The Indescribable Experience

October 1978, Vol. 7, No.10 – by Eleanor Links Hoover: From Human Behavior
One reason why the public seldom sees much deep, penetrating reporting and/or commentary about any contemporary psychological movement is that it is distinctly unfashionable for journalists to write anything that may be interpreted as favorable about such phenomena. Never mind whether it’s true or not. The silent rule is, “If you can’t be critical, don’t write it.”

Well, this is to serve notice to any potential head-lopper that I choose not to be intimidated. Sorry. I just can’t join the cynical press bandwagon. est is – and remains – one of the most fascinating movements, events, phenomena (take your pick, it still defies analysis) I have ever observed and reported on. The fact that it isn’t what it seems to be (what is?) and that it is as elusive as quicksilver to describe only enhances the fascination as far as I’m concerned. For me, it is, among other things, an excursion into High Philosophy – a miniseries of sorts into issues raised by Plato, Sartre, Wittgenstein. Bill Bartley, philosophy professor at California State University at Hayward once told me, “What est is doing is making available for the first time on a wide, popular basis, the key ideas and problems of philosophy.”

Roy Scheider

Roy Scheider

From The Graduate Review Jan/Feb 1981

In September’s Playboy interview, Roy Scheider, star of The French Connection, Jaws, and All that Jazz, talked about his est training as an experience of theater: “You come to understand that within each of us is a tremendous beauty, passion, joy, and love for life; you realize that everyone is you… I’ve never had a better time in my life. I never laughed so much, I never cried so much. I was actually dazzled. I couldn’t believe that degree of intimacy could be achieved in a hotel room with 300 people… And I was one of the actors in the show. It was sensational.”

TRANSFORMATION: THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF WERNER ERHARD – Review by 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.

Werner Erhard on Transformation

Transformation does not negate what has gone before; rather it fulfills it. Creating the context of a world that works for everyone is not just another step forward in human history; it is the context out of which our history will begin to make sense.

Werner Erhard

Transformation

The Graduate Review

 

Tiger Woods’ father, Earl Woods, credits est for his success as a father:

Tiger Woods:
The 1996 Sports Illustrated
Sportsman of the Year

In the 1996 Sports Illustrated article in which Tiger Woods is named the 1996 Sportsman of the Year, Earl Woods talks about the impact of the est training. He says that what he learned in est allowed him to devote himself to his son and his son’s development into the world’s most renowned athlete.

“Not long after Tiger’s birth, when Earl has left the military to become a purchaser for McDonnell Douglas, he finds himself in a long discussion with a woman he knows. She senses the power pooling inside him, the friction. “You have so much to give,” she tells him, “but you’re not giving it. You haven’t even scratched the surface of your potential.” She suggests he try est, Erhard Seminars Training, an intensive self-discovery and self-actualizing technique, and it hits Earl hard, direct mortar fire to the heart. What he learns is that his overmuscular sense of responsibility for others has choked his potential.

“To the point,” says Earl, “that I wouldn’t even buy a handkerchief for myself. It went all the way back to the day my father died, when I was 11, and my mother put her arm around me after the funeral and said, ‘You’re the man of the house now.’ I became the father that young, looking out for everyone else, and then she died two years later.

“What I learned through est was that by doing more for myself, I could do much more for others. Yes, be responsible, but love life, and give people the space to be in your life, and allow yourself room to give to others. That caring and sharing is what’s most important, not being responsible for everyone else. Which is where Tiger comes in. What I learned led me to give so much time to Tiger, and to give him the space to be himself, and not to smother him with dos and don’ts. I took out the authority aspect and turned it into companionship. I made myself vulnerable as a parent. When you have to earn respect from your child, rather than demanding it because it’s owed to you as the father, miracles happen. I realized that, through him, the giving could take a quantum leap. What I could do on a limited scale, he could do on a global scale.”

At last, the river is undammed, and Earl’s whole life makes sense. At last, he sees what he was searching for, a pattern. No more volunteering for missions — he has his. Not simply to be a great golfer’s father. To be destiny’s father. His son will change the world.”   From, “The Chosen One”, by Gary Smith, published in Sports Illustrated Magazine.  http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/1996/sportsman/1996.html

Werner Erhard Leading a seminar

Conservative Thinkers Think Again

Conservative Thinkers Think Again
by Patricia Cohen, Sunday, 20 July 2008 NewYork Times,Week in Review

Almost anything can happen in an election year, but among conservatives, almost everyone seems to agree that no matter who captures the White House in November ‘08, the movement that has ruled the Republican Party since the 1960’s and mostly dominated American politics since 1980 has lost its way. Across the spectrum of the right, writers and thinkers have turned their relentless analysis inward, a kind of political EST seminar aimed at self-transformation.

The Age of Miracles

from “The Age of Miracles: Embracing the New Midlife”
Marianne Williamson, Hay House Inc. Publishers, January 31, 2008

“According to Werner Erhard, founder of the est organization, we can live our lives either acting out of circumstances or acting out of a vision. And when it comes to midlife, we can forge a new vision, a new conversation, to take us beyond the limited thought-forms that have defined its parameters for generations. The circumstances are fixed, but our experience of them is not. Every situation is experienced within the context of the conversation surrounding it, both in our heads and in our culture.”

New Conversations That Lead to New Possibilities

Werner Erhard is a teacher, consultant, and the creator of one of the most influential technologies of the last 30 years, the technology of transformation. This technology has been the basis for two widely popular and effective educational programs, The est Training and The Landmark Forum, as well as a successful corporate consulting business and several other enterprises and organizations. In 1983, Werner accepted the request of the newly formed Mastery Foundation to consult in the creation of a transformational program for those who minister and serve others. Since then, he has continued to donate his expertise and services to the Mastery Foundation, at times developing new program material and leading courses.

See: http://www.masteryfoundation.org/peace/ireland/blockanderhard/