OUR STRUGGLE AGAINST SPIRITUAL FORCES OF EVIL

Working within State government, I found myself involved in an 'est' training seminar, now called 'The Forum'. The seminars developed by Werner Erhard, emerged out of a myriad of studies including Scientology. Scientology is the foundation of est. Erhard took the process one step further in developing est seminars.
Werner's road was parallel to mine with the exception of Mormonism and Christian aspirations. He turned his back on God and I was looking for truth. He ended in Scientology and had an encounter that he never discussed with anyone of public knowledge. Werner's profile is important because it also reveals what happens when people defy God and deliberately walk into the opposite direction.

As in Mormonism, no explanation of what a person is about to enter, is in itself excluding choice or free will that God granted us. People who had participated either could not remember what had happened to them or they were sworn to secrecy. My supervisor got involved and persuaded her underlings and coworkers, and many of the people in the department signed up. She had moved to Denver from California, very educated and admired for her ability to climb right to top of the ladder. She had sent me flowers on my birthday in the office and that was unheard of. Some ingredients during the Mormon temple sessions reminded me a little of the est training.
People locked into large rooms in a motel from early morning till four o'clock in the morning on the first night in my case. Usually sixteen to twenty hours each day (two weekends) without opportunity to go to the bathroom as usual, eat, take pills, smoke or fulfill the general body functions. Shocking to the system, confined with a group of approximately three hundred people, it was to give a person the opportunity to discover bad habits and make one's life work.

To give a little background, these 'est' encounters began in 1971 through 1984 but they are still conducted but under a different name and have been somewhat modified. An estimated 700,000 takers participated in more than thirteen years. 'est' attracted lots of criticism for their authoritarian form of indoctrination and produced hundreds of obsessively eager acolytes, who talked others into their seminars. They were unpaid and willing to talk people into becoming new trainees, paying what used to be $250 and now at least $625 for a seminar. A seminar was set for two weekends locked in at a motel.

The theme based on the notion that life wasn't working, found a button in most. One girl was afraid to have children, after the training she got pregnant. Another person was afraid to get married wanted fixing and sometimes it brought changes and sometimes not. Not knowing what was involved, it got my curiosity and I trusted this woman to be my friend. The theme talked about indicated: persons needed to get rid of extra baggage and become transformed.

Forbes Magazine in September 1991 reported that The est Corporation owed $14 million to the IRS that the corporation racked up $76 million in gross profit between 1975 and 1981. Werner Erhard's where about's became a mystery for a few years until last year his own daughters exposed him. He sold the corporation to his trainers. An article in August 1975 in Psychology Today, by Mark Brewer, describes some of the procedures. What is interesting, the people who attend these sessions are intellectuals, educated people, famous Hollywood personalities and middle class. He described it as a pop-psych trip [exceptionally misrepresented]. The motto was 'When you know you are a mechanical anus, you've 'got it'.

My job at the time this occurred was in the accounting department at the Department of Institutions which included Mental Health. The information I'm about to write about was at the Department head's office and available after it was over. They knew of this problem, being in charge of a mental hospital, but they neglected to warn their employees. That is what protected me from loosing my job. They did not want the information to leak to the press. I believe God intervened. I did not go through the whole training because I realized what was going on and refused to believe their scare tactics. I stayed in the training for two days and left town because I knew they would not let me get away with it. How right I was. They tried to catch up with me, because I knew too much.

I had some understanding of subliminal procedures from reading many books and my occult background filled in the rest. I realized the fact that they were hypnotizing people to insert their information, without them realizing what the information was. Using ocean waves and distorted words is a subliminal procedure to get past the built in censure. The article the department head had on his desk, stated that prominent lawyers, doctors and psychologists endorsed the training. Werner Erhard claims that he had tried for years to develop techniques to motivate people into selling products. He finally had an illumination in his car and got the answer. What was strange, he could not describe this experience.

Called a training but not teaching anything, were the words coming out of the trainer's mouth. According to Werner, "what it does is give people the space to learn from themselves." Because there is a psychological change, many friendships and marriages disintegrate afterward with people who have not undergone the training. They cease to agree with the body of people they belong to and move into the body created by Erhard's method to promote his product: 'the est training.' This same phenomena occurs when one marriage partner leaves Mormonism. They become 'unequally' yoked as the Bible calls it. Mormon leaders try to break up the marriage to keep the committed one in. My husband and I were unable to have a civil conversation until we were both out of Mormonism.

The writer describes the following: "What trainees come out with is the understanding that their minds are perfect machines or robots. They have become trained human beings, and they love it. They also came out feeling a sort of ecstasy." That ecstasy comes from being part of a group of individuals, who have been taken to zero and reprogrammed with affirmations about themselves with a desire to work for the organization. Who knows what else happened from the spirit realm. My experience was not ecstasy but disgust that people would stoop that low for the dollar. The processed get an overzealous desire to tell others about the training, but not about content, and the excitement on how wonderful it is quickly convinces others to put their money on it.
Only a small group of paid staff supported by an army of volunteers, who give up to forty hours a week at times. They have a zombie like attention to duty. Their unfailing adulation of Werner Erhard [then, the rich and famous], makes them become branches of Werner, much like Mormon missionaries become branches of the LDS Church and the Hitler Youth and SS Storm troopers, branches of Hitler.

The principle, this technique is based on, is biblical. "I (Jesus Christ) am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:5) "..if the root is holy, so are the branches." (Romans 11:16) This leads back to the two spirits, the Holy Spirit and the spirit of this world. One or the other is the root of the tree, we are the branches for the leader we identify with. "I will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins. I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty and will humble the pride of the ruthless." (Isaiah 13:11) "Thou shalt bring down the noise of strangers, as the heat in a dry place; [even] the heat with the shadow of a cloud: the branch of the terrible ones shall be brought low." (Isaiah 25:5 KJV) There are many false prophets is the reason why the word 'ones' was used. It is plural.

The Training described as ghoulish and unexplainable, has a reputation of a brave new application of classic techniques in indoctrination and mental conditioning worthy of Pavlov himself. [That is a misrepresentation from beginning to end. The technique is ancient]. The representatives boast about it giving a strong sense of personal worth. The recruits arranged in three groups of rigid order, sit in chairs for more than sixteen hour days. The trainers harangue and cajole the recruits [much like the military] into believing that their lives were not working [using vulgar, filthy words and bad language, demoralizing recruits by calling them vile names]. They described [planting suggestions in recruit's heads] about the anxiety they were going to experience shortly. Next they described what the trainees were going to endure through the coming hours. "...Your mind is so confused with beliefs..that you are incapable of experiencing life.. Therefore," yelled Tony, "we're gonna throw away your whole belief system..We're gonna tear you down and put you back together"...while Tony bombarded them hour after hour, the recruits shook, became confused and finally, in a great majority of cases, dislodged the old ideas and behavior patterns.

When I asked Werner the difference between est and mass mind control, he brushed my query aside as not being a 'representational question'. Even some members of the est Advisory Board, whose duty it is to evaluate the techniques and results of the est training, are not much clearer about what's going on.
Tony's assault on belief continued. Endlessly he seemed to recognize hands, dull-faced assistants hustled down the aisles with mikes to trainees who wanted to share their stories... Tony assured them all, ..Confusion was the first step toward 'natural knowing,' the very pinnacle of est-think. ..Six hours of deprivation felt like seven years of locusts, and when aching backs, filling bladders, and desperately wandering minds finally neared the point of open rebellion, Tony showed the 'est's curative process. He told them to go inward, [while] he sipped ..tea. He gave direction to create space in their bodies .. reminiscent of some ..mass hypnotist.. affirmations..the big truth process.

[The next day] "..250 of us, lying on the floor, writhing and gesticulating, amid a din of whimpers, sobs, wrenching and ..groaning." The writer refers to Williams Sargant, a British psychiatrist, who studied and wrote in 'Battle for the Mind' (1957), about the described abreaction as 'a time worn physiological trick that has been used, for better or worse. Generations of preachers and demagogues use it to soften up their listeners' minds and help them take on desired patterns of belief and behavior'. In closing the writer stated that the recently federally funded est training of school children is a step in the direction of making people happy and efficient and such training is the wave of the future."

Another article in the same issue of Psychology Today, by Richard P. Marsh 'I am the cause of my world', "a San Francisco State professor took est training twice, and felt a surge of life." This surge of life is momentary the opposite from the life that Jesus speaks of which is eternal. "And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me (Jesus) to have life." (John 5:37-40) "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it." (Luke 9:24)

In describing what goes on behind the locked doors among the approximately 300 participators during a session, keep people squirming painfully in their seats for endless hours while (the trainer) expresses his love for the crowd by using vulgar and abusive language reasoning that he wants to wake them up to the possibility of a more abundant life.

The mechanics are very similar to the Mormon Temple sessions. Sitting for hours on end hearing the same rote routine over and over is the creates the same boredom as the est training. The boredom during est is what creates a tremendous problems. 'Getting it' is the goal. In Mormonism, 'Getting the rituals down pat, the actions, the words and the grips' is the goal. And the boredom inhibits the ability to concentrate making the candidate incapable of learning the task. A particpator in "est" wrote: "I recently took the est training for a second time as a fringe member of an invited group of 250 leaders in psychiatry, education, law, science, aviation and the human potential movement. The training is in some respects painful and exhausting."

"Bathroom, food, and sleep breaks are minimal. Smoking and drugs are forbidden... Nearly all invited participants sweated out the four grueling days required. I can only speak for myself, I 'got' that I would rather be right than alive. In order to be right, I very ingeniously make other people wrong. This tactic preserves my righteousness, but the price is no less than my own life.. I 'got' that my mind is a pile of multisensory snapshots, recording my moment- by- moment experiences ..this picture album that is my mind has a single purpose: to insure its own survival. I 'got' that I am the cause of my own world and not the effect and am therefore responsible for it... I was tired because I was under pressure. The long hours and the tough ground rules had taken their toll... I consider nonsense the charge made by some critics that the est training is a form of brainwashing."
Another states: "precisely the reverse is true.

Brainwashing attempts to confuse by sudden reversals of logic, to frighten and humiliate a captive subject in order to break his will and insinuate forcibly into his mind the belief system of his captor. He also stated, the est training is coherent and noncontradictory; it is respectful of the individual at all times, being based on a set of agreements about procedures freely entered into by all concerned; as a point of doctrine, if asserts the foolishness of all belief systems. One thinks it is a form of "de-hypnosis" perhaps... or whatever est is.... ??" This participator proves that he doesn't recall what happened during the training when stating that the training is coherent and noncontradictory and respectful of the individual.

Next is what I personally experienced. Right after I got back from California, a week after the traumatic experience with est, a letter went out to my mother. It was dated November 4, 1978.
"Dear Mom and Dad, I had a terrible training in that 'est' seminar I told you about over the phone. It was like meeting Satan in person, horrible. They got us into the training under false pretenses. I talked to eight colleagues before the training who had participated and received reassuring comments that it would be a healthy encounter. I felt save. These were people I worked with day in and day out. Not one told me what was going on in the seminar. Everything looked legitimate, what a shock when they locked the door behind us and positioned guards by the door.

I found myself among a group of three hundred, subjected to extreme physical discomfort and verbal abuse, which was torture for me from 8 am to 4 am the next day. That same morning, we were to come back at 10 am and stay till 11 pm that night. Starving till 11 pm, we sat in a straight back chair. We spent the first 6 hours following rules. People had smuggled all sorts of 'helps' in and began confessing. Then they processed us with hypnotism, brainwashing, meditation and how to leave your body. Feeling like they must have in the concentration camps getting ready for the gas chamber. They broke people's personalities down to zero. The trainer told us to throw out everything we believed and accept everything they had to say. They said if we stopped in the middle of this training it would be like stepping off a roller coaster up in the air at its highest point. We would crash mentally. I was so scared during one of their processes, I became unconscious, got diarrhea and came close to vomiting. Hysteria with screaming, shakes, breaking out in cold sweat was next. People all over the room were passing out and throwing up. Can you imagine this is going on today in America in 1978? By the time dinner break came at 11 pm, I fled out to the car, it was pouring raining, I was sobbing in the car, nauseated and trembling all over.
When the training was over I was completely disoriented and got lost trying to get home at 4:00 am. Without any rest, I went back the next day. They had rearranged the whole room, everything in perfect order with sort of a podium the whole length of the room. The process called 'danger' followed, mind you 300 people in this process.

They had a row of wardens sitting in the back of the room. They looked like wardens, never moved a muscle in their faces. Each row had to line up on the podium and look at the audience and the trainer was screaming: "look at these people: they are supposed to be loving you, they are unconscious robots. "They looked awful and their faces full of fear and dread." My heart beat like it was going to jump out of me. People were screaming passing out, throwing up, crying, laughing hysterically, they had lost their personality. These were prominent people like a Scientist from the Colorado University, a Psychiatrist, business people, and the wealthy with diamonds, even a movie star from Hollywood and her boyfriend. Dope addicts, pushers, alcoholics and the like identified themselves. One girl confessed she had tried suicide twice with overdosing. Women who had aborted babies and on and on, they were there to get rid of their guilt feelings. They were confessing all over the place.

The trainer pointed at a man and screamed again: "look at this Psychiatrist," who stood there crying like a baby. "Look at his twisted body and you go to him and pay $ 25 for his advice." There were even young teenagers, 12 years old and people 70 years old. You would not believe it. It was the job of wardens to stare each of us down. They appeared dead in their eyes and faces to a point where I wanted to slap them across the face to wake them up. Young girls stood there and sobbed. I never experienced anything so horrible. People had come from all over, Kansas, Texas, Nebraska and many from Salt Lake City (Mormons). Two young girls who were Mormons got up and talked their way out on the first day. They got scared right away. Analyzing everything in spite of strict orders not to, they kept reassuring everybody that the training would not work for people who did that.

To me it appeared as if some of the people were possessed with demons after the processes. I could see one hanging over me during a process. Praying to get to the truth of what this was all about, I came to the conclusion that Satan is gathering himself an army. The whole atmosphere was evil. When the people got through with the whole training they dedicated their lives to this organization without pay.

The people I worked with spent 20 hours a week there guarding, giving out name tags, running the microphones and what not for free. They came out proclaiming that the experience was worth thousands of dollars. They suddenly belonged to this large group, all loving each other because they had become the same through this process. Trouble is after they are processed, they can't get along with the rest of the world and they talk all their friends and family into undergoing the process. Werner Erhard processed his own mother and the whole family to get along with them according to a biography about him.

Refusing to complete the training, I called my supervisor and gave two weeks notice. Many of the people processed worked with me and they were working on everybody, even the head of the department. I was scared. The director did not let me quit for fear that I would report the whole episode. He told me to call back when I returned from California, so we could work things out. Telling no one including my husband, where I was heading, I left. They would try to find me, was on my heart. The 'est' people knew right away what happened and called my supervisor and others called the house trying to find out where I had gone. I drove two and a half days and was without sleep for a week. Not being able to eat either, that stuff went around and around in my head. The more I thought about it the more frightened I became. Twice lost traveling, I came close to suicide. The belief that I would go to hell kept me from it. But my biblical anchor had suffered a critical blow. Finally, I landed at my hide out. It stabilized me and I shared with them what had happened to me. It gave me an opportunity to share the importance of Jesus Christ who had empowered me to leave without fearing their threats of a mental crash. Somewhere tucked in the corner of my heart I knew Jesus Christ would carry me through the whole episode, he had done it so many times before, your loving daughter."

My family never brought this letter up again. They probably thought I had lost it and didn't believe it could be factual. They went into denial. Reading it today it sounds unbelieveable. I will never forget it because every imaginable emotion was involved in that period of my life and my children and husband are my witnesses. My husband decided not to go after he attended the marketing event which preceded the actual training.

I called the office and went back to work. The head of the department gave orders for people to stop harassing me. By some strange coincidence they had found these articles I mentioned and began investigating and found that 50% of their personnel was under the influence of that organization. They were shocked. This was the department of Institutions which included a Mental Hospital. They kept the whole situation and their predicament under wraps, because the Department of Institutions was a political football. They could not afford a scandal. My supervisor had a heart attack at 38 years old and later died, not too many months after this happened. He could not stop smoking three packs a day. He was so up tight about loosing his job, that he came back to work two weeks after open heart surgery and went back to his old habits.

The administrators of 'est' called me to come to their office and confess what I had experienced. "No way," I told them. They said I was going to get my $300 back since I had not completed the experience. Begging people to listen, I told everyone I knew to keep them from going but curiosity got the best of some of them. I witnessed for Christ but they did not hear me. What they could not understand was that I was the only one who came out of there with that kind of conviction. That is why I did not expose it myself. No one would have believed it and I would not have had a leg to stand on in court. In 1992, I decided to write about this and researched books dealing with this subject. They were in the library. The information I found confirms what I experienced. One, a biography, characterizes Werner Erhard by his own admission.

Two ladies who kept on harassing me and lost their jobs. It wasn't long before an opportunity came for another job away from this agency. One of their processed young men kept approaching me for many months to complete the training, but in vain. It is sixteen years later and I sit here and wonder how many people had permanent spiritual damage unbeknownst to them.

From the Book 'The Transformation of a Man Werner Erhard, the Founder of est', comes an insight into the character of Werner Erhard. Though by descent half Jewish, he did not receive a Jewish upbringing. He went regularly to Episcopal Sunday School. The belief that Christ was the savior was with him all the way. "I was an altar boy there for eight years. Not much later I first began to learn something of Eastern religious thought. This was not originally out of desire for spiritual attainment. It was only later, in studying spiritual disciplines, that I heard about spiritual attainment. Incidentally, there is no such thing as attainment when it comes to being spiritual," said Werner Erhard," according to the author. Werner was right, according to Romans 7:15-21: "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me."

Werner further stated: "I remember how I first got into yoga. I was eleven or twelve. I did all the exercises and practices. I did this on my own. There was nobody with whom I could discuss it. I was trying to walk without expending energy. I got one leg to float along without effort. It wasn't just physical disciplines that I went into. I also had conversations about God with myself. I wondered whether there really was a God and what it all meant what I was taught to believe. I wondered why God made it so bad? Why did he make war and famine? I also asked whether I was really responsible. I don't think I put it that way then. I would have said: "Can you get away with breaking the rules? Why do you have to keep the rules?"

"Werner told me," the author continues: "I had begun to detach myself from my surroundings, from my family, my friends and my teachers. What was going on within, removed me from the world around me. I became very lonely. I was becoming aware of my intelligence. My family could not really respond to my intelligence. They were uneasy. Whereas I was by now dissecting everything that I encountered. I was interested in the problems of human existence, human relationships, love, sex, the purpose of it all, values, ethics and integrity. I could not discuss such things with my family, school friends or teachers. It was all right to write about such things, but not to talk about them. That was forbidden intimacy.

After some considerable personal problems and to sort things out, he went to the beach by himself and lay still in the sun for a long time. "It was quiet, in the sense that few people were around making noise. Yet I was surrounded by, immersed in sound: the sound of the waves and the rhythmic beating of the surf, the jangling sounds of the boardwalk. I just lay there, doing nothing, being bathed in that sound, that white noise. As I lay there I began to have the most extraordinary experience. I just detached from everything. I hate to call it an out-of-body experience, but I transcended myself as a personality there. With my eyes closed, I could see what was happening there on the beach, how others were moving, how I myself was lying there. And then I could see everything and everywhere. I experienced a oneness with the universe. I lost the kind of consciousness that locates one in a place. I became the universe!"

He got married began to experience major hell, and admitted marriage was not for him. He began reading and searching. As a car salesman, changed his name to hide his Jewishness and began extra marital affairs. "This part of my life was a long disaster. I messed up everything I touched." In 1959 he moved his wife and three children to Hatboro, Pennsylvania to carry on his affair somewhere else. His wife said later that she was pregnant with number four when he asked for a divorce. "The fact is, until people are transformed, until they transcend their minds, they are simply puppets, perhaps anguished, hurting, strongly feeling puppets, but ones nonetheless limited to a fixed repertoire of responses. And that is what karma is all about," Werner stated philosophically. Pat filed for divorce.

"You could tell by looking at him that he was living a double life at this time," Werner's Aunt Kitty Clauson told me about it. In the glove compartment Pat (his wife) found false identity papers, Social Security cards and drivers' licenses, and a checkbook for both Werner and June, his new partner.

Werner proceeded to find a typically American answer, in the books of Napoleon Hill and Maxwell Maltz on positive thinking and self-image psychology. Hill was the author of 'Think and Grow Rich'; Maltz, the author of 'Psycho-Cybernetics'. Maltz and Hill exude optimism and the go-getter energy, fellowship, and boosterism of the Rotary Club. What Werner actually found was a sort of religion. He also came across the human potential movement through the study and application of motivational techniques. From there he was to go a step further to what he now self mockingly calls the 'business of transformation'.

Make detailed statements of goals, specify what one is prepared to pay in order to reach them, and color them with desire and imagination, Werner suggested. One must visualize oneself 'on the road to success,' taking definite steps toward those goals and then see oneself as having attained them. [Visualization is described in the Scriptures as imagery "Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery (art of making mental images is considered an abomination) for they say, The LORD seeth us not; the LORD hath forsaken the earth. He said also unto me, Turn thee yet again, [and] thou shalt see greater abominations that they do. (Ezekiel 8:12,13)] Strangely enough it reminds me of a meeting headed by Oral Roberts, Kenneth Copeland and the Charismatics of our time in Tulsa. Oral encouraged upcoming representatives of ministries, "envision yourself above huge crowds as a preacher and it will come to pass."

Speaking of again of Werner Erhard, the Hindus call Kundalini: the transmutation of the sex drive. A genius is one who, by the sublimation of sex, has increased his mental vibrations to the point where he can communicate with sources of knowledge not ordinarily available.

Werner was already familiar with hypnosis and experimented by autohypnosis on himself and others who grew out of yoga. Hypnosis is potentially very dangerous. Hypnosis characterized by an altered state of consciousness, a trance state, is induced either by oneself alone or with the aid of another person. It was discovered by Franz Anton Mesmer, a Viennese physician who did a spectacular healing that he called animal magnetism, akin to electrical magnetism.

Hypnosis is often described as a 'special form of trance developed in Western civilization', many states reached through hypnosis resemble those reached through meditation and yogic practices. The ritual and paraphernalia and the setting are, to be sure, different: the so-called 'induction' or relaxation procedures vary [Werner used the beach with the noise of ocean waves]; so, too, the Oriental will use a Sanskrit word for his mantra (the sound associated with trance induction).

One may expect a unified theory of altered states of consciousness to emerge. Confront is the whole matter of 'suggestion.' Western hypnosis is frequently reduced to manipulative suggestion. Thus, the hypnotist might give his subject a posthypnotic suggestion to perform a particular action after leaving the trance state and not to remember consciously that he had been given such instructions. Unscrupulous persons might gain control over others. Werner believed that people are already, normally, in a trance and thus it is easy to hypnotize people with a single word or action.

"The point is to be dehypnotized," Werner emphasized, "to go beyond the mind is what I call the Self," which is what Eastern disciplines believe. Werner began investigating motivation and human development. He began encounter and sensitivity groups and his curiosity touched base with a whole list of psychologists, beginning with Maslow's 'selfactualizing'. He got interested in the discipline of telling truth absolutely. He noticed that people including himself almost never tell the truth. He had a 'peak experience' and had a profound sense of Self. "It was only later, as I worked through Zen and Scientology, that I began to understand the matter better," Werner said.
He calls it 'Getting to the top of the pile of bodies' he began to get skeptical of reality. There was a shift in values, things that had been important: success and satisfaction ceased to be important suddenly. He touched base with Zen by Alan Watts an Episcopal clergyman who renounced his priesthood and became an advocate of Oriental religions. Disciplines taught more about the Self also called Being, Essence, or Buddha nature. Not until Scientology did I get a clear distinction between Mind and Self.

Werner also nonchalantly probed areas that would have been forbidden ground to most academic investigators and even off limits to Alan Watts, whose practice of Zen never strayed far from the respectable. Werner probed the bizarre, eccentric, exotic, and utterly disreputable new movements, Subud and Martial Arts and religions that were growing in California, and ransacked them for notions and practices of value to him in his own quest. Werner later participated in latihan itself, which is a form of meditation aiming at 'inner stillness' and opening of the mind to meaning and 'divine energies' [There is only counterfeit divine energy without Christ Jesus].
"I had no idea what Scientology was," Werner told me, wrote the author. "But I did what came along and agreed to have the Scientology communication course presented to our organization. The course was arduous. There was no brain work in it, just exercises that at first appeared to have no relationship to life. There also was a two - person, two - hour, eyeball - to - eyeball confrontation. I did the exercises. I saw their point, and I saw how to apply them. The course was brilliant."

"Werner encouraged his whole staff to take the Scientology communication course. Werner went through five Scientology levels, and received a total of about seventy hours of auditing. Werner encountered that the mind was the root of all the trouble. He states that he was able to get back to his 'memories' of past lives."
If the Bible is truth, reincarnation does not exist according to Jesus's declaration: "'I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.''How can a man be born when he is old?' Nicodemus asked. 'Surely, he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!' Jesus answered, 'I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit." (John 3:3-6)

Werner was getting in touch with something, but it was not past lives since we are only born once to die. "Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death." (Romans 7:9,10) "Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment." (Hebrews 9:27)]

"After my experience with Scientology, I saw what it means to see the Mind as a machine." said Erhard. Hubbard, who invented Scientology, is a variant more usually associated with Eastern philosophy, particularly with Buddhism. For Hubbard, the most important thing in the universe is a god like creative force called the 'thetan', itself the creator and definer of universes. The thetan does not exist in space and time, and has no mass or energy. It is the true Self of the individual, his soul, or 'essence', and is immortal. The world of matter, energy, space, and time [abbreviated] the MEST universe, as Hubbard calls it. Buddhists call it illusion. It is created by the thetans, and has no independent existence. The thetan is a 'MEST production unit.'

Man as we know him exists in a fallen state. He has forgotten his essential, immortal Self. He has entrapped himself in the MEST universe. He even believes himself to be wholly MEST. No worse fate could have befallen him. For the MEST universe is a universe of force and slavery, where honesty, justice, reason, and integrity are impossible, a universe wholly at war with the thetan essence, which is 'naturally good', honest, just full of integrity. [It is not possible to equate Thetan with the Holy Spirit, because the spiritual realm without Christ Jesus is demonic. Therefore, it cannot be 'naturally good'. "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin." (Romans 7:25) We can only be empowered through the Holy Spirit to overcome sin. That fact Werner did not acknowledge. Werner was looking to find this freedom in Eastern religions such as Zen-like Buddhism and Scientology.]
According to Werner Erhard, the way to happiness is to win freedom from this entrapment by the world of mass, energy, space, and time, to regain thetan freedom and creativity. So far, little in Scientology differs from Buddhism and other Oriental philosophies that search for escape from the 'wheel' of birth and death. There are also similarities with gnostic and Christian attempts to free the spirit from the flesh.

Every time the individual encounters a new experience reminding him in any way of an earlier trauma, the reactive mind goes into operation and the person goes unconscious, automatically acting as he did earlier [until] he no longer has space in which to create; he "goes solid." He is hemmed in by traumatic memories, and by all the agreements that he made with other persons and with the MEST universe. He comes to think that he is MEST body, and forgets his non-MEST origins.

The goal of Scientology is to retrieve the individual from his agreement with the MEST universe [thus his commitment to God if that is an agreement he strives for]. To reduce the apparently infinite power of the MEST universe over him to zero; and to increase the apparent zero of his own personal universe to infinity. [To reduce his commitment to Christ Jesus to zero and increase the zero ?? {Gobble de guck!}]

Next Werner got involved in Mind Dynamics .. a mind-expansion program.. featuring extraordinary demonstrations and intensive training in memory feats, in enhancement of psychic powers, ESP, precognition, and psychic diagnosis and healing, techniques drawing on hypnosis and autohypnosis, and on autogenic therapy, in addition to.. techniques. They were also cultivated by 'natural psychic' Edgar Cayce, and by Jose' Silva, founder of Silva Mind Control. ..a number of colorful effects drawing from Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, and other disciplines. Clairvoyance, extrasensory perception, and healing have always been reported with the hypnotic trance. Alexander Everett, the Englishman founded Mind Dynamics. Alexander told me, 'Searching for methods to reach the inner spiritual state was the aim. I still didn't find a way to reach the spiritual level effectively.'

Werner got involved with the Edgar Cayce group. "It was the same thing that I had encountered with Madame Blavatsky with Rosicrucianism. She did not know how to teach you to get there either. I learned in Theosophy the power of imagination and visualization, he said." Now he was ready to create his own reality.
Somewhere between Corte Madera and the Golden Gate Bridge, the man in the car on the freeway was transformed: the individual who emerged from the Mustang in San Francisco a half hour later was a different kind of being. Werner had an extraordinary experience, and found what he had been searching for, in one discipline after another, for nearly eight years. Werner could have saved himself much time and money by just looking in the Scriptures, everything he talks about is written. He claims money was no object. He could have had eternal life with God. Werner never did explain what happened. Erhard had no words to explain
what happened in the car, but the effect was an altered life. He began identifying himself as the space, the creator, the source of all stuff. "I became Self. Experience," Werner said, "is simply evidence that I am here. It is not who I am. I am I am." [He is saying, he is god. "You shall have no other gods before me." (Exodus 20:3) "For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many 'gods' and many 'lords'), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live." (1 Corinthians 8:5,6)]

It is as if the Self is the projector, and everything else is the movie. Before the transformation, I could only recognize myself by seeing the movie. Now I saw that I am prior to or transcendent to all that. [What he is saying here is that he has realized that he is a branch, a projector, in other words a medium, through which the force of creativity flows from the spirit world.] Werner admitted: "I had reached the end. It was
all over for Werner Erhard." One is now complete according to Erhard. [Completion comes through a commitment to Christ Jesus and the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit is not occupying that vacuum, we try to fill it with substitutes and the longing does not get satisfied.]

It makes no sense to be committed to anything: beliefs, ideologies and traditions. The problem is to propel one from Mind to Self [the counterfeit I am]. How is the transition from one state to the other what Werner calls transformation to be achieved?

Werner Erhard is correct, 'no discipline or route leads to the Self' as he admitted earlier. People usually submit to someone to have a life of substance and they become the controller. There is really no Self in a believer, the Holy Spirit lives in a believer and gradually takes control leading to the death of the self which is the case when the person submits to the demonic spirit entities. He stated that he found out he was a projector through which the movie was being played. "We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us." (1 Corinthians 2:12) This verse states there are two spirits, the spirit of the world and the Spirit who is of God. Werner is talking about contacting the spirit of the world because he rejected the spirit given to us of God earlier.

"In which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient." (Ephesians 2:2) "This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus, is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them." (1 John 4:2-5)

The 'est' training that Werner Erhard developed, provides a format in which siege is mounted on the Mind. It aims to press one beyond one's point of view. Teaching no new belief, it aims to break up the existing 'wiring of the Mind,' and thereby to trap the Mind, to allow one to take hold of one's own Mind, to blow the Mind. The training and its style is irreverent and intrusive. Thus, a transformed individual is unlikely to become a 'true believer'.

Looking at what the previous sentence said, these kinds of seminars could easily apply to: "what good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?" (Mark 8:36) Our minds are precious and need guarding, because they belong to God and He advises each of us: "And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. (Ephesians 4:23,24)
The training aims to enable transformation to occur, not to convey information. The training is about sixty hours in length. The choice is absolute: the cost of righteousness.. one transcends Mind and gives up the 'hunger and thirst after righteousness'. This is what Jesus had to say to oppose and warn about the result of the training, since the hunger and thirst for righteousness will be eliminated: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." (Matthew 5:6). That will most likely not be possible when the desire for it is gone because we have to ask for it. When there is no desire for it, we would not be asking to be filled. The cost of going Werner Erhard's way is far more than $300 - $600, it could easily cost eternal life as a child of God in His presence.

Werner assumes that transformation will have a radical effect on society, as it is mediated by transformed individuals through changed relationships and transformed organizations and institutions. Existing institutions in education, law, medicine, government will then start to work. Humankind will, in the process, be transfigured [to the Antichrist].

From 'The Book of est', by Luke Rhinehart: "The problem is that est is not a religion, not an academic course, and not a belief system. Experiencing the training itself is the only way to get what the training offers, but the closest approximation to the training is a dramatization. The training normally lasts fifteen to twenty hours a day. As a result every trainee suffers from periods of 'unconsciousness' when he is so bored, angry, involved in his own fantasies, or simply exhausted that he is unable to experience or recall what is happening in the training itself."
The author describes the experience in detail in his book and confirms my letter to my mother. "We breathe deeply. We listen to the long affirmation of life read to us by the trainer. A tape recording begins to play the sounds of waves crashing rhythmically against our beach, and we are asked to play there...however we feel like playing. I began to feel sick to my stomach. There were no thoughts no memories, just nausea, why?

The lady next to her threw up all over the place? The whole process is ridiculous. 'You're all liars. You've got nothing, NOTHING. And when you've got nothing then you really have something.' 'It's doing nothing that works'.
'Truth process' [comes] after the intense emotional confrontations and breakdowns. It is for some a release to be able to stack the chairs at the side of the room and lie on the floor and 'go into our space'. There is a good deal of fear in the room as the process begins. There are some 250 trainees lying on the floor, a half dozen sitting in chairs, and a dozen assistants present to hand out tissues or vomit bags where needed."

Adelaide Bry who wrote a book, 'est', went back after the training to observe as trainer. Here is what she had to say: "Belief is a disease. The truth believed is a lie. What the trainer later called 'the roller coaster ride' had begun. It seemed to me that the idea was to reduce us to pulp, to attack us where we're most vulnerable, to eventually have us identify those areas of our lives that don't produce results. "When you reach a critical mass of observation," Werner says, "things can begin to disappear." I looked around and noted that all but one of the exit doors had signs across them saying 'NO EXIT'; the other door had an est volunteer in front of it to prevent entry from outside. Stewart said, "The truth puts people to sleep. It goes right to what's unconscious in them, and most people are uncomfortable in their unconsciousness, enough just to chance letting some truth strike the truth in them."

"You are going to feel every feeling there is to feel." Stewart's directions continued, and the scene grew noisy; an incredible cacophony of sound (harsh sound) erupted as each one of the two hundred and fifty men and women, lying flat on their backs on the floor of the giant ballroom, went into their 'item'. Two hundred and fifty people in every form of emotion, giving free vent to vomiting, shaking, sobbing, hysterical laughing, raging recreating experiences in a safe space."

This author was a trainer and shares: "I stood on the aisle with a pile of vomit bags in my arms. My eyes scanning the couple of a dozen trainees assigned to me, watching for someone's hand to shoot into the air signaling that he wanted to vomit. I had decided to volunteer for the two weekends because I wanted to see what it was like from the other side. Est's meticulous attention to detail paralleled exact instructions. Several est workers proudly told me that est graduates were in great demand on the California job market. A number of businesses, in fact, were reported to be hiring esters.

Incredible! It occurred to me that if Werner actualized his proposal to train millions, it might have a dramatic effect on everyone's job performance. I saw that Werner has created a situation where people clamor to volunteer. It saves the cost of thousands of salaries and it provides est with dedicated people to attend to the myriad details that contribute to est's success. Werner told me that what people really want to do with their lives is to make a contribution to the well-being of others.

My feelings about this aspect of 'est', the sense of community and eager commitment, is that it fulfills a deep need in contemporary American society. Critics of 'est' have compared it, disparagingly, with old-time religion. Its sense of service, of mission, and of course its a definition of a way of being and experiencing. And, like many religions, 'est' has its own language.

There are the education workshops. Of the 14 percent of est graduates who are educators (teachers, counselors, administrators), 4,000 have responded to est's programs to assist them in adapting est to their work. The workshops provide a place for them to share with each other how they've used est professionally in teaching or learning and the results they've obtained. Out of this have come classroom trainings for children (the Watts training reportedly raised reading scores dramatically), in-service training credit for teachers, and courses based on the est experience. I might add that I've adapted some est techniques for use in my therapy practice and have found them valuable," writes the author Adelaide Bry.

Workshops have been conducted for a mixed bag of professional and special-interest groups, including psychotherapists, scientists, clergy, doctors, and nurses, among others. These programs, incidentally, are highly publicized. 'est' makes a big point about never advertising, but it is relentless in its efforts to invite graduates to bring newcomers to guest lectures and to attend graduate functions themselves. Almost no event passes without a pitch for at least one other event. And huge numbers of volunteers are continuously involved with mailings and phone calls to solicit attendance. At first, I found these tactics offensive, and I no longer do, as I take responsibility for my response to them.

There are two teen programs, one a ten- day 'live- in', which takes place in a secluded natural setting, and the other a standard training identical to the regular 'est' training. "In the teen training we do a breakthrough process, done as an activity until you lose control. The power releases when you lose control, when you are actually driven out of control. At that point trainees have the option of losing control or not, and the 1,000 teen- agers who have thus far been through the training and all did lose control.

We transform your teen- ager or we don't bring him back. So far they've all come back." The cost for all this is $750. The training stripped away the patterns of our old, habitual transactions, unstuck us from our separate niches, rode right through the armor we'd set up to defend ourselves against one another...best of all, it totally erased all fear and anxiety regarding our future relationships together; there is simply no problem that we won't be able to handle. I see him as totally powerful. Over 2,000 children have gone through it to date. Any child between six and twelve, one of whose parents is an est graduate, is qualified to take it. The training is held for fifty children at a time. More than 14 percent of its graduates, a total of almost 11,000, are educators.
'est' is no ordinary California cult. It is a multi million dollar corporation that has doubled in size each year and operates nationwide with the efficiency of a crack brigade. It's joined by prominent lawyers, doctors and psychologists; it has trained California schoolchildren under a Federal grant, and its Advisory Board is chaired by a former chancellor of the University of California Medical School, San Francisco.

The trainers fall into a very special category. As Werner's emissaries, the fourteen trainers are alter egos if not quite carbon copies and yet each has an individual personality. They are rigorously trained over a long period. Their apprenticeship is to learn to re-create. What they really have to give up is their ego. In regards to 'est' and God: Werner has said, "Belief in God is the greatest single barrier to God in the Universe; (it is almost a total barrier to the experience of God. When you think you have experienced God, you haven't). Experiencing God is experiencing God, and that is true religion." A graduate in training with the guest seminar leaders program said to me right after Werner spoke about training forty million people, "Can you imagine what the world out there would be like if forty million people stopped lying to themselves?"

What needs to be remembered about Werner Erhard is his admission of everyone being a liar, including himself. Sixteen years later these types of organizations began approaching members of my family, things changed for me. To just sit by became impossible. Taking a stand activates the Holy Spirit. Information began to flow to me about these establishments and it enabled me to get some answers at least explaining what had happened to me in 1978 at the est training. The book Helter Skelter that describes the story about Charles Manson suggested Scientology in his background. It's founder, Ron Hubbard's life, described in the Los Angeles Times in a detailed feature story came to me from a friend. Then at our little bookstore there was one book out of dozens that Hubbard wrote. It held exactly what I wanted to know. Needing information about the process, it was all described in detail by Ron Hubbard himself. It paralleled the 'est' seminar, except Erhard processed groups, where Hubbard processed individuals and used methods of exteriorizing (leaving the body) that Hubbard warned against.

In his book Scientology, The Fundamentals of Thought, by L. Ron Hubbard, he states, "Probably the greatest discovery of Scientology and its most forceful contributions to the knowledge of mankind has been the isolation, the description and handling of the human spirit [soul], accomplished in 1952.. I established along scientific rather than religious or humanitarian lines that thing which is the person, the personality, is separable from the body and the mind at will and without causing bodily death or mental derangement... Man had not discovered this before because lacking the technologies of Scientology. To the contrary, there has been an awareness of this phenomena for centuries. The entire cult of Communism is based upon the fact that one lives only one life, there is no hereafter and that the individual has no religious significance. Man at large has been close to this state for at least the last century. The state is of a very low order, excluding as it does all self-recognition. In Scientology [the soul] "thetan" [notice that word] has no mass, no wavelength, no energy and no time or location in space except by consideration or postulate. The spirit , then, is not a thing. It is the creator of things.

The goal of processing in Scientology and one of many goals..is to 'exteriorize' the individual [that means to move the soul out of the body]...since it has been discovered that he is happier and more capable when so situated." Next Hubbard gets into mental imagery and creation... words can be immediately implanted into the reactive mind which become operable under restimulation at later times [it looks like hypnosis to me]..goal is total knowingness. Exteriorization under duress is sudden and to the patient inexplicable and is in itself very shocking and will cause mental suffering. Exteriorization under duress is the characteristic of death itself...departure of the soul is generally associated with death.. which is not so in this case."

In L. Ron Hubbard's chapter on "Civilization and Savagery" he writes: "The way to paralyze a nation entirely and to make it completely ungovernable would be to forbid education of any kind within its borders. Also to inculcate into every person within it the feeling that he must receive any information from anybody about anything. To conquer a land..there must be some sort of agreement among the people themselves, as well as between the conqueror and the subdued. Only in this way could one have a society, a civilization or, as we say in Scientology, a smoothly running game."

"The goal of Scientology is playing of a better game... The earliest stage is taking over control of the [subject] by repetitive processes up to 75 hours. A possibility of exteriorizing becomes a possibility by observation or because the subject informs the [trainer] that it has happened...A Scientologist knowing the mind completely can of course do many 'tricks' with the conditions of people to improve them. Aim is civilization
without insanity."

In the chapter 'The Body'.. Hubbard states: "Biophysics only became feasible when it was discovered in Scientology that a fixed electrical field existed surrounding the body entirely independent of it but can be influenced by the human mind...The complexity of these anchor point can cause an independent series of electronic flows which can occasion much discomfort to the individual. The balance structure of the body and even its joint action and physical characteristics can be changed by changing this electrical field that exists at a distance from, or within, the body. The use of electrical shocks upon a body for any purpose is therefore very dangerous.. was never intended to be therapeutic.. [it] deranges the electronic field in the vicinity of the body.. and causes physical problems." Hubbard, a world traveler, picked up Eastern philosophies and studied engineering and took a course in nuclear physics.

He developed Dianetics which was targeted by public opinion and is now Scientology, world wide and changed recently to a church status. It is another form of developing the 'I Am God' position with deeper implications of the possibility of undesirable spirits taking residence. The God given protections are artificially removed. Occult teachings warn against these types of practices. They can cause a loss of sense of reality. That is what they are deliberately developing in the processing. Reality virtually disappears momentarily.

In my opinion repeated processing causes diminished control and loss of protection from the spirit world.
[ source: Prove Me the Lord Says, by Rita Williams - Chapter 13, rejected by publishers, copyrighted 1994 - Library of Congress ]

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