The only things people believe in are things they don’t know, things they can’t prove, things they cannot experience. Ghosts, UFOs, reincarnation, a perfect society, a wife who will desire them…

This post is for the new guys.

I have this weird fascination with the self-help movement of the ‘70s and ‘80s. When I get my hands on old classic books or audio recordings in this space I devour them. Many are fucking wild and outlandish (take Dianetics for example), but that’s what I love about them.

My favorite of all the fads was something called est, or Erhard Seminar Training. (est made a brief appearance in a few episodes of the TV show The Americans. Maybe that’s where you’ve heard of it?) The seminar aimed "to transform one's ability to experience living so that the situations one had been trying to change or had been putting up with, clear up just in the process of life itself.” Yeah, what? Okay. Sure.

In 1976 an author named Luke Rhinehart attended an est seminar and wrote a book about it. It’s called The Book of est, and it’s one of my favorites. (He also wrote a fucking crazy weird book called The Dice Man but that’s for a different post…)

The Book of est is almost entirely made of up of dialog between trainers and trainees during a two-weekend seminar in the 70s. And let me tell you, there’s a reason est no longer exists and that its founder, Werner Erhard, was shunned from society via a number of legitimate and illegitimate claims of wrongdoing: the seminar is fucking bonkers. They were accused of mind control, of not letting people use the bathroom. People would vomit, pass out. They locked trainees in a ballroom, two hundred at a time, told them not to believe a word they were about to hear, that everything is bullshit, and then proceeded to tear down (often by screaming and calling everyone assholes) their notions of belief and self and reality before building it back up again under a new paradigm until everyone “got it.” Sound familiar?

The sheer number of topics the seminar covers is insane. The last time est was offered in a public forum was in 1984, so the book is the closest you’ll get to experiencing it. I re-read it a couple times a year, and have a different experience each time.

I could write many posts on this book alone, but today I want to narrow in on a particular concept that I think is particularly applicable to MRP: belief versus experience. To quote The Book of est:

“Look. If we put a rat in a maze with four tunnels and always put cheese in the fourth tunnel, after a while that rat will learn always to go to the fourth tunnel to get cheese. A human will learn to do that too. You want cheese? Zip zip zip down the fourth tunnel, there's the cheese. Next day you want cheese? Zip zip zip down the fourth tunnel and there's the cheese.

Now after a while the Great God in the white suit moves the cheese to another tunnel. Zip zip zip goes the rat to the fourth tunnel. No cheese in the fourth tunnel. The rat comes out. Goes down the fourth tunnel again. No cheese. Rat comes out. Goes down the fourth tunnel again. No cheese. Comes out. Down the fourth tunnel again. No cheese. Comes out. Eventually the rat will stop going down the fourth tunnel and look elsewhere.

“Now the difference between rats and human beings is simple: THE HUMAN BEINGS WILL GO DOWN THAT FOURTH TUNNEL FOREVER! FOREVER! HUMAN BEINGS COME TO BELIEVE IN THE FOURTH TUNNEL. Rats don't believe in anything; they're interested in cheese. But the human being develops a BELIEF in the fourth tunnel and he comes to MAKE IT RIGHT TO GO DOWN THE FOURTH TUNNEL WHETHER THERE'S CHEESE IN IT OR NOT. The human being would rather be right than get his cheese.

Let’s bring this back home to MRP.

You, Blue Pill motherfuckers, are the rat. The maze is your marriage, the fourth tunnel is the Matrix. The cheese is your wife’s desire. Now go back and read it again. I’ll wait here.

Welcome back.

The reason your marriage (or life) doesn’t work is that you’re living mechanically in your belief systems, you’re living in an empty, cheese-less tunnel, instead of in the world of actual experience.

Rats don’t believe in anything; they’re interested in cheese. Your plugged-in self on the other hand has so many fucking beliefs! Beliefs that society has instilled on you throughout your entire life. Beliefs that ultimately impede your ability to get your cheese.

I believe that because I married her, my wife should fuck me.

I believe that because I make $200k per year, my wife should fuck me.

I believe that because I put a roof over her head, my wife should fuck me.

The good news is that you, my Red Pill fellows, are unlike a majority of men, and you realize there is a tunnel, you realize that you’ve been duped, that the cheese probably isn’t where you thought it was. So many men don’t make it out of the fourth tunnel. They believe they are different. They believe their wives are different. They believe the stories they have been told about love are true.

“You know you've been spending your time in empty tunnels because every now and then -- accidents will happen -- you experience some cheese: a freedom, a joyfulness, an aliveness [desire from your wife] so different from your usual flow that you wonder whether someone slipped some acid [Spanish fly] in your [her] morning orange juice. And ‘Wow!’ you say to yourself, ‘This is great, I'm gonna hold on to this,’ and you reach out to get a good grip on it and POP! it disappears. The harder you try to get it back again the worse you feel.”

For these men, it disappears because they are so wrapped up in their beliefs that they refuse to look in a different tunnel, they refuse to unplug and truly experience what it means to be a man who is worthy of desire. They keep playing the game, keep going back to the where they think it is, but POP! it’s gone. Instead of looking down the alternative tunnels, or questioning the tunnels existence in the first place, they keep playing the game with their wives and wonder why it’s not working, thinking they're doing everything right, everything they've been told, but wondering where the goddamn cheese is.

MRP is about recognizing the tunnel for what it is, knowing that the path to their wive’s true desire is not down the tunnel their moms or society created for them. It's about realizing that your wife's desire is not the fucking cheese. It’s about taking that maze of your marriage and life and flipping it the fuck upside-down, about realizing the true nature of women, of desire. It's about throwing away everything you've been told, everything that has built up these false beliefs that you are clinging to, believing them to be real, to be what will bring you what you want. It's about living in the realm of experience, not the realm of your false belief systems. It's about forging your own path, being your own cheese.

Stop going down that fourth tunnel and expecting to find the cheese. Motherfucker, stop making your wife's desire the cheese. You are the cheese.