In New York: Much Ado About "It"

By Frank Trippet

Suddenly the packed auditorium explodes in an ovation suggesting that this might be, as they say, "It." But no. Here, nonetheless, is the next best thing; that foxy wizard of Itmanship himself, est's own Werner Erhard, has materialized on stage. The roar of welcome goes on as he lays claim to the spotlight, hoisting himself onto a director's chair, a gray-flanneled leg tucked underneath him. The clamor trails off only when his words and pale gaze begin to spill across the crowd, conveying the improbable intimacy that seems to be the gift of all magnetic evangelists. It is the sound, not the content that mesmerizes, and before long he is saying, "Nothing is going to enlighten you. What will enlighten you is nothing."

These estian maxims, though they might seem puzzling to some, can only come as heartening news to this particular crowd. Most of them, the 1,500 or so gathered here, are in the market for enlightenment. And if "nothing" is indeed its source, they have certainly managed to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. It is a Sunday that, by the climactic instant of Erhard's appearance, has begun to seem like an eon if only because of the hardtail, fold-down seats of the place: a seedy high school auditorium on Manhattan's Upper East Side temporarily exalted into a mecca for the awareness/consciousness movement. Packing picnic lunches and pillows, the moderately young, mostly white enthusiasts now relishing Erhard, with murmurs of "Beautiful" and "Fabulous," have been here since morning, absorbing with similar murmurs such gurus as Wayne (Your Erroneous Zones) Dyer, Arnold (Pumping Iron) Schwarzenegger, Masters and (The Pleasure Bond) Johnson. This, in short, is the self-styled "The Event, the First Awareness Extravaganza"--proof positive that the national binge of self-discovery that rolled up out of the 1960s, far from fading away, is alive and hyping.

Indeed, the circusy, '70s-style revival meeting that has filled the auditorium might reasonably be taken as a sign that the awareness industry is at last showing its real self. The occasion was contrived by Jerry Rubin, the reformed Yippie who has decided at 40 that his calling is consciousness. The program, whose co-impresario is Rubin's wife Mimi Leonard, offers to those willing to shell out $32 to $60 per ticket not merely the galaxy of stars (Dick Gregory and Buckminster Fuller too) but the promise that all participants will learn, during the 14 1/2-hour much-ado, "everything you will ever need to know about how to be healthy and loving."

On entering, the pilgrims quickly learn that what they may not receive from the voices on stage they can probably buy from the vendors whose stands and tables jam the lobby and adjacent corridors. They are hustling a cornucopia of aids to selfdiscovery, self-actualization, self-service, self-enhancement, self-assertion, and self-treatment. Equipment to facilitate what used to be called self-abuse, and literature encouraging its practice is also offered, along with energy pyramids, jogging shoes, biofeedback machines and ionizers, lore on herbology, kinesiology, esoteric breathing techniques, and organic sprouts from an outfit called Pinch of Love in Athens, Me. Mountains of books, too, by the star speakers and other luminaries. Sample titles: Stories the Feet Have Told Thru Reflexology, Rebirthing in the New Age. Here, in a continual flea-market atmosphere peopled by folks who say "head" when they mean "mind" and "I feel" when they mean "I mean," are posters, pamphlets and sleek brochures promising still other shindigs where the secret of life may be gleaned.

Or is there any secret? "The secret to happiness is really so simple," says one pamphlet. "You just need to be who you really are; and who you are is whoever you are when you stop doing all the things you do to be someone other than who you are because you're so afraid who you really are may not be all right."

It is not easy, glancing about, to tell who the participants really are. Right off the bat in the morning, a bouncy little loudmouth takes the barren stage and tells everyone to pick a partner for a game. "One of you will be a frozen yogurt, the other a banana." Fantastic! This apparently fulfills the promise that there would be group "sharing" and mass "intimacy." Still, the participants are people who, en masse, become as obedient, as malleable as a class of terrified kindergarteners. They submit themselves with amazing unanimity to a series of silly exercises ordered from on high. Everybody stand up! Take a deep breath! Massage your leg! Jump up and down three times! Give the laugh of power! Huh-uuugh! Fabulous! Pick another partner! A, you tell B what you like about the person, and if you don't know the person, make it up!

Individually, meanwhile, many of them give every sign of knowing who they are. Here is one who says he is Marvin Schwartz, 46, a math teacher who took est training. Says Schwartz: "I used to stutter badly. With est I got off stuttering. My life is a sword now." Here is Peter Wetzler, 25. He meditates, runs, is "into" yoga and is happy "just being here and seeing the possibilities." Here is Sil Read, 23, another est grad, who thinks attending The Event is "like going into a beautiful church." There in a $60 seat, a matronly woman sits confiding to a newfound friend in the next seat that she is open. Says she: "I used to be closed, and I lost my job, my money and my husband, and things did not start to get better until I became -- open."

Today, mostly, they are an audience. They applaud abundantly. They applaud themselves and the speakers with impartial enthusiasm. Their collective gratitude for glibness and fatuousness seems boundless. Here comes Wayne Dyer onto the stage, collar open, bald head shining, as he offers a handy cure for guilt: "Don't feel guilty, don't feel that way, don't let those thoughts in your head." Hooray!

Here comes Muscleman Schwarzenegger, fully if casually clothed, refusing a request to take off his shirt but solemnly sharing his discovery that one can do things better if one thinks about them. Hooray for mental power! Here come Mr. Masters and Ms. Johnson, smooth as Nichols and May used to be, finishing each other's sentences, opening everybody's eyes to the possibility that pleasure is to be had from sex. Hooray! Any questions? The immense speakers boom forth one from a young woman in the crowd:

Q. What do you say when your lover asks you, have you reached an orgasm?

A. You don't really have to explain yourself.

The biggest hooray is reserved for the prime-time afterdinner headliner, Erhard. By then Dick Gregory has come and gone with his familiar tirade, Bucky Fuller has delivered a mystifying ramble on creativity, and Rubin's father-in-law George Leonard, barefooted, has in formed the crowd: "We have vacated our bodies, and now we are in the process of moving back in." The audience fails to laugh, suggesting that it has been properly primed for Erhard.

Who is, as ever, ready for them. With his camp-meeting mesmerism on overdrive, he plays his stock-in-trade spiel on "It" and "transformation" and "enlightenment" like a dependable old Elvis Presley favorite. Nothing, he keeps saying, is going to enlighten them. And he goes on: "When you're willing to take the circumstances you've got and come from that, then you're enlightened. You come from enlightenment. Enlightenment isn't a process. It happens outside of time. The process happens in time. In fact, it might be time. Enlightenment happens." The flock is left to wonder where to go for help to make it happen.

Curiously, after all that, the contrivers of The Event still feel it necessary to offer a professional comedian for laughs. So here is George Carlin telling us all, "I have developed a life-style that does not require my presence." Under the circumstances, a most promising idea. -- Frank Trippet

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