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To: All the
participants of The Stelle Group April
16, 1975
From: Richard Kieninger
The general meeting of The
Stelle Group on March 15 gave rise to many questions about why the trustees are
blocking me from both teaching philosophy and directing the course of the
group. In response to repeated requests by participants that I define the
issues at hand, I am writing this letter in an attempt to do so.
None of the matters
discussed at the last meeting were new to the trustees, for the ideas have
been aired in detail by them. As long as there has been a board of trustees,
we have worked to identify problems and their causes and then find
appropriate solutions whether they involved an individual or some part or all
of the group. The solution would be implemented through the proper officer
or agency with as little fanfare as possible in order to present a smooth
transition from one emphasis to another. Given though there may be intense
debate in trustee meetings, there might be no issues apparent to the general
membership. That such debate should spill over into consideration by all the
members is rare and at first encounter is understandably bewildering to those
to hadn’t the benefit of background information.
I believe that The Stelle
Group has grown to the point where its people must begin to be encouraged to
take more of a hand in their own community affairs and interactions. The
Stelle Group, on the other hand, is a school, and the trustees are intended
to serve me in disseminating the philosophy. The truths garnered and
preserved by the Brotherhoods are not debatable issues, but how they are to
be implemented can be a matter of choice and agreement which depends in large
measure upon the ever-maturing, aggregate readiness of the participants.
Paternalistic control by a handful of people elected out of the general
membership is not desirable or feasible for very long. Moreover, it is not
growth-engendering for a person to rely on others to make his decisions for
him. On September 26, I recommended at the meeting of the twelve that there
be some means of having the Trustees hear and be responsive to the
grass-roots sentiments and opinions initiated by the membership. This idea
was shot clout on the spot. I know from long experience that at least three
trustees are determinedly opposed to opening the door to such participation
by members on the grounds that (1) it could lead to dissipation of
trustees’ time and attention, (2) might divert members’ energy from their
work, and (3) runs the risk of political divisiveness and polarization of
opinions. Dr. White referred to politics as “the total expression of man’s
relation to man,” Political action can certainly be conducted at a positive
and beneficial level among Stelle members. When the group first was forming
there was diverse clamorings for opposing life-styles to be adopted. By
taking a strong hand then, with the agreement of the members, the trustees
guided people into trying and proving that the Lemurian way worked. Now that
we have arrived at a point where there is a base of sound people and a
tradition of proven ways these should afford the development of avenues of
self-governing. Effective voice in one’s own affairs must be granted eventually,
and it is easiest to begin now. I have discovered so much earnest concern and
unrest among members that such divisiveness can hardly continue much further
and stay within reasonable bounds. Members are presently invited to bring
their questions, suggestions and problems to the trustees rather than chatter
about things among themselves, but coming before the trustees seems
inherently a formidable prospect for some people. All too many have reported
to others that they were angrily attacked or criticized in a meeting with
trustees, and this farther discourages people to apply for an appointment to
communicate reasonable dissent. I propose to create an elected review board
with no trustees empanelled which would receive and discuss opinions and
suggestions from the members and then pass along to the trustees the
responsible complaints and the practically implementable ideas with
recommendations of how to proceed. This I envision as a transitional step
toward evolving a community forum and legislative adjunct. (see TUF, p.
220). Administrative functions would continue to reside in the board of
trustees as per Illinois law and page 135 of TUF.
I also suggested on
September 28 a rudimentary judicial function in the form of a single
ombudsman to hear complaints of unfair treatment or harsh disciplinary action
from an aggrieved party. The ombudsman would be immune to retribution for his
decisions and would act as compulsory arbitrator in certain kinds of
disputes. My suggestion was found unacceptable as it implied the possibility
of un-Lemurian unfairness in The Stelle Group and Stelle Industries
supervisors. Yet Stelle people are human and subject to errors in judgment
based on reactions to situations.
Another major area of dispute between
me and The trustees is the issue of whether information not of immediate
practical use may be taught by me or given approval for individual
investigation. The membership should have the right to learn of these things
and discuss them in order to further expand their understanding of the
Universe. It is my contention that members continue to seek information from
sources outside of Stelle and evaluate it on their own regardless of official
proscriptions that my be placed against specific areas of inquiry. An “Observations” which I submitted commented on a
form of mental perception which transcends rationality and is afforded in
waking consciousness through a repatterning of nerve interconnections in the
brain. The presentation I wrote concerning the scientific reality of this
phenomenon was determined to be unacceptable by the trustees. Indeed, the
ruling I have received from the trustees is that concepts not already covered
in The Ultimate Frontier and Observations are contradictory by
their newness and constitute revisionism. Were I to be allowed to project
insights into the very nature of the Universe, these would be regarded, at
best, as speculative and un-useful information that could well divert one’s
solving of practical problems in day-by-day work situations. Stelle must
avoid overbalanced emphasis on work and strictly practical, cut-and-dried
thinking. My experience is that today’s dreams become tomorrow’s realities,
and that man needs dreams to grow on. A balance of scientific and intuitional
approaches to information is inherent in the Brotherhoods’ concepts of the
scientist-philosopher presented in The Ultimate Frontier. This is what
has attracted many people to come here. The trustees’ almost exclusive
emphasis on practicality certainly contributes to the development of
participants into persons of high productivity and self-esteem, but it will
not necessarily foster growth in esthetic values or human-heartedness.
One of the most important
lessons Christ has set for mankind is embodied in His only Commandment—the Eleventh—“Love
ye one another.” This is the emphasis I too wish to stress, and I draw upon
the example of St. John. For those who love, work is a joy. Are we perhaps
failing to put the most important thing first so that all other things may
follow naturally? Love is at the core of universal creativity. It is a power
which, when it flows through an Ego, allows him to experience the most
pleasant and uplifting emotions. Being in Stelle has a special advantage over
the rest of our culture in that its members support the same philosophy and
believe in man’s ability to uplift himself by balancing his spiritual, mental
and practical natures. Inherent in the philosophy and in the community goal
is the development of a strong and affectionate family bond among all the
membership with genuine feelings of love for one another. Although the
Brotherhoods’ way presents a long and carefully nurtured collection of
guidelines, each person must find and pursue a path appropriate to his
personal needs. Each Ego is unique and requires a unique set of experiences
for his growth. Stelle should encourage individual development rather than
dictate absolutes. Whenever I make mention of the need for love within
Stelle, vile connotations are immediately imputed by the Trustees. What I
foresee for Stelle, and have been directed to propagate, is the kind of
interpersonal linkages which encourage growth from ego-centricity to
socio-centricity and which afford the basis for real maturity. This does not
mean I am seeking to turn Stelle into a big encounter group. It is important
to understand the type of people we presently are because of our being
immersed in Western Civilization. Several centuries ago Europeans were
agrarians who worked closely with land and were in tune with diurnal impulses
of nature. We turned from that maternal, life-giving emphasis of
nature-consciousness to materialism and ownership with the rise of the
merchant middle class followed by the industrial revolution. Emphasis on
boundaries and acquisition promoted separateness and covetousness. The
masculine, militaristic and patriarchal emphases then came to the fore.
Stelle is counterbalancing separativeness by playing down ownership and
acquisitiveness, Even love then becomes non-possessive and does not imply
sexual having. Real love is not conditional upon receiving some compensation
in return from the one loved. The trustees’ Western views on sexual mores
inevitably colors their feelings about the usefulness of close emotional ties
between large groups of people. I find that I have no common grounds of
understanding with the trustees to even embark on a rational discussion of
such matters. There has been an ardent appeal by parents for guidance on how
to have sex education presented to their children. This question cannot be
entered upon with the trustees, let alone arrive at a sensible answer. I
propose that a bi-weekly discussion between all parents and the teachers of
the school be undertaken to find a consensus or agreement acceptable to all
on what sexual guidelines shall be taught to our children even if it takes a
year of meetings. We know that change is inevitable and that changes will
continually be needed, but let us determine our direction consciously, and
let us start now.
The trustees charge that I wish changes made in order to justify my
romantic activities in the recent past. That accusation may merely cover
their own reluctance to tackle the knotty problem of sex education. Indeed,
we all are inept in the face of the task, but have we not already learned
that by trying hard we will find answers? I will be happy to guide, but it
is not for me or trustees to dictate what must eventually grow into a
Lemurian morality over the next six generations. Most tastes and preferences
in sexual matters have their inherent validity and appropriateness. No one
person should be allowed to say his way is the right way for all. To
enforce any one way would make outlaws out of the majority of people. The
touchstone-questions must always be: will an activity enhance Initiation and
be karmically sound? Let us meet with positive intent in free and open
discussion. We cannot come to live as the Lemurians did in just one
generation of trying, but we can start.
My initiation of divorce
proceedings against Gail has provided new fuel for the trustees’ promotion of
the fiction that I have gone through a severe personal crisis and have become
unhinged by it. The trustees say I am out of touch with reality as far as The
Stelle Group is concerned. And, indeed, I find it almost impossible to find
out what The trustees are working on. An accounting of what business is transpiring
or being planned in Stelle Industries is not reported to me even though I am
a director. Fortunately, managers have been telling me something of what’s
going on in their divisions, but the two top officers are very
closed-mouthed. Gail’s continual inferences while I lived with her from
November to February that I couldn’t be trusted with information convinced me
I could no longer live under her discipline. I refuse to return to a marriage
that has been a years-long political conflict and a never-ending trustee
meeting.
I stated emphatically at
The March 15 meeting that Gail worked in conjunction with David Cysewski to
lead The Stelle Group in directions I later preferred to not see it go. I
started by letting Gail and David run with their theories in working out
techniques for the Stelle School and the Orientation Program since they were
the ones actually involved with the children and Associates. I have never questioned
their sincerity to achieve to goals of the Lemurian Philosophy, and
they both have a good understanding of the information. They worked together
very closely for years beginning with our move to the Chase Street house in
Spring of 1966. Gail and David are kindred souls to found themselves so
compatible in their ideas and tastes that a positive and loving communion
naturally developed between them in the course of their long hours of working
together every day. Unfortunately, this communion became so engrossing that I
and Sandy, David’s wife, felt that there was little place left for us in Gail
and David’s emotional lives. I did not consider my masculinity threatened by
their affection for one another, and furthermore, David was my friend. Sandy,
however, fought Gail for David, and to my distress, the school became the
arena. Janet Hansard’s charges at a PARMCAMSG meeting against Gail and
David’s alleged affair eventually precipitated a large exodus from the
Group. David pointed out to the Group that to relationship between any two
people is their business alone and must not be made the subject of
speculative chatter. Although I received several notes and telephone calls
from members who thought I should be apprised of my wife’s so-called
“affair”, I do not believe there was any sexual consummation of David and
Gail’s association. The real problem I had with David’s association with Gail
is that if anyone challenged Gail, David attacked tern strongly. Issues on
which Gail and I disagreed would be taken up by David a week or so later to
change my mind. I found this continual two-against-one arrangement very
distasteful in my home and work situations. The monolithic bloc presented by
Gail and David has long delayed my efforts to direct The Stelle Group where
it must go. I believe I have allowed their views a fair trial in both the
school and in teaching Orientations. The continuing charges by parents of
harshness, unfairness, and rigidity in the school have to be dealt with
instead of being always explained away by Gail and David as merely noise
being made by down-tone participants. Turning off people in the Group rather
than adjusting the psychological techniques being used in the school is, I
believe, too prideful on the part of the architects of the system.
Gail and Jim have no faith
in the guidance I have received from the Brotherhoods, and Gail has stated
there is no Emissary assigned to teach Citizenship Training. The latest
official line they have introduced is that each member is his own emissary; and
when a person needs information, he will pick it up from the Universe, The
Brotherhoods have spent millennia sorting out the real truths from the
seductive imitations, and They would, I’m sure, disagree vigorously with that
view. Input is all too readily available from nether entities, The
trustees have now backed themselves into an interesting box by undercutting
me. When, last Summer, they began to suspect that I might be returning to the
area to monitor their activities, the trustees gradually began leaking
statements to the membership that I had changed, that I was being bugged by
lower entities, that I was in deep personal crisis, that I had strayed into
promoting false doctrines, etc. Although these pronouncements were probably
designed to discredit me as a person to keep me from challenging their
position, the credibility of the philosophy I had promulgated inevitably had
to come under question by the members. This questioning was not brought about
by my alleged actions but rather by interpretations put forth by the
trustees. But people became faced with the concern as to how far back in time
might I have started the deterioration claimed by to trustees. Could I
perhaps not also have been bugged when I wrote The Ultimate Frontier?
What about all the policies and directions I had operated on in setting up
and strengthening Stelle and which the trustees still maintain? Until a few
months ago, whenever someone challenged the trustees’ actions or decisions he
was told essentially that the trustees control and the rightness of their
decision stemmed from the line of authority and precedence handed down to
them through my direct and sole responsibility to the Brotherhoods for the
group. But they have undermined that line of authority by the very misrepresentations
they began against me last summer. Now they have no more of an inside track
than anyone else in the group to determine The philosophy and vital decisions
for all the rest of the members to follow. About the only course left them in
order to maintain their power would be to claim sometime in the future to
have inherited a direct line of responsibility from The Brotherhoods.
Although I have always been
directly accountable to Superiors, the trustees have repudiated the
restraints of any accountability except, as they say, to their own individual
consciences. They have tried to paint me as a miserable, ineffective shell of
a formerly admirable leader who has run away from insurmountable problems of
his own making. Therefore, no one would seek to follow such a poor example’s
teachings. Aside from my present discord with the trustees, I enjoy peace and
personal balance. And I feel good about my decision not let myself be
contained in intolerable situations any longer. I find I can sustain myself
positively despite the angry confrontations from the trustees even though
their letters, conduct, and language toward me has been the kind used only
with someone to has been completely written off as a person to could ever
again be considered as a friend or worked with without sneering animosity.
The severity and frequency of their threatening attacks to force members to
obey them seems to be increasing. The trustees’ power-plays, bold
refutations, and false witnessing frankly rouse my indignation, and I have to
apologize that seeing my words and real motives twisted into traps for the
membership provokes me to react emotionally. The trustees are operating
destructively in my sphere and crushing that which we put together under the
Brotherhoods’ direction with much effort over many years. They appear to be
willing to hold sway regardless of the cost to The Stelle Group. I am,
therefore, strongly and righteously opposed to the trustees’ continued
interference in the path of the Brotherhoods’ Plan. The trustees have
unleashed the backhanded weapon of using the high position of their office to
give weight to their charges of my being under the influence
of Black Mentalists. That I have come back to stand up for what I believe is
right for guiding the destiny of Stelle is a change in my ways of doing
things, and that surprised them; for in the past I have instead acceded in
order to preserve the appearance of a stabilizing unity among the leaders. I
failed to be strong and assertive when the group’s direction was being
decided upon by the encroachment of others instead of me. Now I have a
difficult task in correcting my error. It is not in me to be vindictive. I
believe that employment of the talents of the trustees can still be utilized
should they be replaced as trustees. New trustees can afford me clear
channels and good counsel by which the Philosophy can again be disseminated.
I expected Jim to provide a check and balance against Gail and David during
my absence, yet it seems apparent to me now that he himself needs to be kept
accountable to some ameliorating authority to prevent further executive
excesses against personnel.
In the past I was asked to
recommend the names of the persons who I believed would best counsel me
effectively and also serve to direct the executive functions of The Stelle
Group, and the general membership would vote to ratify those recommendations
in the biennial elections. The present trustees state that they will neither
assume responsibility for nor permit the passing along of my understanding of
the Brotherhood’s teachings; so, logically, I asked that the present trustees
step down in favor of a board which will allow resumption of the advancement
of the philosophy. To ask the membership to support a call for the trustees to
resign without prospect of who would assume those positions as new trustees
might seem too much like asking for a move from known to unknowns. I have
therefore enquired of some of the most respected, capable, fair-minded, and
independent-thinking persons in The Stelle Group if they would serve on a
board of trustees should the need arise to do so. That does not necessarily
imply that the persons to accepted my invitation seek to oust the present
trustees but rather that they will run as candidates and be willing to serve
together and take on the burdens of the office. The four persons to have
agreed to run for trustee are: Russell Hardke, Walter Cox, Kurt Raillard, and
Douglas Werth. Their grasp as individuals of the philosophy in both its
practical and spiritual aspects I believe to be sound. I herewith again call
for the resignation of all the trustees to become effective in
twenty days. And it is essential that they resign in a body; for were one to
remain he might elect himself president and appoint new replacements for the
other vacancies. Should they choose to resign, a twenty day notice for elections
can be sent out, (ten days to declare candidacy plus ten days notice and
election) and the present trustees can also declare their candidacy for that
election. If they will not resign, the membership can petition the trustees
for a referendum on removing the present trustees from office (Article II,
Sect, 6), and the trustees are obliged to have the secretary send cut ballots
for such referendum. Another method is to move at a general meeting for a
ballot to amend the By-Laws (requires a simple majority vote) so that the
regular election date would be moved to a day in May, 1975, and every
alternate year thereafter (Article III, Sect. 5).
When I left last April, 1
did not give the trustees authority over me or the right to revise and
control the teachings. The Trustees’ usurpation of the philosophical guidance
of Stelle and their intention to pass on the content of what I have to teach
has continued even though I have repeatedly and specifically protested. The
trustees have taken personal offense at proposals for change, and they seek
to block those changes by posturing as the protectors of the faith. Their
subjective tastes are not to be the arbiters of the Universe, and clinging to
the past and familiar only delays our emergence into Lemurian ideals, which
in many respects may be as different as life on another planet compared to
today’s perversions. I am here to teach about Christ, not preserve Christianity
as it is generally practiced. I have sought to respect the official
capacities of the trustees within the organization we have built; therefore,
I have submitted to the chain of command which I find over me as a member of
The Stelle Group in order to preserve the stable organizational structure of
Stelle. There is plenty of room within the guarantees and framework of the
By-Laws for me to work legally and formally to re-establish the authorized
direction which will fulfill my commission from the Brotherhoods. I am not
seeking to replace the present trustees because of administrative
malfeasance, but rather because of their opinionated obstructionism. There
are other members who concurrently have expressed their own desires for
change in the policies of The Stelle Group and Stelle Industries, and these
should not be confused with my call for new trustees.
I think Jim Howery should
be praised for his organizational ability in running Stelle Industries, Inc.,
and I intend to support his continuance as president of that corporation as
well as his functions in the Department of Building, City Planning Board,
Economic Planning and Direction Committee, and other special projects
suitable for his talents and training. Gail should continue to be in charge
of correspondence with those to write to The Stelle Group for guidance and
information, and I would seek to have her serve as a member of the
Educational Policy Review Board and be in charge of developing school
curricula and study materials. David would continue in his capacity of
overseeing bookkeeping and continue the task of writing and developing an
orientation course for newcomers. Gary would continue as general manager of
the Stelle Construction Co.
I believe it is important
that Stelle members review the issues I have presented here and judge them on
their merits and not according to who supports or opposes the ideas. Each
person should be mindful of preserving the peace and goodwill which will
always be vital to the effectual functioning of Stelle in the future.
I am more than willing to
serve The Stelle Group, and I seek to serve by teaching and guiding its
people in that part of the Great Plan which I have been charged by the
Brotherhoods to help bring into reality. I trust that one day I shall again
be free to do so effectively.
Richard Kieninger
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