WHUM, Immunics, Direct Centering, Nexus, The Course

All the above are brainwashing groups lead by "founder" Bayard Hora.
He changes the name to avoid paying taxes and to keep moving in for a fresh batch of suckers.
Looking at their most recent website which can easily be Googled, WHUM, they have taken to the streets.
They have no shame as they stand in the street and ask for money, pretending to be a cause for "curing the flu".
It's the simplest of ploys, hooking people though their basic fears of getting sick and then starting the brainwashing techniques soon thereafter. Then they just exploit the innocent and get whatever money and free service and donations they can; all for their own enjoyment. A car, a boat, a house, new clothes, a meal for 10 at a sushi restaurant, it's all paid for by people thinking they are donating t a cause. That's a con. But they are much more than this; they steal YEARS of peoples lives. They break apart marriages. They abuse physically, mentally, spiritually. They break a person down and make them in to servants.
It's a CULT.

WHUM is a CULT.
Bayard Hora, Fran Hora, Greg Morkovin, Keely Stahl, Barb Retson are each trained, devoted, dedicated, driven to make YOU or your loved one their next victim.

What, you're double-posting??! The more the merrier. ;-)

I've googled Immunics, WHUM, Immuners, Bayard Barnes, Bayard Hora, etc. many many times over the last many years and there is very little on the web that is critical of Bayard's ever-mutating playpen. Hopefully with these threads going some seeds will be planted, and other discussions will be initiated.

I have found a few juicy tidbits, though:
[ask.metafilter.com]
(the middle of the page, a post by "asavage")
[www.edgenewengland.com]
[www.edgeboston.com]
(both by the same author, who writes about losing his boyfriend to Direct Centering)

and this thread started by me:
[forums.randi.org]
The randi.org forum is on the website of the Amazing Randi, the well-known magician, skeptic and exposer of the methods used by "psychics" to baffle and sucker their customers.

I did some searching today on these forums, and found a long thread on the Sedona Method at [forum.culteducation.com]

Peculiarly enough, there is a connection between Bayard Barnes and Lester Levenson, the originator of the Sedona Method. I thought some other forum members might find this interesting.

During the mid-'70s, at some point before the founding of Direct Centering, Bayard (then called by his nickname "Gavin") did a course called Mind Freedom in New York City where he resided. This I learned from another assistant at DC who was involved with Direct Centering even earlier than I was and indeed had been a client of "Gavin" when he was an unlicensed primal therapist. He told me that the original Direct Centering System as it was taught back in the fall of 1977 when I took this course had been adapted or taken verbatim from the Mind Freedom course. Mind Freedom is Lester Levenson's baby, and is what eventually was called the Sedona Method.

After I severed my ties with Direct Centering in the fall of 1983 and began my post-cult recovery process, I began to do some research about Gavin/Bayard. I worked occasionally with an exit counselor who had been called many times to work on Direct centering cases, so this research was of practical value as far as encouraging others to leave Bayard/Gavin's cult. I spoke to someone from the NYC Sedona Institute in late 1984. I saved notes and correspondence from back then, and from a letter I wrote to Lester Levenson on 1/29/85, I wrote "He (the person I spoke to at NYC Sedona Institute) said something like that Gavin was an asshole, that he had been teaching Mind Freedom material incompletely and incorrectly and without your permission or endorsement, that you had called Gavin several times in the early days of DC's existence to tell him to stop teaching your material before he hurts somebody,. and that the Universe might wind up giving him a swift kick in the head (my language, not XXX's -I forgot how he phrased it) for what he was doing."

I then asked Lester in this letter:

"What I'm asking you for is information; first off, confirmation and clarification of my recollection of Mr. Hurley's comments. Secondly, any more detailed memories and impressions you have of Gavin that you would be willing to share with me. Thirdly, if at all possible, I'd like to compare what I learned at DC with what Gavin learned from you 8 years ago in hopes of understanding more fully the conceptual roots of Direct Centering."

A month after mailing this letter, I was surprised to receive a long-distance call from Lester, who was then located in Sedona, Arizona. I wish he had written me as I would have had a document to save, but I summarized what he told me to another ex-DC-er in a letter.

I wrote:

"Got a call earlier from Lester Levenson, Founder of the Sedona Institute, which gave the Mind Freedom course that Big G (Gavin) took many years ago, and from which he absconded with what he called the original Direct Centering System. I had sent him a letter describing my experiences at DC and asking him for confirmation of what one of his staff people had told me in NY (that Levenson had called Gavin several times in the early days of DC to tell G to stop teaching his material, since he was doing it without permission, and doing it incompletely and incorrectly with the possible consequence of hurting people), and also asking him for whatever else he might be willing to share with me about his impressions of Gavin from back then. The gist of what he told me in the call was that yes, he did call G several times, that when G did his course (he was not the teacher of Gavin's course, he has several teachers), G had signed a secrecy agreement, agreeing not to teach the material to others (I vaguely recall DC has that as one of the Course agreements, so did the est training, I think), and as we all know, Gav went ahead and did it anyway. He never pursued legal action because DC was so tiny back then it didn't seem like anything important enough to warrant such an action. He considers Gavin to be an unethical person, and now, knowing that DC has grown to its current size, he is considering legal action, either a suit or serving G with something called a cease and desist order. He's going to have one of his graduates here in NY check DC out and get back to him—this guy he's going to contact will speak to me before going down to DC. Also, all of Gavin's talk of unlimitedness and people really being unlimited beings and many other DC concepts that didn't seem to be derived from Scientology were taken directly from the Mind Freedom course. This guy Leveson was talking about Unlimited this and that just like G did. Levenson apparently knew Hubbard in the early days of Scientology, and considers Hubbard, along with Erhard and Gavin to be paranoid personalities."

Lester went on to talk about "light centers"--I guess the Sedona-ish part of the Sedona method--and we got off the phone soon afterward.

Nothing ever came of his interest in pursuing legal action AFAIK, but it was illuminating to me to know that from the very beginning, Bayard/Gavin had no compunctions about using whatever he could swipe to attract a following and gain a reputation.

Wow, finally something about this group! I knew Immunics was their latest thing ... the outgrowth of the more woo-woo sounding direction they were taking when I left in 1994. They had changed their name to U-I-Ku (or something close), but when I joined the group was called Naexus. I didn't realize it was a cult, because all the descriptions in resources I could find back then sounded much more extreme and/or obvious. That was part of the brainwashing -- that it's not a cult! Of course I hadn't been exposed to any other LGATs. In fact, reading Landmark's description is giving me chills ... thank god I didn't find it after Naexus, because believe me I was searching for a replacement! Ever since then, in fact. Till now.
I would love to correspond with anyone who has been in a group with Bayard; are you interested?

Quote
hara
Wow, finally something about this group! I knew Immunics was their latest thing ... the outgrowth of the more woo-woo sounding direction they were taking when I left in 1994. They had changed their name to U-I-Ku (or something close), but when I joined the group was called Naexus. I didn't realize it was a cult, because all the descriptions in resources I could find back then sounded much more extreme and/or obvious. That was part of the brainwashing -- that it's not a cult! Of course I hadn't been exposed to any other LGATs. In fact, reading Landmark's description is giving me chills ... thank god I didn't find it after Naexus, because believe me I was searching for a replacement! Ever since then, in fact. Till now.
I would love to correspond with anyone who has been in a group with Bayard; are you interested?

I'd be happy to. Reply to me via PM and we can e-mail each other, or we can have a dialog here. Having a dialog here might be of more use to the random anonymous person out there on the web who is googling Direct Centering, Naexus, Immunics, Bayard Barnes or Bayard Hora and is hunting for information other than cult-hype about them. FYI Direct Centering was my home-base for nearly 6 years, but I did lots of other LGATs during my involvement there, including est, Actualizations, the Insight Training, Sterling Institute's "Men, Sex and Power" (as it was called back in the early '80s), rebirthing trainings, and many other small-GATs who have disappeared in the mists of time. I've acquired a bit of perspective on this species of cult, having been suckered by so many of them and somehow gotten to the other side.

Direct Centering/Naexus had an offspring by the name of Naka-Ima See: [www.nfnc.org] or [www.nfnc.org] (Larry Kaplowitz was involved with DC/Naexus). Was this the Japanese-ish name you were trying to remember??

Thanks, Laarree. Both might be productive. I am definitely interested in this "species" of cult, since it was the kind that sucked me in. After Naexus it had a phase of being called something else; not Naka-Ima -- that is an offshoot by two former staffers. (I actually visited Lost Valley, which at the time hosted those workshops; but it didn't really have much draw. Probably a good thing. I wonder if what they're doing now would qualify for this forum. ... ) No, it was called something pretty close to "U-I-Ku," sounds that were supposedly based on a sort of channelling that Bayard was doing ... accessing was what he called it. Which is what I think they're basing Immunics on today. It started as an outgrowth of applied kinesthesiology, only instead of pushing your arm or other body part down, it involved using your index finger and thumb, either by testing their resistance when held together (e.g., strong was yes, weak was no), or letting them loosely rub together like a pendulum. Then everything was built on asking the universe questions and getting yes/no answers this way. The overall process was also called harmonics. There was a lot of stuff about dimensions, and their various characteristics.

Quote
hara
Thanks, Laarree. Both might be productive. I am definitely interested in this "species" of cult, since it was the kind that sucked me in. After Naexus it had a phase of being called something else; not Naka-Ima -- that is an offshoot by two former staffers. (I actually visited Lost Valley, which at the time hosted those workshops; but it didn't really have much draw. Probably a good thing. I wonder if what they're doing now would qualify for this forum. ... ) No, it was called something pretty close to "U-I-Ku," sounds that were supposedly based on a sort of channelling that Bayard was doing ... accessing was what he called it. Which is what I think they're basing Immunics on today. It started as an outgrowth of applied kinesthesiology, only instead of pushing your arm or other body part down, it involved using your index finger and thumb, either by testing their resistance when held together (e.g., strong was yes, weak was no), or letting them loosely rub together like a pendulum. Then everything was built on asking the universe questions and getting yes/no answers this way. The overall process was also called harmonics. There was a lot of stuff about dimensions, and their various characteristics.

The index finger/thumb-thing was called finger testing, wasn't it? I've browsed thru the immunics website many times (at least the pages that don't require a username and password) and saw references to higher bodies, the spiral body, etc. that reminded me of old-school occultism like Theosophy or the esoteric aspects of yoga.

Bayard's latest thing is an ebook where he addresses Rhonda Byrne of "The Secret" fame, presumably about the subject of manifesting. Currently there are videos of him on Youtube presented on the Immunics homepage where he talks obliquely about how he used to teach about "manifesting", a reference to the time when the Direct Centering course was still being given. The videos of him are peculiar -- he is videotaped sitting in profile, rarely looking at the camera, and he looks extremely lean, even gaunt. The shaved head I'm sure gives him an added dash of spiritual master credibility to some people. His personality and speaking style are virtually unchanged since 25 years ago when I last saw him in person, and his periodic laughter seems unnatural to me, more like a tic than an expression of amusement.

Yes, finger testing (instead of larger muscle testing, as in applied kinesthesiology). And yes, the direction it was going in when I left was starting to sound more occult/esoteric -- and thus less appealing to me, since I was more into "blast through your limits, change your life"-type processing. Rather than stuff like clearing past lives, which we started doing. Having been open to their previous challenges, I tried to stay with it for a while. Finally I just couldn't stomach the whole thing -- most crucially, the money piece.
I took a glimpse at the first YouTube video but didn't have the time or patience to sit through it. I too was struck by how Bayard sounded so much the same. And he had a shaved head the whole time I knew him, so I'm sure I had already been subtly influenced by the "master" image, which as far as I can tell hasn't changed much since then (14 years ago?). The laughter ... he did that when I knew him, and maybe it's a kind of involuntary tic-like gesture ... but was it then? At the time I saw it as an expression of his "crazy-wisdom" style. %)

It's been a long time since my contact with Gavin/Bayard. It was in 1987. Some writing I'm doing, a story that involves that general time period, occasioned me to bring to consciousness the old experiences and the old pain, and I realize that I still have not resolved everything. In fact, I seem to have blocked out of memory most of the actual workshop sessions, possibly because I found them so painful and difficult.

At the time I was there, Bayard's offering was called "The Course". I wanted what The Course promised, and went up to NYC from the south to take the beginner's workshop. If I remember correctly, it was billed, prior to taking it, as basically empowering one and transforming one completely. After one took it (as happened at Lifespring, too, a few years later), the beginner's course was more or less pooh-poohed or spoken of as a tiny first step. The Intensive--is that what they called it?--was the one that would turn the key.

I took that, too. In both workshops, I rememeber a sense of humiliation and failure (though I "passed", technically). I seemed to be incapable of doing what many of the others were doing. A lot of the skills I lacked, and still am not great at, are "confrontation skills". The culture of Bayard's group encouraged a lot of confrontation, in and out of workshops. For a time I was a an office volunteer and saw the culture closely. One thing that frightened me was that out-and-out tantrums were accepted behavior among the inner circle.

Bayard called me a creep in one of the workshops. Later, when partly as a result of the trauma there, I was hospitalized for a month, he phoned to say "I love you". I never had a clue whether he was a sociopath, with no scruples or some sort of advanced soul who really was able to function in exceptional ways. (If the latter were the case, then I was severely challenged.) I'm still not sure which of the two above propositions is true.

I had a friend who went up with me and took a couple of courses, did ok and seemed fine with them, and to my knowledge never had any more such dealings with Bayard. I, on the other hand, felt I needed the promised results, but I never was able to get them, I suppose because I was not capable of the aggressive extraversion, confrontation, etc, that seem required. I actually moved up to NYC, did volunteer work at the Course offices, took courses until finally my charge card number was noticed on a list at a gas station and the card was confiscated. I still deal with these extraversion/introversion issues and uncertainties in myself and with my behavior.

One thing that started to disillusion me, fairly early on, about the group, was when I was in a workshop and a rather charismatic, popular young man came up to me in what seemed a disarming, almost childlike way, and said to me, "Will you be in 'Fighting' (another course) with me?" I was quite touched that he wanted my companionship in that workshop, and signed up.

Not long after that, I was on the volunteer staff of a workshop. All of us volunteers met together every so often, and I was told, as we all were, that we each had a quota of other people we were expected to persuade to "be in such-and-such a course with me." So that fellow's seeming affection had been totally phoney. I came to wonder whether anything a staff member said to me was authentic.

One more thing: after several months of trying to make it in Bayard's world, and finding myself getting more and more overwhelmed by what seemed a deliberate strategy to rope me into more and more paid activities by phone call or face-to-face entreaties, I recognized clearly that for the sake of emotional survival, I needed to immediately sever all connection with anyone in the group.

I did this. A friend I was staying with (who unfortunately turned out to be possibly even more toxic, fielded all my phone calls and under no circumstances allowed anyone from Bayard's group to get through.
So much karma/energy had been generated by my relations with the group, though, that For at least a week or two I felt like someone who'd just withdrawn cold-turkey from a prolonged period of psychedelic drug use.

The confrontation that was encouraged around Direct Centering probably had its origins in Bayard's pre-DC work as an unlicensed primal therapist. Years ago, I did a bit of phone calling around to therapists who were doing primal-style therapy in New York in the early 1970's, and found a couple of them who remember Bayard from groups of theirs, before he started up his own "therapy practice". I'm sure he learned a great deal about encounter-group-style confrontation, emotional defense-busting, and the evocation and expression of pent-up emotion from those experiences, as well as from his experience doing the est Training and witnessing Werner Erhard in action. Bayard of course was and is a master of such things, especially because he is utterly sure of himself and likely does not experience fear or self-doubt like normal people.

Re: the charismatic popular young man asking about your companionship-- DC was ALL about enrolling people in courses and events. Anyone who volunteered there or took one of their courses, be it a beginner's course or a graduate event, was pressured in countless ways to ask or even demand that other in their life or proximity do the course/event, or even issue the command "Take the Course/Event" (a fruit of Bayard's studying of L.R. Hubbard's writings on Scientology-style communication techniques). When I was there assisting, we literally rang bells and cheered when assistants got a registration, a very Pavlovian tactic. The charismatic young man was under all these pressures and was on a mission (being "on purpose"), and had learned how to give people the illusory experience of Instant Intimacy as a method of influencing the unsure to "enroll" in whatever he was talking about.

I'm glad this thread is still alive. It's so rare that I have any contact at all with ex-DC'ers/Nexoids/Immeunuchs. ;-)