Authors: Adelaide Bry
est (17 page)
wears impeccably tailored clothes. And he drives a Mercedes. The way he
sums it all up is spelled out on his license plate: so WUT.
But there's nothing offhand or flip about the way he has his business run.
At this writing,
est
has existed for four-and-a-half years. It now
has offices in a dozen cities and runs training in all of these cities,
as well as in schools and in prisons. In 1975,
est
grossed around
$9,300,000 with a paid staff of about 230 and the assistance of 6,000
to 7,000 unpaid volunteers. Thus,
est
is clearly good business.
According to
est
's chief executive officer, Don Cox (Werner
is listed in the
est
brochure simply as founder),
est
wasn't founded for profit. "Technically
est
is owned by a trust
which operates it for the benefit of the public, to whom the value of
est
ultimately belongs," Don says.
Where, then, does the money go? Werner told me. "The purpose of
est
is to serve people, and to support those institutions
of society that have as their purpose to serve people." As a result,
est
's philanthropic work has included six trainings, representing
a contribution of well over $350,000; scholarships to clergy and to
recently released convicts; and donations to hospitals and pediatric
centers for work in child development.
During the last couple of years,
est
and the
est
graduates
have supported a foundation that was founded by Werner Erhard. The Foundation
makes grants for a wide range of activities in research, education,
and public communication in various disciplines in the areas of
consciousness, human potential, and the experience of the transformation
of consciousness. During this period of time, The Foundation has made
grants totaling $250,000.
An interesting aspect of the organization, which describes itself as
an educational institution, is the way it emphasizes its contributions
to education and its relationship to the educated. Werner, whose formal
education never went beyond high school, has created an advisory board
notable for the number and variety of higher degrees. In
est
's
brochure, two pages out of fifteen of text describe "
est
in
Education" and preface a listing of its programs and accomplishments with
the proud statement that over 14 percent of its graduates -- a total of
almost 11,000 -- are educators.
Despite the good works
est
is doing, a lot of people distrust it
because of its slick, big-business image. Mark Brewer summed up what
I had been hearing among some skeptical colleagues in his put-down of
est
in
Psychology Today
:
"
est
is no ordinary California cult. It is a multi-million dollar
corporation that has doubled in size each year and operates nationwide
with the efficiency of a crack brigade. It boasts a President who taught
at Harvard Business School and left the position of General Manager of
the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of California to join Werner; it has been
endorsed and even joined by prominent lawyers, doctors and psychologists;
it has trained California schoolchildren under a Federal grant, and its
Advisory Board is chaired by a former chancellor of the University of
California Medical School, San Francisco." *
* August, 1975.(I recently heard that a businessman from the Midwest who was planning
to fly to New York to take the training cancelled his trip after he read
the
Psychology Today
article. Like some others I've talked with,
he apparently would prefer to entrust his pysche to a more modest,
less successful savior.)
Others on the impressive
est
advisory board are Dr. Frank Berger,
a psychiatrist who, among other things, discovered the tranquilizer
meprobamate; the musician, John Denver; a total of eight physicians,
three of whom are faculty members of the School of Medicine, University
of California; two scientists, one an M.D. and one a Ph.D.; the dean
emeritus of the University of California School of Nursing; a judge;
an author and an editor; two attorneys; a community organizer; two
educators; a dentist; two businessmen, a social worker with a D.S.W.;
a federal government official; and a local mayor.
The meticulousness with which Werner chose
est
's Advisory Board
extends to every aspect of
est
's business. During the training,
I was struck by how every conceivable possibility had been anticipated
and prepared for. The printed materials are meticulous. The format for
communications is meticulous. Even the ways
est
staff members
dress is meticulous.
More attention to the particular can be seen in the number and kind of
communications emanating from
est
. Once you actually take the
training, your mailbox will never again be empty. I get phone calls and
monthly mailings. After I signed up for the training, I received two or
three mailings and a couple of phone calls that reminded me that I had
signed up, providing information to make certain that I got there.
No aspect of
est
's operation is left to chance or whim, least
of all the staff. Those who work for Werner are carefully chosen and
precisely trained. A San Francisco graduate who had once been invited
to join the staff, and declined, told me, "He doesn't want people at
headquarters who think they're doing him a favor. You've got to choose
to be there, for no reason other than that you choose to be there."
The trainers fall into a very special category. As Werner's emissaries
(I've heard them referred to, affectionately, as sub-gurus) the fourteen
trainers are alter egos if not quite carbon copies and yet each has an
individual personality and is his or her own person. They are rigorously
trained over a long period. I understand that the main concentration of
their apprenticeship is to learn to re-create "where Werner comes from"
(with the use of videotape among other things) and for the trainer-trainee
to get his or her own personality out of the way so the regular trainees
can "be there" with themselves. That they all have the same air is, I
suppose, a way of saying that the differences between them is irrelevant
to the training. There are three women trainers, one of whom does the
children's training. Word is that Werner is not a male chauvinist.
There are no specific standards for becoming a trainer -- no tests, no job
descriptions, no applications for this position. Werner says that "many
people come out of the training wanting to be a trainer. What I do is to
set up an obstacle course and whoever gets through it is a trainer. The
course is made up of anything they've been unwilling to give up, anything
they're attached to, anything they need in order to survive. It's a huge
sacrifice. What they really have to give up is their ego."
Trainer Randy McNamara used to travel with Werner and one of his jobs was
to prepare Werner's tea during trainings. He says there is no difference
between making tea and doing the training. Landon Carter began his job
as trainer by being custodian of the San Francisco office. He says that
he spent a lot of that time cleaning toilets; he, too, feels that doing
the training is the same as doing menial work.
I watched trainer Tony Freedley conduct a Graduate Seminar Leaders
Program one afternoon. The program gives graduates who have completed
the Guest Seminar Leaders Program an opportunity to be trained to lead
Graduate Seminars. He was putting the trainees through a mock seminar in
which, one by one, they mounted the platform. and delivered a portion
of the seminar material. Tony was tough; he demanded nothing less than
perfection from them.
I found the scene interesting. In addition to the trainees, there were
est
graduates who had come to participate and comment. (Several of
them told me they came to anything
est
did as often as possible
because the more they hung around
est
the clearer they got.) Tony
put the trainees through their paces over and over. One was told,
à la
Dale Carnegie, to project his voice. Another was
teased to lighten up his heavy approach. And another was chastised for
not knowing his material perfectly. I felt that they got a sense of what
it really is to communicate with people.
The trainers have gone through this kind of preparation -- and more.
The nine trainers whom I've seen in action have in common a kind
of transparency, an objective quality, that transcends personality,
judgments, and biases so that the only experience you get is your own
right back again.
When I mentioned this to someone who had taken the training, she disagreed
with me vehemently. "But they're always 'on,'" she said. "They're brilliant
actors -- stern and unbending sometimes, clowning and funny at others,
beautiful, polished, clever. . . ." Exactly. What you experience from
the trainers during the training is a duplication, out of their own
experiences with Werner, of the training he created. Although they have a
set format and a map of the ground to be covered and certain techniques
and material to be presented, each particular training is shaped by the
experience of the trainees in that training.
The trainer exists not as a teacher but as a catalyst, to
allow
experience. He never interprets what's happening, as would a therapist.
He gets out of your way, leaving you alone with your resistance, your
vomit, your headaches, your backaches, your hunger, thirst, or bursting
bladder. He's there to hack away at your belief system. And to do that
he has to be Dale Carnegie, John Barrymore, Jack Kennedy --
and
Werner Erhard -- all rolled into a neat super-guru package.
In return for hard work and dedication -- trainers work eighteen to twenty
hours at a clip --
est
staff members get free medical examinations,
insurance, and medical, dental, and chiropractic maintenance. And, of course,
Werner's love.
One staff member described to me the value she received from being
on staff: "I've experienced being supported by the others on staff
and accepted as being O.K. just the way I am. I've begun to experience
serving people, not coming from the position of need or help, but getting
satisfaction just from serving. I've also experienced an increased
amount of energy, getting things done that my mind says is impossible,
and most of all, an enthusiasm for living."
est
is all business and yet it is not business. The seeming
contradiction arises because the staff at
est
really wants to
be there. At staff meetings they share honestly what is on their minds
without fear of repercussions and, according to Don Cox, president of
est
, "they aim at one hundred percent efficiency all the time
and hit it frequently."
Don told me that "many high-powered executives who leave other jobs and
come to work for
est
hit bottom for a couple of months. They are
just not accustomed to people really working and really getting the job
done. What happens is they discover that they have barriers to operating
at their full potential, and that's tough to look at."
Even the decor at
est
fits in with a total attention to detail and
emphasis on beauty. The offices are elegantly simple and efficient. Don's
office, decorated in shades of beige and with a few treasured art objects,
reflects excellent and individual taste.
At the same time that he demands a total commitment, Werner also expects
his staff to remain non-attached, both to him and to
est
. "You know,"
an insider told me, "if everybody dropped out of the seminar series
that would be O.K. with him. Even if
est
were to fold that would
be all right."
Here, again, was the theme of the SO WUT license plate. It took me a while
before I
got
it and recognized it as ancient wisdom from Himalayan
caves and Japanese monasteries transplanted to the opulent and elegant
San Francisco town house from which
est
is produced and directed.
Werner Erhard is an exceedingly complex man. Those who have summarily
dismissed him as a con artist offering personal salvation to the tune of
$250 have fallen into the trap of an easy, superficial explanation. It's
an assumption based on conventional associations.
He is obviously brilliant and for some it may be more comfortable to label
him charlatan than to look at what he has to say and what he's doing.
Anyone who has experienced the training and who also has knowledge about
the mind of man, and the traditions of philosophy, theology, and psychology,
cannot fail to see how Werner has pulled them all together in a meaningful
way that people who aren't philosophers, theologians, or psychologists
can grasp.
It is easy, also, to write off what Werner is doing by seeing it merely
as the sum of its parts: some basic Zen, a little Gestalt, a dash of
Psychosynthesis, and some shrewd business management. That's like saying
Picasso's work is merely the integration of all the brush techniques
and stylistic devices ever created by all the great artists who came
before him.
This point of view fails to recognize the mark of genius. Werner's genius
becomes evident when you see that what a lot of great thinkers have been
saying for centuries is what
est
is essentially saying, too. The
difference is that
est
doesn't
say
it. Werner has developed
a way for people to
experience
truth through their own experience.
With other teachers, you read what they have to say. With Werner you
get
it.
Aunt Anna and Uncle Harry
The following is an experience I hadI went with reluctance to pay a courtesy visit to my beloved Aunt Anna and
shortly after I completed the est training.
The event was not hugely important. But
it showed me how different things could
be for me in all areas of my life.
Uncle Harry, who are eighty-three and ninety-one respectively. Although
they have been an enormous and generally benign influence in my life,
for the past year I had disliked going there because I was usually so
uncomfortable during our visits. Uncle Harry is deaf, so it's almost
impossible to talk with him. And Aunt Anna, once our opening platitudes
are over, has nothing to say.
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