Conversation between Nathaniel Branden & Werner Erhard
Nathaniel Branden (1930–2014) was a Canadian-American psychologist and writer known as the “father of the self-esteem movement.” He was also known for being an associate of the Russian-American philosopher Ayn Rand during the 1950s and 60s. His nearly 20 books have been translated into 18 languages with more than 4 million copies in print. He said his mission was to inspire people “to honor their life and happiness.”
Werner Erhard (1935) is an American thinker and philanthropist known as the founder of est, which he launched in 1971. In 1977, he co-founded The Hunger Project with singer-songwriter John Denver and physicist Robert W. Fuller. In 1991, he sold the intellectual property of est to his employees who then established the personal growth and development company Landmark Worldwide. More than 2 million people have participated in the programs led by Landmark and its predecessor companies.
This document is a never-before-published conversation between Nathaniel and Werner that took place in early 1982.
According to Nathaniel’s personal notes, the two men first met sometime in 1976 when Werner was in New York City to give a talk. In 1978, Nathaniel and his wife Devers had lunch with Werner at the Franklin House in San Francisco, where Werner’s operations were based. The two men were also together later that same year with American psychologist Will Schutz during a filming of the popular Phil Donahue show (I can’t find a copy of this episode anywhere).
In early 1982, Nathaniel invited Werner over to his home in Los Angeles to discuss a number of themes from Nathaniel’s recently completed book Honoring the Self. Nathaniel recorded the nearly 2-hour conversation for his records.
Nathaniel’s widow, Leigh Branden, is a friend of mine. Last month, she found the recording in an old box of his archives and sent it to me. She granted permission for me to transcribe and share the conversation publicly. The conversation has not been altered or edited in anyway. I take responsibility for any mistakes or typos.
Tape — Side 1
NATHANIEL: [Turns tape recorder on] Interview with Werner Erhard. January 29, 1982.
WERNER: [Laughing, talking to Nathaniel’s wife Devers] Like inviting a trojan horse in.
NATHANIEL: What I’m going to do is this. As I mentioned earlier, obviously, at some points, be playing straight man, in that I have an approximate idea…
WERNER: [Interrupting, to Devers] Does the cigar smoke bother you?
DEVERS: No, not at all.
NATHANIEL: I have an approximate idea of your ways of looking at certain things, but first of all, I don’t want to assume I know.
WERNER: [Laughing] That’s nice. That’s unusual.
DEVERS: I’m going to take pictures too.
WERNER: Some of the pictures of you two guys are really, really fabulous. Where did I see… Oh, the one on the book. Is it on the book? Yeah, this is very good. So is the one in the other room. [Laughing] I want you to know I had never taken a good photograph until…
NATHANIEL: There was a beautiful one of you in the [est] Graduate Review.
WERNER: Yeah? OK. Maybe it’s my perspective.
NATHANIEL: We are very poor judges of ourselves. Devers and I always disagree on which of my pictures should be used for publicity purposes. I hate…
DEVERS: He wants to be very serious and tense.
NATHANIEL: In any event…
WERNER: [To Devers] This is a nice picture. Because it’s got quality to it. It’s obviously serious and…
NATHANIEL: What I want to do is ask some fairly simple questions and let you raddle with your permission to at certain points I may say, “OK. Enough. I’m going to re-direct now.” Fair enough?
WERNER: Yeah. This is your ball game and I’m playing in it. So you tell me what you want and I’m pleased to do it that way.
NATHANIEL: Thank you. Thank you. I’m fascinated by the fact… I guess part of my first question spins out of my knowledge of your interest for example in Zen and the influence which it’s had. Zen has had a very profound influence on the whole field of psychology. I’m intrigued by the fact that the word “ego” is of course Latin for “I.” Ego enjoys a very bad press in the world. It enjoys a bad press in religion. It enjoys a bad press often, not always, in philosophy. Certainly, it enjoys a bad press in transpersonal psychology. Our mutual friends or acquaintances in the San Francisco area never use that word, almost except in a negative sense. And yet all the word means, in origin, is “I.” Since I know you’re familiar with the phenomenon. I’m interested in your opinion as to why this is so. Why do you think it’s so that ego has acquired such a bad press. Because I don’t think the answer to that is self-evident.
WERNER: No. I don’t think so either. In fact, it’s really a beautiful question. It’s really totally switched by head when you asked the question the way you asked it. And it’s very interesting. It’s something which I haven’t given any thought Nathaniel, so I’ll have to think about the question. But my first reaction was that there was something off and people were looking for something to lay it on. And perhaps the understanding of the aspects of self were such that there wasn’t much around and so that was the one that was there most prominently, namely “I”-ness. And it might have gotten off on that sort of… So, my sense is that something’s wrong and that’s how ego got its bad name. But that’s pure guess work and historically I have no idea about the answer. But I don’t think you were finished with the question anyhow. Go ahead.
NATHANIEL: This is a good opening. Let’s develop this a little further. Because it’s so endemic among people that we know personally or know in common, what I’ll loosely call the whole transpersonal field.
WERNER: Oh! OK now that’s a little different question. Go ahead.
NATHANIEL: That is narrower, but let me say this. Let me feed a little more in that might stimulate it. I’m interested in the fact that there is this identification of ego or sometimes of self with only the narrowest, most petty vision of one’s own life, yet there’s nothing in the word which implies that. For example, it’s often the case that people in Eastern religions and philosophies will use “ego” or “self” when they want to refer to maybe an excessive or exclusive concern with not only my material concern, but my material concerns only of today, like it’s an inability to perceive my life globally or anything but the immediate physical dimension. Yet again, there is nothing in the concepts of ego or self which communicates intrinsically any such notion and indeed that notion of ego or self is enormously foreign to me personally. Do you understand what I’m saying?
WERNER: I understand. The thing which I find fascinating about the question is that your… First off, I think we need to say, and I think we both know this so it’s kind of just a pat on the head, that we’re not really talking about the word because we could be talking about “x” — at least I don’t think we’re talking about the word.
NATHANIEL: You’re right.
WERNER: But that — this word — which was inherently neutral to begin with, one would think, has taken on all these pejorative senses. And your question as I understand it is why did it take on these pejorative senses since it was… Now maybe there is something pejorative around, but why that word took on those pejorative senses. Why don’t we leave that word neutral? Why don’t we leave this “I” thing neutral? And say “X” is this pejorative thing. Why did we mix them together so to speak? That was what I got out of the question, which I never thought about before, which I think is a very interesting point.
So, just to respond — and now this is a little more than off the top of my head like the first one was — in part, there is an analogy. And the analogy would be that you have an automobile out in the front and somebody says “There is this new thing called the automobile and it gets you around to wherever you want to go and you don’t have to wait for it at the corner and it runs night and day. Not only that, but it’s a kind of enjoyable mode of getting to grandmother’s or wherever you’re going. And it’s out front and here’s the key.” So one takes the key, goes out front, starts it up, and grabs the rearview mirror and drives away with the rearview mirror in one’s hand because one has an incomplete awareness of this thing called the automobile so you can’t differentiate one aspect of it from another. And it works to some degree, it runs, and it often gets down to the bottom of the hill, usually there are a couple of crashes along the way and very rarely does it ever really get to grandmother’s, but it gets you closer to grandmother’s than you were when you started.
I have exactly the same notion about the totality of selfhood — of which ego is either another name or a part, depending on how the word is used. That we, as a people, human beings, have generally so little, so dim an awareness of the totality of selfhood, and the various aspects of it and the parts and the way they work, and that the steering wheel is used — though it turns left and right — than the rearview mirror and we’re kind of crashing through life in this mostly unsatisfying way, not unsuccessful, but unsatisfying way, and not too damn successful globally either. I mean a few of us have had a lot of success, but if you take the totality of 4.6 billion people there is damn little success as well.
NATHANIEL: Agreed.
WERNER: There’s an enormous confusion between success and satisfaction for most people. We don’t have good words for it. If we were so dimly aware of automobiles as we are of the totality of selfhood, the world of driving would be ridiculous. And we are that dimly aware of the world of selfhood. And now I want to draw another analogy. And that’s the analogy of the African herdsman who looks at cattle and sees, I think, 21 distinctly different, discernable states of brown. Whereas I look at the same cattle and see brown cattle.
NATHANIEL: Very good analogy.
WERNER: He, from those distinctions, knows exactly when that cattle needs water, whether he can walk to them water, when he needs to start walking them to the water, which one is sick, which one is healthy, which one is pregnant, which one isn’t pregnant, which one is this, which one is that, which one is the other thing. If I got dropped into the herdsman’s job, all of my cattle would be dead in short order.
NATHANIEL: That’s right.
WERNER: Because — and I want to make this one point Nathnaiel because I think it’s fundamental — because of a phenomenon which I’m going to label “discrimination.” I lack discrimination. And what discrimination is is the ability to draw distinctions. We are highly discriminate. That is so say, we can draw important, fundamental distinctions in an automobile. But in the domain of selfhood, we are rotten at discrimination. Our distinctions are fuzzy, arguable, for the most part merely conceptual, rather than actual. And for me, the whole mish-mash that ego and the confusion that you’re pointing at represents is a function of this dim awareness.
NATHANIEL: OK. I think the point is absolutely valid and I think the herdsmen is of course aware that his survival requires the ability to make discriminations. The world in which we live we need to make discriminations of other kinds, given the environment that we need to deal with. Whenever you’re trying to think about a concept, it’s always useful to remember — speaking of discrimination — as contrasted with what? Meaning, what is the alternative?
WERNER: [Laughing] Right.
NATHANIEL: In a certain sense, when somebody says, “Life is good”. In a certain sense, even that I God knows feel most of the time, there’s a certain sense in which it’s a very strange proposition philosophically. As contrasted with what? [Laughing] What am I comparing it to? What is it that’s not good by comparison to which I’m saying this.
Anyway, “ego” or “I” is used basically one of two ways that I’m aware of. Either in differentiation from “we” or “you” or “non-ego” meaning “me” and “non-me”. Then there is a further sub-division either “I” and “we” or “I” and “you.” Alright?
WERNER: Alright. So I got the first distinction which is either “me” or “not-me.” But what is the other one?
NATHANIEL: “Me” or “not-me.” Or sometimes “ego” is used not to differentiate “me” and “not-me,” but “I” as contrasted with “we.” OK?
WERNER: OK.
NATHANIEL: Then that is the social use of the word “ego.” Then there is the metaphysical use of the word “ego,” in which the opposite pull of ego is as it were the universe or existence or the totality of things. So, that in effect we talk about losing the ego and experiencing the oneness of everything. Which is then the metaphysical sense. Now, what’s fascinating is that if one looks — to go back to the social for a moment — at all the cruelty and harm which human beings do other human beings, in terms of murder, expropriation, torture. The crimes committed in the name of “ego” or “self” are truly microscopic set against the crimes committed in the name of “we” or “us.” Because all the great butcheries of history, all the great barbarisms of history, are never — I mean, you could say to somebody who kills somebody or tortures them or chops their eyes out because he is personally angry at him — that is a spit in the ocean compared to what people do once it’s for a great cause or the true faith. True?
WERNER: That’s right.
NATHANIEL: What is very interesting though is “we” never got a bad name.
WERNER: Yeah. Interesting.
NATHANIEL: “We” never got a bad name. For example, early on, the first time when you and I were guest speakers at the YPO several years ago, and a woman in the audience was — it was interesting to me — raising a challenge against you, which is raised by many people who work in what I’ll call loosely call “folk appeal,” whatever that is, [joking] “I’m waiting to find out when I grow up what I’m going to do.” [Werner laughing]
In any event, what she said was something to the effect of — this is a paraphrase, not a quote — “Inculcation occurs with self-realization. Aren’t you in your own way encouraging selfishness?” One of my criticisms of many people in the human potential movement is how defensive they and how helpless they are when the specter of narcissism or the “Me” generation, as though it was some illicit activity. As though if encouraging people to move in the direction of expanded consciousness or self-fulfillment or anything which would contribute to their enjoyment of life or sense of their own fulfillment. This is somehow kind of an illicit activity which you have to apologize for or justify in terms of something else.
Here again what is interesting to me is that I don’t see a conflict between self and the other. I reject the whole notion of a conflict as I assume you would. But what’s interesting is that as soon as the issue is put in contention at all, low man on the totem pole is always — see the individual is always at the low end of the stick. And that is what I’m inviting you to meditate on with me or reflect on. Namely why it is that throughout history individual has always been low man on the totem pole.
WERNER: Yeah, it’s interesting Nathaniel because your question really reflects to some degree the difference in our approaches and what interests me here is that you’re actually bringing up questions which I have not considered.
NATHANIEL: [Joking] Well then you must feel very indebted to me.
WERNER: [Laughing] I do. But what it reflects for me is the distinction or the difference in our approaches to things. Which is useful to me because it helps me to begin to understand where what you say comes from. And for me that’s actually senior to what anybody is saying. So that’s great.
NATHANIEL: I feel the same way about you in this context so that’s good. That’s good.
WERNER: First off, let me make some comments to get me up to your question. I’ll probably make 3 or 4 and I think they’ll seem unrelated, but when they’re done they’ll come together.
The first comment is that I don’t like psychology very much as a discipline. I don’t like it very much as a discipline because I think that it is less than effective in understanding and empowering and giving insights into and enabling motions forward the area of my interest. Now, I’m back into playing psychology to some degree because the assumption is that what I’m doing has something to do with psychology and therefore I ought to be able to explain myself in psychological terms and therefore psychologists will understand what I’m doing, etc. I think psychology is great as psychology. And I’m not versed in it enough to be a critic of it in its own right. But I’m versed about my own things to be a critic of it in terms of the light it sheds or the darkness it makes in my own realm, so I have that kind of a problem. Recently I’ve begun to study philosophy again and that’s a lot richer in terms of helping me to understand what I’m interested in, shedding light on it, enabling breakthroughs, and so on and so forth. That’s statement number 1.
Statement number 2. From the beginning of est, I kept trying to say — it was like a voice shouting in the wilderness — “This is not the human potential movement!”
NATHANIEL: Let me reassure you that maybe I had aired on the side of using shorthand. Because I understand you. I am not a great admirer of the field of psychology myself. It’s a kind of a shorthand because we lack a certain language.
WERNER: No. I know that you and I are on the same wavelength.
NATHANIEL: I completely understand what you’re saying.
WERNER: Yes. I know you do. I actually know that without you telling me because I know a little bit about your history and I know about your expression. So you and I might say different things about what I just said, but I know you would immediately understand what I’m saying. Let me say that I respect psychology in its own right. I certainly respect the human potential movement in its own right. And I have never thought that what we were doing was human potential.
I want to make the distinction about human potential and what we’re up to. Human potential is grounded in the notion of subjectivity. Grounded there. It’s grounded in the notion that there is some potential to be actualized. The pre-suppositional structure of the work that I’ve done is the antithesis of both of those notions. It’s not anti-subjective. It’s simply not subjective. And it’s based on the notion that there is nothing to start with rather than there is potential to start with. And it goes on from there.
For instance, operationally I’ll give you a distinction although this is only an example. The human potential movement, at least in a large part of its history, rejected intellectuality, and we’ve always embraced it. And that’s a kind of operational distinction. OK so much for those 2 [statements].
The last statement is that: if not the most important issue than certainly one of the two or three most important issues in all the work that I’ve done is this whole issue which you just brought up. I first off want to re-state what the issue is for me so that I’m talking out of my place to talk and you see where it fits into the question rather than my trying to figure out exactly what your question presupposes as a structure. I’m talking about the totality of the domain called “Self-hood.” I want to make sure that it’s clear that I distinguish Self and individual, so that Self and individual are not synonymous, in fact, they are unequivocally not synonymous for me.
NATHANIEL: Oh, I understand that fully. In the sense in which you capitalize Self. I’m talking about self with a small ‘s’ and very often use Self with a large ‘S’ to have an entirely separate meaning, so I’m with you completely in my understand of that. Maybe I should mention one thing that could be useful here. This is really — from my point of view — a philosophical discussion and not at all a psychological discussion. I think one of the most intelligent comments that Fran Dever [?] gave me when he read The Psychology of Romantic Love, he said, “You know you really have done a magic act. This is a book of philosophy disguised as a book on psychology which is disguised as a book on romantic love. And it’s really a part of the development of a vision of life for which romantic love is the vehicle through which you’re operating.” So that in many ways, I feel that I am more basically a philosopher than a psychologist.
WERNER: Well, and your background would argue for that too. Not only that, but the precedents in the field of psychology are that. I mean James, who was more or less the father of the whole thing…
NATHANIEL: That’s right. So I’m very much out of step with contemporary psychology, certainly, as you correctly with the anti-intellectualism of the human potential movement. This really for me is a philosophical conversation and maybe it’ll become a sociological one in a few minutes. But I’m not experiencing you yet as coming head on. Because forget labels for a moment and let’s go back to something…
WERNER: [Interrupting] No, as I said that part of the conversation was only to get me up to your question.
NATHANIEL: Oh, then I beg your pardon, I cut in too soon. I apologize.
WERNER: And the 3 or 4 things turned into 3 things that I wanted to say just to get me up to the question… so, Nathaniel say the question for me one more time.
NATHANIEL: [Laughing] The question was we’re still exploring why it is that politically, ethically, religiously, philosophically, with some very rare exceptions, in the real world, the world in which we all live or die, smile or bleed, which is the only world that interests me in the end. A very important point. We are bombarded almost from the day of birth. “Listen kid, I’ve got news for you. Life is really not about you. It’s about something else.” What is the very first meaning when you call a child “good” or you say he “behaves”? What it means is: your first introduction to the word “good” is that you conform to somebody else’s expectations. “He is a good boy.” “He minds me.” “She is well-behaved.” What the hell does all that mean? It’s all variations on the theme of conformity and obedience.
WERNER: So the question — fundamentally — is: why does the “I” always take the rap, rather than the “we”? Is that…
NATHANIEL: I’m asking you: you work with thousands of people, you work in a different arena, but you cannot do what you do without — at some level — these issues intersecting with what you do. Right?
WERNER: Oh absolutely. They intersect massively.
NATHANIEL: Right. They intersect in many, many different ways. Organizationally, in the seminars and such, so I’m really asking you to kind of just ruminate, almost viscerally, I’m not expecting any kind of philosophical… but just on that gut level of interacting with thousands and thousands of people and seeing the operation of this, you’ll have to have some sort of impressions.
WERNER: Well, essentially, the glue for that view is inculturation. I didn’t say it started there, but I say what keeps it in place is that the environment is organized and you just gave the example about — you get patted on the back for behavior which enhances everybody else, you get at best begrudging acknowledgement for behavior which enhances “I”, even if the behavior does no harm to anyone else, or even if the behavior benefits others, if you have benefited royally then the appreciation is only grudging.
NATHANIEL: Right. That’s a very good way to put it.
WERNER: As I said, the thought police, the shapers of opinion, in this culture, reinforce that so that those of us who reflect those shapers of opinion reinforce that which each other. And I’m not talking about that as the starting place, that’s just the environment in which we operate. In a lot of ways, it’s really manipulating the individual personal drives and needs so as to produce behavior which is essentially contributing outside individual personal needs and so on and so forth. It’s a kind of true inauthenticity. In other words, “A” gets “B” to behave for the benefit of “We” utilizing motives which are inherent to “A,” not motives that are inherent to “A” for “B.” For instance, people are charitable because of the acknowledgement that it brings to them as an individual. That’s essentially inauthentic for me.
NATHANIEL: Yeah, agreed.
WERNER: [Pauses, thinking] …I’m trying to work my way down to the source of it.
NATHANIEL: Well, you may not actually have an opinion. One answer is, “Nathaniel, I agree with your description of the phenomenon and I don’t at this moment have an opinion as to its origins.” That’s a completely valid answer.
WERNER: Oh yeah, sure! Which is what I meant when I said, “You’re asking me questions in areas that I’m interested in and have thought about, but you’re asking the questions from directions that I haven’t looked at.” So I’m trying to work my way through the answer to the question to see what the hell is there.
DEVERS: Let me ask you a question. Why do you suppose Werner Erhard — “I” — who has really capitalized, I think, “I”, has really gotten so much rap and has been set apart and at times what does it make you feel not being “we”?
WERNER: That’s good. There are really two domains in which I got something to say there. The one area is — actually they’re the same area, but they’re looked at from two different sides. We were looking in a group with whom I was looking at this with, it happened to be the other [est] trainers and me, at why behavior was unacceptable or rejected or more accurately or more often misinterpreted. And the answer that we came to and it really fit for me after I looked at it carefully, is that in this culture no one is allowed to be “holy.” There are no “holy men” in this culture. You must have an explanation of yourself which does not include that you are in any way “holy.” That is to say you must have a structure of explanation of motives, which when backed down to who the hell is doing this and what their motives are, that there is nothing holy about it.
NATHANIEL: Not only that, but that there is in some sense base.
WERNER: Yes. Precisely. Therefore, if in fact, there is any expression which is holy — and I’m going to try to get into what I mean by “holy” in a little bit — if in fact there is an expression which holy, you either have to be inauthentic by representing it as something else in the explanation of your motives and who you are, or you have to be attacked if you are either not explaining yourself as a way of not being authentic or God forbid in anyway explaining yourself accurately and honestly. That’s part of the answer to the question you asked.
DEVERS: Yes.
WERNER: I think it’s really fundamental. This culture denies any innate holiness. What do I mean by “holy” and why does the culture deny? And to go back to the answer to your question initially. I’m going to repeat myself so I’m just going to do it in 1 or 2 sentences.
Because of the total — fundamental — and therefore total misapprehension of what Self is, all of this stupidity falls out. Again, I’ll use the analogy of the automobile. If we were as dimly aware of the automobile as we are of the Self, can you imagine the body of explanation and the disciplines that would come into existence to explain why automobiles didn’t work and why there were crashes and why nothing happened, when a simpleton could come along and say, “Don’t steer with the rearview mirror. Take your hands off the rearview mirror. Put your hands onto the steering wheel and steer with the steering wheel.”
Now, until someone came along and made that little stupid instruction, it’s not even a distinction yet, but just instruction, can you imagine the gurus and the scientific disciplines and the bodies of knowledge that would come along to explain how to make automobiles work and the bullshit that would be existent until that one little distinction was drawn by someone who could then give intelligent instruction, not to mention, perhaps go on to reveal the distinction, not to mention, go on to reveal that the whole problem was one of distinction.
So the answer to the question: why does the “I” always take the rap and the “we” never? Why is “I” always the fall guy? Why is there no room for “I”? I say that the answer to that is a fundamental and therefore total mis-getting of Self and the disciplines, the mores, and all that other stuff that comes up from that mis-getting is the stuff that you’re attempting to clarify by writing about and working on and it’s really the fundamental answer to why that junk is there.
NATHANIEL: Then would it be fair to summarize — I sort of want to move on, I feel a bit of [time] pressure — would it be fair to summarize that what you seem to be saying is that, at least provisionally, that you see the issue in terms of simply a consequence of an inadequate or faulty or a failure actually to understand what self and ego are or mean or entail?
WERNER: Yes.
NATHANIEL: Good.
WERNER: But I want to make it real clear as in something so simple — at the first level — as something so simply as trying to drive your automobile effectively with your hands steering on the rearview mirror. And then at a deeper level, a deeper misunderstanding, that given the basic lack of insight and appreciation, you will then build a world which looks like this world.
NATHANIEL: That’s right.
DEVERS: I would like you to add your explanation of a holy man because I feel that’s very important. The threatening quality of the “I” to the “we.”
NATHANIEL: [Joking] Yes. What I need from you Werner, I want to cultivate your ability to speak aphoristically — in one liners.
DEVERS: [To Werner] What is a holy man to you?
NATHANIEL: [Joking] One of the characteristics of a holy man is that they zing one-liners. [Laughing] You understand?
DEVERS: I’m assuming because of who you are that you are a “holy man”? Speak to me as a holy man. The difficulties of an “I” when it’s much easier to be a “we.”
WERNER: First off, we need to understand that what I mean by “holy man” is that which everyone is ultimately. [Devers laughing] I mean that. Oh, absolutely I mean that.
NATHANIEL: That sounds awfully close to “potential.”
WERNER: No, no. First off, you have to understand that it’s hard to talk in aphorisms because I’m essentially trying to do violence — that is to say, to break up — the whole structure from which the questions come.
NATHANIEL: I understand. I’m playing with you, the distinction we did “ultimately” and “potentially.” I’m just playing with you a little bit. I’m fully aware of the distinction.
WERNER: I think that more conversation in the paradigm of misunderstanding always, only deepens the misunderstanding.
NATHANIEL: Absolutely. As witness: any marriage.
WERNER: Exactly. So that my conversation is always intended — I didn’t say always does — but is always intended to do damage to the paradigm.
NATHANIEL: Please believe, I can’t prove it, then I’d have to give a lecture. But I really do understand that.
WERNER: [Laughing] Yes, I know you do.
NATHANIEL: Now consider this…
DEVERS: [Interrupting] I want your answer to the holy man!
WERNER: A holy man — holy person — is distinguished, in part, by expressing him or herself in terms of where they’re coming from rather than in terms where they’re attempting to get to. So that when human beings are trying to get somewhere, they are what I call “motivated.” There is always a “because” which explains why they did what they did. When a human being knows whence they come, there is no “because,” where they’re coming from and the expression are one. There is no motive. There is no reason for doing it. Anymore than a flower has a reason for blooming — now, that’s only analogous, that’s not an example, a flower is not a “holy one.” But there’s an analogy in there. So a holy person is a person unmotivated.
Now here’s the problem with what I just said. The problem with what I just said is that on the dimension of reasons and where-I’m-going-ness, any intersecting action coming not from motive or going-to, can always be interpreted as “motivated.”
Let me repeat that. If you take the dimension of motivation and you intersect an action from another dimension — let’s say unmotivated — where it intersects, what you will see — the action — you will be able to explain as a motivated action and by explain I mean cogently and self-consistently so that it fits. Always observables from other dimensions when intersecting with the dimension on which the observation is taking place can always be explained in the dimension on which the observation is taking place. You can’t use the rules of that dimension to understand the behavior.
Which is the whole problem with trying to do quote “scientific” research into some of the things that we’re talking about, which is why this is more philosophy than it is psychology. Because the rules of investigation have to be consistent with the dimension which you’re investigating. You can’t take the rules of one dimension to investigate phenomenon of the other dimension except as they intersect and then you’re always going to get a fit with the dimension on which you’re looking, which proves nothing about the dimension which you’re trying to investigate.
NATHANIEL: This is of course one of the great faults of contemporary psychology is that it has worked within a grotesquely narrow vision of the total universe, and therefore requires that all of this explanation occur only within a very narrow band. Which is why they all break down at one point or another.
WERNER: This answers the question that you [Devers] asked me personally about my own sense of the response that I’ve gotten in the world. I mean I expected and do expect a response because essentially I’m operating from and wish to announce the existence of a dimension which is unperceivable in its truth or actuality from the dimension into which I’m speaking. But that was the name of the game. I knew that was what I was doing to start with.
NATHANIEL: A couple of fast observations and then next question. I think that what you said about the issue of holiness and our culture — only having a very limited repertoire of explanations is absolutely true. I think another element or 2 other elements I can think of which bear on my inquiry today is this: one, part of the consequence of the Puritan — should we say Christian ethic, Puritan ethic — is a certain divorcement between valuable achievements and pleasure. Meaning, a certain assumption that if there is not pain involved, then what you’re doing is dubious. [Werner laughs] Truly a very vicious notion, but a very prevalent one.
WERNER: Yes.
NATHANIEL: Therefore, if a person is doing something which at one level seems to be offering a human service, yet at another level does not appear to be entailing some momentous self-sacrifice on the person who is doing it, it is ethically suspect at the very least. That brings us right back to the start of this whole conversation. Collaterally with that, because I regard the animus against profit as a special case of the animus against the individual, if you are doing something which is useful to people and if God forbid you are earning your living, worse still a good living doing something which is useful to people, your motives have to be reducible to something ignoble. Or if not ignoble at least totally devoid of anything deserving admiration. Alright?
WERNER: Yes.
NATHANIEL: Which is why it is a liability in my line of work to, it’s not desirable to appear starving because then you’re regarded as incompetent [Devers laughing], but it’s very funny a client will have to work through a lot of negative feelings coming up — now that I’m using that as a facility to see people in — where they’re getting off on dealing with “I’m coming for assistance and I see two God damn Mercedes in the driveway.”
WERNER: [Joking] A holy man doesn’t have two Mercedes, we all know that!
DEVERS: [Joking] Camels maybe, but not Mercedes.
WERNER: [Laughing] Very good. That’s a good little aphorism there.
NATHANIEL: [Laughing] OK. I’m going to move very fast now and I hope we can compress because…
WERNER: [Interrupting] Let me make one comment on the thing that you said. That is a real detriment to people who don’t have 2 Mercedes. That whole structure of thinking keeps them…
DEVERS: [Interrupting] From getting a Mercedes!
WERNER: Not only keeps them from getting a Mercedes, but keeps them from having any satisfaction in their lives. Really.
NATHANIEL: That’s right.
WERNER: It’s very deeply destructive.
NATHANIEL: Yes. I don’t have any children of my own. I have grown daughters through Devers, but none of my own. But many years ago, somebody asked me if I had a child what would I most want to teach that child. And I never thought about it consciously until the question was flung at me more or less involuntary meaning spontaneously. I said number one — the fun of using your own powers, of using what you’ve got. And secondly, never allowing a split — using your own powers in a way that is personally pleasurable to you and the process of earning a living. Never regarding work as some onerous duty, apart from the process of the enjoyment of life.
WERNER: That’s a hell of a book [title] by the way: What Would You Teach Your Child?
NATHANIEL: Right. To earn your living doing something that you love doing, if you’re able to do that, you have licked certainly one of the great issues of being human. That’s just an aside. Next question. I was listening a year or two ago to you being interviewed and here I’m definitely being straight man. I’m going to be provocative — moderately — to get a rise out of you.
WERNER: Whatever go ahead. You can be very provocative.
NATHANIEL: Werner Erhard is being interviewed on New Dimensions and he’s asked, “Will taking your program or seminar facilitate the process of people getting what they want out of life?” And Werner Erhard said, with some degree of polite impatience, if not to say contempt in his voice…
WERNER: [Laughing] I hope it’s not so obvious to everybody else, but go ahead…
NATHANIEL: It’s very obvious to me sweetheart. If there’s anything in this world I know it’s the human voice. Anyway, he says, “What people want is of no importance whatsoever. What I am teaching has got really nothing to do with aiding people in getting what they want because I don’t think what they want is of any importance.” Now, I’m listening and saying, “I know a context in which that might be said, in which people want a lot of naughty and — ”
WERNER: [Interrupting] –nonsense. They want what they don’t want is what I was trying to say.
NATHANIEL: But you didn’t succeed!
WERNER: [Laughing] OK. I didn’t say I succeeded!
NATHANIEL: I want you to imagine that 22-year-old Albert Einstein is sitting here beside me and is listening. And he says, “What the hell does this man mean? What I want most is to understand how the universe works. Is this mother telling me that what I want is unimportant?” So then I thought to myself, “Well, Werner would probably say, ‘No, no, no. That’s not at all who I’m talking about or what I’m talking about.’”
WERNER: That’s correct.
NATHANIEL: But then little Albert would say, “But then when you’re talking about what people want, why is it geared toward the schlemiels, meaning I am also the human race!”
WERNER: That’s right. And he and you would both know what I meant. Because he would say, if I were to ask him, I happen to know a little about Einstein because he is one of the guys that I’m interested in, that what he wanted was irrelevant as well. That the so called “needs,” the fantasies which are articulated or expressed as “what I want” are of no consequence, should I get them, they wouldn’t satisfy me or make me happy. That what is really important is something a lot more authentic than that, which is what I really want. I make a distinction between what one wants and what one really wants. This happens to be an area in which I’m doing a lot of work. I could have answered Devers about what the hell I’m up to right in this area. It’s the area of vision. So let me tell my little story there. I’m going to get to one place aphoristically and one place delving-ly.
To trivialize and therefore speed up the beginning of this thing, I’m going to do a talk on the Self. Very rapidly. So a person wants to know “Who am I?” And the analogy is that they are an onion. And they pick the onion up and they look at it and they say, “Oh! This is who I am. Now let me examine this very carefully. Oh wait, this is only the skin. Good. I’ll take the skin off and see who I really am.” So they peel the skin and they say, “Now I’ve got my self!” And they look at it very carefully and oh my God it’s another skin. Well they know what to do so they take the skin off. They keep taking skins off and getting “Oh this is who I am” and seeing that who I am is another skin. And finally get down to the bottom, they take the last skin off and what there is is nothing.
As I said, that’s to trivialize this whole talk about the Self and getting back to the Self as nothing, which the Self is.
NATHANIEL: Buddha, one thought I want to flash in here fast: I’m with you. I would say after you peel away the last skin, the Self is who asks the question.
WERNER: OK. Fine. That’s good.
NATHANIEL: [Laughing] Carry on! Carry on!
DEVERS: [Interrupting, to Werner] Want some coffee? Want some hot coffee?
WERNER: Yes please. Thank you.
NATHANIEL: I would adore some. Thank you.
DEVERS: [Joking, to Nathaniel] You would adore some?
NATHANIEL: You didn’t ask me, but… [Werner laughing] I would adore some.
WERNER: So I just did the most important thing I could talk about aphoristically.
NATHANIEL: You did it beautifully.
WERNER: So we’re starting with the Self — to put it into Heideggerian terms, “the clearing” — to put it in another terms, as: that without meaning, that without substance, that without purpose, from which all meaning, purpose, and substance comes. The Self is nothing and it doesn’t mean anything that the Self is nothing. You can’t feel badly about it because if you’re feeling badly about it, you haven’t gotten that the Self is nothing yet. OK starting from there.
NATHANIEL: That’s small ‘s’ [self] right?
WERNER: No that’s big ‘S’ [Self] and small ‘s’ and now… This is the grand…
NATHANIEL: [Interrupting] Carry on!
WERNER: Oh wait — no — sorry, by small ‘s’ you mean something closer to “I”-ness?
NATHANIEL: Yes.
WERNER: Fine. Then…
NATHANIEL: [Interrupting] I don’t think you want to say that the big “S” [Self] is nothing. Do you?
WERNER: Oh yes, absolutely. Absolutely! But not the kind of nothing that you’re talking about for the moment. Just let’s leave that alone. We won’t get into it or we’ll get into it later if we get into it.
The first expression of Self is — coming from nothing, to take a stand on nothing from nothing, that is unmotivated, inexplicable, unreasonable, is one’s vision. We could say what you want. That’s what I mean by what people really want. People however are so far away from themselves, so unaware of themselves, that they mis-identify as themselves the play of thoughts and notions and feelings and attitudes and sensations. They mid-identify that as themselves. Once they do that what they want is of no consequence. That is to say: even if they get it, it won’t mean anything to them, not really, deeply, profoundly. Even if they get it, it won’t mean anything to the world, not really, deeply, and profoundly. That even good things, whatever that means, agreed-on positive things generated from that domain will lack a certain quality of making any difference in the universe, either for “I”, “we”, or any other entity, no matter how quote “good” they are.
NATHANIEL: I’m having a little difficulty in how to interpret you. I’d like to make it personal because that’s very primitive. That might help to focus this a little more. The thing is that not only do you have a context that is not the ordinarily shared one, I do too, though it’s a different one perhaps. Therefore, we would really need time to understand each other.
WERNER: [Laughing] Oh yeah, we’re in real trouble. That’s right. What you said is really beautiful and very, very true. And often leads to misunderstandings with people whom I respect because we don’t make the distinction that neither one of us buys into the consensus.
NATHANIEL: [Joking] It’s like a person from Mars meets a person from Saturn on planet Earth.
WERNER: [Laughing] That’s exactly right!
NATHANIEL: Sometimes I get a clear insight when I tie it to my own personal experience. Let me briefly tell you a story. One of the things that I wanted for a long time — whatever the reasons aren’t important — I wanted to organize my life more and more around writing because I don’t overly enjoy — even though I’m a psychologist — I don’t overly enjoy a lot of involvement with people in a daily sense. The reasons are unimportant now. It all feels too slow for me.
WERNER: I understand.
NATHANIEL: So when I’m with Devers up in Lake Arrowhead [California], I’m really where I’m happiest and most fulfilled in every way. More and more of life has been organized around eliminating workshops, eliminating intensives, doing enough things that I can keep trying on new ideas on, I have…
WERNER: [Interrupting] Excuse me, I want you to give me 2 sentences before we leave on what you’re going to do this weekend. Are you going to do a workshop?
NATHANIEL: Yeah, I’m doing a workshop.
WERNER: Or if you got a brochure, you don’t even need to tell me, just let me see it.
NATHANIEL: I’ll give it to you, sure.
WERNER: [Laughing] Good.
NATHANIEL: Anyway, when I’m there and we’re taking a walk together or I’m sitting at my desk looking up…
WERNER: [Interrupting] By the way, I have so total a sense of what you’re saying about yourself there, it’s like you’re evoking in me the experience rather than drawing me a picture of it.
NATHANIEL: OK good. I have said to Devers many times when we’re maybe just sitting or I come downstairs and we’re playing music or out for a walk, I say, “I don’t know what the fuck anybody wants out of life, but for me, this is it. I have nowhere to go from here!” Meaning, I’m not looking forward to the future. I’d love to have more of the same. I’d love us to have a long life together. But I don’t have the fantasy, really…
WERNER: [Interacting] Your life is not about what isn’t. At that moment, at least, it’s about what is. Not that there won’t be a what isn’t — a future.
NATHANIEL: Right. There’s always new things, but the things now are new relative to 2 years ago.
WERNER: Right. Exactly. I understand this state totally. You have communicated way beyond the amount of time it took you to say that and way beyond the words.
NATHANIEL: [Laughing] OK. Thank you. So yesterday, I finished the new book [Honoring the Self]. I wanted to get my life stripped down. I got rid of a lot of so called friends, I really simplified my professional life. I knocked off a lot of things. So this is something that I wanted to do and when I do this daily existence will be more satisfying than when I am doing this. I projected a certain goal, I planned it out, I did it, and lo’ and behold, just as I thought, everything was more terrific. Now…
WERNER: [Interrupting] Now excuse me for one second, I must make a comment here. It concerns me that the source of this outcome is slightly different than that which you’re going to credit.
NATHANIEL: Oh, OK fine. We’re coming to the jist of it — we were 60 seconds away from that.
WERNER: OK good. Go ahead!
NATHANIEL: All I know is I know what conditions, I’m very jealous or resentful of what my mind has to be engaged with. [joking] I feel my most precious possession is my consciousness, not my virginity. [Werner laughing] And I’m really jealous about what anybody asks me to think about or… I know you’ll understand that.
WERNER: Oh absolutely.
NATHANIEL: OK good. So yesterday I finished this book and I feel like doing something, and so we go out to a nice place for dinner. And in the middle of talking there — I forget how it happened — I just wanted, Christ I really feel good, I want something which I can’t quite articulate yet, to mark this day of my life. We’re talking about the book, in connection with which this interview is happening, a book called Honoring the Self. And we get talking about I’m stuck on the right way to open it, to get into it. For me, I think very musically when I write, in terms of how I…
[End of Side 1]
Tape — Side 2
NATHANIEL: …I had no idea if Devers would understand me or not. So I began to tell her this very spacey idea I had, totally unlike anything I’ve done before, and a lot of my readers would be surprised that I would come at it from this angle. Well, she immediately got where I was coming from. We had this fantastic conversation. Last night — it was very exhilarating — I was lying in bed, looking up at the ceiling, feeling absolutely happy, meaning, thinking, now, as long as I live, some days are happier than others. One of the things that one lives for happened between us tonight.
I have like pictures of the look on her face when we’re talking, what I was feeling, the visions for the book in my mind. And the feeling that the thing flowing between us and feeling that whatever happens tomorrow whatever happens next week — if a bomb falls, whatever the hell happens — this is life as I understand it. Now, I am aware that the basic condition of happiness is satisfaction resides as a capacity within the person and that it’s not something that the environment gives you in the obvious sense and that is of course the great mistake that people make is that they don’t understand what the source of the enjoyment of life is. You have to first be a person who is able to enjoy life that precedes what people call their victories, it doesn’t follow it.
WERNER: Yeah. Very good. I would ascribe your state more to your awareness of that which is kind of what you’re saying.
NATHANIEL: Oh damn right. Damn right. It’s like–making a fast analogy here — when people ask me about my view on romantic love and why it’s a relatively rare phenomenon in the terms in which I discuss it. You have to be a passionate person prior to meeting or falling in love.
WERNER: [Laughing] That’s right. Right.
NATHANIEL: [Laughing] You don’t take two nebbishes and then they meet — except in the movies — and then suddenly they get transformed. Two zeroes cannot transform each other. Two entities can enhance something which already exists, but they can’t… Anyway, my point back to you is very simple. Probably you can already anticipate the direction of my question. These are wants and when they are actualized — the things that I said that I want, I don’t feel later sour or like “Oh, that wasn’t it” meaning I really feel…
WERNER: [Interrupting light-heartedly] No, but you’re well-being waiting to happen! See, your story is…
NATHANIEL: [Interrupting] You understand what I’m asking.
WERNER: Absolutely. Your story is for me irrelevant. You could tell 20 different stories and the outcome would be the same. It doesn’t make any difference that you’re doing less, see, it’s not that you’re doing less of the things that are less stimulating for you and that’s one of the problems I got with psychology, is that psychologists, do this bullshit, and I mean bullshit in a very specific sense. Let me define bullshit. Bullshit is communication that makes no difference.
NATHANIEL: [Laughing] Alright.
WERNER: It’s the difference between let’s take one more comment about this issue. Let’s take the quarterback as the player then let’s compare what the journalist writes about the quarterback’s performance on Sunday with what the coach says about the quarterback’s performance on Sunday. True they both have different intentions but putting that aside. What the journalist says has no impact on the efficacy of the quarterback’s playing — it may change his mood — but it’s not designed to make him more effective. More journalism same effectiveness. The coach — to the degree that he is a good coach — will interact with the player and say something that actually makes a difference in his performance and therefore in his effectiveness.
So bullshit is the stuff that you say that doesn’t make any difference. It may sound wonderful, people may lap it up, it may stimulate their curiosity, their interest, etc. All that stuff. I’m not interested in that kind of conversation. I’m interested in the kind of conversation that can make a difference. Psychologists say you must do those things in life about which you are passionate. I say that that’s interesting stuff but that’s bullshit. Telling people that doesn’t make any difference in their lives. On the other hand, knowing that you are passionate first or you aren’t and you meet someone with whom you can express the passion or you don’t that makes a difference. Because if I ever get that, I start looking when I have a flat tire at the tires, not at the windshield, to use my old analogy of the cars. So, I explain your…
NATHANIEL: [Interrupting] And you know how to review your environment for what’s relevant and appropriate.
WERNER: Exactly! So naturally Nathaniel Branden knows how to adjust his environment as this and more of that and open that opportunity, but that’s a trivial comment that he knows how to do that. Anybody given the distinctions that you make about what self, life, one, we, etc. makes will do those things automatically, it’s no big deal that you tuned your radio in to the right station. I mean that’s trivial. That you know how a radio works, that’s nontrivial. That you share with me that it’s station x-y-z and how you get that — that’s trivial. That you share with me how the radio works, that’s profound. So that’s the end of that comment. You know, you are essentially, to put it in my terms, which I don’t think are any better than anyone else’s terms, but since I talk that way, you are I’ll say closer, I don’t mean that as an evaluation, I just mean it as a way to make a general comment…
NATHANIEL: I’m not afraid of an evaluation. That’s OK.
WERNER: Nah, see I think they’re bullshit so I don’t want to engage in them. I don’t mean this as an evaluation. What I mean is that as a statement about the source of your let’s call it well-being or better yet fulfillment or better yet self-hood is an accurate or a more accurate apprehension grasping of the true nature of self, others, life, however you want to say it, and not what you do. See, I don’t need to write books to be happy and do less seminars and all that other shit. And actually, neither do you. But that isn’t to say Nathaniel that you would have been just as happy had you not retuned your environment, but it’s not that you retuned your environment. That was inevitable given your grasp of the truth about what an automobile is about what self, life — it’s all about. So that’s, yeah. Period. I’m just going to repeat myself if I say anymore.
NATHANIEL: I think that where this becomes practical and where it makes a difference in my view would be this — is I agree with what you’re saying. Let me tell you where I think it becomes practical. It’s very obvious for example if one would be dealing with children and you want to give them tools — you want to create an environment — but it also implies for example this may sound like a negative consequence.
When I wrote Romantic Love, for example, a 50 year old man came up to see me after I wrote the book. And what he got from the book was that he wasn’t crazy. That he had been a good boy for too long, putting up with a very unhappy marriage. And what he got was a sanction or a permission, not to spend the rest of his life as unhappily as he spent the last 30 years. So I think there are contexts in which telling people to have more respect for their own internal signals and to pay more attention to what brings them joy or doesn’t or what they really want or don’t want is strategically and practically very important.
WERNER: I like the word strategically. That’s right. I think that it is strategically very valuable. And if I didn’t think it was strategically very valuable I wouldn’t be interested in — I would just cut myself off from people who did that. I think it’s enormously valuable.
NATHANIEL: You see what I’m saying?
WERNER: Absolutely!
NATHANIEL: I think that one of the worst of all human vices is passive resignation to suffering.
WERNER: So Nathaniel, in part, I’m doing something personal between you and me in attempting to signal the distinction between my respect for something and it being other than what I personally am doing in what I am doing in my work.
NATHANIEL: Oh sure! For goodness sake, I don’t assume that if my approach is a valuable one therefore it is the only approach which is valuable and that all people should participate in it. Christ, that never even entered my mind. Tell me, because I’m very interested, can you tell me about Russia and the workshop you’re doing there.
WERNER: Essentially what has happened, it’s something about which we want to keep quiet for the moment because it’s essentially a politically or delicate thing, but what happened was that we were afforded an opportunity to interact with a high level Soviet person — the First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy in the United States. Who represents in this country the US/Canada Institute from the Soviet Union — a scientific institute, part of their scientific establishment, sorry the nomenclature escapes me for the moment. We struck up a relationship.
Now, first off, we were told that the quality of the relationship that we had with this guy is such that it should be a reflection of 8 years of interacting. We’ve been interacting for a little over maybe 2 years. My view of why we have this depth of relationship is, and you want to know that we’ve been very straight with the guy. We’ve taken him to task for everything that we think the Soviets have to be taken to task — and there’s plenty. We’ve tried to be authentic with the guy, we haven’t tried to maneuver him.
But we’ve done all of it, as an expression of a space from which we are coming, rather than as an expression of something we were trying to get to. And where we’re coming from is very simple. The United States and the Soviet Union are related whether anyone likes it or not. It’s probably one of the most important and fundamental relationships of these times. Now, the guy, kept trying to figure out what we wanted. So at first he tried to figure it out. Then he tried asking us. Then he tried suggesting it. In each case, we weren’t interested. Because always and only, the relationship was an expression of being related, not trying to get something. That’s why I think the relationship happened so powerfully.
We’ve had 2 exploratory trips to the Soviet Union. And by the way, we shifted our ground from the USA Canadian Institute to the Cybernetics Institute and they are really the people who are looking to do the invitation. The last trip to the Soviet Union was just at the end of last year. We showed a film on the 6th day that — you know there is a lot of stuff to tell you.
2 things about that trip. Time Magazine had gotten 50 industrialists and financiers from the United States and taken them to the Soviet Union. While they were in the Soviet Union, they attempted to arrange an official reception for them, an invitation to come talk. They could not get it done. Our two little people. One a physician. One is Raz, you guys probably know Raz Ingracia, at least from talking to my office, we’ve worked a long time together. Raz and Jack Mantos, Jack is a trainer. They were invited to come have a conversation. In contrast to way more powerful, etc. Not only invited them, but invited them to show a movie. There has been no American movie shown in the Soviet Union for something like a year and a half. None.
We have a little bit of a relationship with a guy by the name of Dusko Doder, who is the Washington Post correspondent in Moscow. And Raz asked him “Should we do it?” He said “Are you crazy? Absolutely. It’s an enormous acknowledgement of the interest in your work.” So we showed the thing. They were very, very excited about it. A psychiatrist who they had brought in to say, “Look this is a little more in your field, what are these guys doing?” Supported the thing as absolutely authentic, he said what you saw on the screen was real and happened. This as not a setup or editing. And so the interaction goes on.
The Soviets are ridiculously difficult for at least us to deal with — because this talk that you and I might have you don’t make the decision about anything, the next level up makes the decision, you report to them, they give you the decision, you tell me the decision. And there’s a lot of other bureaucracy. Essentially you’re dealing with a bureaucracy.
NATHANIEL: Of course.
WERNER: But that’s the way that it is, so if you don’t like it, too bad. And that’s the way they want it to be. So it’s very delicate and it continues to go on very positively. When Jack and Raz were there last their proposal was let us invite you to come and do the est training once and let us see what happens. They said, “Look, you need to know that we’re not willing to keep importing you guys, we’re only willing to look at this if you’re willing to train us to do it.” We said, “Sure, at some point, we’re willing to train you to do it.” The last interaction was between Raz and this guy in the Cybernetics Institute that they should send 2–3 of their people to London or some place to do the training, then we would talk some more about going over there.
It all hinges around a kind of critical place where they have to do in writing an official invitation for us to come visit them to discuss this work with them. It’s a trivial thing this official invitation. But it seems to be the thing that breaks this thing from going uphill instead of going downhill.
DEVERS: Do you work through interpreters?
WERNER: No there’s enough people there that speak English. They understand that we are not willing to make an agreement with them that they are not going to subvert this to their own use. We’re willing for them to make it available in their country. Now, that doesn’t mean that they have in mind not subverting it to their own use. So there’s this interplay. Anyway, we try to keep in touch with our own State Department to let them know what the hell is going on.
DEVERS: That’s exciting. Very exciting.
WERNER: Here’s the thing, it’s a big gamble in terms of it’s very unlikely that something will come out of it. However, the gamble is worth it because if something comes out of it it could truly make a difference — I mean, truly, no shit, make a difference. There’s no question about the fact that the people who have gone through the experience of the training who started out with totally divergent views will come out after the training, still with their totally divergent views, but with an ability to interact with each other.
And that’s what is missing in the Soviet and U.S. relationship is the ability to interact. Nobody ever thinks the Soviets are going to take our view. We’re not going to win them over to democracy and free market enterprise. And we’re sure as hell not going to take be taken over by their view. But the problem is how do we interact in ways that work and still maintain our separate views. So we think we can make a contribution. Now, like I said, the possibility of it happening is very, very small, but if it does happen the outcome is very, very big…
We’re also working — you know, we have a center in Israel — and we’re working in that domain. We’re going to start in the Arab world pretty soon. We’re doing north/south stuff. We have a center in Bombay that is very, very, ridiculously successful. While those guys were in Russia, I was in Greece, then we met in India. And we have commitments from the Indian government for formal invitations to work with the government. I actually worked with their planning commission and lots of different government people. And that’s the place where we’ve had a lot of interest for a long time. I mean it started out in the interest in the ordinary stuff, I mean, the holy man stuff in India. But it has really become a commitment to the Indian people and that whole issue there…
If I can take a minute, there’s a couple things which I don’t think you asked me, but which I want to say about this issue about ego and self and so on and so forth.
NATHANIEL: Yes, please do.
WERNER: These are all maybe nothing you are interested in and I only want to say that at least you have a sense of where I’m coming from. I mean you’re going to use whatever I say in a way that’s appropriate to your book [referring to Nathaniel’s Honoring the Self] and I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t willing for you to do that.
First off, just some flat-footed statements. For me, if I wanted to put myself in camp, I would say that I am an existential thinker, not an existentialist. And there is an important distinction there and anyone who is hip to those distinctions will know what I mean. And people who aren’t hip to those distinctions, it doesn’t make any difference. My ground of being is that there are so things which must be said about the self and they must be said with enough accuracy to make driving the car possible. And without these two knowledges — awarenesses — you can’t ever hope to drive the car successfully. The first statement is that ultimately the self is nothing. Or as Heidegger said, a clearing. The self has no position, no place, no time, no form, no expression, no nothing. So there is no meaning — -ultimately there is no meaning and it doesn’t mean anything that there isn’t any meaning. It doesn’t mean anything that it doesn’t mean anything.
So my view Nathaniel is that until one works one’s way back through the structure to that fundamental place of nothing, one is always off significantly enough to keep it from really making any difference ultimately.
NATHANIEL: To keep what from making any difference?
WERNER: One’s life, one’s contribution, etc.
NATHANIEL: Are you assuming then that making a difference… I think of life as self-justifying. I think that it’s very difficult to live intelligently or creatively without making a difference. But I think especially in an exchange society, it’s difficult not to in some sense make a difference. But at the same time, I think that life is intrinsically an end-in-itself. It doesn’t need to “make an external difference” in order to be valuable to itself.
WERNER: No, that’s right.
NATHANIEL: The most primitive example of what I mean, if you’ll forgive me, is does an orgasm make a difference? Well, I think anybody in their right mind would say, well the question is almost senseless and of no consequence. It’s entirely self-justifying.
WERNER: But that’s also true about a flower or a tree or anything else.
NATHANIEL: But let’s stay with human experience.
WERNER: No, then you and I disagree there to some degree. That a human being has the power to either recognize or imbue qualities to orgasm that animals don’t and therefore the innate validity of orgasm, whole absolutely true and unarguable worth, begs the question of orgasm in human beings. That there is something more to it than what you’re saying. That what you’re saying is totally true, unassailable and that there is something else. I don’t even want to say more because that would imply on top of what you said and therefore somehow alter what you said.
NATHANIEL: Well you see here is something I really hope we have the opportunity to explore. Because I’m absolutely fascinated in your approach. Absolutely fascinated with this theme of making a difference. Not because I don’t think making a difference isn’t important. But…
WERNER: [Interrupting] You don’t like it’s inherent-ness and neither do I. I don’t say that it’s inherent. I don’t say that it’s inherently valuable. It’s a construct. I agree.
NATHANIEL: I mean for example, you have known the experience where, I assume, you take a breath of clean air, and you feel wordlessly maybe, jeez it’s great to be alive. Period. Period!
WERNER: Period. That’s right! And there’s nothing more to it.
NATHANIEL: I don’t know how to say this, but I live in that place.
WERNER; See that’s a quarterback statement. That’s a wonderful quarterback statement. Let me see if I can make this distinction here because it’s very important. That means you’re a good quarterback. Good quarterbacks don’t necessarily make good coaches.
NATHANIEL: Of course.
WERNER: Now, good quarterbacks don’t necessarily make good journalists either. I acknowledge you unequivocally as a good quarterback. Now, the question is, about this other domain of coaching and/or journalizing. There’s an expression which is important that quarterbacking wants to become coaching or journalizing — totally up to anybody about whatever the hell they want to do — in which these other notions then become important. They are of no importance to quarterbacking. That is to say, a quarterback is a quarterback. Now, to take any other quarterback and to do something about coaching the other quarterback to be able to realize the state which you as the quarterback do realize may require expressions which you as a quarterback don’t make, but which you as a coach damn well better make.
NATHANIEL: That’s absolutely true! Absolutely true.
WERNER: So this whole notion about making a difference is a coaching notion, not a quarterbacking notion.
NATHANIEL: OK.
WERNER: See, look, it’s the old argument that Socrates went through when he went to meet the artists and the artisans and the politicians and see what they did, but none of them could tell him anything that would make a difference to anybody else. As a matter fact, what they told him was essentially bullshit — that is to say that it was noise that did not impact the other politicians to become better politicians or more effective politicians. This is getting a little too personal about you and I want to be really, really clear that I am not taking you to task as a coach, I just want to make the distinction between you as a quarterback — and don’t tell me how great you are as a quarterback — when we’re talking about coaching. And I recognize you as a good coach.
NATHANIEL: [Laughing] I think the distinction is absolutely valid. I would never accuse you of the arrogance, not to say irresponsibility, which to a lesser mind, could have sounded like you were flirting with for a split instance.
WERNER: With what?
NATHANIEL: [Laughing] Huh? You got that didn’t you.
WERNER: For taking you to task?
NATHANIEL: No, no, no. I’m playing. You didn’t get that one?
WERNER: The arrogance from which I was flirting.
NATHANIEL: Yes!
WERNER: Oh, you see, except that I don’t think it’s arrogant to know something.
NATHANIEL: Of course not, hey.
WERNER: Although, in the social sciences you must never say you know anything.
NATHANIEL: Oh, I know that. The only thing you can know is what other people believe is true. To be an authority is know what other people believe is to true. But to say that something is true is to invalidate yourself.
WERNER: OK so let me make the other statement. That for me, in order to do effective coaching, not to mention, in order to be a great quarterback or to enable great quarterbacking, you must come to know, not just hear, think, conceptualize, but come to know that ultimately self is a space from which to come — a clearing, nothing. The other statement to complete it. And these two statements don’t merge, but they stand together is that the self is the stand it takes on itself. Self is the stand it takes on itself. Not to know that is to be inauthentic. Now, a lot of inauthenticity is successful because we live in an environment of inauthenticity. But it’s never, ultimately, fulfilling, whole-ing, completing.
That a lot of people who are whole and complete and fulfilled mis-explain the source of their wholeness and completion and fulfillment because they try to deal with it in the environment of inauthenticity and in that environment — in that domain of inauthenticity — one can in fact make it and one can explain why one made it, but one can never successfully coach making it. One can write and say and do a lot of things which make people feel better and nah nah nah and think this that and the other thing. See, I want, when I’m done reading a book or going to a weekend, I want not to be able to explain better. I want to be better! I don’t even want to be able to do better Nathaniel. I don’t even want a new set of instructions. I want who I am to be — now better is a stupid word — but be better. You know what I mean.
NATHANIEL: I’m with you a thousand percent.
WERNER: Now that’s the difference for me between journalism and coaching. Not that I want to dismiss journalism because journalism has its own validity, but it ain’t making better quarterbacks. Journalism doesn’t make better quarterbacks. And by the way, out of that thesis — out of those two fundamental places — then what you mean by ego, or what I mean you to understand by ego, is this self as the stand one takes on ones self. And what other people mean by ego and where the conflict comes and why all this nonsense about which you’re questioning is the mis-identification of the structures of personality or even structures of being — and there I’ll make a distinction between structure of being and being itself. And a mis-identification as self as those.
NATHANIEL: Yes. Let me give you a very fast example, I was conducting a seminar for Robert Frasier, the California…
WERNER: [Lightheartedly interrupting, speaking to Devers] This is the difference between conversation with men and women. Women leave a space between each statement. Men leave no spaces.
NATHANIEL: [To Devers] I’m sorry sweetie, but I’m just super conscious of time. I’m not meaning to be rude.
WERNER: Listen, I’ve done a little study about this because we really have a problem when we’re trying to have a discussion with men and women and what we discussion is that men are right after the next one. Somehow the women — their cadence is slightly different — this is a generality.
DEVERS: Would you rather — let’s put it this way — that women respect the fact that other people may want to come in and not be rude and interrupt so they just kind of pause.
WERNER: Maybe it’s that! But I’d rather…
DEVERS: [Interrupting jokingly] We could go on talking! We could keep the cadence going! We could keep it going. But we just think maybe, maybe somebody else wants to talk.
WERNER: No, I didn’t say that you couldn’t keep it going. I’m just talking about the distinction between men and women functionally. I’m not even talking about why.
DEVERS: Women are always aware of whoever is here, no matter how engrossed they are. I’m always aware of that.
NATHANIEL: There is greater relationship orientation.
DEVERS: Yes. I’m always aware there is someone, something else.
WERNER: They are all explanations of the phenomenon I was describing. I wasn’t trying to explain it, I just want to be clear.
NATHANIEL: All I was going to say was that I was doing this seminar for this group of graduate students. Bob Frazier [?] said to me — he was in Japan for 5 years studying Zen and aikido — and he said to me, “You know, one of my Zen teachers said to me, ‘It isn’t that we are opposed to ego, but we think of ego as a wild steed to be managed and controlled and directed.’” And I said to Bob, “What an interesting perspective. I think of ego as the force that does the controlling and it would never occur to me to think of ego as the steed. For me, ego is always the ultimate witness.”
WERNER: For that conversation, I think it’s required only because it’s too guys talking about brown instead of two guys with a model which distinguishes the 21 different kinds of brown.
NATHANIEL: OK. I don’t disagree with that.
DEVERS: I wanted to ask something because it happens to be my own personal opinion about the oneness of people, the separateness and feeling like an individual, or love everybody, we’re all one or whatever. You can take and train someone. Let’s say you have a trainer, Mr. X, and mechanically he can do what you do, but he’s not you. Mechanically he can get up and do X. But I’m taking this a step further than just ego. What makes you separate and different? If he’s doing it just the same as you. What would make you separate? Why would the audience feel the difference in the mechanicalness or be drawn to you instead? How would you explain that for you yourself as a human being?
WERNER: So the question is framed in what I call the structure of personality, so I’m going to try and answer the question that way. I have to tell you that I think the whole notion of structure of personality is bullshit, so that I don’t like the structure so that any answer I give you I don’t like. I’m going to try and answer you in a way in which I do like, which maybe less useful to you but more authentic for me.
The difference in “it”, when two people are doing exactly the same thing or close enough to be called the same thing, why the impact is different for people is that he will be coming from one place and I will be coming from another place because doing is always out front-ness and no matter how much congruence you get in out front-ness, that isn’t where the real power in something comes from. The real power comes from what’s behind it — or to put it in my terms, where one’s coming from.
NATHANIEL: I agree completely. Boy, do I agree with that.
DEVERS: I do too.
WERNER: Now that’s a distinction which almost no one draws. Where, particularly in this culture, is fixated on what is out front. We are suspicious, at best, usually totally ignorant of any coming-from-ness. That’s the difference. I like my answer better than thought I was going to.
NATHANIEL: It’s a very, very good answer and one to which both of can relate in very intimate ways. We address graduate students in psychology. It’s necessarily to learn a variety of technical procedures which have utility, but I love to ask graduate students, “Do you have the concept that somebody can come into the room with you and because of who you are something will happen inside of them. Never mind the techniques that I will talk about later.” For me, learning how to do psychotherapy is 90% me working on me and 10% learning certain skills. This relates directly to what I understand you just said.
WERNER: Absolutely.
NATHANIEL: But there are certain people — to standard language — are healing personalities. You can play volleyball with them and it would be a transformative experience because of the quality. And this is very hard to persuade psychotherapists or students of it for a very, very simple reason. Since with rare exceptions, they are not such beings themselves, there is an excessive reliance upon technique or the learnable aspects of the art because that is the teachable and the transmissible.
WERNER: Two or three things that I want to say about that. I want to say one more thing about your question which I’ll come back to. A psychiatrist by the name of Bob Shaw and I started a thing which we call The Center for Contextual Study. What we’re doing at the moment is a training for professional therapists which we call Mastery: A Context for Psychotherapy. It started for the reason that you just described.
Bob is the head of a thing called the Family Institute in Berkeley. From time to time they bring very famous psychotherapists in and they do workshops with them. And this one guy who I happened to know about, Bob invited me to come by and see what the hell he was doing. So he was up on the platform when I got there, up on the platform working with a family, brilliant job of intervention with this family. You might not like the word intervention, but you know what I’m talking about. Big audience, like 150 professionals there. He’s all done, excuses the family, thanks them for doing it and so on. Takes a break. People are walking out. A lot of people walking by happen to know me, said “Wasn’t that great?” And I said, “Incredible. Remarkable.” They said, “Why did he do this? Why did he do that?” And I said, “Well, when he comes back, ask him those things.”
It was clear to me that the people in the room got almost nothing out of watching this genius quarterback at work. And when he got back, he explained everything he did, and it was clear to me that everything he said was pure journalism. Not one thing he said, an explanation of why he did what he did, was going to in any way empower those people to make any difference in their practice of psychotherapy. I was really struck massively by that experience.
And this whole thing that Bob and I are doing together is an attempt to open up the domain from which this guy was coming, rather than the domain from which this guy was doing and from which this guy from explaining what he was doing! Because the fucking explanations Nathaniel were great. They were totally consistent. They were beautifully rational. They were powerfully reasoned. All the things you need in a good explanation were there. But what wasn’t there was any capacity for these people to find these skills from within themselves. So you asked what we were doing. That’s another thing that we’re doing. And the thing is just really remarkable Devers.
DEVERS: Isn’t that sort of what Diana and Grindler [?] were trying to do?
NATHANIEL: They were modeling it at another level.
WERNER: But I think they were looking at that same problem.
DEVERS: Yes looking at that same problem.
NATHANIEL: Yes.
WERNER: Their response to it is quite a bit different.
DEVERS: Yes but they were looking for that.
WERNER: Now, I want to get back to the thing that you asked about two people doing the same thing and why does it make a difference. I’m going to make couple of assertions. Being and presence are distinct. What presents itself and being are distinct. One of the things which makes them distinct is being is not in time and presence is always in time. So that that which is the same in presence is not necessarily the same in being. And while it is almost entirely unseen, the impact in the world of presence is really less important than the impact of being. By that I mean, the impact of presence on presence has a kind of linear function and therefore is very weak, not very powerful. The impact of being on presence transcends the rules of linear function and can produce outcomes which are inexplicable, although once produced will be forced into the explanation or the explanation will be altered to fit them. That was my discussion before about intersecting dimensions.
One last thing. My whole thesis about what people think we’re up to — helping people, making them better, etc. Whatever this domain was when we started to talk — the human potential movement, whatever the hell it all is — is done in a model which is essentially faulty, in that it is seen that there is what is called being inaccurately, because it’s really experiencing. And the representation of experiencing. So we’ve got experiencing and we’ve got the representation of experiencing. I experience you and then I have a representation of my experience of you. The next time I come back to see you again I don’t experience you directly, I now experience you — to some degree — filtered through my representation of you. My experience of you now will reinforce my earlier representation of you because my new experience is filtered through that representation. The reinforced representation will more fully dominate my next experience of you, which will more completely reinforce the representation, and you get a vicious circle.
NATHANIEL: You’ve just given the great problem of marriage counseling. That is the problem of marriage counseling.
WERNER: It’s the problem that all modern therapy attempts to deal with. And all modern therapy — to the degree that it’s any good — does one thing: it breaks the hold of concept on experience, so that people begin to experience more directly, more authentically, without the reinforcement of the perception. Now, the problem with that is that it inevitably must go back into the vicious circle because the total model is the vicious circle model. That’s all modern therapy in my view. The best, the worst, what works, and what doesn’t work can all be explained in that model. Why it ultimately doesn’t make a difference is also shown in the model.
For example, you go to a really good encounter group, well done, well led, and you come away and you walk outside and you don’t see a tree, you see a TREE. And you don’t go home to your wife, you go home to some body, and you are deeply authentically connected with whoever you go home to. Now the problem is that whether that happens is turned into a representation of what happened, that representation of what happened becomes the filter for nah, nah, nah, and back down the vicious circle. So what I’m interested in is not working with the problems as they come up in the vicious circle, but in breaking the vicious circle and enabling people to have a domain from which experience can be derived which is not representational, but is purely creative.
See it’s exactly the thing that Nathaniel said about if you are a romantic person, you romance with the people that come into your life. That’s just a narrow application, albeit a very interesting one. So what I’m interested in enabling people, empowering people, to be that which they choose to be rather than to more effectively use that which they got. See I think it’s possible to create oneself — freshly, newly. As a matter of fact, I not only think it’s possible, I don’t think it’s possible to live ultimately, authentically without doing so.
DEVERS: Right. Agree.
WERNER: Now we go back to something underneath the question you asked. If I want to affect my circumstances, any nitwit knows that I got to do something. Because sitting here contemplating my navel is not going to interact with my circumstances. So we all know that you got to do something! So we all talk to people about what to do. However, while I accept unequivocally that only action — doing — affects things, that action derived from the domain of the things you’re attempting to effect, produce change with no difference. Let me say it again.
DEVERS: No, I understand.
WERNER: OK great. I’m interested in calling up, recognizing, making available to people, a domain in which they have absolute freedom, they’re not constrained by the circumstances. A domain in which they can generate what — I’m now going to give a name to, the name is unimportant — a “context.” From which context their experience derives, not the circumstances don’t derive their experience from, their filters they don’t derive their experience from, they now derive their experience from a self-created context. That experience then begins to reorganize the circumstances to look like the context or where they’re coming from — to use words I’ve used before. And it works almost inexplicably because most people are trying to figure out life and what is in a model in which there is just the experience realm, just the action realm, just the process realm, just the what-I’m-doing realm, just the who-I-am-as-experience realm, and the realm of circumstance. That’s what I call the vicious circle model.
DEVERS: And stepping outside the circle.
WERNER: Yes. Precisely. By the way, that’s who Self is for me, ultimately Self — this is a third statement.
NATHANIEL: Wait, I, unfortunately have to go, but finish your sentence.
WERNER: OK. Self is ultimately nothing with the capacity to create contexts. Self is a context-creating phenomenon or entity.
DEVERS: Alright. As you ponder and go away, answer this question for me in a letter or something.
NATHANIEL: [Joking] Telepathic communication is also acceptable.
DEVERS: No, seriously. Because Marilyn Monroe did what you’re talking about as she put herself in another circle. Tell me how she could have gotten out of that. I’m using her as an example because I get clients like that all the time — they create outside, they go beyond this, everything you were saying. Now what happens?
WERNER: It’s very simple. Marilyn Monroe was a quarterback. In other words, she did that without knowing what she was doing. The one thing about being that distinguishes it from all other expressions of existence is that it must be self-aware in order to be complete. Had Marilyn Monroe known what she was doing, all the problems that went along with what she was doing could have by her been resolved.
DEVERS: So you’re saying that if she was aware when she stepped out of it that no problems would have arisen?
WERNER: No. She could have dealt with the problems as effectively as she dealt with that for which she did create a context.
NATHANIEL: [Beginning to exit the room] I think it’s a very good answer.
WERNER: [Laughing] Nathaniel, I don’t know that our conversation was any good, but being with you is great.
NATHANIEL: I think the conversation was good.
DEVERS: I wish we could do it for longer, as in you never have time, but we do have time in the mountains now, we’ve given up a lot of our work. And we’d love to see you.
WERNER: That’s good for you.
DEVERS: [Laughing] Oh shut up Werner.
WERNER: Was that bad that I said that?
DEVERS: [Laughing] No, no.
WERNER: [Laughing] I was pleased. I’m actually very, very pleased with my experience of where you all are at. I mean not that you give a damn what I think.
DEVERS: Yes we do!
WERNER: Well, at any rate, I didn’t say it because I thought you gave a damn, I said it because it’s true.
[Inaudible goodbyes]
DEVERS: Having been sort of a salesperson, huckster, someone who has been out there many, many years myself, you really do enjoy what you do. It’s a wild stab at what I’m saying, but I really feel that you had a long path of monetary reward and now it’s more of a self-fulfillment thing, right?
WERNER: No. It was never monetary for me.
DEVERS: Come on. Way back when?
WERNER: No.
DEVERS: Not even at the beginning? When est started?
WERNER: Nope. It never was there. Honestly.
DEVERS: Because I really think that I don’t see that anymore. I feel like this is something you really believe in and that you want to do for humanity.
NATHANIEL: I said years ago before I knew you when I heard a lot of things, “I can tell you right now, whatever this fellow is about it’s not about money.” And that is before I knew you, I had that opinion about you.
WERNER: Yeah, it couldn’t be and have what is happening, happen. But no one knows that at the beginning. You have to stand the test of time.
DEVERS: But you really want to change things and you really believe it.
WERNER: I do.
DEVERS: [Joking] And Nathaniel you leave the tape running for posterity?
NATHANIEL: [Laughing] Well, we were still talking!
[End of tape]
To learn more about Nathaniel Branden’s work, I recommend reading his magnum opus The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem (1994). You can also visit NathanielBranden.com.
To learn more about Werner Erhard’s work, I recommend watching the documentary Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard (2006), which can be streamed on Amazon Video. You can also visit LandmarkWorldwide.com.
