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Werner ErhardWerner Hans Erhard (born John Paul Rosenberg on September 5, 1935 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) founded the large group awareness training program est, short for Erhard Seminars Training. Rosenberg sold used cars in his early twenties. He later sold encyclopedias. He married and had four children. Trapped in what he considered a dead end marriage, he changed his name and fled his marriage with a lover, June Bryde in 1960. After engaging in a wide variety of spiritual disciplines including Zen Buddhism and Dianetics, Erhard had a peak experience while driving on U.S. Highway 101 in Marin County, California. Essentially he realized that the world was perfect the way it is. His attempts to change or modify either his physical circumstances or his mental outlook were grounded in a conception of the world (that it should be different than the way it is) that precluded or at least limited one's experiential and creative appreciation of it. After this realization Erhard put together an long, intensive twoweekend course he called EST after the Latin 'It is' and/or Erhard Seminars Training. This course was designed to bring its students into a place where they were able to experience a similar realization. This long course, consisting sometimes of 18hour days, was controversial and exciting. Many experienced greatly increased vitality and self expression. A weekly seminar program concerned with various aspects of life (integrity, self expression, sex, money, commitment, etc.) evolved. A more intensive six-day course was created as a communication workshop. At one point Erhard declared that hunger was no longer necessary, that it was physically possible to feed all the hungry on the earth, and the Hunger Project was born. In the 1980s the EST training was transformed into a less confrontational program called the Forum. This program continues today in most of the major cities in the US and elsewhere. Erhard later faced tax disputes and allegations of domestic violence and an allegation that he had sex with one of his daughters. The daughter later recanted, saying that a reporter had offered her two million dollars to make the accusation. Claiming persecution by the Church of Scientology (as detailed in the book by Dr. Jane Self - see References), he sold WEA and left the United States for Russia, Ireland, Costa Rica, the Cayman Islands, Mexico, and other places abroad. Erhard changed his name to Werner Spits and continues to have indirect family, consulting and financial links with the successor organization to WEA, Landmark Education. References - Werner Erhard: The Transformation of a Man, by William Warren Bartley
- Outrageous Betrayal: The Real Story of Werner Erhard from Est to Exile, by Steven Pressman
- 60 Minutes and the Assasination of Werner Erhard by Dr. Jane Self
External link Erhard, Werner
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