Access Consciousness
Access Conciousness is a alternative medicine organization that was founded in 1995 by Gary M. Douglas. It purports many non-specific benefits such as wakefulness and weight loss that can be gained through their special head massages, electromagnetic activation of chakra-like "bar points". They offer many books, video and physical classes, memberships and accessories.
| Against allopathy Alternative medicine |
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| Clinically unproven |
v - t - e |
History
Before the creation of Access Consciousness, Douglas was in the real estate business until he was sued by multiple collection agencies in 1990 including the IRS and the Department of Justice, ending in his bankruptcy in 1993.[1] After this collapse he turned to his connections with Scientology from his first wife, a Scientology recruiter, and his second wife who used to be in Scientology and left during the restructuring after L. Ron Hubbard stepped down.[1] He then exploited this rift and a growing popularity of channeling in Santa Barbara and stated in reference to someone performing a channeling session, "How come he can do that and I can't?"[1] Conveniently, he discovered his own channeling powers after the loss of his previous job and stated that he channeled both Rasputin and Extraterrestrialaliens. He used the information he said he gained through that to create Access Consciousness, which offered advancement and the ability to solve your ills if you are able to pay.[1]
Access bars
One of their main services involves targeting some of the 16 bars in your head that allegedly correspond to different parts of your life. Overall this is a recycling of previous acupressure and chakra concepts but focusing only on the head.
Under their page on access bars, they have an entire section labeled "how does it work?" Unsurprisingly, this category has absolutely no description of any scientific principles behind the procedure. Instead they compare the bars to buttons that can mute your limitations. They imply that you need to learn to be receptive for this to work, which allows for a convenient escape hatch if it doesn't work.[2]
Store
Much like Scientology, which it was partially inspired by, Access Conciousness has a large digital shop selling books, classes, memberships and even certifications for opening branches.[3] These products are of course all very expensive with their cheaper membership being 10 dollars a month for raw mp3 files of "clearings" that were originally performed over the radio with no access to previous files[4] and their more expensive "creative edge" membership costing over ten times that amount at 130 dollars a month for the ability to see a telecast,"unpredictable surprises from anywhere at any time" and "A one-hour call every month with some combination of Gary Douglas, Dr. Dain Heer, Simone Milasas and Brendon Watt." depending on who cares to do it that day.[5]