A Few Excerpts from: The Best Of Est?

Werner Erhard's legacy lives on in a kinder, gentler and lucrative version of his self-help seminars
Time Magazine/March 16, 1998
By Charlotte Faltermayer

When Werner Erhard (born John Paul Rosenberg) founded Erhard Seminars Training, Inc. in 1971, the former used-car salesman from Philadelphia had a hook. Born of the theater-of-the-absurd …( this phrase was used by Dale as he asked me if I had ever read “Waiting for Godot” in one of those talks we had without any witnesses. PL)

atmosphere of the late 1960s, est (Latin for "it is") promised to help people get "it," whatever "it" was. ..

(What ‘it’ is depends upon your perspective on “it.” What you believe is happening also depends upon from where you see the START of the action, as is demonstrated inside the ‘training’ which Dale took and publicly admits to taking. PL)

…Unlike Erhard, est is still around--sort of. In 1991, before he left the U.S. , Erhard sold the "technology" behind his seminars to his employees, who formed a new company called the Landmark Education Corp., with Erhard's brother Harry Rosenberg at the helm. Rosenberg admits that Erhard was in Toronto briefly last June for a family reunion, but will not elaborate

But he has proved to be an able keeper of his brother's legacy. Landmark appears to be thriving. At its core is a four-part "Curriculum for Living," which starts with a 3 1/2-day seminar called the Forum and proceeds to courses that expand upon its brand of enlightenment. Since 1991, approximately 300,000 mostly professional and well-educated seekers have taken the introductory Forum (an estimated 700,000 took Erhard-era seminars). Revenues, which had been averaging $34 million annually, hit $48 million in 1997, with profits approaching 4%. Landmark is becoming a global brand name, with 42 offices in 11 countries, including a well-appointed San Francisco headquarters. Says Rosenberg : "If we were doing a bad job, we wouldn't have the growth that we have."

(Value judgment required here.PL)

The secret of its success? Landmark lacks est's showcase celebrity following, but its programs are not as costly (tuition is down some 50% from Erhard days); they are not as lengthy (the basic course was originally spread over two weekends); and--most important--they are less in-your-face, nearly devoid of the shouting and door monitoring imposed by est's stern trainers. Says a former estie

(Dales’ self definition in writing to me used when I asked him what he was doing and what , if anything, he wanted PL)

who attended a 1997 Forum: "est was much more militant.

(When information is pulled out of something or the true starting point is no longer seen, what something is can become irresolvable and improvable as well can’t it? PL)

You had to have a doctor's note just to go to the bathroom. People humiliated themselves for it. est tried to break you. Landmark doesn't do that." …

At a recent Forum weekend in a nondescript room on Manhattan 's East Side , 52 men and 47 women gathered for a variety of reasons. The meek sought a voice; the proud, humbling; the lonely, companionship.

(Or it could be the opposite of this too couldn’t it? “it is about domination.” PL )

All had signed a form stating that they are mentally and physically well. … The Forum started promptly at 9 on a Friday morning, when a svelte, spiky-haired woman named Beth Handel walked in and introduced herself as the Forum leader. The Forum, she said, is a game called transformation. Like every other game, it calls for good sportsmanship. One should be "coachable," or open-minded about the Forum's concepts, and committed to "forwarding the action." The name of the game is participation or, more specifically, "sharing," which was to take place at three microphones. The weekend, Handel warned, will be "an emotional roller-coaster ride."

(Do you noticed the similarity to ‘mental illness’ speak as performed by the professionals? PL )

..Handel, 39, then drew diagrams on a blackboard as she held forth on a series of concepts: facts have no meaning; it is the stories we concoct out of those facts that give them meaning.

(Actually facts DO have meaning but concepts apart from concrete facts do not. However the ‘stories’ concocted by the participants here in my fascinating case are what gave the meaning to them that I was a mental case if I thought this happened at Dale’s direction. PL)

… She cautioned that Landmark's ideas ("Be for each other like that" and "People 'is' to death") aren't meant to fit together: "The Forum is holographic. It's not linear."

(In other words it transcends space/time PL)
… For Richard Giordanella, 49, a software executive, the Forum was enough: "I'm still high on the Forum's main message, that my life is in my control. But I can do without the narcotic effect of their reinforcement."

(No one has total control over their life. No one. To believe that one does is to by into an illusion. In my own opinion, that is what is being ‘sold’ here PL )

Others, though, are hooked.
…Critics say Landmark is an elaborate marketing game that relies heavily on volunteers. Says Tom Johnson, an "exit counselor" often summoned by concerned parents to tend to alumni: "They tire your brain; they make you vulnerable." Says critic Liz Sumerlin: "The participants end up becoming recruiters. That's the whole purpose." Psychiatrists who speak on Landmark's behalf dispute these claims. But Sumerlin says a 1993 Forum turned her fiance (now her ex) into a robot.

*(Interesting isn’t it that so many of the psychiatrized say that talking to psychiatrists is like talking to robots. I have called the one sided conversations like talking to automatons programmed to operate like stimulus /response machines. I don’t think this should be all that surprising though since what they want it to control those ‘others’ whom they see as less than human, meaning less than THEM and therefore subject to their ‘justifiable’ control. PL)

She organized an anti-Landmark hot line and publications clearinghouse. Landmark officials made sounds to sue her.

(I don’t understand. Why would they need to do that? If everything and nothing are the same thing, why would anything bother the Landmark people? Also are they not totally responsible for everything that happens to them? If so, shouldn’t they just be accepting anything from that frame of reference? Isn’t it said by them that there is no right or wrong; it is all just about changing your point of view, or perspective on that? Don’t the experts know how to do that better than anyone? PL )

Landmark alumnus Walter Plywaski, a Colorado electronics engineer who took on the company after his daughter ran up a $3,000 tab on courses, thinks Erhard is still pulling the strings. Says he: "Erhard is like the Cheshire Cat.
(A reference to Alice in Wonderland, a story to which we nuts often compare our experience of groups including the psychiatric profession itself.PL)

He has gone away, but the smile is there, hanging over everything." … Indeed, the transformation has been such a success that it was the subject of a recent case study by the Harvard Business School . According to the study's co-author, Karen Wruck, the product that Landmark sells is "an abrupt or jarring change, like an 'aha'"--a "peculiar" one, certainly, but patently marketable.

--With Reporting by Richard Woodbury / San Francisco
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