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  For a long time, the "one more thing" was love, Stewart confessed. He then launched into a skit he called the rituals of love. The audience tittered when he was a minute or so into it; it sounded familiar. By the time he hit the finale, they were into a full chortle. I wondered how many of them realized that the joke was on them. His tale went something like this:

  "We all need someone to love and someone to love us," he said. "So we behave in such a way that we finally get someone to say 'I love you.' That feels great. It fills our need, but it isn't enough because it is only a symbol of the experience -- and the experience is really what we are after. And when it isn't enough, we know what the solution is. The solution is always more. More symbols.

  "So then we act in a way that gets them to say again, 'I love you.' But soon that is not enough either and again we know what the solution is. The solution is more.

  "So we say, you tell me you love me but you don't act like it. And finally when we get them to act like it, that is not enough either. We figure we have the wrong person and we get somebody else and go through the whole series again.

  "You see that, while it is true that you and I need someone to love and someone to love us, gratifying a need does not produce satisfaction. It does not make us feel whole and complete. Where love is concerned, it is only the experience of loving and being loved that is satisfying, and that allows us to be whole and complete.

  "The purpose of the training," he explained, "is to allow you to experience that part of you that experiences satisfaction so that whether the symbols 'I love you' are there or not, the experience of being loved, and loving, is. The training allows people an opportunity to come from satisfaction, rather than trying to get to it."

  Marcia moved center stage to bring Stewart's words back to the experiential. "I want to share with you one of the biggest expansions in my life," she announced softly. The room became silent as she lowered her voice to a stage whisper. "I was able to let go of needing someone." Her words hung in the air. "I found out I can be happy," she explained, "if I never see 'him' again. I am the source of my own happiness."

  It was now Marcia's turn to share what she "got" from est. Among other things, before she took the training, she had been "in love with loving" a man. She wanted him to do the training with her, but he felt that aliveness should be given free in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. She talked about it constantly and still he wouldn't go with her. Finally she stopped insisting, at which point he decided that he would like to do the training. "We still fight," she shared, "but we fight responsibly now. And," she added, "my relationship with my mother works too."

  At a later guest seminar, I heard seminar leader Monique's story. Although she was happy before est (I heard none of the est leaders admit to ever having been unhappy), after the training she was able to let her straightened blond hair go naturally curly; she got a substantial raise (unsolicited) in her airline job; and she was now able to communicate to large groups of people, something she could never do before.

  Entertained and warmed-up by these stories of happy transformations, the audience was then ready for the nitty-gritty of est.

  The cost of an est training is $250 (up $50 from a year ago). In answer to questions about why the fee is so high, the answer was simply "That's what it costs." In return for this sum, payable in advance, a trainee meets with about 249 other trainees in a hotel ballroom for approximately sixty hours of training over two consecutive weekends. Yes, the guests were told, it's true that you may not go to the bathroom or smoke or eat until the trainer says so. No, you don't have to do anything in the training that you don't choose to.

  The question remained: What, exactly, is the training? And how does it work? In answer, Stewart gave a brief run-down about belief systems (see Chapter 3) and a general, day-by-day agenda. Like most of the audience, I still didn't know what it was all about by the time the seminar was over. I consoled myself with material from one of the est brochures:

  Having someone tell you what it is like to parachute out of an airplane is not the same as experiencing jumping out of an airplane yourself. est is a uniquely personal experience. And, as such, it has meaning only to the person who is experiencing it. After you take the training, you probably won't know how it works, you will only know that it works.

  I was able to accept this after the training. For the moment, I dutifully noted what Stewart was saying and tried to accept that it was relevant, and that it was as much information as I was going to get.

  The main things that happen the first two days, he told us, are experiencing data (undefined) presented by the trainer, sharing experiences with other trainees (he told us we didn't have to share if we didn't want to), and undergoing processes. He implied that the processes are central to the training but that he couldn't really describe them to us. They happen with your eyes closed, he said, so that you're alone with yourself to look at the way you put your life together. He stressed that it is not meditation. However, other people have described it as resembling "guided meditation." A similar technique is called "guided fantasy." An est brochure gives the following technical definition of a process: "A training process is a method by which a person experiences and looks at, in an expanded state of consciousness and without judgment, what is actually so with regard to specific areas in his or her life, and one's fixed or unconscious attitudes about those areas. The intended result of doing a training process is a release to greater spontaneity."

  Between his talk and answers to questions from the audience, I began to piece together some of the concepts behind the training. It went something like this:

  Most of us don't experience life at all. We generalize or conceptualize -- "l don't feel well" or "I'm tired" -- instead of being specific about what is happening, for instance "I have tenseness in the left side of my jaw" or "I'm avoiding doing the dishes."

  When we break down our beliefs to deal in a more direct way with our experience, the barriers to experience simply disappear.

  Among other things, the processes offer us the opportunity to look into our minds to see the beliefs that get us stuck and the automatic behavior, and past conditioning, that prevent us from acting responsibly. Stewart's example was "When you meet someone new, such as a sixty-five-year-old man with gray hair, do you see him as he is or do you immediately notice his resemblance to your father, grandfather, or someone else? The little voice inside you that points up the resemblance is the automatic and unconscious behavior that keeps you from seeing and experiencing him this very moment as he really is."

  While Stewart was talking, I remembered a Jules Feiffer cartoon that shows a disembodied head trying to connect its body. In the last frame, it almost reaches the body but can't quite get securely attached. The message was clear: We've gotten into our heads at the expense of our bodies. Noticing how we feel, what we feel, and where we feel -- whether through est processes or any other technique -- is the mark of being truly alive.

  Stewart put it another way. "If we can have a dfrect experience without it being limited by our thoughts, our attitudes, by that little voice, and if we can become aware of that little voice, we can then become spontaneous instead of mechanical."

  And from Marcia: "You get the space to have a direct experience of who you are, not through your mind, your thoughts, your attitudes, your feelings, or through your understanding. You get the space to stop evaluating and judging and, instead, react to life spontaneously."

  After an hour-and-a-half the seminar leaders called for a break. We were told to look for people with blue-edged name tags who would happily tell us about their est experiences. The saved will communicate with the heathen, I mused as I headed for the door and a cigarette.

  A lovely young blue-tagged woman (a secretary) approached me. I asked her what est had done for her. "I still have the same problems," she answered me directly, "but I see them differently and I'm having more fun."

  A fortyish lawyer told me that after hating his father for thirty years
, they had been reunited in his father's old age. There was a hint of a tear in his eye as he said this.

  Alongside me a woman asked if est would interfere with her therapy. The graduate explained that est is est and therapy is therapy, and that she could have both.

  As I headed back into the room a lively and pretty woman buttonholed me to share that she would never be the same again. "I have a new awareness of what I do and it's working. My life is . . ." She paused to search for the right word, which turned out to be, again, "working."

  When we were settled in our chairs, a well-dressed businessman immediately complained about the hard sell. He compared it to selling toothpaste. To which Stewart replied, "We want to share the training with you. And we want to present it so that you get to make the choice about participating or not. We have no investment or need to make you take the training." Marcia had said earlier, "We in est don't feel we have the only way. And we think that est has shown it is a way."

  We were then invited to ask questions. Marcia quoted a Werner aphorism: "In life, understanding is the booby prize." There were titters through the audience as hands shot up. They all wanted to understand, regardless.

  Is est anti-intellectual? Stewart answered, "We use words to wrap our experiences in. One of the objectives of the training is to allow you to begin to listen to where the words come from instead of just hearing the words." The questioner looked confused but politely sat down. I thought of how so many of us cling, like drowning men, to old ideas without looking at the truth of our lives right now.

  A tense young woman wanted to know if, after est, a couple can "come together more" or if their relationship might get worse. Marcia answered in her no-nonsense voice. "Either. And whichever way it turns out people seem to get value and nourishment from it as a result of the training." She added that if they come to the training together they won't be permitted to sit together.

  Her use of the word "and" jarred me. I had been hearing it all evening in places where I would have consistently used "but." As I ventured further into est I soon found that everyone seemed to use "and" -- usually emphasized -- in places where I didn't expect it and didn't understand it. Eventually I got that it implies that alternatives exist, as opposed to the either/or thinking that rules both our language and our behavior but limits you both by word and attitude.

  The money question was raised by an efficient-looking elderly man. "Who owns the common stock?" est is profit-making, came the answer, but not in Hawaii. And the intention is not to make a profit; it all goes back into expansion. A man in the back called out that $250 sounded cheap to him. "My wife spent $3,000 this year on therapy," he announced, "and she's still crazy." I saw heads nodding around the room. I guessed that hundreds of thousands of dollars had gone down in therapy from the group assembled that evening. And that many of them saw themselves as still crazy.

  The questions rolled on. Yes, deaf and dumb people can take the training. . . . No, age is no barrier; we had a woman take it who is ninety-four and we have training for children as young as six. . . . Yes, if you have medical problem about going to the bathroom you can bring a note from your doctor and you can go to the bathroom when you need to. . . . No, you don't have to do anything during the training except be there. Yes, it's true that we ask you to refrain from alcohol, marijuana, medications -- except those prescribed by your physician -- sleeping pills, etc., immediately before and during the training. . . .

  It struck me that a disproportionate number of questions concerned toileting and eating. Alter I had been through the training, I was less surprised by these questions. The trainer had repeatedly reminded us that we all live our lives as though we are tubes -- our primary concern being what goes in and comes out of our bodies, "Food and shit, shit and food," the litany went. It was all uncomfortably familiar.

  "Is it brainwashing?" someone who had just read an anti-est article asked. The answer: "In my experience it is not. Each person sees from their own point of view. The author of that article had a particular point of view and what I can tell you is that what the article had to say is not my experience of the training." The article, in fact, had been scathing, and est, true to form, never put it down.

  People began to come to est's defense. A middle-aged man said he was there because a friend who took the training was now doing hang gliding. Before, he was scared of everything.

  Another said, "I've gone all around the world to get enlightened. And this is where I've wound up."

  A woman shared that a friend of hers had never seen flowers before. And another complained that taking the training was like buying real estate in Florida without seeing it.

  Each person who spoke got a positive response: thank you, fabulous, wonderful, O.K. Astute and clever remarks received no more points than dumb ones. Everyone was acknowledged equally. No one got an argument or a defense or a deliberate evasion from the seminar leaders. If they didn't know the answer, they simply said so.

  The large guest seminars wind down with more anecdotes and finally a sales pitch. There are usually a handful of spaces left in the next couple of trainings and then nothing until three or four months thence. People are told they need to reserve their space in advance by making a deposit of $30; and that trainings fill very quickly. There's a sense that if you don't act right away you might miss the greatest opportunity of your life. (There are about 12,000 people across the country pre-enrolled in the training. In most cities, the wait for a training is two to three months. Sometimes additional trainings are added, giving people the opportunity to register for a training only a few weeks away.) When the seminars are over, there are invariably lines around the sign-up tables. I understand that 15 to 20 percent of those attending usually enroll: Happiness is contagious.

  The regular guest seminars, which are given every evening when there is a graduate seminar (in New York this is up to five times a week), and which attract several dozen to several hundred people at a time, offer the bonus of a mini-process, a version of which is duplicated on the following pages. Doing this process is an excellent way to get a sense of at least one aspect of the training.

  This mini-process resembles but is not actually a training process. (I cannot ethically reveal the training processes, nor would I choose to do so, because I feel that knowing them in advance significantly reduces the experience of them in the training.)

  In sharing this with you, I want also to recommend that you experience it with a friend. Have the other person read the instructions to you rather than read to yourself. Merely reading the words is meaningless and in no way can convey the potential for the experience. Each of the instructions should be followed by a pause to allow the participant time to look and be able to respond to himself. If you're not interested in going into this experience at this particular time, I suggest that you just skip to the next chapter, perhaps to return to this place at another, more leisurely, time.

  The process begins:

  Please uncross your arms, uncross your legs, take everything off your lap, get into a comfortable position, relax and close your eyes. Thank you. The first thing I would like you to do is to bring the chair that you are sitting on within your space and experience what it's like for you sitting there in that chair. Good. Now expand your space to include the person or persons sitting on either side of you. Thank you. Notice if you have any attitudes or opinions or emotions or thoughts about the person or persons sitting next to you, and, if you do, notice what they are. Good. Now keep expanding your space or your experience of you to include all the people here in room, and notice what it's like for you sitting here with these people. Thank you. Notice if you have any attitudes about the group, or if you think the group has a particular attitude, and if you do, notice what that is. Fine. Now keep expanding your space to include the whole room. Recall the floor, the walls, forms, textures, and colors. Notice the sounds and smells, notice what it's like for you, what your experience is of being here in this room. Good. Now recall a time when you were real
ly happy with someone and notice what that experience was like for you. Thank you. Now recall a time when you really communicated with someone and they really got that communication and notice what that experience was like for you. Great. Now recall another time when someone else was really happy with you. Get a very clear picture of an incident when someone else was really happy with you, and notice how you carried your body. Notice how you walked, how you talked, how you smiled, how you tilted your head. Notice how you experienced you when someone else was really happy with you. Thank you. Now recall another time when you were really happy with someone. Get a clear picture of that, allow yourself to experience what it was like for you when you were really happy with someone else. Just keep experiencing that; notice what you were saying, how you were feeling, what the other person is saying, what they're doing. Good. Now bring a stranger into the experience and notice what happens to the experience. What happens when a stranger comes in. How are you holding your body now? How do you feel now? What are your thoughts now or your attitude now that a stranger is present? Thank you. Just keep your eyes closed, we are going to do a couple more things. First, just go through your body and notice if you have any tension. You might check out that area behind your neck, between your shoulders. You might even like to wiggle your head around a little. Great. Notice the area between your eyes, at the top of your nose. Just notice if that's tense or not. You may want to take your hand and rub your forehead a little. Great. Now just notice your arms and your legs and see if they are in any position. You might want to shake your arms out, notice if they are crossed. If they are, uncross them. Very good. Now take a look and notice if your jaw is clamped tight and, if it is, see if it is O.K. with you to release it. Just let it relax. Thank you. O.K. Now what I'd like you to do is take your hands and rub them back and forth on the chair you're sitting on and notice what comes up for you to experience while you are rubbing your hands back and forth on the chair. Notice if you feel silly or irritated or confused or if you are doing it just a little bit so that the person next to you doesn't know that you are doing it; notice if you are afraid of touching hands with the person next to you. Notice if you are wondering about what the significance of rubbing your hands on the chair is. Keep rubbing your hands till I say stop. O.K. Stop rubbing your hands. Now take your feet and rub them back and forth on the carpet. See if you can tell what the color of the carpet is through the bottoms of your feet. What color does the carpet feel like? Good. The last thing I would like you to do is to get a sense of the space you would like to be with yourself. Just get a clear sense of how you would like to experience you, and when you've got a sense of the space you would like to be in, and you feel really good about that space; so good that you can't help but smile, then what I want you to do is to smile and open your eyes into that space. Good.