Werner Erhard
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Werner Erhard (John Paul Rosenberg) He was trained at Ford by Lee Iacocca (Order of Malta, MGM). He worked with Alan Watts and also trained Jerry Rubin, David Geffen, Yoko Ono, Arianna Huffington, Jeff Bridges, Diana Ross, Raul Julia. In the 60's he worked for Parents magazine of Knight of Malta J Peter Grace. |
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He was influenced by Carl Rogers (CIA front Human Ecology Fund, that funded MK Ultra research of Jolyon West) and the book Psycho-Cybernetics of Maxwell Maltz (mm=33, Columbia), which also influenced Tony Robbins.
He worked for Alexander Everett's Mind Dynamics, which mixed concepts of Rosicrucianism, Edgar Cayce, José da Silva, Christian Science and Theosophy. William Penn Patrick of Mind Dynamics was a member of the John Birch Society.
In 1971 he founded Erhard Seminars Training, a cult similar to Scientology, also influenced by Norbert Wiener's cybernetics. It established an office in San Francisco and collaborated with University High School in Hollywood, close to Laurel Canyon.
Cosmopolitan of Hearst helped increasing the popularity of EST training. New graduates were:
- Ted Ashley (Warner Bros
with Mark Rosenberg) and his wife Joyce
Easton (NBC soap Days of Our Lives)
- Ida Rolf (Esalen, Phi
Beta Kappa, Rockefeller
Foundation)
- David Geffen (Geffen Records,
DreamWorks with Steven Spielberg)
- Arianna Huffington
(Huffington Post, Berggruen
Institute, Uber)
- Joan Woodward (Actors Studio, wife
of Paul Newman, played a character with Multiple Personality Disorder in
The Three Faces of Eve)
- Havey Korman (ABC's the Donna Reed Show with
members of the Mickey Mouse Club)
- Cloris Leachman (Actors Studio, The
Last Picture Show of Ken Kesey's friend
Larry McMurtry, married to George Englund, director of The Ugly American
with Marlon Brando, neighbor of Judy Garland)
- Valerie Harper (Mary Tyler Moore Show with Cloris Leachman)
- Diana Ross (The Wiz with Michael
Jackson=Wizard of Oz
programming)
- Joel Shumacher (screenplay of The Wiz)
- Jerry Stiller (father of Ben Stiller)
He interviewed Buckminster Fuller (Esalen). EST training centers were set up in the UK, Israel and India.
United Artists movie Semi-Tough (1977) with Burt Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson, Carl Weathers, Lotte Lenya was a parody of EST training and technique of Ida Rolfs.
In 1977 he founded The Hunger Project with John Denver (appointed by Jimmy Carter for President's Commission for Hunger), Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (Secretary-General of United Nations, Inter-American Dialogue, Club de Madrid, Order of St Michael and St George), Noor Al-Hussein, Amartya Sen (Berggruen Institute, married to Emma Rothschild), Joan Holmes (UN Millenial Report), Joaquim Quissano (president Mozambique), Speciazo Kazibwe (vice-president of Uganda).
He was interviewed by Barbara Walters and Charlie Rose.
William Warren Bartley (LSE, Warburg Institute) wrote his biography. EST training played a role in The Americans with Noah Emmerich (The Truman Show).
EST training was discussed in Adam Curtis' BBC documentary Century of the Self with Michael Murphy (Esalen), Mario Cuomo (father of jesuit Andrew Cuomo), Herbert Marcuse, Jeffrey Bell (speechwriter of Ronald Reagan), Jerry Rubin (Abbie Hoffman's YIP), Howard Hunt (CIA), Heinz Lehmann (colleague of Ewen Cameron).