Editing Erhard Seminars Training (section)

== Training ==
The est Standard Training program consisted of two weekend-long workshops with evening sessions on the intervening weekdays. Workshops generally involved about 200 participants and were initially led by Erhard and later by people trained by him. Ronald Heifetz, founder of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University, called est "an important experience in which two hundred people go through a powerful curriculum over two weekends and have a learning experience that seemed to change many of their lives."<ref>''Leadership Can Be Taught: A Bold Approach for a Complex World'', by Sharon Daloz Parks, published 2005 by Harvard Business School Press; pp. 157– 158</ref> Trainers confronted participants one-on-one and challenged them to be themselves rather than to play a role that had been imposed on them by the past.<ref name=Moreno>{{cite book|last1=Jonathan D|first1=Moreno|title=Impromptu Man: J.L. Moreno and the Origins of Psychodrama, Encounter Culture, and the Social Network|date=October 2014|publisher=Bellevue Literary Press}} {{ISBN|978-1-934137-84-0}}.</ref>

[[Jonathan D. Moreno]] observed that "participants might have been surprised how both physically and emotionally challenging and how philosophical the training was."<ref name=Moreno /> He writes that the critical part of the training was freeing oneself from the past, which was accomplished by "experiencing" one's recurrent patterns and problems and choosing to change them. The word ''experience'' meant to bring into full awareness the repetition of old, burdensome behaviors. The seminar sought to enable participants to shift the state of mind around which their lives were organized, from attempts to get satisfaction or to survive, to actually being satisfied and experiencing themselves as whole and complete in the present moment.<ref>''Werner Erhard: The Transformation of a Man, the Founding of est'', by William Warren Bartley, III; New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. 1978. {{ISBN|0-517-53502-5}}, p. 199.</ref>

Participants agreed to follow the ground rules, which included not wearing watches, not speaking until called upon, not talking to their neighbors, and not eating or leaving their seats to go to the bathroom except during breaks separated by many hours. Participants who were on medication were exempt from these rules, and had to sit in the back row so that they would not interfere with the other participants.<ref name="Cults 1999, p.75">''Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion'', by Marc Galanter; New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 1999, p. 75</ref> These classroom agreements provided a rigorous setting whereby people's ordinary ways to escape confronting their experience of themselves were eliminated.<ref name=bartley2>{{cite book|last1=Bartley|first1=William Warren III|title=Werner Erhard: The Transformation of a Man, The Founding of est|date=December 12, 1988|publisher=Clarkson Potter|isbn=0-517-53502-5|url=https://archive.org/details/wernererhard00will}}</ref>{{pn|date=November 2021}} Moreno describes the est training as a form of "[[Socratic questioning|Socratic interrogation]]...relying on the power of the shared cathartic experience that [[Aristotle]] observed."<ref name=Moreno /> Erhard challenged participants to be themselves instead of playing a role that had been imposed on them<ref name=Moreno /> and aimed to press people beyond their point of view, into a perspective from which they could observe their own positionality.<ref>{{cite book|last1= Bartley |first1= William Warren III|title=Werner Erhard: The Transformation of a Man, The Founding of est|date= December 12, 1988|publisher=Clarkson Potter|isbn=0-517-53502-5|url= https://archive.org/details/wernererhard00will | page = 233 | quote = The training provides a format in which siege is mounted on the Mind. It is intended to identify and bring under examination presuppositions and entrenched positionality. It aims to press one beyond one's point of view, at least momentarily, into a perspective from which one observes one's own positionality. }}</ref> As [[Robert Kiyosaki]] writes, "During the training, it became glaringly clear that most of our personal problems begin with our not keeping our agreements, not being true to our words, saying one thing and doing another. That first full day on the simple class agreements was painfully enlightening. It became obvious that much of human misery is a function of broken agreements – not keeping your word, or someone else not keeping theirs."<ref name=kiyosaki>{{cite book|last1= Kiyosaki |first1=Robert|last2=Kiyosaki|first2=Emi|title=Rich Brother Rich Sister|date=January 2009|publisher= Vanguard Press|isbn=978-1-59315-493-6|url=https://archive.org/details/richbrotherrichs00kiyo}}</ref>

Sessions lasted from 9:00&nbsp;a.m. to midnight, or to the early hours of the morning, with one meal-break.<ref name="Sun Times">{{cite news|last1= Ruys|first1= Chris|title=Can you unchain your mind through est or TM?|issue= January 23, 1977|publisher= Sun Times (Chicago)}}</ref> Participants had to hand over wristwatches and were not allowed to take notes, or to speak unless called upon, in which case they waited for a microphone to be brought to them.<ref name="Lewis2001">{{cite book|editor=James R. Lewis |editor-link=James R. Lewis (scholar)|author=Kay Holzinger|title=Odd gods: new religions & the cult controversy|chapter=Erhard Seminars Training (est) and The Forum|year=2001|publisher=Prometheus Books|isbn= 978-1-57392-842-7|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781573928427}}</ref>{{page needed |date=September 2019}} The second day of the workshop featured the "danger process".<ref name="Lewis2001" />{{rp|384}} As a way of observing and confronting their own perspective and point of view,<ref name=bartley /> groups of participants were brought onto the stage and confronted. They were asked to "imagine that they were afraid of everyone else and then that everyone else was afraid of them"<ref name="Lewis2001" />{{rp|384}} and to re-examine their reflex patterns of living that kept their lives from working.<ref>{{cite journal|last1= McGurk|first1= William S.|title= Was ist est?|journal= Contemporary Psychology|date=1977|volume=22|issue=6|pages=459–460|doi=10.1037/016030}}</ref> This was followed by interactions on the third and fourth days, covering topics such as reality and the nature of the mind, looking at the possibility that "what is, is and what ain't, ain't," and that "true enlightenment is knowing you are a machine"<ref name="Lewis2001" />{{rp|384}} and culminating in a realization that people do not need to be stuck with their automatic ways of being but can instead be free to choose their ways of being in how they live their lives.<ref name=bartley /> Participants were told they were perfect the way they were and were asked to indicate by a show of hands if they "had gotten it".<ref name="Lewis2001" />{{page needed|date=September 2019}}

[[Eliezer Sobel]] said in his article "This is It: est, 20 Years Later":<ref>{{cite journal|last1= Sobel |first1=Eliezer|title=This is It: est, 20 Years Later|journal=Quest Magazine|date= 1998|issue=Summer}}</ref> <blockquote>I considered the training to be a brilliantly conceived Zen [[koan]], effectively tricking the mind into seeing itself, and in thus seeing, to be simultaneously aware of who was doing the seeing, a transcendent level of consciousness, a place spacious and undefined, distinct from the tired old story that our minds continuously tell us about who we are, and with which we ordinarily identify.
</blockquote>

===Participants' reported results===
Many participants reported experiencing powerful results through their participation in the est training, characterised by Eliezer Sobel as perceived "dramatic transformations in their relationships with their families, with their work and personal [[Goal|vision]], or most important, with the recognition [[self-awareness |who they truly were]] in the core of their beings".<ref name=Moreno />{{qn|date=February 2021}} One study of "a large sample of est alumni who had completed the training at least 3 months before revealed that "the large majority felt the experience had been positive (88%), and considered themselves better off for having taken the training (80%)".<ref>
{{cite book
 | last1 = Galanter
 | first1 = Marc
 | author-link1 = Marc Galanter (psychiatrist)
 | year = 1990
 | chapter = Altered Consciousness
 | title = Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion
 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=dKlkYgGo2cEC
 | edition = 2
 | location = New York
 | publisher = Oxford University Press
 | publication-date = 1999
 | page = 75
 | isbn = 9780198028765
 | access-date = 18 February 2021
 | quote = The whole thing ["getting it"] is treated as a joke, discomforting the new converts. [...] Nonetheless, one study of a large sample of est alumni who had completed the training at least three months before revealed that the large majority felt the experience had been positive (88%), and considered themselves better off for having taken the training (80%).
}}
</ref> Others described the sessions more negatively.<ref>{{Cite news |last=McClellan |first=Bill |date=9 January 1985 |title='Hunger Network' Unites Opponents |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/st-louis-post-dispatch/170402912/ |access-date=15 April 2025 |work=St. Louis Post-Dispatch |via=[[Newspapers.com]]}}</ref> 

=== Controversy ===
In 1976 psychologist, Dr. Daniel Fullman, called est more of a [[Get-rich-quick scheme|money making scheme]] than a practical way to provide therapeutic help.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Hostetler |first=Harold |date=4 April 1976 |title=Expanding the Mind: Real--or a Hustle? |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/honolulu-star-advertiser/170398850/ |access-date=15 April 2025 |work=Honolulu Star-Advertiser |via=[[Newspapers.com]]}}</ref> Dr. Leonard Glass, a clinical professor of [[psychology]] at [[Harvard University]], alleged in 1983 that participants of est showed "severe emotional problems, notably psychosis, which occurred in the midst of or shortly after EST training."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Rodgers |first=Ann |date=16 July 1983 |title=Life Training or Brainwashing? EST: The Story Behind Erhard Seminar Training |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/concord-monitor/170397799/ |access-date=15 April 2025 |work=Concord Monitor |pages=13}} and {{Cite news |date=16 July 1983 |title=EST |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/concord-monitor/170397911/ |work=Concord Monitor |pages=14 |via=[[Newspapers.com]]}}</ref> A participant of an est seminar sued the organization in 1985 over [[negligence]] and [[fraud]].<ref>{{Cite news |date=6 December 1985 |title=$5 Million is Sought for Est 'Breakdown' |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-evening-news/170401878/ |archive-date= |access-date=15 April 2025 |via=[[Newspapers.com]]}}</ref>