I’m having an offline conversation that invites me to take time out to look at Werner Erhard’s teachings.
And I’m “getting it,” getting his teachings at a much deeper level now than I ever did before.
Reading the material again awakens the thrill in me of hearing him make the cases he (and his assistants) made over really helpful points of life and spiritual practice. I have his cassettes and books, etc.
Here’s one of his best statements:
“That you make a difference, that the rules for living successfully are now based on you and me, that we can live in a context of the world working for everyone is literally unthinkable. It is beyond our present paradigm, outside the scope and limits of the condition in which we have lived. You have to dare to think the unthinkable, dare to do more than dream, dare to be the architect of your own world.” (1)
Imagine a person, fully alive, speaking these words to a vast audience in dulcet tones that I’d hope to use with my sweetheart.
Often he raises his voice, but not as Hitler did. There isn’t a hint of hatred or anger in his voice when raised, nothing to hook me, nothing I could point my finger at. It’s a powerful demonstration that someone can raise their voices like that without a hint of aggression.
That I make a difference? No, really? I was 33 at the time, working as a business writer for an engineering firm. I acutely didn’t feel that I made a difference.
The rues of living successfully are based on you and me. I’m still learning that lesson. It’s still out ahead of me. I’m still somewhat you or me, walling myself off from others.
And then the coup de grace. “We can live in a context of the world working for everyone….” Werner, Werner, you’re talking to a professional complainer, the runt of the litter who, to be heard, would jam a stick in the bicycle wheel.
I learned the power of “no” at a very early age. No, no, no, no. Will the world work for everyone but me? How can a world be made to work for everyone?
Enter transformation/enlightenment. I did “get it” towards the end of my first est training. Trainer Rod Browning was looking at each of us and perfectly matching our expressions – suggesting a wonderful degree of egolessness.
When he came to me, I recognized what was happening and allowed it. And I briefly entered the space of knowledge of the Self – for as a long as the experience lasted (hours, I imagine). (2) The est Training called that “getting it.”
But I didn’t get a world that worked. It remained a puzzle for me year after year, until, as I told you earlier, I got how it could work on March 13, 2015. (3)
Truly, verily, such a world is “literally unthinkable,” as he says. Thinking will not help you get it. You have to “enter” the space that he’s pointing at.
Our consciousness is dense because our physical bodies are non-conductors to begin with and then we make the situation worse by doing things that were out of integrity that we then have to lie about. That makes us wary, suspicious, afraid and all of this shows up as muscular tension in the body and emotional stress.
Well, the physical body compared to the astral body is like a gorilla’s body compared to a human’s. Imagine dragging a 400-lb body around. And yet this is the body which muffles the emotions of the spirit inside. (4)
It isn’t possible from inside a body that’s like India rubber to feel the finer emotions, certainly not the emotions which I’m sure Werner was feeling.
To know that more refined state, we have to “enter” it. No, not geographically. Somehow, and with the aid of our guides, we have to evoke or summon up in ourselves a consciousness that is unbounded, if even for a moment. If we succeed, the expansion of consciousness ignites and persists for a time. But we certainly, even then, don’t live in that space forever (until Sahaja Samadhi).
The mass of folks don’t know that space, according to sages. Our bodies are dense. And our life practices increase our density. These things can prevent us from knowing the “transformed” space that Werner is pointing at, in which the world naturally works, this you-and-me world beyond the ego’s pull, in which we make a difference.
With that as context, we now hear him tell us that what he is pointing at lies beyond our paradigm and thinking.
“It is beyond our present paradigm, outside the scope and limits of the condition in which we have lived. You have to dare to think the unthinkable, dare to do more than dream, dare to be the architect of your own world.”
We have to emerge from the shells our consciousness is in, stand forth, drop our fears if we’re to enter the space he was in. We have to create our dream as a reality, be the architect of our own world.
The world of our minds would never suspect that such a space exists as he describes here if it weren’t for periodic arrivals of people like Werner who exhibit it and provide humankind with models.
This man is talking about what we here understand as “the ascended state.” Not only that. But he spoke to large audiences from it, stirring them into action to build a world that works. I shouldn’t speak about him as if he isn’t here. He’s still at work, in what he calls the Mastery Foundation.
He certainly stirred me to action and has always intrigued me. His philosophy was far ahead of its time. It may not be entirely clear to us until we live in a more refined state as a planet.
The sponsors of this consciousness shift want us to live in a world that works for everyone. After the gradual shift culminates, we will. For this generation, uniquely, Werner’s words are a preview.
Footnotes
(1) “Each of us has the opportunity, the privilege, to make a difference in creating a world that works for all of us.” (Werner Erhard, A World That Works, 1980, cited at https://www.worldthatworks.org/.)
“Transformation does not negate what has gone before it; rather, it fulfills it. Creating the context of a world that works for everyone is not just another step forward in human history; it is the context out of which our history will begin to make sense.” (Werner Erhard – A Shot Heard Round the World: A World that Works for Everyone at https://www.scribd.com/doc/143329822/Werner-Erhard-A-Shot-Heard-Round-the-World-A-World-that-Works-for-Everyone
See also Werner Erhard, The Hunger Project: The End of Starvation. Creating an Idea Whose Time has Come. San Francisco: Hunger Project, n.d., p. 3.
(2) No experience short of Sahaja Samadhi, mukti, moksha is permanent. This is simply a moment of transformation, a peak experience.
This was the second time I had had a brief experience of the Self. The first time was at an Enlightenment Intensive during the Cold Mountain Institute resident fellowship, a three-month encounter group, the year before. These experiences really whetted my appetite.
(3) Steve Beckow, “How Can a World Work for Everyone?” Golden Age of Gaia, April 14, 2018, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2018/04/14/how-can-a-world-work-for-everyone/.
(4) I had an out-of-body experience in 1977 and acutely observed what happened when the spirit body returned to the physical body. While I was wailing my eyes out outside the body, having witnessed someone bullying a friend of mine and being unable to intervene, when my consciousness transferred to the outside of my body (and I then lost track of myself), my cry became a whimper. This body is a relative non-conductor of emotions.