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A Different View:life Does Not WorkOpinion:A Professionals Professional?by Pat Chaseneed: “The talk about con-Two weeks ago the promotion of “an evening seminar by Werner Erhard, inventor and founder of something called “est” (Erhard Seminars Training) began in the School of Medicine. Several third-year students and at least one teacher spoke to first-and second-year classes about this great thing called est and about how lucky we were that Erhard himself consented to come and talk to us. A circular was handed out which ennumerated the merits of est. It was printed on textured paper with soft brown ink (no mere xeroxed or mimeographed handout) and signed by 11 students and faculty members who had personally experienced est, including former Chancellor Philip Lee.It stated that there is an increasing need for more awareness on the part of doctors in their dealings with patients (Who couldn’t agree?) and that modern psychological movements have failed to fulfill thissciousness, group experiences, the “here and now” philosophy and the dissatisfaction with purely analytical approaches — all those have addressed themselves to this problem. However, the inherent (and in many ways essential) conservatism and rationalism of our profession make us leary of accepting many of these approaches. We tend to equate them with revival meetings, self-delusion, reliance on gurus, faith healing or worse.”But, so the handout said, est is different and unique. It is efficient and non-invasive. “The features we liked particularly were: that est insists that you participate entirely as a matter of your own choice, that est opposes manipulation or even subtle group pressures, that it emphasizes your own responsibility for what happens to you, that est is not a movement and Werner Erhard not a guru.” Because of limited space at the coming event, it was announced that it would be necessary to obtain an invitationwhich were FREE (imagine!) and available upon request in the medical student affairs office. The invitations turned out to be specially printed, snazzy, two-tone tickets even more impressive than Bob Dylan tickets.Finally the big day arrived. Clinging to the hope that perhaps this was the medical school’s attempt at injecting a little humanness, just a bit of mellowness, into its programmed drudgery, some students and various doctors and professors arrived at the stated 7:30 p.m. tickets in hand. (Students from other schools Continued on Page 6by Linda Fraley President, School of MedicineI had the pleasure of attending Werner Erhard’s talk on his perceptions of how things are. I am a student who has profited from the tools and ideas which came out of the humanistic movement, and I appreciate, on various levels, anyone who comes up with good ideas for human interaction. I went for historical reasons to hear Mj\ Erhard.Mr. Erhard described the basic theme for his approach as “Life does not Work”. Other philosophers have described it as “man is mechanical” or that “man works under the law of constant dissatisfaction.” The translation is mine. Mr. Erhard urged us to make our own.Mr. Erhard described a person as a being who is in reality an experiencer but who in life constantly hung up on what was produced in the process of experiencing and on the collection of experiences which had accumulated over the years. This collection of experiences which had accumulated over the years. This collection in lifeusually gives identity to “who I am.” The glitter on the outside is what we’re attached to and identify with and the gold is hidden from us underneath.He continued with other common themes such as the pursuit of happiness will not lead to happiness couched as — We start out sometime with a good idea, but we all know every good idea leads to a problem, we seek solutions to these problems and the solutions (also being good ideas) lead to problems —. If this formulation works for you, note that it doesn’t appear to be a happy one.Fortuitously, we also have the ability to have periods of enlightenment which dissolve a problem instead of solving it, a solution lies below and below that, working backwards, another problem. Working backwards we go through similar motions as in our formulation above, but Mr. Erhard feels the difference is that we are happier working back toward the good idea. It was not made clear where the experiencer is in all Continued on Page 61385 - 9th AVE. SAN FRANCISCO PHONE 665-3255Ynu’rfi Invited
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San Francisco, California, US
Thu, Jan 31, 1974
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