Authors: Adelaide Bry
est (15 page)
is something you cannot do."
In the typed transcript of the interview tape there's a note inserted here
by my typist. She wrote, "Is this kid for real?" I laughed. Later I told
her that I felt he's not only "for real" but that he's more "for real"
than almost any other child I know.
Mason's concept of time is that it exists by agreement and that the
agreement states that time only moves forward and can't be changed.
He gave me an example of how this affects his own life. "I know that
if something bad has happened, like when the atom bomb fell on Japan,
it's not something I can care about. It's already happened and I can't
take it back. If could, I would care."
He related things of the past to things of the present with a "for instance."
"If my Dad fell off a cliff and got beat up, I would say I half cared
and half didn't." He thought about that for a minute and then added,
"I guess I would take it back if I could." There was neither guilt nor
remorse in that remark. He simply accepted that most of the time he
cared about his father and sometimes he didn't.
Mason's parents were happy to share with me their experience since his
training. They were grateful for it and spoke about their post-
est
relationship frankly and openly.
"One thing that's different now," his father told me, "is that I no longer
keep the things from him that I used to because I thought he was too young
to understand. I was totally wrong. There is nothing I can't talk about
that he wouldn't be able to get, regardless of how complex I think it is.
"One day I was in a rotten mood and he said, 'Something is going on
with you; is anything wrong?' I told him I was thinking about what had
produced my bad mood, and he got it. I didn't know it was so easy. I
thought kids didn't understand that kind of thing. After that, I stopped
hiding myself from him."
He and his wife had sent Mason to the training because it had changed
their own lives dramatically and they wanted him to have that experience.
But they weren't quite prepared for the results.
"On the last day of Mason's training, when we went to pick him up,
I naturally asked him what he got out of the training." This, from his
mother. "He just looked at me calmly and said, 'I don't really need you.'
"I felt my head spin and my stomach turn over. I had learned long ago (a
belief) that a child
shouldn't
feel that way about a parent. But
now after
est
, I see that he may not need me or sometimes even want
me. And that sometimes I don't need or want him. It is simply truth. But
at that moment, I still couldn't handle my own child saying this to me.
"He could see how hurt I was. I turned my face away to hide my tears. When
he went to bed that evening and I went in to kiss him good night, he was
very loving and he said to me 'You're being the victim, Mom.'
"And suddenly I got that he was able to say this to me because he knew
that I loved him. And he knew that I knew that he loved me. And that
sometimes we both need each other very much and love each other and want
each other. And sometimes we don't. And that he knew that I was being
a sucker for plugging in to what he told me."
These parents were in touch with their emotional rackets, their games,
their impositions on their child. He, in turn, saw not only Through their
rackets but also through his own. With that clarity there was space for
all of them to be together. And to love each other.
If we multiply this kind of relationship many times over, we will get an
entirely different notion of what being a family is all about. Once we can
detach ourselves from the belief that children must love and need their
parents all the time, and that parents must love and want their children
always; once we accept that all feelings and experiences between parents
and children are acceptable, then we can free ourselves and our children
from guilt and dishonesty and allow ourselves simply to be together.
We can really love each other only if we can let each other be who we
really are. I got that at
est
.
Janet
Janet at forty-eight is a beautiful bundleTalking about my
of energy. She is divorced and has five
children ranging in age from fifteen to
twenty-seven.
est
experience is like trying to share how I felt
about my first trip to Rome with someone who never left Kansas. Or like
telling how it was to have a baby.
I can't believe it. I can't believe the way I feel now. Just before
my divorce in 1965, I had a nervous breakdown and I've been seeing
a psychiatrist ever since then. He wasn't in favor of my going
to
est
. He thinks my problems center around anger and he
felt
est
might be a shocking way for me to get through to
my anger. "Shocking" is his word. If I got those feelings out of
my system, he told me, and if anything bad happened, it could cause
another breakdown. He added that if the breakdown did occur, it wouldn't
necessarily be unhealthy.*
* est has a screening policy whereby anyone who has beenI weighed what he said and decided to do it. I felt that if I had another
hospitalized for psychiatric care or a mental disorder, or is in
therapy now and not "winning," or who has been in therapy within six
months of taking the training and not "winning," is recommended not
to take the training. If the person does not accept est's
recommendation, the enrollee must have a letter on professional
letterhead from his therapist. The letter must state the following:
(1) that the therapist approves of the person's taking the training;
(2) that the therapist will be available to the enrollee during the
training; (3) that the therapist will be available to the enrollee
after the training.
breakdown because of feelings I couldn't express, I would benefit from
it. I was going against him but it was my decision. I just said to myself,
"O.K., my mother and father will freak out if I lose control, but my
children are strong enough to take it. I'm doing it, anyway." Now I'm
glad I did.
The first day of the training was just dumb. I called the friend who
had recommended it to me and he said that at the end of his first day
he wanted to call the attorney general because it was such a rip-off.
On the second day I went back into my past and the feelings spilled out.
I saw and felt myself as a child of about five. I felt unbelievable pain.
I felt a ball in my left side as though I had just been hit. Then I saw
myself as an uncertain, goody-goody little girl torn between my mother
and father. I had never gotten anything like this kind of experience
in therapy.
Now, since
est
, I can sit in my psychiatrist's office and be
conscious of my body. When I get physical sensations, I know that what
I'm saying is important. I might get a sharp pain in my stomach and,
wow, I experience my anger. That's the anger I locked up in my body and
never told my mother and father about.
Now I'm beginning to question what my psychiatrist is doing. I'm getting
dissatisfied with him because I've gotten so much more out of
est
.
I've been feeling a lot more. A lot of my pain about my breakdown and other
things is coming out. And I can get angry at the children. The most important
thing is that I'm not afraid now to get angry, right or wrong.
I only shared once in the training. I told people that my breakdown was
a copout, that it was my way of escaping so I would have the support of
a doctor. I said, maybe I didn't need that breakdown. Maybe I could have
stayed strong and still gotten my divorce.
8
Werner and His Business
"I know that you know that I love you.There's a photograph of Werner Erhard that appeared in print which makes
What I want you to know is that I know you
love me."
-- Werner Erhard
him look larger than life. I had bought this image. When I finally got
to meet him I was surprised to see that he is only six feet tall.
Life-size. It was a little like finding out about Santa Claus;
I was both disappointed and relieved.
Unquestionably one of the most charismatic of contemporary heroes -- or
anti-heroes, depending on which side you're coming from -- Werner has in
just a few years in the limelight become the focus of massive adoration,
speculation, criticism, support, and controversy. Everything he has done
and does is a strong statement. And a lot of it seems contradictory.
Witness:
On the one hand, he's the most influential person in the self-improvement
field today; he's been invited to conduct grand rounds at the Langley Porter
Neuro-psychiatric Institute and he's spoken at such distinguished places
as the University of California Medical Center, Stanford University, and
the University of Munich. On the other hand, in a field where graduate
degrees are an essential passport to success, his formal education ended
with high school.
On the one hand, his main theme is self-responsibility. On the other,
he walked out on a wife and four children, sixteen years ago, to do his
own thing.
On the one hand, he is regarded as the brilliant mastermind and director
of
est
. On the other, he is absolutely dedicated to minutiae
(how to clean toilets; how to arrange chairs for a training).
On the one hand, he was born with a Jewish name (used until his
mid-twenties). On the other, he adopted a name that sounds as though it
comes direct from the Weimar Republic.
On the one hand, he appears the ultimate realist; to the marital status
line on
est
's application form, he added LWS -- living with someone.
On the other, he appears a hopeless romantic; he expects forty million
Americans to take the
est
training.
He makes terrific copy. He's a sinner and a saint, a super-salesman and
a mystic, a preacher of pleasure and a workhorse, driven and peaceful,
loving and demanding, and according to those who work closely with him,
both sexy and neuter. He neither defends those parts of his life that
don't fit into the American superman image nor does he hype his "good
guy" stuff.
From my point of view, the main thing you have to
get
about Werner
is that he's dramatically changing people's lives. "It's possible for you
to walk out of here turned around 180 degrees," the trainers tell you,
and it's true. It's tempting to knock who Werner is because of what he's
doing, which is giving people what they want and making lots of money
at it. It's also tempting to see him as a laugh on the psychological
establishment with its rats and computers and unintelligible papers. As
far as I'm concerned, that's not what Werner's about. He's a brilliant
and effective superproduct of our times. And his work, I believe, is
making a difference.
Werner Erhard was born Jack Rosenberg in Philadelphia on September 5, 1935.
When he was five his family moved to Bala Cynwyd, my own Philadelphia suburb
-- a comfortable middle- and upper-middle-class environment with old Colonial
houses and tree-lined streets. He spent one year at the same high school,
Lower Merion, that my two children attended. He then transferred to another,
from which he graduated in 1952. He may have hung out at the same local
delicatessen which attracted my own teen-agers on spring afternoons.
I've had a chance to observe his parents on two occasions, and my
impression is that they are gracious, successful, and affluent people
with a strong and positive sense of themselves.
After a thirteen-year period during which he had no contact with any of
his family, Werner now has a close and loving relationship with all of
them. Including his ex-wife, who has taken the
est
training.
I was extremely moved on one occasion when he shared his feelings about
his parents. His mirror-deep blue eyes unwavering, he thanked his mother
for teaching him about commitment (although, obviously, that seed took
a long time to sprout), and he thanked his father for teaching him to
be open and to love.
From high school, Werner had a quick succession of jobs: working in an
employment agency; lugging beef in a meatpacking plant; and helping out
in his father's restaurant.
He learned construction estimating and became a construction supervisor.
For a short time, he worked in the automobile business as a salesman
and as a sales manager. During this period, he also managed a business
which sold medium-duty industrial equipment.
Shortly after he finished high school, he married his high school girl
friend, Pat, and they subsequently had four children: Clare, Lynn, Jack,
and Debbie.
In 1959, when he was twenty-four, he left his family "to avoid the
responsibilities I had," he says honestly. He took off with Ellen, who
later became his second wife and with whom he has had three children --
Celeste, Adair, and St. John.
I thought of all this when I heard him talk recently about doing right
and wrong things in life. "We make mistakes in life. When something is
wrong, you have to acknowledge it's wrong. You also have to allow others
to be wrong. Otherwise, you get stuck in being right." And later that
same evening, "The soap opera you call your life is just a melodrama,
evidence of the instant story you call your life."
When Jack left Philadelphia, he headed for St. Louis, the first stop in a
long and arduous odyssey. En route, to avoid being traced by his family he
changed his name. He read an article about physicist Werner Heisenberg and
Ludwig Erhard, the German finance minister (later chancellor) and took his
new name from a combination of theirs. He later said that "I had a very
determined mother and an uncle who was a captain in the police department,
so I wanted a name as far from John Paul Rosenberg as I could get."
(There has been a lot of flak about Werner's name change and the presumed
disavowal of his Jewish heritage. He has never publicly denied this,
perhaps out of respect for his father's family. In fact, he was baptized
John Paul in the Episcopal church. His mother, Dorothy, is Episcopalian,
and his father, Joe, was a Jew who converted to Christianity around the
time of Werner's birth.)
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