The most hated article of Star's Edge: ''The Wiz of Orlando''
Ronald Cools
To expose the truth about Harry Palmer and Stars Edge please visit:
http://home.planet.nl/~cools092/
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Behind the Scenes at Avatar
by Eldon M. Braun
There are a few possible reasons why you may not have heard of Harry
Palmer's Avatar Course. If you live in the U.S., you must not take New Age
Journal or Success Magazine; subscribers of those magazines receive
complimentary copies of the Avatar Journal through purchased mailing lists.
Or maybe you're simply not interested in self-improvement. Or you're not
tuned into the right channeler. Otherwise, you should already have gotten
wind of the "instant enlightenment'' course called Avatar. Thousands of
people in the U.S. have paid $2,000 to take it. It is offered by a few
hundred teachers, called Masters, in every American city of any size, and
is growing by leaps and bounds. If you live in France and haven't heard
about Avatar, you are way out of touch. There, it is proportionately far
more popular than in the U.S. If you live elsewhere, expect to hear about
Avatar soon. It is currently taught in 31 countries. Avatar is the
fastest-paced growth course since est, as free-spirited as a Rajneesh
seminar, and a lot cheaper than Scientology . What's more, like all the
above, it works--assuming you believe it does. Thousands of seemingly
credible people do. The Avatar Course has even earned rave reviews from
professional therapists and counselors. One is Emma Bragdon, Ph. D.,
psychotherapist and author of the book The Call of Spiritual Emergency.53 .
After taking the Avatar Course in May, 1990, she called it "the most
empowering week of my life,'' and said, "I reclaimed my birthright: to be
awake, to be in control, and in joy.'' She now teaches the course herself.
The Avatar Course is not presented as a cult, an organization that demands
strict allegiance, or a set of doctrines. Graduates are only subtly
encouraged to proselytize it. Unlike Scientology, the principal mental
technology studied by its developer, Avatar really isn't much of an
organization. The entire company that licenses the course worldwide and
teaches licensees to deliver it consists of four people.
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.
ONÂ 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 at least 40 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 pay 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
$tars Edge: Our business is your Beingness
Ronald Cools
Avatar Course. The official website of Stars Edge in Florida:
www.avatarepc.com
My website for shocking revelations: http://home.planet.nl/~cools092/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE HERETIC
An open forum for Spiritual Investigation
February 16, 1988 Issue XIV
INTERVIEW WITH MARGIE HOFFMAN
Q: What was your role in the Avatar organization?
A: It was sales. I was also a trainer, but mostly sales.
I was the one who opened up the West Coast from Elmira and I got people
from all over to come to Elmira.
Q: Why did you leave?
A: It wasn't like I thought it was going to be. I started speaking my mind
and it was unpopular and Harry and his wife Avra, were extremely rude to me.
But
most of all, there were many people in Elmira who were quite upset because
they had paid thousands of dollars for services that no longer were going to
be
delivered to them. They were still paying loans, and some were having to
file
bankrupty. I didn't think it was right.
Q: Have other staff left?
A: Yes. There were three other people that left. He was paying them 100 to
150 dollar per week - if that, I'm guessing high. I personally was paid
well,
but it is because I demanded a raise in April.
Q: Are these people speaking out about Avatar?
A: Nobody is really speaking out about Avatar; it's a very workable tool.
It's just we object that the only one who profits is Harry Palmer. Some have
gone
to labor boards, some to the local newspaper. But you have to understand
that
we were very loyal to Harry, and that was why we got paid so little, because
we were loyal to him.
>
Q: What was Palmer's response to people going to the newspaper?
A: He told the reporter that the reason that he let all of us go -we quit,
he
didn't let us go- was that we had drug problems. And he referred to us as
''bleeding hearts" and "puppies that are weaning". He also said that he made
a
lot of money with other companies and that his staff had nothing to do with
him
making money. (See Elmira Star Gazette, Feb 2,3,4 & 7).
>
Q: How succesful was Thoughtstorm?
A: I don't have statistics but he had been saying that the people that he
went into the Thoughtstorm business with, people who were with the Creative
Learning Center, didn't support him and so he lost $40,000 on it. I don't
know of
anywhere the Thoughtstorm is being used besides Avatar centers.
>
Q: Is Avatar a replay of Scientology and is Palmer a replay of Hubbard?
A: It certainly does have shades of Scientology. WHEN AVATAR CAME OUT HE
SAID THIS IS GOING TO BE THE ONLY COURSE YOU'RE EVER GOING TO NEED AND IF
THERE'S ANYTHING NEW THAT COMES OUT WE'LL JUST INCLUDE IT IN THE MATERIALS,
YOU WON'T HAVE TO BUY ANYTHING.
And then the Masters Course came out and there were things that were
exclusive as far as case handling. And now out comes the $20,000 "Wizards''
course.
[Trivia note: Avatar was the chief character in the animated movie Wizards.]
As far as him being like Hubbard, let me read this thing he just put out to
promote the Wizard course: "On a somewhat grimmer not, 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 often left me spinning... and
while I certainly am not complaining... the eye of the storm has thaught me
lessons... and [bas] 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 heavy stuf. It can drive someone who is in power shy and preaching
all sweetness and light into a real snit... So don't loose sleep over the
$20,000 price being bantered around. With the heavy Avatar traffic ahead, by
the
time Wizard is released in February or March '89 that will be pocket
jingle," now
if that doesn't sound like Hubbard."
Q: To the best of your knowledge how many people have completed the Avatar
course?
A: Harry Palmer, on many occasions, has said that there are about 1200 to
1500 Avatars. When I left November 7 there were 408, and anywhere from 75 to
100 Avatar Masters. It's most ex-Scientologists. Harry made some inroads
with some
psychologists in Portland, but most of these people had previously been
involved in "New age", occult things.
Q: How similar is Avatar to the CofS in terms of attitudes and values?
A: Pretty similar. The attention on money was really a big deal. If somebody
didn't "get it" they would get a little special attention to see if they
could
get it, then it was just kind of dropped. And recently I received in the
mail
an anonymous warning: "Maybe the world should know what kind of person you
really are. Clean up the third party on H or they will". Attatched were 4 or
5
pages of Xerox copies of overt write-ups from my ethics folder. The police
went
to the Center to compare type between the Center's typewriter and the
blackmail note and were told that the ethics folder and the typewriter were
missing.
Q: Was the Elmira Center run the same as an Avatar center as it had been run
as a Scientology center?
A: We were still handing in our stats on Thursday at 2:00 up until June of
1987. It wasn't until Harry and Avra went to L.A. that the staff at home
stopped
doing that. The pay was the same, too. We never had a chance to deprogram
from Scientology the way the rest of the field did. In Portland when I was
speaking my mind about the situation in Elmira, Harry asked me if I had a
withhold.
He also asked me if I was doing drugs. He insinuated that it was all my
illusion -mind you, we had about 50 people in our Elmira field - that these
people
were upset. A big flap followed us from L.A. to Portland because we would
leave town without completing people, I said we should complete them and he
said I
was ''forwarding the enemy line". Also, when something did not go the way he
wanted, he always looked for a Who.
Q: Is he still withholding the money from the people in Elmira?
A: He is starting to give half of the money back. He considers that the
people in Elmira invested in something along with him called the OT Levels.
His words are "the ship sank". He didn't think that they had any right to
ask
for their money back. He thought that they should "share in the loss." I'd
like to know why they don't share in the gain.
Q: Do they practice disconnetion in Avatar?
A: There was a woman in San Fransisco, an Avatar Master, that kept calling
me
when she heard that I left staff. She said how mucht that she wanted to help
me and how much she cared. After Palmer was in San Fransisco I got a
carbon-copied letter from this woman which was a disconnection notice. She
wanted nothing to do with the people in Elmira because they are "draining."
Q: Do you have any criticism of the Avatar technology and material?
A: The only criticism I have is the way that the Masters Course is
administered. This may have changed, but at the last training I attended
their technique was to call people "dodo heads", ''bird brains'' and
''stupid'' and basically insult the person.
Q: Do you still believe that there is a be-all/end-all state called Avatar
that this rundown will produce?
A: Maybe for some people for a certain amount of time, but as far as forever
and ever, and the person never has to do another thing ever in his life,
that
is misrepresented. If you're constantly growing, the same tool can't be used
forever. What you use as a child is not necessarily going to work as an
adult. Avatar is a useful tool for those who want it. The first session I
had was the ultimate key-out!
Q: Discreate means to as-is. What could be so special about another
technique
to do that?
A: Well sometimes people do the "Emperor new clothes" thing, like "don't the
Emperor's new clothes look wonderful!"
Q: What was the last straw for you with the Avatar organization?
A: When I was in Portland and I was ready to resign, Harry and I, using the
Avatar materials, reached an understanding, and I felt wonderful and that I
was
re-aligned with him. Then I saw the instructors treating another person the
way I was being treated, with intolerance and rudeness. I thought, hey, I
can
discreate anything, but there is no way I can make certain things, like
their rudeness, disappear. I had a brand new perspective. It wasn't all me.
Harry
does not believe in co-creation.
Q: What do you know about the origins of Avatar?
A: Harry has always done a lot of reading. He studied a lot of Hubbard when
he was in Scientology, and other things, like yoga. He was intensely
interested
in Bashar. He bought all his tapes and videos - $900 worth. He read that
Ramtba book - all-white with "Ramtba" embossed on it.
Q: Do you have any regrets about missing out on the Wizard Course?
A: Fuck no! Can you print that? Fuck no!
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