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29 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good book on its own merits, September 10, 2004
Mine is a review of the book and not of the "est" Training or the Landmark Forum, neither of which I have attended. Although written by pro-Erhard philosophy professor William Warren Bartlett III, now deceased, the book is not a whitewash of Werner Erhard's life. This is a biography which appears to deal fairly honestly both with the man's gifts and his flaws. The book is a study in the evolution of his thinking, and provides a wealth of information on the sources that Erhard drew on in creating the "est" training. The author traces Erhard's development, beginning with his fascination with Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" and the work of Dale Carnegie, which eventually led him to Maxwell Maltz's "psycho-cybernetics" and the work of psychologists Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. From there Erhard started to voraciously investigate anything he could get his hands on that related to human potential, including meeting and working with Alan Watts, learning about Zen Buddhism, checking out Ron Hubbard's dianetics and Silva Mind Control, and eventually becoming a trainer in Mind Dynamics. It was his dissatisfaction with the Mind Dynamics training that led Erhard to create the est seminars.
The author is also frank about Erhard's failings, including his tempestuous relationship with his mother, why he abandoned his young family, why a half-Jewish man adopted a German name, how he fled his former life, and how cheated on his second wife. While it is rather well known that Erhard began life as a used car salesman - as if that were any more significant than Einstein having been a postal clerk - what is not so well known is how Erhard began to succeed in business, especially at Parents magazine, and in particular how he began to apply the principles he had learned to his management activities. As a manager he attracted an extremely loyal following, many of whom followed him into the est organization. The author also draws the relationship between Erhard's two seminal experiences - a "peak" experience in 1963 and subsequently his experience of "true self" while on the way to work in 1970 - and how Erhard tried to make those experiences available to the trainees in his seminar. The author is frank in describing the training as a "siege of the mind," and how Erhard wanted to break down his student's mental constructs in order to give them the space to experience their own "true" selves.
My chief complaint with this book is that in places it is too abstruse, that it reads too much like a philosophy text book. Also, he spends a little more time than he should simply quoting Erhard from their conversations together. But the author, although impressed by Erhard's apparent genius, seems also to have a good handle on his limitations.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Revolution Begins, August 5, 2005
Truly extraordinary. I've been participating in Landmark Education for nearly 6 years now; the difference its made in my life is too much to talk about in this little review, and what's important to me now is the difference its made in the lives of the people around me. It's not that our lives are paradisical. We aren't turning to white light; turning to white light has stopped being a concern since we are playing from what is possible, rather than what is wrong - even those of us who haven't done the Forum. This book has given me a powerful context from which to view my own participation, the phenomenon of transformation, Landmark Education as its now organized and the future of the discourse. That someone who was such an unremitting a--hole to the people in his life for such a very long time found his a--holeness to be the fuel for a new realm of being by looking at it head-on and TRYING ON that he's responsible for all is irrefutable testament to the possibility of being human, testament to a possibility against which riches, fame, being written of in the history books, and "power" without it are shadows. I too am an a-hole. No longer needing to pretend I'm not has given me the freedom to INVENT what my life is about. Reading this book has given me a new gratitude to those on whose shoulders I stand. I know I am not alone as I test the discourse and invite all of you to extend it into uncharted realms. Most of transformation's story has yet to be written. You may read this and think I'm a cult member. That's perfect. That's right where we're supposed to be right now. I acknowledge your concern. And with critical thinking fully intact, and knowing the risks, I putting my money on transformation.
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23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Conversations For Transformation, September 17, 2004
You won't get transformed reading this book. The way you get transformed is by participating in Werner's programs and by speaking and listening transformation in face to face conversations with people. That is why, for the most part, Werner's work has never been widely distributed in books, films, video and audio tape, or other media. Transformation is not gotten that way. Transformation is being in conversations for transformation.
Having said that, this book is remarkable on two fronts.
In the first instance, this very human story of how Werner's life headed inexorably from birth toward that fateful moment out of time on the Golden Gate Bridge when he experienced transformation for the first time makes for riveting reading.
In the second instance, Bill Bartley has provided intersecting chapters giving the essence of the various disciplines Werner immersed himself in before he experienced transformation and then created the est training out of his own authentic experience of who he really is. Each one of these intersections alone is worth the price of the book itself. They are masterfully crafted gems, distilling the very essence of each discipline in very few words - a difficult task for most writers in this genre, yet one in which Bill Bartley succeeds brilliantly.
The book ends after the creation of the est training and does not cover subsequent iterations of Werner's work like the Landmark Forum.
The sense of transformation which pervades this book (which you will want to read again and again and again) is palpable to the point where if you have ever wondered what transformation is, in reading this book you will almost be able to taste it.
Read this book.
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