In New York: Much Ado About It

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

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

Indeed, the circusy, '70s-style revival meeting that has filled the auditorium might reasonably be taken as a sign that the awareness industry is at last showing its real self. The occasion was contrived by Jerry Rubin, the reformed Yippie who has decided at 40 that his calling is consciousness. The program, whose co-impresario is Rubin's wife Mimi Leonard, offers to those willing to shell out $32 to $60 per ticket not merely the galaxy of stars (Dick Gregory and Buckminster Fuller too) but the promise that all participants will learn, during the 14½-hour much-ado, "everything you will ever need to know about how to be healthy and loving."