Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard

[Howard Schumann]

TRANSFORMATION: THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF WERNER ERHARD

Directed by Robyn Symons (2006)

"Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come" - Victor Hugo

Building from the momentum generated by the youth counter-culture in the sixties, the human potential movement burst upon the scene in the seventies and found its most vocal expression in a training known as est (derived from the Latin verb meaning "to be). The training, created by Werner Erhard in 1971, promised to transform the quality of the lives of 200 to 250 participants in two weekends, spent in a hotel ballroom. People enrolled in est because they were looking for something they considered to be missing in their life, be it expansion, clarity, definition, or a new direction. What they received was much, much more - a multi-level introduction to self-realization and a new definition of reality that pioneered what is generally known as New Age Spirituality.

Shown at the Atlanta Film Festival, Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard, a documentary by two-time Emmy Award winner Robyn Symons looks at est and its creator, showing rare clips from inside the training as well as interviews with est graduates and staff members. Symons brings the story up-to-date, interviewing Werner, now aged 70, talking about the infamous "60 Minutes" broadcast of 1991, his reconciliation with his family thirteen years after he had abandoned them in his twenties, and his activities during the last fifteen years. Werner, considerably mellowed by the passing years, comes across as still dynamic, yet somewhat worn down. For those who participated in either the est training or est's successor, The Landmark Forum, the film will be a validation of the contribution that Werner has made and will restore some balance in the public mind as to how his legacy is perceived. Unfortunately however, because it is so limited in its time (62 minutes), and lacking in fuller exploration and depth of its topics, it may have limited appeal to those who know little or nothing about est or Werner's history.

The film traces the beginnings of est to an epiphany Werner had while driving over the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco when he realized that, contrary to all that he had been taught, the individual is responsible for the content and decisions that make up his or her life. While est in the seventies engendered a strong positive reaction from the majority of people who finished the course, it also became a source of controversy. Stories circulated about fainting, peeing, vomiting, and sobbing, painting a scene that, taken out of context, seemed frightening. However, the meaning and purpose of the training was lost in these horror stories and Werner's attempt to explain est to the media was singularly unsuccessful. It also spurred a negative reaction from the psychiatric and academic establishment, unwilling to believe that people could alter the quality of their life in the space of sixty hours, contrary to the deeply ingrained notion that progress had to take months, years, and even decades to be achieved. Consequently, est was labeled "pop psychology", "brainwashing", and "a boot-camp approach to psychology".

Werner's reputation also took a hit in 1991 with an "expose" on "60 Minutes" in which associates and family members accused him of unsavory acts, all of which were later denied and subsequently recanted by the accusers. Werner, however, left the U.S. shortly thereafter, claiming on a Larry King broadcast that he was being targeted by Scientology. He has not returned in the last fifteen years and, though he has carried on his work abroad, has become largely forgotten in the U.S. While the film attempts to set the record straight about his life and about common misconceptions about the training - its language, physical environment, and whether or not people were prevented from going to the bathroom, the film does very little to clarify the methodology or the true purpose of the training.

Also some clips from inside the training, may actually reinforce the notion in some people's minds that trainees were being victimized. For example, the film shows a young woman being told by Werner that her experience in foster homes was simply her "story" and her "racket". In the context of a sixty-hour training, these labels are precisely defined and have a great deal of meaning, and were intended to allow the young woman to realize that her experiences, as painful as they were, do not have to define her life. Outside of that context, however, their meaning is not clear and Werner's tone comes across as being less than compassionate. Additionally, clips seem to be selected more for shock value than as instructional tools about the meaning and purpose of the training.

While the film does add perspective to his recent trials, it has a "stagy" quality that doesn't truly capture the excitement and inspiration of those early days when it looked as if est could one day be incorporated into public education. While spokespersons for Werner in the film (mostly former est staff members) are articulate in supporting the goals of the training, the film could have benefited greatly from the comments of those who were outside the organization, perhaps insights from poets such as Allen Ginsberg or psychologists as to why the training was able to produce the kind of results it did in a short period of time. In spite of the film's shortcomings, however, it is an important first step in acquainting the world with the contributions of this man who dedicated his life to making others great.

Words and phrases such as "transformation", "empowerment", "making a difference", "getting it" and so forth have become part of the vocabulary of the culture, even to the extent that they have been pre-empted by advertising agencies who seek to use them to make a profit. Werner did not write books or go out on the lecture circuit to great applause from true believers and functioned in an atmosphere of non-agreement and non-acceptance. His genius did not lie in any concepts or ideas but in the enormous contribution his programs made to people's lives (including my own). Although the training, now The Landmark Forum, in recent years has moved away from the fringes and closer to the mainstream, Werner's programs, in my view, are still extremely valuable tools to deepen our self-awareness and Symon's film Transformation is a fitting beginning to the acknowledgment of his true greatness.

GRADE B+

[Chris Knipp]

Interesting discussion, the more so because informed by your insider's knowledge of the program. This however leaves me with many questions, some of which might better be answered by another person whose experience of Erhard was less positive than yours. But no harm there, since you yourself note that the film is incomplete. If the film had brought up certain other angles about the subject, you would no doubt have dealt with them. Surely for a figure and a movement as complex, significant to his/its time -- and controversial -- a longer film would have been preferable, and it seems to me that a film barely over an hour will find trouble finding theatrical distribution, if that's what its owners seek.

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Interesting discussion, the more so because informed by your insider's knowledge of the program. This however leaves me with many questions, some of which might better be answered by another person whose experience of Erhard was less positive than yours. But no harm there, since you yourself note that the film is incomplete. If the film had brought up certain other angles about the subject, you would no doubt have dealt with them. Surely for a figure and a movement as complex, significant to his/its time -- and controversial -- a longer film would have been preferable, and it seems to me that a film barely over an hour will find trouble finding theatrical distribution, if that's what its owners seek. Thanks very much for commenting. I guess I would have to say that I was disappointed on the whole and even wonder whether or not the filmmaker ever took the trainings she is writing about. Too much of it is sensationalized rather than trying to put the experience into perspective. I don't know what Robyn's plans are for distribution but it seems to me that she should concentrate on Film Festivals who can group shorter docs together.

If you have any unanswered questions about the life and career of Mr. Erhard, the methodology or results of the training, its acceptance in the community, I would be happy to try to answer them. Though I did have a very positive experience, I think I can be objective in looking at the down side.

Howard

[Chris Knipp]

Mainly I was just interested in what the down sides were, in people's views, and how the film dealt with that and how you would deal with that. Frankly I don't think this kind of program would work for me personally, though of course that doesn't invalidate it. I also would wonder how it differs in overall effect from other motivational seminars that take a weekend or two and also claim similar empowerment effects, such as Tony Robbins'.

You're no doubt right that festivals are the way to go for the film, and if it gets on Netflix and in Blockbuster stores, lots of people will eventually watch it.

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Mainly I was just interested in what the down sides were, in people's views, and how the film dealt with that and how you would deal with that. Frankly I don't think this kind of program would work for me personally, though of course that doesn't invalidate it. I also would wonder how it differs in overall effect from other motivational seminars that take a weekend or two and also claim similar empowerment effects, such as Tony Robbins'.. As far as the down side is concerned, the est training was very intense. Keep in mind that people were in a much different space in the 70s, far more resistant to the approach because it was so new and out of the mainstream. I think many people were simply not prepared for the intensity of the work and felt very uncomfortable in being asked to look at things in their life that they would rather not. The experience could be very painful for some but I think the vast majority who enrolled were willing to go on the rollercoaster ride and see where it would lead them. Participants were allowed to leave the training after a day with a full refund and some did but most stayed.

As far as what people see as the results, I found that those who came with the idea that it wouldn't work for them ended up usually being right. Their resistance was so great that their only reason for completing it was to prove to themselves and others that it didn't work. Many held themselves back, pretending to be disinterested observers or journalists looking to "cover" it. In my experience and I was involved in various capacities in many weekend trainings, that those who were open to the experience and allowed themselves to look at and experience the emotions that came up ended up with a great deal of value from the course.

For me, it was the most valuable thing I have done in my life and I owe Werner a lot. I can't say whether the present Landmark Forum would work for you or not. That it something you would have to determine for yourself by attending an introduction. As far as other programs are concerned, I cannot really compare it to anything because I never felt the need to do anything else after I did the training and the seminar series that followed. I'm sure the other programs have merit as well but I cannot speak to that.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks. Why do you think you needed it, and what effect did it have on you?

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Thanks. Why do you think you needed it, and what effect did it have on you? I don't think most people who took est really needed it but were seeking a way to expand to a new level of functioning in their life. I was probably an exception to that, however. I had come from a fairly dysfunctional home life and had major issues with my parents which showed up as a lack of ability to express anger (I was always afraid to express my emotions to my father). I was run by a fear of intimacy and an inability to form close relationships, to really give of myself to another person.

I think what happened for me in the training is that I saw that I could choose my own experience in life without having to be enslaved by the past. This was not a conscious realization and after the training was over, I didn't feel that I had gotten that much out of i but I did have a feeling that something had shifted but I wasn't sure what it was. I only knew that my life would never be the same.

As it turned out, I had met Joan in the training during the lunch break on the second day at the St. Francis Hotel and we started dating. I took the traiing in May 1974 and we were married in Jan. 1976.

Of course, my further participation in est both as an assistant and later as a leader of introductions and seminars for graduates of the training reinforced the value I had received and built upon my stronger sense of self. The idea that we create our own reality was just a concept from the traiing until I had an epiphany at a motel in Iowa during a cross country trip that validated the idea and allowed me to experience it directly. I have since validated it in my experience hundreds of times.

Thanks for asking.

[Chris Knipp]

My impression is that dysfunctional families are very common, so why do you think that most of the people who took the training didn't need it?

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
My impression is that dysfunctional families are very common, so why do you think that most of the people who took the training didn't need it? I think the majority of people who enrolled in the training were already successful in life but may have been looking to enhance an area in their life that they thought could be working better. Of course, once the training began and people began to look at their life they often found a lot of stuff that they had been unaware of that had been running their lives. This is where it started to be uncomfortable for some.

Keep in mind that est was not therapy. Werner distinguished between change and transformation. So the training wasn't about changing your life or making it better. The promise of the training was to transform the quality of your life so that the situations you were putting up with or trying to change clear up in the process of life itself.

So it wasn't about changing an existing paradigm but creating a new paradigm in which you are 100% responsible for your experience of your interation with others, others interaction with you, and ultimately others interaction with others. This is something that cannot be grasped as a concept but can only be experienced and in the 70s est provided the means for people to experience that.

[Chris Knipp]

How did you know that most of the people who went through the programs were in better shape than you were--is this anything than a subjective guess? 'Already successful in life but looking for improvement' wouldn't necessarily mean people didn't come from dysfuncitonal families, would it? Don't many successful people come from dysfuctional backgrounds?

What is the difference between change and transformation, other than that transformation is a more emphatic word? Waht's the difference between "clear up in the process of life itself" and "change"?

What do you mean in this context by "paradigm"?

If you say this was something that you had to do est to understand and it was back in the 70's then we're at a dead end, and that could be one reason why the movie was only an hour.

[Howard Schumann]

Thanks very much for your provocative questions? They are very good ones and ones that many people ask.
How did you know that most of the people who went through the programs were in better shape than you were--is this anything than a subjective guess? 'Already successful in life but looking for improvement' wouldn't necessarily mean people didn't come from dysfuncitonal families, would it? Don't many successful people come from dysfuctional backgrounds? I only know that from talking to "guests", those interested in doing the training for approximately five years two or three times a week plus my experience in being in the actual training itself both as a trainee and later as an assistant that most of the people who took the training were successful in life.

Of course it varies from one participant to the other but people who had psychiatric problems or were not "winning" in therapy were not allowed to participate, so the majority of those who did the training had to be functioning successfully in at least some major aspects of life. That does not mean that every aspect of their life was working and they may have looked to the training to enhance those areas that were not.

Many people did have family issues but I couldn't speculate as to whether or not the family is "dysfunctional" since that is such a general term. In the training of course, the individual becomes aware of his or her responsibility in the family dynamic and all family issues are cleared up to the extent that it is still possible.

What is the difference between change and transformation, other than that transformation is a more emphatic word? What's the difference between "clear up in the process of life itself" and "change"? Change within an existing system means trying to improve one's functioning within the present system, the one of cause and effect in which people believe that events are caused by some external force and do not accept responsibility for the circumstances of their life. Change implies action or doing something different. Clear up in the process of life means there is nothing to do, things will just naturally clear up as a result of the training.

Transformation means shifting to an entirely new system, for example, one in which the individual is no longer operating "at effect" but "at cause", so that events in the person's life are created internally and not subject to outside or external influences. This is sort of a metaphysical solipsism in which consciousness is the only reality and since we are all one consciousness, we embody all that is. Another way of putting it, a bit more controversial is that each of us are Gods in our own universe.
What do you mean in this context by "paradigm"? A paradigm in this context is simply the ground of being in which people operate. For example, the current paradigm might be called a scientific/materialist paradigm. If we operate however as if we are cause and that experience is the only reality, we could be said to be operating from a different ground of being, or a different paradigm.

As far as having to take the training to appreciate what I'm saying, my telling you about what I think is interesting but only personal experience can validate it, so I'm trying to explain it as best I can but in reality it cannot be understood as a concept. Unfortunately the est training is no longer available but there are other programs which might result in a similar experience.

[Chris Knipp]

What programs outside est or unrelated to Erhard's teaching would be most similar to est training today? I'm curious whether you think est (or it's Erhard-related followup) were unique or if they have family resemblances to other consciousness raising or personal development programs that might be out there now.


Transformation means shifting to an entirely new system, for example, one in which the individual is no longer operating "at effect" but "at cause", so that events in the person's life are created internally and not subject to outside or external influences. This is sort of a metaphysical solipsism in which consciousness is the only reality and since we are all one consciousness, we embody all that is. Another way of putting it, a bit more controversial is that each of us are Gods in our own universe. Can you explain this further? is "a sort of metaphyciscl solipsism" considered desirable accurding to est?

Obviously the idea that you can change reality is a stretch. Reality is usually considered to be "out there," not inside. If there is a reality. Nobokov always said "reality" was one word that had always to be written in inverted commas. If "reality" is just a concept, then if you say you have "changed reality" you mean you have changed the content of your own mind, but you have changed nothing external to yourself, so the "paradign" if you think you know what it is, remains the same.

[Howard Schumann]

What programs outside est or unrelated to Erhard's teaching would be most similar to est training today? I'm curious whether you think est (or it's Erhard-related followup) were unique or if they have family resemblances to other consciousness raising or personal development programs that might be out there now. I cannot really answer the question because I've never done any other programs, other than est and The Landmark Forum which has some similarity to est but is less philosophically oriented. Some of the individuals who were involved in est have started their own programs but I could not supply any details. There was a program here in Vancouver called Context that seemed to have some of the form of est but not the substance. I'm sure the experience of "who you are" however is available through many different channels: direct experience, other religious or spiritual disciplines such as meditation.
Can you explain this further? is "a sort of metaphyciscl solipsism" considered desirable accurding to est?

Obviously the idea that you can change reality is a stretch. Reality is usually considered to be "out there," not inside. If there is a reality. Nobokov always said "reality" was one word that had always to be written in inverted commas. The basic notion is that we have the power to transform our lives at any moment and do not have to operate as the effect of our circumstances. Metaphysical solipsism is my term, not est's. Perhaps that one only confuses the issue. In any event, the notion that we create our own reality is not desireable or undesireable. It is simply the way the universe operates. It is a context in which to hold events that does not involve blame, shame, guilt, or regret. It postulates that events are governed not by cause and effect but by the power of our intention, whether consciously realized or not. Many times it is not "understandable" but is simply a way to hold events, such as a simple acknowledgment that we are cause in the matter.

As a crude example, we may be furious at our boss for a decision that was made and feel vcitimized by our job. If we look at it from another perspective however we may discover that it turned out exactly the way we wanted it and that there is an underlying payoff for us. In other words, the universe is perfect exactly the way that it is and the way that it is not and ultimately in order to discover our intention, we only have to look and see the result.

Keep in mind that none of this was "taught" during the est training. People came to these realizations through direct experience as a result of the processes of the training. The paradigm shift can be summed up as follows: Before the training when a specific event occurred, it was because someone or something outside of ourselves was doing it to us. After the training, when an event occurs, there is the simple acknowledgment that we are responsible, i.e. cause in the matter.

If "reality" is just a concept, then if you say you have "changed reality" you mean you have changed the content of your own mind, but you have changed nothing external to yourself, so the "paradigm" if you think you know what it is, remains the same. There is nothing external to self. Experience is the only reality.

[Johann]

Holy est, Batman!

[Chris Knipp]

I get most of what you're saying here. Wish you could make comparisons, but you're certainly right not to say anything about what you don't know about.
In any event, the notion that we create our own reality is not desireable or undesireable. It is simply the way the universe operates. How do you know that the second statement is true? Again, I would comment that reality is such a fluid and un-demonstrable concept that it should be in quotation marks: "reality." If each person really "creates" his own, then that's all the more reason the word reality should be in quotes. But there are arguments for an objective reality, aren't there? How does est refute them?

"Solipcism" probably isn't a good word because it's pejorative. Leibnitz's concept of "windowless monads" might be more apropos and neutral.
In other words, the universe is perfect exactly the way that it is and the way that it is not and ultimately in order to discover our intention, we only have to look and see the result To say it is perfect both the way it is and the way it is not seems like saying nothing, like saying anything is perfect; if so, then "perfect" has no meaning other than "the way things are -- and the way they are not."


Keep in mind that none of this was "taught" during the est training. People came to these realizations through direct experience as a result of the processes of the training. The paradigm shift can be summed up as follows: Before the training when a specific event occurred, it was because someone or something outside of ourselves was doing it to us. After the training, when an event occurs, there is the simple acknowledgment that we are responsible, i.e. cause in the matter.
Let's look at this. That none was "taught" gives me the biggest insight so far into how est worked and why it was effective: it made people work things through. When you say "there is the simple acknowledgement that we are responsible, i.e. cause of the matter" -- what do you mean by "cause of the matter"? "The" cause, or "a" cause? Important distinction. The second would be unexceptionalble;l the first would be a radical and in common sense terms, questionable statement, wouldn't it?


There is nothing external to self. Experience is the only reality.I guess this is indeed Leibnitz's windowless monads.

[Howard Schumann]

I'm trying to carry on a philosophical conversation (and enjoying it), write a film review, and deal with a bullying landlord all at the same time so forgive me if I'm less than coherent.


"In any event, the notion that we create our own reality is not desireable or undesireable. It is simply the way the universe operates. "

How do you know that the second statement is true? The way we know that anything is true for us - by observation and direct experience.
Again, I would comment that reality is such a fluid and un-demonstrable concept that it should be in quotation marks: "reality." If each person really "creates" his own, then that's all the more reason the word reality should be in quotes. But there are arguments for an objective reality, aren't there? How does est refute them? Est did not argue for a position or attempt to refute any ideas. It simply provided a training in which people looked at their life, saw what was working and not working, and had the experience through various processes that they were the author of their own experience in life. I see no reason to put reality in quotes, because if I create getting fired from my job or having an ear condition and so forth, the experience is still very real.
"Solipcism" probably isn't a good word because it's pejorative. Leibnitz's concept of "windowless monads" might be more apropos and neutral. I'm not sure I understand enough about the concept of windowless monads to know if it fits or not.
In other words, the universe is perfect exactly the way that it is and the way that it is not and ultimately in order to discover our intention, we only have to look and see the result

To say it is perfect both the way it is and the way it is not seems like saying nothing, like saying anything is perfect; if so, then "perfect" has no meaning other than "the way things are -- and the way they are not." Life works when you choose what you got. Actually what you got is what you chose As you can see, this universe is perfect. It is saying nothing but it is also saying everything.
Let's look at this. That none was "taught" gives me the biggest insight so far into how est worked and why it was effective: it made people work things through. When you say "there is the simple acknowledgement that we are responsible, i.e. cause of the matter" -- what do you mean by "cause of the matter"? "The" cause, or "a" cause? Important distinction. The second would be unexceptionalble;l the first would be a radical and in common sense terms, questionable statement, wouldn't it? To argue that we are "a" cause would seem to imply that there are other causes which is not my experience. There is a lot about the nature of reality that I do not understand but as the song "It's In Everyone of Us" goes, "We can all know everything without ever knowing why". That is why Werner said that "understanding is the booby prize".

Operating from the ground of being that we are cause (cause in the matter means any matter from my wife throwing me out of the house (she hasn't as yet) to my neighbor dying of a heart attack). It is not understandable in rational terms. It is a place to come from, a ground of being. The implications of it are of course profound. If we are creators (or co-creators with God as some may like to put it) we then need not live as if we are powerless victims of events beyond our control.

[Chris Knipp]

Operating from the ground of being that we are cause (cause in the matter means any matter from my wife throwing me out of the house (she hasn't as yet) to my neighbor dying of a heart attack). It is not understandable in rational terms. It is a place to come from, a ground of being. The implications of it are of course profound. If we are creators (or co-creators with God as some may like to put it) we then need not live as if we are powerless victims of events beyond our control. I get that you are dealing with free will and determinism. Erhard seems to be way over toward the extreme of the scale toward free will. Isn't it a stretch to consider oneself responsible for somebody down the street dying of a heart attack? And isn't that a lot different from your wife throwing you out of the house, for which you might consider yourself the proximate cause -- though any good marriage counsellor would argue that she is responsible too? However, if this means blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong, then this outlook doesn't seem likely to be very cheering. I'm afraid I'm pretty much stuck with my rational and sceptical points of view.
"In any event, the notion that we create our own reality is not desireable or undesireable. It is simply the way the universe operates. "

How do you know that the second statement is true?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The way we know that anything is true for us - by observation and direct experience That's certainly a valid answer in the terms fo modern philsophy, I should think, though in detail one would want to know how the processes of observation and direct experience, according to Erhard, are carried out. This would be the concern of much 20th c. philosophy, isn't it, determining what we know and how we know it?

A lot of what you are saying here seems to relate to and perhaps even derive from Zen Buddhism, especially when you arrive at saying,
To argue that we are "a" cause would seem to imply that there are other causes which is not my experience. There is a lot about the nature of reality that I do not understand but as the song "It's In Everyone of Us" goes, "We can all know everything without ever knowing why". That is why Werner said that "understanding is the booby prize". Certainly Zen Buddhism doesn't promise understanding or seek it in any ordinary rational sense. However, I would think a Buddhist would allow that there are plenty of causes. How does an est graduate with this point of view avoid being a pompous ass, too full of him-or herself to be endured?

To be more specific in what I think would be hard for me to accept in Erhard's viewpoint, I don't think I could go from taking responsiblity for my own life, which is a standard grownup thing to do (not blame mommy and daddy or my boss or lack of education or poverty or the reverse), to considering myself the sole cause of everything in my own life. I think maybe he dramatically overemphasizes this just to make people aware of the need to assume responsiblity and stop blaming or whining. Am I right at all about that, in your view?

This has been interesting to me too, but the limitation to our discussion for me is that you beg off knowing anything about the wider context of thought, and my whole interest is to know how est fits into such a context. You present it as terminally unique, but that isn't generally how philosophical schools work. Only by approaching est as a true believer, totally convinced but unable to convince others, can you regard it as unique, inexplicable, and unrelated to any other schools of thought. Even Erhard acknowledged his debts to various schools of thought, didn't he?

[Howard Schumann]

I should think, though in detail one would want to know how the processes of observation and direct experience, according to Erhard, are carried out. This would be the concern of much 20th c. philosophy, isn't it, determining what we know and how we know it? Sorry, I cannot analyze it rationally. There are some things we just know from our experience. It's called natural knowing. Sometimes all it takes is looking. For example, on the surface I might be looking forward to an office party held outdoors and I tell everyone I hope it is a sunny day. When it turns out to be cloudy and the party is cancelled, I could say Oh, shucks, mother nature had the final say. However, if I was to look within, I may have discovered that I was uneasy about meeting some people at the party and had some resistance to going. That resistance was enough to create the bad weather and the cancellation. Doesn't make any sense rationally, but it is what's so for me.
A lot of what you are saying here seems to relate to and perhaps even derive from Zen Buddhism, especially when you arrive at saying,
"To argue that we are "a" cause would seem to imply that there are other causes which is not my experience. There is a lot about the nature of reality that I do not understand but as the song "It's In Everyone of Us" goes, "We can all know everything without ever knowing why". That is why Werner said that "understanding is the booby prize". "

Certainly Zen Buddhism doesn't promise understanding or seek it in any ordinary rational sense. However, I would think a Buddhist would allow that there are plenty of causes. How does an est graduate with this point of view avoid being a pompous ass, too full of him-or herself to be endured? That's a valid question. I haven't studied Zen so I don't know what the similarities or differences are. I know the ideas are similar to Advaita Hinduism which postulates that Brahman equals Atman, in other words God and the self are the same. About being pompous, knowing that we are a part of all that is is a deeply humbling experience. it would seem that those who operate out of ego and say that man exists apart from God are the ones in danger of becoming pompous. I realize that I don't always experience my power to affect events and must ask the assistance of God, the co-creator. In other words, in the process of forming my intention, I ask the universe to support me in having my intention be realized. This requires a deep humility before the spiritual forces of the universe. If my intentions are not realized, it only tells me either that it was really not my intention or that I had a counter intention that nullified it.


To be more specific in what I think would be hard for me to accept in Erhard's viewpoint, I don't think I could go from taking responsiblity for my own life, which is a standard grownup thing to do (not blame mommy and daddy or my boss or lack of education or poverty or the reverse), to considering myself the sole cause of everything in my own life. I think maybe he dramatically overemphasizes this just to make people aware of the need to assume responsiblity and stop blaming or whining. Am I right at all about that, in your view? To answer that I will simply post some of his aphorisms and let you draw your own conclusion.

"The truth doesn't mean anything. It just is.

If you keep saying it the way it really is, eventually your word is law in the universe.

Man keeps looking for a truth that fits his reality. Given our reality, the truth doesn't fit.

If you experience it, it's the truth. The same thing believed is a lie.

In life, understanding is the booby prize.

Obviously the truth is what's so Not so obviously, it's also so what.

You don't get to vote on the way it is. You already did.

When you've said all of the bad things and all of the good things you haven't been saying, you will find that what you've really been withholding is, "I love you."

You don't have to go looking for love when it is where you come from.

I know that you know that I love you, What I want you to know is that I know you love me.

Happiness is a function of accepting what is.

Love is a function of communication.

Health is a function of participation.

Self Expression is a function of responsibility.

It's much easier to ride the horse in the direction he's going.

You're god in your universe. You caused it. You pretended not to cause it so that you could play in it, and you can remember you caused it any time you want to.

If you're not all right the way you are it takes a lot of effort to get better. Realize you're all right the way you are, and you'll get better naturally.

Don't change beliefs. Transform the believer.

One creates from nothing. If you try to create from something you're just changing something. So in order to create something you first have to be able to create nothing.

To make sure a person doesn't find out who he is, convince him that he can't really make anything disappear. All that's left then is to resist, solve, fix, help or change things. That's trying to make some thing out of something.

Life is a game. In order to have a game something has to be more important than something else. if what already is, is more important than what isn't,the game is over. So, life is a game in which what isn't, is more important than what is. Let the good times roll.

The essence of communication is intention.

If you could really accept that you weren't ok you, could stop proving you were ok. If you could stop proving that you were ok you could get that it was ok not to be ok. If you could get that it was ok not to be ok you could get that you were ok the way you are. You're ok, get it?

If God told you exactly what it was you were to do, you would be happy doing it no matter what it was. What you're doing is what God wants you to do. Be happy."
This has been interesting to me too, but the limitation to our discussion for me is that you beg off knowing anything about the wider context of thought, and my whole interest is to know how est fits into such a context. You present it as terminally unique, but that isn't generally how philosophical schools work. Only by approaching est as a true believer, totally convinced but unable to convince others, can you regard it as unique, inexplicable, and unrelated to any other schools of thought. Even Erhard acknowledged his debts to various schools of thought, didn't he? Knowing where the concepts are derived from does not in any way change the quality of our life. The important thing is to know through direct experience that we have the power to transform our life.

[Chris Knipp]

You say:
About being pompous, knowing that we are a part of all that is is a deeply humbling experience. it would seem that those who operate out of ego and say that man exists apart from God are the ones in danger of becoming pompous. I realize that I don't always experience my power to affect events and must ask the assistance of God, the co-creator. In other words, in the process of forming my intention, I ask the universe to support me in having my intention be realized. This requires a deep humility before the spiritual forces of the universe. If my intentions are not realized, it only tells me either that it was really not my intention or that I had a counter intention that nullified it. But you have just said:
It's called natural knowing. Sometimes all it takes is looking. For example, on the surface I might be looking forward to an office party held outdoors and I tell everyone I hope it is a sunny day. When it turns out to be cloudy and the party is cancelled, I could say Oh, shucks, mother nature had the final say. However, if I was to look within, I may have discovered that I was uneasy about meeting some people at the party and had some resistance to going. That resistance was enough to create the bad weather and the cancellation. Doesn't make any sense rationally, but it is what's so for me. So I guess this means that although you discover you created the bad weeather because you had some resistence to going to the party that you weren't initially aware of, God hellped? And wihout his help, the bad weather wouldn't have happened? It sounds like in these respects, Erhard departs not only from the mainstream monotheistic regions in his way of looking at things, but from rational analysis. But I suppose you will simply reply that you are not aware of the details of other religions; and that you cannot analyze all this rationally.


Knowing where the concepts are derived from does not in any way change the quality of our life. The important thing is to know through direct experience that we have the power to transform our life. (Emphasis mine.) I have to look back over our by now long discussion, but I frankly do not see how in context "transform" is any different from "change," and how the concepts of "paradign" and "transformation" and the various ideas about "reality" and "truth" and taking responsiblity for everything that happens is different from empowerment or motivational workshops in the ultimate effect on the individual, the goal, the effect on, and final outlook of, the est graduate.

You've gotten me further into the mysteries of est than I've been before but we may soon reach a dead end, since for a lot of my questions, you say you have no answer, or you can't explain the context because you haven't studied the area of related ideas I'm suggesting (Leibnitz, Zen) or simply because the est explanations "don't make any sense rationally," and you believe in them, but can't explain them to anyone who hasn't done the training.

I think I'll comment on the Erhard aphorisms separately, since they are not directly related to each other or to this point in our discussion.

[Howard Schumann]

So I guess this means that although you discover you created the bad weeather because you had some resistence to going to the party that you weren't initially aware of, God hellped? And wihout his help, the bad weather wouldn't have happened? It sounds like in these respects, Erhard departs not only from the mainstream monotheistic regions in his way of looking at things, but from rational analysis. But I suppose you will simply reply that you are not aware of the details of other religions; and that you cannot analyze all this rationally. Please do not tell me how I will reply. I will reply in a way that is true for me. Coming from the premise that we are a part of God, of course God helped because we are co-creators. Asking for support is a way of realizing our intention. It is not important to know whether the result would have happened anyway if we didn't ask for support, the important thing is that the result is achieved.
"Knowing where the concepts are derived from does not in any way change the quality of our life. The important thing is to know through direct experience that we have the power to transform our life. (Emphasis mine.) " I have to look back over our by now long discussion, but I frankly do not see how in context "transform" is any different from "change," and how the concepts of "paradign" and "transformation" and the various ideas about "reality" and "truth" and taking responsiblity for everything that happens is different from empowerment or motivational workshops in the ultimate effect on the individual, the goal, the effect on, and final outlook of, the est graduate. I suspect the difference is that most motivational workshops operate from the existing paradigm - that somebody or something out there is the cause of our problems - which doesn't work. I thought the distinction between change and transformation was clear. Change means doing something new, better, or different within an existing paradigm. Transformation means operating from a completely different paradigm. The examples were operating at effect versus operating at cause.

You've gotten me further into the mysteries of est than I've been before but we may soon reach a dead end, since for a lot of my questions, you say you have no answer, or you can't explain the context because you haven't studied the area of related ideas I'm suggesting (Leibnitz, Zen) or simply because the est explanations "don't make any sense rationally," and you believe in them, but can't explain them to anyone who hasn't done the training. I have said this before and must repeat myself. Est was not a belief system. It was not a philosophical theory. It was not a religion or a church like Scientology. It was simply a training in which people had an experience of themselves and came to certain conclusions about how life works based on those experiences.

There are many personal experiences that defy rational analysis. For example, out of the body experiences, precognition, clairvoyance, near death experiences and the like. You can say to someone that their experiences were not rational until your blue in the face and they will say, of course. They are not rational. Yet the experiences are real and very powerful nonetheless. Your problem is that you want to explain everything rationally and not everything can be explained in that manner. My suggestion to you is that if you want to understand what I'm talking about, do the Landmark Forum. Although it is not est, I think you will have a better idea of the issues and won't have to fall back on analysis and comparisons which lead nowhere.

[Chris Knipp]

Sorry, I cannot analyze it rationally. There are some things we just know from our experience. It's called natural knowing.How does it work that est is “not a belief system” but just a training program, when according to est there are many things that can't be explained rationally (my “problem,” you say, being my need to do that)? If they're not to be explained rationally, but they're accepted as valid and important, mustn't they by the process of elimination have been accepted on faith? Isn't systematically accepting certain processes or conclusions on faith evidence of a belief system? If you come through "experience" (presumably intuitively) to the acceptance of something, and it is not rationally explicable, isn’t that faith, and hence aren’t you being introduced to a belief system, which helps you to explain causal relationships, such as that you as well as God caused the rain that kept you from the party? Help me to understand how it could be otherwise. The term "natural knowing" is apparently part of the terminology of est and Erhard; it does not come from anywhere else, does it?
Please do not tell me how I will reply. I will reply in a way that is true for me. Did you reply? This was what I was referring to:
It sounds like in these respects, Erhard departs not only from the mainstream monotheistic regions in his way of looking at things, but from rational analysis. That was my question (is my statement right?). Obviously rational analysis is rejected, but did you get to my question about mainstream monotheistic religions?
of course God helped because we are co-creators. Is this not quite different from the explanation of things in the monotheistic religions?
I suspect the difference is that most motivational workshops operate from the existing paradigm - that somebody or something out there is the cause of our problems - which doesn't work.Didn't you say earlier that you didn't know about other programs (i.e. motivational workshops)? But be that as it may, isn't it the case that in modern psychology and 12-step recovery, for example, they don't say that "somebody or something out there is the cause of the problem," but do leave much room for personal responsiblity and individual action? Is blaming somebody or something out there the "existing paradign" in 12-step recovery?If so, why have, I, who have spent some years in 12-step programs, been taught that blaming others and nursing resentments are two things that are to be strongly avoided? In some ways I'm convinced by now est is unique, but is this one of those ways?

[Howard Schumann]

It seems as if we are getting lost in terminology. Bottom line is that Werner put together a program that worked to shake people loose from deadening positions that were running their life. He could have written a book or hired a hall to lecture people. Instead he chose to confront people directly and have them look and see the cause of their life not working. Werner had the ability to turn people on to their own strength and to allow people to see the possibilities in life. I'm sorry that it is difficult for you to understand how the training worked. Actually it is not something can be readily understood or appreciated outside of the particular context of the two weekends.

The training worked in so far as people were willing to give up the way that they had of knowing and look at their life from a different point of view - the point of view that they created the circumstances of their life and have the power to create new circumstances that work better. You seem to want to equate responsibility with blame even though I have repeatedly said that talking about responsibility in the context of the training had nothing to do with blame. It was a simple acknowledgment that we are cause in the matter - what matter? any matter. We are not accustomed to dealing with context. We are more comfortable with content. My mother was overbearing, therefore I turned out a certain way. My father was cold, therefore, I could not warm up to people, and so forth.

In the existing paradigm, my mother and father are to blame. However, if you step back and look at it from a different perspective - I created my mother and father acting a certain way because of the opportunity I needed to grow and expand in specific directions. I can say that I am responsible for my parent's behavior in that it is happening in my experience and comes out of the space and energy I am in. However, this does not imply that I am to blame.

Each of us is 100% responsible for their experience. I am responsible and my parents are responsible and neither are to blame. Blame is content. Responsibility in this definition is context, a place to come from. You seem to want to relate the training to things you are familiar with - motivational seminars, traditional religion and so forth. It is however none of these even though perhaps it may contain some aspects of them.

It is necessary to understand the difference between thoughts, feelings, and experience. We can believe certain things to be true such as most people believe in God without ever having a direct experience. They also have a feeling about God, that He is present to help them in their lives. An experience, however is somewhat different. Let me use another example. Supposing I had a fight with my wife and I had a thought that the marriage is over and I want to leave. Accompanying this thought are feelings - rejection, anger, hurt and so forth. So I can choose to act on my thoughts and feelings and walk out - or I can get in touch with something deeper, so deep in the core of my being that I really can't explain it - it is called my experience of my wife. I may get it touch with how we met, the period of courtship, the wedding and the vows we took - the idea of commitment. What happens then is a shift. I am now in touch with an experience of love for my wife which transcends my thoughts and feelings and am also in touch with the word I gave to love and honor her - till death do us part.

So experience is on a deeper level and is not easily explained. The experience of the training is also on a deeper level than so-called belief or faith. When I came out of the training, I did not believe anything Werner said. I did not believe that I created my own reality. If you had asked me right after the training ended what I got out of it, I would have said - very little. I knew that something had shifted but I was expecting more of the same in my life. It was only after I had a direct experience on the freeway that thoughts affect reality that I was able to validate it.

In this particular instance I thought I would test out the theory. I would create having a flat tire on the freeway without any bad consequences just to see if I am powerful enough to do that. Minutes later, I had a blowout and someone drove up right behind me and fixed the tire. After that I validated it over and over - hundreds maybe thousands of times. So do I believe that we create our own reality - that the level of energy we are operating in - our thoughts and feelings can alter reality. All I can say is that I don't necessarily believe it but I have experienced it and know it to be true.

It is very hard to fit est into any models we are familiar with. I cannot speak about twelve-step because I am unfamiliar with its methodolgy but I would venture to guess that it had a specific goal in mind that each participant strove to achieve. Est had no specific, measurable goal other than those formulated by each trainee. The trainees were encouraged to have a specific goal in mind so that it could serve as a measuring rod, but many did not - only that they wanted to expand their awareness of themselves. So it was process-oriented not goal oriented. It could be called a form of participatory theater with an aim of having the participants experience a catharsis that would produce greater satisfaction in their life.

It was not about having the trainee brought to a "high" or peak experience. The transformation people experienced in the training was a shift from in Werner's words "a state in which the content of your life is organized around the attempt to get satisfied or to survive to an experience of being satisfied right now, and organizing the content of your life as an expression of being satisfied, being whole and complete right now". So the training was a process of freeing people from the past rather than wallowing in it or enmeshing oneself more deeply in it as is the modus operandi of Freudian psychology. The training taught no new belief but its aim was to break up the way the mind is wired - to allow each trainee to take hold of one's mind - in 60s jargon - to blow the mind so what is left is an experience of the being, whole and complete and satisfied. It was the first step toward the realization of a higher consciousness, a deeper awareness of one's place in the universe.

At the heart of the training was a distinctive morality. The key to it lies in the distinction between being at cause and being at effect. Most morality is oriented toward defense of a position, coming from the mind or ego. This leads to the need to assert power over others, to control and dominate or avoid domination, to be right and make others wrong. Responsibility by contrast does not have to defend a position. It is not fault, praise, blame, shame, or guilt and includes no judgments or evaluations of good and bad, right and wrong, or better and worse. To be responsible for a situation does not mean that one did it. It is a way of experiencing life that transcends both I did it and I didn't do it (somebody did it to me). It precludes the position of both the victim and the hero. His purpose is not to strengthen his position but to further his aliveness by being appropriate to each situation coming from the ground of being that one is at cause. As one begins to experience life from a transformed point of view, one's behavior becomes effortless and appropriate in the process of life itself.

Additionally, a transformed person is one who acts with integrity, who tells the truth, and a transformed environment is one in which the truth can be told. Unfortunately, most individuals who completed the training went back out into a world in which the truth could not be told and people who had the experience of transformation had little room in which to express it. The world is not friendly to the idea that your life works. They think you are feeling or acting superior and that you must be only pretending that your relationships are meaningful and nurturing. So Werner's ultimate goal was not only to transform a single person but to transform the institutions of the world that denied that people could be transformed - a revolutionary goal and this more than any other reason in my opinion is why the program met with as much hostility as it did. The training itself was only half the work.

I hope I was able to address some of your concerns. If I have been unable to, it is perhaps the same problem I face when I have seen a movie that shook the core of my being - I often cannot come up with any words that can translate the experience so that people are moved to see the film. The important fact is not what you or I think about it anyway. The important fact is that over half a million people took the training and positively affected their own lives, the lives of the people around them and ultimately the planet.

[Chris Knipp]

Unfortunately, if you are using special terms and refuse to explain them, you are just talking, and no one is listening or understanding. You have stopped answering my questions, so there is no more dialogue. It was good while it lasted. I'm sorry, but I am not a good candidate for a Landmark Forum. I already knew too much and now for sure I do, and I am not a gullible person but a profoundly skeptical one. I can, however, recognize the value of believing or accepting simply because one knows it will lead to a better life, regardless of the validity of the program in itself. Similarly, I do not believe all the tenets of Bill Wilson's 12-Steps to be gospel, but I recognize that they can help me and have.

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."-- Wittgenstein. Less admiring, cooler descriptions of est and Erhard (who apparently sold used cars and encyclopedias, changed his name, it appears, or used aliases, four times throughout his life, and was a bigamist before he became a guru), have said that his program was stitched together from Scientology and Mind Dynamics and Dale Carnegie and Maxwell Maltz and a variety of other sources, including Esalen and of course Zen, as well as techniques from gestalt therapy and primal scream therapy and ideas from miscellaneous self-help books. It appears that his concept of enlightenment may very likely derive from the phenomenology of Heidigger (this from various sources).

Despite Erhard's apparent scorn for the idea of belief and faith in favor of "transformation" (in keeping with his doctrine and terminology) the est method of overstressing participants in the workshops and frisking them of their principles, a method of voluntary brainwashing similar to those used by (in the word of William Sargent) "generations of preachers and demagogues to soften up their listeners' minds and help them take on desired patterns of belief and behavior," is, it would seem to me, clearly designed not to remove all belief but to replace one set of beliefs with another. And that's fine, aside from the apparent brutality of Erhard doctrines and his training sessions -- but why the unwillingness to acknowledge it? Why is it necessary to consider est and the Landmark seminars so terminally unique? One can only conclude that that is the immemorial attitude of the true believer, but not that of more comprehensive and humanistically-minded thinkers or religionists, who tend to acknowledge the relatedness of schools of thoughts to their own and the validity of other cultures and other moralities than the narrow one in which they live.

According to the Wikipedia Werner Erhard entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Erhard) , "Attempts to portray him as a great philosopher or thinker appear to have fallen on stony ground [and some have come to stress his role as an "educator"] -- I think those who read the list of "aphorisms" given earlier in this thread will understand why this has been so. The use of the word "aphorism" (there goes my hangup over terminology, A/K/A language, again) in this context also seems ironic, in view of the glaring lack of wit in Erhard's declarations. Aphorisms are more in the line of La Rochefaucauld, e.g.,
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example. Or, perhaps more to the point,
Few are agreeable in conversation, because each thinks more of what he intends to say than of what others are saying, and listens no more when he himself has a chance to speak. Or, even better:
No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong. Unlike traditional religious leaders who have renounced wealth and lived lives of poverty (Jesus, Buddha), Werner Erhard got into his Seventies programs to become rich and famous, till scandal drove him out of the country. But he has not lost contact with what is a multi-million-dollar family business, of est and its successor the Landmark seminars. Harry Rosenberg, his brother, is the current CEO of Landmark Education, and Erhard sold Werner Erhard and Associates to Nathan Rosenberg, another brother, in 1991. Erhard's sister, Joan Rosenberg, is Vice President of the Centers Division for Landmark Education. However, as mentioned earlier in the review that opens this thread, all was not peaceful in the family since three daughters of Erhard, Deborah, Adair, and Celeste, went on the 60 Minutes program to accuse him of abuse. It appears unclear whether one accused him of rape, though some documents say so; the daughters differed in their allegations. Tax disputes were another factor in Erhard's flight from the US. Is all this included and clarified in the movie? Certainly there are various aspects of Erhard's reputation that require clarification.

In the early years of est Erhard, himself a Jew, went so far as holding six million Jews responsible for the Holocaust. It's too bad they didn't have a chance to attend the est two-weekend workshops, prior to being sent to the death camps. It all might have been so different.

Not unrelated to this is Erhard's theory that world hunger was due not to scarcity of food but a mindset. Again, a pity that black children with swollen bellies and sunken eyes in the barren plains of Africa didn't have the benefits of a Landmark Forum either. They just didn't "get it."

[Howard Schumann]

I could refute these lies and absolute distortions of truth point by point but it would not appear worthwhile since your mind is so obviously closed. Your post is particularly hurtful because, rather than trusting my years of personal experience, you would rather repeat stuff of which you have no personal knowledge or experience and simply rely on all the garbage posted on the Internet from people who have never done any of Werner's programs.

It seems that any discussion with you inevitably heads south and ends up in a torrent of recrimination and personal attacks. Believe me, I will not get sucked in again.

[Chris Knipp]

I could refute these lies and absolute distortions of truth point by point but it would not appear worthwhile since your mind is so obviously closed. Why should your being an est insider make you the one with an open mind? I am partly only asking whether the film you reviewed dealt with these points, some of which may be true and some of which may be false, in satisfactory detail. A skeptical mind is not a closed mind. The fact that you are being challenged does not mean the discussion is "heading south." I thought it was an important aspect of est training that participants were challenged in their beliefs and preconceptions. Anyway in est terms, this discussion has proceeded exactly as you meant for it to, and is "perfect." Is that not so? But you will get no torrent of recrimination and personal attacks from my end.

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Why should your being an est insider make you the one with an open mind? I am partly only asking whether the film you reviewed dealt with these points, some of which may be true and some of which may be false, in satisfactory detail. A skeptical mind is not a closed mind. The fact that you are being challenged does not mean the discussion is "heading south." I thought it was an important aspect of est training that participants were challenged in their beliefs and preconceptions. Anyway in est terms, this discussion has proceeded exactly as you meant for it to, and is "perfect." Is that not so? But you will get no torrent of recrimination and personal attacks from my end.
Your last post is little more than sustained character assassination. I am shocked that you would stoop to this level and will have no further part in this discussion. Sayonara.

[Chris Knipp]

I'll readily cop to being a skeptic and having a very critical mind, but not to being a character assassinator, sustained or one-shot. I'm sorry your sensitivities don't permit you to continue the discussion.

[Howard Schumann]

I was not going to respond any further but since this thread has drawn a great many viewers, I feel it is important, not to continue an argument with the closed minded but to summarize my thoughts about est and Werner. It is not easy to share your life for seven years with a man who made such an enormous contribution to it and to the lives of thousands of others and see it distorted by by media lies, intemperately repeated by Chris Knipp in a previous post. Relying on media attacks to judge a man's life is like relying on a movie review from someone who hasn't seen the film and reports on what others have said who also did not see the film.

Of course not everyone was happy with Werner or his programs, but the fact that in the course of 32 years of est and Landmark, only a miniscule percentage of over one million people who have done the training have had anything negative to say is remarkable. This is from a group active in 11 countries around the world and active in prisons and schools. There were inevitably people who should not have done the training and attempts were always made to screen out those with severe psychological problems or those who were in therapy and were not winning but they were not always successful.

But people who did benefit from the trainings constituted individuals from all socio-economic groups and all walks of life including prominent people such as Professor John Mack of Harvard, author Chuck Palahniuk, singer John Denver, actress, Cloris Leachman, Yoko Ono, John Ritter, Ted Danson, activist Jerry Rubin, the Wachowski Brothers and many more.

These programs have been the object of media villification almost since day one and much of the campaign against it has been orchestrated by Scientology. I know because I was there at the beginning and participated in its founding years. Perhaps Werner was partly to blame because he refused to offer explanations and challenged the media to participate and to discover the truth about est. Naturally, they refused and wanted him to explain it which is an impossibility since the training is experiential and cannot be explained.

Aside from his public relations mistakes, I think the very nature of the training did not lend itself to easy understanding. The media looks for simplification. The training, however, broke new ground and was a direct challenge to the psychiatric establishment that had so embedded itself in the popular culture as the only way to deal with emotional problems.

When est said that it could transform the quality of life in two weekends, everyone said that was impossible and started searching for labels like pop-psychology, or "me" generation or other pejorative terms to pigeonhole and categorize it. The truth is that Werner and his programs were truly revolutionary. They had never been done before. When people testified to the fact that they worked, the media said "impossible. You must have been brainwashed by this cult".

Lies started appearing about "abusive" trainers who didn't let you go to the bathroom or leave the room. The truth is that these methods were used on day one only to let people know that their destructive habits were about to be challenged. Not going to the bathroom for six to eight hours at the beginning (later changed to four) was done for one purpose, to have people realize that they are not their body and that their being is in control. It was a very valuable part of the course.

The methods that were used were done for one purpose, because they worked. If you go to the doctor to cure an illness you don't want the doc to pat you on your ass or blow in your ear. You want your doctor to do what's necessary to cure the illness. The fact that in two weekends people could give up destructive behavior, patterns that they had carried around all their life belied the fact that the methods were "abusive". Yes, the trainer did say "f**k", and said "you are assholes", but it became clear to any discerning individual almost immediately that the trainer's ground of being was love and support.

What was being referred to was the fact that people walked around in a straitjacket and were being run by their "tape recorder" and that their behavior had become so mechanical that they could not distinguish between their mind and who they really were.

Although I saw Werner in hundreds of different situations, interacting with trainees, assistants and staff, no one viewed him with uncritical acceptance as typical of a cult. First of all, most est and Landmark graduates have come in contact only with their respective trainers and have never met Werner or his brother Harry who runs Landmark. During the time I was participating, I had the opportunity to observe the workings of the organization from the inside including seeing Werner operate on many different levels and have no doubt about Werner's absolute integrity and the integrity of the process he created. My relationship with him was not always comfortable, however.

He is a man who is dedicated to making others great and can be very challenging to be around. I did not always appreciate what he was trying to do at the time but in retrospect my admiration for this man is boundless. This is not hero worship. He is not my guru. I simply love him as deeply as one human being can love another. I thank him for my life and his contributions to the world will be remembered long after his villifiers have been forgotten.

[Chris Knipp]

Yes, the trainer did say "f**k", and said "you are assholes", but it became clear to any discerning individual almost immediately that the trainer's ground of being was love and support.
Ah.

I'm glad that you've returned to the discussion which you began. I am ready to believe many good things about est and believe that it generated positivity and strenthened many people, and I acknowlege from the evidence that it had its own unique flavor and style, but I am less able to believe it any more "unique' than scientology, Tony Robbins seminars, and the like, or to grant that it had no debt to any previous thinking (historical philosophy) or programs. It seems evident from the mutual war, that it was deemed to be in direct competition with scientology -- which also has many famous graduates, though most of them that we hear about are merely Hollywood actors.

If you did not consider Erhard your "guru," so much the better, I suppose. But what harm is there in having a "guru"? Guru is only an Indian word for teacher. An honorable title.

Your good will and enthusisam are evident, but you have not disproved any of the allegations. In your unwillingness to dirty your hands by touching upon these "villifications," as you see them, Howard, you leave them unchallenged.

[Chris Knipp]

P.s.
Of course not everyone was happy with Werner or his programs, but the fact that in the course of 32 years of est and Landmark, only a miniscule percentage of over one million people who have done the training have had anything negative to say is remarkable. It would indeed be remarkable if it were true, but this is anecdotal. Here you minimize objections, but in fact it would appear that there is a veritable army of people who have much that is critical to say about est, the Landmark forums, as well as others equally dubious about Scientology and similar programs. More so, in these cases, than about 12-step recovery, which, in contrast to Erhard, Tony Rollins, or dianetics, etc., programs, does not rely on one charismatic individual leader, does not require a large outlay of cash, is not mysterious about its principles, and doesn't claim to change you in a couple of weekends, but only gradually after a lifetime of work.

[Howard Schumann]

Your continuing posts indicate that you have neither heard nor understood anything that I have been saying.

As I said before, I have no intention of continuing this discussion with you or getting into any more circular arguments. I only started this because I thought you were sincerely interested in trying to understand the training and its methodolgy. It is clear that you were only interested in gathering enough information to launch a vicious personal attack on somebody I consider a very important person in my life.

I will not answer your scurrilous attacks as I would not discuss a movie I cared deeply about with someone who hadn't seen it but was simply repeating what he had read or heard about it. The overwhelming majority of criticism of the program comes from those who never took the training and you are no exception.

If you wish to learn more about Werner, the idea of transformation, or his programs which include est, The Landmark Forum, The Hunger Project, The Breakthrough Foundation, or Youth at Risk, I respectfully suggest you consult the fillowing websites:

http://www.landmarkeducation.com/

www.wernererhard.com

http://laurenceplatt.home.att.net/wernererhard/

http://www.working-minds.com/werner.htm

For a detailed account of the 60 Minutes accusations, read

"60 Minutes and the Assassination of Werner Erhard" by Jane Self

Here also is an excerpt from an interview with Werner and Barbara Walters from 1976. Simply press play to hear the audio.

http://www.archive.org/details/Werner_Erhard_Today_show_w_Barbara_Walters

Howard

[Chris Knipp]

It is clear that you were only interested in gathering enough information to launch a vicious personal attack on somebody I consider a very important person in my life.

I will not answer your scurrilous attacks . . .I'm sorry you have this level of paranoia. I had no desire to "launch a vicious personal attack" and do not think I have done so. Nor do I believe the information I brought up was "scurrilous," which one online dictionary defines asm "1. Given to the use of vulgar, coarse, or abusive language; foul-mouthed; 2. Expressed in vulgar, coarse, and abusive language."Where have I used such language?
The overwhelming majority of criticism of the program comes from those who never took the training and you are no exception.
If only you would answer the questions instead of attacking the questioners. Outsiders often make the best critics; it's hard to see the flaws from inside. But you are jumping to the wrong concluson in lumping me with critics. I am only playing devil's advocate to bring out more information, to get answers to those criticisms. You have not been very forthcoming.


I respectfully suggest you consult the fillowing websites. . .
Probably it would have been useful to have these links earlier in the discussion, but it's good to have them now. However they are mostly "party line" documents except for the interview with Barbara Walters. I therefore go to that and find this [following are my notes from Barbara Walters' interview with Werner Erhard on the Today show of February 19, 1976]:
Q: What is est?
A: It's a course for people who are getting along in life successfully, and are willing to expand their experience of aliveness and satisfaction. [Describes no. of people, trainers, two weekends; basic setup of the training.]
Q: But what is it? Is it meditation, is it therapy? What happens? All that most people hear is that you can't go to the bathroom for most of those hours; you aren't allowoed to eat or to smoke.
A: [laughs]
Bathroom breaks were granted every four hours. There's a meal break, so people eat three meals. The object of est is to allow people to take a look at their own belief systems and what's behind them, their sources. In the normal course of events, you're forced to protect your belief system and not allowed to look at it. The training lets you get an opportunity to take a look at what you believe and look behind all that to get in touch with where all that comes from.
Q: It's not therapy?
A: It is not therapy. People who need therapy shouldn't go to est.
Q: People come away "getting it." And "getting it" means what is, is; you are responsible for your own life. Is that the essence of est? And what is "what is, is, and what isn't, isn't"?
A: [laughs]"Getting it" is like riding a bicycle, the moment when after struggling to learn, finally you can ride. The program's essence is not explicable in words but is an experience in which it all suddenly clicks.
Est grows from the belief that our public face hides what we fear. I attempted to hide being a jerk or failure but wasn't satisfied. Est gets to the actual person you are underneath the person you're afraid you are.
Q: Why did you change your name-- it sounds like a Nazi prison camp leader?
A: Didn't want to be located when he left home and family. No symbolism in choice of name.
Q: $16 million profit. Cleaning up. Where's the money go?
A: Back into expanding the services and keeping est healthy.
Q: All $16 million?
A: Yes. Not non-profit.
Q: Are you a guru?
A: I am a person with whom people have a bond of sharing an important experience.
Q: Are you rich?
A: I guess I'm rich, I don't know, Barbara.
Q: Goal?
A: Expand, continue to make it available. Nothing more.
Q: Will est change the whole society?
A: We don't want to be presumptuous, but we'd like to train enough people so the consciousness shifts.
Q: What is the essence of est?
Fundamentally it begins with a willingness to be honest. When you begin to understand your life is organized around accumulations of symbols of being okay…and you like about it and say this is what you really want. Money…not ultimately satisfying. Acknowledge we're in a little bit of a rat race. We go to work and are in relationships because we're in them and stuck with them rather than that they give satisfaction. Begin by experiencing things exactly as they are, get in touch with your own experience, you begin to experience a transformation.

N.B. This excerpt was accompanied by only one comment which is as follows:


This interview is nearly 30 years old. Yet it's fresher today than it's ever been and just as relevant if not more so. Listen to what Werner is saying. Listen to what he sounds like. Listen to where he's coming from. Listen to where it lands for you. It's extraordinary.
This obviously is a covert, and he is not questioning. I am. And I'm listening.

[Chris Knipp]

Another link. Here is a sample of Working Minds, "Mind Controll [sic]":
Mind Control - Online Classes
At NEIH, you will receive professional training preparing you to work with others using mind control to create dramatic change in a private practice of your own.
www.neih.com


Remote Mind Control
Influence people remotely using advanced psychotronics and tele-hypnosis software.
www.tifareth.com


Mind Control
By Haha, Dr. Lung. Only $9.97, or order used. Read reviews and discover similar items.
www.amazon.com


Looking for Mind Control Products?
Find exactly what you want today.
www.ebay.com


Ross Jeffries: Mind Control
This is the exclusive source for Ross Jeffries' Speed Seduction courses and NLP products.
www.speedseduction.net
[ Apparently there really is a Dr. Haha Lung. I think I might be a little late for Speed Seduction. But I'm not sure how all this gets me closer to the training of Werner Erhard.

[cinemabon]

I don't mean to be presumptuous by entering so late into this heated discussion. However, I did find a very good link on this subject at the following, which I found very helpful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/erhard_seminars_training

I am editing this post because the link I created here does not work. However, I will tell you how I got this link. I went to ask.com and requested, "What is est?" The top link in the reply gave me the above site. It is a wealth of information. I suggest that anyone interested in knowing more about this subject investigate this particular site as it answers many of the questions raised in this discussion. I do hope I haven't offended anyone by making this suggestion.

[Howard Schumann]

I corrected the link.

[Chris Knipp]

The Working Minds link does work now as intended.

This link does not seem to work:

http://www.laurenceplatt.home.att.net/wernererhard

This one is not working now either:

www.landmark.education.com

This one from the Boston Globe seven years ago on the Landmark sessions, I found helpful and balanced

http://www.wernererhard.com/wernererhardthebostonglobe.htm

. It is generally positive, but considers criticisms. The process of the sessions is described the the reporter, who attended them, and that gave me a more vivid picture than I had before. The healing process of making amends to others is very like the Twleve Steps -- Steps Eight and Nine. AA began in 1934, and had its roots in the Oxford Group. Of course it's not a process that happens overnight, but everyone goes at his own pace, as is indicated by Howard's personal story.

[Chris Knipp]

On the Werner Erhard link, not suprisingly my favorite section is the Werner Erhard: Debate and Controversy page (http://www.wernererhard.com/wernererharddebate.htm). This is where the Boston Globe article is listed, and provides the best answers to the allegations against Erhard and his programs.

[Howard Schumann]

All the links should now be working.

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by cinemabon
I don't mean to be presumptuous by entering so late into this heated discussion. However, I did find a very good link on this subject at the following, which I found very helpful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/erhard_seminars_training

I am editing this post because the link I created here does not work. However, I will tell you how I got this link. I went to ask.com and requested, "What is est?" The top link in the reply gave me the above site. It is a wealth of information. I suggest that anyone interested in knowing more about this subject investigate this particular site as it answers many of the questions raised in this discussion. I do hope I haven't offended anyone by making this suggestion. You are not being presumptuous at all. Actually, I wish others would jump in as well, especially if they've done either est or The Landmark Forum. There is some useful information in Wikipedia but I don't really think you will get a true sense of the programs by reading so-called objective sites. None of these sites are written by anyone whose actually done the program. Once you have done the program, it is hard to be objective about it.

Basically what I'm saying is that if you are interested in finding out more about The Landmark Forum (est no longer exists), talk to someone who has done it or go to an introductory meeting and you will get a better sense of what the work entails. Information sites will tell you very little because the training is not about information but a personal experience. Objective appraisals of the training come from the point of view, widespread in our society, that something that everyone says is so great cannot possibly work so they look for the negatives and neglect to tell people about the positives. You can find negatives in almost anything so it is not hard if you look for it. No statistics are kept of those who committed suicide while in psychotherapy but if one person out of 500,000 dies while doing est, it is used to discredit the program.

Howard

[ajax]

Howard,

The est training was a great experience, an epiphany. Four days to freedom - just the opposite of a cult experience. My trainer was Monib, a beautiful guy. Also did the Forum, which was a bit too tame and civilized for a hard case like me. <g>

One can only hope LEC is comparable in effectiveness to est. I wouldn't know but it is probably worth a shot. There is bound to be a lot of "what you don't know that you don't know" in it, and some of it could make a huge difference. Or it could be a bust - just an ego trip for seminar leaders.

Meanwhile I'm looking forward to catching the film, and being in that space again.

Peace.

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by ajax
Howard,

The est training was a great experience, an epiphany. Four days to freedom - just the opposite of a cult experience. My trainer was Monib, a beautiful guy. Also did the Forum, which was a bit too tame and civilized for a hard case like me. <g>

One can only hope LEC is comparable in effectiveness to est. I wouldn't know but it is probably worth a shot. There is bound to be a lot of "what you don't know that you don't know" in it, and some of it could make a huge difference. Or it could be a bust - just an ego trip for seminar leaders.

Meanwhile I'm looking forward to catching the film, and being in that space again.

Peace. It is nice to hear from you. Monib was great, a very good friend of mine in those days who is now a member of the Board of Trustees for the Mill Valley School District in Northern California.

If you were born on the last day of 1969 as your profile indicates, you must have been very young when you took est. How old were you? When you talk about LEC are you referring to the Forum or something else?

Hope you will have a chance to see the film. It is not perfect but it brings back a lot of memories.

Howard

[editor34]

I registered on this Web site just so I can respond to Chris Knipp and Howard Schumann's conversation about est and the Landmark Forum. Without going into my story, I went through the Landmark Education in New Jersey in 2003. It was, and still is the best experience of my life. I am a -34-year-old female, white collar, professional, whose life has changed as a result of my self-realization via Landmark and Werner. I could list of the amazing experiences I have created because of the education, but it would not do it justice. Some of my friends have done est, and some of those same friends have complete the Landmark Education. Est was a different time in history--the 1970s, but the philosophy is carried through in the Landmark Education.

Chris,
Like anything else in life, how can you comment on something you have not experienced? Can you comment on the experience of giving birth to a child? No, because you cannot give birth to a child (unless I am incorrect in thinking that you are a male). I, like you, gathered ever information possible before I chose to do the education. I'm a researcher, a skeptic. I trust no one. I hesitated beyond belief about this education. During my teen years, I saw a pschyologist for about 3 years. Why? Because I had trouble growing up like every teen. When I completed the Forum (3 days and 1 night), I called my parents and told them how much money I owed them for therapy that never "worked." The Forum worked for me.

Please don't judge or make judgments on something you have not experienced. Go through the education and then you can comment all you want.

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by editor34
I registered on this Web site just so I can respond to Chris Knipp and Howard Schumann's conversation about est and the Landmark Forum. Without going into my story, I went through the Landmark Education in New Jersey in 2003. It was, and still is the best experience of my life. I am a -34-year-old female, white collar, professional, whose life has changed as a result of my self-realization via Landmark and Werner. I could list of the amazing experiences I have created because of the education, but it would not do it justice. Some of my friends have done est, and some of those same friends have complete the Landmark Education. Est was a different time in history--the 1970s, but the philosophy is carried through in the Landmark Education.

Very nice to hear from you editor34. It is great to hear that the Landmark Forum worked for you as it has for every member of my family. Thanks for registering to give us your comments.

Howard

[editor34]

Thank you Howard for your reply.

I am very interested in seeing the movie, only wishing that it were longer than an hour.

I am also interested in reading Chris' reply when he has the chance.

After I completed the Forum, laughing, I wondered why this was not a part of our educational institution. Why is studying 2 years of a foreign language a necessity in high school but LE was not? I'm dumbfounded by that theory. As I result, some of my friends who are educators have taking LE and are introducing it to others in the educational world. I look forward to the outcome.

Thank you for your commitment to the conversation you had with Chris. I found it enlightening from both you and Chris.

[ajax]

Howard,

You have a good thread going here.

No, I was born 1948 not 1969. Sorry for the confusion. I did the Forum (and est) before there was a Landmark, when it was still owned by Werner. By LEC, I meant the new Forum, if that is what they call it, which I have not participated in and can't vouch for.

Monib being in leadership in education is perfect. Mill Valley is lucky.

Ron

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by editor34
Thank you Howard for your reply.

I am very interested in seeing the movie, only wishing that it were longer than an hour.

I am also interested in reading Chris' reply when he has the chance.

After I completed the Forum, laughing, I wondered why this was not a part of our educational institution. Why is studying 2 years of a foreign language a necessity in high school but LE was not? I'm dumbfounded by that theory. As I result, some of my friends who are educators have taking LE and are introducing it to others in the educational world. I look forward to the outcome.

Thank you for your commitment to the conversation you had with Chris. I found it enlightening from both you and Chris. Of course, Werner's initial goal was to have the training part of the educational process but I think he was too far ahead of his time for that to happen. Maybe someday in the near future.

If you want Chris to reply, perhaps the best thing to do (if you haven't done so already) is to reply directly to one of his posts.

Best
Howard

[Chris Knipp]

Chris,
Like anything else in life, how can you comment on something you have not experienced? Can you comment on the experience of giving birth to a child? No, because you cannot give birth to a child (unless I am incorrect in thinking that you are a male).

I guess it all depends on what you mean by comment and experience. Elsewhere I have said to Howard that I have participated in 12-Step recovery, and feel that I have gotten some of the same kinds of benefits from that which are attributed to the Werner Erhard programs. If you read through the thread you will see that while the ride was bumpy at times, I performed a useful function as a questioner and devil's advocate, so that the discussion went on. Otherwise it might have stopped shortly after the initial post.

I don't know what "comment" means to you. There are men who know a great deal about what the experience of giving birth is like and are able to articulate it -- to the benefit of women. If one had to "experience" everything one wrote about, there would be no fiction., and perhaps no science, no psychology and no biology. Men can't give birth; indeed that is so. If one were to adhere to your simple assertion, one would have to claim that men couldn't write about what it's like to bewomen and vice versa. Dickens couldn't have written about the death of Little Nell because he hadn't died. Of course he had seen the death of children; and more importantly, he had expeirneced death emotionally and imaginatively. One is able to speak of things one hasn't directly experienced by virtue of imagination, projection, extrapolation. Nonetheless of course there are experiences that one can't truly "know" without experiencing them onself, and est graduates claim that that's the nature of the est experience. But again, what is experience; and what does comment mean, and what does it mean to truly know? These are questions that can be discussed in any program of free and open inquiry, where participants are allowed to discuss ideas and experiences about which they are not certain. One can't really move about in the world of ideas without being willing and able to deal with things one has not directly experienced. To restrict all "comment" to direct "experience" is to limit us to living at a very primitive level.

I approached this topic with great skepticism, having been unconvinced previously of the value of est and the Landmark Forums and wondering about the serious criticisms leveled at them. But as a result of this discussion and the little amount of research that I've done on the Web in connection with it, I have come to believe that many people have in fact greatly benefitted from est and Landmark and are happy with the experience. A lot of the criticisms and rumors about the negative aspects of Erhard's programs seem to have been invented or grossly exaggerated. That's as far as I'm prepared to go, but for a person as skeptical as me, that's going pretty far.

[ajax]

Howard,

Re your discussion of responsibility, I have to take issue with what you were saying to Chris, that we are responsible. First, it is not clear if you are talking about "we" as in "all human beings" as a species, or whether you mean each of us, individually. But I will assume from your examples you mean each of us being responsible for our individual experience.

Now, of course, that is not what I got from the training. What I got was that I was (we all are) essentially an automaton, wired and conditioned for quite predictable behavior (racket) in response to stimuli - in a sense, responsible for nothing, free will being just a meaningless phrase I learned to explain my behavior and hopefully have it look good. There is no ' "is" responsible' in human being, except when we create it.

The transformation comes about in seeing the value of, and choosing to be responsible, by which is meant see myself as the source of my experience and to be ultimately accountable for my response in the world. The question of "blame" is a largely a separate matter.

Until I make this choice of responsibility in all things, despite what the law and conventional morality may say, I am not actually responsible for anything, just essentially a machine or a slave to convention, and this is the way most people go about life, if you look at them objectively.

This and several other points that I think you have inadvertently misdescribed appear to have created some stumbling blocks for Chris. Chris has made some good points in his posts and his skepticism is quite justified in light of the difficulties we all have in talking about this stuff. I would categorically deny that there is anything like promotion of irrationality in Werner's work (I don't end up believing I cause the weather), but there is much that is impossible to transmit in concise everyday English vocabulary. Some people will say that this suggests that it is nonsense (What kind of a nut would say I am responsible for my own persecution?), but that merely indicates they do not realize how much of our thinking and feeling is circumscribed by received vocabulary, or the power of a conversation toward freedom to create a new and better experience of life.

[editor34]

Thank you for replying. I absolutely understanding what you are asking regarding "comment." I honestly mean it in its most simplistic term. Fiction is fiction. To suggest that a human knows the experience of another human is fiction. If I cut my finger from a peice of paper, it may bring up a memory for me of touching fire when I was 5 years old; however, if you were to cut your finger on a peice of paper, it may remind you of being cut by a knife. Two totally different experiences of being cut. Chris, What does it feel like to cut your finger on a piece of paper?

My point is that even two women who have given birth may know the experience of giving birth--they know the experience for themselves, not the whole human species, not every woman. Having said that, we are primitive. Someone tells us what is and we say "okay." Free will? We have it, but how many of us use it? Who told you it was wrong to put your elbows on the table while eating? Someone did, and we believed it. Free will? Hmmm, I question that. I believe we as human beings are capable of free will. In our life, we chose to be who we are, or even better, who we think we are. You wrote that you are a skeptical person. Well of course you are because you said you are. Whatever you say is thruth. What would happen if you stopped being skeptical for one minute?

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by ajax
Howard,

Re your discussion of responsibility, I have to take issue with what you were saying to Chris, that we are responsible. First, it is not clear if you are talking about "we" as in "all human beings" as a species, or whether you mean each of us, individually. But I will assume from your examples you mean each of us being responsible for our individual experience.

Yes, we as individuals are 100% responsible for our experience, though as you point out, this may not not be brought into conscious awareness until we can notice that we are playing our mental tape recorder and choose to operate at cause rather than at effect.


The transformation comes about in seeing the value of, and choosing to be responsible, by which is meant see myself as the source of my experience and to be ultimately accountable for my response in the world. The question of "blame" is a largely a separate matter. I have no problem with that at all.


Until I make this choice of responsibility in all things, despite what the law and conventional morality may say, I am not actually responsible for anything, just essentially a machine or a slave to convention, and this is the way most people go about life, if you look at them objectively. Yes, from time to time I do things mechanically until I catch myself and remember that I am the cause of my experience.


This and several other points that I think you have inadvertently misdescribed appear to have created some stumbling blocks for Chris. Chris has made some good points in his posts and his skepticism is quite justified in light of the difficulties we all have in talking about this stuff. I would categorically deny that there is anything like promotion of irrationality in Werner's work (I don't end up believing I cause the weather), but there is much that is impossible to transmit in concise everyday English vocabulary. Some people will say that this suggests that it is nonsense (What kind of a nut would say I am responsible for my own persecution?), but that merely indicates they do not realize how much of our thinking and feeling is circumscribed by received vocabulary, or the power of a conversation toward freedom to create a new and better experience of life. Well, we may have a somewhat different experience of the work. You may be thinking of irrationality in perjorative terms but when Werner says the only reality is experience (consciousness), he is not talking about what is reasonable or even what is rational but about our ability to create from nothing. I would rather state it as that there is no difference between the physical and the mental and that reality is malleable (yes even the weather) . According to physicist David Bohm, "In human life, meaning is being" or in the very act of interpreting the universe, we are creating it. "In a way", he says, "we could say that we are the totality of our meanings." Bohm's ideas as Werner's spring from a vision of wholeness, a vision that allows people to transform their consciuosness and restore to our world a deeper sense of interconnectedness and meaning.