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.  page 1 2345
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