The Hunger Project

Celebrating 50 Years!

It is now the 21st Century and there is much talk of possibility, making a difference and transformational leadership – but where did this all start? October 1971, 50 years ago in the Jack Tar hotel, a hotel that was noted in San Francisco as the future, a building that was said to be 30 years ahead of its time. In this hotel ballroom Werner Erhard, way ahead of his time, was responsible for transformation bursting on to the scene and the national stage. Werner Erhard and the est Training brought to the forefront the idea of transformation, personal responsibility, accountability and possibility – and in less than a decade a half a million people across the globe “Got It”.

50 Years of Transformation

The Purpose of the est Training was to transform one’s ability to experience living so that the situations one had been trying to change or had been putting up with clear up just in the process of life itself.

Over the years more than three million people from all walks of life participated in est or the programs that grew out of Werner Erhard’s est Training. Professionals and leaders from government, business and health industries, as well as people in the fields of arts and entertainment actively participated in the programs of est.

The est Training

“The real purpose of est was to create space for people to participate in life – to experience true space and freedom in life.”
Werner Erhard

Being of Service

My notion about service is that service is actually that kind of relationship in which you have a commitment to the person.

Service is about knowing who the other person is, and being able to tolerate giving space to their garbage.

What most people do is to give space to people’s quality and deal with their garbage.

Actually, you should do it the other way around.

Deal with who they are and give space to their garbage.

Keep interacting with them as if they were perfect.

And every time you get garbage from them, give space to the garbage and go back and interact with them as if they were perfect.

~Werner Erhard

Giving One’s Word

Any time I give my word to others, I have also given my word to myself to be good for my word. If I hold myself up as a person of integrity and do not honor my word to myself, it is highly unlikely that I will be able to be in integrity with others. – Werner Erhard

Taking On Life Like An Opportunity

From “The Heart of the Matter”

Breakthroughs

Speaking Being: Werner Erhard and Martin Heidegger

Groundbreaking ideas are introduced to a new generation of thinkers via the bestselling book, Speaking Being: Werner Erhard, Martin Heidegger, and a New Possibility of Being Human. Erhard’s transformational ontological work and Heidegger’s philosophical work are brought together for the first time.

Through a comparative side-by-side display and analysis of a transcript of Erhard’s Forum, with his ideas and methodology, combined with Heidegger’s philosophical ideas, the authors make the power of Erhard’s ontological rhetoric and Heidegger’s often difficult-for-the-layman ideas available to a wide range of audiences. It brings to life complex yet important new ideas for scholars at work within a variety of academic disciplines, and provides an entry to anyone interested in the possibility of and the access to being for human beings.

 

Foreword to Speaking Being

Professor Michael Zimmerman’s Afterword to the book Speaking Being: Werner Erhard, Martin Heidegger, and the Possibility of Being Human is his first-person account of discovering parallels between Erhard and Heidegger, and then learning of Hyde and Kopp’s remarkable, in-depth exploration of this unexpected relationship.

Erhard and Heidegger, two seemingly disparate thinkers, arrived at a similar understanding of human being, and they arrived at such understanding independently. Does such deep agreement give credibility to the shared understanding?