The Book of Est - Contents

Contents

The Book of est includes a one-page foreword by Werner Erhard. Erhard writes in the foreword that Rhinehart's book "brilliantly ... communicates clearly to the reader both a sense of being in the training room and the spirit of what takes place there." Erhard's foreword notes: "although this book dramatizes the highlights of the training and attempts to give you the vicarious experience of being at a training, this is a book, and the est experience cannot result from reading any book".

With Erhard's endorsement, Rhinehart attempts to replicate the "transformation" experience from est. The book imparts the message that the participant's life "doesn't work", and that after two weekends the individual will come to understand how to "win". The book presents a fictional dramatization of the est training. Punctuation style usage including exclamation points and boldface type bring the reader's attention to key items in the text.

Rhinehart describes the est training as a form of participatory theatre, writing: "Seeing the trainer as a master actor ... permits us to evaluate his acts and words more intelligently than if we misinterpret him as being a scholar or scientist giving a lecture." In an analysis of how to approach the est training, Rhinehart comments that "It might best be described, if it can be described at all, as theater—as living theater, participatory theater, encounter theater. Once we begin to see est in these terms, much that fails to fit the scheme of therapy or religion or science begins to make sense."

In Rhinehart's fictional account of the training, the est course leader begins with the instruction: "Let me make one thing clear. I don't want any of you to believe a thing I'm saying. Get that. Don't believe me. Just listen." The est trainer explains that the course techniques are used because "Werner has found that they work." When one of the est participants asks why the instructor says certain statements during the course, the instructor responds: "I'm saying them because Werner has found that the trainer's saying them works."

Participants in est are told that they cannot take notes during the course, and at the end of the seminar the instructor declines to go over a review of the training. In order to participate in the course, trainees must adhere to agreements which include: they may not exit the course facility except during specified break time, they cannot sit next to someone they knew before coming to the course, and they cannot take unprescribed medications or alcohol for the week prior to the training.

Individuals are given a chance to receive a full refund and leave the course after the instructor goes over the course agreements. A second chance to leave the course and receive a refund is offered on the third day of the course. At the end of the training, the seminar participants are strongly encouraged to bring guests to sign up for the course – participants are instructed that "bringing guests is a manifestation of a person's willingness to participate in life."

The concluding portion of the book includes a comparison of Werner Erhard's methodologies to Zen, The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda, and to Rhinehart's views from The Dice Man. Drawing a parallel to the "controlled folly" described in Castaneda's A Separate Reality, Rhinehart argues that in almost all cases, enlightenment is linked to humor: "One can rarely have an enlightenment experience except under the impact of nonsense ... Every time we laugh we are in a way experiencing a mini enlightenment, a tiny letting go of some attachment to some bit of belief or sense. Full enlightenment, in these terms, is accepting what is, which leads to experiencing fully whatever one is experiencing."

Rhinehart comments that those who have taken part in the est training feel the need for a sense of community: "Most graduates indicate that the value of the seminar series depends not so much on is ostensible data content or on the processes introduced, but on the sharing on an intimate basis with others." He notes that some of the graduates of the est training "treat him with the love and awe normally associated with that of disciples for spiritual teachers". He likens Erhard's relationship to his staff members to the way in which a guru interacts with disciples: " the essentially eastern phenomenon of a powerful being (usually a guru or a spiritual teacher) attracting other powerful beings who nevertheless choose to channel their power through their leader." Rhinehart argues that est "may be seen as in many ways the culmination to date of the 'Easternization of America', a process that first became notable in the late fifties and early sixties".