July , 1987

 

 

Dear participant of The Stelle Group,

 

In January of this year, TSG mailed a newsletter to thousands of readers of my book, The Ultimate Frontier. That newsletter included many untrue and distorted statements about me. Since the U.S. Supreme Court made its decision in New York vs. Sullivan that a public figure has no legal recourse from public slander, ridicule, or false allegations, they were safe in printing whatever would put me in a bad light—such as hints of my having been mentally ill, immoral, and a misappropriator of donated funds. Not only have I not been provided an opportunity to give my side of the story to the thousands who received the newsletter, but I have been barred by a temporary court injunction, obtained by TSG Trustees, from corresponding on my own with readers of my books. In the interim, I have helped start the Builders of the Nation lodges and have been investigating the behind-the-scenes activities of the Trustees in getting me out of the picture and their efforts to silence any opposition I might present to their attempts to take over my work. I am taking this opportunity to respond with my perception of the truth to the scandal, largely manufactured against me by the Trustees, and others. ­In 1982 I requested of the Trustees that they divest The Stelle Group of its control over the community of Stelle, Illinois, and allow the residents and home owners there to undertake their own self-government rather than TSG governing the community. In response to suggestions from my Teacher, John, I asked that the Trustees concentrate instead on the tasks of education and development of technology in accordance with the corporate charter of TSG instead of diverting almost all their energy into governing the residents of Stelle. This divestiture was accomplished that same year, and TSG headquarters was moved to Dallas in preparation for moving it to Adelphi. New bylaws were drawn up by Robert Machiz and approved by the other Trustees which, if voted in by the members, provided for the disenfranchisement of all the members except Trustees and would make the Trustees a self-perpetuating board. The members were persuaded that this is what I wanted, whereas I only asked that the bylaws be revised to prevent the membership from voting out any parts of the Lemurian Philosophy when some tenet seemed too hard to live with. One of the selling points used to convince the members to accept the revised bylaws was that I was to be made a Trustee and become titular head of the board as chairman so that I could advise the board what actions the Brotherhoods wanted to institute and which then the other Trustees would carry out. I was not alarmed by the proposed changes in TSG bylaws when I was apprised of them because I believed no one would ever vote for them. To my amazement, they were passed.

It is an interesting fact the new bylaws were setup so that any three Trustees could remove me from being a Trustee and the chairman at any time. It is obvious from reading the bylaws that I was a captive figurehead under constant threat of summary expulsion if I stepped out of line. Until 1983, when the Trustees moved to Dallas, one of the more rankling aspects about the ruling clique which the residents and 7 former residents of the community of Stelle frequently reported to me was the subtle techniques used by Joanna Carnahan and Cindy Foreman to drive out people of whom they did not approve, regardless of the decisions of the Mem­bership Committee. Many of the residents found it intolerable to be pointedly kept out of the social circle of the elite clique presided over by the Carnahans. Mrs. Foreman and a select coterie of their lady friends. In a small town like Stelle, it was very painful to be excluded and have it made obvious that you didn’t measure up to the insiders’ standards and thus be unwelcome in a community that is supposed to lead its participants to spiritual advancement and the benefits of brotherly love. As head of the office of Membership, I would officially accept Resident Associates, and then the ruling clique would freeze out some of them unofficially with cruel effectiveness. I was often told as much by those who packed up and left, but I could not combat the secret gossip mill, since especially since I myself was not accepted into the elite, ruling clique. Of course, some of the young single men were oblivious as to when they were being ostracized, and many of them couldn’t have cared less if they were accepted into the inner circle, but the women were very sensitive to it.


When Malcolm Carnahan, the president, moved to Dallas, he said he wanted to earn a larger salary than he had been receiving as president of TSG, and so he took a job as a commodities broker, saying that he could easily run TSG in his spare time­s since his subordinates required little supervision—which is apparently true. I continued to take care of the day-to-day administration of TSG, as I had been doing before we moved, and the Board of Trustees made the executive decisions in its weekly meetings. All the other Trustees obtained highly-paid jobs outside TSG when they moved to Dallas. Since so little time was required to supervise the office personnel in carrying out our programs. I received no salary from TSG and didn’t ask for one. After Malcolm had been a broker about six months, he lost his job as the result of a change in federal law requiring licensure. He was then in immediate need of an income and the other Trustees elected to return Malcolm to a salaried position starting at over $30,000 per year to do what I had been doing on a volunteer basis. At that Trustee meeting, I objected to any Trustee or offi­cer being paid a salary to work for TSG, especially since the group was only just beginning to come out of the financial slump it had been in for the past year and more. My objection was overruled, and I was further told that I was to stay out of all administrative work since it would interfere with the chain of command. Malcolm told many committee members and staff personnel to not ask me questions or communicate directly with me on policy or philosophy but to work through him. The Trustees also told me to limit myself to supply­ing philosophical advice to the board since Malcolm was henceforth in charge of TSG, and he board did not consider itself advisors to me but rather that I was subordinate to the Board. I was also told that henceforth all votes taken by the Board would be unanimous, the penalty for my dissent being implied.

I had worked to get decent salaries for the full-time hourly-employees and teachers of TSG, but so little time was required to supervise them, since they were competent and conscientious, that it took Malcolm about 5 hours per week to do his job Volunteer workers in the office reported that they almost never saw Malcolm have any work at his desk or do anything other than practice Vivaxis, read financial newsletters and books, talk long-distance about commodities deals, and shoot the breeze. Yet the Trustees have voted him a wage package now costing TSG more than $42,000 a year. Between Carnahan, Machiz and Wilhelm—all of whom are Trustees—they have voted themselves wage packages that cost TSG some $104,000 a year. This is an unconscionable amount for a non-profit organization that currently receives donations of only about $170,000 per year. Carnahan and Machiz are virtually parasitical considering the lack of productive work they contribute to TSG and their lack of creativity or leadership. Most of their efforts these days seem to be devoted to lawsuits they have instituted to muzzle me. I personally brought in many tens of thousands of dollars in donations to aid the work of TSG, and I complained that almost all of it was going to salaries instead of to programs for members and students. Without my asking for it or wanting it, Malcolm insisted that I receive a salary of $24,000 so that I build a house at Adelphi and buy some new clothes and a decent used car. Malcolm argued that no one would be willing to move to the Adelphi site until lived there and there may have been some validity to that. Malcolm also thought that the founder and Chairman of TSG should appear more prosperous so as not to give the impression to the public that I didn’t have the prosperity consciousness about which we teach.

The situation between me and the other Trustees and me and the rest of the ruling clique, has been an uneasy truce for the last four years. Things came to a head in April 1986 when Robert Machiz, who became a new Trustee and a staff employee ten months earlier, threatened to resign because he didn’t feel supported. I was concerned in the first place by Malcolm hiring Robert, as a charity, because he had been fired by Federal Chicago from Stelle Industries. He certainly wasn’t needed to help Malcolm with his five-hour a week work load, but I believe Malcolm wanted Robert to keep him company during the day. It was promised to the board that Robert would devote full time to raising large sums of money and developing my new program assigned to me by the Brotherhoods called Builders of the Nation. By last April Robert had done virtually nothing on either project, and, in fact, was so depressed for the first six months that he accomplished very little. When Robert threatened to resign, I told Malcolm that I intended to accept the resignation. One week later, at a special meeting arranged to discuss Robert’s problem, the trustees accused me of sexual mis­conduct with a 27 year-old divorcee, Leslie Olson, who had become a Resident Associate 17 months earlier and now, according to the Trustees, was plan­ning to sue me and The Stelle Group for a million dollars under federal sexual harassment laws unless I was kept from ever getting involved with a female participant as I had with her. The Trustees adopted the posture that I should step down from all my positions in TSG and TAO in order to save TSG from a lawsuit which would destroy the group. At that meeting, the Trustees abolished, on the spot, my position as Chairman of Office of Membership, and shortly after that I transferred my powers as the Chairman of the Board to Malcolm; thereby, I could no longer have any possible way to terminate Robert’s employment and salary.

Miss Olson, as it turned out, didn’t have a case against TSG or me under the harassment laws, but she was certainly angry with me after being undoubtedly shocked and horrified by the impression she received from Don Morrow, Malcolm’s Vivaxis partner, that she had probably been hypnotized by me and thus seduced.

Don Morrow’s Vivaxis session with Miss Olson took place, according to witnesses, at Malcolm’s suggestion after a Vivaxis class in his home just days before I was accused. Malcolm suggested to Leslie that she bring a complaint against me to the Membership Committee. Malcolm claimed publicly, however, that he had no prior knowledge of the matter! Yet this knowledge was at the very core of the strategy to prevent me from being able to accept Robert’s threat of resignation. Encouraging Leslie to bring a complaint might seem like Malcolm was aiding her in bringing suit against TSG, but he already knew that she didn’t want to cause trouble for the group. Furthermore, Robert contacted a lawyer to learn that she couldn’t sue under the law which the Trustees told rue was being threatened against us. Unfortunately, I trusted what they told me and signed agreements they presented to me.

From that date onward, the Trustees had to come up with more and more excuses to justify their case against me in order to convince the other members of TSG and TAO. But in my analysis of their stories, they don’t hold water. The Trustees have resorted to initiating lawsuits against me and the three women who formed the Committee for Truth. The Trustees are intent upon keeping donors from being able to contact me or hear my side, and they are afraid of an open hearing on these matters. It appears that the Trustees have so far spent several tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to try to isolate me and thus preserve their easy jobs and their “truth.” They are mortgaging TSG property and spending donated funds to keep from losing their salaries. Meanwhile, they are forcing me, who has no income, to hire lawyers, as required by the courts, to respond to my being hauled into court every month or so by the Trustees. It seems to be their strategy to win by outspending me. They have more than a million dollars in TSG assets to spend in order to break me, and they have nobody to answer to; whereas I have to pay out of my own pocket, which is hard since they have withheld paying me my book royalties since last year. Meanwhile, programs that 1 had been set up to serve the public and our children have been virtually closed down. The plans we members had been long told were the desire of the Brotherhoods f or us to accomplish have languished because practically all our income goes to high salaries for execu­tives who aren’t and weren’t needed. When they got rid of me by making it clear that I was never going to be able to accomplish anything through TSG, they also got rid of TSG’s connection to the Brotherhoods.

Malcolm has a close-knit following of about twenty members in TSG, and I suspect this fostered his believing that the supporters on the outside also were his followers rather than their being attracted to my writings and tasks. The thirty or so followers in Malcolm’s flock give him a slight majority also in The Adelphi Organization, and there he proposed a resolution that anyone who does not agree with the majority should be asked to resign or be expelled. TAO still is a democratic organization with statutory protections against being expelled, as I originally set it up. The wife of one of the trustees stated openly that the Adelphi members who came here from Stelle intend to take the assets and control of TAO away from the original Texas members who invested in it and built it now that Malcolm’s party has the majority. Malcolm requested and got the majority of TAO members to vote for diversion of TAO building funds to TSG to cover some of TSG’s cash shortfall. This is the kind of per­sonal power that Malcolm has displayed to us.

Malcolm’s desire to achieve psychic powers is also revealed in his teaching and practice of Vivaxis—part of which is a means of mentally invading other people’s thoughts and physical well-being through psychic means equivalent to what can best be described as sorcery. He has also admitted to his communicating with a spirit entity by means of Vivaxis. Although he says this was only a temporary connection, it is apparent to anyone who is clair­voyant that the spirit entity has become his spirit control and infests his environment. It now seems bent on destroying him and The Stelle Group and everything that we have built by dissipating the corporation’s assets and un­dermining the group’s reputation by attacks on my name. The obnoxious fund-raising letters that have been sent to former donors is indicative of the Trustees’ conscious or unconscious intent to scuttle TSG’s part in the Great Plan of the Brotherhoods by offending potential donors, reminiscent of Rob­ert’s presiding over the dismantling of Stelle Industries’ managerial staff.

The Trustees control the contents of the Stelle Group newsletter and have TSG money to send it out to 8,000 people on their mailing list in order to present only their side of things. Vague and unsubstantiated accusations of mental problems, sexual aberration, and mishandling of funds have been printed against me, while glowing statements of the Trustees’ supposed accomplishments have been mailed to people to induce donations from them. The June 10, 1987 letter to contributors included the 1985 and 1986 unaudited financial state­ments in hopes of having the reader infer that TSG is still conducting the same programs to serve the public today in 1987. This was a snow job. Noth­ing new has been started since I left, no new technology is being developed, and the children’s school in Dallas no longer conducts regular classes. In the meantime, I hold monthly Public Meetings in Dallas and run Builders of the Nation. TSG Trustees are now trying to find some legal tricks to take over BOTN in order to profit from it like they have managed to do with everything else I have ever built and written.

 

 

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