Four Arguments for The Elimination of Television

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After several days of this environmental and contextual onslaught, any confusion and resistance people brought with them gives way to the desire for acceptance, and then the construction of a new "ground of reality" can begin. When trainers say "ground of reality" they literally mean the structuring of a reality where there is none ( Space station).

Here is a summary of the new est reality: Everything is belief. Everything that we see or experience of the world is only an outgrowth of our belief that what we see and experience is the way things really are. Reality, then, is nothing more than an agreement as to what is real. Therefore, problems that we may have, or problems that may exist in the world (napalm, genocide, police repression, loss of jobs or lovers, pollution and so on) are real only because we believe they are real; in fact they exist only in our minds. If we do not acknowledge them, they don't exist. So we effectively create these things with our belief systems; so do the napalmed kids, the Jews in Germany, and the laid-off factory workers.

This is a very comfortable attitude for much of today's world; people who "get it," like it. It's not only a fun game—mixing up all those perceptual tricks in one's head—but there's something that passes for mystical in the notion that one creates one's own reality, and the world doesn't really exist. It makes people feel they have special powers. It is a comfort because it simultaneously relieves trainees from making better sense of their artificial, arbitrary world, which is literally nonsensical and ungraspable, and at the same time it asserts that they determine whatever world they wish. If things don't go perfectly, well, that's the way they created it, and it must be for the best. It is simultaneously creation and submission, total responsibility and irresponsibility, involvement and noninvolvement, according to personal definition.

Now, it is certainly true that if you believe a thing is a certain way—let's say you believe yourself to be competent or beautiful, or that you will succeed in your new career—then that will make your belief more likely to become reality. Dale Carnegie taught that fifty years ago; so does every loving parent. So est can benefit many people who might otherwise turn themselves back at every conflict. If there were nothing attractive in est then obviously no one would follow it.

When people fully accept the idea that all reality exists solely in their own minds, and that nothing outside their minds is definitely, concretely real, each person then has unlimited personal power to create and define reality. It is now up for grabs. There is no cause. There is no effect. Relationships do not exist. Money does not exist. Jobs do not exist.

I have known several est trainees who carried this belief into new levels of disillusionment and a loftier sense of personal failure because they were unable to "create" food or meaningful contact with other human beings when they needed it.

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