Word: ests
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...girl named Wendy insists that her life works. She's come straight from Transcendental Meditation, and she's just here to seek further enlightenment. Ron observes she is full of shit. He launches into a banal ten-hour lecture on est epistemology. Most of what we know consists of received ideas and secondhand experiences. We see the world through a glaze of beliefs and ideas. Thinking is crap-the yammering in the back of our heads. Ron wiggles his fingers behind his head to show us how foolish thinking...
...acknowledge what has been said. Many fear that the philosophy is too deep for them, but Ron says it will all become clear later. Hostile questioners are verbally thrashed and told to "come off your act." Intellectuals, who are already guilty of thinking, are tripped up by est's Catch-22: "All criticism is self-created and says more about the critic than the subject discussed...
Asking questions is a minefield, because words do not mean the same thing in est as they do in English. "Understand" is intellectual and bad ("Understanding is the booby prize in life"); "get" is experiential and good. "Try" is bad. You either do it or you don't. A woman rises to defend her secretary, who "tries" hard at some jobs and sometimes fails. "You're a self-righteous bitch!" Ron screams. She collapses in tears; Ron says she is patronizing the secretary by approving her failures. A man rises to offer sympathy to the woman...
Nausea, boredom and physical discomfort set in, and a few people begin raising their hands for the official silver-colored est bags to throw up in. By around midnight (no watches are allowed in the room), we have been going more than 15 hours with only two bathroom breaks and no food. Ron announces we will go without a food break today (groans) but we will just do a few exercises and go home (sighs of relief). We go another two or three hours, of course, so the anger can build into fury. We do "processes" (relaxation and meditation exercises...
Sunday. Following the est script, the "logistics team" has set the air conditioners on extra cold. Room temperature is perhaps in the low 40s, and going down. A woman announces that she was so high after yesterday's session that she felt no need for food. A man says that on the way home, Seventh Avenue smelled of clover. A hefty housewife, who is wearing a heavy sweater over a wool dress, asks if the air conditioners could be turned off. Ron says "the temperature will be what it will be," but she is allowed to fetch her coat...