"Werner Erhard, pioneer of the multi-billion dollar personal growth industry, breaks a long silence about his ideas, his life and the controversial program est that made him a cultural icon of the 1970's and 80's."
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This was originally posted over on the TTI forum by someone else; I was worried that some of y'all might miss it there, ha haaa!
Title: Dontcha just LLOOOVVE est?
Post by: Ursus on October 11, 2007, 10:02:06 PM
Here's an old piece on Werner Erhard, which also mentions some perspective from Warren Bennis. Initial mention of Bennis (in another thread) was in relation to Laura and Malcolm Gauld's book The Biggest Job, due to his seeing fit to lend it his laudatory review... see HERE (http://http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?t=23309&start=140) for more details. Bennis also has his own thread, see HERE (http://http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?t=23562) for the latter.
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Los Angeles Magazine Copyright Los Angeles Magazine, Inc. 1988; Business Dateline; Copyright (c) 1988 UMI/Data Courier May, 1988 SECTION: Vol 33; No 5; Sec 1; pg 106 LENGTH: 5761 words HEADLINE:The Return of Werner Erhard: Guru II (http://http://www.xs4all.nl/~anco/mental/randr/marmac.htm) BYLINE: Mark MacNamara DATELINE: San Francisco; CA; US
Part One (I couldn't get it all on one html doc.)
BODY: His face, now just inches from mine, became unrecognizable: all eyes and mouth, no shape, no topography, the way a face becomes when it looks at itself too closely in a mirror. For a moment there was complete silence, and then out of the mouth came the scent of a fine cigar and these words:
"Breakthroughs are created when people are willing to live out of their commitments rather than out of their feelings and their thoughts and their attitudes -- or, if you like to use one word for all that, their beliefs. Listen, this is extraordinarily exciting. You have no idea how exciting this stuff is. Man, this gets you up in the morning, keeps you up at night. This'll give you the kind of energy you need to work 12-, 15-hour days, day after day, without getting tired: this possibility of a breakthrough -- and what it means to be human."
The face pulled back and became distinguishable again. It was Werner Erhard's, all right. It had watery, faded blue eyes and pockmarked skin, well tanned and glistening with oil or lotion. It was a narrow, rectangular face with thin, dry lips and, inside, a row of narrow, huddled teeth. Clearly, the whole was greater than the sum of its parts, and no question the whole suggested sincerity, intelligence, imagination. Yet, there was something else about this face, something off-putting.
"I can say that to you after two or three hours together," Werner continued in his characteristic tone that suggested a question mark with every pause -- an inflection he said he picked up from working with R. Buckminster Fuller -- "and I know that you know what I'm talking about. I know that you get the flavor of what I'm talking about. Now, it's damned tough to put it into clear prose. Damn tough. That's why we've got poetry. That's why we have fiction."
What Werner Erhard was having such a devil of a time explaining, as he sat in the offices of Transformational Technologies, located just north of San Francisco, was why he had devoted so much of his life to developing "breakthroughs." The difficulty he was having is ironic because this is a subject he had certainly given much thought to and ironic also because in some circles he is regarded as one of the great communicators of the era.
Indeed, the name Erhard has become synonymous with that desperate effort of the "Me" generation of the 1970s to articulate its identity. He was the one who taught masses of the middle class to communicate with themselves. He was perhaps the first American guru, a salesman turned spiritualist, a clever craftsman who understood how to combine pop philosophies, Eastern religions and the Puritan work ethic into an effective way to motivate people.
But having created something, Erhard himself has always remained just out of reach. The media has hounded him for years, particularly the press, and in the last year he has evaded magazines and newspapers. Now he's making still another attempt to meet the press, partly because he wants to stimulate enrollment in the Forum (the next generation of est training) and partly to try once again to erase an image fostered by critics -- that of a West Coast Svengali using psychobabble to con people who don't know any better.
His strategy is to open up his organizations to scrutiny. To help with public relations, he has hired McGuire Barnes, Inc., the small San Francisco company that handled the pope's dramatic masses in Los Angeles and that may represent Jerry Brown in a political comeback. His hope is that if the public remembers only one thing, it is that Werner Erhard's work "has touched the lives of almost a million people and, by their own report and by the report of 22 independent studies, has touched those lives positively."
Despite his reluctance to grant interviews to the print media -- which he accuses of relying on old clips for the basis of stories -- he has continued to do TV and radio interviews where "people can make up their own minds because they've been there with you." But even then, as he himself admits, he is often misunderstood or not believed.
Myths and rumors follow Erhard, now 53. Always there are the stories -- stories about making millions from est; about tax problems and lawsuits; about the Sausalito yacht he lives on; about lavish dinner parties with a celebrity guest list ranging from Joyce Carol Oates to Mike Wallace; about going to the Soviet Union and coming back from Ethiopia; about his divorce and about his management-consulting firm, Transformational Technologies. Old stories about studying Zen and taking Dale Carnegie courses and going through five levels of Scientology. And still older stories about Werner before Werner, when he was an anonymous salesman named Jack Frost who sold Fords for a Norristown, Pennsylvania, dealership under the general management of somebody named Lee Iacocca. And, finally, the oldest stories, about a boy named Jack Rosenberg, son of an Episcopalian named Dorothy and a Jew turned fundamentalist Christian named Joe.
The lobby of the Ambassador Hotel was dead. At 7 p.m. on a Tuesday, even the night porter had stepped away, and there was a haunted quality to the place reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's eerie Colorado resort in The Shining. That image had a particularly pejorative connotation in this context, perhaps an unfair connotation, but the suggestion of madness was accurate, because, of course, this is the place where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. And it's in the Grand Ballroom -- where the senator stood 20 years ago next month, reveling in his victory in the Democratic primary -- that Werner Erhard's Forum in Los Angeles sometimes takes place.
Indeed, on this night, while the lobby was empty, the ballroom was filled. Some 250 people sat waiting for the Forum leader to begin the evening -- another in a series of seminars for Forum graduates. Commitment, excellence, money, vitality, sex and intimacy are among the topics. Tonight it was creativity.
The mood was jovial. "Glad to see you again," people said to each other. A baby wailed. The look was young professional; the look underneath was confidence mixed with nervous energy. Everybody wore a name tag. Pretty girls called "microphone runners" stood ready in the aisles waiting for the sharing to begin.
After 17 years "the inquiry" continues.
From October 1971 to December 1984 it was known as est training, and the purpose was to get people to move, see themselves in a new way, disregard all the old tapes and start life over again. Then Werner Erhard came up with another idea, one for the '80s: The goal -- stimulating performance -- is the same, but the method is softer, less emotional, more intellectual, and the emphasis is on commitment, on the notion of breakthroughs.
If one had understood one's identity after est, the aim now is to do something with it, leave the interior and achieve, go beyond mere understanding and people moving to the realm of being -- being whatever one wants to be. An anecdote Erhard tells is that of a physics professor trying to teach his students more than simply the meaning of pi and how to use it in a formula; instead, the professor's goal is to turn his students into true physicists able to create pi themselves.
The effect of est -- and now of the Forum -- has been substantial, if often subtle. In 1980, one Erhard publication estimated that as many as one in 900 Americans had taken the training, and whether or not that figure is accurate, graduates have influenced -- at least briefly -- not only government agencies and corporations but also the very language of commercial culture. According to Werner Erhard and Associates -- the umbrella company for all of Werner Erhard's projects except Transformational Technologies, a separate management-consulting company -- "Master the Possibilities" for MasterCard and "Commitment, Integrity, Vision" for Shearson-Lehman were all thought up by people who took either est or the Forum or worked for Erhard at one time.
The number of participants who have taken either est or the Forum worldwide is about 600,000. In Los Angeles, as of November 1987, 5,000 people had taken the Forum in the two and a half years it has been offered, and nearly 50,000 people had taken its predecessor in the 13 years it was offered. As for why est itself was discontinued, Erhard insists it had nothing to do with market response: "We began the development of the Forum at a real sacrifice."
In addition to the 600,000 who have taken est and the Forum, 300,000 more people have taken other Erhard courses, including those offered as part of the Hunger Project, the Holiday Project, the Breakthrough Foundation, the Werner Erhard Foundation and the Education Network. In 1986, WE&A, which is headquartered in the old L.A. est Center in Santa Monica, had revenues of $35 million. In 1987, WE&A offered 32 programs given in 139 cities throughout the world.
Of all Erhard's creations, certainly est was the most widely recognized. It has also been the most controversial. At the height of its popularity, in 1983, the training was offered in some 20 American cities. More than 50,000 people took est that year alone.
"From the beginning," explained the late Dr. Jack Mantos, president of WE&A until he suffered a fatal heart attack in February, at age 43, "the training was about achievement and performance and about the superstitions surrounding performance. It did not produce its result through psychological analysis or psychological methods."
Not everyone has perceived it that way, particularly critics who have condemned both the est training and the Forum on grounds that the methods are psychologically manipulative. In this country, the most consistent Erhard critic has been the Cult Awareness Network, a 10-year-old organizations with headquarters in Chicago and affiliate organizations in 25 states. The organization claims some 2,000 members nationally.
"We classify est, the Forum and the Hunger Project as destructive cults," says the organization's executive director, Cynthia Kisser. Among the many dozens of other blacklisted cults are Scientology, Hare Krishna, Transcendental Meditation, the Unification Church and, at the top of the list for the last several months by a large margin, Satanism.
The network's decision to put a cult on its list is based on complaints by parents, police, social workers and some cult members as well as newspaper and magazine articles and, occasionally, well-publicized studies. The information on a cult suspected of being dangerous is virtually all secondhand and rarely, if ever, checked.
"But we've gotten a lot of complaints," says Henrietta Crampton, coordinator of the network in Los Angeles. "Most were from husbands or wives who said their spouse's personality had completely changed. The biggest complaint was that after going to these seminars their spouse seemed more dedicated to Werner Erhard than to the marriage. There was a sense they'd been programmed."
"I would say the single most damaging thing about est and the Forum," insists Kisser, "is that they are able to market themselves to businesses and consumers as self-awareness programs when, in fact, they are slipping in mind-control techniques without the consent or knowledge of the people who sign up. We assume the purpose is to build a financially lucrative enterprise and bring in a loyal body of people who will donate hours and hours of their time to ensure the organization's growth and financial security."
The mind-control techniques at issue have now become part of the lore of est training: long hours; criticism, even humiliation, in front of the group; foul language; and, of course, the famous bathroom prohibition.
Erhard himself waves aside the subject of bathrooms, arguing that people always had a choice, that indeed the reason some people who wanted to leave the room during a session but instead found themselves having a dialogue with a trainer was that "people often avoid things by getting hungry or going to the bathroom, and most people don't know that. When you find out that's true, it alters your sense of yourself."
Moreover, according to WE&A exit polls, very few people who actually took the training ever complained about the bathroom issue. A more pressing question, however, was the tenacity with which Erhard's staff tried to keep graduates coming to follow-up seminars. Though Erhard apparently didn't endorse the practice, a form of proselytizing was widespread.
Donald Strauss was 25 when he took the training in Los Angeles in 1977. He found it to be a profound experience and volunteered to work at the L.A. est center. Eventually, he earned a staff position, was paid $ 700 a month and was put in charge of 45 part-time volunteers. His boss was Joan Rosenberg, Erhard's sister. His job was to oversee efforts to encourage graduates to stay with the program. Part-time volunteers would phone graduates, and if the graduates "were bailing out of a seminar, you were supposed to get tough and get them to stay with the schedule.
"The problem," says Strauss, whose mother, father and one sister took the training, "was that many people in the organization became little demagogic characters thinking they could do anything and feeling they were imbued with such integrity. There was an enormous arrogance on the part of some of the higher-level assistants, including myself. The positive side was, you were often using your power for a good purpose, which was the intent."
As for the training techniques used in est -- which have been largely removed from the Forum -- the question often raised among critics is whether they were harmful. According to WE&A records, there have been 22 independent studies done of est training, and none of the Forum, though one is in progress. One est study, by three Stanford University doctors in 1982, explored the effects of certain grouplike trainings such as est and Lifespring. The study, based not on formal interviews with graduates but on various writings about the training and anecdoted information, concluded that despite claims to the contrary, est definitely involved a form of therapy, which had both positive and negative effects, depending upon the individual.
"Our purpose was to write a balanced article and not to dismiss it," explains Dr. Peter Finkelstein, one of the authors. "We found that two kinds of harm may be associated with the est training. The more dramatic but less frequent harm involves people who were more disturbed than they appeared to be and decompensated in certain extreme situations of stress. The more subtle harm was that some people tended to abandon certain psychological defenses important to stability."
But Finkelstein believes that the very thing that makes rapid-consciousness-raising experiences stressful may also have a positive effect: "There is something quite real for many people that is to be valued. It's completely plausible that some people have been able to use this experience and catch a glimpse of another way of living. It's important not to dismiss this 'technology.'"
Perhaps the most extraordinary implication of his study, says Finkelstein, is that in some cases "you can teach humanitarianism using totalitarian techniques."
Since 1971, 10 lawsuits related to the seminars have been filed against Erhard. Seven were either dismissed or withdrawn; three remain. Of those, one suit alleges psychological damage. In the other two cases, one man suffered a stroke during the training and died, and another man died from unexplained causes during the second week of the training. Because of the enormous cost of insurance these days, WE&A has gone for the last three years without any insurance.
Questions of therapy and technique aside, the only other serious criticisms of Werner Erhard's work come from academics who have doubts about New Age values in general.
"Werner Erhard has developed one of the most successful marketing tools of New Age consciousness-raising ever developed," says Carl Raschke, professor of religion at the University of Denver. "est has had quite a bit of influence from Jerry Rubin to John Denver. It's a combination of behavioral-psychology techniques and the manipulation of language that we find in Zen Buddhism, and it has also been a fairly successful means of generating a commitment to a new style of political expression.
"It is good or bad? If you believe that the preservation of traditional American social values and religious ideals and commitment is a good thing, then what Erhard has done is utterly disastrous because the whole purpose of est was to disengage you from hang-ups, from loyalties to groups, individuals and institutions and make you responsible utterly and thoroughly to yourself. In that sense, Erhard has done as much to advance what Christopher Lasch called "The Culture of Narcissism" as televangelicals have done to advance evangelism.
"On the other hand, if you believe America suffers from an encrusted and obsolete set of moral-authoritarian values and that the whole nature of traditional religious expression, patriotism, philanthropy and personal allegiance is keeping American society from moving into the New Age millennium, then Erhard has done a good thing."
Dr. Olin Robison, president of Vermont's Middlebury College, met Werner Erhard in 1980 during dinner at a Soviet official's home in Washington, D.C. A longtime Russian scholar with many connections in the Soviet Union, Robison became an intermediary between the Russians and Erhard, a relationship that led to a trip in June 1986, during which Erhard tried out some of his techniques in an adult-education program for middle-level Soviet managers.
"The Soviets have had very serious problems in the workplace," explains Robison. "There's a high rate of alcoholism, low productivity, poor quality control, high absenteeism and a bad attitude in general about work. In the early '80s, the Soviets started looking around for ways to solve these problems. They looked at both conventional and non-conventional approaches and became interested in Werner Erhard because they had heard he had had some success dealing with these kinds of problems, in particular how to motivate people. A part of their appeal was that they couldn't place his work on any particular spot on the ideological spectrum."
Robison went along with Erhard during part of the trip and recounts that initially language was a big problem. "I have teased Werner," he says, "that he doesn't speak English. At least the English he uses is not the English I use. It's not only California that's the difference, it's his particular version of California. The vocabulary of the training really comes through, and at first he had serious problems with the Soviets: translation problems, transliteration problems. They were very skeptical in the beginning. But in the end he had them with him."
Robison has serious concerns about the whole question of language and the effects of jargon and not having a "vocabulary we all agree on"; nevertheless he thinks that Erhard has found a niche for himself in society that's useful.
Another scholar who knows Erhard well is Warren Bennis, professor of business administration at USC. Bennis took the est training in 1979 in London: "It gave me a good sense of who I was at a critical period in my life. I had just ended my time as university president, and I was looking around for new directions."
Bennis, who during the early 1980s served as a consultant to Erhard, giving advice on organizational design and leadership techniques, felt that what the training provided in those years was a "restoration of the self... I'm sort of a loner among my colleagues. The people I know have profited from it. I don't think it deserved the bad press it has gotten. Personally, I haven't met a person who has gone through it and not profited."
But Bennis adds that there were problems: "The bad part is the proselytizing, the phone calls you get, the language; there's something missing in the aesthetic of it. And another problem has been the dependence upon Werner himself. Which is not his problem. If you're in that kind of position, sometimes you get disciples as opposed to students."
"I have to say," adds Bennis, "that it's an incredible puzzle for me that he has acquired such a negative image among so many people. I detect a lot of hostility, and I don't understand it. A lot of my friends are Jewish, and I'm Jewish, and often they see est as a quick fix for making money from losers.
"But many of my colleagues who criticize Erhard have grown up in a deterministic environment. The world they know was created by Freud, Darwin and Marx -- all men who believed in limits. I think Erhard is talking from a different perspective, and sometimes that's threatening to people who are resigned to the death-on-the-installment plan."
The midafternoon light from a January sun reflected off the inlet water passed through the tinted office windows of Transformational Technologies and cast a weak glow on Werner Erhard's face. The light and the charcoal gray suit he wore and the cigar he lighted and relighted all suggested a portrait of an early-20th-century tycoon. There's something distinctly old-fashioned about the man, a white-buttoned-down-cloth-shirt conservatism that contrasts sharply with the image of a laid-back Marin County squire of the New Age.
"I made a very deliberate decision," Erhard was saying, "to structure the enterprise (the est training) as a business. From the beginning I was not interested in the awards of proprietorship. I was interested in the discipline of a business. If you've got the discipline of having to provide value in the marketplace for people's money, it's real hard to fool yourself for too long that what you're doing is valid. People will tell you it's valid. People who participate in the programs and the support and their willingness to exchange their money for that value is a very honest transaction.
"Now people are honestly going to conclude you're in it for the money. And I don't know how to stop them from that conclusion."
It's a curious thing about Erhard that no matter how many nonprofit organizations he creates and no matter how open he is about his personal mistakes -- running away from a wife and four children at the top of the list -- the cleaners still can't get all the spots out of his image.
He told this anecdote about an appearance on a TV talk show: "Charlie Rose, on NightWatch. The last question he asked me was, 'You made a lot of money, haven't you?' And he said something that said, 'You're lying to me.' And that was the end of the show. But when the camera stopped and the lights went out, I said to him, 'You're really thinking I'm not telling you the truth.' And he said, 'Sure, I don't think you're telling me the truth.' I said, 'Okay, I just wanted to be clear that what you were doing was not mere television, that you genuinely think I'm lying to you.' This is a guy that doesn't know me from Adam."
Ironically, Erhard thinks that he gets his best exposure from the electronic media -- because that's where he can be seen unfiltered -- and yet one wonders whether he's aware of how he's perceived. "Larry's a tough interviewer," he says about a recent appearance on Mutual Broadcasting's The Larry King Show. "It was very, very interesting. That was one of the best interviews I've ever done. I love that kind of conversation."
It was so good in Erhard's mind that his staff recently tried to get a return engagement. But, perhaps unbeknownst to Erhard, after the show King and the producer were shaking their heads. Pat Piper, King's producer, puts it this way: "After Erhard was on the show, Larry and I talked about it. He says things that sound terrific, but you don't know what the hell he's talking about."
"I made the mistake in the first five years of not translating what I was doing," explained Werner. "I would speak like I spoke in the training in an interview. That was a mistake. I would say that in the last 10 years I've learned a lot more about how to be effective with that. In the last five years, I think I have been more effective by explaining, by describing, by defining."
But having said that, he also admitted a more fundamental truth: "I am difficult to understand. But I know how to talk. I can talk like you're supposed to talk if what you want to do is to be understood. But I don't care about being understood when I'm working. I care about giving people access to the thing that concerns them, and not explanations or descriptive access but action access, being access . . .
"The rub is, if what you're trying to do is understand what I'm talking about and you listen to a conversation designed to give people access to what I'm talking about, it doesn't make sense when you're listening for an explanation, when you're listening for the description, when you're listening for understanding.
"If you understand how to ride a bicycle and you get on a bicycle, you fall off. The language that I use is designed to give people access to balancing on the bicycle, access to riding the bicycle -- not giving them access to understanding how to ride a bicycle. People don't pay me to go out on a clear understanding. When people pay their $525 for the Forum, they pay it to go out enabled, empowered."
Part of the reason Werner Erhard has problems communicating, at least with people who don't speak his language, is not only his jargon but the fact that he doesn't work out what he wants to say beforehand. He's an inventor, not a thinker. He's interested in coming up with new products, not in rehearsing what he'll say as a salesman at the door.
And he knows it: "That's how I work, in dialogue. I don't sit down and figure it out. That's not the way it comes. I do it in dialogue. I do it in action."
One can understand why people might dislike Erhard for what he says or the way he says it, but there seems to be a visceral dislike as well. "Have you ever noticed," remarks actor Nicholas Pryor, a regular on NBC's The Bronx Zoo and a Forum graduate, "that once in a while you'll be driving along and you pass alongside somebody, you look at him, and you think, What a creep! Well, here's this guy called Werner Erhard, with this high-school accent, and you don't understand him so you don't like it and you don't like him."
The irony is that Erhard has been so open about himself. Indeed, he has built a business on that openness. More than that, he says all the things about the importance of being open and accessible that you would expect from such a person.
"When you take responsibility for a mistake," he says, talking about Gary Hart's handling of public scrutiny, "there's a possibility beyond the mistake. When you hide the mistake, defend the mistake, you're stuck with the mistake. I'm a guy who's an expert in that field, both personally and in my work. Had I not woken up to who I had been being and been able to take a really honest look at myself, I could not have done the work I've done."
The most dramatic awakening took place on a midweek morning in March 1971 while Erhard was driving into San Francisco to his job as a division manager for the Grolier Society, a subsidiary of the Grolier Corporation. Somewhere on the road between Corte Madera and the Golden Gate Bridge, he had a revelation that led to a period of personal enlightenment.
In his 1978 biography, Werner Erhard, W. W. Bartley III quoted Erhard on what came from that revelation. A brief part of what he said was, "I had to 'clean up' my life. I had to acknowledge and correct the lies in my life. I saw that the lies that I told about others -- my wanting my family, or Ellen (his second wife), or anyone else, to be different from the way that they are -- came from lies that I told about myself -- my wanting to be different from the way that I was."
-- Go to Part Two of this Article --
Title: Dontcha just LLOOOVVE est?
Post by: Ursus on October 11, 2007, 10:43:19 PM
-- Continued from Part One of this Article --
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Los Angeles Magazine Copyright Los Angeles Magazine, Inc. 1988; Business Dateline; Copyright (c) 1988 UMI/Data Courier May, 1988 SECTION: Vol 33; No 5; Sec 1; pg 106 LENGTH: 5761 words HEADLINE: The Return of Werner Erhard: Guru II (http://http://www.xs4all.nl/~anco/mental/randr/partwo.htm) BYLINE: Mark MacNamara DATELINE: San Francisco; CA; US
Part Two
Erhard explained to me the difference between the way he thinks he is and the way he is perceived as the difference between an image and a reputation: "An image is built out of: I meet you. With me you've got a reputation. I tell Barbara about you. Barbara tells Bobbie about you, and with Bobbie you've got an image. No reputation. So I make the distinction between those who had their own access to a person and those who had an interpretation or an interpretation-of-an-interpretation access to a person. I would be very willing to stand or fall on my reputation. I've never been very good at shaping an image. In fact, I've been terrible."
He went on to talk about some of the stories that had grown out of that image: The stories that a company called Erhard Seminars Training owes more than $3.3 million in back taxes and penalties is true, but he points out that he never owned that company nor directed it. That the IRS has no claim against him or any of his companies.
On the subject of wealth, he claimed he was not a wealthy man. He owns two profit-making ventures: One is Transformational Technologies, of which he is the sole proprietor. The other profit-making venture is Werner Erhard and Associates, from which he received no money until last fall, when he began receiving $25,000 a month. He claimed he was not a millionaire, that the bulk of his wealth has been derived largely through the efforts of a skillful financial adviser.
Moreover, he took out a $15-million loan in 1982 to start WE&A. That, along with the other obligations, including the mortgage on his mother's house, add up to a sizable amount of liabilities. He admitted he has a "great income" but only to pay for all the liabilities.
As for his personal life, he has been married twice and has four children from his first marriage and three from his second. Both wives and his mother live in the Bay Area. His father died in 1973. He has been separated for five years from his second wife, Ellen, the woman for whom he left his first wife. It was Ellen, whose real name was June Bryde, who ran away with a man named Jack Frost on May 25, 1960.
"The divorce is not final," said Werner. "If you're talking about operationally, Ellen and I are divorced. If you're talking about a legal document, that has not been whatever they do to it . . . I guess, signed it." The divorce is expected to be finalized in the fall.
Has Werner Erhard become everything Jack Rosenberg ever wanted to be?
"It's really not, like, grounded that way," he said, retreating into his labyrinth of jargon and personal syntax. "Obviously, you have certain aspirations, or dreams, if you want, as a youngster, and my aspirations and dreams as a youngster were, as I recall them, materially different from my commitments of, say, the last 17 years. You know, for me there was a fundamental transformation, which means that I literally altered my system of values, my system of commitments, and I would say that there is a fulfilling of the values that I generated out of that transformation, albeit with mistakes and breakdowns."
At the end of the interview, Erhard was driven away by a chauffeur in a green Chrysler van with heavily tinted windows and a phone antenna. A secretary was barely visible in the rear seat. Werner sat up front.
The van was heading toward San Francisco, and as that was where I was going, I found myself following it. It was on the Golden Gate Bridge that I ended up almost alongside the van. Erhard was leaning back, his head against the headrest, looking off the west, away from the city, toward that spectacular view of the ocean and the last of the sun.
I had just a glimpse of the man as the van moved ahead in traffic, but there was the suggestion of a man in flight, not in the sense of fleeing something, but of simply moving above everything, removed from what he had created and involved in some personal odyssey.
Talking about destiny, which may one day become the theme of still another generation of his training, Werner commented: "It interests me whether a person is stuck with destiny that kind of got built up over time, as they were growing up, or whether they can really create and invent their own destiny, and what the interplay is between the two."
Perhaps the man's true dilemma is whether Jack could ever become Werner after all.
The Guru's Reach
Werner Erhard's two main sources of income are Transformational Technologies -- a management-consulting business started in 1984 -- and Werner Erhard and Associates, a "think tank" focusing on personal effectiveness.
WE&A, which sponsors the Forum, was started in 1981 as part of an effort by Erhard to purchase the rights to the est training. Although he created est, Erhard never owned the company that delivered the program to the public.
In addition, Erhard has created or helped to create several nonprofit, tax-exempt enterprises, including:
The Holiday Project, begun in 1971, which coordinates the efforts, especially during holiday time, of approximately 20,000 volunteers in 100 cities who visit prisons, nursing homes, hospitals, psychiatric facilities and shelters for battered women and children;
The Werner Erhard Foundation, formerly the est Foundation, established in 1973 to explore the world of human well-being and transformation; it is also involved in international crisis-relief efforts and has raised more than $65,000 to aid earthquake victims in Mexico City;
The Hunger Project, a nonprofit organization founded by Erhard and John Denver in 1977 to ignite a grass-roots effort to end hunger through a series of educational seminars; though the project has drawn public criticism because the cost of the seminar does not usually go to buy food, it is well respected by experts for raising issues and offering a choice of options;
The Breakthrough Foundation, created in 1980, a training-and-consulting organization that focuses on the problem of juvenile deliquency; one of its better-known programs is "Youth at Risk," which is offered to young people aged 15 to 20;
The Mastery Foundation, started in 1983 by a group of religious leaders; its main work involves a four-day workshop called "Making a Difference: A Course for Those Who Minister";
The Educational Network, also started in 1983, which sponsors seminars and works with communities to develop "innovative" educational programs.
Title: Re: Dontcha just LLOOOVVE est?
Post by: Joseph W. Gauld on October 16, 2007, 03:50:06 PM
Quote
"Werner Erhard, pioneer of the multi-billion dollar personal growth industry, breaks a long silence about his ideas, his life and the controversial program est that made him a cultural icon of the 1970's and 80's."
Ah, good ol' John Paul Rosenberg. Nice to see he's still kicking around too!
'Course he changed his name to Jack Frost at one point. I suppose some of us were supposed to think that was funny, har har har!
And then he hit on the fact that Werner Erhard was a much more marketable name; it sounds kinda like some teutonic aristocrat! I always catch myself starting to say "Wormer," but ya gotta just purse your lips and wrinkle yer nose like you're smelling somethin' bad, and then it comes out alright...
Thinking back to the good old days, Joseph W. Gauld, The Educator
Title: did you say wormer?
Post by: Anonymous on October 16, 2007, 03:55:36 PM
http://cupchicks.com (http://cupchicks.com)
Title: Re: did you say wormer?
Post by: Joseph W. Gauld on October 16, 2007, 04:10:13 PM
Quote from: ""jack shit""
http://cupchicks.com
Boy, you need a wedgie to calm those antsy-pants down! That's why I call you knuckleheads "panty-waists," got it?!!
It sure is tragic what the youth of today are gittin' themselves into!!
Gittin' your undies ready for you, Joe-Joe, The Emasculator
Title: Pavel weighs in
Post by: Ursus on October 18, 2007, 03:41:37 PM
Paul weighs in with a review of the recent Werner Erhard film, for a Ramtha newsletter. There wasn't a date on the HTML version, but the film came out not too long ago, so this review is relatively recent.
So I guess the whole family are now fans of the Forum?
See also HERE (http://http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?t=20404) and HERE (http://http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?t=23621) for more news/discussion along similar lines.
HTML link is the title. PDF link heads the page (font was all screwed up for me).
================================= http://www.transformationfilm.com/bleeping_herald.pdf (http://www.transformationfilm.com/bleeping_herald.pdf). (http://http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:1ES4HIcIJ7AJ:www.transformationfilm.com/bleeping_herald.pdf+pavel+mikoloski&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=41&gl=us) , which premiered in April at the Palm Beach International Film Festival, I was pleased to see that Symon does not shy away from the controversies which swirled around this man, resulting in his walking away from est and going underground, while also managing to honor the work of one of the key figures in the Human Potential Movement. Anyone who has an interest in the power of the mind and in personal transformation would do well to see this film, as it presents an unbiased look at a volatile and creative period in American Pop Cultural History and elucidates the reasons for this innovative leader's departure from the American scene.
In the 70's and 80's Werner Erhard, pioneer of the multi-billion dollar personal growth industry was known for his boot-camp approach to "waking people up," getting "off their bullshit," and finding their true selves. In his seminars, he raised his voice, confronted the myriads of people who were invested in their "stories," and initiated transformational experiences in the lives of the participants, transformation in relationships with their families, and likewise in businesses, corporations, and the educational sphere.
The first part of the film is an exploration of some Erhard's ideas, but the origins of those ideas could have used a more detailed exploration, especially for those of us interested in transformation. There is the mention of some early courses Erhard had taken with Scientology, and an oblique reference to the German Philosopher, Heidegger, and San Francisco reporter Don Lattin says in the documentary, "it was a mixture of Eastern philosophy and the power of positive thinking, but he packaged it in a way that was very appealing to Americans." But to attempt to explore his ideas in the confines of 62 minutes would be a challenge for anyone. Producer/Director Robyn Symon agrees: "This was the most challenging project I've done trying to communicate in a few minutes the essence of the ideas that take a weekend seminar to understand. The ideas are powerful tools that can help people examine their lives and live more powerful lives which benefit them, the people around them and by their extension, the world – a world that works for everyone."
The film, perhaps because of my own training, does not go deep enough into the origins of Erhard's ideas, although it does document nicely how some of his ideas have since found their way into the American vernacular and consciousness. Perhaps that is a subject for another documentary. Transformation: The Life & Legacy of Werner Erhard serves best as a look at the man himself with all of his blemishes and his reasons for leaving the US in 1991.
A great deal of the footage is from the est era. It's a time warp that brings you right back to a time where the counter culture was at its hey day and the styles of dress and hairstyles do bring you right back. There is rare footage of actual est seminars, which, at the time were controversial and now, seem somewhat quaint to those of us who have done so many courses over the years.
In those days, Werner was characterized as a brash, always "on task" confident leader, with piercing blue eyes that caught you like a laser, and smooth skin that made him appear to be unflawed, knowing, and somewhat robotical in demeanor. I remember watching him on television in those days and thinking it looked "too perfect." It was impossible to find the humanity beneath the smooth glassy surface. That he was super-successful as a businessman was often noted with distrust in the press and once the major media opened fire on him, he was self-admittedly, an easy target for parody.
Symon chronicles his undoing which centered around a 60 Minutes expose, where his character is pretty much relegated to the media catchall dustbin of another charismatic "Cult Leader" as well as a line drawn from his early Church of Scientology connections to the all-out attack from that organization upon him as a man, who had changed his real name and left his family even as his trainings espoused personal responsibility and integrity. Having seen the media trash other Human Potential Movement Icons in the 80's like JZ Knight, who I was close to, gave me an extra added dose of compassion and sympathy. I would love to have seen more on the trouble with the Church of Scientology and their attack on Erhard, as well as the real reasons for it, but that may be another story completely, as neither Symon nor Erhard name names.
Symon interviews Erhard's family members, his mother who was quite broken by his departure, his peers, est seminar participants and a smattering of experts, and fills in details most do not know and reveals more about this man's character and we see that perhaps he had not ultimately strayed so far from his own philosophy after all. Her interviews with Erhard, (his first since leaving the US 15 years ago right before the 60 Minutes expose) now 70 years old, with a face that still looks younger, but with the lines only pain and its partner wisdom can accrue, reveal a man who in his older years, is still involved with his passion for transformation on this planet, work which he continues to do under the radar of the media, to which he may go to his grave with a healthy dose of mistrust.
We now see him traveling constantly around the world, still staying clear of the US, working with people on both sides of the Irish Catholic and Protestant divide in Northern Ireland as well as the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict. Symon says, "While he admits he can still be difficult at times, I think people will see Werner Erhard as a compassionate human being with faults, living his work; not an ego-hungry maniac bent on building an empire - but a man making a big difference in so many lives all over the globe, which was his intention all along." Could this man have just possibly made his life about personal transformation and the seemingly ever-elusive desire for World Peace?
I would like to know more about his personal relationships. There is no mention of anyone close to him in whatever country he now calls home, and he comes off a bit like a wandering monk, although an updated and modern one, still well-dressed and professional- looking. Although he probably wants to protect anyone close to him from the media glare due to his past experiences, it makes him seem like the proverbial island that no man ever really is.
Nowadays, with on-air radio hypocrites seemingly finding redemption as a matter of course, and with the constant hypocricies of the current administration in office stealing the limelight whereby even film reviewers like Roger Ebert take task with the ultimate destination of Flight 93, you gotta wonder why people like Erhard have not been given their just due.
Symon's documentary is a step, and a very crucial step in re-examining the work of a pioneer. Thought of as a fad of the 70's & 80's, the groundwork done in the est seminars is still very much in the mainstream both in the United States and around the world. Just the other night, I saw a comedy with Queen Latifah, where one of the buzz words was about "creating possibility." That the brothers Wachowski who are responsible for the "Matrix" trilogy were Landmark Graduates has been well-documented. And that is only the filmic representation of the Erhard work. Symon's film also covers other ways in which his work has trickled down to and emanated throughout much of the culture, places as mainstream as Harvard Business School.
Turned off by the est movement in the 80's, as far as Erhard's influence goes, I am a case in point. I decided to take the Landmark Education trainings about five years ago when my sister called me one day to tell me that she was "out of integrity" with me in that she had never paid me her part in a car rental we had agreed to over a year before which I had forgotten about and she wanted to make good and that it was through her study with Landmark Education (the training platform now with over 50 offices around the globe Werner Erhard literally gave over to his employees in 1991, while taking on his past debts) that she realized the importance of her word.
Since then, both my mother and my younger sister have done the trainings, a sort of "kinder and gentler" approach to personal transformation that we all have gained greatly from. I have also heard from some BLEEPers who have been so happy to find a place to practice their intention to transform their lives. For me, it was the impetus for developing a career where I could take all I knew in 20 years of metaphysical work and make it active in the world. This new career is one I can be proud of, as it is based on integrity which continues to keep me in awe with my growth and my ability to impact my world and is leading me from my work in the BLEEP to new horizons in a foreign country where my role is to help get the knowledge of the latest in mind research and quantum physics out to the world.
So Werner, wherever you are, my hat is off to you. I still don't know if I have to separate the message from the messenger, as this film is not definitive in any way, but it certainly serves as a beginning of a conversation about personal responsibility and transformation and for you - it is obvious to me that you have left an indelible mark, and certainly a lasting social legacy of personal and thereby social transformation.
Title: cup chicks?
Post by: Anonymous on October 18, 2007, 06:07:10 PM
Here is a review of the only movie that I want to see that has anything to do with "est." Since we all know that "est" is a conjugation of the Latin verb "to be" from our Hyde education all I can say is: est haud diutius est.
This comedy is based on Dan Jenkins's novel about two good-old-boy pro football players (Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson). Best friends on the field and off, they're also friendly competitors in the arena of love for the same woman (Jill Clayburgh), who happens to be the daughter of their team's owner. Directed by Michael Ritchie, who was something of a poet of films about competition in the 1970s and early 1980s, this movie has a certain shaggy charm, abetted by Reynolds's knowing way with a one-liner. If Semi-Tough doesn't seem to go much of anywhere, it still has a good time getting there. The best moment is a send-up of an est-like self-actualization program, with the late Bert Convy as a wonderfully smarmy stand-in for Werner Erhard. --Marshall Fine
I was listening to an interview with Trey speaking on his take on musical composition. He said one of this mentors taught him that to "find beauty you must run from it." This seem to hold true for those that use these self described gurus who's goal is to free us from bullshit. Paval needs a pair of fly fishing waders to get through it. Perhaps he is partying with the cup chicks.
Title: funnier that the Cup Chicks
Post by: Anonymous on October 18, 2007, 06:18:52 PM
Semi-Tough" has got to be one of the best comedies of all time. The casting is perfect, and the acting is very understated. You could really identify with Kris Kristofferson, Bert Reynolds, and Jill Clayburgh as lost children of the 1960s looking for the answers to life in the 1970s. They parody to a "T" some of the self-help and consciousness raising scams of the times.
I especially loved the thinly disguised "BEAT" which closely paralleled "est" (Erhard Seminars Training, and they always wrote the acronym in lower case) which attracted many followers. I had the misfortune that year of working for a boss who was an est graduate (they called themselves "estholes") and two ex-hippie co-workers. est was their life, almost like a religion to them, and they were always pressuring the other workers on the team to take est. They had their own language -- e.g. "I'll take responsibility for that," "We have an agreement," and especially "I got it." (meaning I understand it). While Kris Kristofferson "got" the training, Jill Clayburgh did not. Since they wanted to get married they were afraid of a "mixed marriage." Fortunately Burt Reynolds also takes BEAT training and pretends to "get it" although you later learn he saw right through it from the beginning. Burt Convy as the seminar leader bore a striking resemblance to Warner Erhard, the founder and leader of est.
For your $300, the training consisted of two weekends spent in a hotel ballroom from about 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM both days. There were no breaks even to eat or go to the bathroom (no kidding!) The stunts in the movie paralleled the real est training, with things like lying on the floor hugging your pillow while kicking your feet in the air. After the training you were supposedly a changed person, free of your old hang-ups. Fortunately, I found another job where I was not subject to "estual harassment."
Robert Preston, the Team Owner, played his role perfectly too. To a background of Gene Autry records which matched his own view of the world, he tried many other psychic movements, including crawling around on the floor rather than walking. They also tried "Pelfing," a thinly veiled send-up of Rolfing. In fact, one other football player was a devotee of "pyramid power," proudly wearing a pyramid from a necklace.
This movie has been on TV but not recently. It would be fun to see it again. Interesting that the IMDB poll for this movie shows that viewers over 45 enjoyed it much more than the kids under 18. Yeah, they weren't around during those happy days of Disco, Leisure Suits, disaster movies, gas lines, est, Lifespring, Rolfing, Pyramid Power, and of course, "Happy Days."
Title: Re: cup chicks?
Post by: Ursus on October 18, 2007, 07:11:09 PM
Quote from: ""sick bastard""
Since we all know that "est" is a conjugation of the Latin verb "to be" from our Hyde education all I can say is: est haud diutius est.
From: By then Erhard already had come across an interesting name for his soon-to-be announced new venture. Earlier in the year, a friend had handed Erhard a science fiction novel called est: The Steersman Handbook, written by an author named L. Clark Stevens. In his book, Stevens wrote that "est" stood for "electronic social transformation," and heralded the arrival of "est people" bent on transforming society. Erhard was excited about Stevens's message and made sure other staff members read the book. It wouldn't be long before he borrowed "est" to fit his own needs...
...Erhard's formal break occurred a little more than a week later. Even then, Erhard made sure to take full advantage of his popular standing within Mind Dynamics when it came to unveiling his new plans. He had earlier scheduled one of his regular Mind Dynamics lectures for the evening of September 13 in a ballroom at the Mark Hopkins Hotel atop San Francisco's Nob Hill. Hundreds showed up to hear him, many of them guests of Erhard's Mind Dynamics students. But that night Erhard was no longer interested, financially or otherwise, in touting the miracles and wonders of Alexander Everett's course on controlling the brain's alpha waves. At the appointed hour, he launched into his lecture, but without any of the usual theatrics that had always accompanied an Erhard performance. After finishing his obligatory remarks about Mind Dynamics, he revealed the real purpose of the night's session. He announced that he was quitting Mind Dynamics to begin his own self-awareness program. He had decided to call it Erhard Seminars Training, though he preferred that it be known only as est. He never mentioned that the word "est" had originated in an obscure science fiction novel.[/list] (http://http://perso.orange.fr/eldon.braun/awareness/door2.html)
Title: there is a sucker born every minute
Post by: Anonymous on October 18, 2007, 07:38:24 PM
No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. H. L. Mencken
Title: Dontcha just LLOOOVVE est?
Post by: Oz girl on October 18, 2007, 08:19:00 PM
My parents have the book version of this
Title: Re: Pavel weighs in
Post by: Anonymous on October 19, 2007, 12:27:58 PM
Quote from: ""Pavel""
For me, it was the impetus for developing a career where I could take all I knew in 20 years of metaphysical work and make it active in the world. This new career is one I can be proud of, as it is based on integrity which continues to keep me in awe with my growth and my ability to impact my world and is leading me from my work in the BLEEP to new horizons in a foreign country where my role is to help get the knowledge of the latest in mind research and quantum physics out to the world.
do these 20 years of metaphysical work include Hyde?
Title: Re: Pavel weighs in
Post by: Ed Legg on October 19, 2007, 01:38:25 PM
Quote from: ""Guest""
Quote from: ""Pavel""
For me, it was the impetus for developing a career where I could take all I knew in 20 years of metaphysical work and make it active in the world. This new career is one I can be proud of, as it is based on integrity which continues to keep me in awe with my growth and my ability to impact my world and is leading me from my work in the BLEEP to new horizons in a foreign country where my role is to help get the knowledge of the latest in mind research and quantum physics out to the world.
do these 20 years of metaphysical work include Hyde?
Well yall ought to do the math on that one. Hyde would have been a span of 35 years for Pablo or what ever he is calling himself. He probably spent about 10 years getting his degree as a meta - physician and his intern work at an epistemological emergency room.
See now he was one of my boys. I turned out some real leaders with I was running the show. I hear he got a wife and kids so I know he was listening to my lectures. Good boy Pablo.
Hugs
Title: Dontcha just LLOOOVVE est?
Post by: Ursus on October 20, 2007, 04:14:03 AM
I can see how Taggart's material might be termed "mind research," but I fail to see what "quantum physics" has to do with it. To me that sounds like one of the Ramtha buzz words that has been completely distorted from its original definition. From what I recall, "What the Bleep?" had no physicist on board; they had some guy who taught Philosophy of Physics.
Twenty years...? How long was he with J.Z. Knight? Sounds like he did Landmark partway through that. How long was he at Hyde? Two, three years? Did he go back to teach? I seem to recall that he did a lot with the school newspaper while he was still a student. Perhaps he went back and worked on the Alumni Newsletter.
Title: Dontcha just LLOOOVVE est?
Post by: Anonymous on October 20, 2007, 08:04:53 AM
It is currently necessary to use quantum mechanics to understand the behavior of systems at atomic length scales and smaller. For example, if Newtonian mechanics governed the workings of an atom, electrons would rapidly travel towards and collide with the nucleus. However, in the natural world the electrons normally remain in an unknown orbital path around the nucleus, defying classical electromagnetism
We think of cause and effect in Newtonian terms but Quantum physic tell us those models are incorrect. Our learned presumptions of reality are based on a discredited model therefore WTF do we now about anything? The uncertainty principle is used to show that the observation of events effects them. They pet Schroedinger's cat and further assert that the mind is a chemical process and "wow man we could just be a though in God's mind or each atom in you hand could be a universe with solar systems and wow have you ever REALLY looked at your hand? Hey pass that back to me I want another toke" So then it is obvious this woman is really an ancient shaman and if we just close our eyes and click our heels three times and say "there is no place like home" we will wake up in bed in Kansas and there will be world peace no hunger or war, peace will guide the planets and love will steer the starts.
Some one left the cake out in the rain .... but that is another song.
Title: Dontcha just LLOOOVVE est?
Post by: Anonymous on October 20, 2007, 08:08:41 AM
The sweet green icing was flowing down on my keyboard. That line should be "love will steer the stars
Title: Dontcha just LLOOOVVE est?
Post by: Ursus on October 20, 2007, 08:12:29 AM
I'm starting to see stars. Are we still in the Age of Aquarius?
Title: Dontcha just LLOOOVVE est?
Post by: Anonymous on October 20, 2007, 08:24:35 AM
Up up and away in my beautiful my, my beautiful balloooooon.
Title: Dontcha just LLOOOVVE est?
Post by: Anonymous on October 20, 2007, 06:12:25 PM
According to Physics Today Online, the film invokes quantum physics to promote pseudoscience.[15] The article also states "the movie illustrates the uncertainty principle with a bouncing basketball being in several places at once. There's nothing wrong with that. It's recognized as pedagogical exaggeration. But the movie gradually moves to quantum "insights" that lead a woman to toss away her antidepressant medication, to the quantum channeling of Ramtha, the 35,000-year-old Atlantis god, and on to even greater nonsense."
John Gorenfeld reports that three directors are devotees of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment and JZ Knight/Ramtha.[16]
The Guardian Unlimited published an article summarizing the reactions to the film by some British scientists. Richard Dawkins states that "the authors seem undecided whether their theme is quantum theory or consciousness. Both are indeed mysterious, and their genuine mystery needs none of the hype with which this film relentlessly and noisily belabours us", concluding that the film is "tosh". Professor Clive Greated writes that "thinking on neurology and addiction are covered in some detail but, unfortunately, early references in the film to quantum physics are not followed through, leading to a confused message". He also questions whether modern physics cannot be married with institutional religion as the film implies. Simon Singh called it pseudoscience, and said the suggestion "that if observing water changes its molecular structure, and if we are 90% water, then by observing ourselves we can change at a fundamental level via the laws of quantum physics" was "ridiculous balderdash." According to Dr Joao Migueijo, reader in theoretical physics at Imperial College, the film deliberately misquotes science. [17]
An article published by Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that Associate Professor Zdenka Kuncik, Professor Peter Schofield and Professor Max Colthear have criticised the film's ideas that quantum mechanics means an observer can consciously affect reality, saying: "The observer effect of quantum physics isn't about people or reality. It comes from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and it's about the limitations of trying to measure the position and momentum of subatomic particles". They also maintain that quantum effects have little influence on everyday objects like stones, and only apply to sub-atomic particles[18]. The article also discusses Hagelin's experiment with Transcendental Meditation and the Washington D.C rate of violent crime; they note that "the number of murders actually went up". They also comment on the film's use of the ten percent myth.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Fortean times have both discussed the story of the Native American's "perceptual blindness" to European ships. Both agree that there is a real psychological phenomenon of perceptual blindness, but find the historical details of the account given in the film to be unconvincing. The Fortean Times concludes that the story originated with Captain Cook. [19]
Title: Dontcha just LLOOOVVE est?
Post by: Anonymous on October 20, 2007, 06:30:52 PM
Sirs and Others
I deeply resent my song MacArthur Park being used as an example of something that makes no sense. It is a collage of images not a hodge podge of illogical jumps try to make a statement on the subjective nature of reality.
Spring was never waiting for us, girl, it ran one step ahead as we followed in the dance,
Between the parted pages that were pressed,
A love hot fevered like a striped pair of pants,
MacArthur Park is melting in the dark, all the sweet, green icing flowing down.
Someone left the cake out in the rain,
I don't think I could take it, `cause it took so long to bake it,
And I'll never have that recipe again, oh no!
I still see the yellow cotton dress foaming like a wave upon the ground.
Around your knees, and the birds like tender babies in your hands,
And the old men playing checkers by the trees.
There will be another song for me, for I will sing it.
There would be another dream for me, someone will bring it.
Oh, I will drink the wine while it is warm,
And never let you catch me looking at the sun.
But after all the loves of my life, after all the loves, you'll still be the one.
I would take my life into my hands and I will use it,
I will win the worship in their eyes, and I will lose it.
I will have all the things that I desire, and my passions flow like rivers in the sky,
And after the loves of my life, after all the loves of my life,
You'll still gonna be the one.
MacArthur Park is melting in the dark, all the sweet, green icing flowing down,
Someone left the cake out in the rain,
I don't think I can take it, cause it took so long to bake it,
And I'll never have that recipe again, oh no, oh no!
Title: Dontcha just LLOOOVVE est?
Post by: Ursus on October 23, 2007, 01:29:25 AM
Okay, I found another version of that review by Paul... I was going to just update the previous entry with the new link, as this one gives us some time reference points, but then I noticed that this review is not exactly the same. He's expanded some points, and taken others away (gone are the references to his family, as well as his empathy towards J.Z. Knight) and he goes a little deeper into some of his personal commitment to this path. Along similar veins, see career description at the very end. And... he even briefly mentions the effect of est on the educational sphere, ha haa!
Note the time reference: August 2006. So he's actually been in London for -- at the very least -- well over a year. This seems to not comport with the news a couple of months ago that he was "fired" by J.Z. Perhaps he was working for both simultaneously for a while? Lynne McTaggart used to be a frequent contributor to the Bleeping Herald, and is now apparently a bonafide regular columnist, who has something to pontificate about each and every issue.
So here 'tis! From the August 2006 issue of the Bleeping Herald (Vol.2, issue #5):
In case you want to do a point by point comparison, the previous (-ly posted) version can be linked HERE (http://http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?t=23187&start=6).
==================================== [/url] Documentary review by Pavel Mikoloski
Whatever happened to Werner Erhard?
In the 80's it was hard to avoid knowing about him. People attended his Erhard Seminars Training, known as "est," in legion in all of the major cities. It sometimes felt to people like me, living in New York City at the time, that these people were hard to get rid of – that they were hell-bent on recruitment and wouldn't take "no" for an answer. Even those of us who were interested in transformation found it hard to avoid the "newly empowered." There was even a disparaging name for them. They were called "est-holes."
In her new documentary, Transformation: The Life & Legacy of Werner Erhard, which premiered in April at the Palm Beach International Film Festival, Producer/Director Robyn Symon does a wonderful job separating the myth from the man. A former staff Producer with PBS and a two time Emmy winner, Symon brings us up to date on this past cultural icon, now all but forgotten.
I was pleased to see that Symon does not shy away from the controversies which swirled around this man, and which resulted in his walking away from est and going underground in 1991. At the same time she also manages to honor the work of one of the key figures in the Human Potential Movement. Anyone who has an interest in the power of the mind and in personal transformation would do well to see this film, as it presents an unbiased look at a volatile and creative period in American Pop Cultural History, and elucidates the reasons for this innovative leader's departure from the American scene.
In the 70's and 80's Werner Erhard, pioneer of the multi-billion dollar personal growth industry was known for his boot-camp approach to "waking people up," getting them "off their bullshit," and into finding their true selves. In his seminars he raised his voice, confronted the myriads of people who were invested in their "stories," and produced change – change in the lives of the participants, change in relationships with their families, and change in businesses, corporations, and the educational sphere.
The documentary does no real examination of where he gained his knowledge (It is mentioned he had taken some courses in Scientology, and there are oblique references to the German philosopher, Heidegger and eastern mysticism) for the purpose of this film is not an exploration of the ideas which found their way into his courses, and later, into the American vernacular. Instead it is a look at the man himself, with all of his charisma and his blemishes, as well as the reasons he left the US in 1991.
A great deal of the film footage is from the est era - a time warp that brings you right back to the counter culture in its heyday, with its styles of dress and hairdos.
There is rare footage of actual est seminars, which at the time were controversial, and now seem somewhat quaint to those of us who have done so many transformational courses over the years.
In those days, Werner was characterized as a brash, always "on task" confident leader, with piercing blue eyes that caught you like a laser, and smooth skin that made him appear unflawed, knowing, and somewhat robotical in demeanor. It was impossible to find the humanity beneath the smooth glassy surface. That he was super-successful as a businessman was often noted with distrust in the press, and once the major media opened fire on him, he was an easy target for parody.
Symon chronicles his undoing, which centered around a 60 Minutes expose in which his character was pretty much relegated to the media catchall dustbin of another charismatic "Cult Leader." The connection is drawn from his early Church of Scientology connections and proceeds to the all-out attack by that organization upon the man who had changed his real name and left his family - even as his trainings espoused personal responsibility and integrity. I would love to have seen more on the trouble with the Church of Scientology and their attack on Erhard, as well as the real reasons for it, but, as neither Symon nor Erhard name names, that may be another story completely,
Symon interviews Erhard's family members, his peers, est seminar participants and some experts and fills in details most do not know. Much is revealed about this man's character, and we see that perhaps he had not ultimately strayed so far from his own philosophy after all. Her interviews with Erhard, now 70 years old, are his first since leaving the US 15 years ago just before the 60 Minutes expose. With a face that still looks younger than his years of pain - and its partner wisdom - have accrued, Erhard's reveals he is still involved with his passion for transformation on this planet; still involved in work which he continues to do under the radar of the media, which he distrusts. We see him working with people on both sides of the Irish Catholic and Protestant conflict in Northern Ireland, as well as the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Could this man have just possibly made his life about ensuring the ever-elusive dream of World Peace?
In the end, Symon's film left me wanting to know more about his personal relationships. There is no mention of anyone close to him in whatever country he now calls home, and he comes off a bit like a wandering monk, albeit an updated well-dressed and professional-looking one. Due to his past experiences, he probably wants to protect anyone close to him from the media glare. Yet it makes him seem like the proverbial island that no man ever really is.
This first documentary representation of Erhard's work is a crucial step in re-examining the work of an important pioneer. Thought of as a fad of the 70s & 80's, his work has emanated throughout much of western culture, into places as mainstream as Harvard Business School, and is still very much in the mainstream. Just the other night, I saw a comedy with Queen Latifah, where an est-origin buzz-word was used about "creating possibility."
That the filmmaking brothers Wachowski, responsible for the Matrix trilogy, were Landmark Graduates (the post-est incarnation of the company he left to his employees in 1991) has been well-documented. For myself, also a Landmark Graduate, I have gained greatly from this approach to personal transformation.
For me, Landmark was the impetus for developing a career where I could take all I knew in 20 years of metaphysical work and make it active in the world.
So Werner, wherever you are, my hat is off to you - and Symon, the same to you for bringing greater clarity to the public impression of a man who has made an indelible mark and lasting social legacy of personal and thereby social transformation.
For more about Transformation: The Life & Legacy of Werner Erhard go to: www.transformationfilm.com; (http://www.transformationfilm.com;) to learn more about Landmark Education go to: http://www.landmarkeducation.com/ (http://www.landmarkeducation.com/)
Pavel Mikoloski is the former marketing manager for What the BLEEP Do We Know!? and is currently working in London, England with Lynne McTaggart (author of The Field) as her marketing director.
Title: Dontcha just LLOOOVVE est?
Post by: Ursus on December 05, 2007, 03:10:27 PM
"There's a sucker born every minute...! You just happened to be comin' along at the right time!" -- Tom Waits.[/list]Est has training centers all over the United States in most major cities, and the organization even maintains one overseas for those foreigners who crave an injection of fast-food therapy. Since its inception in 1971, est has produced nearly 250,000 graduates, most of whom regularly extol the virtues of self-enlightenment. Est does not advertise. The organization instead relies on its graduates to proselytize the virtues of the four-day, two-weekend training by word-of-mouth. Est has been aided in this venture by numerous celebrities, including the likes of Valerie Harper and John Denver, who believe that the program has changed their lives.
Erhard claims that the success of the training has not made him or the est organization particularly wealthy, though its financial status belies this. Est operates under tax-exempt laws, as a group based in the British Isles, and charges $350 for its 50 to 70 hour indoctrination. Since the organization trains approximately 250 people during each session, est stands to pocket $87,500 each time it opens its rented hotel doors. Certainly, Erhard is not a poor man.
There is reason to believe, according to several people who have infiltrated the est organization in California, that Erhard rules his self-help group like a dictator. Controls are placed on all those foolish enough to surround him as he acts the parental disciplinarian to his multitudes. Those at the heart of the est corps are required to turn in "Notes to Werner" at specified times during the week, outlining exactly what they have done recently. If anyone in the crew (on-call 24 hours a day) decides he does not want to be disturbed, he must pay a $5.00 fine. Esties are also charged $100.00 every time they work more than six days a week for Werner, something the organization claims is a major problem.
No mere propagandist could command such loyalty with simple celluloid and projector. Somehow, there is wizardry in the air.
"The training is a precisely articulated series of manipulations carefully designed to produce the desired effects. One of the effects is dependency, a dependency that approaches infantilization. The trainer tells you when to talk, when to eat, when to drink, when to applaud, when to sit and when to stand.
The authoritarianism of the training is a beginners course in the totalitarianism you will be subject to if you join the est organization. According to [Jesse] Kornbluth [New Times, March 1976], staff members report their sexual activities to Erhard as though he were an investigator from the Board of Health, trying to limit the spread of VD." -- Dr. Sheridan Fenwick, psychologist, Getting It: The Psychology of est, 1976.[/list]The major objection raised by those who have found the training offensive is that the organization relies so heavily on coercion. Trainees are gathered into groups of 250 so that the West Coast voodoo may work its "magic" -- it is harder to object to curious goings-on in a crowded hall, harder yet to escape the pressure of the euphoric cooperation of some of the more enthusiastic. Trainers urge conformity by roundly praising the toothy exuberance of the most obviously happy.
Other objections are raised by those concerned with est's quasi-psychological leanings. Though the organization claims it does not incorporate psychological techniques into each four-day session, there is reason to suspect those in the upper echelon may not be telling the entire truth. Since the goal of the training is to "change" or "transform," as stated in the est Credo, and in so doing to jog the trainee through the gamut of emotion, insisting that est is not psychotherapy is like following Columbus on a flat tour of the world. You may want to believe that the seas will tumble off the edge, but it simply isn't true.
Est has been repeatedly sued by graduates claiming that their psyche has been threatened, that harmony has been irreverently and irrevocably damaged by the mind-control methods employed in the training. Still the est wizards wield the sometimes awesome power of the amateur psychologist, emerging as veritable witch-doctors of mental hygiene.
"An estie asked me, 'What is standing between you and the training?' Common sense, I though to myself as I ran, completely turned off, for the nearest exit." -- B.H. Krispien, Penthouse Magazine, September 1976.[/list]I began est training on August 30, at Thomas Circle's International Inn. Common sense had not kept me away, though after spending 13 hours with the positive-thinking set, I wished that it had.
I arrived at the Inn at 9:15, nearly 45 minutes after the training was scheduled to begin, expecting bleary-eyed paper pushers to abuse me with punctual est dogma or yawning annoyance. I did not expect the fierce welcome with which I was greeted.
Before being admitted to the training room, a spartan lecture hall of straight-backed chairs and fluorescent chandeliers, all trainees are required to complete the est training questionnaire. Trainees are asked about their physical and psychological health, though a disclaimer at the top of the form proclaims that est is not psychotherapy.
"We just want to make sure that everyone in therapy has alerted their therapist that they're doing est," explained one of the trainers. Closer to the truth, perhaps, is the fact that the est organization wishes to weed out those participants considered even mildly unstable. The best way to beat lawsuits is to avoid them.
Est training rooms are strange things. Guarded by potential est thugs on either side, tardy trainees are admitted only after a note announcing their delayed arrival has been passed through the space between two closed doors. Even then, admission is only guaranteed after a lengthy interrogation, during which the guilty party must renounce his mistaken ways - trainees are required to "acknowledge the fact that you are late," "recreate the agreement to be on time," and promise not to yawn while being spoken to.
The lucky trainee will compromise his position, agreeing to anything the thin-lipped trainer may suggest; the unlucky fellow will engage the trainer in a philosophical discussion, from which honorable extraction is difficult if not downright impossible. Remember: the trainee cannot possibly win. Winning is guaranteed only to those who have graduated from est.
"... questionable financial arrangement, 15 page security memos, the hiring of private detectives to 'interview' people who've talked with reporters. An internal memo from a staff member to the president of the est psychologists and psychiatrists who have been publicly critical of est ... It may well be satisfaction and aliveness that such activities are intended to serve; it clearly is not candor or freedom." -- Dr. Sheridan Fenwick.[/list]Freedom is the least of est's concerns. Before the actual training can begin, trainees must pledge to uphold a series of "groundrules," limitations imposed by the trainers to ensure that the training "works." Trainees are instructed to avoid drugs not prescribed by a physician (including alcohol); transcendental meditation or other forms of "consciousness altering;" busywork, note-taking, smoking or eating inside the training room; tardiness; or snacking during bathroom breaks. All trainees must agree to eat only during the assigned meal break, which usually occurs close to midnight, and to urinate only during assigned bathroom breaks, of which there are few.
During my training, the rules were read by a neo-Victorian, gravely-voiced woman named Jane, who scurried back and forth across the wooden stage like a caged animal. Impressive as she was in her domination - she seemed to get an almost orgasmic thrill confronting an annoyed male trainee - she was most impressive when she hurled insults at the stunned crowd. "YOU'RE ALL ASSHOLES!" she screamed. "YOUR LIVES DON'T WORK! YOUR LIVES ARE SHIT!!!!!"
The first two hours of the training were composed of similar insults, as the trainers, Jane and an olive-skinned balding fellow named Dave, attempted to bully the audience into submission. Confused trainees questioning the validity of the groundrules were informed that the reason they didn't understand was because they were assholes - and would in fact be assholes until the training was completed. "The rules are not rational," intoned Dave. "They do not make sense! But you still have to follow them..." Those refusing to follow the rules were asked to leave - one fellow, a reporter who objected to the no note-taking rule, did actually leave, but was talked back into the room by swarming est volunteers. There was never any mention of refunds.
The next several hours were spent discussing the trainees' role in est. Jane and Dave, both wearing cumbersome remote microphones, scuttled like cockroaches through the crowd as they took turns delineating the difference between "Knowing" and "Not Knowing."
"What you must do to fully experience est," said Jane, "is to know that you don't know anything! Only then will you be able to throw away your belief systems and start to experience life!"
One of Erhard's major contentions is that we fail to enjoy life because we don't actually experience it, that our belief get in the way of our happiness. The trainers use the metaphor of a silver box, in which we treasure our most exciting sexual adventure. Every time we have another experience, we hold out the one in the box to see if it was as good.
Est also contends that we "fail to experience people." Jane and Dave both agreed that we were all assholes because we "merely jam people into your belief systems, and don't experience them!"
The basic problem with this sort of "I'm o.k. you're o.k." West Coast mentality is that it is itself a belief system. It is the same kind of paradoxical mumbo-jumbo that at one time caused Erhard to exclaim, "boredom is a very high state."
"Obviously this - the yelling, the insults, the temperature changes and the crowding - was designed to get us to a point of sheer vexation; it was like a brainwashing technique in which the victim is rendered so exhausted, frustrated and helpless that he is ready to embrace any ideology, heresy or commercial whatever." -- B.H. Krispien.[/list]Perhaps the other participants were more vexing than the training itself. Predominantly young, white and Jewish, the most offensive trainees were the ones too eager to please - those who tattled on their neighbors for talking, chewing gum or wearing watches, all verboten by the est hierarchy.
The most determined brown nosing of the day occurred during a process called "sharing." Willing trainees were asked to relate any experience relevant to the est training, though often the sharing involved nothing more than mere braggadocio. Talkative trainees giggled trite tales of colloquial stupidity as they told of the niggling activities of their lives. All tales were met with the same exuberant applause, as the trainers urged us to "acknowledge" the courage of fellow trainees.
Jane explained that there were three people we had to experience on the rocky road to enlightenment: the person we pretended to be; the person we feared we were; and the person we really were. The first persona was discarded during sharing, as mustacioed gentlemen were cowed into weak-kneed submission by a vociferous Jane. Persona number two was to be explored on the following night. And we were not to discover our true identity, tucked somewhere safely between yesterday's cherry pie and last week's faux pas, until night four, when the moon would be full and werewolves would circle around a ring of fire.
"A few minutes into the process I began to hear moans and whimpering on all sides of me, then crying, laughing, screaming, shrieking and sounds of people puking their guts out. It is very surreal, very frightening, like suddenly finding yourself in the middle of an insane asylum." -- Dan Greenburg.
"I felt I was the only normal in the place. I sat up and saw hundreds of people writhing and flailing the air. I was in a snake pit and I wanted out... Suddenly, a man shouted from across the room, 'Somebody get these fucking nuts off my beach!'" -- B.H. Krispien.[/list]We began the trip into the depths of our psyche after the evening bathroom break. The first journey lasted but 20 minutes, the latter one nearly an hour and a half, as we mentally explored first one part of our body, than another, in a perverse ritual designed to get us "in touch" with our feelings.
The first journey was fairly innocuous, a far cry from the preposterous canterings of earlier hours. We were required to sit straight up in our chairs, hands flat on our knees and eyes closed. Jane, both dominatrix and conductress, guided us on our mental voyage with the skill of a stewardess, helping many of the befuddled trainees through their psychological turbulence with her kind words.
"TAKE OFF THE SUPPRESS BUTTON," she yelled, "DON'T BE ASSHOLES! LET YOUR EMOTIONS GO!!!!! EXPERIENCE WHAT'S HAPPENING!" A furtive glance around the room proved that several of us, annoyed, and dreadfully hungry, would have liked a shotgun to help us "experience" our festering anger.
The psychological journey, called a "process" in est lingo, began at our feet. "Experience a point in your ankle," growled Jane. "Thaaaank you. Now experience another point in your ankle. Thaaaaank you."
This continued until we had reached our waist, at which time we began our descent. A few muffled sobs or an occasional nervous cough were heard during the process, as people dredged up forgotten emotions or incidents from the past, but the lunatics had yet to emerge.
It was during the second process, a lengthier version of process one, that insanity rose to the surface. As Jane guided us on another voyage from ankle to calf, to thigh, to waist, people began to weep uncontrollably, sobbing like banshees or homeless buzzards. An occasional maniacal laugh punctuated the oppression but could not break through the misery hanging like a shroud over the rented room.
As the process continued, framed by an embryonic tape of a California surf, est flunkies distributed air-sickness bags to those whose guild came forcefully bubbling to the surface. Suddenly, the room reverberated with the sounds of hysteria, as we sprinted through the world of neglected emotion. I glanced cautiously at the wailing women behind me, certain that I was to be covered with whatever did not reach the vomit bags.
The denouement came as abruptly as the cries had begun. Those it was a unique request, one laced with subtle hints of infantile eroticization, there was precious little time for mental preparation when Jane asked us to "experience a point in your rectum." Setting my sights on the tightly guarded exit, I overruled even the slightest compliance and impatiently awaited the dinner break. After Dave had mounted the stage to run down the list of fast food enterprises located near Thomas Circle, an urban industrial center renowned for its other hit-and-run entrepreneurial ventures, I pocketed my name tag and ducked through the crowd of therapeutic junkies.
I did not return.
The next day, I was awakened by an est volunteer, who demanded to know why I had resigned from the training. Informing her that est was run by neo-Nazis, fascists and perverse oddballs, I became involved in a lengthy discussion of est's merits, which terminated only after she became noisily belligerent.
"You mean you left because of boredom?" she whined. "Do you find that when you're screwing someone, you just get up and leave?" No, I admitted, curiously pondering the queer correlation between est and sex. I have honestly never been that bored.
"The more I envision the goose-stepping corps at the center of the est organization, the more virtue I see in anarchy. The last person who made the trains run on time participated in the creation of a nightmare. The only way to stop a nightmare is to wake up." -- Dr. Sheridan Fenwick.[/list]The est organization claims that those who have not completed the training - the assholes, the cowards or the mindless - shall remain voiceless, insignificant beings, content to try and drive through life's barriers rather than around them. If that is actually the case, then I shall remain secure in my role as an offensive driver, wheeling my Mack truck through the skinny entrances to businesses or bars. Psychotherapy will come in small doses, 12 ounces at a time, and mental masturbation will lead only to the discovery of tainted paltriness. If any of my friends wish to join hands with the est forces, I shall kill them, assured that death is the proper alternative to mellowness. And if Werner Erhard should ever cross my path, I will make no attempt to step on the brakes.
Title: Dontcha just LLOOOVVE est?
Post by: Anonymous on December 06, 2007, 06:24:32 AM
A love hot fevered like a striped pair of pants
Title: Re: Dontcha just LLOOOVVE est?
Post by: Anonymous on August 08, 2008, 08:38:51 PM
Family Weekend, anyone?:
Quote
During my training, the rules were read by a neo-Victorian, gravely-voiced woman named Jane, who scurried back and forth across the wooden stage like a caged animal. Impressive as she was in her domination - she seemed to get an almost orgasmic thrill confronting an annoyed male trainee - she was most impressive when she hurled insults at the stunned crowd. "YOU'RE ALL ASSHOLES!" she screamed. "YOUR LIVES DON'T WORK! YOUR LIVES ARE SHIT!!!!!"