How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival

by Kaiser, David

  Erhard told Fuller that he wanted to host a new kind of conference, not just run-of-the-mill meetings: the kind of conference that would “actually make some difference to the physics community.” He asked Fuller to organize the new conference series; Fuller agreed to organize the organizers. Together they cast around for a respected physicist who could encourage the discipline’s heavyweights to attend. After conferring with Berkeley’s Geoffrey Chew and Caltech’s Richard Feynman, they approached Sidney Coleman.47 Coleman, then a professor at Harvard, had done his doctoral work at Caltech in the early 1960s. As one of Coleman’s colleagues put it recently, Sidney was “always interested in expanding his horizons,” and despite nearly fifteen years on the Harvard faculty by that time, he still had something of the “California spirit” in him.48 A world expert in quantum physics and a celebrated lecturer with a sly and sarcastic sense of humor, Coleman was intrigued by the offer. He teamed up with his colleague from MIT, Roman Jackiw, to plan the first meeting. By July 1976 they had hammered out a topic and guest list.49

  Coleman’s first order of business was to establish some ground rules. He and his colleagues (including Jackiw) were to have total control over content, invitation lists, and so on, with no meddling from Erhard or the est foundation. Erhard readily agreed, asking only that he be allowed to sit in on the meetings. With that half of the negotiation settled, Coleman turned to his colleagues, trying to wrangle them to attend the unusual conference. The invitation letter was vintage Coleman. “The following information may be of interest to you,” he spelled out:

  The est Foundation (though a legally independent entity) derives its income from Erhard Seminars Training, a San Francisco based organization that offers expensive weekend self-improvement courses. For what it is worth, my uninformed opinion is that the fact that it is possible to make good money this way is yet another piece of evidence that we are living in the Golden Age of Silliness. However, this is irrelevant, because the proposed conference will be no more devoted to promoting Erhard Seminars Training than the activities of the Ford Foundation are to pushing Pintos. I have received explicit agreements to this effect from the responsible parties, and I promise you that at the slightest sign these agreements are not being kept, I will throw a tantrum and cancel the conference.50

  The letter went to a Who’s Who of the world’s top theoretical physicists. Of the seventeen physicists whom Coleman and Jackiw invited, six had already won or would go on to win the Nobel Prize.51

  Nearly all of the invitees signed up. With Fuller’s help and Erhard’s generous backing, Coleman and Jackiw convened their first meeting, on “Novel configurations in quantum field theory,” in late January 1977. By all accounts it was a lovely affair. The est foundation paid all expenses for the physicists and their spouses to travel to San Francisco. The foundation sent each confirmed participant and guest open round-trip airline tickets, so they could come and go as they pleased. Lodging was at fine hotels, with the bill (including all room-service charges) sent directly to the est foundation. Drivers greeted participants at the airport and chauffeured them around the city.52

  An est foundation staff person assured physicists in advance of the meeting that the foundation’s intention was to provide a comfortable place where they could work without distractions.53 That private space turned out to be Erhard’s San Francisco mansion, Franklin House, which served as Erhard’s personal residence and est headquarters. “We took all the stuff out of my office,” Erhard recently explained, “and set it up for the conference with a blackboard.” As it happens, the huge blackboard they wheeled in was curved in the shape of a parabola, which had an added bonus: not only could all the participants see each other’s scribbles at the same time, but the curved shape helped project speakers’ voices as well.54 Erhard and Coleman each aimed to keep things informal, with long blocks of time reserved for casual conversation rather than cluttered with presentations. As Coleman explained to his colleagues, “both conscious policy and instinctive sloth lead me to keep things as unstructured as possible.” Most important, Erhard kept his word: he sat in the back and kept quiet the whole time. “I couldn’t follow ninety percent of what got said,” Erhard recalls, “but I really loved the way they thought and worked,” including “the way they worked with each other. That was a kind of payback for me.” Coleman never had to throw a tantrum.55

  As Erhard and Coleman had hoped, conversations spilled beyond the stipulated conference hours. Fuller and Feynman, for example, discussed quantum physics while out for a morning jog.56 Conversations continued well into the night as well, though not always about physics. Feynman, for one, couldn’t believe “how well we were taken care of at the meeting,” as he wrote to an est foundation staffer. But he felt sheepish about having Erhard’s foundation pick up the tab for his “binge” at the hotel bar one evening, so he sent in a check to cover those expenses.57 Coleman registered his “mild disappointment” that no one had announced in the mornings that they had stayed up late in their hotel rooms the night before, calculating some new effect, having been inspired by something they had heard at the previous day’s meeting. “Nobody could say that at our conference,” Coleman explained, “because by the time we got back to our hotel rooms we were all drunk and stuffed.” Even so, Coleman congratulated Fuller on their mutual success. “Well, they said it was impossible, but we did it: we got both Feynman and Werner to wear ties.”58

  Three weeks after Coleman and Jackiw’s est-backed conference, Erhard considered doling out some additional largesse to his original physicist-consultant, Jack Sarfatti. The latest idea was for Erhard to finance a new fellowship for Sarfatti to teach as a visiting lecturer at the San Francisco Art Institute.59 Sarfatti was thrilled. Writing to David Finkelstein—veteran of the Esalen workshops who, unbeknownst to Sarfatti, had also just attended the Coleman-Jackiw meeting at Erhard’s Franklin House—Sarfatti enthused that “I shall be the new Henri Bergson of San Francisco. I shall hold an ongoing seminar in Adventures of Ideas discussing Borges, Buddhist logic, QM [quantum-mechanical] logic, Whitehead, James, Einstein, Bohr, Goethe, Physics as Conceptual Art, etc.” Sarfatti promised “a grand vision to set before the eyes and ears of the San Francisco artistic-literati. I shall sing it and deliver it in poetic cadence. New forms of inquiry, new modalities of thought and expression for the new physics!” In his excitement, he signed his letter, “Professor of Quantum Cabalistic Art.”60 Sarfatti was scheduled to deliver an inaugural lecture entitled “Plato’s anticipation of quantum logic” at the Art Institute a few months later. He printed up copies ahead of time and mailed them out to his long list of recipients. John Wheeler thanked Sarfatti for his copy, and recommended further reading: one of Wheeler’s favorite studies of the poet Samuel Coleridge.61

  But it was not to be. Around the time that the visiting lectureship was to begin, Sarfatti began corresponding with MIT’s Viki Weisskopf, the senior physicist who had recently coached Fritjof Capra along the road to The Tao of Physics. Sarfatti had invited Weisskopf to join an advisory board for the Physics/Consciousness Research Group. Weisskopf declined, as usual in his gentlemanly Austrian manner. “Naturally I am interested in what you are doing and find some of your things reasonable and useful,” Weisskopf assured Sarfatti. But two major sticking points remained. “One is your connection to Werner Erhard,” about whom Weisskopf held a rather low opinion. “The other is your constant connection to such silly things as ESP, coincidences of events, etc., with quantum mechanics. As you know, it is my strong opinion that they have nothing to do with each other.”62

  One week later, in response to Sarfatti’s suggestion that Weisskopf might have misunderstood Erhard and his mission, Weisskopf returned to the matter of Erhard’s patronage. Weisskopf, who had fled fascism in Europe as a young physicist, had done some reading about Erhard. By that time Erhard and est had begun to receive some negative publicity for purportedly authoritarian tactics.63 Weisskopf had also spoken with graduates of the est training, although he h
ad not received “any feedback, positive or negative, from the physicists” who had attended the recent Coleman-Jackiw conference, including his own department-mate Roman Jackiw.64 Weisskopf tried to end his letter on a more upbeat note. “I hope you don’t interpret this letter as a declaration of war between you and me,” Weisskopf closed to Sarfatti. “On the contrary, as I say I am always interested in what people like you are doing and I like to discuss the issues they are interested in with them.” But he made clear that he would not participate in any official capacity with the Physics/Consciousness Research Group.65

  Similar advice came in from Martin Gardner, the Scientific American columnist and leading organizer, together with physicist John Wheeler and magician James Randi, of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). “Jack, my friend, take my advice and get out of the psi field,” Gardner counseled. “It’s sicker than you suspect. Nobody is in the least interested in trying to ‘explain’ psi by Q[uantum] mechanics, or electromagnetism, or the weak force, or quarks, or tachyons, or anything else. All the funders care about is practical results—i.e., miracles.” Gardner hoped Sarfatti could make a clean break. “You’re too honest, and know too much science to be wasting your talents trying to get funding for theoretical work on the nature of consciousness” from patrons in the human potential scene. “Do something honest,” Gardner suggested, “like, maybe, rob a bank” or “make a porno movie.”66

  Spurred by these correspondents, and deeply insulted at not having been consulted about the Coleman-Jackiw conference, Sarfatti broke with Erhard—one of his principal sources of funds—with gusto. “Until recently I never took a close interest into what Werner and est were really about,” Sarfatti declared in an open letter that summer. “After all the chap was giving me and my colleagues considerable money, so why be so impolite as to inquire too deeply? After all physicists are notorious prostitutes anyway.” The recent est foundation physics conference—to which he had not been invited—stung Sarfatti as one insult too many. Sarfatti alleged that Erhard’s cronies had reneged on a promise of more cash to come. He further likened Erhard’s underwriting of the Coleman-Jackiw conference to “Stalin signing a non-aggression pact with Hitler,” it came as such a stab in the back. Perhaps the latest letters from Weisskopf and Gardner provided Sarfatti the face-saving cover he needed to justify his sudden break with Erhard, about whom he had previously expressed only friendship and admiration. Sarfatti announced that “If such distinguished men as Gardner and Weisskopf take their time to keep me honest, the least I can do is to keep Werner Erhard and est honest.”67

  Sarfatti then turned his attention to those physicists who had recently begun to enjoy Erhard’s patronage. Coleman, Jackiw, and Fuller were already planning a follow-up conference, building on the success of the Coleman-Jackiw meeting of January 1977. For the next annual conference they chose the topic of quantum gravity and again began soliciting participants.68 Sarfatti got wind of the plans and sent out a blast. Scrawling across the top of his recent letter from Weisskopf—the one that had mentioned no “declaration of war between you and me”—Sarfatti penned a warning and distributed copies far and wide. “Dear colleague,” he began: “Werner Erhard/est has or may invite you to a ‘Quantum Gravity’ conference in January, 1978. You are being used as part of a larger plan” to buy “prestige,” he alleged. “It is immoral for you to participate once you are aware of the realities behind the appearance.” He closed with a pledge. “We will actively picket the gravity conference with media coverage. We urge you to boycott est.”69

  Those rumblings quickly made their way back to Erhard and his lawyers. One attorney wrote to Sarfatti with a kind of cease-and-desist order phrased in est-speak. The attorney urged Sarfatti to redirect his energies to more positive pursuits. Sarfatti’s actions, the lawyer continued, reflected a malice toward Erhard all out of keeping with the generosity that Erhard and his foundation had shared with Sarfatti to date.70 The lawyer’s letter only fanned the flames. Sarfatti shot back with a rambling seven-page letter and then sent out a follow-up memo to physicists who might have been invited to the 1978 Erhard-funded conference on quantum gravity, again warning them against attending.71

  Erhard, Fuller, and their advisors took Sarfatti’s threat seriously enough that they arranged for extra security guards at the January 1978 meeting, expressly to keep Sarfatti out of Franklin House.72 They needn’t have worried. Sarfatti decided to protest by nonviolent means, in ways the San Francisco “artistic-literati” might well have appreciated. He groused about the turn of events with an artist friend and fellow frequenter of the Caffé Trieste in North Beach. Riveted by Sarfatti’s moral outrage and bemused by the wider est phenomenon—he had long been fascinated by what he called the “daily parade of well-heeled suckers” who flocked to Erhard’s seminars—the artist put pen to paper to depict Sarfatti’s plight. His first cartoon featured a gaunt, bearded Sarfatti chained to a crumbling “Temple of est,” while larger-than-life posters of Erhard’s smiling face fluttered in the background. The second image cast Sarfatti as David to Erhard’s Goliath, showing Sarfatti struggling mightily against the power of Erhard’s microphone. Sarfatti mailed out copies of the pictures along with some of his anti-Erhard letters. The artist, meanwhile, went on to have a successful career, including work on the animated television series The Simpsons.73 (Fig. 8.2.)

  Still fuming at what he considered Erhard’s betrayal, Sarfatti picked up his own pen as well. He retreated to his spacious apartment on Telegraph Hill—the apartment loaned to him by Esalen’s director, Michael Murphy—cranked up Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” on the stereo, indulged in some psychedelic mushrooms, and set to work. Within an hour he had banged out a first draft of a radio play he called Hitler’s Last Weapon. From time to time he emerged from his room “shouting with almost mad glee,” as his former roommate recalls, to read a portion of his script while his friends (also tripping on mushroom tea) egged him on.74 In the play, a scheming physicist helps Hitler accomplish his most audacious feat. While hunkered in the famous bunker in the spring of 1945, they create a perfect quantum clone of Hitler’s consciousness, ensuring that the Führer can live on even after the Nazis’ defeat. The scientist entangles Hitler’s brainwaves with those of a “mule,” an unsuspecting Jewish kid from Philadelphia. The child grows up, leaving dead-end jobs as a used-car salesman and encyclopedia peddler, until, some time in the 1970s, the entangled wavefunction collapses, transferring Hitler’s most evil characteristics to the new carrier. After infiltrating the California human potential movement, the thinly disguised Erhard character works to seize power as the first psychic dictator of the United States, the “Chancellor of Megalomania.” As the play unfolds, hope rests on the shoulders of “Rabbi Sarfatti,” lead agent of an undercover unit of the “Higher Intelligence Agency” headquartered in San Francisco’s North Beach. (Agent Sarfatti’s cover: “the village idiot of Grant Avenue.”) Forces of good thus battle evil on the plane of quantum consciousness. Years later producers of the Berkeley-based Hearts of Space radio show recorded the play, narrated by the accomplished radio dramatist Erik Bauersfeld. Sarfatti’s quantum-psychedelic thriller aired on hundreds of affiliated stations across the country.75

  FIGURE 8.2. Jack Sarfatti’s friend Norman Quebedeau drew whimsical cartoons to depict Sarfatti’s dramatic break with Werner Erhard and est in the summer of 1977. (Courtesy Norman Quebedeau.)

  Not long after Sarfatti made his flamboyant break with Erhard, Robert Fuller bowed out as well, albeit much more quietly. Fuller had accepted Erhard’s invitation to lead the charitable est foundation because he thought it could provide a platform for tackling world hunger, a problem whose severity had struck Fuller during an earlier trip to India. Soon after President Jimmy Carter entered office, Fuller worked on his personal contacts, some stretching back to his college president days, to try to encourage Carter to work on the hunger problem. Fuller’s contacts helped him get the message high in
to the new administration, but he was unable to reach Carter directly until the singer John Denver stepped in. Denver, then at the peak of his fame and a well-placed friend of est, paved the way for Fuller to approach Carter directly about a new “Hunger Project.” Fuller briefed President Carter about the plan in the White House’s Oval Office in June 1977. He also gave Carter’s son a copy of a short film, The Hungry Planet, by Keith Blume. Carter watched the film that night and soon announced the formation of a Presidential Commission on World Hunger.76

  As Fuller remembers it, he and Erhard had agreed ahead of time that Erhard would remain a silent partner in the Hunger Project, devoting significant est foundation resources to the project behind the scenes but refraining from making any public statements about the effort until Carter had publicly endorsed it. Fuller had feared that the negative publicity beginning to swirl around Erhard and est would scuttle any efforts at real progress. All seemed to be going well after Fuller’s meeting with Carter until Erhard began talking publicly about the project. As Fuller had feared, a media backlash quickly followed. The San Francisco–based liberal political magazine Mother Jones ran a long investigative piece accusing Erhard of manipulating the Hunger Project for “self-aggrandizement.” The magazine alleged that the charitable effort was little more than a crass publicity stunt aimed to benefit Erhard’s for-profit est corporation. (Today the major international Hunger Project charity includes a Nobel-laureate economist and the Queen of Jordan among its honorary members.) Disappointed at what he considered Erhard’s broken promise, Fuller resigned from the est foundation.77