Grabbing a hot piece of ACCESS

Grigori Efimovich Rasputin is easily one of the most fascinating characters to emerge from Russian history – or any other history, for that matter. Famously known as "The Mad Monk," he may indeed have been mad, but he was no monk, only a self-proclaimed holy man, mystic, and spiritual healer – and almost certainly a world-class charlatan. In other words, he would be perfectly at home in today’s New-Wage climate.
Rasputin did seem to possess mysterious healing powers, or at least he was able to convince some gullible people, most notably Alexandra, the last Tsaritsa of Russia, that he had such abilities. Though married, he was a notorious womanizer who may have occasionally dallied with men as well; his consorts of both genders apparently didn’t mind that he was profoundly hygiene-challenged. As Amazon reader Daniel Jolley noted when reviewing the A&E Biography DVD Rasputin: "Rasputin has…been accused at one time or another of being a spy for the Germans, evil incarnate, a hypnotist, a seducer of the Tsaritsa herself, and a whole list of other crazy things. The man is the epitome of contradiction, and a serious look at his life finds a mixture of the good and the bad – and when Rasputin was bad, he was very bad." And by most accounts, when he died, Rasputin died violently and dramatically – being in turn poisoned, shot, clubbed and then finally drowned – though in recent years doubts have been raised about the veracity of that over-the-top death scenario.

But all of those things are just details. What really matters is Rasputin’s lasting legacy. He did his part, however unwittingly, to bring an end to the Russian monarchy, and many believe that was not entirely a bad thing, although considering what replaced the monarchy, it’s not exactly a good thing either. But what really makes Rasputin a hero in my book is what he is reported to have done more than seven decades after his death.
Rasputin, rumor has it, was the conduit for a revolution – and no, not the Russian Revolution, but one infinitely more profound and beneficial for humankind.

The story goes that back in the early 1990s, a "being of light" called Novian used Rasputin to channel an "energy transformation technique" to a Santa Barbara realtor named Gary Douglas. That technique, which Douglas christened ACCESS, now has followers all over the world.
I’ll let you in on a secret: I hadn’t actually heard of ACCESS until a reader of this blog – a person who seems to have some firsthand experience with ACCESS – pointed out that something I blogged about recently, Quantum Therapy, sounded a lot like ACCESS. Wanting to be able to respond intelligently to the comment, I hopped on to the Net and soon entered the world of Accessories, as they sometimes call themselves. (I wonder if they do that with pursed lips?)

Now, as for the Rasputin/Novian origins, I’ll let you in on another secret: I can’t find any reference to either Novian or Rasputin on the ACCESS web site. For that I had to go to one of the skeptic sites, Dr. Stephen Barrett’s Quackwatch, where I found this explanation:

ACCESS (Access Energy Transformation): "Energy technique" that supposedly works with the "creative force" to free it and connect it to the "Light" ("us"). Allegedly, Novian, a "Being of Light," channeled the method to Gary Douglas through the Russian monk Grigori Efimovich Rasputin (1872?-1916). ACCESS theory posits: (a) 32 "Bars," points on the head that are a means of allowing the flow of bodily "energies"; (b) a "Soul"; (c) "Implants," electrical devices (e.g., a "False Immune System") inserted in another lifetime and attached "electrically" to the Soul's "energy"; and (d) "Entities," disembodied beings or "thought forms." Purportedly, ACCESS removes "energetic blocks" at cellular and "etheric" levels and enables one to reclaim "awareness as an eternal being."

On the Access web site we are merely told this about the origins of the teachings:

Gary describes the creation of Access as a series of revelations and insights. "What we now call Access started coming through in about July 1990 when I was a successful realtor in Santa Barbara, California," Gary explains. "I began channeling information about points on the head that act like a computer bank for all our thoughts, feelings, emotions, considerations, attitudes, decisions – anything that we decided that was important at anytime in this life or any other lifetime. I felt that maybe this could be a class for massage therapists or bodyworkers. I came home and called four friends to come to a class on energy work. That was the first Access class."

And if you Google "Novian," you will find very little of relevance except for the brief mention quoted above. But the Rasputin/Novian story had to have come from somewhere, so I am assuming that it originally came from Gary Douglas himself (who is, of course, free to refute this if he wishes). I did see a mention of the Novian/Rasputin connection on a 2001 thread on Shirley MacLaine’s discussion forum:

Access Energy Transformation tools were channeled by beings of light called Novian through a being known as Rasputin to help us access the Oneness that we truly are by using the electromagnetic component of thoughts, feelings, and emotions to clear limitations (density) at the soul level.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the person who began this thread, "Soaring Spirit," was Gary himself, or one of his minions who had a financial stake in letting people know about ACCESS. Here’s the link to that thread.*
In any case, it seems indisputable that ACCESS "started coming through" to Gary as a result of "channeling." Though I sort of wonder why a middleman would be necessary. Why didn’t "Novian" speak to Gary himself instead of going through Rasputin? Or does Rasputin, though indisputably dead these many years, possess some eternal exclusive license to speak for Novian? Or might Rasputin have just been pulling Gary’s leg from the "other side," and there’s really no Novian after all? Or is it possible that Gary was/is just a little bit of a nutter?

It really doesn’t matter for our purposes here. What matters is that enough other people believed him to enable the formation of an actual ACCESS industry that pulls in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from people all over the world, with huge concentrations of Accessories in the US and Australia.

Okay, but, like, what is it?
So what exactly is ACCESS, and what does it do, and how can it help you? According to the "About ACCESS" page on the ACCESS web site…

The mantra of ACCESS is "All of life comes to me with ease and joy and glory." This means the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s about ALL of life coming to you with Ease, Joy & Glory. If you say this ten times in the morning and ten times in the evening it will change your life.

How about that – something that’s even easier than watching The Secret seven times in a row!

But that didn’t really answer the question: What exactly is ACCESS? Well, it’s nothing to speak of…and yet it’s everything:

There is no form, no structure, no significance in Access, it’s about allowing everyone to choose for themselves, and facilitating the awareness so that everyone may see the truths and lies in what they do, be, have, create and generate. The reality is that you are energy, you are light, you are movement, you are creativity. You are not solidity. Do not create yourself as solidity.

Now, although you may not be solidity, you no doubt have a body, and ACCESS seems to be very much about bodies…and sex. Here’s what one…um…satisfied customer named Stephen has to say about the benefits of ACCESS.

I used to choose women based upon certain body parts. If she had the parts, I figured I could make the rest of it work for me. What I failed to see was that just because she looked great in the right areas, didn't automatically make her great in bed – often the opposite. I had to work so hard to make the sex great and it was all about turning her on and very little about me. A partner would often comment that she had 'the best sex of her life and what can you do for me next?' while I was left feeling strangely dissatisfied. So I did the Truth of Sex class with Gary and Dain. Wow! I realised that previously I didn't have choice, because I had 'decided' that this certain criteria equalled great sex. Not the best decision that I have ever made. Now I ask my body, "Will this person be great to have sex with?"– it's just amazing what my body knows about other bodies. How cool to have a friend like that. Now I get to enjoy ALL of those wonderful bodies, gift and receive great sex; and have lots of fun.

A match made in a two-bit chiro’s office heaven
As a matter of fact, one of the major players in ACCESS, Dain Heer, or "Dr. Dain," as he calls himself, is a chiropractor who apparently has a ton of body issues, which he is only too eager to go on and on about on his bio page. Not too long ago Dr. Dain was an unhappy soul with a struggling chiropractic practice and lots of problems with money and other stuff. He had, he says, a beautiful girlfriend, and everyone thought they were the perfect couple. But they weren’t very happy together. She was footing most of the bills, and Dain was spending his days paralyzed with fear about life in general. Some days he could barely drag himself out of bed.

Then one day he saw an ad in the paper that said, "ACCESS. All of life comes to me with ease and joy and glory. Call Shannon." Dain called the number in the ad and Shannon responded.

Shannon came to my little office and offered to do something called the "bars." She explained that she would be putting her hands on my head for about an hour and that I would feel at the very least as if I had a good massage. At the best, she said my life would be altered. "Yeah, right," I thought. "You don’t know just how much altering there is to do in my life!" From the moment she put her hands on my head, I had this quiet (and sometimes not-so-quiet) laughter going on. I lay on the table and laughed this childlike laugh for almost an hour. It was the first time in so long that I had a feeling of peace, of everything being right with the world. It was this sweet, expansive peace that I could not describe, nor did I care to. It was as close to feeling like everything was peaceful and O.K., had always been peaceful and O.K. and always would be peaceful and O.K. as I could remember.

Dain adds that he’d been a seeker all of his life; a born-again Christian when very young, he later developed more esoteric interests. At various times over the years he’d done "Tantra, Applied Kinesiology, Total Body Modification, Neuro-Emotional Technique, Soul Memory Discovery work, Reiki, Tony Robbins’s stuff, NLP, and so many other things it would make your head spin." He says that when he was in chiropractic school he was told that he was on the "lunatic fringe" of chiropractic. "And still, with all of these incredible ‘healing’ modalities, my life still sucked!" he wrote. "I still had no peace."

Shannon changed that when she did Dr. Dain’s "bars." But his life really changed when Gary Douglas himself got word of Dain and offered to "trade sessions" – and no, that’s not code for doing anything naughty. Gary agreed that he would do some ACCESS on Dain if Dain would do some chiro on Gary. After the chiro session was done, Gary jumped up and said he’d never experienced such fulfillment at the hands of a chiro. Their eyes met and they fell into each other’s arms. And the rest is history.

Okay, I made up that last bit. In no way am I implying that Gary Douglas and Dain Heer are gay lovers. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! In fact Rasputin almost certainly would approve. Lovers or not, it seems that ever since that day in his office with Gary, Dain’s life has mostly been one glorious ACCESS party.

And make no mistake about it: Dr. Dain swears by ACCESS, describing it as being "like a cosmic ‘glop’ remover, getting rid of huge chunks so that you can shine brightly as who you are."

Not only that, but ACCESS is apparently a cure-all for emotional, psychic, spiritual and even physical ills of all types.

ACCESS is a way to shift and change ANYTHING in your life that doesn't work the way you'd like it to... So. . . how does ACCESS do this? It works by asking the energy of whatever created the limitation to go back to the point of creation of that limitation and undo it at its source, whether that occurred last week or a hundred billion years ago...

Even better, it’s easy as pie.

Instead of doing all the drudgery and hard work of getting the barriers in your life to go away, we simply go back to the POINT OF CREATION of whatever caused the limitation and undo it. It makes it simply disappear – unless, of course, you want to keep the pain and suffering – that's OK too. ACCESS requires no re-living of events, no trauma and drama, and is pretty darn easy to use and to receive.

There is, you may be glad to know, more than one way to get ACCESSorized. You can schedule a private session (nudge-nudge, wink-wink) with an ACCESS practitioner over the phone or in person. Or you can attend one of many workshops offered all year round in many major cities in the US and Down Under. If the description on the ACCESS web site is any indication, these workshops seem specially designed for people who are tired of being burdened by thinking:

At the end of most workshops, the facilitator usually asks the audience if they have any thoughts or activity in their head. The participants of the class are often surprised to realize that they not only have no thoughts in their heads, they can't easily form any. From that place of no thought, they can create from infinite possibility. And that is the aim of ACCESS: to give you the freedom and the awareness AND THE TOOLS to be the infinite you.

So... basically you have to unlearn how to think, which, I would imagine, puts you just where the workshop leaders want you, especially when it comes time to sign up for another class. And ACCESS will make your pain and suffering go away, unless you want to keep them, which is also okay. (In other words, if your pain and suffering do not go away, it is because you want to keep them. Don’t blame ACCESS, and don’t expect your money back.)

Of course, you could just do nothing and get the same result. But how would you know you were doing it right?

Now, ACCESS itself may be easy and effortless, but attending ACCESS classes can be hard work if you don’t happen to be overburdened with money. Not only are many of the classes kind of pricey, but "participants are encouraged to repeat any and all classes" – which, I imagine, is the only way to prevent the return of that insidious process called "thinking." There is, however, a discount for repeating.

And to spread the joy around even more, there’s also ACCESS for business (oh, the lucky employees who get subjected to that), and even ACCESS for kids (how could a whole generation of psychobabbling tykes not make this ol’ world a better place?).

In case you’re not quite ready for a private ACCESS session or a workshop, you can always buy ACCESS stuff. Gary Douglas, Dr. Dain and others have written quite a few books and have produced some expensive CDs and DVDs as well. You can even buy ACCESS refrigerator magnets that sport such profound sentiments as "Knowing is knowing," and "You have choice. You have always had choice" (not before Roe v. Wade, we didn’t!).

Can all these people be wrong?Whether or not ACCESS actually works, its promoters seem to be very good at producing giddy responses in people. Just listen to Clem from Australia:

I went to the Conscious Living Expo on Thursday, and met some interesting people. There was a singer named Joy, as I found out later. The way she flowed on the stage was incredible! Then I discovered she was part of the Access team. Access stand was one of the most interesting stands. Mainly women, but a few blokes involved too, but I have never seen so much "life" come out of people. They are having a session on Tuesday, to which I am going. Believe me, what they have got, I want some of!!! They believe in life, and fun, and doing want you want etc. I had a "session" with them, and somewhere along the line they gave me a "demo" of energy coming from them, and one of the young chicks tried to explain lots to me as she was nearly making love to me (well draping herself all over me). Not much went in...I listened to their CD today. It is like Beyond Belief. But as I said – the energy they had was amazing. It is sort of like all the "stuff" that I always knew could happen, happening. What with Beyond Belief, The Reflection Book, and Access, I can see my whole life changing, really quickly. And, I want it to!!!

And a woman named Joy who claims to be an international performance artist wrote:

The first time I had my bars run, I knew my life would never be the same after I got off the table. After that first bars session, I finally had the courage to change everything in my life that was not working and to start living my life for me. A client of mine – 3 days after having her bars run – got married, found out she was pregnant, and miraculously had someone pay off all her debts in one fell swoop! Another client of mine had been trying to get pregnant for months. After one bars session, she found out she was pregnant 2 weeks later. She is now the proud mother of a beautiful baby boy.

Hmmm… there may be more to this "bar running" stuff than the Accessories are letting on. It could be nearly as risky as bar hopping…so caution is advised, particularly if you do not want to get pregnant.
If the testimony of a California woman named Suzy is any indication, ACCESS apparently works on animals too.

The Access hands-on processes have had quite a dynamic impact on Georgio, a Golden Retriever who was diagnosed to live for 6 months maximum with cancer even with the use of chemo therapy. Melinda, his owner, decided to go ahead with the chemo therapy, she changed his diet and had us work on Georgio several times a week to assist with the process, mainly the side effects of the chemo. Six months later Georgio had another full body check to see where he was standing with the cancer and NO CANCER could be found in his body! Melinda considers this a miracle and keeps having body processes run on him as well as his diet change. Chemo is no longer necessary.

Could it be that…umm…it was the chemo that was responsible for the fact that NO CANCER could be found in Georgio’s body? I’m just asking.

Grigori, we hardly knew ye
I have no doubt that if Rasputin were walking the Earth today, he would have legions of followers who would utterly adore him, body odor and all. He might have a phony Ph.D. or two and go by the name of Dr. Greg. Or he might choose to exploit his faux monk-ness and be Brother Greg. Heck, he’d probably be on Rhonda Byrne’s A-List, and we would see his bearded visage and piercing eyes on The Secret. Larry King would fawn over him, and Oprah would give him one of her breathless, starry-eyed endorsements, which, of course, she would then have to retract as soon as she found out he wasn’t a real monk, and/or as soon as people who claimed to have been screwed in various ways by Brother/Dr. Greg started coming forward.

But it is good to know that in some small way, Rasputin’s spirit lives on in the work of Gary Douglas and Doctor Dain, who now seem inseparable. If those two play their cards right and kiss up to Rhonda, maybe they’ll end up in one of The Sequels. Or, at the very least, they might make it into my next MystiCouples contest.

*And even if Gary and the ACCESS folks have disavowed the Rasputin connection, a little Russian history never hurt anyone. (Do check out that very slick Rasputin web site I linked to at the beginning of this post. Here’s the link again, just in case you don’t feel like scrolling all the way back up to the top.)

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