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."

Among the recent Access teachings Blanford helped bring to light are the new ways in which Accessories should deal with "elfs" ("Evil Little Fucks"), rattlesnakes and other enemies. The excerpts on Accessschism.com are an accurate reflection of recent manuals obtained by the Press, and they were included in questions we e-mailed to Douglas's publicist.

From the March 2012 Level One manual: "How do you handle a demon bitch or bastard from hell? You call them up and say quietly to them three times, 'If you do this again, I will kill you.' Make sure nobody else can hear you. You have to mean it. Maybe not this lifetime, but you will kill them. If they tell somebody, you go, 'Me? Would I do such a thing?'"

And then there's this, from the same manual: "In many cases where children were sexually abused, the child allowed themselves to be molested because it was a way of stopping the person from doing it to anybody else. And they knew it — even if they were only six or seven years old. That was a great gift and a bizarre point of view to realize that they know it's what they have to do."

There's also a treatise on family in Access's March 2012 Foundation manual, which states that the word stands for "fucked-up and mainly interested in limiting you" and explains that "the reason they love you is that you agree with them." Also: "Remember, the only reason to have a family is if they have money you might inherit. Otherwise, divorce them."

And then there's this bombshell of higher consciousness: "Girls like to go shopping with their friends and talk terminally about ­nothing."

Douglas's publicist replied to our questions about these statements with, "Access has reviewed the questions posed, which have been taken out of context from the Access Materials. Gary is also presently out of the country and due to his schedule, is unavailable at this time."

It's a disingenuous defense, because even viewed in the "context" of their respective manuals, the meanings don't change. It's just that in the manuals, they're surrounded by long, rambling, gobbledygook phrases that try to shroud their inanity. They expose the fundamental flaw in Access pointed out on Accessschism: It's inherently contradictory. It doesn't hold up under even the slightest scrutiny. It tells Accessories to cast away all judgment and not have "fixed" points of view. Nothing is right or wrong. They're all just "interesting" points of view. In one manual, the word "but" is singled out as a word to avoid because it qualifies and negates everything preceding it. So you can't have exceptions for murder or rape.