If not now, when?

“We can choose to be audacious enough to take responsibility for the entire human family. We can choose to make our love for the world what our lives are really about. Each of us has the opportunity, the privilege, to make a difference in creating a world that works for all of us. It will require courage, audacity and heart. It is much more radical than a revolution – it is the beginning of a transformation in the quality of life on our planet. What we create together is a relationship in which our work can show up as making a difference in people’s lives. I welcome the unprecedented opportunity for us to work globally on that which concerns us all as human beings. If not you, who? If not now, when? If not here, where?” – Werner Erhard

Werner Erhard Archives

Werner Erhard is a lecturer, author, consultant, and the creator of one of the most influential technologies of the last 30 years, the technology of transformation. The web page at wernererhard.net/archive.html provides a collection of historical articles written by or about Werner Erhard and his work between 1970 and 1991.

Assessment of the Philosophical Significance of The est Training

Assessment of the Philosophical Significance of The est Training, by Hubert Dreyfus “In the course of the training it became progressively clear to me that the experience underlying the training and the conceptualization of this experience have deep affinities with the phenomena presented and analyzed in Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time.” “…It is directly manifest in the training that est embodies a powerful and coherent truth which transforms the quality of the lives of those who experience it. Moreover, this truth contains radically new insights into the nature of human beings.”  (Courtesy of http://www.wernererhard.net)

Werner Erhard on Power

POWER By Werner Erhard, March 21, 1983 Your power is a function of velocity, that is to say, your power is a function of the rate at which you translate intention into reality. Most of us disempower ourselves by finding a way to slow, impede, or make more complex than necessary the process of translating intention into reality. There are two factors worth examining in our impairing velocity, in our disempowering ourselves. The first is the domain of reasonableness. When we deal with our intentions or act to realize our intentions from reasonableness, we are in the realm of slow, impede and complicate. When we are oriented around the story or the narrative, the explanations, the justifications, we are oriented around that in which there is no velocity, no power. Results are black and white. In life, one either has results (one’s intentions realized) or one has the reason, story, explanations, and justifications. The person of power does not deal in explanations. This way of being might be termed management by results (not management for results but management by results). The person of power manages him or herself by results and creates a space or mood of results in which to interact with others. The other factor to be addressed is time. Now never seems to be the right time to act. The right time is always in the future. Usually this appears in the guise of “after I (or we) do so and so, then it will be the right time to act”; or “after so and so occurs, then it will be the right time to act”; or “when so and so occurs, then it will be the right time to act.” The guise includes “gathering all the facts,” “getting the plan down,” “figuring out ‘X’,” “getting ready,” etc. Since now is the only time you have in reality and now will never seem to be the right time to act, one may as well act now. Even though “it isn’t the right time,” given that the “right time” will never come, acting now is, at the least, powerful (even if you don’t get to be right). Most people wait for the decisive moment, whereas people of power are decisive in the moment. – Werner Erhard

Operating Principles for a You and Me World

Operating Principles for a You and Me World From the March 1980 Graduate Review report on ‘A World That Works For Everyone’ Since we have been raised and educated in a you or me world, and since very few of us have noticed the shift to you and me, we are going to have to work out the rules for living on our own. We won’t get much help. Werner shared his own perceptions of some of the other new rules, or operating principles, for the you and me context: Respect the other person’s point of view, whether or not you agree with it. Recognize that if you had their history, their circumstances, and the forces that play on them, you would likely have their point of view. Consider life a privilege – all of it, even the parts that are difficult or seem a waste of time. Give up the islands that reinforce mediocrity, the safe places where we gossip and complain to one another, where we are petty. Take a chance. Be willing to put your reputation on the line; have something at stake. Work for satisfaction rather than for credit Honor your word. There will be times when the circumstances of life will make you forget who you are and what you’re about. That is when you need to be committed to honoring your word, making what you say count.

The Mind’s Dedication to Survival

The est process is designed to assist the participant to discover through experience, rather than analysis, aspects of his mental functioning and behavior.  The participant “looks at” (without explanation or rationalization) his behavior, feelings, thoughts, history, justifications and the concomitant payoffs.  The realization that previously unrecognized payoffs of apparently negative behavior cause the negative behavior to persist occurs here.  For example, the person may come to experience the self-justification and righteousness that can occur when he is blocked, “out down” or dominated.  As he gets a glimpse of what the mind has accepted as the payoff of these feelings, he gradually becomes aware of the patterns he uses to assert power and control the situation.  He now has the opportunity to see how this behavior allows him to feel “right” while it allows him to make others “wrong.”  He discovers how these old patterns and acts of domination reduce his aliveness and result in perpetuation of unhappiness and discontent. The Mind’s Dedication to Survival, by Werner Erhard, Gilbert Guerin and Robert Shaw

Werner Erhard’s trip to Moscow in 1990

_________________________ Excerpted from Werner Erhard’s trip to Moscow in 1990: “At the beginning of the year, we had an opportunity to look at our work in the context of the beginning of a new decade.  We saw that on the one hand, it’s true that this is a year like any other year, and on the other, we also had and continue to have an opportunity to generate this year, and this decade, as a powerful springboard into the next century for both our individual intentions and as the conversation we are engaged in together, standing for a new possibility for what it is to be human.  In creating this future for ourselves, we allowed ourselves to be inspired by the unprecedented changes which took place in the world, particularly in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe….” “We have been engaged in an exchange with organizations in the USSR for the past ten years, both through Werner Erhard and Associates (which funded our initial work in the USSR), and the US/USSR Project of the Werner Erhard Foundation…” “The USSR that we found on this visit is palpably at an historical crossroads. While many people are disturbed by the changes that are taking place because of the basic disruption the represent, there are many people who are taking the opportunity, and the sudden lack of guidelines for action, as a window to create and generate a new and unpredictable future.” Read the full article.