What's Behind Gary Douglas's Scientology Knockoff?

But based on more recent writings and accounts from later classes, Access has taken a distinctive turn.

One woman, whom we'll call Tammy because she didn't want her name used, told the Press that Douglas was "verbally abusive" at a workshop she attended within the past year.

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

"I was horrified by his style of facilitating — which is shaming," Tammy says, later comparing Douglas's style to Heer's. "I mean, Dain is really sweet and openhearted, and Gary can be really vicious...I think he has a lot of unresolved anger toward women...He would talk very disparagingly about his ex-wives and how they did this to him and that to him. He just sounded like a victim the way he talked about it."

Tammy says he showed a real dark side, referring to his ex-wives as "controlling bitches," and sharing an anecdote about how he dealt with a little girl who picked on his daughter Grace when she was a child: "Gary told us that he pulled the little girl aside and he called her a little cunt." (Douglas's first wife, Laurie Alexander, a minister and life coach in Santa Barbara, told the Press that she loves Gary. "He's a great guy, really good person, really lots of integrity...That's all I can say." His second wife, Patricia O'Hara, also praised Douglas and Access to the Press, which is odd, since Douglas told a group of Accessories in 2004 that, because of her, "You were not allowed to talk about Access in the house." Douglas meekly bowed to her demands, as in all aspects of the marriage: "I said nothing...I just made the money and gave it to her." To illustrate what an emasculating shrew she was, he told a story of how she chided him in front of Heer and other dinner guests one evening, snidely asking him if he remembered to turn off the barbecue grill because he had forgotten to the last time. At this point in Douglas's story, Heer chimed in about how he was even more upset than Douglas, saying, "She was about to get kicked in the cunt.")

Tammy says that Douglas's rantings were so different from the Access teachings that appealed to her in the first place, explaining that "I'm grappling with that, because I don't want to throw it out completely — because there are good things."

Another former Accessory, whom we'll call Liz, said she left the group after noticing what she called a darker streak in Douglas's teachings. What had started out as a call for "oneness" and just generally being a better person, led by a genuinely sweet man who had empathy for others, had taken a dark turn — especially in how he spoke about women. Simply put, Liz says Douglas's "perspective on women lacks development." She says he didn't think women were inferior; he just wanted to focus more on helping men explore their consciousness. (She says the only female who had any sway over Douglas was his biological daughter, Grace. In Liz's estimation, Douglas's stepdaughter Shannon threw herself into Access and worked hard for Douglas's approval, while Grace walked on water.)

Liz was also slightly uncomfortable with how Douglas "created Dain [Heer] as his little mini-me" and "[posed] Dain as Prince Charming." Prior to Heer, she says, Douglas was grooming two men in Australia to be his VIPs, but they didn't last. Liz says that, for Douglas, Heer was a perfect, impressionable acolyte — someone who was "perhaps not a self-thinker" and was "willing to follow Gary blindly."
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These women's recounting of Douglas's behavior describes a man radically different from the Douglas in the 2004 workshops reviewed by the Press. That was a man who advocated self-reliance, and swapping a low-confidence victim mentality for one of empowerment. That Douglas even encouraged skepticism, saying at a workshop that one sign Access isn't a cult is that "I ask and request of you one thing: Know that you know. Whatever makes you feel light is right and true. Whatever makes you feel heavy is a lie — don't buy a lie from anybody. Not me. Not the guy I channel, Rasputin. Not anybody."

That sentiment is lacking in the most recent Access manuals. Some of these puzzling changes in Access dogma were first revealed by the administrator of a site called Accessschism.com, and explored in a more irreverent manner by a blogger outside of Houston, Connie Schmidt, whose brilliant "Whirled Musings" blog at cosmicconnie.blogspot.com tackles what she calls "the New-Age/New-Wage crowd."

Andrew Blanford explains on Accessschism.com that he took a basic Access class and has "read much of the material."

He writes that, while "there are some good things in Access," much of the material "is confusing, convoluted and contradictory at best." According to Blanford, "Most of the deceit and coercion you won't discover until you are invested to the point that you don't want to admit to yourself that you were duped."

He told the Press in an e-mail, "One of the foundational elements of Access Consciousness is accepting and allowing everything, therefore Access Consciousness should be in total acceptance and allowance of any critical discernment of their teachings or writings."