The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas (49 page)

Some of the research conducted along the way led up the occasional blind alley. In 1958, for example, Michel was invited by Laura Huxley - the wife of Aldous Huxley - to take part in a controlled experiment with LSD at Rancho de la Puerta, in Tecate, Mexico. The drug was relatively unknown at the time and remained legal until 1968. ‘I heard of this new substance imported from Switzerland and the claim that it widened reciprocity in regard to learning, so I was interested. I thought I might be able to apply it - that it might be another tool to probe the learning process of the mind. I had no idea what I was in for.’

The LSD was supplied direct by its creator, Dr Albert Hoffman of Sandoz, Switzerland, who had discovered it by chance in 1943 when working on a drug for migraine. Lysergic acid diethylamide was a by-product developed from a fungus that grows on rye, and the doctor accidentally ingested a dose in the laboratory. He realised he was on to something revolutionary when the short car journey home seemed to take centuries.

Michel arrived at Tecate for the two-day experiment and joined a group of a dozen volunteers, including two doctors, and Michael Murphy, founder of Esalen, the original alternative spiritual retreat in California. Most members of the group were handed a single 100 mg tab of LSD, two were given placebos, and Michel requested a double dose, as befitted a man interested in accelerated learning. Laura Huxley was one of two guides who did not take the drug, but she explained to the group what they might experience. ‘It’s heaven and hell and everything in between. It can bring out an angel or a devil and you do not know which one is going to pop up. You must have no preconceived opinions. You must give up control and be prepared for ego loss. It’s like dying and trying not to die. Paranoia lurks, but remember the sensations are psychological not physical.’
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The group then swallowed the tabs of pure LSD. ‘I was given a tape recorder to record my impression at all times. For a while I tried to analyse the sensations to know how the drug worked.’ This approach was soon abandoned as the drug took hold. I tried to control it in order to experience it more fully - I thought that was what I was supposed to do. For once in my life I was not in control - which goes against my nature. I had heard about bad trips, but didn’t accept I was there for a trip. I was there to experiment and research. After a few hours I was through with it, I’d had enough. I thought I would shake it off. And I couldn’t! I felt controlled. I had a cold shower and started doing exercises, but it didn’t work. So I gave in to it.’ He moved outside into the Mexican garden. ‘I was immensely impressed and overawed to step into nature and see everything differently. I saw nature through the eyes of Van Gogh.’

It had been an interesting experience, but it did not contribute anything to Michel’s investigation into the learning process. ‘The sensations had been emotional and spiritual, not intellectual. It was not clear to me how it could be used in a concrete way in terms of learning.’ However, word spread in Hollywood that Michel’s method owed its success to hallucinogens, one of the many rumours that have attached themselves to the system over the years.

Michel became involved with a beautiful actress during this time, abandoned his womanising, and sincerely believed he had met a partner for life. The couple moved in together - an almost unheard-of arrangement at the time - and began a long monogamous relationship. ‘It was different to all the others and I was in love. I was thinking seriously about having a life with her. Meaning marriage.’

It came as a shock when he was challenged by the actress, who accused him of not truly loving her. Stung, he said he could not understand how she could say such a thing.

‘When we make love, I feel you make love to somebody else,’ she insisted. ‘That I remind you of somebody you love. But it’s not me.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Michel protested.

Directly after the conversation he had to fly to New York on business, and thought deeply about his lover’s statement during the flight. ‘And I realised she was right. It was very perceptive of her. I saw that she reminded me in many ways of Suzanne and that for all these years I had still been in love with Suzanne. And all the relationships I had considered good and exciting, as close as some may have been, were marginal compared to my deep emotional involvement with Suzanne.’

The insight broke up the relationship, but also liberated Michel from the power of a past love. ‘After that I felt I would finally be able to love again.’

Among the powerful and influential men Michel taught during this period was Jules Stein, founder of MCA, one of the great entertainment empires of the twentieth century. The men became friends, and Michel sometimes drove out to Palm Springs to spend the weekend. The mogul immediately understood the originality of the language system and its unlimited potential.

Julius Caesar Stein, the son of immigrant Lithuanian Jews, stumbled into the entertainment business as a medical student at Chicago University when he booked jazz bands into the gangster Al Capone’s speakeasies and nightclubs. The business spread to Hollywood, where it represented movie stars and developed into the major movie studio that eventually became Universal Pictures.

Stein encouraged Michel to consider opening a network of schools nationwide and suggested a partnership. ‘He was so excited that he wanted “us” to open schools across the country. He wanted ten, fifteen, twenty schools - the number increased as he spoke - to open simultaneously. It would be promoted by famous actors and be an immediate success.’ Michel said he would think about it. In a town where people fought and begged to be in business with Jules Stein, this came as a surprise, almost an affront. ‘I did think about it. I saw myself in the future as a financially successful owner of a chain of schools, with Jules Stein as my partner, but it would have destroyed my whole purpose. At that time I was far from completing my exploration of the learning process, defining educational goals and perfecting the system. I knew it would take many years, possibly decades.’

He went back to Stein, thanked him for his interest and explained why he could not accept. There was a moment of stunned silence. Stein seemed confounded, and said that nobody ever turned him down. Michel shrugged. Stein later wrote a letter saying he respected the decision, and enclosed share certificates for a generous allocation of his personal, preferred stock in MCA. ‘In this way we will always be partners,’ Stein wrote.

Whenever the men met at parties afterwards, Stein would enquire after the progress of the school. ‘How are we doing?’

‘Fine,’ Michel answered.

‘And the stock?’

‘Fantastic!’
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But Michel certainly had ambitious plans. As he continued to probe the learning process, he began to dream of an international university. ‘All great universities are national institutions. Oxford is English, Yale is American, the Sorbonne is French, and so on. I wanted to create a supra-national university with the best professors from all over the world teaching an international student body.’ As he worked to turn the dream into reality, he talked to Robert Hutchins, one-time president of the University of Chicago and the Fund for the Republic, who became fascinated by the idea. Hutchins wrote in a letter to Michel: ‘Long reflection on the state of the intellectual world has led me to the conclusion that the trouble with it is that there is no leadership in it. There is no concentration of intellectuals dedicated to the task of leadership anywhere in the world. There is no intellectual beacon or lighthouse to be seen. It would not take much to create one, and one should be created before it is too late. A group often or a dozen of the most intelligent men in the world who come together in a single place, strategically located, to work together on the identification and solution of the great problems of the second half of the twentieth century could have an overwhelming influence on the thought and the events of our time. The reason for this, of course, is that the world is waiting for the leadership that such men could supply... The members of the group should have together and be continuously engaged in discussion of the program.’

Hutchins said that the Fund had made a partial and inadequate attempt at such an idea, but had failed, and welcomed the renewal of such a concept under the auspices of an international university. He put forward the names of some of the Fund’s own group, including Nobel prize-winning physicists Isidor Rabi, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, and the leading Catholic theologian in America, John Courtney Murray. He also mentioned the names of other international luminaries who had expressed interest in the idea, such as Paul Tillich, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Jacques Maritain, and numerous others. It was a high-powered group by any standards.
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It was obvious that an international university would need a great deal of money, so Michel approached Joseph Hirschorn, one of the wealthiest men in America whose fortune had been made from uranium mines in Canada. Hirschorn pronounced the project financially feasible, but suggested the greatest problem would be finding a suitable location. A supra-national university needed some kind of supranational site, and for this Michel had a brainwave.

Grace Kelly had sought Michel’s skills to teach her French after her engagement to Prince Rainier of Monaco, and teacher and pupil had become good friends during lessons conducted on the set of
High Society
, the star’s last movie. Michel suggested Monaco as the ideal location for the international university, as this would also lend intellectual status to the principality, known solely as a gambling resort and tax haven. Prince Rainier expressed interest in the idea and invited Michel to join the couple for a skiing holiday at their Swiss chalet in Gstaad.

Prince Rainier listened attentively as Michel outlined his plans to build a university funded by outside investors and staffed by a collection of the world’s great minds. However, Rainier pointed out a fundamental flaw: ‘It’s a wonderful idea, but you know Monaco. It’s rather small. It is simply a question of having no land for such a large project.’

‘I don’t want your land,’ Michel said evenly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I want your territorial waters.’

Rainier was silent for a moment. ‘But what on earth will you do with the Mediterranean?’

Michel explained that it was possible to reclaim land and create an island, ‘but I want the island to be independent and not under the jurisdiction of Monaco. It should be a University State with the same relationship to Monaco that the Vatican has with Italy.’

Rainier listened closely. It seemed a fantastic scheme - especially at the time - but every detail had been carefully thought through. He asked to be shown detailed plans and encouraged Michel to go further.

Elated, Michel returned to the States and began pouring time and money into the project. He commissioned a prestigious firm of architects to draw up plans for the university buildings and to research the ocean bed for a suitable site.
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Hydrographic maps were obtained from France, the ocean bed was surveyed, and an area big enough to create an island was found that would hold a full university campus, connected to Monaco itself by a bridge. The estimated cost was fifty million dollars, an astronomical sum for the day. ‘It’s only money,’ Hirschorn said, undismayed.

A sophisticated and detailed proposal was sent to Prince Rainier. It included the hydrographic map marking the exact location for land reclamation, architectural designs for the university, a description of its academic nature, and Hirschorn’s assurance of financing. ‘I had to wait quite a time for an answer.’

A letter finally arrived from Prince Rainier. ‘I must ask you to excuse the long delay in answering your letter, due to the fact that I have been giving the project my most earnest attention. There are several points that remain obscure...’ Two rapier thrusts followed, effectively killing off the project. ‘The site of the proposed island would interfere with the new plans for reclaiming land from the sea and for embellishing the water-front; these plans are in process of realisation.’ And, ‘Do you realise that, by tradition, education in the Principality is largely under the control of the Catholic Church, Monaco being a Catholic country?’
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Unfortunately the Prince had not brought up these fundamental objections in Gstaad.

Michel was greatly disappointed. Subsequently he learned from a diary item five years later in the Louella Parsons column in the
Los Angeles Herald Examiner
in April 1963: ‘The visit of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier is not entirely to be with her family and attend civic and social affairs... The Prince has a real estate deal up his royal sleeve, which is novel to say the least. Monaco, like many countries, is hurting for land and Rainier is sponsoring a project which calls for an artificial island adjoining his principality to be built up as a lavish resort area. Tourist trade is one of the biggest sources of income for Monaco.’
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And it was not until Michel returned to the south of France on holiday that the extent of Rainier’s ‘innovative’ project became clear. Suzanne told him she had something to show him, and drove him to an exhibition mounted in the Monte Carlo casino. ‘And there was this maquette of a proposed new casino and hotel to be built on land reclaimed from the sea. I felt they had taken my plans for a university and built a casino instead!’