ASSESSHENT OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE est TRAINING

by Hubert L. Dreyfus Introduction

The est Training is multi-faceted and intense. After one encounter

I by no means feel that I have grasped all the implications and inter­

connections. In any case I will not go into ho~ the training affected

my life, since the report I agreed to produce was not to be a recounting

of miracles but rather the assessment of a certain way of accounting

for them . . Nor am I professionally trained to evaluate the psycho­

therapeutic, social, political, organizational, etc., aspects of the

training. As a professional philosopher I shall stick to a critical

assessment of the epistemological,metaphysical, and theological con­

ceptualization of a group process ·v.Thich clearly works and ,.;-hieh, unlike

most transformational techniques, seeks to give a detailed account of

how it ~orks to those on whom it works.

I will divide my comments into three parts:

Part I - ~nternal Assessment of the "est the Hetaph\-sics.

In the course of the training it became progressively clear to

me that the experience underlying the training and the conceptualization

of this experience have deep affinities with the phenor.ena presented

and analyzed in Martin Heidegger's Beine: and Time. I ~ill therefore

compare wy understanding of the est training to 1::y understanding of

the account presented by Heidegger and suggest ways that Hei~egger's

analysis oight be used to render the basic est insight more consistent

. and compell ing .

2

Part II-An External Assessment. In this section, I will criticize,

from the perspective of later Heidegger and Soren Kierkegaard, what I take

to be the truth set forth in Being and Time and in the training, as well

as the quality of life which this truth makes possible.

Finally, in two appendices, I will discuss first, philosophical

moves less central to the truth of the tra ining which I personally feel

require further refinement, and, second, the general mode of philosophical

argument characteristic of the training which no doubt serves an im­

portant function but which might well offend philosophers.

Part I - Internal Assessment: Ho," to talk about a truth that worKs.

It is directly manifest in the training that est embodies a

powerful and coherent truth which transforms the quality of the lives

of those who experience it. Moreover, this truth contains radically

new insights into the nature of human beings and the cos~os which ~ere

unkno ... 'n both to Greek philosophy and to the mystical tradition from ,<,'hieh

it gre>v. Since, however, the mystical/philosophical tradition has given

us most of our concepts, it is almost i~possible to conceptualize

this experience ~ithout putting it in traditional teTwS, thus diluting

and distorting the experience.

The German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, generall y considered the

most profound and original philosopher of the 20th ce::tury, had a

similar experience to the one elicited by est and s~ruggled all his

life to find an adequate language to express it ~it~cut falling, as he

put it into the ruts of metaphysics. His first anc ~~st famous atte~pt

to articulate this experience is the forrr.idable anc unfinished

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philosophical classic, Being and Time (1927). Since his account

parallels and illuminates the est approach I viII sketch it here.

Heidegger begins by introducing a nev method. He is not interested

in beliefs, arguments, and conceptual syste~. Rather he proposes a

procedure which he calls hermeneutic, phenomenol_o~" in

which one gets behind the concepts and everyday interpretations of

experience to a direct manifestiation of Being itself. Both Heidegger

and Erhard are wary of the attempt to convert the truth of experience

into a system of beliefs. ~.Jhat Erhard puts. aphoristically ("If you

e>..-perience it, it's the truth. The same thing believed is a lie." )

Heidegger e~-presses in more German ic philosphical prose.

l\T!lenever a phenomenological concept is dra.m from primordial sources, there is a possibility that it may degenerate if communicated in the form of an assertion. It gets understood in an empty way and is thus passed on, lOSing its indigenous character, and becoming a free-floating thesis. (pp. 60, 61.)

Heidegger proposes to show in the course of his

investigation that each of us already has what he calls a

preontological understanding of Being, but that this understanding

is covered up.

'Behind' the phenomena of phenomenology there is essentially nothing else; on the other hand, ~~at is to become a phenonenon can be hidden. And just because the phenomena are proximally and for the most part not given, there is need for phenomenology. Covereci-up-ness is the counter-concept to 'phenomenon' ... fA] phenomenon can be buried over. This means it has at some time been discovered but has deteriora:ed to the point of getting covered up again ... This covering­up as a 'disguising' is both the most frequent and the most dangerous, for here the possibilities of deceiving and misleading are especially stubborn. (p. 60)

Thus in order to make the truth directly manifest, phenomenology

must break through rationalizations, traditional belief structures

and the resistance which supports them until human beings

(which Heidegger calls "Dasein") can directly confront the phenomena.

Dasein's kind of Being thus demands that any ontological interpretation which sets itself the goal of evhibiting the phenomena in their primordiality, should capture the Being of this entity, in spite of this entity's O\¥n tendency to cover things up. Existential analysis, therefore, constantly has the character of doing violence, whether to the claims of the everyday interpretation, or to its complacency and its tranquilized obviousness. (p. 359)

Thus if one can face, first, what est calls nN kn(l, .. -inf:, one can ac~ieve

natural knowing or certainty. l\~at often seerrs to the trainee defending

his belief system to be the trainer's dogmatic and authoritarian

insistence that he (the trainer) knows the truth, can be understood

phenomenologically as the certainty which goes with directly experiencing

the truth at each moment.

As in the est trainin~what Heidegger uncove~s ene~ges only

little by little in the course of analysis. There is a first preli~inary

uncoverins in Division I of Being and Time and then, in Division II,

the whole process has to be repeated for a deeper reyelationwhic~ ' puts

the revelations of Division I in a totally ne ... ' perspective.

In Division I Heidegger is concerned with ma~in; ~5~ifest our

everyday condition. Heide.gger fiTst examines y.'hat he calls the

"clearing" opened up by our everyday social practicEs, in ""hich 1,.1E:

encounter objects and people as the kirids of objE:cts and people ~~ are

brought up to expect and cope with. This account is si~ilar to the

est account of the social world as the product of a~~ec~ent or

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consensus and of the physical world as the product of absolute

agreement. fI did not receive the board material on this subject,

so my terminology may be inaccurate.] Heidegger and Erhard agree

that physical reality does not rest on individual agreement

the agreement has al~ays already been given -- but it is not

independent of historical human practices which shape our judgments,

interests, and discriminations. Heidegger calls this already-given

interpretation human facticity. Since we are all already trained

into this way of understanding ourselves and other entities by the

time we begin to think, and since it is the element in ~hich ~e

perceive and move (like ~ater for the fish), HeideggeT says ~e are

throl.m into it and calls it our thro\.mness. Est says, "You have

no choice in the matter."

Without this background we could not perceive or cope ~ith

things at all. Thus Heidegger speaks of our relation to it as one

of indebtedness and also responsibility. (The double meaning

of the German\ooOrd Schuld.) In est terms: " ... [YJou can rene~ber you

caused it any time you want to."

(In contra!t to Erhard, however, Heidegger seeks to sho~ that this

social space, which he calls the world, is prior to various sub-~orlds such

as the world of business, the ~orld of the theater, a~d all particular

"private'" '-1orlds. Re also dis'tinguisi:es thh di~.:lcsure space fr=-r:; Fhys:':al

. space in which objects are located,and fro!: the u~:" ,.erse l.'hich is the

totali ty of obj ec ts. All objects, including the ,,:hole universe, ca"

onlY be encountered ~ithin the world. We ~ill lc~k at the i~plications of . "'

these differences in the next section.)

Turning to the beings ~hose practices embody a~ un~erstan~ing of various

kinds of being and S0 open up this space, Heideg~c:r shcn·:s the t eycrycay hUr:2!1

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beings do not realize they are a clearing and thus do not own their own

lives but are lived by the Anyone (Das Man) -- Heidegger's name for social

and cultural norms i. e., for what "one does".

Dasein, as an Anyone-self, gets 'liv~' by the common sense ambiguity of that publicness in which nobody resolves upon anything but which has always made its decision. (p. 345)

Each person is so totally deterr..ined by these norms.lHeidegger says) that

the who of everyday Dasein is the Anyone-self. Such a self is unowned or

inauthentic (Uneigentlich). In language identical with Erhard'sjHeidegger

says that such a self does not assume responsibility for its world and so has

no freedom, spontaneity and choice -and hence no joy. Everyday Dasein simply

identifies with its social role and acts out the social patterns which have

formed it.

With Dasein's lostness in the "Anyone", the factical potentiality~for-Being which is closest to it (the tasks, rules, and standards, the urgency and extent, of concernful and solicitous Being-in-the-world) has already been decided upon. The "Anyone" has always kept Dasein from taking hold of thesp ~os~ibiliti~s of Being. The "Anyone" even hides the manner in which it has tacitly relieved Dasein of the burden of eh~licity choosing these possibilities. It remains indefinite who has 'really' done the choosing. So Dasein make no choices, gets carried along by the nobody, and thus ensr.ares itself in inauthenticity. (p. 312)

In Division II, it turns out that hurr~n beings persist in this lifeless

state because they are fleeing a dim premonition of an:dety. Anxiety is

the experience of the fact that the whole social oreer and all of science

is an arbitrary and unground-e<l etmSen5tlS. Then~ {~ "'frO s.)1i~ -5-€lf an<i

'no. brute facts. Ko way to make sense of and be at ho!:.: in the world.

lolhen in falling we flee into the "at-home" of publicness, we flee in the face of the "not-at-home"; that is, ~, .. e flee in the face of the uncanniness which lie~ in Dasein -- in" Dasein as thrown Being-in-the-world, \o,Thich ha.s been delivered over to itself in its B.::r.g. This uncan:1ir:ess pursues Dasein constantly, and is a threat to its everyday lostness in the "Anyone", though not e>..~licitly. This threat can go together factic2lly ~ith complete assurance and self-sufficiency in one's " everyday cor.c ern. (p. 234)

7

The experience of anxiety reveals that the Anyone is meaning-

less and that there is no deep truth,("Enlightenment doesn't mean anything",

Erhard says.) Dasein 1s not the Anyone-self but it has no other

content. It is a pure nothing over against. a .me~ningless world.

Anxiety discloses an insignificance of the world; and this insignificance reveals the nullity of that which one can concern oneself. (p. 393)

To deny this truth which is deeply disturbing, Dasein flees into the

public ~orld and hides in ~hat Heidegger calls idle talk, curiosity,

and ambiguity. This 1s the condition of everyday human beings.

But there is a way to overcome this condition by recognizing it.

If anxiety is "held onto" rather than denied, then Dasein o\ms up

to and assumes responsibility for itself and so beco:"Jes authentic.

In est ter~s a person then experiences his experience.

This does not mean that one gets a ne~ content for the self -- the

everyday self just is the pattern of the Anyone, and there is no

other content, but one sees that the true Self is not this content.

Heidegger calls this experience of holding onto anxiety and thus

. freeing one's self from the Anyone self while still re~aining the sa~e

person, 'resoluteness' (entschlossenheit) which means both decisiveness

and openness.

"Resoluteness t: signifies let ting oneself be su::-=:med out of one's lostness in the "Anyone". The irresolute­ness of the "Anyone" remains dOT:linant nOt'\,'fthstanding, but it cannot impugn resolute existence. . .. Even resolutions renain dependent upon the "Anyone" and its world. The understanding of this is one of the things that • re~olution discloses, inaswuch as resoluteness is what first gives authentic trans?arcncy to Dasein. (p. 346)

Heidegger never explains why Dasein's lack of neaning and content

as revealed in anxiety should be disturbing to it, s= Heidegger's

account of the motivation for covering up or fleeing rerr2ins unsatisfactory.

Erhard is more consistent on this point, suggesting that ... ·hat .. e flee is

8

ultimately fear and pain, and that our defenses atter:-.?t to insure not

the meaningfulness of our lives but the survival of the mind. Erhard

has a problem similar to Heidegger's, however, ~ince he_ can~ive no

account of why the being identifies its survival with that of the mind

in the first place.

From these two different accounts of ultimate motivation t~

different vie\ol's of the stability of transformation or authenticity

follow. Both Erhard and Heidegger agree that I1Get it/lose it is what

life is all about." For Heidegger, since authenticity reveals that there

is no deep meaning of life, Dasein's demand for a stable, grounded

meaning in its life leads human beings to fall back constantly into

inau thenticity. For Erhard, on the other hand, it ~~uld seem to follo~

that once one had seen that the being is not the mind and that defenses

always work in assuring survival but always fail by costing aliveness,

one observes the defenses and they progressively disappear. Heidegger

and Erhard thus have complimentary problems. Heide~ger can eXFlain why .

we do not remain au thentic, but only by positing a nEC:~ for rneaning

for which he has no further account. Erhard posits no s~ch need, but on

his vie\..' it re:i:ains mysterious ~ .. hy once out of e\'erycay self deception,

hu:nan beings v.,ho have "got it" fall back into everyday assholeism.

In any case, both Heidegger and Erhard agree 0:1 the i::?ortant point

that acceptance of its nothingness does not rer:::we thE: Self fro~ the \.,:orld

and others but enables it to participate fully for thE: first ti~e.

Resoluteness, as authentic Being-one's-Self, does not detach Dasein from its wrld, no. does it isolate: it so that it beco=es a free-floating "1". And hen .. ' should it, \o.·~J,,"n resoluteness as authentic disclosedness, js authentically nothing else than

. Being-in-the world? Resclute~ess brings the Self right into its current concernful Being-alo~;siGe ~hat is ready-to-hand, and pushes it in~ solicitiou~ Eeing ~ith Others.

Only by authentically Being-Their-Selves in resoluteness can people authentically be with one another ••• (p. 344)

9

The way one participates is of course not "helping,1\ which Heidegger

calls "leaping in for" another, but rather by letting each person ex-

perience his own anxiety, which Heidegger calls "leaping in ahead of ll the

other and turning him back to face his o"n nothingness. Heidegger sums up:

The phenomenon of resoluteness has brought us before the primordial truth of existence. As resolute, Dasein is revealed to itself in its current factical potentiality-for-Being, and in such a way that Dasein itself is this revealing and Being-revealed •••• The primordial truth of existence demands an equiprimordial Being-certain, in which one maintains oneself in what resoluteness discloses. It gives itself the current factical situation, and brings itself into the situation. The situation cannot be calculted in advance.~, It merely gets disclosed in a free resolving vhich has not been determined beforehand but is open to the possibility of such determination.

What, then does the certainty l.,hich belongs to such resoluteness signify? Such certainty must maintain itself in what is disclosed by the resolution. But his means that it simply cannot beco!:e rigid as regards the situation, but must understand that the resolution, in accordance with its own meaning as a disclosure, must be held open 'tid free for the current factical possibility.

The new flexibility gained by holding onto anxiety does not, ho .... ·ever,

make Dasein vacillate OI renege on its cO!!!Illitments. " < •• It is in

resoluteness that one first chooses the choice ~hich makes one free ftir

the struggle of loyalty." (po 437) The result is enhanced experience.

Along ,dth the sober anxiety t.."hich brings us fact: to face t..,·ith our individualized potentiality-for-Being, there goes an unshak~able joy in this possibility. (p. 358)

With this joyful experience there also goes a broadening

of one's ontological horizon, Instead of identifying o~eself with

the social practices which are the clearing in which all entities

are encountere~ the authentic Dasein realizes in an ins~ant of insight

(Augenblid:) tha: he is an eI:i.pty clearing, an ac:i';12; r.oti1ing I.·:;ich gets

its content from these practices but is not identici~~1th any of

then, At this early sta~e of his thinking, (for rea~ons too conplicated

10

to go into here), Heidegger calls this ultimate horizon for under­

standing Being, which each of us is, the ecstatical temporal unity.

It is neither public nor private, but is the "source" of both the

. social world and personal experience. Heidegger describes it (rather

obscurely) as lithe primordial 'outside of itself' in and for itself",

(p. 377) and, in the part of Being and Tilne never published, he v:as

prepared to call it God.

The similarities between Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology

and what one learns in the est Training is obvious and significant.

Both Heidegger and Erhard experience and succeed in conceptualizing

the truth that there is no ground or meaning of reality and no

deep self "'hich has a content that needs to be e):pressed or realized.

They thus avoid Gree~ metaphysics and self-realization theo~' in

all its fo~s, whether it be the Freudian myth of getting in touch

't.Tith the deep secret meaning hidden in our sexuality, or the myth

of growth in the human potential movement which clai~s we can fulfill

ourselves by discovering our true needs and using our neglected

capacities to satisfy them. If the true Self has no conte~t, then

it cannot be expressed, realized, or grow. !Est ter=inology is

almost, but not quite, pure and consistent on this point. Occasionally

the trainer talks of realizing one's potential.] ~'foreover, getting

in touch with the deep self cannet be a change, a ~evelcpment. etc.

The training makes clear over and over again that transfor~~tion is

not gro· ... th. Heidegger also insists t~at thes~~\'itch fron: the

. inauthentic to the authentic is a "prin:Jrdial mo:::ification" \,'hich

leaves the content of one's life unchanged while totally transforming

one's rela tion .to thatconter.t.

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.•. authentic disclosedness modifies with equal primordiality both the way in which the 'world' is discovered ...•

and the way in which the Dasein-with of Others is disclosed. The 'world' which is ready-to-hand does not become another one 'in its content', nor does the circle of Others get exchanged for a new one; but both one's Being towards the ready­to-hand understandingly and concernfully, and one's solicitous Being with Others, are now given a definite character in terms of their ownmost potentiality-for­Being-their-Selves.

Besides these striking similarities, there are, however, three

differences in conceptualization bet;.1een Heidegger and est which

alE! !Significant and instructive. Each in its Ow"1i way suggests

that although Erhard has avoided the trap of traditional Greek

philosophy by insisting on the nothingness of the true Self, this

very insistence has brought him dangerously close to the distorting ideas of

a traditional kind of subjectivism (found, for a~am?le, in Edmund Husserl's phenomenology) which posits the ultimate importance of a private inner reality.

1. Truth is never total.

The immediate certainty of the truth manifest in experience

. must not be understood as a direct and uninterpreted

merging with the way things are. Heidegger argues, against Husser1, that the phenomeno-~logical method makes truth directly manifest, but it does not do

away with concealedness ("All revealing is also cC7:cealing."),

nor with interpretation (liThe meaning of phenoUlenolog:'cal description

as a method lies in interpretation." p. 61). So Heidegger concludes:

The idea of graspill~ .;.nd explicating phe:;,cT:::na in a way which is 'original' and 'intuitive' is directly opposed to the naivete of a 'i~~ediate', and u~reflective 'beholding. '( p. 61)

2. The world is prior to lTT\' world.

Heidegger's basic claim in 9PPosition to all £or~s of idealism --

especiallY Husserl's transcendent~l phenomenology which est sometimes

12

resembles, is that the world is prior to my world. We are actively

involved in shared situations, working with shared tools and directly

confronting other people in cooperative work and play. It is only

.when we withdra,-' and reflect that we "discover" our O'-"Tl priyate

experience, and it is only when we reflect on this reflective experience

in a special detached way that we get the distorted yiew that my world

is what is real and the shared world is an "intersubjective production"

(Husserl) or an "illusion" (est board diagram of the three universes).

The fact that we all share one world is so natural and yet so hidden

by the philosophical tradition that Heidegger has to work

through the tradition in Being and Time in order to get the reader

to see that Dasein is a public space of practices that embody a shared

understanding of what it means to be. Division I of Being and Time,

among other things, is a "concrete demonstration" that Dasein is

Being-in-the-world.

In the est training there is a constant tension on this subjec~

as if the truth w:re trying to get out around the conceptualization.

After much talk about going inside ~ world, ~ -space, ~ mind, the

trainer once said: "All that stuff out there needs cleaning U?"

Or, at another point: "Stay with your experience. Stay out there,

not in your head." That is the right way to talk. I am back there

in the past. Ol.lt there in the present, anG ahead of ffiyself in tl1e future,

not inside my head. Even moods are not inside. As Heidegger points out:

" A mood is not an inner condition ~hich then Teaches fort~ in an

enigmatic way and puts its mark on things and persons. It cor:es neither

from 'outside' nor 'inside' but arises out of Being-in-the-world". (p. 176)

13

All that is inside are the aches and pains in my physical body. So

in the training processes, subjectivism and meditation not withstanding,

when we are not practicing awareness we should be told to go out

into our space.

Of course, this is not to deny that I have opinions and desires

which are mine and that you have yours and that I should try to under-

stand yours and to let them be, it is only to emphasize that all

this communication takes place on a shared background of public language

and practices which has created and sustains both of us and our

communication.

'Communication' in which one makes assertions -­giving infonnation, for instance -- is a special case of that communication ~hich is grasped in principle existentially. In this more general kind of co~~uni­cation, the articulation of Being with one another understandingly is constituted. Communication is never anything like a conveying of experiences, such as opinions or wishes, from the interior of one subject into the interior of another. (p. 205)

3. The cleaming is not the totality of objects.

Heidegger is very careful to distinguish the "orId, which is the

space in which we encounter other entities, frorr. the universe which is

the totality of '-'hat is. For the same reason, in Division II he

equates the ultimate empty temporal openness '-'ith Being, but never

with the totality of beings. Thus Heidegger agrees with the

equation of Being and Nothin$, but he would object to the equatior. of

Nothing and Everything.

If one does equate Nothing and Everything a!lc e:-:?eriences the

fact that we are Nothing, it seens to folIo".' that ... .-e Cim experience

that we are everything. (The same goes for the equation of Nowhere

and Ever)"to.'here.) This leads to the process in ',"~ich ,,,e expand our

14

awareness to encompass the whole universe. This is both a linguistic

confusion and an experiential lie. I can think about or conceive

the furthest galaxy; I cannot perceive it. To say I am aware of it or

conscious of it confuses conception and perception. If I were aware

of it in anything but an intellectual sense, I " .. ould not have to

say, as the trainer did say, that there might be life on one of the

other solar systems, I could look and see if there was.

A holistic account such as that

t!roposed by est cannot explain how we are some particular

point of view at some particular place and time. This difficulty

arises for any vie;.' that claims that w.e are ultimately all one thing:

God, an empty space, or the empty ecstatic temporal horizon.

Heidegger's answer, I think, is that we are jndividuated by the facticity

for which we assume responsibility. For

Heidegger, inauthentic Dasein is lived by the Anyone and so has no

content of its m.m; on the other hand, authentic Dasein becomes an individual by taking responsibility for some particular content. Est, however, cannot individuate "the being" in this \,'ay, since, if Nothing

equals Everything, everyone is responsible for everything.

The above ontological inadequacy of the est conceptualization of

Being occurs because the training blurs what Heidegger calls the

ontological difference the difference between Being and beings.

!he same proDleID comes up in even more exaggerated fcr~ on tbe entic

or empirical level in the est account of mind. If the ~ind is a multi-

sensorial total record of everything in the universe, hm,' does one record

. differ from another so that they can be linearly orde~Ej? One might

think that one record has me as a baby, another me as a child, another me

as an adult, etc. j but every record has me as all three. Since the records

15

are all total, they are all identical and there is no way to order

them. Such a view cannot make sense of "successive moments of now."

(Husserl in his Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness solved

this problem in terms of the relative clarity and distinctness of

the moments we call most recent but this way out is not open to the

view presented here, since all records are equally and totally clear.)

Of course, the same problem comes up when one ~ants to differenciate

a plurality of points of vie~. Since each record contains all points

of view, all perceptual perspective, all pains, etc., there is no way

to explain what makes one of the points of view mine, or why one

record stack comes down on me, when I see a bicycle,for exa~?le, rather

than on you,since the bike trauma is in your stack too. In what sense

is my stack mine and your stack yours?

There are hints in the trai-ning that the vie\.' that everyone

is everything also leads to a misleading account of skills.

In , discussiong the cabinet of abilities the trainer gave the impression

that one could be perfect at any skill one pleased if one just stopped

resisting and covering up and got in touch with the ability. It \,'ou1d,

indeed, folIo\.' that if my being is everythbg, it is also all skills.

But this see~s to de~y the necessity of acquring a skill

through years of practice. I have argu:d else· .. ·here

(see enclosed paper, liThe Psychic Boom") tha t skills ~ig:; t \ooTell be

explained in terms of holograms, but that these ho1ogra~~ are the result

of the specific experiences of the specific individual ~ho practices

the particular skill. One eventually acquires en':)u£:-, h::lograr.~ 0 f an

activity to be able to perform perfectly if one could only let oneself

go and just experience the activity rather than think about it, but f~''''''

16

this perfection is only accessible to those who have put in the

necessary effort to acquire the necessary backgrounq of experience.

Another implausible conclusion that follows from the equation of

Nothing and Everything, is that each person is responsible for Everything.

Granted we all are identical with the clearing or God and so are all

ne, it does not follow that we are responsible for every specific

thing and person in the clearing. To be the clearing in which all

specific events occurr, and so in some ontological sense their source,

is not the same as being the ontic cause of each specific event. It is,

therefore, a self decption to assume responsibility for all events, and

as we have already seen, such total responsibility ~~uld preclude

individuality.

All these problems arise from forgetting the ontological difference

and identifying the clearing with everything in the clearing. This

mistake gains plausibility from a pseudo-scientific theory of mental

holograms.

holograms,

It is an interesting hypothesis tha~ our ~ind might consist of .1

and hologram, as scientists like Karl Pribran and David Bo~~ "

rightly point out, has the whole of what is on it distributed all over

it. It does not follow, h:")w~ve=, that each hologra:r. contains a record of

the whole universe. It simply contains all over it a re:ord of one limited

local perspective. Even if one accepts David to~='S int~rpret4tion of

micro-physics that the universe is an "ir::plicate order" in ",-hich everything

is involved ~ith everything else, this still would not support the view

of the mind presented in the training., Or.l) if the brain, which is part

of the physical order, processed informa tion on the I!'.icrophysical level,

for which I know of no evidence, would it follo\~ t~at brain hologram5

are total records of everying in the universe.

Unless the matphysical

17

contradictions which holism entails can be ayoide~ the view is

not only implausible in suggesting we are aware of other galaxies,

past lives. etc; it is totally incoherent.

II. External Assessment: The power and poverty of nihilism.

After writing Being and Time. Heidegger experienced a transforma­

tion (Kehre) in his life and thought. In looking back at Being and

Time he felt that he had been right in holding that human beings are

ul timately a clearing ~7hich is more flexible and open than that provided

by the stereotypical meanings and differeritiations of the

public world of the Anyone. Bu~ later Heidegger felt t~at equating

this broader horizon with an empty temporal disclosure space could

not give an adequate account of the meaning and differentiation that

':remains after one has transformed one's life out of the public ",'orld

into an openness to Being. In short, ,:Beidegger came to regard the

equation of Being and Nothing as a nihilistic remnant which remained

in his thinking because he had not completely overcor.:e his o,,-'n meta­

physical/mystical tradition.

This is not the place to go into Heidegger later writings. All

I can do is note that he admired poets like Nietzsche and Rilke who

thought they could free man from technology and mechanisre by opening

a pure enpty space. but that he felt this approach ane tr,e approacr. or

Being and Time were still part of the problem -- the prcble~ of nihilis:7l.

In response to this problem he saw he had to give up herDcneutic phenone­

nology and experience Being historically. He hopec thereby to discover

and preserved the serious meaning left in our practices from other epochs

in our past such as 5th century Athens.

18

Heidegger describes how cultural paradigms such as the Greek temple

and the medieval cathedral give life meaning and purpose by focusing

the meaning of being in the practices, holding it up for the people

to see and experience, and making it the center of genuine conflicts

of interpretation.

It is the temple-work that first fits together and at the same time gathers around itself the uni~y of those paths and re­lations in which birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endurance and decline acquire the shape of destiny for human being. The all-governing expanse of this open re­lational contex.t is the wrld of this historical people. (,Or igin of the Work of Art" p. 42)

In this way great works of art preserve and give content to the clearing.

"A work, by being a wrk, makes space for that spaciousnessc 'To make

space for' means here especially to liberate the free space of the open

region and to establish it in its structure. • •• The work hold., open

the Open of the wrld." C'Origin of the Work bf Art," po 45)

As I understand est, it is at the stage of Division II of Being

and Time. It allows people to break out of the Anyone and the mechanism

of their mind by realizing the power of pure nothingness in them. They

realize they are nothing and so not the mechanism. They can then choose

the mechanism (return to the Anyone) where "choose" means notice and

accept responsibility for. ~ They can thus become free 1 flexible,

spontaneous·, alive, and joyfuL But this e.>:perience does not help

them get back in touch witn tne1r cul~l TootS. Its ~ff~ct is j~~

the oposite. Their projects become global projects all Can agree on

~~king the world work). They do not involve co~itment to specific

content and so do not lead to conflicts of interpretation~ Each person

has a point of view but he is not identified with it. I observe

my point of view. You get mine and I get yours. Then we all ~ork on so~ething

20

and thereby risks a conflict of interpretations, since in the est

conceptualization and experience that could only ~ean returning to

ego. Nothing makes any ultimate difference and the only experience

~h~t matters is the one that gets one in touch with nothingness. Such openness

may well give one health, happiness, love and self-expression never

dreamt of in everyday conformity or fanaticism, . but it does not give

one's life meaning. Heidegger himself, although he defines Dasein as the

being whose being is an issue for it, never works out an adequate account

of how an individual life can be meaningful. For a powerful conceptuali~

zation of the experience of meaningfulness with its paradox, risk, dread,

and bliss, one has to turn to the writings of S~ren Kierkegaard.

Conclusion.

The est training, as Erhard well knows, is much more than a means

for psychological or social change. It deals with improving the quality of

hu~n life the most important philosophical and religious question of any

age, and especially important in our present technclogical nihilistic wcrld.

It seems to me that Heidegger has delt more successfully than est with this

challenge on a conceptual level, and that he is more aware of the limitations

of his view. Est's unique importance, however, is not in its theory but in

its practice. The training, unlike reading Being and Time, actually

gives a person a glimpse of the .lJthenticity that Heidegger and Erhard have

both experienced.

This is not to say that the Heidegger/Erhard experience of the power

of nothingness is what is most needed in our nihilistic time. But it is

a step forward out of the indifference of evervda\,ness, and makes it

possible to discuss, and perhaps even to experience, a way of life which

has aliveness as well as content and meaning.

20a

APPENDICES

In order to focus on the deep philosophical agreement

~which unites Heidegger and Erhard, and to see how each can be used

to complete the other, I have put aside in the body of my report,

my more personal philosophical repose to SOme of the less central

ideas presented in the training. I will present my remaining

questions and disagreements in the follo~dng two appendices.

Appendix I

1. "Hell is Other People."

During the first weekend an explanation was pror.~sed of the basic

motivation behind the loneliness, sadness, fear, greIf, anger, hatred, ...I

21

boredom :, shame, etc. that emerged in the· truth process. I was surprised,

given est's suspicion of causal accounts in psychology, that the trainer

was going to present a position or explanation, and even more surprised

at the end of the weekend when the ultimate motivation turned out to be

fear of others. This claim seens dubious not only in the light of the

methodological contradiction, but also in respect to ~hat it specifically

asserts.

There seems to be no way that one could assert the general claim that

"All people play roles and suffer because they are I!lotivated by fear of

other people." as an experiential truth. One could legitimately claim to

kno~ that this analysis has been eA~erienced as true and liberating by

300, 000 es t graduates. But not that it was true fer e\' eryone, as the

trainer, David ~orris, asserted in conversation.

·As a substantive philosophical proposal the theory see=s over-simple.

It has a venerable history having .been held by Thonas Ho:-:,es ("Every man

fears violent death at the hancs of his fello .. ·s ") ar.d. i:1 a more subtle

form by 5artre, who contends that each consciousness is afraid of being

turned into an object by the other's gaze. This latter see~ to be the est

pos i tion since the fear theory it!II!lediately £ol1o"'s the "ordeal" in which one

must submit to the gaze of the others and just be. 5artre's solution is also

echoed in the advice given at the very end of the first ~eekend. Sartre says

that w~ must realize we can prevent others fro~ turnins us into objects by turning

24

notion as imprecise as ever. One cannot even precisely define "chair".

In any case definitions are never as helpful or precise as what

Wittgenstein called a paradigm case or perspicuous example. One of

.the impressive ways est works, in spite of its seeming dependence on perspicuous

definitions, is to elicit A examples from the participations.

(The subtlety of language, even of grammar, vas revealed in

an episode in which the trainer was trying to free a, trainee by

getting him to substitute "and" for ''because'' in the claim:

"I am impotent because I lack confidence." The trainee dutifully

changed his claim to "1 am ilnpotent and 1 lack the (sic) confidence."

The trainer never understood why this change did not produce the

desired effect.)

25

Appendix II

Sophistry as a transformational technique.

For a philosophy professor one of the most impressiYe features ·

of the est Training is that the training often rese~bles an ideal

philosophy class. The participants are asked to provide definitions

which are then shown to be incomplete so that step by step bewilderment

and then deeper understanding emerges. A further ad~irable character­

istic connected with this first one is the trainer's constant readiness

to explain, clarify, elaborate, and argue for the conceptualization

being presented. There se~ to be a genuine CCii"I!"..l.t!:",ent to reaching

rational agreement. On the other hand, est de~onstrates a justified

suspicion of arguments and rationalization, thus there is a kind of

tension in the Socratic pretense. Philosphical problems are posed

and accounts are elaborated anc defended, but there see~s to be no

c·ommitment to using valid arguments in .the process.

I will give a fe'·' exa:;:pl.es, although this lis t is by no r.:eans ex­

haustive.

1. The exchange on not kno'-'ing ho',' to "alk is pU!"c sophistry.

The dictionary defines knowing ho'" as having the ability to de: something.

It does not require that to know ho,,' to do s017.ething on€: !:ust be

able to tell how. If the trainer has recourse to the dictiona!"y in

other cases then why not here?

"Knowing - that" does require being able to tell. If O'!1e knO\·7s

something like the way to the bank, one reust be a~:! t~ ex?lain it.

Perhaps the example could be reconstructed usi:1g a case of ''knot.:'ing that"

26

which the participant is unable to explain or defin~ rather than a

case of "knowing ho\o,'." Concentrating on knowing that, Socrates had

no trouble showing that the most brilliant Athenians did not know

. anyt~iing at all.

2. The chart sho\Oing that the (vco kinds of reality are physical

and experiential leaves out the realm of ideal entities such as

numbers. It does not suffice to say that all instances of the mlre~er

two, for example, are printed tokens. The debate between nominalism ·

and realism, as it was called in the ~~ddle Ages, is much more subtle

than that. Not that I think est trainers should enter into such

a debate. I would only hope there wa~ some more intellectually honest

way to avoid it.

3. Tne arguments against peoplE who claim not to have 'got it'

that they are machines have a ri~g of desperation. To tell someone

to decide to stand up and then to point out to him that he is still

sitting and to conclude from this that, like a machine he can~ot do

what he decides to do, is pathetic. He presuwably has decided to

stand up when told to do so and he is doing exactly \o,'ha t he has decidec

to do.

4. A more complicated case is the claim that the trainer is

standing in front of the room because he is seen, not seen because

he is standing in front of the rC=-::4 G~eat philo~oph.er-5 -5Udl -&£ .f;:-5:-.op

Berkeley haVE been confused by that one. Still, if one is doing

phenomenology one must ackno~-.'ledge, as Heidegger does in Tne Basic

Problems of PhEnomenclo~v that one se~s · objects as indepe~dent of

one's seeing them, and as seen at the same tioe by others. To deny

this is to make the public \Oorld an ~ll:.!s ion \ ... hich is cou~ter to the

deeper truth ex?erienced both by Heidegger and by est.