Authors: Adelaide Bry
est (6 page)
"Belief is a structure which can contain very little information in terms
of making it useful in one's consciousness or well-being," says Werner.
The alternative to belief is what the yogis call witness and what
est
calls observation. "Observation," Werner says, "has nothing to do with
my senses, perceptions, or my belief system. It has to do with my direct
experience. . . . Don Juan gives it another name: stopping the world."
When we're convinced that someone is wrong we're often quarreling with
his observations because they don't mesh with our beliefs. Everyone
has his own experience of anything and everything, and, in addition,
his own way of conceptualizing.
I feel that it's because formal religion has become so removed from
our own personal experience that our churches are empty today. "God
believed," I've heard Werner say, "is a lie." A beautiful young woman
from New Orleans who works as a hospital chaplain told me her faith was
deeply reinforced after the training.
"I had given up the church in which I had been raised," she shared,
"because there was a lot of talk about God there that didn't mean anything
to me. I was studying primitive religions; they were much more involved
with feelings. Now, since
est
, I've had the most incredible sense
of mission -- and of God. I am back in divinity school. And I am going
to church again.
est
brought me back to my religious feelings in
a new and deeper way."
Werner says that "life could be considered to be three feet long, and the
first two feet, eleven and three-quarter inches are about the material
aspects of life, (e.g., food, clothing, and shelter) and what we call the
psychological needs. You need someone to love you and probably somebody
to love. You need self-esteem, recognition, the respect of others.
"After people become sophisticated enough in their development to fill
their needs, to begin to look at what it means to fill one's needs,
and even to begin to realize that there's no true satisfaction in merely
filling one's needs, then they begin to look for what's beyond that. And
that is the last quarter inch -- that's what consciousness is about for
me -- the last quarter inch."
It is this last quarter.inch that this book is all about. And to
get
it, you're going to have to suspend some of your beliefs. "
est
talk" may sound like double-talk to non-
est
graduates.
If some of what's in the pages ahead seems like non sequiturs, or,
worse, crazy, I suggest that you check out your belief systems. If you
can separate yourself from what you're
used
to thinking, then
you will see the
est
language as simply an experimental way of
putting words together and the
est
training as a way to lead you
to an experience of yourself.
Jim
est
.
I took the training after a close friend who was miserable most of his life
went through it. Never had I seen such a drastic change in anyone in such
a short time.
The point was that his problems were the same but the way he dealt
with them was totally different. I hesitated about going, though,
because it seemed too pat, too easy, a panacea, the kind of thing that
I had always guarded myself against -- that some one person had all the
answers. Fortunately I made up my mind to do it before I went to the guest
seminar. The hard sell, the push, the broad grin, too much conviviality --
everything I detest about organized things -- were all there.
When I went into
est
, I saw that even though my life was generally
on an even keel, in close personal relationships I was messed up. When I
got too close, it didn't work. The easiest relationship for me was playing
big brother -- give and give and give, hoping I might get. I used to say
I was a perfect Pisces; I was hypersensitive to other people's feelings
and I became whoever they wanted me to be. I was a mask. I'm so good at
this sort of thing that I once sat through a friend's suicide attempt
to prove to myself what a good guy I was.
During the training, I hated sitting still. But when we got to the
Danger Process I began to open up. The tears kept rolling down while
the trainer stood in front of me telling me to let it out, to experience
it. He told the group, "Look at this big man and see how he is willing
to expose himself." To me, what he was saying was that the football-hero
façade that I had always carried with me was just junk.
Frankly I was relieved when the training was over. There was a lot of
physical and emotional stress.
After the training, when friends would call for my usual dose of sympathy,
I found that I could no longer be that remote, level-headed, astute
advice-giver I had always been.
The week after the training, on a business trip, I found I could allow
an angry client his space to be, which gave me a new freedom to define
mine. I simply don't fall back on my old rote responses. I get less
uptight around people who I feel want something from me. And, since
I've stopped giving clients anything and everything they want, I get
less pressure from them.
One night this week I had another realization from the seed planted in
the training. I was late for a date -- my life is pretty pressured --
and rushing to pick her up I suddenly became aware of the tension pulsing
through my body, the shallowness of my breathing, how my fists were
clenched, how my body was hunched over the wheel of the car. I wouldn't
have noticed it before and I certainly wouldn't have connected it with
my feelings.
As soon as I started looking at it -- my posture, muscles, eyes --
it changed. By the time I got to my date's house, it was all gone.
At another time I would have walked in and most likely picked a fight,
or hated the evening.
My parents are special to me now, and I'm going to tell them that. I've
come to realize that love expands your space. Now I can share with them;
I can tell them about my fears and what's gone wrong in my life. They've
known nothing important about me since I left home at eighteen.
A friend last night shared with me that he has a new record, new dope, new
brandy; that's his way. I didn't respond in my old "Gee, that's wonderful"
way. By the end of the evening we were really communicating -- not about
"things." I don't proselytize about
est
. I don't especially like
the clannishness of the volunteers, the recruiting, the mass hysteria of
the guest seminars. I know there are a lot of people for whom
est
is a complete way of life. l don't support that. I don't recommend that
people go. And it's changed my life.
4
The Training
the room. His face contorted, his eyes red, he pleaded to be allowed to go
to the bathroom. The trainer simply stared at him until, after a while,
the young man shut up and sat down. No one had physically barred his
way. Nor had anyone told him that he couldn't leave. It was his choice
to remain in the room.
About ten minutes later he raised his hand for a microphone. "I want
you to know," he announced, "that I just peed in my pants." In a crisp,
staccato voice, he added: "And it really doesn't matter." Two hundred
and forty-nine people cheered and applauded.
It was at that moment that I knew I would make it through the training.
And
get
it.
What follows is my experience of the
est
training based on my own
personal experience and the experience of those who have shared with me.*
The training unofficially begins with the "pre-training," on Monday
evening preceding the first weekend, which is recommended but not required.
The pre-training, in effect, revs you up for the training. It presents
the ground rules for the training, gets you used to some of what's to
come, and leaves you eager for more. I loved it. I left it smiling --
and with homework. Neither of which, incidentally, prepared me for what
I was to experience in the training itself.
The night of the pre-training I was back in a hotel ballroom again, tins
one at the New York Statler Hilton. (In all of my
est
experience
so far I must have been in more than two dozen hotel ballrooms, draped
and carpeted in the usual shades of gold, crimson, or blue and lit by
massive chandeliers. The new location for enlightenment, I mused.) Smiling
faces led me from the lobby to the elevator to the ballroom, whereupon
more smiling faces checked me in, tagged me, and directed me to sit
"in the front-most, center-most chair."
While I smoked my last cigarette for the evening I looked over the group
I would be holed up with for the next two weekends. They might have been
an intermission crowd at a Lincoln Center ballet performance. Most were
well-dressed in business clothes, and a few were carefully casual in
fashionable jean outfits. All appeared to be serious, thoughtful, and
intelligent. They ranged in age from late teens to (I later learned)
mid-seventies. Some appeared nervous, some not, the rest so well masked
that it was impossible to tell.
Right off, after we were all seated, the pre-training seminar leader (the
trainer is there only for the weekends and the post-training) announced
that whatever he would tell us was told to us because "it works." "Werner
only uses what works," he explained. And, later, "Whatever is in the
training is there because Werner found out that's what works."
This was to be the first of many times that I would hear someone quote
Werner as though he were God. "Werner says . . ." is the final word at
est
, from the trainers down to the pre-trainers.
"Now," the leader continued, "I'll tell you who you will meet at
est
." I immediately had visions of a string of celebrities to
come to add their testimonials to the dozens I had already heard.
The people we were going to meet, he said, were ourselves. First, we were
told, we would see our social selves, the person each of us thinks he is.
This is the self that's familiar and comfortable. And automatic. Its
favorite line goes something like, "Don't call me on my act and I won't
call you on yours." Next we would meet the person we're afraid to find
out we are that "terrible" person we try to hide with our social selves
-- what is hidden under the mask we label "personality." And finally
-- he grinned -- we would meet who we really are. He looked us over,
knowingly. In so doing, he acknowledged that we hadn't the vaguest idea
of what he was talking about. But that we eventually would.
We then went on to the agreements, which are a critical part of the
est
experience. The agreements are not what we can and can't do
throughout the training. Rather, they're what we agree we can and can't
do throughout the training. There is no policing of the rules, nor is
there punishment in the traditional sense of the word for breaking
them. "Life works to the degree to which you keep your agreements,"
the leader told us.
The ground rules are read seriously from a loose-leaf binder. Always.
Lest there be any question that this is serious business, we are told
right away in a loud and stern voice that there would be no talking.
All fidgeting stopped. All eyes were front center on the man we later
dubbed among ourselves "the mortician." We listened to the words for
the first time. It was like listening to a death sentence. What price
enlightenment? I wondered as I took it all in.
For a start, we, as trainees, are to agree not to take alcohol, marijuana,
sleeping pills, uppers, downers, or anything else that is not medication
a doctor says we have to take. That includes tranquilizers and all the
other prescription mood drugs. We may take coffee, tea, cigarettes. And
birth-control pills. The last gets a laugh from everyone except the
poker-faced leader.
We also agree not to have a timepiece in the training room; to go to the
bathroom only at bathroom breaks; not to eat at any time other than the
single meal break; to be there on time and stay until the trainer decides
we've gotten what we need to get for that day. On and on. I notice that
my shoulders are hunched, my hands clenched. We go on making agreements.
We will stay seated unless called on. We will not sit with anyone we knew
before the training. We will not talk unless we're sharing, in which case
we will talk into a microphone (which we're taught in detail how to use).
We agree to wear our name tags at all times when we're in the room and
always keep them visible (people with long hair are to pin them in the
center of their chests). We agree not to move our chairs from their
positions unless instructed to do so. . . .
of making it useful in one's consciousness or well-being," says Werner.
The alternative to belief is what the yogis call witness and what
est
calls observation. "Observation," Werner says, "has nothing to do with
my senses, perceptions, or my belief system. It has to do with my direct
experience. . . . Don Juan gives it another name: stopping the world."
When we're convinced that someone is wrong we're often quarreling with
his observations because they don't mesh with our beliefs. Everyone
has his own experience of anything and everything, and, in addition,
his own way of conceptualizing.
I feel that it's because formal religion has become so removed from
our own personal experience that our churches are empty today. "God
believed," I've heard Werner say, "is a lie." A beautiful young woman
from New Orleans who works as a hospital chaplain told me her faith was
deeply reinforced after the training.
"I had given up the church in which I had been raised," she shared,
"because there was a lot of talk about God there that didn't mean anything
to me. I was studying primitive religions; they were much more involved
with feelings. Now, since
est
, I've had the most incredible sense
of mission -- and of God. I am back in divinity school. And I am going
to church again.
est
brought me back to my religious feelings in
a new and deeper way."
Werner says that "life could be considered to be three feet long, and the
first two feet, eleven and three-quarter inches are about the material
aspects of life, (e.g., food, clothing, and shelter) and what we call the
psychological needs. You need someone to love you and probably somebody
to love. You need self-esteem, recognition, the respect of others.
"After people become sophisticated enough in their development to fill
their needs, to begin to look at what it means to fill one's needs,
and even to begin to realize that there's no true satisfaction in merely
filling one's needs, then they begin to look for what's beyond that. And
that is the last quarter inch -- that's what consciousness is about for
me -- the last quarter inch."
It is this last quarter.inch that this book is all about. And to
get
it, you're going to have to suspend some of your beliefs. "
est
talk" may sound like double-talk to non-
est
graduates.
If some of what's in the pages ahead seems like non sequiturs, or,
worse, crazy, I suggest that you check out your belief systems. If you
can separate yourself from what you're
used
to thinking, then
you will see the
est
language as simply an experimental way of
putting words together and the
est
training as a way to lead you
to an experience of yourself.
Jim
Jim, thirty-four, is an attractive and successfulI had thought I'd come a long way from Idaho. Until I took
advertising executive who commutes between New York
and Los Angeles. He was raised in Idaho, where both
of his parents were schoolteachers.
est
.
I took the training after a close friend who was miserable most of his life
went through it. Never had I seen such a drastic change in anyone in such
a short time.
The point was that his problems were the same but the way he dealt
with them was totally different. I hesitated about going, though,
because it seemed too pat, too easy, a panacea, the kind of thing that
I had always guarded myself against -- that some one person had all the
answers. Fortunately I made up my mind to do it before I went to the guest
seminar. The hard sell, the push, the broad grin, too much conviviality --
everything I detest about organized things -- were all there.
When I went into
est
, I saw that even though my life was generally
on an even keel, in close personal relationships I was messed up. When I
got too close, it didn't work. The easiest relationship for me was playing
big brother -- give and give and give, hoping I might get. I used to say
I was a perfect Pisces; I was hypersensitive to other people's feelings
and I became whoever they wanted me to be. I was a mask. I'm so good at
this sort of thing that I once sat through a friend's suicide attempt
to prove to myself what a good guy I was.
During the training, I hated sitting still. But when we got to the
Danger Process I began to open up. The tears kept rolling down while
the trainer stood in front of me telling me to let it out, to experience
it. He told the group, "Look at this big man and see how he is willing
to expose himself." To me, what he was saying was that the football-hero
façade that I had always carried with me was just junk.
Frankly I was relieved when the training was over. There was a lot of
physical and emotional stress.
After the training, when friends would call for my usual dose of sympathy,
I found that I could no longer be that remote, level-headed, astute
advice-giver I had always been.
The week after the training, on a business trip, I found I could allow
an angry client his space to be, which gave me a new freedom to define
mine. I simply don't fall back on my old rote responses. I get less
uptight around people who I feel want something from me. And, since
I've stopped giving clients anything and everything they want, I get
less pressure from them.
One night this week I had another realization from the seed planted in
the training. I was late for a date -- my life is pretty pressured --
and rushing to pick her up I suddenly became aware of the tension pulsing
through my body, the shallowness of my breathing, how my fists were
clenched, how my body was hunched over the wheel of the car. I wouldn't
have noticed it before and I certainly wouldn't have connected it with
my feelings.
As soon as I started looking at it -- my posture, muscles, eyes --
it changed. By the time I got to my date's house, it was all gone.
At another time I would have walked in and most likely picked a fight,
or hated the evening.
My parents are special to me now, and I'm going to tell them that. I've
come to realize that love expands your space. Now I can share with them;
I can tell them about my fears and what's gone wrong in my life. They've
known nothing important about me since I left home at eighteen.
A friend last night shared with me that he has a new record, new dope, new
brandy; that's his way. I didn't respond in my old "Gee, that's wonderful"
way. By the end of the evening we were really communicating -- not about
"things." I don't proselytize about
est
. I don't especially like
the clannishness of the volunteers, the recruiting, the mass hysteria of
the guest seminars. I know there are a lot of people for whom
est
is a complete way of life. l don't support that. I don't recommend that
people go. And it's changed my life.
4
The Training
"Follow the instructions and take what you get."All eyes were focused on the handsome young man standing at the back of
-- est koan
"Life's . . . a tale told by an idiot, full of
sound and fury, signifying nothing."
-- William Shakespeare
the room. His face contorted, his eyes red, he pleaded to be allowed to go
to the bathroom. The trainer simply stared at him until, after a while,
the young man shut up and sat down. No one had physically barred his
way. Nor had anyone told him that he couldn't leave. It was his choice
to remain in the room.
About ten minutes later he raised his hand for a microphone. "I want
you to know," he announced, "that I just peed in my pants." In a crisp,
staccato voice, he added: "And it really doesn't matter." Two hundred
and forty-nine people cheered and applauded.
It was at that moment that I knew I would make it through the training.
And
get
it.
What follows is my experience of the
est
training based on my own
personal experience and the experience of those who have shared with me.*
* Everyone who now takes the est training Is asked to sign anBEFORE
agreement not to divulge the material of the training, including,
but not limited to, the names of the participants and their remarks.
An est trainer clarified the nature of my commitment. I could
share my experience of est, which is exactly what I had
set out to do. I regard this book as an agreement kept, and
its point of view is strictly my own. I would like to add here that my
description of the training is a compilation of several experiences.
I want to say also that a few of my est friends feel that
knowing about the training in advance has a negative effect an the
experience. I share that. And I disagree with It. A friend of mine
who took it after a friend of his had given him a day-by-day rundown
of what happens told me that on the first day of his own training
he kept damning the informant for "spoiling the training for me.
I knew what was coming next, and I felt gypped." By the end of the
second day he got that he was spoiling his own experience.
The training turned out to be an incredible breakthrough for him.
I believe that knowing about the training can change your experience
of it only If you choose to have your experience changed by it.
The training unofficially begins with the "pre-training," on Monday
evening preceding the first weekend, which is recommended but not required.
The pre-training, in effect, revs you up for the training. It presents
the ground rules for the training, gets you used to some of what's to
come, and leaves you eager for more. I loved it. I left it smiling --
and with homework. Neither of which, incidentally, prepared me for what
I was to experience in the training itself.
The night of the pre-training I was back in a hotel ballroom again, tins
one at the New York Statler Hilton. (In all of my
est
experience
so far I must have been in more than two dozen hotel ballrooms, draped
and carpeted in the usual shades of gold, crimson, or blue and lit by
massive chandeliers. The new location for enlightenment, I mused.) Smiling
faces led me from the lobby to the elevator to the ballroom, whereupon
more smiling faces checked me in, tagged me, and directed me to sit
"in the front-most, center-most chair."
While I smoked my last cigarette for the evening I looked over the group
I would be holed up with for the next two weekends. They might have been
an intermission crowd at a Lincoln Center ballet performance. Most were
well-dressed in business clothes, and a few were carefully casual in
fashionable jean outfits. All appeared to be serious, thoughtful, and
intelligent. They ranged in age from late teens to (I later learned)
mid-seventies. Some appeared nervous, some not, the rest so well masked
that it was impossible to tell.
Right off, after we were all seated, the pre-training seminar leader (the
trainer is there only for the weekends and the post-training) announced
that whatever he would tell us was told to us because "it works." "Werner
only uses what works," he explained. And, later, "Whatever is in the
training is there because Werner found out that's what works."
This was to be the first of many times that I would hear someone quote
Werner as though he were God. "Werner says . . ." is the final word at
est
, from the trainers down to the pre-trainers.
"Now," the leader continued, "I'll tell you who you will meet at
est
." I immediately had visions of a string of celebrities to
come to add their testimonials to the dozens I had already heard.
The people we were going to meet, he said, were ourselves. First, we were
told, we would see our social selves, the person each of us thinks he is.
This is the self that's familiar and comfortable. And automatic. Its
favorite line goes something like, "Don't call me on my act and I won't
call you on yours." Next we would meet the person we're afraid to find
out we are that "terrible" person we try to hide with our social selves
-- what is hidden under the mask we label "personality." And finally
-- he grinned -- we would meet who we really are. He looked us over,
knowingly. In so doing, he acknowledged that we hadn't the vaguest idea
of what he was talking about. But that we eventually would.
We then went on to the agreements, which are a critical part of the
est
experience. The agreements are not what we can and can't do
throughout the training. Rather, they're what we agree we can and can't
do throughout the training. There is no policing of the rules, nor is
there punishment in the traditional sense of the word for breaking
them. "Life works to the degree to which you keep your agreements,"
the leader told us.
The ground rules are read seriously from a loose-leaf binder. Always.
Lest there be any question that this is serious business, we are told
right away in a loud and stern voice that there would be no talking.
All fidgeting stopped. All eyes were front center on the man we later
dubbed among ourselves "the mortician." We listened to the words for
the first time. It was like listening to a death sentence. What price
enlightenment? I wondered as I took it all in.
For a start, we, as trainees, are to agree not to take alcohol, marijuana,
sleeping pills, uppers, downers, or anything else that is not medication
a doctor says we have to take. That includes tranquilizers and all the
other prescription mood drugs. We may take coffee, tea, cigarettes. And
birth-control pills. The last gets a laugh from everyone except the
poker-faced leader.
We also agree not to have a timepiece in the training room; to go to the
bathroom only at bathroom breaks; not to eat at any time other than the
single meal break; to be there on time and stay until the trainer decides
we've gotten what we need to get for that day. On and on. I notice that
my shoulders are hunched, my hands clenched. We go on making agreements.
We will stay seated unless called on. We will not sit with anyone we knew
before the training. We will not talk unless we're sharing, in which case
we will talk into a microphone (which we're taught in detail how to use).
We agree to wear our name tags at all times when we're in the room and
always keep them visible (people with long hair are to pin them in the
center of their chests). We agree not to move our chairs from their
positions unless instructed to do so. . . .
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