To: all the participants of The Stelle Group

 

From: Richard Kieninger

 

        A recent statement by the officialdom of The Stelle Group is that Stelle is becoming irreconcilably divided between a peripheral group of persons seeking to live a typical suburban life of mediocrity versus an inner-circle of persons who have taken the attitude of students striving for excellence. Such an idea is typical of the divisiveness visualized by the present trustees and further feeds precipitations of disunity. To my knowledge, all the members of The Stelle Group have aimed and con­tinue to aim for Egoic excellence and the success of Stelle, and this goes for most of the associates as well. I know of no participant who is seeking to destroy Stelle. The dream of the Brotherhoods’ Plan lives in the hearts of all. When the trustees’ claims of having special authority to teach and to hold power by divine intervention are ques­tioned by participants, the trustees brand them as partakers in an evil plot to destroy Stelle. The anger, scorn and guilt through which the trustees’ views are filtered causes them to lash out indiscriminately at whomever might become a potential threat to their power or be disobedient to their will. The fate of any person who makes false claims of authority and who usurps the rightful place of another seems invari­ably to be a haunting fear of just retribution. Such fear is the anti-thesis of love and cannot coexist with love. Members united in the solidarity of love, with the courage, faith and resolve which the power of love provides, can overcome the trustees’ tyrannizing love of power.

        The high-handed power ploys of the trustees are being resisted by the majority of the members with the aim of returning Stelle to a footing of karmic soundness. The Trustees still seem to feel that they are righteously justified in pursuing their disdainful contempt of civil law and common rights and that they may say or do anything if it serves to overcome what they choose to label “evil.” When a person forms the seductive conclusion that because he is trying to promote good then anyone who opposes him is evil, be on guard! I do not see any intrinsic Egoic superiority in the persons who have been allowed to undertake the trus­tees’ “advanced” schooling as compared with those who have been adjudged hostile toward the trustees. The Brotherhoods’ Citizenship Training is to be available to all members. Exclusion from the trustees’ special course, on the other hand, is a means of serving notice to members that they are being frozen out of The Stelle Group for not believing in the trustees. Two-classes of membership have thus been created by the trus­tees, and these classes obviously have nothing to do with personal worthi­ness, Egoic advancement or one’s dedication to Stelle and the Brotherhoods. The greatest potential device the trustees had for uniting the group has been used instead to split it. People came here for informa­tion. Depriving some members of the right to receive it is calculated to drive them away. Many persons have decided to accept a low profile and string along with the trustees in order to see what information they are offering. Some participants, as good employees, believe in pulling to­gether with the established power structure in order to keep things going, and some persons actually believe in the trustees’ claims of special authority—undoubtedly, these participants are all earnestly doing what they see as right and good. But can even these followers tolerate much longer what is being done to their friends and fellow participants by the trustees in order to enforce fealty? There are very real threats of dissociation, termination of employment and other retributions for non-support of the four trustees, who, for yet a little while, still hold sway over the personal destinies, fortunes and security of the general membership.

        Fear, suspicion, wariness, and anxiety have become the new way of life at Stelle. The momentary expectation of being suddenly adjudged hostile to the administrators or not growing in the right direction has made life at Stelle fraught with tension, distrust and separativeness. Loving enthusiasm has given way to frenetic, phony piousness and fawn­ing exhibitions of loyalty. At least one person who opportunistically moved up to member status by saying the right thing at the right time has since stated his contempt for his membership because of the obviously political way in which it was granted. I’m sure that after seven years of taking the trustees’ substitute course for the Brotherhoods’ Citizen­ship Training, members will regard any conferring of an “elevated status’ which is not recognized by the Brotherhoods, with just as much contempt. Many followers give lip service to support of the trustees because they are quick to recognize that there is now a power structure based on the whims of favoritism; and in order to survive and hope for a future chance to do what one came here for, one must curry favor. As a result, the group has been reduced to the level of high-school cliquishness, and the effect of all this is to promote a personality cult—where “believe on me or perish” is the unuttered command. In my many years with Gail, she has been quick to turn on anyone who crosses her. Those who she promoted to high places and who could do no wrong suddenly claimed that they could do nothing right. Personal vengeance has no place in Stelle. With no safeguards in the by-laws to check rule by fiat, there is no safety for anyone even if he is presently pro-trustee. The slightest indication of disloyalty to the trustees and their schemes can bring an almost instantaneous and total turnaround in one’s fortunes. It was because I wanted to add these safeguards upon my return in November and also change several structures after having had a chance to analyze them more clearly during my absence that I was charged by the trustees with being inconsistent and having changed in my philosophy. Indeed, I hope I always see better ways and implement them.

        Gail earned the right to be the wife of the Builder of Lemuria by the skills she had learned in past incarnations and by starting this incarnation positively. But she later became more interested in admini­stration and rule than in being my wife. While we lived on Chase Street, I saw the many evidences of her ambition to be admired as an exalted per­sonage, and I warned her against putting on regal aires and controlling people by playing the role of a saint. So she learned to better disguise these outward appearances. In years past I had let Gail try her hand at almost anything she felt she was ready to undertake and learn from because of my admiration for her, but I never expected to be rewarded by the long series of her usurpations and bold challenges which preceded my departure in April 1974. Until that Lime, Gail had been under a shield of protec­tion through me; so her seeking after control of the group was a creature of her own propensities. (I have been assured by my Teachers that because of the sensitivity of my job the Brotherhoods continuously screen out all mental influences, especially from Black Mentalists, that may be directed toward me. This is done in order to guarantee that my every thought is my own, and information is received only through conscious communication and self-directed efforts at perception. I have been allowed to request similar protection for those close to me, who verbally agree, so they could be less readily used as channels by nether entities to enter my environment.) John, who had originally spoken to me of the beautiful qualities of Gail and encouraged me to take her as my wife, now regards her as a prime threat to the Stelle phase of the Brotherhoods’ Great Plan.

        Long ago I was told by John that I must guide but not govern men, and he explained all the things I must not do (p. 197, T.U.F.) which the trustees are now doing. I founded Stelle as per instruction; but I was not told to govern it, and I do not care to. I was not avoiding responsibility when I left Stelle. My effective usefulness ceased after Gail had successfully outmaneuvered me politically in her determination to be the head of Stelle, and so I left her to work out her own karma. At last she could carry out her own ideas and become the one of whom people asked questions and advice. Nevertheless, I sought to counter­balance Gail’s possible misuse of power against the membership by putting Jim Howery in the two presidencies knowing his vigorous distaste of pushy females. He has managed to build his own strongholds in certain areas, but he surprised me by joining forces with Gail instead of their counter-checking each other. I have been criticized by my Superiors for not having provided sufficient protection for the membership against abuses of power and now I find myself assigned to the task of blocking Gail’s severed defiance of instructions which I passed along to her and the other trustees years ago from the Council of Seven. Yet, I would never have believed that these people who I had regarded as friends would ever go so far in dismantling The Stelle Group. The trustees are in error when they think that they need someone to pretend to be a representative of the Brotherhoods in order to preserve an aura of authenticity for The Stelle Group after the expelled me. They fail to perceive that people come here to prove the efficacy of a philosophy in their own lives and not to exalt a human figurehead.

        The attraction that elitism has for sane persons entices them to support a strong man who tells his followers that they are made of finer clay than some other faction. Clever politicians in the past have created out-groups upon which to heap indignities and opprobrium in order to further weld the unity of those who have been granted in-ness. Jim Howery has called upon his followers to shun the allegedly unbelieving ‘workers of evil’ and to deny them shelter or even a hello (‘receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed”); this can only undermine the solidarity and growth-engendering atmosphere of Stelle. On March 13, 1975, John, one of my Contacts with the brotherhoods, informed me that by the “totalitarian oppressiveness” of their methods the trustees have separated themselves and Stelle from the Brotherhoods, Who by comparison have cham­pioned and founded self-ruling governments through centuries of careful development of Western Civilization and the United States. This was at the root of John’s instruction to me to “begin to actively pursue exposure of the trustees and their removal from office.”

        The method used by Jim Howery to consolidate his power in Stelle Industries is a simple, tried-and-true formula defame and then fire anyone who questions your authority; build a new team in which each mem­ber owes his power to you and refer to them in heroic terms while calling the former team “incompetents”; keep bragging about even the tiniest suc­cesses with great fanfare and hide the failures; and suppress vital information so that no one knows what is going on. Jim’s tendency to estab­lish himself as a spiritual leader is following the same formula. Jim’s ability to organize the activities of people and formulate codes of be­havior is unquestioned, but his poor business decisions, sales strategies, and personnel policies have brought Stelle Industries to the brink of ruin. The mounting evidence of his illegal, immoral and fraudulent practices due to his disdain of the government, people and the other com­panies cannot be allowed to continue.

        The trustees now promote another self-deception—that they can devise a system of discipline by which a whole group of people can be marched “by the numbers”, as it were, towards Egoic advancement. Living one’s own life is at the heart of achieving Egoic advancement, not acquiring esoteric information. The trustees’ course of study is much fanfare and little meat. The lock-step methods used by the trustees are in direct contradiction to the very ground rules of The Stelle Group which attracted the trustees in the first place. In August, 1966, I wrote in an Observations: “A rigid, doctrinaire atmosphere is counter to helping a resident in Stelle overcome the prejudices, misconceptions or irrationalities which limit his grasp and complete acceptance of what the Brotherhoods have garnered in the way of truth. His freedom to question and doubt is guaranteed; for this is the only way true Egoic growth can occur” Egoic growth is a slow, on-and-off, up-and-down pursuit occupying the whole of a lifetime, and much growth occurs on an unconscious level quite opposed to driving purposefulness.

        Gail’s announcement in May, l975, that Stelle had become a Prepara­tory School (MM-066) contained a number of half truths relating to my refusal to develop lesson material for distribution outside of The Stelle Group even though I had been authorized to do so by Dr. White in 1963. Dr. White specifically enjoined me at that time from ever using the Lemurian Fellowship lessons, and he also told me that The Stelle Group is not authorized to a citizenship training program. This has been known by the trustees for many years, and there has not been a change in this instruction to date. An outline for a set of lessons had been developed by a committee early in 1969, and then a smaller committee was involved in drafting the first lesson. Gail and David dis­missed the other members of the committee with the reasoning that only one person could actually write a lesson; and Gail assumed the job. After a year and a quarter, the first lesson was ready for publication. My opinion was that the contents were so much pap that no outside student would spend ten to twenty dollars for Lesson Two after reading Lesson One. Moreover, at that point we simply had no one with the time and skill to take the job of a lesson correspondent and teacher. It was my judgment that reading more written material changed people but little, whereas a relatively brief period of working in Stelle provided demon­stratable beneficial returns. My instruction to the trustees then was that for the time being we would develop an Orientation Course for the psychological accommodation into Stelle of those who actually arrived here in order to promote their interaction with the group. During a con­tact from Dr. White in 1970, I explained my decision to not pursue devel­opment of lesson material for the reasons given above. He concurred fully with my decision.

        I believe that a reading of the material in the Lemurian Fellowship lessons would provide very little that is basically new to Stelle members beyond history and some sources of Masonic symbology. It is certainly interesting reading, and Dr. Stelle’s insights are well presented, but the new items are not the kind of stuff that could provide Egoic great­ness. The kinds of things the trustees offer in their instructions have tended to promote student conformance and regimentation instead of self-actualization. Adults and children who think independently and act spontaneously seem dangerous to the trustees. Jim, too, demands conformance rather than individualism, and his methods of publishing a proliferation of edicts, codes, policies and directives reveal his need to control men’s thoughts and actions in even the minutest detail. The trustees’ sly and devious ploys to manipulate the membership are all too remini­scent of a grey occult’s drive for control over others. (T.U.F., p. 84)

        The membership must take the reins of its own management and develop bit-by-bit a Constitution to be effectively in force before the Depres­sion. For after that there will be no state or federal laws or courts to turn to against oppressive rulers. The men will be in the Stelle militia during the Depression, and they will be under military law and punish­ment which will require special safeguards. Your public servants must serve the majority will of the group and not exert political influence. Your real leaders are the philosophers among you. The freedom of self-responsibility is a bitter gift in its seeming conflicts and hard choices, and yet it promotes clear thinking as opposed to deferring to paternal­istic guidance by others. The present trustees have proven they want total control and have even argued for their dictatorship. Elect instead men and women who will be sensitive to and be accountable to the whole group. It is a myth that the present trustees have special qualification and training to be trustees. There are many persons in The Stelle Group who are qualified to be trustees. The present trustees had advice and consultation from me whenever they needed it; and although they seemed to agree with my philosophic discussions and instructions when I was the president, I’ve since discovered that over the years they actually practiced their own personal ideas and methods while actively maneuvering The Stelle Group and Stelle Industries into paths counter my strategies. Now that the trustees have finally thrown off all my efforts to ride herd on them and oversee how they steer and use the actual doers and technicians of the group, almost any other team of new trustees can hardly help but be better.

        The end of the present trustees’ control over The Stelle Group is near at hand; so we must remember that healing the breach between members is the first order of business under the new trustees. It must be a time of forgiving and realizing that sincerity was in everything said and done by the membership. Laugh at yourselves and allow retribution against no one. The present trustees are also Egos also seeking Initiation—they just couldn’t handle power wisely. You have seen first hand the mischief that arises out of using political pressures to try to mold others to one’s personal tastes and ideas, and you have had it driven home to you that you must all remain actively on guard against tyranny from within. Remember that nether entities will always seek to subvert whomever you put into power in direct proportion to the amount of authority he has. Therefore, divide the administrative load into smaller, decentralized offices. The group is intended to be one People in the eyes of Christ. Love one another and you will survive and prosper.

 

My deepest regards to all,

 

Richard G. Kieninger

 

8-8-1975

 

 

 

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