Werner Erhard on Erhard Seminars Training

“My plans could be said to be to make est as public as possible. My notion on how to do that is through the educational system. So I would like to give est up to the environment.”

“The purpose of est is to transform your ability to experience living so that the situations you have been trying to change or have been putting up with clear up just in the process of life itself.”

“Some people think est came into being because of my past. Actually, est came into being because I completed my past … Having confronted it, taken responsibility for it, communicated, and corrected it, it is now completed for me.”

“I am a sort of revolutionary. I have a strange ambition, though. I don't want any statues. I don't want any ordinary monuments. What I want is for the world to work. That's the monument I want. There's egomania for you! The organizing principle of est is: 'Get the world to do what it is doing.' I want to create a context in which governments, education, families are nurturing. I want to enable, to empower, the institutions of man.[emphasis italics in original]”

“I knew that I couldn't create the space for other people to participate as long as my ego was in the way. It was after I solved that problem that I started est. The way I solved the problem was by realizing, 'How dare you not have an ego! How dare you! That's the ultimate ego!' The ultimate position of ego is to try not to have an ego. So, where my ego is, is right here, and I handle it by taking responsibility for it rather than by being the effect of it. Instead of being my ego, I have an ego.”