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  page 1 2345
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