked him to simply drop the course materials in the mail,
since that was what he had promised to do when he first promoted Avatar to
former Scientologists as "the end of case." His response was a letter full
of Scientology argot, a parody of L. Ron Hubbard's vernacular, warning me
that I should reconsider, meaning to pay up. Palmer explained that Star's
Edge only delivered the Avatar Course so Masters could experience watching
students go through it. During the past year, he said, more than 1,500
prospective students had been referred to licensed Masters, while only about
20 had received the course at Star's Edge during Masters Courses. As for
Del, Palmer said the trainers had asked him to leave during his second stint
there because of a "conflicting hidden agenda." The letter was an
entertaining parody, and was signed ``Ron, er, Harry." There was just one
problem: Palmer did not address my questions about his earlier statements at
all. When I questioned a few other Masters who had been there to review the
Masters Course that year about how many people were taking the Avatar Course
at headquarters, one commented, ``Bullshit! There were ten or twelve new
people when I was there, and they gave six Masters Courses in Florida last
year."
As Palmer and I began an exchange of letters, Michel Langinieux showed up
for what turned out to be a three-month stay in San Francisco. He knows a
number of people here from the days when he had lived in the area during the
1960s. During that time, he hung out with Alan Watts and other explorers on
the outer realms of consciousness while teaching French drama at Stanford.
He has been a student of Krishnamurti, Douglas Harding and Werner Erhard. He
is on a first-name basis with just about everybody who is anybody in the
worldwide consciousness-raising movement, as well as dozens of cutting-edge
scientists, journalists and other thinkers he finds amusing. Michel calls
himself a traveling minstrel. He officially lives in Paris, but spends most
of his time flitting around the planet, stopping off a month or a few months
wherever his fancy leads him. He supports himself modestly by performing the
interactive show he gave when we both graduated from the Avatar Masters
Course. In the show, he wears masks representing Harlequin, Pantelone and a
character called, simply, "The Fool." During the performance, he proceeds to
gently remove some of the psychological masks worn by the audience. As it
turned out, he had already begun to unmask Harry Palmer. Since the Masters
Course we attended in Orlando, Michel had dropped in on four more courses in
Europe and the U.S. in order to hone his skills. Now he had a few concerns
of his own about events in Europe. In Europe, the Masters Courses were
getting so large that the training was obviously superficial. Courses had
recently been given at a rural castle in France, in Nice, in Montpelier, and
in Neufchatel, Switzerland. At the Swiss course, 250 people attended. The
three trainers were obviously stretched too thin, yet most of those
attending were certified as Masters and turned loose to deliver the course.
There had been incidents.
In Nice, a psychiatrist taking the course became so agitated when he
couldn't get a question answered that he picked up a table and smashed it.
In Montpelier someone who had taken the Avatar Course without getting the
results he expected showed up to confront Palmer and got a refund after
causing a scene in front of the group. The training at that course was so
lax that many new Masters were licensed without even practicing guided
"initiation sessions" on each other. Michel felt the Avatar course was being
delivered in an increasingly unprofessional manner in France by people who
obviously weren't qualified to teach it. Some Masters were surreptitiously
cutting the price in order to win students away from others. Others were
demonstrating the confidential procedures to the public at fairs. When asked
about the lack of quality control, Miken Chappel had philosophically
answered, "Some people have to get Avatar in spite of their Masters." Before
he left Paris, Michel had run into one of the most successful Avatar Masters
in France, a psychologist. With his partner, he had taught the course to
about 200 people during the past couple of years at their counseling center
in Boulogne. The man had talked to Palmer at a Masters Course and informed
him that he thought a lower commission schedule might be in order for people
who delivered as many courses as he and his partner. Would Harry consider
lowering the fee to 15% or 10% at a certain point? Palmer's response, said
the psychologist, was to point a finger at him (a grave insult in French
culture) and call him a "black heart." After attempting to talk to Palmer a
second time about the matter and getting the identical response, he went
back to Boulogne and cut off all further communications with Star's Edge. He
and his partner are now reportedly delivering a course called "Global
Brain." While visiting a Masters Course in the U.S., Michel had spent some
time working with Mike (not his real name), a student who had obviously not
yet assimilated even the basic Avatar Course.
When he asked Avra Honey Smith why she was instructing him to do certain
things, and pressed her for specific answers to questions about the criteria
for completing the Masters Course, she told him that he basically had to
please her, since she doled out the certificates. The trainers subsequently
concluded that he was on drugs, and didn't pass him on the course. His
conclusion was that he had been conned out of $5,000. Michel offered to put
him through the Avatar Course again gratis, but he declined. When he
questioned Mike about the first time he took the course in New York, Michel
discovered that he was required to show up for only a couple of hours a day.
Much of his time on the course had been spent not doing the exercises, but
chatting about the course's theory from a philosophic viewpoint. As for
being on drugs, he said he hadn't used drugs to any extent for years --
though he had shared a few joints with his Avatar Master during the 12 or 14
hours he spent on the course. There had been problems with the French
translation of the new Creativism book. Palmer had originally asked Michel
to translate the book. When he was told it couldn't be finished within his
one-month deadline, he hired another translator who took three months, and
whose work Michel regarded as incompetent. Michel and Marie Franciose
Baracetti, a Paris newspaper editor, made numerous corrections, but most
were not incorporated in the final edition before it was rushed to press
with some 200 inaccuracies. One glaring error particularly bothered them. In
the section of the book where Palmer justifies the price of the course by
saying it is aimed at the successful middle-class stratum of society, the
translation implied it was "not for the common people" -- an elitist
sentiment that has been anathema to the French since the revolution. An
equivalent American gaffe would be to say an activity "is not for white
trash."
Baracetti mentioned the translation problems in letters to other Avatar
Masters. Palmer accused her of "black worming" and treachery in general.
Several months later, her license to deliver the course was suspended; she
was forbidden to teach students pending her review of the Masters Course.
She was told she could attend Masters Courses to be held two months later in
Florida or three months later in Switzerland -- but was not invited to a
course scheduled to begin in France ten days after the date of her
suspension notice. Apparently someone at Star's Edge did not want to take
the chance that she might express her opinions there.
A Swiss industrialist, noting the mistakes in the translation of the book,
asked how many copies had been printed. "Only 10,000? No problem. Burn them
and print it again." Word has it that Palmer came close to having a heart
attack. "Harry just doesn't seem to trust professionals," said Michel. "He
hires nincompoops. He doesn't realize when people are supporting him. He
sees support as betrayal." Michel loved delivering Avatar. At the time he
showed up in San Francisco, He had given Part I workshops at no charge for
more than 700 people in Europe and America. He liked sharing the work with
people, and felt that a number of them had been transformed without taking
the rest of the course. Now he had serious doubts that Palmer's management
skills were up to maintaining the level of quality needed to deliver the
course properly. "He has discovered a jewel and then misused it to satisfy
his own idiosyncrasies," said Michel. "He seems to misuse gullible people to
satisfy his own greed. It's anything for a quick buck." When I told Michel
about my current disagreement with Palmer, and introduced him to some of the
people who had originally taken Avatar back in 1987, he was surprised to
hear about the upset in Elmira.

STILL SEETHING
On an intuitive hunch, I called Del, the man from New York who had gone to
Orlando to take the course. Avra didn't really use any hard sell on him, he
said, and he had initially felt comfortable about taking the course at
headquarters because he assumed they knew what they were doing. When he went
for the first time, he found the trainers a bit cold and reluctant to answer
his questions. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that the last day of the course
was the highest day of his life. He decided to return and review the course
the next time it was scheduled. In the meantime, after mentioning Avatar to
some friends, he received a letter and some copies of newspaper articles
about Palmer from someone in Elmira. When he went to Florida to review the
course, he tentatively brought up the subject of Palmer's Scientology
background, and was "told to go do Feel-It's as penance." The trainers, he
said, wouldn't really acknowledge anything about Palmer's past. He felt they
were being evasive. This made him uncomfortable, so he left of his own
volition midway through the course. I vaguely recalled hearing about some
articles in the Elmira paper, so I asked him to send me copies of what he
had received. In order to make certain I had heard Palmer say what I thought
he had said, I had just sent out several questionnaires to people who were
present in 1987 when he was giving his first round of lectures. One was
Margie Hoffman, the Avatar trainer who had caused a stir back in 1987 when
she quit. While I was out one evening, she called from Elmira and had a chat
with Michel. When I returned, he was aghast. "They say he's a crook!" he
exclaimed, rolling the R indignantly. "Still lawsuits after four years! He
stole from 30 or 40 people! Some are bankrupt! They're screaming bloody
murder! Margie and Linda Rosin testified against him in court in November!"
Something told me the merde had hit the fan.
The Elmira upset is described in a brief chronology entitled "Avatar's Time
Track" which appeared in the new edition of the Creativism book: "A few
former employees, envious of Avatar's growing success, choose to explore
aspects of betrayal and launch a broad publicity campaign to denounce Harry
and his Star's Edge Organization." As it turns out, a few dozen people in
Elmira see the events of October, 1987 in an entirely different light. Their
version would read more like this: "Every student and client of Palmer's
Scientology center, joined by all but two of his staff members, denounced
him emphatically. They claimed he had systematically swindled hundreds of
thousands of dollars from them, then slandered and blackmailed members of
the group who threatened him with exposure." The next day after her
conversation with Michel, I called Margie back and listened to her story for
more than half an hour. No sooner had I hung up the phone than it rang.
Linda Rosin, the former promotion manager of the center was on the other end
of the line. The next day, more people from Elmira called. They all asked
pretty much the same question: was someone finally going to do something to
expose Palmer as he really was? He was described by various people as a con
artist, a cruel and ruthless swindler, a master manipulator of people, a
blackmailer and a compulsive liar, among other things. "The man is
absolutely crazy," said Hoffman. "He's totally gone." Strong talk, that.
Coming from one person, I might have dismissed it as vengeful gossip by a
jealous former employee trying to get back at Palmer for some imagined
slight. But Margie Hoffman sounded cool, collected and totally genuine. She
had no financial claims against Palmer herself, she said, but plenty of
other people did. In fact, she had testified against him in court only a
couple of months before. There were plenty of other people to back up her
story. The "few former employees" who had sided against Palmer turned out to
comprise the entire staff of the Elmira center, with the exceptions of Sue
Sweetland and Miken Chappel. A number of staff members who had worked there
for a decade or more verified what Margie said, and many offered to provide
factual evidence. These were six of the nine volunteers who initially
received the Avatar procedures when Palmer did his pilot run, as described
in the article "The first Avatar Materials" in the latest edition of
Creativism. Interestingly, none of them had anything bad to say about the
Avatar Course. Some felt the results promised had been overstated, but they
all thought Avatar had been a more or less valuable experience. Their
problems were with Harry Palmer. I started checking out the stories of some
other people who had dealt with Palmer over the past few years.

THE FRENCH LETTER TORTURE
The phone calls continued, and photocopies of letters and articles arrived
from Elmira. Of particular interest to Michel was a series of letters that
had been sent to various people around the U.S. by Kathleen Raines, who was
a student at the mission from 1983 to 1987 after his development of Avatar.
While studying there she fell in love with and married Tom Wright, who
supervised some of the courses. The tone of the letters was resentful, but
the details were specific and plentiful. Her accounts of events at the
Center for Creative Learning chronicle episodes of intimidation, coercion
and extortion that far exceed the notorious excesses of the Church of
Scientology. Michel wrote a letter to Palmer, enclosing a copy of one of the
letters from Kathleen Raines. Palmer's response, which arrived a few days
later, was that she was "addled." If she published it, she could certainly
be sued. Michel's next letter called Palmer's attention to the fact that the
information had already been published. "Are you going to sue the
newspaper?" he asked. The tone of Michel's letters was polite, but he asked
very direct questions and became increasingly insistent on getting some
answers.
Why were there dozens of people in Elmira still claiming to have been
victimized after so many years? What had put them in that state? Their
numbers included the same people Palmer had claimed were initially
transformed by Avatar, yet they now felt betrayed. Wasn't this harmful to
the progress of the work? Why didn't Palmer clean this up and settle it?
Palmer did not answer the questions. His response was basically, "Don't
trouble yourself with this." After receiving a few evasive replies, Michel
quoted a section of the Masters Course materials where Palmer had said "You
embark upon lands that are known for treachery and deceit. . . where the
charlatans outnumber the master by ten thousand. . . ." "Now it seems to be
ten thousand and one," said Michel. "All he sees is treachery; no wonder he
said that. Does he think we can be manipulated like those people in Elmira?
Who does he think he's dealing with?" After a few more exchanges, Michel
sent copies of Raines' letters to a few of his friends who were Avatar
Masters asking what they thought about all this. When someone called Star's
Edge and mentioned having seen the material, Palmer responded by sending an
overnight letter to which officially terminated his license to deliver the
Avatar Course. People were speculating, said Palmer, that Michel and I must
have something to hide. He advised Michel to "safely distance yourself from
further criticism of Harry Palmer and Avatar," and carbon copied his
attorneys. Michel, feeling by this time that Palmer was the one with
something to hide, began sending out more copies of letters and newspaper
articles he had received from the group in Elmira to Avatar Masters
throughout the U.S. and Europe. He made numerous trips to the post office. I
don't know exactly how many packets of information he sent, but it must have
numbered in the hundreds. During the next week, the copying machine at the
corner store broke down twice. The same day Michel got his notice, I
received a computerized form letter by registered mail informing me that my
license to deliver Avatar had been suspended until such time as I
successfully reviewed the Masters Course. By this time, I didn't expect to
be successful if I did attempt to review the course. Passing the Masters
Course is entirely dependent on Avra's judgment, and she has been known to
flunk people who don't see the light, meaning seeing things her way. Instead
of calling to book a plane ticket, I made a few more calls to Elmira, sent a
few letters, then began piecing together the missing elements of "Avatar's
Time Track." It goes something like this.

THE TIME TRACK, EXPANDED
Harry Palmer opened a Scientology mission called the Center for Creative
Learning in Elmira, New York in 1971. At the time, he was reportedly a Class
IV case supervisor, a fairly low level of training. Before that, he claims
to have held a tenured teaching position. He has told one person that he had
a Master's degree in psychology, and another that he was trained in
engineering. Former staff members say he was a high school counselor before
he opened the center. They also say he was asked to resign his position
after complaints that he began to incorporate Scientology techniques into
his work.
The center delivered lower level Scientology courses and auditing, a form of
counseling performed with a device called an E-Meter, a device similar to a
lie detector. It measures galvanic skin response through a couple of tin
cans held loosely in the hands. A sensitive ohmmeter needle on the front
jerks and dips in response to mental activity as a person is being
"audited," or counseled, so the counselor can note subliminal responses.
Palmer and Avra Honey Smith ran the center, assisted by staff members like
Gale Lyon, who worked there for 13 years as an auditor (counselor); Margie
Hoffman, who worked there for 12 years; and Linda Rosin, promotion manager,
who worked there seven years. In typical Scientology fashion, staff members
were expected to work long hours for little pay. But Palmer had big plans
for the future. Someday, he said, his entire family of loyal followers would
be rich. They were the gauntlet that would propel him, the sword, to
greatness. He told them he was doing research on religions. Once he got it
figured out, he would start a new one that would be wildly successful. He
paraphrased a well-known statement L. Ron Hubbard had once made at a science
fiction convention: "If you want to get rich, the best way is to start a
religion." At some point along the way, Palmer also started a sideline
business selling and installing TV satellite dishes. Linda Rosin's husband
Dick, who was taking courses at the mission, worked for that company. In
1982, the Church of Scientology began to lash out at its independent mission
holders, demanding large sums of money it claimed they had "withheld."
Missions were charged as much as $15,000 per day [not a misprint] just to
have their books inspected by "Finance Police" in order to determine whether
they had been up to any financial hanky-panky. From the sounds of things,
they could have made an honest case against Palmer.
Gale Lyons says she delivered auditing 50 hours each week, but that records
were falsified. Palmer reported only about 12 hours per week, she says, and
paid the church its 10% commissions based on that figure. Just before the
Finance Police came through town, she says, he called her into his office
and told her to memorize what was on the schedule board; it was about to be
erased.
The Church of Scientology is well known for playing dirty tricks on its
perceived enemies, and for using various manipulative techniques to
intimidate its staff members and clientele. According to former staff
members, Palmer could have showed them a few new tricks. Not only did he
consistently under-report the amount of auditing that was delivered, they
say, he spied on the church's activities. Gale Lyons recalls seeing stacks
of documents he had collected that detailed top secret "Black Scientology"
techniques for harming the church's enemies. On his home computer, he
managed to hack his way into the church's computer network, printing out
stacks of legal documents and other information. Linda Rosin remembers
making hundreds of photocopies of this material. One day, Gale Lyon recalls,
he came in looking forlorn. "I've lost it," he said. ``I've tried everything
and I can't get in." Apparently the church had improved its computer
security. He also appears to have perfected the intimidation and
manipulation of staff members and students to levels unheard of in the
Church of Scientology. The idea that Palmer's staffers would submit to some
of the treatment they say he dealt out may sound incredible, but not to
anyone who has spent time around a Scientology organization or any similar
cult that uses manipulative techniques to keep its members in line. The
methods are simple, methodical and insidious. Once they taste some relief
from their worries, people within the organization, are convinced they
belong to a select group. They know something the rest of the world doesn't.
A psychological wall is built up between the group and the rest of society
(known in Scientology as "wogs," the racist British colonial acronym for
"Worthy Oriental Gentleman"). Organization members are convinced that they
have a special mission--to improve themselves and to proselytize to the rest
of the world. Scientology portrays itself as the sole effective purveyor of
spiritual freedom, contesting formidable forces of darkness on a global (or
in the case of Scientology, multi-galactic) scale. Group members are told
they must sacrifice for the cause now, and promised rich rewards in the
future when the group's goals are accomplished. They are indoctrinated with
esprit de corps to the point of militaristic obedience. If they question the
motives of their leadership, they are threatened with disgrace and
expulsion. Liberal use is made of a psychological technique known as "the
Stockholm effect." Simply put, it works like this: if you apply consistent
duress to people, they will be grateful to you whenever you stop. While
working on a smaller scale than L. Ron Hubbard, Harry Palmer managed to use
these techniques very effectively within his sphere of influence, which
included about 40 people in the Elmira area. Staff members say they worked
twelve or more hours a day, six days a week, receiving anywhere from $50 to
a maximum of $150 per week in wages. They idolized Palmer, and even
volunteered to go paint his house one Sunday, their only day off. Their
wages were supposed to be paid in "units" which were parceled out as
percentages of the value of services delivered by the center. Gale Lyons
recalls mentioning after a particularly busy and lucrative week that the
paychecks should be pretty fat this week. No, Avra explained, they had to
make up for the weeks when there was no income. "What weeks when there was
no income?" Lyons asks herself in retrospect. She was busy every week. When
she went back over her records and tallied up the total amount paid for the
auditing she delivered, she came up with $1,867,000. Lyons' daughter,
Maryann Dolschenko, began taking Scientology courses at the center when she
was eleven. In 1975, shortly before her thirteenth birthday, a drive was
started to sell copies of Dianetics, Hubbard's introductory treatise on the
mind. Avra Honey Smith talked Dolschenko into using $50 she would be getting
soon as a present from her grandparents to buy books for resale. She was
promised that the money would be refunded if she were unable to sell the
books. "Avra wanted the money to be counted in the week's statistics," says
Dolschenko, "so my mother advanced a check, and Avra agreed to hold it until
I received my birthday money. She cashed the check that afternoon and went
shopping." Over the next three months, Dolschenko managed to sell three of
the 25 books--two to relatives and one to a neighbor. When she asked for a
refund, Avra denied having made the agreement and told her to hold onto the
books for a few years until maturity made her a better salesperson. The next
year, Dolschenko became a Dianetic auditor and worked at the center briefly
for $2 per hour. After working for 25 hours, she was told that her attitude
wasn't grown up enough. On her way out the door, Avra Honey Smith cornered
her and instructed her to sign her paycheck over to the center. She owed it
for the "Minister's Course," which was necessary because of legal
technicalities. After the course, she was unable to be ordained at the
Buffalo church because by that time, Palmer was having a row with them.
Linda Rosin says part of her job was to chauffeur Honey Smith to and from
work each day, pick up her dry cleaning and do her laundry. Avra and Palmer
lived in a ramshackle farm house 20 minutes out of town. Avra had learned to
drive for the first time when she was 35, but rarely got behind the wheel.
The house, says Rosin, was "disgusting, an absolute slum. Harry's German
Shepherds had the run of the place, and they had chewed up all the
furniture, so there was stuffing falling out of it. I honestly think Avra
was so intimidated by Harry that she didn't feel she could make her home her
own." Avra Honey Smith's hobby was collecting jewelry. Palmer collected
hunting knives and guns, but his most prized collection was the store of
gold ingots and coins he kept buried in a strongbox in the back yard. Rosin
says it was so heavy a strong man could hardly lift it, indicating his stash
must have been worth well over a quarter of a million dollars. When
Christmas rolled around, and again three months later as Palmer's birthday
approached, Avra Honey Smith made the rounds demanding mandatory
contributions from staff members and students, who were expected to
contribute $100 each to buy Palmer more gold. If anyone protested that they
couldn't afford it, she ordered them to come up with $300 instead. She once
called the business where Maryann Dolschenko was working and asked them to
garnish $300 from her wages because she had balked at contributing. The
contribution for Honey Smith's own birthday present was a bargain: only $50
each. "Avra," says Kathleen Raines, "could get blood out of a stone." Rosin
and Hoffman both describe Avra Honey Smith as intimidated and verbally
abused. "When the pressure was on from Avra, you could be sure she was
getting the heat from Harry," says Raines. When things weren't going right,
the solution was always to bring in more money. Scientology organizations
are well known for high pressure sales tactics, but the atmosphere at the
Elmira Mission soon became outright rabid. Kathleen Raines says she has
heard of other Scientology missions where brain-washing techniques and
control techniques were the norm, but "not with the thorough viciousness
Harry displayed." Gale Lyons says that when Palmer called her into his
office to criticize her about something, he would often pull his hunting
knife out of its sheath and stroke the blade as he talked. "Sometimes he
would signal his German Shepherd Grey Wolf to snarl at me," she recalls.
"Once he bit me." In 1985, the Church of Scientology came down on the center
legally. No one knows exactly what the legal proceedings between Scientology
and the mission entailed, or how extensive they were. The usual reason given
when the church attacked an independent mission was "not sending people up
lines" for higher level training and services. In the case of the Creative
Learning Center, they had ample reason to think so. At missions, students
were supposed to receive only Dianetics, a form of regression therapy, and
"the lower levels," processes which address various abilities and attitudes.
Many people complete those levels in a hundred hours or less. By that time,
they have either already "gone Clear" (cut loose from their subliminal
programming), or are close enough to proceed on to processing levels offered
only at higher levels of the organization. During the thirteen years she
worked there, Gale Lyons recalls only two people who "went Clear" under
Palmer's case supervision and were declared ready to advance to a higher
level organization, despite the fact that she alone put in 18,000 hours
auditing the mission's students. One of the two "Clears," Marianne Helsing,
had been known as one of the mission's toughest registrars, meaning that she
was good at hammering people to take out loans for services. After "going
Clear," she became more mellow. Palmer fired her, telling Tom Wright the
reason was "down stats" (low statistics). Then he told other staffers she
had been fired for the opposite reason; she had been "regging too hard" --
putting undue pressure on prospective students. Soon after the lawsuit with
the Church of Scientology began, Avra instituted a new fund-raising drive.
The 30 to 40 people who were mission regulars were told they could buy the
"entire bridge, including NOTS ("New Era Dianetics for Operating Thetans,"
the secret upper level procedures dealing with possessive entities mentioned
at the beginning of this article). The students were told to come up with
money for the complete panoply of Scientology auditing levels -- now
renamed -- in order to help save the center, and asked to contribute to a
legal defense fund as well. People were hammered constantly. They were
always expected to pay in cash. If they didn't have the money, they were
told to get bank loans. Students were ordered to cosign loans for each
other. The price tag for full counseling averaged $60,000, but one student
paid a total of $161,000 to purchase courses and counseling for his wife and
himself. Somewhere along the line, she was sold a body clean-out program
called the Purification Rundown twice. She never received it, even once. The
man still has claims against Palmer for around $26,000 after having received
a refund of half the money he had on account. Kathleen Raines, who invested
a total of $60,000 in advance payments for auditing, says she took out so
many bank loans that at one point, her payments were more than $500 a week.
Not only was she taking courses several hours a day, but working two jobs to
try and keep her head above water. At the time her husband was being paid
$75 for working a 47-1/2 hour week at the center, and also worked at
part-time jobs to try and make ends meet. Raines says, "It is astonishing
for me to look back and see that I actually got $50,000 from about 15
different banks. We students would lie to the bankers, telling them the
money was for a honeymoon, appliances, personal education, consolidation
loans, credit cards, ad infinitum. We knew every bank within a hundred mile
radius and which credit reporting agencies they used, and which of our loans
appeared on which credit reports, and which didn't. We would also lie about
our incomes. I remember seeing one person forge a tax return. Another trick
was to bombard many banks at once, and then again within a short period of
time. That way, the loans wouldn't appear on your credit report yet. Staff
knew that we did this. I was called a financial wizard." Other staff members
say Avra Honey Smith habitually instructed people to forge tax returns with
inflated income figures to obtain loans, and told them their services were
tax deductible long after the IRS had ruled that Scientology "donations"
couldn't be deducted. Subsequently several of them were audited and
penalized by the IRS. Raines says she got a break of sorts when she was
seriously injured in a car accident. Palmer told her to see an attorney who
settled with the insurance company for $26,000. Before the deal was closed,
she recalls, "the mission staff was hounding me day and night. They actually
had me drive up to Buffalo to pick up the money, then go straight to the
bank to cash the check. Harry and Avra never took money in checks--always in
cash. The mission got $12,000 of the money. I don't know how I ever got to
keep the remaining $14,000, but I used all of it to pay off some of my
outstanding debt with the banks." Gale Lyons recalls that some people used a
good third of their auditing time attempting to resolve "present time
problems" caused by the debt they had incurred to buy the auditing. Palmer
was, of course, the case supervisor who prescribed the auditing actions.
Lyons and other people who worked at the center say a syndrome evolved; if
people expressed money worries, the answer was a special "repair action"
designed to "clean them up." The registrars would hound them to take out
another loan to pay for the extra auditing, leading to more money worries. .
. . The Church of Scientology is known for its voracious financial appetite,
but the therapeutic actions sold there are doled out in a methodical,
sequential fashion, according to set guidelines. Palmer routinely delivered
actions out of sequence, ordered high-priced corrective actions for people
he felt could afford it, and took people off counseling midway during
actions they had paid for, ordering them to buy courses that would cure
their "resistance to auditing." Raines says the various courses and auditing
actions sold by the center had different prices at different times, for
different people. Prices were never published. After Raines married Tom
Wright, she was discouraged from getting pregnant, which she feels was
because motherhood would have made her a less lucrative source of income.
One day she received a stern lecture from Avra when it was found out she
wasn't using birth control pills. Her husband was also told that she wasn't
ready to have a child -- she needed more auditing first. Margie Hoffman, who
had married a man who stayed aloof from the center after checking out a
lower level course or two, was advised by Palmer to divorce him because he
was a bad influence and a hindrance to her spiritual progress. There was one
letup in the incessant drive for money. Tom Wright says rumors of a loan
fraud investigation spread when a number of people fell behind on their loan
payments and then made numerous applications for more loans. They were
encouraged to make payments on time, and the pressure let up for a few
months. The legal problems with Scientology were settled in May, 1987. Staff
members were not told much, and were instructed not to talk to each other
about the internal affairs of the mission. It is known that as part of the
settlement, Palmer signed sworn statements that he was not in possession of
any of the confidential upper level materials (which he had not been
authorized to deliver as a mission holder anyway), and agreed to stop using
the Scientology trademarks. He was treading on a legal mine field. He had
obviously obtained bootlegged copies of the upper level Scientology
materials, since they were already being sold and delivered at the center.
If the Church of Scientology found out, they would certainly embroil him in
further expensive lawsuits.
Staff members were instructed to be on the lookout for spies. They were told
to visualize a cloud of white light around the building and arrange mirrors
facing outward in order to fend off the bad energies being thrown at them by
the church. When a staff member left without notice, Palmer called the
police and told them he suspected the man had been kidnapped, probably by
Scientologists. They interviewed Gale Lyons, who had a simpler explanation.
The man was tired of the pressure at the center, and had talked about moving
to Las Vegas. When they checked, they discovered that was what had happened.
Palmer knew it was time to come up with something new, so he set about
researching what it might be. He studied the channeled book Ramtha and
acquired a complete set of audio and video tapes of channeling sessions with
the entity called Bashar. The Bashar tapes provided a handy source of extra
income. He had staff members make hundreds of copies of the tapes (which
were protected by copyright), sold them and pocketed the money himself,
according to Gale Lyons. The center was still engaged in this cottage
enterprise even after the advent of the Avatar Course, when the tape
duplicating machine was in hot demand for both Palmer's introductory Avatar
lecture and the bootlegged Bashar tapes. Just a few days before his
announcement of the Avatar Course, Palmer mentioned to Tom Wright that he
had been studying some Eastern techniques for increasing and decreasing the
intensity of a reality.

THE FIRST AVATARS
In October 17, 1986, he announced that he had come up with something new and
took some staff members "into session" where he ran a version of what was to
become the Ultimate Process of Avatar on them using an E-meter. The sessions
lasted anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour at the most per person. Many
staff members emerged in a state of ecstatic bliss. After several people had
received the process, Palmer emerged from the room and said, "Anybody else
wants this, see the reg[istrar]." In other words, pay up. After the initial
Avatar sessions, Palmer mentioned to staff members that he would have to
"complicate this up" and "mystify it" so he could charge more for it. He
developed some preliminary exercises and variations on the process, and
announced it would be available for $1,000.. There was one large,
embarrassing problem. The center still owed its students hundreds of hours
of auditing which had already been paid for in advance at prices ranging
from $100 to $200 per hour. As word went out that the Avatar Course was a
"one shot clear" process which made Scientology processes obsolete, some of
them began to question why they couldn't just take the course and get the
remainder of their money back. At first, Palmer refused to let those who had
paid in advance use the money on account for the Avatar Course, period. They
would have to come up with another $1,000, which was soon increased to
$1,500. Others were told they needed to be audited through Grade IV before
taking the Avatar Course. Still others were told they needed the "Dynamic
Enhancements" first. These were renamed versions of Scientology processes
known as Lists 10, 11 and 12. They entail, among other things, spotting and
releasing entities that might be causing compulsive behavior or undesirable
emotions--the same Scientological affliction Palmer said was automatically
eliminated by taking the Avatar Course.
One student, Drandy Campbell, had purchased part of a set of "technical
volumes," the encyclopedia of lower level Scientology auditing techniques.
He was told he had to buy the rest of the set of books before he would be
allowed to take Avatar, despite the fact that the books were now considered
obsolete. Kathleen Raines, who still had over $20,000 due her in undelivered
auditing, offered to let a couple of her friends use her credit to take the
course and pay her back when they got their financial affairs in order. No,
said Avra Honey Smith, a transfer couldn't be allowed. That would amount to
a "covert refund." If Raines' friends wanted to do the Avatar Course, they
would have to cough up the money themselves--in cash, as usual.
When Avatar students started to show up from around the U.S., the course
room at the center was remodeled and air conditioned. As they studied the
Avatar materials, Gale Lyons was busy auditing upstairs. Other staffers were
told to get on the phone and round up students who still had money on
account. The word from Palmer was, use up those advance payments as quickly
as possible.

WESTWARD HO
When Palmer, Honey Smith, Sweetland and Hoffman went to the West Coast in
early 1987 for the first out-of-state Avatar delivery in Los Angeles, things
had begun to change around the center. The staff members, many still feeling
the afterglow of the Avatar Course, were talking to each other more openly
than ever before. Without Palmer around, things felt more relaxed.
The staff and some students began comparing notes about what had been going
on. Previously they had been instructed not to discuss the center's business
even amongst themselves, but now the pressure was off. Many things they had
been told -- particularly about their fellow staff members -- didn't add up.
The amounts of money Margie Hoffman had collected in cash, the bank deposits
made by Linda Rosin and the hours of auditing delivered by Gale Lyons were
wildly disparate. This indicated to them that Palmer had simply pocketed a
large share of the center's income without including it in the portion that
was supposed to pay their wages.
Another thing that didn't add up was that they were still receiving the same
meager paychecks as before. More than 400 people had taken the Avatar Course
by this time, and most had paid the center $1,500 each, for a total of more
than $500,000 in income. Over and over, Palmer had promised the staffers a
fair share of the wealth when it finally rolled in. Their paychecks were
supposed to represent a given percentage of the center's income from the
services it delivered. Simple mathematics told them it wasn't happening,
except in the case of the trainers, who were paid $100 per day while they
were on the road delivering courses.
At the time, Linda Rosin recalls, she was having to fend off an increasing
number of people who wanted refunds of the remaining money they had paid in
advance for the illicit Scientology levels they had been sold and had not
received. Between visits to the West Coast, Palmer started talking about
out-of-body visits he was having with extraterrestrials.
One day, staff members recall, he walked in and said he had been on a
spaceship where he had been given a promotion. He also informed some of the
staff members that they, regretfully, had been demoted. He took to dressing
entirely in white when speaking to groups. In September, 1987, the trainers
made their first major foray into non-Scientology circles when they went to
Portland to deliver the course and a subsequent Masters Course to a group of
psychologists and psychiatrists. For good measure, a couple of the
therapists brought along a couple of patients who suffered from mild
personality disorders.
One was a woman described as a "walking schizophrenic," barely functional
enough to hold down a job. Many of the therapists who took the courses liked
the techniques, but Palmer himself did not fare too well with them. When
questioned about his background by one, he said, "You wouldn't understand."
"Try me," said the therapist, who was no metaphysical virgin himself. Palmer
simply turned and walked away. From then on, he spent much of his time alone
in his hotel room as the three trainers delivered the course. By the time
the Masters Course started, some of the therapists enrolled on it became
wary. The trainers were still using the aggressive mode of instruction known
as "tearing off their faces." The prospective Avatar Masters were ridiculed
and called "dummies" when they asked questions. It was suggested that the
trainers themselves might profit from some instruction in the techniques of
conducting workshops. Some of the therapists were also displeased by the
fact that the schizophrenic woman, after having spent three weeks on the
course with few beneficial results, was passed and advanced onto the Masters
Course after the trainers persuaded her to come up with the $3,000 course
fee. A few of the therapists asked for refunds because, they said, they
wouldn't feel right about delivering the course as associates of Palmer's
organization. One who was particularly insistent was given a refund. As the
trainers prepared to leave Portland, Margie Hoffman had the feeling that
Palmer was behaving, as she put it, "stranger and stranger." He mentioned to
her that he had been given the Avatar Materials by extraterrestrials in his
back yard, when she was pretty certain he had developed the course mainly by
applying Scientology methodology to the theories he had heard in the Bashar
tapes. He had told the therapists in Portland that more than 1,500 people
had done the Avatar Course when she knew the true figure was less than a
third that many.
Hoffman also had misgivings about the rudeness the trainers were expected to
display when delivering the Masters Course, and the heavy emphasis on the
telepathic "serious drill" as a cure-all at the expense of practical
application. The last straw came when Palmer announced that the people in
Elmira were no good. As soon as they got back, he was going to fire
everybody. It was going to be just the four of them from now on. Hoffman
knew better than that. The staff members in Elmira were her friends, and in
fact her extended family. They had all worked at the center for years for
long hours at low wages, bolstered by the idea that they were making the
world a better place and the promise of riches to come. Palmer had promised
them time and time again that they would be richly rewarded the minute the
organization's ship came in. Now the ship had come in, and they were about
to be dumped unceremoniously off the dock. Hoffman announced that she would
be leaving when they got back to Elmira.
The result of her resignation, she says, was a "brainwashing" session that
lasted until 3:30 in the morning, with Palmer, Honey Smith and Sweetland all
haranguing her and arguing that everything was all right. Palmer grilled her
for "withholds," the Scientology term for guilty secrets. Finally,
exhausted, she decided that she must have made a mistake and agreed to stay
on. When they returned to Elmira, Palmer discovered that his favorite dog, a
German Shepherd named Grey Wolf, had disappeared. Only a few months before,
the other Shepherd had been killed by a car. The dogs had always been
allowed the run of the farm. During the trip to Portland, Miken Chappel had
been house-sitting for Palmer, feeding the dog and taking care of a few farm
animals Palmer raised.
Palmer was coming under increasing pressure from people who had money "on
account" and had not received the services. In a communique issued to his
growing nationwide network of Avatar Masters on September 26, he said, "The
members of the original research team, as well as several dozen others who
completed Avatar in the early spring of this year, concur with the following
observation: each has experienced a progressive increase in awareness over
the months since doing Avatar!" In one sense, he was right. Most of them had
become so aware that they were after his hide. Some were talking to
attorneys about filing lawsuits.

THE MEETING
Palmer sent out a letter to his local following, announcing a grievance
meeting scheduled for October 4 that would settle things once and for all.
In the letter, he thanked his followers for their contributions to the
prosperity he was currently enjoying and asked them to put out their best
wishes for the return of Grey Wolf. Shortly before the meeting, he informed
Dick Rosin that Don Woodruff, a man who had been one of the center's
greatest supporters, had never gotten any gains from the auditing he had
received over the years. A rumor had been spread that Woodruff was acting in
concert with the Church of Scientology to get evidence against Palmer. Rosin
found these allegations curious because Palmer had collected more than
$100,000 from Woodruff and his wife for courses and auditing. Woodruff ran a
local promotion company, employed a number of students from the center, and
paid them well so they could buy services themselves. At one time when
Woodruff was working at the center, Rosin recalls that he bought an E-Meter
for everyone on the staff at a total cost of around $40,000. About 30 people
showed up at the meeting on Wednesday, October 4, 1987. At the beginning of
the meeting, Palmer delivered a circuitous and confusing explanation of
where their money had gone. The gist of it was that the Scientology mission,
after legal expenses, had wound up $35,000 in the red.
He said the organization had spent $80,000 to acquire the upper level
Scientology materials -- a figure former Scientologists find questionable,
since they were available in reconstructed form from a number of sources at
the time. He first attempted to make use of peer pressure by dividing the
group into two hypothetical categories. Some people, he explained, had made
sacrifices for a purpose. They had "invested in a ship that went down," and
should accept their losses. The others -- those who wanted refunds --
thought of themselves as mere customers. The Center for Creative Learning
had intended to deliver the services people had paid for with "Scientology
donations," he explained, but he figured nobody wanted them now that the
Avatar Course was available.
Unfortunately for Palmer, most of those in the audience were not impressed
by his setup. He explained that the Creative Learning Center -- the
successor of the Scientology Mission -- couldn't pay any bills of the former
organization; he would go to jail if he did that. But he could set up a
slush fund from equity in the center's building and add the 15% royalties on
courses paid to Star's Edge, Inc. (his own corporation) for Avatar
deliveries. . . he would do his best. If anyone really felt they were owed
something, they should get it. By that time, most if not all of the audience
had no concept of the organizational and financial labyrinth he was
describing. Palmer opened the floor for questions by greeting Don Woodruff,
the man he had accused of spying, and asking "Who wants a piece of Harry?" A
woman questioned him about his statement that $17,000 had been paid out of a
legal defense fund the mission had set up. She herself had contributed
$10,000, and she knew many others had contributed. That was just the last
round of legal expenses, explained Palmer. They were paying attorneys $300
an hour, and had changed law firms in midstream. . . .
Don Woodruff confronted Palmer about his accusation that Woodruff was an
informant for the Church of Scientology. Palmer said yes, he had received
that information, but couldn't specify who told him. Woodruff related the
story to another rumor that had been spread about him -- years before, he
had been accused of having an affair with a girl who turned out to be a spy
and had been assigned a condition of "liability," a label for someone
considered to be detrimental to a Scientology organization. He denied that
any part of it was true. A number of people asked questions about the
hard-driving sales tactics used by the center. Palmer stated that he
personally had been hit by the church for a quarter of a million dollars,
but was not bitter about it.
Midway through the meeting, a young woman who had spent $50,000 at the
mission became emotional. Crying, she confronted Palmer by saying, "I feel
completely betrayed. . . . I spent $50,000. How can you sit there and say I
need another $1,500 [for Avatar]. . . . My credit is ruined, everything is
ruined. I came in 18 years old begging, borrowing and stealing that fucking
money so Avra and Marianne would say hello to me in the kitchen. . . . I
just wanted to be happy. . . . how dare you take advantage of me!"
She went on to describe the plight of a friend she had introduced to the
mission. Despite having a good job as an engineer, the woman was now
delivering pizzas at night in order to pay off her bank loans. More
questions were asked about rumors Palmer had spread around the mission. When
Dick Rosin asked Palmer about a statement he had made earlier that another
student was a spy. Palmer flatly denied having said it and called him a
liar. Rosin started to walk out of the meeting, but Avra intercepted him and
convinced him to stay. By the end of the meeting, Palmer had changed his
tack. He pulled out a list of people he believed had money on account,
explaining that the financial records had long since been destroyed to keep
them out of the hands of the Church of Scientology. Those who were owed
money could settle for half or get nothing, he said, because only about
$40,000 was available for repayments. Linda Rosin described the tactic as
"throwing a bone to a pack of starving dogs." Some people settled for
refunds of half the amount Palmer owed them in services, though several
later regretted the decision. According to Dick Rosin, four people
eventually sued Palmer and seven declared bankruptcy. One man who went
bankrupt left six co-signers saddled with his loans. One man who had
co-signed loans for several students with Avra Honey Smith's assurance that
they were good for the money ended up paying off three of them himself after
the bankruptcies. Within a week of the meeting, Margie Hoffman and all the
other staff members except Sue Sweetland and Miken Chappel had resigned.
Palmer invited Gale Lyons to stay on until the end of the month and finish
up auditing for a few people who were still receiving it. When she went to
the center, she couldn't get in because the locks had been changed. Lyons
took Palmer to small claims court for a little less than $600 in wages. His
attorney offered to pay it if she would sign an agreement never to take
legal action against Palmer in the future. She refused, but the judge ruled
in her favor anyway. She also took Miken Chappel into small claims court to
collect $300 she had loaned Chappel for scuba diving lessons. After the
breakup of the center, Chappel had refused to acknowledge the debt. Linda
Rosin confronted Palmer on the issue of staff wages. She knew how much money
had been collected during the past two years, and had calculated what they
should have been paid under the ``unit" system. Palmer responded by writing
her a check for $5,000. On the back was typed: Endorsement of this check
acknowledges the release of Harry Palmer, The Center of Creative Learning
from all claims and all actions for, upon, or by reason of any matter from
the beginning of the world to the date of this check. That was nice, said
Rosin, but it was less than what she figured was due her. And what about the
other staff members? Palmer stopped payment on the check.
One former staff member threatened legal action if he wasn't paid the back
wages he felt were due. Palmer handled that problem by pulling out the man's
ethics folder. Ethics folders contain lists of misdeeds people are
instructed to write up themselves, plus notes taken by "ethics officers" in
interviews about a person's conduct. Officially, they are supposed to be as
sacrosanct as church confessionals or psychiatric records, but the Church of
Scientology has been known to use their contents for blackmail purposes when
threatened by disgruntled former members. Following the church's practices,
staff members say, Palmer found a few juicy "overts" (misdeeds) and
threatened to make them public. The man backed off. Palmer also refused to p
ay a bill he received from a Los Angeles graphic designer, John St. John,
who had been assigned the task of improving the looks of the Avatar logo.
The original version of the lettering had been made with rub-down letters,
and Palmer had been told it looked cheap. When St. John presented Palmer
with the calligraphy version of the logo that is used today, he explained
that he didn't feel obligated to pay anything for the work because St. John
hadn't really had anything to do with the Avatar logo. Palmer had initially
seen it on the shoulders of extraterrestrials during one of his out-of-body
visits to their space ship. Presumably the bill wasn't for a very large
amount anyway, so St. John didn't press the matter. In his initial
negotiations with Maryann Dolschenko, Palmer offered to settle out her
account for $800. Over the years, she had scrounged and borrowed about
$25,000 for services at the center, and was still owed $14,000 worth. By
this time, she was less naive than she had been at the age of thirteen. Once
she reminded him that she was now working for the local newspaper, he upped
the ante to $7,000. He found her such a skillful negotiator, in fact, that
he offered to give her $10,000 if she would assist him in reaching
settlements with the other students who were owed money. She refused and
took the $7,000. In February, 1988, a five-part series of newspaper articles
appeared in the Elmira Star Gazette. As soon as it appeared, Palmer stopped
making repayments to the people who had agreed to accept half of what they
were owed, and presumably never made another voluntary payment to anyone.
Margie Hoffman, Linda Rosin, Kathleen Raines and Harry Palmer were
interviewed.
Just after the first article appeared, Hoffman received a note that had been
mailed to her at the center and forwarded to her home. It read: "Maybe its
time the wold knowxz the kind d of person you azre. Clean up the 3rd party
on H or they will." [sic] 'Third party' is Scientologese for rumors. 'H' is
the way Palmer signs his correspondence. Enclosed with the note were several
pages of tidbits from Hoffman's ethics folder, which contained lists she had
been told to write containing every bad deed and thought she had ever done
or had. Hoffman called the police, who went to the center and questioned
Palmer and Avra Honey Smith. The folders and the office typewriter, they
were told, had disappeared. A police detective subsequently matched the
typewriting to the machine that had been used to fill out Hoffman's W-2 form
from the center. Her folders were later returned to her.
When he was interviewed for the series, Palmer did not impress the reporter,
who entitled the piece "Palmer a Man of Many Faces," and pointed out a
number of contradictions. Palmer insisted that he had done the best he could
in trying to reach settlements with the people who were attacking him.
Finally, though, he had decided that their demands were insatiable. They
were running an extortion campaign. "They saw the success of Avatar and
they're trying to cash in." He again accused them of kidnapping his dog Grey
Wolf, citing that as the reason he had stopped making refunds. According to
his version of the story, someone at the meeting had told him he would get
the dog back only if he repaid their money. (Everyone else who was at the
meeting emphatically denies that such a statement was made.) At one point in
the interview, Palmer said he had stopped making payments because he ran out
of money. At another point, he described himself as a rich man, and Star's
Edge--the company now delivering the Avatar Course--as a rich company. Linda
Rosin, Gale Lyons and two other staff members instituted a complaint against
Palmer with the New York Labor Board. The Board eventually issued a ruling
that Palmer owed them a total of $53,000 in back wages for the last two
years they worked at the Center. The claim was based on the number of hours
they worked, calculated at the minimum wage. Palmer appealed the ruling.

"I DON'T THINK WE'RE IN ELMIRA ANYMORE"
The Star's Edge International headquarters was established near Orlando,
Florida in March, 1989. When I talked to Susan Sweetland about the move
later that year, she remarked that people had seemed to become friendlier
and more polite as she, Harry, Avra and Miken made their journey southward
from Elmira. Things had definitely become unfriendly in Elmira, and were
likely to remain so for some time. The city is a rural college town with a
population of 36,000. Roots go deep there, and people know a lot about each
other. The scandal over the center was some of the biggest news to hit town
in quite a while. To this day, Elmira would not be a hospitable location to
set up an Avatar Center. Two years after the four packed up and moved to
Orlando, people still talk about the Harry Palmer scandal. Their reality is
that he skipped town before he was ridden out on a rail. Palmer did return
to New York for a short visit late in 1990 to appear at more hearings of the
Labor Board. He was accompanied by two attorneys. At the hearing, he
repeated the accusation that the staff members had killed his dog, Grey
Wolf. In March, 1991, the claim was finally settled for a little over
$12,000, which was divided between the four staff members. Dick Rosin says
he recently heard something that, for him at least, solves the mystery of
the missing dog. Word has it around Elmira that a farmer whose land borders
Palmer's farm had shot the dog because it had gotten into the habit of
killing his chickens. In rural areas, it is accepted practice to eliminate
dogs that habitually kill livestock. German Shepherds are the breed of dog
best known for developing this compulsion.

THE WIZARDS COURSE
(PART I)

In mid-1990, it was announced that the premiere Wizards Course would be held
beginning January 14, 1991. The limit was set at 200, and at least that many
Avatar Masters signed up by paying the 10% registration fee. The Wizards
Course had been discussed around the center in Elmira since 1987. The full
course was initially priced at $20,000 in the first printing of Creativism.

The initial two-week delivery was priced at $5,000 (a special introductory
discount from $7,500) and described as Part I: The Basic Course. Apparently
there were more sections to come. Palmer was obviously taking a different
tack than he had when he introduced Avatar as "the end of case," and pledged
not to add additional courses. His promise to retroactively include any new
developments as part of the basic Avatar Course was forgotten. Officially,
research on the Wizards course was conducted between November, 1987 and
March, 1988 when, according to the sidebar entitled "Avatar's Time Track" in
the Creativism manual, "Ignoring the power struggle over who is entitled to
the revenues generated by the Avatar Course and who has legal rights to
teach his course, Harry Palmer tours Central America and begins a new stage
of research on civilization management, conflict prediction and conflict
resolution. Later, this will be referred to as the period of the 'Wizards
Course research.'
" In a communique to Avatar Masters issued around January, 1988, as word of
the Elmira controversy was spreading across the country, Palmer wrote, "On a
somewhat grimmer note, I know this world has some bent pieces that
compulsively create demons of fear and hate when they imagine your power to
free good people from their paranoid webs of intrigue. . . . From the
tangled human wreckage that laughingly passes for a civilization you are
salvaging some of the most beautiful, incredibly creative beings in the
whole galaxy. . . . So let them snarl and complain. . . and I'll keep them
busy while you continue to pick the flowers. . . .
As many of you know, the rapidity of Avatar's growth has left me spinning. .
. and while I certainly am not complaining. . . the eye of the storm has
taught me lessons. . . and absolutely blown the lid off creating prediction
algorithms exceeding 90%-plus probability in broad areas of physics,
socio-civics, economics and project management. Fate is beginning to resolve
into predictable cosmic logic sequences. . . . This is heady stuff. It can
drive someone who is power shy and preaching all sweetness and light into a
real snit. . . . So don't lose sleep over the $20,000 price being bantered
around. With the heavy traffic ahead, by the time Wizards is released in
February or March '89 that will be pocket jingle." Anyone who has studied
Scientology would agree that L. Ron Hubbard couldn't have said it better.
People who talked about Wizards with Palmer during Masters Course deliveries
during 1990 said he had mentioned the convergence of alternate realities. An
example was the Cuban missile crisis, when the U.S. and Russia approached
the brink of thermonuclear war. Some of the people involved had gone ahead
with the war in another reality. Now the separated realities were
converging. The ecological havoc being experienced on the planet, such as
depletion of the ozone layer and global warming attributed to destruction of
the rain forests, were really fallout from the nuclear war in the alternate
reality. A parable Palmer used to describe the sort of intervention which
could be performed at pivotal moments involved a judge.
About to pass sentence on a convicted murderer, the judge sees a small child
who smiles at him as he enters the courtroom. Earlier, the judge was
planning to sentence the murderer to death, but after the child smiles at
him, he lightens up and lessens the sentence to life imprisonment. Rumors
had it that graduates of the Wizards Course would be dispatched in missions
to various corners of the world to ameliorate impending world events as
opportunities arose, and would be paid for these assignments. Many of the
Masters who signed up for the Wizards Course when it was finally delivered
in 1991 were told there was a waiting list because the maximum enrollment
had already been reached. Only 180-odd people managed to scrape together the
full $5,000 by the time the course began. Several days before it started,
Avra was on the phone to Europe trying to recruit more people and meet the
$1 million quota.
The course began early each morning, but instead of working with the
materials, students warmed up with a few hours of Tai Chi exercises and
sacred dancing led by two French Avatar Masters. After lunch, Palmer gave a
short lecture, then Avra doled out the written materials to be studied that
day. Palmer claimed during one of the first lectures that this was the first
such course held in several hundred years, when the most recent class was
attended by a number of famous historical figures, including Copernicus.
On the second day of the course, the number of participants was reduced by
one. Danielle Soulier, a French Master, was called aside and told she was
being excluded from the course. Miken Chappel wrote her a refund check for
$5,000. Edme Robert, a friend of Soulier and her husband, had come to
Orlando. Robert is also an Avatar Master, and the three of them were
planning to set up a center in France to deliver the course. Robert was not
enrolled on the Wizard's course. He had come to Orlando to make some
business contacts, and possibly brush up on his Avatar skills with some of
the other Masters. He dropped in on one of Palmer's first lectures, thinking
no one would mind. The trainers told him he had to pay for the course if he
wanted to be there. When he was seen carrying Soulier's bag for her in the
hotel lobby, they concluded that she must be sharing the top secret
materials with him. At the beginning of the second week of the course,
Soulier and Robert went into the course room to confront Palmer in front of
the other Masters. They felt they had been mistreated, and wanted to set the
record straight. Avra Honey Smith ordered some of the men to evict them
bodily. Soulier was picked up by one of the larger male students, who threw
her over his shoulder and carried her from the room, kicking and screaming.
As he got to the door, he was confronted by three indignant French women.
One of them hit the man. Palmer later met with Soulier and Robert. Soulier
was told she could take the Wizards Course the next time it was offered.
Palmer told Robert that he knew Robert was in contact with a group that
wanted to harm him, and mentioned to other students that the two were
"Scientology plants." He implied that he might be having more trouble with
the Church of Scientology. Neither Soulier or Robert has ever been involved
with Scientology. Before returning to France, Soulier contacted a local
attorney and had him call Palmer, demanding reimbursement for her travel and
lodging expenses. He agreed to pay $800 and told the attorney that he was
canceling her license to deliver the Avatar Course. Edme Robert sent a
letter to Palmer demanding a refund of all course fees he had paid Star's
edge, for a total of $5,400. Palmer later sent a letter to Soulier telling
her she was in very serious trouble. He claimed to have obtained a video
camera recording from a nearby convenience store that showed her and Robert
using a copier. He said his attorneys had obtained arrest warrants and were
about to contact French authorities. But he would show mercy. If she sent
back all the materials, he would not press charges. That way, the only
penalty would be that she would be unable to travel in the U.S. for three
years, when the arrest warrants would expire. Reviews of the Wizards Course
were mixed. Some graduates mentioned that the outbreak of the Gulf War,
which began simultaneously, was a bit distracting. Palmer's "creation
prediction algorithms" still seem to need some refinement. If the
participants indeed learned anything that helped them alter upcoming crises
for the better, they could have used a head start. The war was in full swing
before they had completed the first set of exercises. The Wizards Course
partially consisted of extensions to the "rundowns" already contained in the
Avatar Course and the Masters Course. A great deal of time was spent doing
more "Identity Handling" in order to gain control over both desired and
resisted aspects of personality. There were additional speculations on the
nature of consciousness and attention, with emphasis on finding "floats"--
areas of stuck attention or mental overload caused by confusion or
unfinished actions. Additional "Creation Lists" of affirmations similar to
those on the Avatar Course were introduced. A scale of mental modes ranging
from reaction through intuiting to direct observation was studied and
drilled. One person described the course as "Masters II," and felt that most
of the information applicable to teaching Avatar should have simply been
added to the Masters Course. Some former Scientologists said it was
"re-wrapped Scientology," and toward the end of the course, Palmer proved
them right.. He introduced a section on handling entities with excerpts on
"elementaries" and thought forms from a book about the work of Paracelsus,
the 16th century mystic and medical researcher. Then he introduced
techniques for finding entities, or psychic hitchhikers, and freeing them by
running the Creation Handling Procedure on them.
The techniques are essentially the same as those employed on the level
called OT III in Scientology, and in NOTs (New Era Dianetics for OTs). One
student remarked a couple of weeks after the course that she felt she had
been "brainwashed" and was having nightmares featuring demons. Another
graduate said "I've been conned. There was some interesting stuff, but I'd
seen most of it already in advanced psychology. The whole thing could have
been done in a week." Another said the course seemed thrown together.
Information on predicting future events was vague and sketchy. Instead of
the accurate "prediction algorithms" Palmer had described, students were
instructed to adopt a neutral observational mode, and make "primaries" with
a strong willful intent. The more believable the primaries (affirmations),
the more likely the probability they will come true. The last section of the
course made a convenient transition into more practical matters. It
introduced the topic of setting goals and planning strategies for saving the
planet from its current ecological, political and religious plights. The
solution for fixing the world's problems was revealed as establishing Star's
Edge at the pinnacle of the new world spiritual order. The findings of
Palmer's research in Central America were disclosed: how people spend their
money determines changes in society. So the best way to change the world was
convincing them to spend it on Avatar. Star's Edge was to be supported by a
loyal executive layer of Wizards, who in turn would manage lower levels of
the Avatar network. Specifically, Palmer announced the goal of selling the
Avatar and Masters Courses to a total of 2,500,000 people within five years,
resulting in the "graceful transfer" of $15 billion from "prejudicial
interests" into the Avatar organization. "Expansion Missions" were
established for purposes of promoting the course, as well as confidential
"Control Missions" for resolving any situations which might impede the
organization's progress. The description of these assignments is eerily
reminiscent of the Scientology Guardian's office , a secretive undercover
department set up to spy and play dirty tricks on the church's enemies. On
the final day of the course, one more student walked out under his own
power, reportedly because he disagreed with Palmer's ambitious plans to
appoint himself leader of such a mercenary organization. Many people
remarked on the mundane nature of the last few pages of the course
materials, which were devoted to sales techniques. At the end of the last
day, Palmer came to the podium "looking like a whipped puppy" according to
one student. He read a section of the course entitled Credo of a Wizard, "To
be silent, to know, to will, to dare." Then he said, "There are gathering
storm clouds. But if we each keep our vow to preserve and nurture the world,
we will each be expanding islands that will meet again." The person who
related this said, "I thought, Oh, shit, I spent $5,000 to be told there are
storm clouds gathering over me?" If Palmer includes himself in the theory
that beliefs create one's experiential reality, he must have developed the
Wizards Course with at least a few misgivings about his own motives. It
created repercussions among his followers which still continue. At a
subsequent Masters Course in France, Edme Robert passed out leaflets in the
hotel restaurant in which he compared the 9,000-franc price of Part III of
the Avatar Course with its "background material" (the Tulku book) which
sells for 39 francs. The Wizards Course was described as offering `"Power,
illusion and [Scientological] manipulation for a few dollars extra." Palmer
complained to the hotel management, but wasn't able to prevent the missive
from being passed around among the Masters. One of the leading French
Masters, Frederic Beaudry, showed up during the same course and asked for a
refund of the $5,000 he had paid for Wizards, saying he had told his 150
students Avatar was "the end of case" and now felt like a liar. He got the
refund. His license to teach the Avatar Course was, of course, terminated on
the spot. A meeting of Masters was held to discuss "the Langinieux
problem.." After his return from France, Palmer issued a communique to
Masters warning them that a feeling of victimization was being transmitted
telepathically by Iraqi soldiers killed in the Gulf War. Masters were told
to expect negative, doubtful feelings, including an outbreak of scandalous
journalism. ( Sure enough, here it is. ) The answer to overcoming the
problems about to manifest, he went on to explain, was granting forgiveness
to anything and everything, presumably including himself. It coincided with
a scathing letter Gale Lyons sent Palmer in which she informed him he
couldn't "Avatar away" the people he had "raped, plundered and pillaged,"
and suggested that he make some amends in the real world.

THE ENIGMA
Harry Palmer says the basic Avatar Course, "properly presented, is the most
powerful, purest self-development program available at any price." The
majority of people who have taken the course seem to agree, at least for
some time after they complete it. Like his acknowledged model L. Ron
Hubbard, Palmer has a good thing going financially. The Avatar Course is a
brilliant synthesis of information from channeled sources, Scientology,
Vedic wisdom, Buddhism and other teachings. It is presented in an
experiential format that allows it to be rapidly assimilated by most Western
students. It is a consciousness-raising technology people are willing to
spend a pretty penny to get. So why, other than giving the course a certain
mystique, are the materials jealously guarded as confidential? The Avatar
Course is presented as if it were an industrial trade secret. Students are
required to sign an agreement to pay $10,000 per unauthorized disclosure.
Whether or not the Avatar procedures could really be legally protected
through this means is highly questionable, even if they were unique. Mental
processes are specifically excluded from patent protection, and trade secret
laws are generally construed to apply only to mechanical, electronic,
chemical and biological processes or formulas. When the Church of
Scientology cited trade secret laws in an attempt to keep its upper level
procedures proprietary, it was soundly defeated.
Palmer lamely explains that secrecy is necessary because the course must be
delivered by competent teachers. The trouble with his argument is that there
are no professional delivery standards in the first place. Star's Edge
exerts little if any control over how Masters conduct the course. As long as
the commission checks keep rolling in, a Master is considered a "producer."
If students come out of the course half-baked and bewildered, the failure
can easily be pawned off as their own creations -- they're
"non-integrators." Besides, there is always hope. Avra Honey Smith calls all
graduates of the basic course to sell them the Masters Course. For $3,000
more, they can have another go at it, and for another $7,500, become Level I
Wizards. Very few mental or spiritual technologies which require training,
experience or spiritual advancement on the part of the teacher are
proprietary. For example, anyone who wants to can study, use or teach the
techniques of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, the therapy derived from the
work of the famous hypnotherapist Eric Erickson. NLP is considered a
legitimate, if esoteric, branch of psychology. Why does Palmer exact a
royalty, or "licensing fee" from trainers for every student who takes the
course? Even Masters who want to teach the course to their spouses and
family members are required to pay Palmer a fee. He once described the
licensing agreement Masters are required to sign as "a string tied to the
trigger of a gun pointed at your head with Harry Palmer holding the string."
Even given his reputation for avarice, Palmer could make plenty of money
under a more orthodox business agreement. If he didn't wish to establish
Avatar as a centrally managed organization, he could just as easily set up a
professional association and ask teachers to pay dues for membership,
referrals and use of his trademarks and copyrighted course material. That
would generate a healthy income without the need for a business structure
that resembles a multi-level marketing scheme. Why has he repeatedly broken
verbal promises in order to abscond with insignificant amounts of money? He
described himself as being a wealthy man and Star's Edge as a wealthy
company to a reporter of the Elmira newspaper a little more than a year
after the Avatar Course was introduced. He could have probably settled the
whole affair amicably and emerged unscathed, at least a millionaire. A
number of people who have experienced his recurrent "decisions not to pay"
have quickly become alienated. Many were strong supporters, and might still
be today had they not felt cheated. He appears to have engaged in so many
such acts -- aside from the fraudulent sale of Scientology courses he didn't
deliver -- that to some who have seen him in action, it appears to be
compulsive behavior. Dozens of people who have dealt with him financially
concur that his preoccupation with money approaches the level of mania.
Others, like Amos Jessup, an old-time Scientologist, say Palmer has been
scrupulously honest with them to the point of generosity. The correlating
factor seems to be Palmer's concept of his own power. People who question
him, or suggest improvements in his operation, quickly get the shaft. Those
who praise him unquestioningly get along with him just fine.. Why does he
feel the need to put up elaborate smokescreens of denial, even over
insignificant matters?
One of the subjective "personal realities" achieved by students during Part
II of the Avatar Course is a sense that the past doesn't exist. After he
introduced the course, Palmer apparently decided he could negate not only
the effects of his own past experiences, but the entire past he had shared
with others. Past loyalties, past agreements and past financial obligations
are swept out of his paradigm whenever he finds it expedient. If anyone
questions his motives or actions, the answer is simple: they are "sitting in
a creation;" the problem is one of their own making. They are wrong,
treacherous "black hearts," planting subliminal "black worms." Woe upon
them. Palmer habitually uses Avra Honey Smith and the other two women on his
staff as shields against day-to-day contacts with his constituency. They in
turn are assumed to be irreproachable, inviolably shielded from criticism by
their own aura of asserted rightness. Palmer may have answered these
question back in Elmira shortly before he developed the Avatar Course when
he was heard to say, "If Ron [Hubbard] could do it, I can do it too. And I'm
going to." Some former Scientologists who have had experience with him think
Palmer is not only using L. Ron Hubbard as a role model, but is
subconsciously dramatizing Hubbard's identity. Either way, the important
question is, can he pull it off? To some degree, maybe. But he certainly
doesn't operate on the same scale as Ron Hubbard. Palmer's center was a
local branch of a sizable worldwide organization that treats consciousness
raising as a commodity. As with drugs, illicit sex and gambling, a certain
segment of the populace derives pleasure from spiritual development, and
will pay well for it. Ron Hubbard might be described as a Godfather of
consciousness raising. He built the Church of Scientology into a worldwide
organization complete with levels of henchmen and hit squads. It must surely
be the envy of the Mafia from a business management standpoint. Although the
products of Scientology are legal -- governments have yet to prohibit people
from paying to have their endorphins titillated -- Hubbard's church uses
methods analogous to drug dealing: give people a taste for what you're
selling, get them hooked, turn them into lower level dealers, and sell
everyone increasingly expensive highs. While Palmer has frequently voiced
his desire to emulate Hubbard's accomplishments, his Avatar Course was
fashioned against a different model.
Like Hubbard, he is obviously obsessed with money. Unlike Hubbard, he is not
a strong planner or manager. Hubbard assembled an organization composed of
thousands of loyal staff members, willing to work dirt cheap and endure
great hardships for the cause. The only organization Palmer directly
controls consists of four people, including himself. He is sometimes an
effective public speaker, but tends to shy away from business dealings on a
personal level, especially interactions with other males. In fact, he has no
known close male friends or confidants, and remains mostly aloof from daily
activities, maintaining his mystique largely through his absence. Palmer's
courses are purveyed, and his business is conducted, remotely through his
stable of three complaisant female personnel who administer the loosely-knit
network and teach the upper level courses. The services sold produce a rapid
surge of elation, culminating in a sense of mindless bliss. Customers are
encouraged to come back and spend more money for advanced courses, but they
are not inculcated with the superstitious and divisive belief systems common
to Scientology and other full-scale cults--at least not until they begin the
Wizards Course. In terms of business management, Palmer comes off more like
a consciousness-raising pimp than a Don of enlightenment. He may be high on
avarice and paranoia, but falls short in the categories of megalomania,
manipulation and leadership ability. The basic Avatar Course does not foster
long-term addiction like the services of Scientology. Palmer's following is
fairly loyal, but not to the point of blind fanaticism. Some graduates
encourage friends to take the course, but not with the zeal engendered by
more fascist movements. About ten percent go on to become teachers
themselves, and a minor proportion of those are successful enough to make a
living by teaching the course full time. As a credit to the Avatar course,
most people who take it and teach it tend to be reasonably individualistic.
Few become prey to the True Believer syndrome typical of cults which seek to
control their members. Michel Langinieux shrugs and says, "The Wizard of
Orlando pulled some strings, but he wasn't strong enough to really
manipulate people. Most Avatar Masters are more powerful than he is, and
found it an interesting drama. As for those who want to stay in Harry's
mirage, it's what they want. Who cares whether the materials came from
UFO's, Bashar or Ron Hubbard? What can't be taken away from us is the work
we have put into the job of raising consciousness. Maybe this was the
essence of all that holy, greedy business. Avatar is the lotus in the loo."
Palmer's recent Wizards Course was certainly a financially successful
operation for an organization comprised of four people. It netted nearly a
million dollars in two weeks. As a long-term strategy to build an empire, it
is questionable. The 180 graduates were drawn from a pool of about 1,000
Avatar Masters worldwide. It seems unlikely that he will be able to
penetrate that market far above the 30% level the next time Part I of the
Wizards Course is offered, particularly since the price will be raised to
$7,500.
Given the mixed reviews of the first course, and the ensuing recognition on
the part of some participants that parts of it were subtly manipulative, it
is questionable whether a high proportion of those who took "Wizards I" will
return for higher level Wizards Courses to be unveiled in the future. With
its lack of coherent management, Avatar as an organization may be
approaching its maximum limits of growth. Some have speculated that it will
discreate itself spontaneously as its followers become increasingly aware
and observe its leader as he is. Perhaps that is the sort of movement Palmer
truly believes he is destined to create: a bubble that expands and pops when
it reaches a certain threshold of disillusionment, releasing its contents
into the atmosphere of mass consciousness. Applying his "persistent mass"
theory to the operation of his organization, he resists assuming autocratic
power and its attendant responsibilities as strongly as he desires it. So it
doesn't seem likely that Avatar will expand into a multinational cult the
size of Scientology, the Rajneesh empire, or even the est organization of
the 1970's. Particularly not after Michel Langinieux sent a few hundred
letters around the world informing Avatar Masters that the proprietary,
top-secret Creation Handling Procedure is contained in an 8,000-year-old
meditation technique. A fair number of Avatar Masters have already decided
to go their own ways, and some are already teaching the techniques on their
own. I don't see why anyone would want to emulate L. Ron Hubbard's
accomplishments anyway. Whatever Hubbard may have achieved, his creations in
life drove him to ever-increasing levels of paranoia and embroiled his
organization in ceaseless litigation. During the decade from 1975 through
1985, he turned what had been a relatively easy-going, idealistic
organization into a paramilitary cult with imagined enemies everywhere. At
every turn, Hubbard man aged to arouse official ire through his acts of
brazen rapacity, tax evasion, slander, espionage and outright
pugnaciousness.
The organization's self-created foes ranged from the IRS and the FDA to what
Hubbard called "the psychs," his blanket term for the mental health
profession as a whole. As the church engaged in massive internal witch hunts
and lashed out at its disaffected members. Hubbard spent his last years in
seclusion, bouncing from Clearwater, Florida to Los Angeles to Brooklyn,
then between secret locations in the Southern California desert, always
shielded from subpoenas by an elaborate network of go-betweens. Palmer has
more than once voiced the ambition to buy his own secluded tropical island
and settle down there. Even if he had to settle for a tiny island, it would
surely be a more pleasant place to retire than the motor home parked several
miles east of San Louis Obispo, California where Hubbard spent his final
days. I don't know how much interest Harry Palmer has in his own personal
growth. If he develops an urge for self-improvement, I could recommend a
course he might want to check out. In only a week to ten days, I'm certain
he could easily learn to lovingly and tolerantly experience his own
paranoia, expand to its outermost limits, label it without judgment,
recognize that it isn't him but his creation, and permit it to discreate.

Copyright c 1991 Eldon M. Braun, 2029 Powell Street, San Francisco,
California, U.S.A. Phone: (415) 781-6278. FAX: (415) 296-9932. Submitted
simultaneously for acquisition of first North American serial rights in
English and first serial rights in French translation in all French-speaking
countries.

53 Published by Harper & Row, New York, New York, 1990
54 Tulku, Tarthang, Hidden Mind of Freedom, Dharma Publishing, Berkeley,
California, 1981; pp. 44-46.
55 ibid, page 13
56 ibid, page 45
57 ibid, page 46
58 ibid, page 53
59 ibid, page xii
60 ibid, page 9
61 ibid, page 11
62 ibid, page 53
63 Tulku, Tarthang, Reflections of Mind, Dharma Publishing, Berkeley,
California, 1975; page 148
64 Hidden Mind of Freedom, op cit, page 53
65 ibid, page 80
66 ibid, page 84
67 Reflections of Mind, op cit, page 148
68 Hidden Mind of Freedom, op cit, page 54 taken from:
http://www.scientology-kills.org/avatar/avatar_wiz.htm

Author: Eldon Braun