This came to my attention today:

www.culteducation.com

and it made me shudder. A well-intentioned family member (who is still involved w/Landmark) sent it to me. Now I'm traumatized all over again reading the "Graduate Reviews." Will they never stop?

Thanks, Rick, for giving us "space" to "share."
Seriously, I am so appreciative of this message board -- so I know I'm not alone.

Eek! The horrors! The aching bladder! I looked at that website for two minutes and stopped.

I did the est training back in January 1979, in the midst of a binge of doing whatever LGATs I came across
here in New York City in a vain attempt to "transform" myself. I earnestly suffered thru many useless graduate
seminars and terms of assisting, including an exhausting period of assisting at a 6-Day training. What a
waste of time and money. The paxil I started taking in 1995 "transformed" me infinitely more than any
New Age workshop ever did.

And did you notice that on the home page, they appear to be trying to take credit for the 'transformational leadership' happening today? Right. The new administration is THANKS TO EST. Thanks, Werner! Now go live in Brazil with the other international criminals.

Reading that makes my brain hurt... :(

Quote
h_r
And did you notice that on the home page, they appear to be trying to take credit for the 'transformational leadership' happening today? Right. The new administration is THANKS TO EST. Thanks, Werner! Now go live in Brazil with the other international criminals.

h_r, can you point us to where they appear to be claiming this? I am currently digging through the Landmark site looking for this connection. I keep getting an uneasy feeling about the new administration and either a Landmark or EST influence.

Zorro --
I think this text on the homepage:

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 on to the national stage. Werner Erhard and his 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”.

Personally, I don't think the new administration has anything whatsoever to do with Landmark. If they had, the media (or the opposing campaign) would have gleefully dug it up. I also think that the above -- transformation, personal responsibility, accountability, and possibility -- are good qualities inherently; they were just abused, misused, and twisted beyond recognition by est.

Thanks h_r.

I read the same thing on the EST site. Looks like they are taking credit for something and trying to get on the band wagon. But I did find this while I was digging around:

[fundrace.huffingtonpost.com]

They contributed almoar exclusively to the Democratic Party, with Joan Rosenberg...hmmm.....the only contributor to the Republican party.

At this point I don't think anything can be deduced about a political connection. But I am always on the look out for any thing fishy.

Three things saved me from doing EST when pressured to do so by the head of our graduate school program (in 1981 the impropriety of a powerholder doing such proslytization was not yet understood)

1) I was so busy doing my f--ing assigned schoolwork that the last thing I wanted was to lose an entire weekend to doing EST.

2) People were not yet living on credit. So my classmates and I didnt have the excess money for EST. (Thank God)

3) I'd heard all the jokes about 'no pee therapy'. I didnt want my toilet behavior to be monitored by dictatorial assholes.

Will tell you that later on I spent time in jail and 2 days in a federal detention facility as a result of participating in non violent peace demonstrations.

In in the isolation unit at the federal facility, you had a toilet of your very own, right there in your cell, and you could use it when you wanted, though you'd of course negotiate with your cell mate/s--as one does in any courteous room-mate situation.

Granted, the federal prison toilet was stainless steel with a stainless steel seat, making it a bitch to sit on when taking one's morning dump, but unlike EST, that prison biffy was YOURS and you could use it whenever you wanted.

God bless America.

Its a measure of Werner Erhard's presumption that he felt entitled to
ordain when people could and could not go to the biffy.

George Clinton sang, free your ass and your mind will follow.

I guess the corollary is if you let someone else enslave your spincter, your mind will be in bondage. Or is it that first, your mind is enslaved and then you're silly enough to let some zlub tell you when you can and cannot piss.

All in all, its a sad commentary on the state of the nation during the 1970s and 80s when EST flourished.

How is it that legions of people who rebelled against the alleged oppressiveness of Mom and Dad, and the Establishment, just a few years later, submitted themselves to the whims and pretensions being so submissive to an earstwhile door to door salesman?

Even Jerry Rubin, the great Yippie rebel, one of the Chicago Seven, disruptor of courtroom protocol, ended up submitting and taking EST.

What happened to us as Americans that a generation of alleged rebels morphed into a generation of slaves?

Slaves who allowed themselves to be told when they could and could not pee?

Slaves who were conned into PAYING hundreds of dollars to be bossed around and degraded this way?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/27/2009 12:06AM by corboy.

When I took the est Training here in midtown Manhattan (January 1979), at one point my bladder felt like it was bursting. I had too much dignity to lose control and pee in my pants, so I walked out of the hotel ballroom where it was taking place. I'm sure some assistant tried to dissuade me, but nature was callling far too loudly for me to care about it or even remember. I relieved myself, and of course, was challenged by assistants about how I had broken my agreements and will I keep my agreements or some such rot. I said yes to everything with the greatest amount of sincerity I could muster, somehow passed their test and re-entered the training room.

I was never prevented from leaving the room. Was anyone ever actually prevented from leaving their training room to go to the bathroom? I have no idea. From my experience, I was under the impression that the worst that could happen was unpleasant confrontation which could be minimized with a good job of acting compliant. I'm sure there were some est assistants who were far more aggressive about maintaining the "integrity" of the training room than others.

Please don't think at all that I am defending est in any way. I have nothing but contempt for est, Erhard, the est-influenced cult I unfortunately wasted time at for years during my mid-twenties, and the other LGATs and New Age caca I indulged in so desperately back then, hoping vainly for a miracle. I just think it's important to distinguish the facts from hyperbole.

Just wondering about recent events of late, such as the promo Transformations film and now this new web site.

Perhaps Werner Erhard is on his last legs with ailing health and hence they are busy pro-actively creating a legacy for him before he dies?

Thoughts?

John