he thing is, Access might never have been born had Gary Major Douglas gotten out of real estate.
He'd done well for a while — by his estimation, making $100,000 a year. But by 1990, according to Santa Barbara court records, his business went belly up. He was sued by collection agencies, then filed for bankruptcy in 1993. His host of creditors included the IRS and the U.S. Department of Justice's tax division. He'd be paying off those federal liens for the next eight years. After real estate, he had a short stint in the United Way, but nothing seemed to be working for him.
That's when Douglas surveyed the metaphysical landscape of Santa Barbara and found an opening.
For years, Douglas had flitted on the outskirts of Scientology. His first wife, Laurie Alexander, ran a "field group" in the city — pulling in new recruits through Scientology's "auditing" process. (...)
After Douglas divorced Alexander in 1983, he married an ex-Scientologist named Patricia O'Hara. The two were close friends with another former Scientologist, named Mary Wernicke, who was roughly 40 years their senior. The English-born Wernicke rose up the Scientology ranks, working for the church's exclusive "Sea Org" unit. (...) in the early 1980s. (...) Wernicke was one of many higher-ups who left the church for the short-lived offshoot, the Advanced Ability Center. Douglas grew very close to Wernicke and even cared for her as her health began to fail in older age. He moved her into his Santa Barbara home and hired nurses to tend to her.
According to mutual friend Kathleen Martin, Wernicke had a profound influence on Douglas. She made Douglas the executor of her will. She wasn't a wealthy woman and she had no surviving relatives, so she left her jewelry and books to a handful of friends, including Douglas, his wife and his daughter Grace. She left $10,000 for one friend, and any remaining money (including the proceeds of any household items sold) to Douglas, which amounted to around $100,000. Martin says that Douglas gave her a portion of the money, even though Wernicke hadn't willed any to her; it was simply in Douglas's nature to be generous, she says.
Not only was Douglas exposed to key elements of Scientology through Wernicke and others, he was tapped into the growing popularity in Santa Barbara of "channels," people who claimed to be able to allow spirits to enter their bodies. It was always a hit at parties. Though channels no doubt were serious about these supernatural powers, Douglas was not without a sense of humor.
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.
"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.
(...)
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.
(...) 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. (...)
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.
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