It’s a lot to try to sum up, and some of it I may not remember that well.
Andy, I very much relate to what you're saying. I also felt trapped as an assistant. It was made more difficult for me because Bayard seemed to care more about assistants than non assistants. He said to me once "if you were still class 3, I'd coach you on this and that". I hated assisting, but I wanted Bayard to like me, and for related reasons, I stayed, even though I didn't like it. Part of it was pressure, part of it was the agreement, and a lot of it, for me was this feeling that I "should", that I was selfish when I wasn’t there. Looking back now, that was brainwashing, but at the time, it drove me to assist more than I wanted to.
As far as the "end of DC" the "start of Naexus" and "immunics". That’s a long answer.
Direct centering did mellow over time and it seemed to "get better" for lack of a better way to describe it. At the same time, year in, year out, attendance at the course and the ability to keep the business running was inconsistent. Into 87, 88, etc, attendance in general seemed to drop, but with more people doing the intensive and later, business courses or expensive courses like power, the company was able to stay in business with significantly lower attendance.
I was never on the inside of the finances, but from what I picked up, the business was close to folding more than once. In the early years, as some of you may remember, they moved the Philly center into Bill Pelle's house because they couldn't pay their rent. A few years later, an assistant named Teddy R. loaned the organization $40,000, which Jerry R. (who paid the bills, or, sometimes, didn't pay them), said he'd return $30 grand to Teddy right away, but that money was never returned. Part of it may have been bad management, but nobody was getting rich. Some money was put towards expensive dinners, student loan payments for full timers and dental work, but zero money was ever saved as far as I know. The business was always run on a paycheck to paycheck basis.
But I seem to have gotten on a tangent that wasn’t what you asked.
Anyway, what generally happened with Direct Centering to Naexus was a general mellowing of the course. From Bayard’s point of view, I’m sure he felt that it was a redesign.
Somebody said earlier in this thread that the name changes were for tax reasons. I can’t say yes or no to that, but it’s the first I’d heard of it. If Bayard did change the name for tax reasons, he did an excellent job selling the changes as design changes, because Bayard was in love with his ability to design courses. I believe that Bayard thought it was a genuine change, though in truth, not that much was different. I’m sure that many of the lectures were altered, but I don’t really remember what was changed. To me, the essence of the course, the “letting go” the “breaks” – lol, the “platform” and the “enrollment” were all fully part of Naexus, so no matter how much the talks may have changed, the courses were quite similar as far as I could tell.
One of the great bonuses of having a "naexus" course was that old graduates could audit it, and you had courses where almost half the students were audits.
What did eventually start happening was that you had courses that ended at 7:00 PM, not 10:00 PM and you even had assistants going out to dinner at the Chinese restaurant across the street after assisting. It was much more relaxed and in my opinion, it was improved from an assisting point of view because effort was removed and a lot of the aggressiveness was replaced by friendliness.
Bayard started giving very expensive courses like Power and Rainbows (5 grand a shot), and my honest impression was that all the courses were good (I took Power, not Rainbows), but there was also, a sameness to them. Were they worth 5 grand? Probably not, but was it a good experience? I'd say, yes, I enjoyed taking many of the courses.
Over time, Bayard hit people less, and in time, he stopped sleeping around too, so on a few levels there was a sense of things getting better, but I think part of that was arrogance on my part. I wanted to believe I was doing something important, so it was easier for me to believe it was improving because that was what I wanted to see.
Other things happened, like, there was a massive full timer exodus, sometime around 86-87. Half the staff left - poof. Overnight. It was quite something.
They took their computers and a few other things, but it wasn't a big deal what they took, and the truth is, there was barely a blip in the effectiveness or attendance of the organization. DC / Naexus was overstaffed so losing half the staff just made the housing that much more comfortable. Having less management may have improved the energy, not made it less well run.
At the time of Neaxus, it felt “new” to me, but looking back it all seemed quite similar, even the expensive courses.
The only really big change happened when Naexus started to incorporate muscle testing. That started when Bayard was getting a session from a chiropractor who had taken a bunch of courses. This chiropractor suggested to Bayard that they try some muscle testing, or Kinesiology [
en.wikipedia.org] and mostly they did it for food allergies, but then one time they started asking questions about other people and using the muscle testing for answers, and, as Bayard put it "the tapped into the Akashic records [
en.wikipedia.org]
It wasn’t long after that, when it changed from Naexus and courses to Muscle Testing and when that change happened, they essentially got rid of the platform, which to me, changed the course completely. it was all about what the muscle testing told you, not as much about letting go.
Some people missed the old direct centering and Larry Kaplowitz and 2 others actually used the direct centering/Naexus model and started giving courses in Canada I think, but Bayard loved change and he loved pulling people into the fringe, so he was all into the new muscle testing thing.
It quickly went from arms/shoulder muscle to finger testing like you see on the videos, but it's the same principal.
Back in the old says, Bayard would say that every other course was damaging (the “damage” phase may have come after you both left, but not long after). For a while, bayard talked about how people were “damaged” and what “damaged them”.
Now, Bayard says everything is good. He even praises Scientology and many other organizations. He does this without much knowledge about Scientology, he's just praising them in general.
The approach behind the website is small payments from lots of people. But he also asks for donations, so he may hit a few people up more significantly. What I do know is that one of the staff members put his entire IRA into making the website business work, so I actually have some wish that they succeed, because I know that they put a lot into it out of pocket, but I also wish that there are no more people like me who spend their college fund for the “privilege” of moping Bayard’s floors and washing his windows.
The muscle testing however was radically different, because we started asking questions about stuff that happened to us in past lives, in the womb, or about decisions like “should I take this job” Some people were better at getting answers than other people and it didn’t take long for a whole new terminology to appear. You had dimensions that people were on (used like the scale it was a means of measuring somebody’s energy level). There were 144 dimensions and a variety of categories and other things like Shakra Spin or Witchyness or "switched / unswitched". It wasn’t as ominous as it might sound, it was kind of interesting and new, but it was occasionally dark or used in mean or manipulative ways, but, mostly, I think the intentions were good.
For me, at first, I had some very interesting experiences with the muscle testing, but over time, I lost interest.
What happened when you introduced muscle testing was that you had people, not just bayard, but other people, introducing new ideas (Bayard would say "discovering" stuff) - so it wasn't just Bayard anymore at this point. Two women come to mind who were very eager muscle testers, and one of them would test things for hours. At some point, Bayard said she was " addicted to testing", but a lot of this higher body stuff, shakras, etc, came from students. It didn’t all come from Bayard.
When you can ask any question and test for answers using kinesiology, you can see that the volume of information (and perhaps disinformation) grows rather quickly.
Before setting up the website, Bayard began to focus on healing medical conditions using the muscle testing, which was about the point where he lost me. I think, I was addicted to the power and thrill of discovery and the energy letting go, and that's why I stuck around so long, but the focus on medical conditions didn't interest me.
On the other stuff the "jesus" "shakras" "higher bodies", whatnot. It all came from questions and answers that came up in testing. There's no reason why Kinesiology has to go in such exotic directions, but if you believe in muscle testing, you can use it practically or, to explore past lives. That's the only explanation I have for that. I personally think a more grounded approach would work better, but I'm long since out of the picture.
It's difficult to sum up 10 years of an entire program in a handful paragraphs. Ultimately I left the muscle testing because I felt it wasn't accurate enough and it seemed too "heady", I had to think about everything, then test on what I was thinking about. It seemed like a lot of work to me.
- - -
When I took Neaxus (essentially auditing the course in a sense), I cried my eyes out and I loved it, but my experience assisting, while significantly better in 1988 and 89 than in 1985, was still lots of work, no pay and a pain in the but, and still occasionally abusive. Mostly, people were nicer about it, but it was still a mistake. I lost a couple job opportunities because of assisting agreements, and given how broke I was back then, that was pretty stupid.
I think it started around 1986 or 87 when the pressure started to let up and there was an effort to make assisting and the course nicer. The agreements were still there, but less yelling and intensity.
A key turning point was when a full timer (don’t want to give a name) left staff. She got pregnant and didn't realize it for a couple months and when it came out, nobody was sure what to do.
DC wasn’t set up to have a staffer who had a kid, and they were discussing what to do in a meeting when Bayard walked into the meeting and he said "I'll tell you want to do. Expell her". Now, reading this, it may sound overly harsh, like firing an employee for getting pregnant, but people on staff had their rent and food handled, but they were basically unpaid and they worked 60-70 hours a week. It wouldn’t have worked for the organization to keep her on staff, either for her or for the organization.
So, back to the story, she was expelled and about a week later, at a typical staff meeting over lunch I think, Bayard walked in, with one of his clever ideas and he said to everyone (just staffers there). "Who here has talked to (so and so) since she was expelled?" and the room got silent. Nobody had called her.
Then Bayard asked “who wanted to call her”, and pretty much everyone in the room said they’d wanted to call her, but felt that they shouldn’t. It was a pretty effective message to everyone on staff that they should do what they wanted and what they thought was right, not what they thought was expected of them, and from that moment, things really did start to loosen up in the organization.
Now, I don’t know if it ever got to the place be where I’d call it “good”. I personally found most of the courses enjoyable, but very expensive and I found the assisting to be a huge distraction. I also think there was a lot of manipulation and meanness that remained even after the organization made an effort to be more mellow, but, I think everyone’s experience is different.
One question I wonder about, even today, is “was there any benefit to doing the course” – I think, learning to let go was beneficial and there were certainly cool moments, but I really struggle with the question of what counts as being useful or helpful and what does not. I certainly think there was harm there. The harmful aspects like coercion, expense, wasted time, manipulation, and brainwashing – all that is pretty clear. I’m less certain about any benefit, and I’m oddly curious about what the benefits were or may have been.
Hope that wasn't too long. It's the writer in me. I can just keep typing and typing.