The Enneagram — “Histoire de Jour”

"What's your soup du jour today?" "Cream of tomato, just like every other day."

Originally published Wednesday, December 28, 2022

Yuval Harari says it would be nearly impossible to get 20 baboons to organize a coordinated effort that would produce a widespread effect. But homo sapiens has created narratives that allowed our species to organize large-scale efforts to subdue and exploit every inch of the universe we can reach. This is our propaganda for the superiority of the human race. If 20 baboons had been able to organize themselves and create a convincing narrative, we’d be living in ”The Planet of the Apes.''

In the history of religions, the creation of a supernatural narrative spearheaded the invincible superiority of monotheism. Modern scholarship has shown that the story of the Exodus was fabricated by the rabbinic and prophetic leadership after the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE. The Narrative of the Good News was created and propagated by mostly Gentile Jews after the death of Jesus. About 600 years after Jesus, the Prophet was visited by the Archangel Gabriel and set the world on course for a more militant form of monotheism. In another part of the world, stories about the Buddha's enlightenment touch on another side of the human psyche that propelled meditation into legitimacy. The Bhagavad Gita played a pivotal role in the 19th and 20th-century Hindu revival by modernizing its teachings into a practical, accessible philosophy for social action and national identity.

The Origin of the Enneagram

As one of Claudio Naranjo’s first students when he introduced the Enneagram, the nine-pointed diagram that he’d learned from Oscar Ichazo, I’ve become very interested in what’s become known as the Western transmission of the Enneagram. I’m fascinated by competing narratives about its esoteric roots. (I’ve written about it before). This is the exact phenomenon that Harari describes: proponents of particular Enneagram styles have crafted creation narratives to bring their products to market. One universal side effect of enlightening mankind through the Enneagram is that it separates you from your money.

This brand of histoire de jour is, at best, self-serving, pieced together from bits and pieces of hearsay evidence, and in some cases, outright fraud.

Here is a preposterous statement on the first page of Helen Palmer’s website for her Narrative Tradition: With a history of centuries, the Enneagram is arguably the oldest human development system on the planet. During the past decade, the system has undergone a renewal of scholarly attention within the context of current personality typologies.

In the interest of the scholarly attention that Ms. Palmer lauds, here’s a clear, distinct, verifiable historical record of the beginning of the Narrative Tradition of the Enneagram.

In the late Spring of 1975, in a large living room of a nondescript house on Berkeley’s Arlington, Kathy Speeth organized a series of nine evening presentations about the Enneagram for the “therapeutic” community. In attendance were approximately 15 therapists interested in the Enneagram who were not members of Naranjo’s SAT group. Among them was Helen Palmer. She’d heard about the Enneagram from Naranjo’s students in her own practice of psychic readings.

I remember these presentations very clearly. They were a departure from the usual work of Naranjo's SAT group. Speeth and Bob Ochs had asked me to be on a ‘panel’ of Seven’s, ego ‘Plan’ as both Ichazo and Naranjo referred to the point “Gluttony.” This was the first time several people with the same fixation spoke in front of a group and answered questions (the identical format of the Narrative Tradition). There was one evening for each of the 9 major fixations.

Naranjo began the sessions with psychological descriptions of the 9 points. In itself, this was not unusual, but his comments were definitely tailored to an audience of trained professionals rather than the conversational tone he normally used when directing a student’s personal work in SAT. The authentic tone of self-observation may have been present, but I felt that the professional/technical language distorted the feeling of each point.

There’s the Narrative Tradition's “history of centuries” condensed to about two weeks of evening presentations, and I was present! Voila

Other enneagram enthusiasts have fabricated other stories and sources. 

The source of the Enneagram, or Enneagon, is Egyptian Gnosis. In Heliopolis, the center of worship of the Ennead, there were nine deities of ancient Egyptian Mythology about which we know next to nothing, and we haven’t yet deciphered the hieroglyphics for fixation.

Other proponents of the system trace the variations of the Enneagram symbol to the sacred geometry of Pythagorean mathematicians and mystical mathematics, but Pythagoras left no clear teachings, though he apparently once went to Heliopolis, with its nine gods, or something.

Plotinus’s Enneads. There, at last, a use of the Greek word for 9. However, we have to credit a dude named Porphyry for the somewhat artificial division of Plotinus’s writings into six groups of nine. Connecting the Enneagram with Neoplatonic thought is perhaps a stretch too far, but fear not, there are other choices.

We can cite Adam and the Kabbalistic Trees — leave no stone unturned and rope in Jewish seekers.

The Secret Teachings of Jesus (via the Desert Fathers) — sure, why not? But in my view, far more persuasive is the Jesuit connection: the frontispiece of the "Arithmologia" by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1601–1680), published in 1665, depicts a figure not identical to, but somewhat similar to, the Enneagram. Jesuits mucking around with esoteric religious writing lends credibility.

Many purveyors of various Enneagram systems say it was originally created by the esotericist George Ivanovich Gurdjieff via the Naqshbandi Sufi order about 100 years ago. However, there is absolutely no evidence in Gurdjieff's voluminous writings that he ever used the Enneagram as Naranjo, Ichazo, et al. do. Zero. I repeat ZERO Evidence.

Dr. Naranjo claims his source of the teaching was his mystical experiences in the Arican desert. He claims the Enneagram's historical origins are in esoteric gnosticism and occultism, based on channeled material from automatic writing, which was then verified through observation. I am particularly fond of the story that a book fell from a shelf in the esoteric library of Ocsar Ichazo’s uncle in Bolivia and opened to a page with the 9-pointed diagram. Let's just skip the verification bit altogether.

Professor Harari points to storytelling as a means of coordinating mass human efforts, but I am suspicious of lesser enterprises employing the same methodology. These people are selling snake oil. They use the “histoire de jour” like a struggling restaurant, using yesterday’s leftovers to increase the bottom line.

“Something is missing” is a constant complaint running through all these narratives. We lose our connection with the divine, have to reconnect, and, in most cases, are unable to complete the circuit without some assistance that costs money. It is one answer to a felt experience of the human condition, and one of the most accepted. There are others, but their popularizers were not as adept as those who captured humankind’s attention.

At best, these histories are "Cream of tomato, just like every day." But probably they’re closer to yesterday’s leftovers.

The Enneagram, the Final Reckoning, Banishment to the Darkness of Ignorance

A Tale of Theft, Appropriation, Accusation, and Lying, Or Enlightenment?

Enneagram Posts:

Why choose to work with the Enneagram?

Connecting G.I. Gurdjieff with Naranjo’s Enneagram

Claudio Naranjo’s first SAT Groups in Berkeley

The Jesuit Transmission of the Enneagram

Helen Palmer and Claudio Naranjo in Berkeley

The Enneagram, the Final Reckoning, Banishment to the Darkness of IgnoranceEnneagram Bibliography

Discovered in a folder dated January 10, 2021, the day that Oscar Ichazo published his “Letter to the Transactional Community.”

 

This is a tale dire enough for spiritual warfare, Light vs Dark, worthy of the most gnostic sectarian cult. Oscar Ichazo was not your run-of-the-mill desert shaman. He might have traveled back to third-century Mesopotamia to enlist the Manichees rather than a 15th-century Sufi sect for his Enneagon. He displayed the fervor of a religious zealot rather than a crafty Murshid in his lawsuit, and today, in his "Letter to the Transpersonal Community." 

Let me recast the story as a Manichean saga. It will still include Metatron, the archangel who is the Almighty’s scribe, as well as the usual cast of warring parties.

The Enneagon sprang forth from Oscar Ichazo, full-blown, a vision of Light. He hiked to the northernmost point of Chile, the Atacama Desert, where he gathered a small group of disciples for the first initiation. One of these disciples, a real doctor and psychotherapist named Claudio Naranjo, stole away with his numbered binder containing a complete outline of the system. Naranjo appropriated it as the Source of his variant system. He called it the Enneagram. Naranjo then gathered his own students in a rival school, which he tried to tie to the teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff. Among Naranjo’s students was a sweet, bright, and remarkably naive Jesuit, Father Bob Ochs, who disseminated this purportedly esoteric information as if it were Jesus on a hot cross bun. Ochs, who had just completed an advanced theology degree in the post-Vatican 2 Institut de Paris, began preaching to a small group of enthusiastic fellow Jesuits who quickly and efficiently established independent schools and study centers. 

When Naranjo heard there were Jesuit cells, he realized he’d been far too lax, but the donkey had already escaped its pen. His “Seekers After Truth” students had signed what in his world was a karmically binding pledge to keep secrets secret, but it was just a photocopy of a generic non-disclosure form, the one Ichazo required of everyone in the Arica —  no need to reinvent the wheel for another sect. But when Naranjo learned that the Jesuits had not pledged to keep their mouths shut forever, or until he gave permission, he cast Ochs into outer darkness. When one of Ochs's Jesuit students did what Jesuits do and published a book, Ichazo got wind of it, and he, too, was angry, but he added teeth of legal action in a US Court.(1) However, O'Leary proved jesuitical. He agreed to state publicly that Oscar Ichazo was the sole originator of the theory of ego fixations and the system of Enneagons, but Ichazo was unable to halt the publication of the book.` On only one point was everyone agreed: no money changed hands between the plaintiff and the defendants.

In the high Andean deserts, the pay scale for shamans is generally not on the high end; witch doctors are a dime a dozen. But forlorn Bolivia sets a particularly low bar. Poor Ichazo convinced himself that his zombie-like seven-day “transformational” experience had accrued some cash value, and his pyrrhic victory over Dimension Books encouraged him to set his sights on the sweet, innocent-looking Rosacrucian lady, along with the deeper pockets of her publisher, Harper and Row. 

One bold action set Transformational Community ablaze with rumors of rainbows and pots of gold. In Kabbalistic heaven, the Archangel Metatron heard useemly rumblings and accusations of theft, lying, misappropriation of the Holy Teaching, or just plain greed. 

Metatron summoned Ichazo, Naranjo, Ochs, Palmer, and O’Leary.. After the appropriate trumpet fanfare and drum roll, the accused fell to the ground in prostration. This was the real deal. There was no escape. When Metaron appeared, Ichazo said, “Holy shit. I thought I was being guided by an abstract (even possibly imaginary) archangel.” Metatron said offhandedly, “Be more careful. I’ve heard that excuse before.” 

Metatron continued: “This mess smells like trafficking in stolen goods, Spiritual Goods, which is a grave matter, but you all lack imagination. Steal-lie-launder-justify; steal-lie-steal-launder-spin-repeat. You, Oscar, suggest that Naranjo spirited away your proprietary notes. Naranjo then gave the contents, which he had annotated and claimed were his property, to Father Ochs. Ochs followed his vocation and went on a preaching spree, giving the system to a few smart and well-trained Jesuits. Then innocent-looking Helen Palmer, trained by the beleaguered Rosacrucians, gathered copious notes (either honestly or by sleight of hand) from various sources, domesticated them, and sold them to a boatload of students. When pressed, Palmer lies with a straight face: ‘I did attend nine sessions of a public enneagram class with no ‘secrecy’ requirement.’ (2) (Ireland has the receipts: Everyone signed the NDA. He participated in the sessions and signed an NDA, despite already having signed one. Catherine Swiniarski testifies that Palmer handed her a signed copy of Naranjo’s NDA agreement. She was the registrar for the event.)

Metatron: “This scenario is absurd. I almost forgot one important but amusing allegation: Naranjo claims that no one owns anything because the whole system was a secret oral teaching from some well-hidden Sufis passed onto an irrasible Armenian-Russian madman called Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff himself told me that he had no idea what anyone was talking about. The whole lot of you don’t know what you’re talking about, but the choir sings ‘That’s the esoteric script. That’s what they’re supposed to say.’

Metatron to Ichazo: “You sued Jesuits? What were you thinking? Suing Jesuits is one thing, but suing them for trying to help others is an entirely different matter. And you accuse them of furthering parochial theological goals. Oh, Ichazo, from you, this is rich, truly rich.

“You, Oscar, claim that you didn’t make any money. Accounting is one of my things: no one made any money, except the lawyers. There was only one amicus brief filed in this matter, from a group called ‘The Big Mind Association of Trial Lawyers.’ Lovely high-sounding name, almost Buddhist. Can I chuckle? I hear a lot from Canon Lawyers (3) and the Sharia Courts, so I thought this might be a welcome change of pace, but, alas, in the end, sectarian lawyers are lawyers. Sex workers may be the oldest profession on earth, but in the religious world, the first ecumenical profession is the Law. I heard from no one else, Oscar Ichazo — not even your gypsy auntie, who gets paid for reading cards. She doesn’t think you deserve a single peso. 

“I want to ask the obvious question: ‘Are you so sure that you’ve interpreted this nine-pointed figure correctly, or fully? How did you arrive at this conclusion with any certainty?’ But before I do, I want to point out your arrogance and cruelty. 

“You, Oscar, suggest that Helen Palmer casts herself as a martyr, and not just an ordinary run-of-the-mill blasphemer. Instead, this sweet Godmother of the Enneagram is right up there with Savonarola, the fire and brimstone preacher who was burned at the stake for his attempt to end the Renaissance in Florence. Only in your mind is Palmer a fundamentalist. It’s you who have assumed the role of Grand Inquisitor and introduced this spectacle of religious barbarism. There is no hint, no innuendo of fanaticism in her writing. You say that she has every right on earth to say what she wants, but I don’t believe you.”

The Archangel considers filing a Charge Sheet against Ichazo.

Metatron: “You, Oscar, did a lot of suing. Maybe I, Metatron, should sue you, Oscar, in the Divine Court for allowing the Sacred Enneagram to be reduced to the level of the Daily Horoscope on the back page of a cheap tabloid. 

“You might ask what real damage I have actually done? Even from the position of an archangel, it’s challenging to ascertain evidence of harm in the marketplace of spiritual practice: How many people actually undertook the difficult work of self-analysis and introspection compared with how many were dissuaded? How many were misled or wasted time chasing a chimera or a rumor? Hard numbers in the world of the transcendent have always been a difficult matter, but if we measure the level of distraction by the number of words and titles that come up with a Google search for ‘the real origins of the Enneagram,’ the answer would be ‘considerable confusion.’ 

“In another time and place, your arrogance and cruelty would have tasted the flames. If you were trying to be funny, the Love and Light crowd is a dreary lot and wouldn’t get the “The Lady’s Not for Burning” joke. If your 41 pages of tightly argued documentation indicate that you are serious, your reference to one of the most barbaric periods of Western religious history forfeits any claim to teach anyone. In the end, Oscar Ichazo, you could just be a stark raving maniac, but I will have to search for another remedy. We just don’t do burning for heresy anymore.

“I have to ask myself if there is a way through this bickering among Aricans, Palmerites, Naranjo enthusiasts, and other “created from nothing” schools? If we allow ourselves just to hurl insults and dogmatic threats, we’ll stay stuck forever. 

“Let me suggest a kind of Enneagram anthropology, one that comes from the lived experience of using the system and discovering its inner logic. I propose several simple steps. Firstly, speak simply.

“The courts did a reasonably good job given the limitations of the materials they were allowed to consider. By defining terms and language that could be “uncopyrightable,”  the court declared that, you, Oscar, could not copyright sloth, lying, and cowardice (4), although I suppose that Scientology’s “engram” and “bank” might be as well as Mr. Gurdjieff’s gibberish: "Aieioiuoa," "Kerkoolnonarnian," "Sekronoolanzaknian," and “Kundabuffer.” 

“Spiritual concepts, at least in the introductory stages, should be expressed in language as simple as possible. Even if and when language disappears, as most mysticism indicates, the benevolent guardians of the Universe have allowed for some language, like baby talk, to point us in the right direction. If writing and testing, rather than automatic writing or divine pronouncements, might begin to lay out a path, we've made a decent start.

“Oscar, you say that the only reason that you attempted to copyright the Arica material was ‘because the psychologists and religious people publish their work, using Arica descriptions mainly of the fixations without appropriate acknowledgment of what is Arica's and what is their own input - as a linear therapy in the case of the psychologists or as a way to Christian redemption by the group of priests and nuns.’ (5) I do not recall that anyone elected you Pope.

“Secondly. Stop lying and hiding behind some outrageous ‘Histoire de Jour:’ 

“Ms Plamer, asserting that you did not sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement with Narajo, probably saved you from paying a penalty to Ichazo that he claims he wasn’t seeking, but it is a lie. You are both lying. On the other hand, Naranjo never admitted that he didn’t return Ichazo’s numbered workbook for the initial Arica Training, and oddly, Ochazo never mentions it. It only became a cause célèbre when Beesing, Nogosek, and O'Leary published their work, and Palmer began her rewrite. 

“I have a difficult time assigning blame, but there’s more than enough blame to go around. All of you, Ichazo, Naranjo, Ochs, and Palmer, share some of it. It would take a full team of lawyers to sort this out, which would be expensive (and probably beyond the statute of limitations), but really, questions about who said what when, and whether or not you signed a mimeographed DNA that was filed and forgotten, don’t matter that much.

“Thirdly, aim for compassion and steer clear of retribution. In this new pan-creedal world, I shy away from any sectarian slant, but I will still repeat the words of Jesus. He is very clear: 

‘You have heard that it was said, Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you." (Matthew 5:38-42, New International Version). Cooperation and working together might help you overcome base instincts.

If the practice of using the Ennegram for introspection survives, it will be in the hands of the people who do the hard work and talk openly about the results, the same kind of people who have been struggling with the nine-pointed figure for nearly six decades since it captured the imagination of a small segment of modern mystics. In the big picture, it is in its infancy.

Fourthly: Quit the cult. Put me out of a job.

Notes:

1 Beesing, Maria, Robert Nogosek, and Patrick O'Leary. The Enneagram: A Journey of Self-Discovery. Denville, N.J.: Dimension Bks, 1984.

2 Helen Palmer, quoted in “Special Forum: The Enneagram in Contention,” Gnosis, No. 42 (Winter 1997), p. 13. 

3 Almost 25 years ago, (10/23/2001), in a pastoral letter warning Catholics about using the Enneagram as a tool for spiritual direction, the U.S. Catholic bishops' Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices, stated that "sin is indeed unhealthy behavior and can be combated by an improved understanding, but it is at its root a moral problem, so that repentance before God and one’s neighbor must be the fundamental response. Enneagram teaching thus obscures the Christian understanding of sin."

4 Arica Institute, Inc. v. Palmer, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York - 770 F. Supp. 188 (S.D.N.Y. 1991). August 5, 1991. “The Court in its prior opinion found numerous aspects of plaintiff's works uncopyrightable: Ichazo's system of nine ego fixations, the sequence or arrangement of the ego fixations within that system, individual words describing the traits of each ego fixation and the one- and two-word labels for points on the various enneagrams from which the system of ego fixations is derived. Any similarity between Ichazo's works and The Enneagram based on these non-copyrightable elements does not constitute copyright infringement.”

5 Oscar Ichazo, Letter to the Transpersonal Community, Page 27.

It’s a cult damn it. Nothing more.

“Love your kids more than evolution requires.” --David Brooks

Other Posts regarding Bob Hoffman and the Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy

The Ontological Odd Couple, and the Origins of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy

Bob Hoffman was a Lunatic, a Liar, a Criminal, & a Fraud

Why Do Cults Need to Rewrite History?

The Truth about Bob Hoffman

The End of Patriarchy and the Beginnings of a Cult. 

It’s a cult, damn it. Nothing more

The Sad Demise of Bob Hoffman 

Jonestown and Our Deliverance from Cults

Bob Hoffman was a criminal. Simple 

I was just listening to a podcast by Andrew Gold, interviewing Jon Atack (A Piece of Blue Sky), about Charlie Manson and Scientology. Alack describes a cult in its simplest form as a group that reveres a particular leader or doctrine. Bow down and surrender. Isn’t that the first thing you heard after you’d knocked on the door? 

A general rule is that cult leaders are not necessarily brilliant, or enlightened, or even educated. As a matter of fact, very often they are none of the above, but they know how to weave a spell, to hypnotize, to create a myth, and make promises that sell themselves. The best and the worst were con men (or women) with an uncanny ability to mirror our insecurities and then reflect back a crafted solution that paid them, usually more than its real value.

In the late 1960s, particularly in California, a new group of high-flying self-help gurus emerged, promising a level of personal awareness that would free us — if we worked with them. We were told that we’d been programmed by a familiar network of parents, schools, pastors, priests and rabbis, tribal culture, liberal (or conservative) political prejudices, the sexual taboos that hounded us along with innumerable generations before us. The gurus pointed to obvious evidence, and we jumped at a ready solution. We’d all suffered through the deadening post-war social homogenization. We’d all experienced the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation, driving under our desks since the first grade (I remember these drills today when the threat of armed maniacs in schools is very real and certainly statistically more deadly). The Haight-Ashbury Summer of Love erupted and, I think, clearly demonstrated a deep hunger for relief.

The new age gurus promised that we could be deprogrammed from this hypnotic state. This was an attractive offer. It was universally agreed among my affluent college-educated peers that we were all caught in the thrall of automatic action and reaction. We also felt that our level of discomfort was somehow unfair. It was just hard to name the culprit. We were told that the buck stopped with us, but we had to pinpoint who we were “being” when push came to shove. A friend paid a sizable chunk of money to spend a long, sleepless weekend sitting on the floor of a yoga studio, asking and answering the repeated question “Who are you?” 

We were told that any possible freedom or newly discovered enlightenment would require work. We rolled up our sleeves and opened our wallets, or at least contrived alternative ways to pay for services. There were groups and rivalries. Bob Hoffman badmouthed Werner Erhard. Mainline Gurdjieff groups paid no attention to Claudio Naranjo’s Enneagram. Gurdjieff teachers questioned the credentials of people who set themselves up as doing “The Work.” Oscar Ichazo sued Helen Palmer, and Scientology had a very long list of defectors in the docket, including Werner Erhard’s est. 

The infighting became cannibalistic. Here’s an example--Scientology sued the Cult Awareness Network, which bankrupted them with the massive legal fees required to defend themselves. Scientology, through an agent, then purchased the shell of CAN for the fire-sale price of $25,000 and made it an arm of the Church of Scientology, which became the resource for distraught parents whose children had become Moonies, an Osho Sannyasin--or recruits for Scientology’s Sea Org. And the Scientologists in charge took their jobs very seriously. I was on the phone with them when a concerned family member raised concerns about the “human-development” seminar company I worked for. They knew the precise questions to ask to uncover a cult.

This kind of feeding frenzy spread like wildfire in dry grass. Not only were our leaders fighting amongst themselves, with lawsuits and unbecoming slander and innuendo, but we took on each other with a righteous, determined vengeance to do the hard work of Ego Reduction. If we were not aware of our patterns of programmed behaviors, rackets, bank, negative behaviors, without lapsing into passive-aggressive behavior ourselves, how could we root them out? Like good soldiers in the war against the dark side, we ganged up on each other, all with some expression of gratitude or at least lack of complaint. In retrospect, our behavior was more like gang bangers than seekers after truth or truth warriors. It also served a dual purpose. It deflected attention from the leaders who were more like tribal Neanderthals with automatic weapons than compassionate, enlightened beings acting for the deepest good of all humankind. 

I knew one of these gurus for almost 30 years. It was an on-again,off-again acquaintance. Bob Hoffman was a very difficult man, most likely suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder. I cannot say that he was dumber than a stump. I don’t know his IQ, though I do know that he dropped out of school in about the 6th or 7th grade and never received a GED. For the almost 30 years I knew him, he never finished a book though he did try several times. He opened E.M. Forster’s “Maurice” when he heard that it was his gay novel, but he never finished it. He told me that the storyline was too bleak. He also tried Christopher Isherwood’s “A Single Man," but lost interest when he realized Isherwood was not Danielle Steel. He asked me to fill him in on the end of the story. He was disappointed. He loved a happy ending. 

Hoffman channeled the Quadrinity Process from his spirit guide, his psychotherapist, Siegfried Fisher. Because it came from “the other side” Hoffman claimed the highest level of validity. He would stand in front of a group and ramble. I never saw him go into anything like a trance. Most times, the sessions were recorded and Hoffman had them transcribed, edited, and cleaned up by a small group of people who had had, admittedly, some rather remarkable personal experiences following this otherworldly methodology. Because Hoffman tried to hide that he had actually been Fisher’s patient, the whole tale became twisted with lies and information that was “somewhat less than factual,” and it became ripe ground for manipulation.

When I read some well-thought-out passage online attributed to Hoffman, I know that it was obviously written by a ghost. Hoffman liked it short, dirty, and crude. His teaching style was in-your-face aggressive. On a scale of professional to barbarian, he was unapologetically barbarian. He “broke you down to build you up,” and you had to be grateful for his gifts of wisdom. You did things his way, or you’d be shut out. Some of the people who succeeded him will boast they never stooped to or countenanced his crude confrontation, that they told him so to his face, brave souls. They stretch the truth. Every one of them would have to admit to strained working relationships. At some point, everyone close to him just blocked his ranting, and as long as he got paid, he learned to live with it. 

But the adjustments, the edits, the lies are necessary. Hoffman is still the guru face of the Process that bears his name. It is a cult. Is there something more? Is there anything that can be saved from this river of teaching? I will also tackle the question of whether the Western adaptation of Buddhism loses something by closely identifying with the Self-Help Industry. Stay tuned.

 

SAT, Naranjo, the Enneagram, the beginnings, and “the Work”

 Originally published in "The Enneagram Monthly"

Claudio Benjamín Naranjo Cohen (24 November 1932 – 12 July 2019) has passed away. Óscar Ichazo (24 July 1931 – 26 March 2020) died less than a year later. The meditation teacher Ajahn Dhiravamsa (5 November 1934 - 28 July 2021) passed away. More recently. Rezeleah Landman Schaeffer has left us, though I can find no obituary. The only teachers and leaders still alive from the early history of Naranjo’s SAT are Kathy Speeth, who told her story of sitting in Gurdjieff’s lap when she was a young child, and the Nyingmapa teacher Tarthang Tulku, who had an enormous influence on Naranjo. At 86, Tarthang is still teaching, though no longer traveling internationally. These were the men and women who first introduced the Enneagram in the West.

My friend Dan Kaplan forwarded an email promotion for a course by some proponents of the Enneagram that promises to unlock its radical teaching by returning to the “original intent.” Please forgive me if I'm skeptical. Are these third-generation experts going back to Naranjo’s characterization of the 9 types, or Ichazo’s prototyping, which is notably different, or the myth of an esoteric Sufi circle, or the inconclusive evidence that it lay hidden in Gurdjieff’s teaching, or William Patterson’s tracing the system back to ancient Egypt? I try to give the devil his due, but “original intent” is just hype to separate you from your money. I challenge any of these teachers to reveal the original intent in a rigorous way. If they’re just trying to distinguish themselves from Enneagram parlor games, I might be more generous.

Perhaps it is time to look at some of the threads that tie the Enneagram’s popularization in the West to the burgeoning of the psycho-spiritual integration that took California by like a New Awakening in the last part of the last century. I only know the SAT experience so that will be my focus.

Dr. Aubrey Lindgren, who was in Naranjo’s first SAT group, talked about Naranjo’s early teaching in the October 2021 edition of “The Enneagram Monthly.” Lindgren’s account tries to unwrap the Enneagram, particularly the Enneagram of Fixations, for a Western audience steeped in the language of psychotherapy. She asks why so little has been written about those early days? Her answer is “To realize the full impact of the teachings, we have to hold the container in silence. A silence that is both inside our own minds, as in not forming concepts about transformation, and outside, as in not discussing the material presented. It is a disservice to the public to hear about a theory without the full understanding and guidance as to how to effectively apply these ideas to your life.”

A gnostic response wants to keep secrets secret, or is trying to hide something, or hinting at some secret knowledge that will cost money. While I appreciate whatever caution is there about doing inner work, Lindgren's answer hides too much. As far as the Enneagram is concerned, the cat’s out of the bag. If the Enneagram ever was an esoteric teaching, it has crossed over into popular culture, at worst mimicking astrology or at best being an adjunct to the techniques of psychotherapy. The careful inner work of introspection seems too difficult for a mass audience.

I was in Naranjo’s SAT 2, which began in the Fall of 1972. By the end of the second year, the group had expanded to perhaps 60-80 people. The first group that Lindgren describes was distinct and interacted with Naranjo in a different way, often delivering his “indications” to newer students. I talked with my longtime friend Daniel Shurman, who was in Group 1; together we combed our memories and remembered many people who were and remain friends. I was particularly close to my fellow Jesuit Bob Ochs and the Franciscan priest Joe Scerbo, among others. We also remembered friends who lived communally out on Broadway and another group around Indian Rock in North Berkeley, and the women who lived with Naranjo on Allston Way. The membership included the well-known second-generation Enneagram teacher, Hameed Ali, as well as the transpersonal scholar Charlie Tart.

The influence of Oscar Ichazo on the modern Enneagram is well known, even litigated. As I pointed out in my article “The Jesuit Transmission of the Enneagram,” as well as “Muddied Roots, Psychobabble, and Inoculation.” I was aware that Naranjo was unpacking a powerful experience he’d had in Arica, and his presentation and understanding were different from Ichazo. Actually a lot of time was spent sorting out the distinctions. I am not an Enneagram teacher so I am not going to indulge in any of the arguments about theories, typing or tests. Have at it.

I will second what Lindgren says about the inspiration of Naranjo’s personal gifts, his intelligence, and his creativity. There was also the influence of Fritz Perls’ Gestalt, echoes of the Sufi school, or what we were told was the teaching of the Brotherhood, the ego reduction in our personal and group work, some dabbling in Buddhist meditation, and, of course, what is called “The Work.” Naranjo felt that the Enneagram, as it came through Ichazo, was a kind of fleshing out of the esoteric work that Mr. Gurdjieff undertook at the beginning of the last century. He could not substantiate this, and he never claimed to be an authorized Fourth Way teacher, but he loved the “trickster” myth around Gurdjieff’s teaching, and was always on the lookout for some connections, real or imagined, with Gurdjieff.

We were a group of bright, mostly young, educated westerners ready, willing, even eager for what we imagined to be the shock of eastern spiritual practice. We were also terribly naive. At times our work together became a circus. There were many dark sides. They do not discount the value of the work that we managed to accomplish--in a way some of the more thorny issues were part of that training. However they persist. In my view we cannot allow them to stay in the shadows, or sweep them under the rug. If we purge them from our telling the history of this period, we are just not being honest.

I will examine one aspect of the early SAT story, its connection with the unofficial Gurdjieff work, and my personal experience of sexual abuse and trauma after undergoing the Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy.

The Work

When G.I. Gurdjieff died in Paris in 1949, beside his recondite writings, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, and All and Everything, he left a large body of oral teaching that spanned nearly four decades. He had many devoted students, and though he did charge certain senior students to work with other interested people across the globe, he died with no clear transmission of a spiritual lineage. As with many powerful systems, it attracted a lot of interest, some from sane people who were intent on realizing the goals of liberation through self-awareness and observation that Gurdjieff advocated. In other cases, people seem to have been attracted by his unorthodox teaching methods. Several hung out a shingle with “The Work” predominantly displayed, and felt it gave them license to behave badly.

I don’t doubt that Kathy Speeth sat in Mr. Gurdjieff’s lap. But it is extremely unlikely, as Lindgren recounts, that it happened during the summers that her parents spent in Paris studying with Gurdjieff at 6 Rue des Colonels Rénard in the 17th arrondissement. Her parents were prominent New Yorkers who had been students of A.R. Orage, perhaps continuing to work with Jane Heap or Willem Nyland after Orage’s early death. Kathy was born in 1937 and the Second World War began in September of 1939. Her meeting with Mr. Gurdjieff was probably on one of his trips to the United States, and he did make one trip to the United States after the surrender of Germany so the timing sounds likely.

Why am I making such a big deal about the exact time that Kathy sat in Gurdjieff’s lap and where it took place? It is probably one of two verifiable connections with “the Work” in the early SAT. Kathy and Pamela Travers were the only people he introduced to the group who had actually met Mr. Gurdjieff. I want to avoid the sloppy thinking that comes from blurring facts with fanciful stories.

When Naranjo began to teach, there were several legitimate, respected Fourth Way teachers in the Bay Area, Lord John Pentland in San Francisco, Mr. Willem A. Nyland on “The Land” up near Cazadero and Mr. Robert S. de Ropp. I know that Pentland and Nyland stayed away from Naranjo’s Enneagram work although each one knew about it. Instead we were introduced to Alex Horn (by proxy--he never visited the group), EJ Gold aka “The Beast,” and Henry Korman as Fourth Way connections. Carlos Castaneda, who never claimed to have any connection with the Work but was a Hollywood example of crazy wisdom, appeared at some point to entertain us. None of these teachers had any interest in the Enneagram as Naranjo presented it, but Naranjo was interested in their teaching methods.

Lindgren describes working with Alex Horn during one of his late-night, early-morning marathon sessions on a secluded ranch north of San Francisco as a revelatory experience. It could have simply been the result of sleep deprivation and hypnosis. My only experience with Horn was at his Everyman Theater on 24th Street and Mission in San Francisco, where I watched a preposterous production about the assassination of JFK staged by Horn and his then-wife, Sharon. Horn prowled the audience before, after, and during the intermission. That was enough for me.

Horn claimed that he was in the lineage of Mr. Gurdjieff, but there is zero evidence of a real connection. I assert that Horn was attracted to the power he could reap from Gurdjieff’s unorthodox teaching methods. Period. Naranjo never encouraged me to work with Horn although several members of the early SAT groups did. I know several people who were not Naranjo’s students but had been in Horn’s group. They report sexual exploitation, coercion and even physical violence. For example, Horn would instigate a dispute between several of the men in the group and then instruct them to have a wrestling match, or even fist fight without gloves. Horn was also a known sexual predator with a voracious appetite for young women. His Bible was not anything that Gurdjieff or Ouspensky wrote but Atlas Shrugged.

E.J. Gold claimed to have been authorized to teach as “The Beast” by an esoteric Sufi School. As far as I can ascertain, he fabricated his connection with Mr. Gurdjieff. He was also the author of a cult book called The American Book of the Dead. When I met him, I could not shake the feeling that he was devoid of compassion. He invited anyone of the SAT group to come to Southern California and do an “intensive training.” By the time my friend Hal Slate arrived at a secluded bunker somewhere up on the Grapevine, the title and authority of “The Beast” had been given to one of Gold’s very young disciples who had learned everything he needed to know by performing for three days straight with a garage rock band made up of people who had no musical training. Ripping a page from the script of Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film, “The Exterminating Angel,” Gold seized on an unexpected change in the weather to concoct a scenario that it was the end of the world and all his trapped guests had to make some serious ontological choices. Hal escaped, walking out of the canyon on foot during the freak Southern California blizzard. As the saying goes, “Never miss the opportunity provided by a catastrophe.” I would add, “real or imagined, there are always several choices available.”

Of all the Gurdjieff students and teachers who visited our groups, meeting Pamela Travers was remarkable. The real Mary Poppins had actually been Gurdjieff’s student. Because I’d actually read some of her books, despite all the technicolor dancing and singing I knew that Poppins would be very English prim and proper with a mystical bent. And here was a middle aged woman, not at all glamorous, as much the portrait of an English nanny as my imagination allowed, who was also very present. She talked and answered our questions in a completely no nonsense way but with a lilt in her voice; she mentioned that she still met with a group and she named one of Mr. Gurdjieff’s senior students as her teacher.

By 1975 Naranjo began to withdraw from teaching the Enneagram. Others with more personal knowledge can comment or speculate on his motivation. My sense is that the initial work had been exhausting and the inspired impulse of his Arica experience had petered out and drained him personally. Some of the second generation Enneagram teachers have speculated that his drug experimentation had taken a toll which from my observation was a strong possibility. One member of the first group told me that much of his distress stemmed from the end of his intimate relationship with Kathy Speeth. All these are possible scenarios. There was also the concern that he felt after that the Enneagram materials had also been released to a wider audience. I do know from my conversations with him that he was apprehensive about the possible distortion of the Enneagram. He also told me that popularizers had watered it down. The SAT experiment would go dark at least temporarily.

He introduced Henry Korman as a person who would possibly inherit his SAT groups. Korman was leading a group in New York but had agreed to come and work with anyone who wished to continue to do what we imagined was Gurdjieff’s Work.

I worked with Korman for almost 3 years, group meetings twice a week and every Sunday. We began with an exercise called “Sensing, Looking and Listening,” then observations and questions from the group under Korman’s heavy-handed direction. Korman also organized elaborate dinners with exacting preparation, like the ones we read about in former Gurdjieff students’ memoirs. Sundays were dedicated to a Work exercise, and once a month we would begin on Saturday and extend it throughout the whole night. This pattern of group meetings, intensive concentration and work coupled with sleep deprivation seemed to be something imitated from the way Gurdjieff is said to have worked with his students. Alex Horn and E.J. Gold also made ample, and often manipulative, use of forcibly breaking up normal cycles.

While there was none of the physical violence that was reported in Horn’s groups, my experience of Korman was that he was a bully. He had no qualms about interfering in the sexual relationships of couples in the group or openly sleeping with students. He tried to arrange for a woman in the group to introduce me to heterosexual experience. Thank god she had the presence of mind to say no. He “strongly” suggested that I join with two other group members and start a construction company which he named “Double Action Builders.” This is the one real regret of getting involved in his group. It set me up to follow a dead end career for way too long.

After I had left Henry’s group, I was living in San Francisco, and trying to piece together some of that frayed experience. A Jesuit whom I knew and worked with was a member of the San Francisco Gurdjieff Group. He arranged for me to meet Lord John Pentland. I arrived at the upper middle class home in Saint Francis Woods at the appointed time for a congenial conversation with Pentland. He asked about my intentions, my experience, and talked about our mutual friend whom he knew well and respected. Pentland suggested that one of his longtime students, the woman who owned Fields Book Store on Polk, would meet and talk with me while we decided if I should join the group. When he asked me if I had any questions, I asked if he knew Korman and about the exercise of “Sensing, Looking and Listening.” Pentland said that yes, he had heard of Korman. Then he asked me to describe the exercise completely and fully which I did. He then asked about some specific details, particularly the attention to breath, or really the absence of any instruction about the breath. He paused, then looked at me directly and said that the exercise had absolutely no relationship to anything Mr. Gurdjieff taught. He would not comment about its possible usefulness.

I’m not going to say that my time with Korman was completely wasted, but I cannot pretend that I was in any way participating in “The Work.” Just a quick footnote--Korman met Mr. William Patrick Patterson, and began to work with him. He stopped teaching, admitted to a “grave” mistake, and wrote a letter of apology to his former students. He did not include me. I had to read a copy of the letter sent to a friend. He was in many ways brilliant, and I hesitate to put him into the category of an arrogant, destructive prick. Sadly he belongs in that bin.


Bob Hoffman and the Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy

Both Lindgren and Ernest Lowe talk about the psychic Bob Hoffman. They both used Hoffman’s Process working with clients as did I. Naranjo introduced this tailor who had zero psychological training to SAT. Hoffman claimed to have had a midnight vision of Dr. Siegfried Fisher, a well known and respected psychiatrist and also a family friend, who revealed the secret of what Hoffman called Negative Love and the Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy that allowed us to undo the negative consequences of our childhood programming.

Most of my first year in SAT was spent doing the Fisher-Hoffman Process. Hoffman became infatuated with me, and within 6 months after I finished working with him, Hoffman began stalking me at Berkeley’s gay bar. After a few more months invited me to dinner and raped me. He was a psychotic and a criminal.

Naranjo did not condone or in any way encourage aggression, violence or sexual exploitation between students and teachers or among SAT members, but I do fault him for not doing appropriate due diligence before allowing Hoffman to work with SAT members. Hoffman was a “psychic.” Hoffman allegedly told Naranjo several things about his childhood which he could not have known. The normal training for a mental health professional was superseded or abrogated.

Although I don’t think he would have approved of Hoffman’s sexual conduct, Naranjo did sleep with students. To my knowledge he did not coerce or manipulate anyone, but inevitably it had negative consequences.


The Soup of the Soup

Looking back, I find it odd that none of the teachers that Naranjo introduced to the group were conversant or really even interested in the Enneagram as Naranjo presented it. They were generally teachers, monks, therapists devoted to the Path of Liberation, but mixed in were some who lied about being in the lineage of Mr. Gurdjieff and fraudsters who made preposterous claims but really were just out for power, money or sex. It was the soup we swam in, and, like the air we breathe, no matter how careful we try to be, we cannot be certain that we’re not getting a whiff of poison.

Naranjo loved a Sufi story, attributed to Mulla Nasruddin, called the Soup of the Soup. A generous neighbor gave the Mulla a fat duck, which his wife dressed and made into a fine dinner. Everyone was happy. The next day, a guest knocked on the door, “I heard that Mustafa gave you a big duck, do you have any left?” Of course, observing the obligation of hospitality, the Mulla invited the guest in for some hearty soup made from the leftovers. The next day, a friend of Mustafa's friend smelled the still rich soup bubbling in the kitchen, knocked on the Mulla’s door, and asked to taste the savory dish. The Mulla invited him in. This goes on for several more days and several more friends of the friends of Mustafa. (In the West, we’d call this a shaggy dog story.) About the 10th day, after the now familiar knock on the door, the Mulla invited another friend of the friend of the friend of Mustafa's friend in for the remainder of the soup, but when the guest sat and tasted nothing more than hot water, he asked, “Where’s the duck?” The Mulla answered, “I’m sorry, but all I have to offer you is the soup of the soup of the soup of the soup of the duck that Mustafa gave me.”

That is my impression of the end of our work with SAT. We were just going through the motions of the Work of the Work, but we’d lost the taste of that fine fat duck that we were given for our feast. However we'd also tasted real Duck Soup that Naranjo had served, and, with persistence and a bit of luck, we could buy a fat bird and recreate the recipe ourselves. We can, in the words of Lord John Pentland, create what Mr. Gurdjieff called self-remembering, “. . . a state of attention . . . a state of vibrant attentiveness, of inner alignment and attunement, which, when we are sufficiently still inside, possesses a potency reminding us that the real inner work is a response to a higher and deeper calling.”