What's Behind Gary Douglas's Scientology Knockoff?

According to the early Access document "How Access Came to Be," "Gary related that, in 1987, he went to a party and saw a man channeling a being called Bashar. He said, 'How come he can do that and I can't? He is no better looking than I, he's no taller, he certainly doesn't speak better — he's from New Jersey."

Around the time Douglas's real estate business imploded, he discovered his own channeling powers. One night, his body was taken over by the spirit of Grigori Rasputin, the Russian mystic who was assassinated in 1916. Douglas would later joke about how it was just his luck that he couldn't be a conduit for any of the typical angelic beings claimed by other channels. Douglas didn't entirely trust Rasputin, and he eventually was inhabited by other spirits, including a "wise ancient Chinese man named Tchia Tsin," a "robust, rowdy" 14th-century friar named Brother George, and a group of alien beings called Novian.

If you want to find out if you're a humanoid, a good place to start is the Access Consciousness Web site.

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• Gary Douglas
• Dain Heer
• Church of Scientology
• Scientology
• Religion

"Never having been human, Novian was very hard on [Douglas's] body," according to "How Access Came to Be." "They would take about one breath and talk for twenty minutes, lower Gary's blood pressure and heartbeat to the point that, on a 92-degree day, he would be freezing...Belligerent, he said, 'You know what? If you can't give this information through Rasputin, I am not doing it anymore. This f—king hurts, and I'm just not going to do it.' The very next day, Rasputin began talking about what is now known as Access."

Douglas retired Rasputin several years ago, but old recordings indicate that Accessories were spellbound by these channeling sessions, a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that Douglas's faux Russian accent makes him sound like a high-school thespian doing ­Tevye.

Rasputin was enough of a hit that Douglas decided to go into business, creating what was originally called Access Energy Transformation. Access was more than a channeling routine — it was a watered-down repackaging of Scientology. At the ground level, both offered fairly typical New Age palaver, but there was incredible chance for advancement, if you were willing to pay.
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In Access, the hook is that there are 32 "bars," or "points on your head, which, when gently touched, effortlessly and easily release anything that doesn't allow you to receive," according to the 2012 Access Foundation manual.

In order to "run bars" on a person, you must take Access classes to become certified. There are 22 Texas "certified bars facilitators" on Access's Web site, but the number could be higher, since not all facilitators need to post a profile on the site. The idea of the bars has stayed consistent through Access's life, and it's how Access drew in its number-two man.

Around 2000, a thirtysomething Santa Barbara-area chiropractor named Dain Heer was on the verge of suicide. Handsome in a J.Crew-catalog sort of way, with a gentle manner, he had a wonderful fiancée and lived in one of the most beautiful cities in the country. On the surface, he appeared to have it all. But his chiropractic practice wasn't doing well, and he could barely pay his share of the rent on the apartment he shared with his fiancée. Heer states in his profile on various Access sites that he was a victim of childhood abuse. He had too much self-doubt and self-loathing to allow himself to be happy and in love. It got bad enough that he set a six-month expiration date for his life if nothing got better.

Lo and behold, he was flipping through a local paper when he saw an ad for a woman who "ran bars," in Access parlance. The woman turned out to be Douglas's stepdaughter, Shannon, who discovered that this sad, chiseled man was actually a prodigy. He had a gift for healing that he wasn't even aware of. He took the Access Foundation and Level One classes, and then Douglas went to see him. He asked Heer to start facilitating Level Three classes, something the chiropractor hadn't anticipated. Douglas recounted one of these early visits in a 2004 class:

"Just talk to my body and do what it tells you," Douglas said he told Heer. "And I knew that he could do that. And so he started doing this stuff, and I started twitching all over the table, and when I got up, I went, 'Holy shit, what did you just do? That was the most phenomenal thing I've ever experienced.' And that session changed my life. And that session changed his life, too."

Before long, Heer moved into Douglas's home and became Access's number-two man.

With his hint of vulnerability, impeccable taste in clothes and awesome hair, Heer was an immediate hit. Based on some accounts by former Accessories, the man has magic fingers. When he runs bars at Access workshops, with only his fingertips on a woman's head, he has been known to induce orgasm.

Heer certainly helped with the eye-candy aspect, but based on the earlier classes reviewed by the Press, this wasn't the only appealing part of Access workshops. These weren't stodgy affairs; there were no pedantic lectures or church-like solemnity. They were fun, lively explorations of what it means to be a humanoid. When Douglas wasn't spouting Access catchphrases like "binary occlusions" and "nucleated spheres," he was dropping the F-bomb, sharing funny anecdotes and encouraging healthy debate. Heer could keep things light with impressions of his family members or a random joke about his penis. To someone who doesn't believe in past lives, metaphysics or magical healing, the classes might seem flaky, but benign enough.