New Solidarity

December 1980

Books

EST Cult Sees Psychosis as Key to Success

Werner Erhard (left), the founder of the cult "EST", with guru Swami Muktananda"an important meeting between American Will and Oriental Intellect"

Werner ErhardThe Transformation of a Man: The Foundation of est. A biography by W.W. Bartley, III, 1978 "A distinctly American tale of the moral education of a rogue genius . . . an important meeting between American Will and Oriental Intellect," W. W. Bartley tells us is the significance of the life story of Werner Erhard. Erhard is the founder of the "human potential" movement est, which has over 200,000 graduates in the U.S. proselytizing est epistemology, and a more recent creation, The Hunger Project, which boasts a membership of 1.6 million worldwide.

Sounds harmless? It isn't. Every indication is that the story of Werner Erhard is one more offshoot of the British-inspired MK-Ultra experiment and in reading Bartley's book, it is hard to escape the notion that he knows it. MK-Ultraa project to create the ideology of the counterculture in the early sixtieswas the beginning of an onslaught by the oligarchical-financial cabal committed to feudalism, to reduce mankind through the use of advanced techniques of psychological warfare, to tamed, easily-controlled beasts. What is this 60-hour transforming experience which many have described in such terms as "the irreversible experience" of their lives, that later keeps these people tied to this autocratic organization, and causes them to use a Newspeak vocabulary distinctly est and order their lives within this framework? (Graduates include a much wider cross section of the population than other aquarian approaches and include known psychiatrists and psychologists, 11,000 educators, media celebrities Jerry Rubin, John Denver, Joanne Woodward, Yoko Ono, and Werner's biographer Bartley, a London-spawned philosopher.) Perhaps more significant, what impact would est's continuing rapid growth the est training is now being given to administrators of city governments, and negotiations are underway to give the est training routinely to all persons released from federal prisonshave on the ideas on which this country was founded? "Est is no ordinary California cult, it is a multimillion dollar corporation that has doubled in size each year and operates nationwide with the efficiency of a crack brigade," reports Mark Brewer in Psychology Today. "It boasts a president, who taught at Harvard Business School and left the position of general manager of the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. 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 board is chaired by a former chancellor of the University of California Medical School," he continued. The Creation Of Sheep The neurosis involved in an individual's unsuccessful attempt to integrate his particular task with the world as a wholeparticularly acute in this period when the productive economy is being shut downis relieved by est. Trainees are told in 14 hour sessions with virtually no breaks, "We are under

the dual illusion that there is somebody or something out there that is going to get us (enter the Devil) and that there is something out there that is going to save us (enter God and Santa Claus). We see ourselves as pawns in a chess game between good and evil. None of this is happening, of course. There is nothing out there." "We create our own personal reality," the well-dressed and articulate usually-Harvard-educated trainer continues. "Then we treat the world as if it were the backyard of Universal Studios. Out of the infinite number of possible experiences and events that are available, we pick just the ones that reflect our world view. Now most of us are not aware of our personal reality. It is held in our consciousness beneath our level of perception." Continuing to turn reality on its head, the trainer, who himself has been "trained" to become a Werner surrogate, continues, "To a person who has undergone a transformation, the world is exactly the same as it was before. What is altered is how you feel about it. The way things are is not the real problem. It is how we feel about the way things are," the trainer continues asserting that reality can only be determined by Hobbesian self-certainty the lowest level of consciousness of Dante's Inferno. "Life doesn't work, that's the first fundamental fact on which est was built. So stop trying," Werner continues the barrage, this time to a crowd of 9,200 est graduates at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. "And, if you stop trying, you'll discover the second fundamental fact on which est is built. You are. That's what you discover when you do nothing. The mind can't handle these facts," he reassures his audience. "And what happens in the training is that the mind is bypassed so the self can experience itself being." "If you experience something it is real for you; belief without the component of experience is a lie," Werner continues. "Beliefs are a state of hypnosis and understanding is the booby prize. That is why so much of what est is about is related to people's beliefs." Biographer Bartley explains that the training provides a format in which siege is mounted on the mind. Teaching no new belief, according to Bartley, it aims to break up the existing "wiring of the mind and thereby to trap the mind, to blow the mind." As a result of est, Jerry Rubin can now function as a Wall Street employee Rubin describes Werner as "one of the major historical figures of our time" because he sees Wall Street as "just another part of the dance" in Werner-model Richard Alpert's (Baba Ram Das) terminology. As a result of

est, teachers can teach in overcrowded classrooms without complaint because it's simply a question of what that teacher chooses to "create" in the classroom. Est graduates make "the perfect employee," say companies who hire est graduates exclusively. "If something goes wrong they blame no-one but themselves." (To be continued)