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.

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

The est Training

“The way est happened was very simple.  I had this transformational experience.  I had a transformation.  Whoever I had been up until that point, I no longer was.  And it was on my way to work, and I happened to be – not anything significant about being on the Golden Gate Bridge – but I happened to be there, and that’s when I had the realization that what my life was about was really meaningless.  It was empty.  And this realization that the things that I thought were so significant, like looking good and winning – just the normal things that I guess most people think are important – that they really had no importance, that it was all empty and meaningless.  When I broke through the sadness, broke through the sense of despair at having wasted my life, I all of a sudden realized, “My God, I’m free.”  What – free – what does that mean to be free?   Free to choose, free to create a life that was worth living.  So I took a day with my staff – shared with them the best I could something that would allow them to create for themselves the kind of transformational experience that I had had.  And we all decided, okay, we’ll do this.  Instead of selling books, we’ll do this.” –Werner Erhard, 2005, from Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard

Werner Erhard Foundation

“The ultimate purpose of the Foundation is the full realization of the promise of human beings and their institutions. The Foundation’s intention is to create the space for an explosion of knowledge and attainment in the area of human consciousness and human experience similar to the one that occurred 250 years ago in the physical sciences which has dramatically affected humankind’s material well-being.”

-Werner Erhard, October 4, 1973

Gonneke Spits

Gonneke Spits, one of the founding staff members of est discusses the original est Training in this video on the Werner Erhard Video site.

est Graduates shaping history

Did you know that there is a website for est graduates to connect and share what they got from the est Training? Here is what it says at http://erhardseminarstraining.com:

“A reunion for you and all the people who dared to create a new possibility for themselves and their lives. It is now the 21st Century and there is much talk of possibility and transformational leadership – but where did this all start? In 1971, in a hotel ballroom in San Francisco over 35 years ago, transformation burst onto the national stage.

Werner Erhard and the est Training brought to the forefront the ideas of transformation, personal responsibility, accountability, and possibility – and over the next decade, over a million people “Got it”. The est Training was as much a sign of the times as bell bottoms, peace rallies and space travel.

Over the years, more than two million people from all walks of life participated in est or the programs that grew out of Erhard Seminars 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. Enjoy the essence of what est created and the impact it has made on society through the archives, video and vivid shares on this site. Stand up and acknowledge how you have made a difference in this world out of having participated in the est Training. Celebrate in this tribute to the est Training, Werner Erhard and you.”

What about you?  What did you create for your life out of having done the est Training?  And what of those lessons learned can we bring forth today that might make a difference to how the world is going?

Werner Erhard Video 2016

Werner Erhard and Professor Jonathan D. Moreno discuss Werner’s ideas, the est Training, and more at the University of Pennsylvania in April 2016 where the film Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard was featured in their First Annual Bioethics Film Festival.  Watch the full discussion between Werner Erhard and Jonathan D. Moreno:

What the est Training was and was not

“The fact is, no one needs the training. It is not medicine. If you are ill, you need medical attention. If you are mentally ill, you need therapy. The training is not medicine or therapy. If you are hungry, you need food. You need air. Actually you need someone to love and someone to love you. You need to feel some self-respect and the esteem of others. Without these, we do not function very well as human beings.

The training is none of these. It does not solve problems. It is true that some problems dissolve in the training, but not because it is the purpose of the training for people to work on their problems in the training. The training is not about people’s problems per se. What the training is about is related to those rare moments in life, which while rare, seem to come into everyone’s life at some time or another. They are moments in which one is absolutely complete, whole, fulfilled – that is to say, satisfied. (I limit the word gratification to mean the filling of a need or desire, or the achievement of a goal. I use the word satisfaction to mean the experience of being complete.)

Each of us has experienced moments in our lives when we are fully alive -when we know – without thinking – that life is exactly as it is in this moment. In such moments, we have no wish for it to be different, or better, or more. We have no disappointment, no comparison with ideals, no sense that it is not what we worked for. We feel no protective or defensive urge – and have no desire to hold on – to store up – or to save. Such moments are perfect in themselves. We experience them as being complete.

We do not need to experience completion. People function successfully without such moments. Like the training, such moments are not something we `should’ have. Like the training, such moments do not make us any better. We are not smarter or sexier or more successful or richer or any more clever. These moments, these experiences of being complete, are sufficient unto themselves. Like the training, such moments are not even ‘good’ for you – like vitamins or exercise or things of that sort.

In the training, one finds there is something beyond that – the opportunity to discover that space within yourself where such moments originate, actually where you and life originate. In the training, one experiences a transformation -a shift from being a character in the story of life to being the space in which the story occurs – the playwright creating the play, as it were, consciously, freely, and completely.”

The est Standard Training,  Werner Erhard and Victor Gioscia, San Francisco, Calif.

Published in Biosciences Communication 3:104-122, 1977

The est Training – by Werner Erhard

“Fundamentally, the est training is an occasion in which participants have an experience, uniquely their own, in a situation which enables and encourages them to do that fully and responsibly. I am suggesting that the best way to learn about est is to look into yourself, because whatever est is about is in your self. There are some who think that I have discovered something that other people ought to know. That is not so. What I have discovered is that people know things that they do not know that they know, the knowing of which can nurture them and satisfy them and allow them to experience an expanded sense of aliveness in their lives. The training is an occasion for them to have that experience – to get in touch with what they actually already know but are not really aware of.

“The training is about the experience of love, the ability to love and the ability to experience being loved, not the concept or story of it – and it is about the experience of happiness, and the ability to be happy and share happiness, not the concept, story or symbols of it. In short, the training is about who we are, not what we do, or what we have, or what we do not do or do not have. It is about the self as the self, not merely the story or symbols of self.” – From The est Standard Training, by Werner Erhard and Victor Gioscia, 1977