Werner Erhard - est: Communication in a Context of Compassion

Reprinted from Current Psychiatric Therapies Vol. 18
Edited by Jules H. Masserman, M.D.
© 1979 by Grune & Stratton, Inc.

Werner Erhard and
Victor Gioscia, Ph.D.

est: Communication in a
Context of Compassion

FORMAT OF THE EST STANDARD TRAINING

The est Standard Training is approximately 60 hours long and is
usually presented on two successive weekends: two Saturdays and two
Sundays, beginning at 9 a.m. and ending after midnight, when the
trainer observes that the results for that day have been reached.
"Breaks" are usually taken every four hours and there is usually one
meal break during the day. People eat breakfast before and some have a
snack after the training day. Included in the $300 tuition are pre-, mid-,
and post-training seminars. These are each about 3'/i hours in duration,
and take place on three weekday evenings — one before, one between,
and one after the training weekends.

Approximately 250 people take the training together at one time,
seated in a hotel ballroom. Chairs are arranged theatre style, facing a
low platform on which a chair, a lectern, and two chalkboards are
placed. Everyone wears a nametag printed in letters large enough to be
read from the platform.

In accord with the Presidential Introduction to this issue, these annual volumes will
include, whenever appropriate, one or more chapters on popularly accepted movements
of psychiatric interest. The following is an account of est not previously available in the
psychiatric literature, written by the founder of est and an est research consultant. It has
been edited to conform to Current Psychiatric Therapies standards.

117

118

CURRENT PSYCHIATRIC THERAPIES: 1978

CONTENT OF THE TRAINING

In est there are four principal topics addressed in the training —
belief, experience, reality, and self. Trainees have the opportunity to
examine their experience of each of these topics in three ways: (l)
lectures by the trainer. (2) "processes" (guided experiences, usually
with eyes closed, and (3) sharing — communications from individual
trainees to the trainer and/or to the class.

The following chart presents these schematically:

Topic

Process

Sharing

Day I Belief

2 Experience

3 Reality

4 |elf

Body
Truth
Center
Mind

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Trainees realize early in the training that the trainer is not actually
"lecturing" — i.e.. presenting conceptual information — but presenting
the trainees with a chance to "look and see what is so for you in your
own experience" about the topics discussed. Similarly, trainees soon
realize that "processes" are opportunities to examine the records of
previous experiences in the privacy and safety of their own experience
(or "space") and that, as they wish, they may or may not share what is
so for them.

Day 1

On day 1, after an assistant has read the ground rules to the
trainees, the participants spend the remainder of the day observing the
role of belief \n defining their experience of living. The purpose of the
est training, which is carefully read and examined in detail, is the
transformation of one's ability to experience living so that problem
situations clear up just in the process of life itself.

The trainer's "attitude" seems to trainees to be one of uncommon
certainty — as if to say, "This training works. I say only and exactly
what I mean. Pay attention if you want your money's worth. See if
what I say is true for you. Don't believe me. Look in your own
experience. It's up to you."

The trainer says unusual things, each designed to present trainees
with an opportunity to examine whether the statement is true for the
trainee. Examples are:

est: Erhard, Gioscia 119

"Anything truly experienced will disappear."

"What you resist will persist."

"The truth believed is a lie."

"Understanding is very low on the scale of experience — creating

your own experience is very high."

It becomes clear to most trainees very early that they are in the
presence of an individual who is engaged in an astonishingly candid
confrontation of the full range of human experience, in a way that does
not fit easily — if at all — into the trainees' preconceptions. This style of
confrontation itself becomes a demonstration of the topic under discus-
sion. The trainer seems completely beyond "point of view," able to
speak as easily from one trainee's viewpoint as another's without
seeming to have one of his or her own. In addition, where the trainer
seems completely able to re-create each and every trainee's sharing,
an individual trainee seems stuck only with his or her own point of
view. This inability to speak except from within one's point of view, at
least from some point of view, is belief, the trainer says.

The discussion of belief lasts several hours. Trainees begin to
wonder, Is it possible to speak from no point of view?

The trainer then describes what a "process" is and assists trainees
to prepare to "do" one. Trainees are informed they will be asked to
close their eyes and "take what comes up for you" as the trainer asks
them, for example, "Locate a sensation in your right foot. . . . Fine.
Now locate a sensation in your right calf. . . . Good," and so on
through the body.

The trainer explains that there is no right or wrong way to do a
process. Whatever the traineee becomes aware of is fine. To observe
what one is aware of in one's body, a person engages in the process of
"observing," or noticing, not only what one senses, but also that these
"senses" are amenable to "observation."

A short "process" is done, locating body sensation. It lasts
for 15 or 20 minutes, after which trainees "share." They are asked to
stand after being recognized by the trainer and to use a microphone and
to say whatever they would like to say. They may relate an experi-
ence, or comment on some aspect of the process, or ask a question.
These are addressed to the trainer or to the class, but not to the sharing
of other trainees. In this way trainees are encouraged to focus on their
own experience and are reminded that the training takes place in the
privacy of one's own "space," not in interchanges with the group.

Before they leave for the night, participants are asked to locate in
their lives a "persistent unwanted condition" and to return with a

120 CURRENT PSYCHIATRIC THERAPIES: 1978

phrase describing it in the morning, when they will "observe" it during
the "truth process." The trainer points out that by "persistent un-
wanted conditions" are meant such things as (1) minor headaches, (2)
uncomfortable feelings or emotions, and/or (3) considerations or evalua-
tions of others' experience. The trainer notes that the truth process will
assist them to uncover the role of belief in these conditions.

Day 2

After some opening sharing, the trainer outlines the "anatomy of
an experience" and discusses the fact that inherent in the nature of
most experiences are sensations, perceptions, thoughts, feelings and
emotions, attitudes, points of view, mental states, considerations,
evaluations, judgments, and images from the past. Trainees discuss
their persistent conditions (or "items") with the trainer, who reminds
them that "a completely experienced item will disappear."

Then for approximately 90 minutes, the trainer asks trainees sim-
ply to "observe" what they become aware of as he instructs them to
"look at" what sensations are associated with their item, then what
perceptions, then what thoughts, and so on through images from the
past.

After this process most trainees share that their item has
disappeared — that their belief in the condition is the cause of its persis-
tence, without which the "condition" vanishes. In short, trainees find
they have begun to "observe" — i.e., to transcend belief. The shift from
conceptual to experiential reality has begun.

During the evening of day 2, there is a long two-part process called
the "danger process" during which trainees are given the chance to
"observe" the fear or acute embarrassment most people feel when
really being with another or others. This process reveals the
pretenses or systems of personality people usually hide behind or
confuse with who they genuinely are. As before, trainees become
increasingly aware that anything completely experienced disappears.
Most depart from the session elated and joyous, experiencing what
they believed could not be experienced — an open, undefended, ex-
panded experience of their natural ability to experience living.

Day 3

On day 3 the trainees begin to observe what is real in their lives. In
a profound "dialogue" with the trainees, which lasts some 6 or 7 hours
(with a break), the trainer conducts a conversation with trainees —
pressing them to look, to observe, really to examine the criteria they

est: Erhard, Gioscia 121

use to determine what is real in life and to note which issues they allow
to define and determine the course of their lives. To their astonishment,
and frequent dismay, trainees discover that they tend to regard things
as real and themselves (their selves) and their experience as unreal!

The trainer points out that the source of this self-unreality, and of
the unreality of their own experience, lies in the trainees' commitment
to (belief in) an epistemology which defines things (matter/energy in
space/time) as fundamentally real and constitutive of reality — which,
therefore, defines experience, communication, relationship, love, and
ultimately self as unreal, imaginary, and of questionable value.

In the two extended processes which comprise the remainder of
day 3, the feasibility of a shift in trainees' fundamental orientation to
reality is presented. In a series of enjoyable experiential exercises,
trainees are assisted to "experience completely" this persistent un-
wanted epistemology that defines things as real and experience as un-
real.

Day 4

The trainer announces on day 4 that the real training will now
begin, starting with a 6-hour "eyes-open" process called the "anatomy
of the mind." Carefully, thoroughly, completely, with an irrefutable
and inescapable logic, trainees create an experience for themselves
that propels them first into and then irrevocably beyond the way they
have contextualized (experienced) all prior experience. At the end of
this process, in a part of the training called "getting it," trainees
experience a transformation — a shift in the nature of experiencing —
from thinking that things (the contents of experience) determine and
define what one experiences (mind) to experiencing self as the context,
or source, of the way they experience.

Suddenly, they become aware of their power to experience life not
as a victim, but as a whole, responsible being.

Suddenly, they get the point. They are who they are! They are
what they seek — whole, complete, and entire, lacking no thing, per-
fectly what they are.

And the world? Suddenly, it glistens with a fresh and open luster,
filled with opportunities for participation, perfectly what it is. The
search is over. I am. I am the context of my being me. I am the cause of
my experience.

At this point in the training the trainer and the trainees share an
especial intimacy in that they are now "in on" the same reality, the

122 CURRENT PSYCHIATRIC THERAPIES: 1978

transformed reality of selves awakened to their formerly unawakened
selfhood. Their now common domain is so unspeakably simple, so
obvious, so unchanged, so light filled and real — it is hard for them to
contain their enthusiasm for simply being who they are.

Still — the trainer counsels — there is "more." Now that trainees
are willing to experience transcendent to the once binding automaticity
of their former content — determined "points of view," it is possible to
examine "the autonomy of the self."

"After a break," the trainer says, "We'll talk about self as the
source of the experiences of responsibility and satisfaction — the
willingness to experience one's self as the cause of what one causes.
Then we'll talk about sex, love, and relationships." The "space" of the
room is now one of delight and celebration. The "secret" of est has
been revealed: What is, is, and what isn't, isn't! It is an amazingly
freeing realization, which restores to trainees their natural ability to be
spontaneously and naturally what they naturally and spontaneously are.
Trainees no longer hope to be. They are. And now they "know" it.

To summarize what happens in the est training, then, we might
quote the following:

It is a transformation — a contextual shift from a state in which the
content in your life is organized around the attempt to get staisfied
or to survive — to obtain satisfaction or to protect or hold on to what
you have got — to an experience of being satisfied, right now, and
organizing the content of your life as an expression, manifestation,
and sharing of the experience of being satisfied, of being whole and
complete. Now. One is aware of that "part" of one's Self which
experiences satisfaction — the self itself, whole, complete, and en-
tire.

The natural state of the self is satisfaction. You do not have
to get there. You cannot get there. You have only to realize your
self and as you do you are satisfied. Then it is natural and spontane-
ous to express that in life and share the opportunity with others. 1

CONTEXT OF COMPASSION

The very obviousness and the context of the est experience are
what make it so difficult to talk about est with those who have not had
the experience. After all, it seems obvious that what is, is, and

est: Erhard, Gioscia 123

what isn't, isn't. So, why have 185,000 people paid all that money to
find that out? And why do they continue to recommend est to their
friends? More specifically, how can so simple a contextual shift in
context be experienced by so many professional psychotherapists —
across all the "schools'" of therapy — as empowering and enabling
themselves and their patients to experience lives in which complete
health, happiness, love, and self-expression are ordinary and routine'?
Do educators, physicians, clergy, attorneys, and other professionals
experience an equivalent empowerment?

The set of all epistemologies is not itself an epistemology, and
the context of all points of view is not itself a point of view. The
implications of this fact are extraordinarily far-reaching, especially with
regard to what might be called the Theory of the Self. On this fact rests
the nature of the training and the est trainer's ability to transcend belief
about the nature of the self.

It lies at the heart of the est trainer's ability temporarily to adopt any
point of view since the context from which the trainers speak is not itself
a point of view.

The distinction between context and viewpoint enables the
trainers to talk to trainees who know they are not who they think they
are. The trainers' awareness that self is context — not content — enables
them to experience trainees so intimately that trainees are moved by
how fundamentally they are "known," even while they are baffled and
initially frightened by the trainers' ability to comprehend them so com-
pletely.

Contextual awareness enables and empowers (I) the trainer to
present the training as if he/she were both trainer and trainee and (2) the
trainee to "get it." We call this contextual awareness a "context of
compassion."

In short, the trainer and — at some point during or soon after the
training — the trainee have actually shifted the very context of self
experience from one in which ( 1 ) any self is a thing, limited and defined
by a specific configuration of matter/energy in space/time to (2) a
context in which self is not a thing, but a context of contexts, an
awareness of awareness, or as the trainers say, an "experienced ex-
perience."

Thus, the apparently paradoxical ability of the trainer to experi-
ence the trainee's experience more completely than the trainee derives
from the trainer's awareness of his/her ability to experience any
experience — since no one experience can threaten a context which
enables and empowers every experience.

The trainee no longer believes him/herself to be one (or more) of the

124 CURRENT PSYCHIATRIC THERAPIES: 1978

contents of experience traditionally associated with "self — i.e., sensa-
tions, perceptions, thoughts, feelings, emotions, attitudes, points of
view, mental state, considerations, evaluations, judgments, images
from the past, and so on.

Thus, the trainer is able to experience whatever the trainee re-
gards as the trainee's "self — in a context of compassion — that is, in a
way which re-creates the trainee's own experience of him/herself and
transcends the trainee's own self-definition.

The trainer and the training thus come from an awareness that true
self is not a position in the universe and not an identity assembled out of
bits and pieces of prior "experiences." It is a way of experiencing the
universe, a context not a thing.

This same "contextuality" also accounts for the nature of the
benefits psychotherapists and their patients report after taking the est
training. Therapists and patients report an enhanced ability to see simi-
lar to the change in view one would have if one shifted from a car to an
airplane. The contents do not change; the perspective (that by which we
see) is clarified. Trainers admire therapists' ability to unravel the in-
tricacies of patients' often tangled lives, while therapist graduates
admire trainers' ability to "know about knowing" and to engage in
compassionate communication which holds all differences as essential,
hence none preferable.

SUMMARY

The purpose of the est training is the transformation of the ability
to experience living, so that the situations one is trying to change or is
putting up with clear up just in the process of life itself. Transformation
is a shift in the experience of "I am" from seeing yourself as content of
experience to seeing yourself as the context of your contextual experi-
ence.

Graduates of the est training — whether they are therapists, pa-
tients, educators, physicians, attorneys, or people from other walks of
life — regularly report that their ability to be, to be with themselves and
with others, and to engage with others in a full participation in the
opportunities of life have been transformed; i.e., shifted from a thing-
determined to a self-determined context. This shift enables and empow-
ers therapists and patients who have taken the est training to experience
themselves as the source of their ability to experience each other with
absolute compassion.

est: Erhard, Gioscia 125

REFERENCE

I. Erhard W, Gioscia V: est standard training. Biosciences Communications

3:104-122. 1977