Food for the Moon

 August 6th, 2022

In August of 2019, after I learned that Father Bob Ochs had died, I tried to acknowledge my enormous debt to him. He brought the teaching of the Enneagram to some very hungry Catholic religious whose sputtering religious practices were on life support, me among them. I tried to recount as carefully as I could the story of his post Enneagram years when I wrote about the Jesuit transmission of the Enneagram. I will revisit some of them here. Last night a friend who was peripherally involved in the beginning of SAT and the whole Berkeley, New Age psychic scene, told me that Susan Diordoni, Bob’s longtime companion, died of cancer. I now feel free to tell a less edited, much sadder story.

Gurdjieff used the term “Food for the Moon” to describe some of the process of awakening and becoming a true person as if it were organic digesting and processing esoteric teaching. We, all our living and dying, become food for the moon. The process of shedding our old beliefs and habits of perception is akin to consigning this dead weight of the alleged mysterious powers of the moon: the relentless, predictable ebbing and flooding of the tides control the shifts and flow of our ingrained emotions, thoughts, inclinations, mind-sets. I heard Naranjo use “Food for the Moon” pejoratively several times to refer to a person who begins the work and, for whatever reason, just doesn’t have the stuff it takes to see it through to a successful conclusion, whatever that actually means. (I do think this mystical moonshine talk offers some clues about the exclusionary tendencies of cults).

Bob Ochs was a respected member of SAT 1, the first group that gathered around Naranjo after he returned from Arica and began to teach. Ochs, along with Charlie Tart, had the highest recognized level of academic training of all the group members. He was a professor at a prestigious Jesuit seminary with a degree from one the best Universities in France. I never asked Bob how he came to know Naranjo or what drew him to the group, but when we met at the beginning of the second year of that exploration, Naranjo had already delegated him to teach the Enneagram to groups of Jesuits, first at Loyola University in Chicago, and then at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. Naranjo himself told me unequivocally that he’d entrusted Ochs to be his emissary, to teach the nine personality fixations and to guide people in discovering their own type and subtype. Only one other person shared this responsibility, Aubrey Lundgren; others had various teaching responsibilities within SAT, notably Reza Leah Schaffer and, eventually Kathy Speeth, though the scope of their responsibility was limited to new SAT students in Berkeley.

A lot happened in that first year that would change the dynamic of teaching the Enneagram in the West. Naranjo trusted Ochs, and Ochs had a knack for teaching. His presentation of the ideas behind the Enneagram was engaging and provocative. He was truly interested in ideas, as you might expect from the exemplary Jesuit that he was. But other forces were at work which would revoke both Naranjo’s and Ichazo’s lock on this esoteric system.

Almost everyone who teaches the Enneagram outside Naranjo’s immediate circle owes some debt to Ochs for their basic understanding, the impetus of their personal investigation, the outline of the 9 types and 27 subtypes, their books, their students and for teachers, their livelihood. I will name a few names but it’s by no means complete. This group has its roots in what I have labeled the Jesuit transmission. Here is a partial list of the Enneagram teachers who are linked to Ochs as the source of their practice; Father Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Jerome Wagner at Loyola University in Chicago; Joanna Quintrell at the Journey Center in Santa Rosa, California; Sr. Suzanne Zuercher at the Institute for Spiritual Leadership at Loyola University; Father William Meninger of St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass Colorado; Don Richard Riso, a former Jesuit, (d.2012) and Russ Hudson of the Enneagram Institute, Stone Ridge, New York; Paul Robb, S.J., the founder of the Institute for Spiritual Leadership; Tad Dunne, S.J.; Maria Beesing; Robert Nogosek, C.S.C.; Patrick O'Leary. Father Mitch Pacwa, S.J., a very vocal opponent of the Catholic adoption of the Enneagram, was also Bob’s student in Chicago.

Helen Palmer also owes a debt to Ochs, which she may or may not have acknowledged, though it is a not as direct as the people who were in Ochs's groups. She was not in Claudio’s SAT groups either, but she was practicing as a psychic reader in Berkeley at about the same time that Naranjo’s groups were forming. She did readings with almost every member of the early SAT group, often multiple sessions. It was in a large part through these readings that she became aware of the Enneagram, and got a taste of the system’s power. When I did a reading with her almost 50 years ago, one of her first questions was about my fixation on the Enneagram. I also know that she also had access to some of our private notes about Naranjo’s presentation of the Enneagram as well as extensive notes from Ichazo’s 1968 talks at the Institute of Applied Psychology in Santiago, Chile. Ochs may have had a hand in delivering some of these materials into her hands.

This is a good jumping off point to describe the start of the Enneagram Wars, which also marked the beginning of Ochs’s estrangement from Naranjo. Even before Palmer’s creation and popularization of the “kinder, gentler,” more saleable Enneagram, the flood of Enneagram books had started. When I researched and compiled my Enneagram Bibliography a few years ago, there were more than 150 books and studies, a huge number for such a recondite discipline. In less than two decades, more than 100 separate practitioners, experts, authorities, claiming some level of insight, leading groups and individuals on an inner exploration. The armies were assembling.

You know that you are on an intellectual battlefield when after a Google search on the origins of the Enneagram, the “Let’s set the record straight” articles appear first. I’m not going to enter that fray. Have at it. Hope y’all have fun. The main battle, the Waterloo, was the lawsuit that Ichazo brought against Palmer. Again I am not going to put on soul armor and take sides, other than to point out that there had to have been some monetary upside to winning or losing to justify the enormous costs of any litigation. My interest here, with regard to Ochs, are the casualties resulting from friendly fire. 

As various leaders and teachers waged battle about the authenticity and effectiveness, the “truth” of their particular take on the teaching, whether it came from Pythagoras, the Sufis or some Egyptian cult, Naranjo knew that he’d lost control. And because a large number of the people who had forged their own versions and adaptations of the teaching that he’d stolen from Ichazo had been Ochs's students, Naranjo stopped taking Ochs's phone calls. Although very clearly in the Naranjo camp, Ochs was ostracized.

This was the point in my own life where I took a very clear break for any investigation and controversy. I had a host of personal reasons for my hiatus, among them caring for people dying from HIV/AIDS, but I also had no personal stake in the negotiated settlement: everybody was to lay down their weapons, just carry on, do what they’ve been doing. No one was going to corner the market for the Enneagram; leave the final judgment to when the Archangel Metatron settles all disputes among the lesser inhabitants of the heavenly realm.

When I finally made contact with Ochs after several years’ hiatus, I was overwhelmed by what had become of my vibrant friend. He had given up his position on the faculty of the Jesuit schools, stopped seeing most of his friends, and was living in small, Spartan, nearly windowless basement apartment in a modest suburb a few miles from the epicenter of the Enneagram Wars. His only regular visitor was Susan Diordoni. He is not the first heterosexual Jesuit to seek deep emotional connection with a woman. I have no knowledge if he maintained his vow of celibacy, but I am happy that he at least had some comfort and companionship.

Both he and I had started to separate from regimented Jesuit life when we shared a floor in the faulty residence at the American Baptist Seminary of the West in 1973. He however, was a priest, 14 years my senior, and had no possible means of outside support. He chose to remain within the institutional frame work. I did not. He received a modest stipend, and tried to justify his seclusion as a work on a book. His superiors, I think with some recognition of his contribution to the Jesuit enterprise, did not press him too hard to produce. 

While the people whom Ochs had trained were writing, advertising, going to conferences, producing and leading trainings that cost thousands of dollars, he was living on a few hundred dollars a month and struggling to write. He felt that he still had something to say. Actually I will rephrase that, he felt that he had an obligation to say something as one of the first proponents of the system. I think he may have also been jealous of the money that his one time students were making on “that gravy train,” but that was never his primary focus, and ultimately he would be unsuccessful. He was a One, and the burden of trying to frame his thoughts against the conflict of the Enneagram wars proved impossible. He could never persuade himself that he’d successfully argued his case. There would be no book, but his efforts came with all a One’s self-recrimination and doubt. Ironically, I think I remember that the analysis was to be based on typing some famous writers but I could be conflating a couple of conversations.

He claimed he had almost no physical energy. He was eating a very strict diet whose contents and restrictions baffled me as much as they obsessed him. We met at a Peruvian restaurant out in the Mission in San Francisco only because he could eat several of the things on their menu and really enjoyed them. 

Here he told me about another obsession. He’d become infatuated with the work of Doris Lessing. “Infatuated'' is not too strong a word. Idries Shah had introduced Lessing to Sufi teachings, and she was also apparently interested in the Gurdjieff school although I have no clear knowledge that she actually worked with any of Gurdjieff’s longtime English students. But she was very conversant with “the Work '' and its alleged connections to ancient Sufi orders. The link here is twofold: Ochs was as obsessed with discovering Enneagram’s esoteric roots as he was frustrated in his attempts to create what he considered an adequate language to describe the teaching.

He also told me about corresponding with Idries Shah, claiming that letter writing was a revered form of spiritual instruction among Sufis. After Shah died in 1996, Ochs tried to initiate a correspondence with Shah’s son, because Ochs was certain Tahir had been designated as his father’s spiritual heir. When Tahir replied that he was a writer, not a Sufi teacher, that his father had not designated him to teach, and actually he was not interested in the job, Ochs said to me, “He’s supposed to say that. It’s his job to put me off.” 

I tried my best not to be put off by Ochs’ increasing reclusiveness, but eventually I gave up waiting for him to return my phone calls. Looking back I do feel some remorse for not persisting. But I also ask myself, after the truce was called in the Enneagram Wars, where were any of his former students? Did you play any role in his life? Did he shut you out? I didn’t have a lot of contact so I don’t know if you visited, called, offered support, but I do know that he was not included in your conferences, invited to speak or write an article. And I’m not suggesting that you should have included him as an obligation, like inviting your cantankerous uncle to Thanksgiving dinner, but actually because he had something to contribute. You missed out, yes you, narrow-minded, parochial, greedy, war-mongering Enneagram enthusiasts. He dedicated his life, every waking minute, to making the possibility of human freedom real. If you don’t do that in all your life, all your relationships, all your work, you’re just food for the moon.

Finally this Midwesterner who’d learned French and earned a degree in Paris, a man who’d introduced Gurdjieff, Ichazo, Naranjo and the Enneagram to Catholic religious, a man who’d struggled to make his own mystical experience available to others, this man returned to Michigan and a Jesuit house dedicated to the French priest who’d promoted devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Perhaps full circle.