Fools on the Hill

Big Pimpin' and Spiritual Styling Bill.

when he rollin' dey hatin'

an don't fuck wit the man's bling.

Lately I've been reading a bit of Emanuel Swedenborg.  I've been browsing through Heaven and Hell and Divine Love and Wisdom.

Hey, I don't understand all of it - I'm no religious scholar.  I can't even say I truly understand what little I read.  It's not because I am dyslexic or suffering from a mental disorder or less than well educated.  It's a damned thick set of concepts and is written in Swedenborg's elaborate and florid writing style.  So I figure if it takes me a while to figure it out, it has to take any other Average Joe a while to absorb it as well.

At the Academy for Psychic Studies, the ministerial staff and students were encouraged, assigned and browbeat to "study" the works of Swedenborg.  People walking through the Academy for Psychic Studies compound in Berkeley clutching the works of Swedenborg while wiping sweat from their brows was a daily sight.

Why they were carrying Swedenborg's books was pretty obvious - they were assigned certain chapters or passages to read and interpret.  Generally, the person who made the assignment was none other than Rev. Bill Duby himself.

Bill was famous for positioning himself as the ultimate authority on Emmanuel Swedenborg's works while telling his ministers, his students and even his wives they knew no more about Swedenborg than the family dog.  At the same time, Bill was equally infamous for boasting he was not only so insane he was drawing disability benefits, Bill frequently pointed out he had dyslexia and was a "bad student" throughout elementary and high school - leading to a lack of and a disdain for "book learning" and all forms of education as we know it.  It appears that Bill had never graduated from or attended college - not even a bible college (Bill never presented a college degree or certificate, nor could he produce the name of the bible college he was said to have attended).

A lack of education (biblical or otherwise), his own "insanity" and his claim of dyslexia never stopped Bill Duby from being the resident authority for all things Swedenborg.  Since Bill read the works of Swedenborg with the same superficiality that I have and was challenged by his own dyslexia and "insanity", I am sure he had even more understanding of the topic as i do.  Bill asserted his authority on Swedenborg by having the followers read specific sections of Swedenborg's works and no others.


Bill's reasoning for the restrictions was that Swedenborg's teachings were so powerful that only the most enlightened persons could absorb and understand them without doing serious psychic harm to their body, mind and soul.


Based on Bill's repeated assertions of his own insanity, that he often claimed he had dyslexia, that he claimed he was not well educated and that I recalled seeing bottles of powerful prescription drugs for hypertension and bipolar disorder with his name on them; I believe Bill was working very hard to restrict his followers to reading only the portions of Swedenborg's works that Bill had read.  As it turns out, those were only a few sections.  In fact, it was only a few portions of those few sections.


The ministers especially were assigned to make "translations" of those fragments of Swedenborg's works from its original meaning and context into a modern, spiritual meaning in the light of Bill Duby's psychic visions. Since Bill's psychic visions were no more than confused observations, psychotic episodes or plain old delusions that resulted from his diseased mind, no one could understand Bill's unique interpretations much less adopt them.


So it's not a surprise that only the three women who comprised his leadership team were sufficiently enlightened to understand the works of Swedenborg.  It's even less of a surprise to see that those women were Bill's two sister wives and the woman he chose as the church bishop.  The nepotism and incestuous relationship between the leadership of the Academy for Psychic Studies and the founder of the Academy just can't be ignored.


Still, those three Witches of Ellsworth were presented to us as penultimate authorities on Swedenborg - even though they read and understood even less of Swedenborg's works than Bill Duby.

So since no one could interpret Swedenborg's works as thoroughly and thoughtfully as Bill, everyone who wrote his or her own interpretation of those works was seriously demeaned and humiliated in front of the assembled congregation as an infidel, idiot, turncoat or some kind of psychic criminal.  Bill or one of his witches would routinely reject the writings from ministers, students or anyone else who was unfortunate enough to have been assigned to write a psychic translation of Swedenborg's works.  As the Academy for Psychic Studies required regular sacrifices, one or more followers were assigned a Swedenborg passage each week in preparation for public flogging and crucifixion.  That probably explains why there were people walking around with sweat dripping from their foreheads.  Rejection of your work always led to Bill and his sister wives taking a pound of flesh.  Or three.  

Just as likely as a rejection, you might find your well-constructed, thoughtful and otherwise good quality essay was re-written in a form that looked nothing like your own style or vocabulary.  Well, it probably would if you were rolling on ecstasy, LSD, too many bong hits or even one too many rum and cokes.

I and almost all of my colleagues had our writing assignments completely re-written in a form that was so foreign to our own persona, our own command of the English language and our own thoughtful and logical reasoning that it might as well have been written in a foreign language - like Aramaic or Martian.


You see, the only interpretation of Emanuel Swedenborg acceptable to Bill Duby was the interpretation only he could concoct. Any other interpretation - even those made by the scholars of the Swedenborg Society were just plain stupid.  If you were to look for the collected Duby interpretation of the works of Swedenborg, you'd find it on a single page of kindergarten-spaced paper written in crayon.


Bill's take on the various works of Emanuel Swedenborg was the same damn thing no matter what book, passage or thoughts had caught Bill's eye.  No real search for meaning and relevance in his life.  No atmosphere of beneficial debate and exploration.  No real learning about Swedenborg was provided from Bill.  


But hey, give Bill a break!  He was insane, dyslexic, a poor student and was never into this damn book-learning anyway!


That works for the Witches of Ellsworth; who have inherited Bill's legacy.  What little they learned of Swedenborg, they learned from the ultimate authority: Bill Duby himself.  No wonder they stopped giving a damn about him.  Errr, I think I mean them.  That is, the Witches give not one damn about Bill Duby nor Emanuel Swedenborg.  No matter how many times the Witches invoke the names Duby and Swedenborg, there's no affection or understanding supporting it.


I'm not surprised.  With Bill running around screaming about making money and directing the Witches to "take care of business first" while making them read random, brief sections of Swedenborg, the best you can say is that the Witches were continuing an insane legacy. More likely, they adopted that legacy only because there is money in it.

So all that made me wonder: how much of an authority on Swedenborg was Bill Duby and how qualified are his Witches and their fat bastard malingerers to carry on Bill Duby's legacy?

Well, if they are carrying on his legacy of deception, usurping the bond between you and the persons and things most dear to you, conning you out of your assets, destroying your sense of self-worth, and permanently corrupting your children and your sense of what's correct and moral then I guess they are doing a marvelous job.

As for how well they teach the essense of Swedenborg's works, well I think you can figure that out for yourself.


We were duped.  We felt like fools then and we feel more like fools now.


It's not easy to admit you got conned.  It's even tougher to write about it.  A commenter did indeed write about his or her own revelation of being cheated.  It's below.


A little set-up:  in one of my earlier posts, a commenter left a message saying she never saw anything fishy going on there.  This commenter was a massage therapist in training who was engaging in her practicum or internship at the Academy compound.  She commented that while she hated the free psychotic reading offered her, she believes that those of us who fell for the "stupid things" thrown at us by the leaders are "stupid people".  Although this massage therapist said one or two things about the leaders, she still claims she saw nothing like what we all lived through.


Apparently, this massage therapist is one of the many who say they don't believe it until they see it while they refuse to pull their head out of the sand to take a look around.


That's a common trait of people who do not understand those affected by cults - and those who don't believe cults exist.  


Like the fool on the hill (that man of a thousand voices standing perfectly still) nobody seems to notice what's going on at the Academy for Psychic Studies.


That's all gonna change:


I've asked Rick Ross to update his page on the Academy for Psychic Studies.  There is a picture of the fool on the hill there as well.  I would encourage anyone with a story to send it along to the Ross Institute.


The more we make disclosure, the more exposure of this worthless and dysfunctional organization will happen.  And like sunshine, that exposure will disinfect the world of this virus.



Below is that response to the massage therapist I told you about:


======================================================

We were fools over the long term.

We were fools rushing in for believing the love we were looking for was here. It was magic, it was fun. Then like a marriage, it began to wear off, and the honeymoon period was over. We then had to give up our independence or compromise our information for the betterment of this relationship. 

Then the period of getting along and not ruffling any feathers began. We then had brief periods of wondering why the people we so admired started to get controlling and manipulative with us, but we hoped things would get better. 
That was a long haul, and some of us had kids that we didn't want to uproot so we stuck it out. Our families wondered why we had changed and we couldn't get to any other family functions anymore. Our friends we knew, stopped calling us to get together. Of course we would make excuses for our absences and turn down of invites. 

Its a mindset that you start to absorb, the outside world doesn't matter, only the good inside these walls are of concern to us. We are asked over and over again to give up personal plans, many times on the spur of the moment and justify it in our minds, that the church needs are more important than ours.
So, the massage therapist may have seen little activity while there, but she never stuck around for the whole process. The recruiting doesn't really happen until you commit to some beginning classes or healing sessions where you then are nudged into taking more and more classes, a retreat, sometimes if they saw something in you, they would invite you for free on the retreats. 

That often led to R. Bill, Angela or Debi to take you aside and blow your mind with information you never heard about before. 

That is the catch, and the catch is your caught like a TUNA!