This was the question I poked into a Google and a Yahoo search. Jesus, is there a lot of stuff on him out there in the Cyber-universe. Very little of it is complimentary, not that I or Werner or a whole bunch of us who went through the original training in the 1970s gives a shit. It doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t matter (paraphrasing Erhart)
Yes, he was a used car salesman. Yes, he likely did have some physical run-ins with an ex-wife. Women can be pretty combative, too. Yes, there appears to be a merging of Scientology (a ‘religion’ founded by a lousy writer of science fiction whose best all time seller is Dianetics), some Esalin, some Dale Carnegie, and many other disciplines, including a smattering of Sufism.
Many, new creative things of the mind and of, say, consumer goods, breakthrough drugs, new technologies and so on WERE ALL combinations of other research, publications by PhDs working in various fields, and even someone as simple as a shoe maker. Why criticize Erhart for doing what every individual, company, and group does every day. A synthesis of existing ideas often creates a new horizon. Anyone having a problem with that can leave the room; You have no agreement to sit there.
It is true that a segment of those who completed the two weekend event (the Training) picked up and used a lot of est’s internal jargon, took it into the world and tried to use it with people NOT having been through the experience. This created great resistance, and those who used the jargon publicly were known as, “est holes.”
Let’s take that a little further by going backward. Rumi, a Sufi poet who lived over a thousand years ago said (paraphrasing), ‘the one hanging by the neck from the tree is the one who could not keep the secrets.’ Are the Sufis a cult–no. Was est a cult, no it was not.
We all came through the end of the second weekend having done something we called, “getting it,” or, “got it.” Each and every one of the ‘graduates’ will use different words to describe what ‘getting it,’ meant. In large measure this is founded in our lack of understanding the meaning of words. For example, if some one says, ‘the sky is very blue today,’ your mental picture of the color, ‘very blue,’ is quite different than my image of the color, ‘very blue.’ Another example–someone says, ‘I am a spiritual person.’ The words, ‘I am a person,’ are fine, yet what my picture of a person is is quite likely different from yours. The biggest problem with the phrase, ‘I am a spiritual person,’ is in the meaning of, ’spiritual.’ What does, ’spiritual,’ mean, really? Does it mean the you you call, ‘I,’ likes animals, is a vegetarian as you believe it is better for you and the Earth, believes in a being larger than yourself, a father or mother of creation, that you meditate without the guidance of a teacher or spiritual master? Just what the fuck do you mean?!!
‘Getting it,’ for me took the form of an interval of unknown length (perhaps no length at all; out of time) when the dialoging with my mind (we all have that affliction) suddenly stopped. I did not know it had stopped until it started up again. When it did I knew things I had not known before, I knew experientially that there is no past, there is no future, there is only NOW, this moment. A moment of that nature is life altering and my life took some dramatic turns following that April in 1975. I took risks I would not have taken before, as in quitting a regular job and starting a business. It worked wonderfully well. I started three more until 2000. They all were profitable, based on delivering what was promised, and going beyond just meeting expectations (another quagmire). It became easier to step off the edge and risk. See, risking IS living.
I again turn to Rumi: “Now is the only moment there is.” A Sufi Master once told me as I was driving him to the airport in pouring rain, “You know at every moment everything is in balance.” A dedicated Sufi of many years on his path once told me, “There is something in every moment.” Another Sufi Master, Hazrat Shah Angha, asked a seeker, “Why are you here?” The seeker said, “To find God.” Angha replied, “God is not lost, you are lost.” I once sat before a Sufi Master he asked, “Why are you here?” Do you see a pattern and directness to this question? I replied, “I want to know if there is life after death and do we reincarnate?” He responded, “Why are you worried about another life when you cannot handle the one you have.”
Referencing above the recombination of disciplines into a realization beyond time and words, it is said Erhart, ‘ripped off,’ Scientology, and did so to other groups. Here the assertion is worth making that there was more Zen and Sufism in est than just about anything else.
Essentially, Werner Erhart and est had some 700,000 people go through the, ‘training,’ before he took leave and turned it over to a group that now calls the training, ‘The Forum.’ I sat through it once and it is not the same as the original ‘est training,’ and I cannot say more as it would only be conjecture and as useless as bagged fertilizer.
Get this, if nothing else from reading these words: You can change who your are, your belief system, your actions, and everything about you in an instant. Yes, in an instant. When that moment comes what difference does your, ‘past,’ make? What does you future look like to you, a rehash of your, ‘past?’ What does it matter if Erhart was a used car salesman? So What? Who Cares? What he is NOW, in this moment, is the only Erhart who exists.
Those who don’t know speak. Those who know remain silent. As such, enough is now written here and so it stops.
I leave this post with this: Who you are is not your body, not your thoughts, not the stories about your life and predicament, not your health, not your car, not your job, not your impressive social circle, not your money, nothing. The YOU you are rides around in the flesh-bag of your body, which is not even your own and is borrowed from the earth, air, water and so on. It imprisons YOU. Someday YOU will leave it behind and return what it borrowed to its rightful owner–the Earth.
