Driving to their apartment, I prepared myself for a miserable time.
"They're not real to me anymore," I told myself. "They're among the living
dead." I cried inside at what they had been -- alive, vital, beautiful.
We greeted each other with hugs. From nowhere, suddenly, tears welled up
in my eyes. I shared with them how much I loved them and how beautiful
they both had been to me. I also told them how very much they had meant
to me.
My uncle's face came alive. He said, "I didn't do anything special.
I was just me and I cared for you."
I shared with my aunt my excitement about the publication of my latest
book,
The Sexually Aggressive Woman
. I had not told her about
it before, less out of concern for her reaction to the subject and the
frankness with which I discussed it than for the fact that I had written
on such an unintellectual subject. That was
my
evaluation.
My aunt asked me to put a copy in the mail to her when I got home.
I definitely detected a gleam in her eye. And my uncle told me that he
had, over many years, acquired a collection of great masterpieces on
sex. Among them were a rare and beautiful copy of the Kamasutra and
photographs taken at the famous Temple of Kondar.
Suddenly, we were all involved in an animated and fascinating conversation
about, of all things, sex. This was because I had put away my preconceptions
about what the visit would and should be. And allowed it to unfold
spontaneously.
I had only
thought
my Aunt Anna and Uncle Harry were dead, which
had almost deprived me of a beautiful experience of being with them.
9
Something About Nothing
One creates from nothing.
If you try to create from something you're
just changing something.
So in order to create something you first
have to be able to create nothing.
-- Werner Erhard
The street was filled with well-dressed, overwhelmingly white,
predominantly young people. As I emerged. from a cab into the cool August
evening, I caught the excitement. The event that we all had came for was
spelled out on the marquee. It said, simply, "Werner Erhard,
est
."
We were all
est
graduates who had come to hear Werner present
"Something About Nothing." There were 5,000 of us who each had paid $4.50
in advance to fill every last seat of New York's Felt Forum. Werner had
appeared at San Francisco's Cow Palace, before an audience of 11,000,
and at the Los Angeles Sports Arena he talked to over 9,200, on the
same topic. It was a major happening, a gathering of "the faithful"
to be with their leader.
It seemed like an enormous family reunion. I ran into people from
my training and we swapped "shares." People I didn't know introduced
themselves and then launched into conversation like long-lost cousins.
I remembered the first morning of my training when 250 "assholes" had stood
around awkwardly -- the only ones talking those couples or friends who
had arrived together, the air heavy with anxiety, people looking isolated
and alone. We had come a long way, judging from the intense interaction
that evening.
At 7:00 p.m. sharp (
est
events start exactly on time) the doors
of the Forum opened. I rushed for a seat close to the stage. I had heard
that Werner was going to talk about his recent trip to Japan and his
meetings with Zen masters. I had a special interest in Zen and was
particularly interested in hearing what he had to say about it.
At that time, I had not yet met Werner. A friend had told me that "he
makes you feel as though you are the whole world, as though nothing else
exists." He had also been described to me as "contained," "complete,"
"dynamic," "beautiful," and "self-realized." Marcia Seligson, now a member
of
est
's Advisory Board, described her first impression of him,
in her
New Times
article, as "a slick, slightly oily salesman-type,
too good-looking and funny, a man who reminded me of the arrogant Jewish
princes I went to high school with, who then went to N.Y.U. School of
Business, married girls named Bernice, and took over their father's
clothing business." * I was eager to see for myself.
* October 18, 1974.
The air was alive with anticipation as we waited for the man who was to
occupy the space defined by a lone stool under a white spotlight against
a black backdrop. It was a setting for a torch singer, not a messiah,
in an arena built for sport events, not enlightenment!
The lights dimmed promptly at 8:00 and Werner emerged from the wings.
There were no tambourines or trumpets, no M.C., no benediction, no entourage,
no props, no spectacle. Just Werner, looking much younger than his forty
years, his skin and eyes incredibly clear, dressed in an impeccably
tailored beige jacket, open-necked white shirt, and dark slacks. The
audience rose and applauded. Werner had come to be with them.
He began quietly, undramatically. I found myself straining to listen to him.
It took me a while to tune in to the way he was using words and the staccato
rhythm of his speech.
"I do welcome you with all my heart," he said, "and tell you that this
really is my living room for tonight and I'm thrilled to be with you. As
I said to Marcia [Marcia Martin,
est
staff member], I want to go
to New York to
be
with the graduates and their guests. I said
the whole point is really just to
be
there -- not necessarily to
do
anything.
"My real purpose in being here," he explained, "is not for me to be but
for you
and
me to be. . . . I'm here to create the space for you to be
and I'm here to be in the space that you create for me to be. And that's
the whole purpose, that's the whole point, and as you'll notice we've
already achieved that so the night's a success as far as I'm concerned."
The audience responded to this introduction with enthusiastic applause.
I was unmoved, waiting for something I considered "meaningful" to happen.
Later I realized that one of my expectations was to be entertained.
The circumstances of the evening -- the theater, lots of people, an
entrance fee -- should produce entertainment, I thought.
"There really isn't anything to do," he said to my resistance. "I love
you and I'm here to be with you. Besides which you will all get the
chance to be with each other -- and that's all that's going on.
"Sometimes people get very uncomfortable when all there is to do
is nothing. See, in order to be, you don't have to do anything. It's
terrific! There's nothing to
do
! It's really important to get clear
about the fact that you don't need to
do
anything to
be
."
The audience had settled in and was intensely focused on this magnetic
and attractive (but not quite handsome) man with the body of a tennis
player and the eyes of a prophet.
"In the ordinary course of events, we organize our lives to figure out
what to
do
to get where we want to get. The point is, this is
it
. You got where you're going. Wherever you were heading, this is
where you wound up. And that's how it is. You're
here
. Experience
that you
are
. That's the purpose of this evening."
I felt as though he were talking directly to me as he continued on the
theme that there was nothing for us to do that evening but sit back,
relax, and just experience who we are. Because I wanted something --
anything -- to happen, I had a hard time relating to "nothing."
"I used to worry about what I was going to say in public before I got
the training," he shared to laughter and applause. "I mean, what is the
difference
what
I say tonight? It won't expand that you are one
iota. And it won't contract that you
are
one iota.
"The entire universe comes out of the fact that you are," he explained.
"Without you there wouldn't be any your-universe. What you call
the
universe is
your
universe. And there are a lot of your universes.
The whole universe springs from
that you are
. You don't need
to
do
anything, say anything, prove anything. It
is
. You
don't have to work on it for it to be there. It comes from the fact that
you are."
It seemed so simple. And so reassuring. To the thousands in the audience
and the millions beyond the theater who had been raised on a diet of
striving to please (Mommy, Daddy, teacher, boss), of trying to be better,
richer, smarter, happier, this was heresy. But it was also manna. I
processed his words and let them filter through all my "musts." It
felt good.
He continued, enunciating the next words as though each were a
universe unto itself. "The most fundamental experience you can have is
that
. There
is
no more fundamental experience than to
experience that you are. From that experience,
all other experiences
arise
."
He talked about all of our relatedness. "By the fact that you exist,
my existence
is
. And by the fact that I exist, you exist. And
we
are
. So we don't have to do anything to be
with
each other. We don't have to
make
our relationship work. We
are related."
Then he spoke about his visit to Japan, where, he said, what he experienced
was "being with life."
In a valley on the side of a mountain in an old monastery he met with a
Zen master and seven monks. After a few polite interchanges they wanted
to find out who he was and so they decided to test him. "It's customary,"
he told us.
"The Zen master showed me a very old tea bowl with strange symbols
on it that had been used by many renowned Zen masters, and asked me,
'What is the most important part of this bowl?' If you say the wrong
thing," Werner explained, "they go back to being polite and remote.
I looked the bowl over slowly and answered, 'The space inside.' "
It was the answer. They became friends.
He said that the Zen masters he met with were "blown away" by the fact
that so many thousands of people in this country had taken the
est
training in only four years. He explained that a Zen master would consider
that he had spread the word to vast numbers if he had trained a thousand
monks in his own lifetime.
One of the things they had all talked about was the relationship
of self experience to world experience. Contrary to our beliefs that
those such as monks who live away from the world are aloof and removed,
interested only in their own inner worlds, his new friends told him that
experiencing the self takes you out into experiencing the world, which,
in turn, takes you further into your experience of yourself.
Months later, in a letter to
est
graduates, Werner elaborated on
this theme. "One of the ways you can recognize people who don't know
who they are," Werner wrote, "is if they think that when you realize
your self, it cuts you off from other people. Somebody who thinks
that self-realization is the road to political irresponsibility has
demonstrated an absence of experience of self. When you have experienced
your self, you will know it because it will take you out into the world."
Werner then talked about
est
and its genesis. "
est
," he
announced, "does not come
out
of the world. It doesn't try to give
people what they
need
. It doesn't come from responding to people's
deficiencies.
est
actually didn't come from any
place
or any
thing
. It comes to the world from nothing, from the fact
that being just
is
, and there's nothing to be done about that."
(When I was working with this material weeks later it occurred to me
that Werner's insistence on word precision often had the effect of
making things more, rather than less, confusing to those not on his
wavelength. I respect his work to revolutionize language and develop
new modes of communication and agree that it is absolutely essential
that we develop more effective ways to communicate. On the other hand,
I think he defeats his purpose of communicating when his message doesn't
get across to those who haven't yet achieved his clarity.)
Werner went on to speak of his doubts. He acknowledged that he has them
and, "I let them be," he said, "and they let me be. They don't run me."
He related what he had once told a reporter in answer to a question
about him as the source of
est
. "I
am
the source of
est
. I've created the opportunity for others to be responsible
in their own lives, and they create the opportunity for me to be
responsible. A source," he told us, "creates something from nothing."
As the source of
est
it is his responsibility to create the space
for the people in
est
to do their jobs.
I was becoming restless. I noticed that others were also. The material
was familiar and not sufficiently dramatic to command my attention.
He returned to his discussion of where
est
came from, and told
us, in answer, that it came from the experience that life doesn't work.
"That's the most fundamental fact in
est
.
"Because people are always working at making it work, and getting those
things which prove that life works, it doesn't." He leaned forward and
readied us for a question. "If something actually worked, why would
anybody be working so hard at making it work? See," he explained, "the
work we do to make life work is an absolute statement that life does
not work. If it worked, would you be working so hard to make it work?"
The audience giggled nervously. He was reaching us. His voice rose as
he reminded us of what we all really knew. "
There's nothing you can
do to make it work.
"So I'll tell you what," he offered us. "If you stop trying to make life
work, you'll have nothing to do. That's the first fundamental fact on which
est
is built.
Life doesn't work.
So stop trying. And, if you
stop trying, you'll discover the second fundamental fact on which
est