I am indebted to Anna Taglieri who requested I write this account, and
to Margaretha van der Meijden Theron who contributed material.
Table Mountain, Cape Town
backdrop for introducing Werner's work to South Africa, 1979
The Promise
Fulfilling a promise I made to Werner Erhard at 2:00am one morning in
1979 in the kitchen of his San Francisco home, the
Franklin House,
I went to South Africa and over the course of a year led the first
series of ten guest seminars around the country in the major cities
causing the first one thousand enrollments in South Africa which
inexorably
started Werner's work there.
Out of a promise of this nature, you may well imagine that any of a
number of things might have happened. This is what actually did happen.
And while I am not the story of my life, this conversation accounts for
and tells that story. If, indeed, a story must be told at all, then I
intend to support it being told accurately.
What Happened: Introducing Werner's Work To South Africa, 1979
It's not that I hit the ground running because I didn't. If anything, I
hit the ground sitting. Upon arrival in Cape Town where I had completed
my university education nine years earlier, the first thing I did was
visit family and look up old friends. We sat around talking. I had no
strategy for what was about to happen. Rather, that seemed to unfold
... just in the process of life itself ...
People said to me: "You're different than when we last saw you", and
"Something has changed about you", and "What happened to you? You seem
open and at peace".
Gradually I started to share about this guy I met (Werner Erhard) and
this thing I did (the est training). In the United States
where everyone has access to Werner's work, an already healthy level of
skepticism had built up. But in 1979 in South Africa, cloistered as it
was by the fetters of apartheid, the listening for transformation was
acute. Enrollment was an easy, delightful process.
A book written by Luke Rhinehart called The Book of est was quite well
known in South Africa, so there already was some sense of the form
Werner's work took. But book knowledge is one thing. Having someone
willing to share from first hand experience was something else
entirely. Soon I started receiving invitations to share Werner's work
with home groups.
Through one of those home meetings, I was introduced to Margaretha van
der Meijden. Margaretha, a bold, strapping woman, completed the
est training and a three months' assisting agreement in
the United States before returning to South Africa in November 1977.
Margaretha shared with me her intention to make Werner's work available
in Cape Town which later developed into her creation of a transformed
space for people. She'd set up a graphics supply store she called
"est graphics" (a greeting on a glass panel said "Hi! This
is it!"). Margathetha had also produced three
The Hunger Project
exhibitions there and had shared her experience of Werner's work with
those of her family and friends who cared to listen (as well as with
those who didn't), enrolling many of them.
After a meeting in Margaretha's "est graphics", we
contacted the major evening newspaper, the Cape Argus. Steve Shapiro, a
reporter, interviewed us. The result was a full page article in the
widely read Saturday weekend edition magazine titled "somewhere between
east and west" (all lower case) with the letters "e", "s",
and "t" in both the words "east" and "west" cleverly highlighted.
I had scheduled to share my experience with a group at the home of a
friend. We were expecting seven people. Anticipating an expanded
interest as a result of Steve's article we changed the venue of the
home introduction to a room at the Hohenort Hotel in Constantia. Steve
graciously included the new location in the coverage of his interview.
At the Hohenort Hotel event, we expected the original seven guests
plus, maybe, a few more who had read the article. Two hundred and sixty
seven people showed up. Things would never be the same after that.
A whirlwind month later, Sandy Robins, another reporter from the Cape
Argus, called me. She said that the Cape Argus would like to publish
another article about est in the widely read weekend edition, this time
in the women's section. The article would be titled "Est is ..." (I
would have preferred a lower case "e"). Sandy asked me if I would mind
being interviewed by her.
Would I? Anticipating even more expanded interest as a result of the
second full page article we changed the venue of the next home
introduction this time to a room at the Newlands Hotel in Newlands.
Sandy (who, by the way, was totally enrolled and got it completely)
also graciously included the new location in the coverage of her
interview. At the Newlands Hotel event, we expected the original six
guests plus, maybe, a few more who had read the article. One hundred
and fifty three people showed up. Now the thing had a life all of its
own, and we could not have purchased better advertising even if we had
tried to.
There was a consideration about presenting Werner's work in South
Africa in those days: apartheid. It would not have been appropriate to
segregate Werner's work. Yet delivering it to so called "mixed"
audiences would have been illegal. During the guest seminars I led, one
of the most important functions assigned to an assistant was to be on
watch in the parking lot outside the venue in case we were raided by
"BOSS", the so called "Bureau Of State Security" for contravening the
apartheid laws since almost all our introductory events drew people of
all races. Fortunately no such eventuality occurred. Ironically, on
another occasion four years later in September of 1981, I enrolled the
Chief of Police of Plettenberg Bay in the possibility Werner's work is.
Regarding apartheid, we did not yet have the language of possibility in
those days. Yet when we managed assistants meetings or spoke what
Werner's work could provide, we asked people what they would want out
of it. Almost everyone in one form or another said "the end of
apartheid". Now that apartheid has ended, did we cause that? Nelson
Mandela (whose grandchildren are now graduates of Werner's work) when
referring to the end of apartheid in South Africa, correctly said:
"Nothing of what happened in South Africa was the work of any one
individual. The transformation of South Africa came out of a
partnership between many, many people.". So did we cause that? I prefer
to say we said it would happen. That was our stand coming from
transformation. We said it would happen. And look what happened.
Between the twin successes of the Hohenort Hotel event and the Newlands
Hotel event, Margaretha introduced me to her sister Iona Hearn and her
fiance James Clow who were also visiting South Africa from California
and who were both graduates of the GSLP, the Guest Seminar Leaders
Program, the forerunner of the ILP, the Introduction Leaders Program.
Before meeting Iona and James, I shared my experience mostly out of my
relationship with Werner. To be sure, that worked well. Brilliantly, in
fact - even if I have to say it myself. But once Iona and James drove
me to the top of a sheer cliff overlooking the beautiful False Bay on
the south side of the Cape Peninsula and had me deliver my seminar at
full volume and at high speed to the seagulls flying by, I realized a
new power source in my delivery: my Self. I am indebted to Iona and
James for making that available to me. What was already a powerful
sharing became even more powerful as a result of their coaching.
Some days I spent hours on the telephone speaking with people, sharing
Werner's work with them, enrolling them, answering questions. There was
no resistance. The time for open listening in South Africa had started.
It was truly an epic time. One morning I got on the phone at about
8:00am intending to spend five minutes in conversation with one person.
One thing led to another, and by the time I hung up at 3:30pm that
afternoon, I had enrolled forty five people, each being recommended by
the previous one. I drove my car to the road that runs along the face
of Table Mountain known as Tafelberg Road ("Tafelberg" is how you say
Table Mountain in Afrikaans, the local language) where I walked for an
hour or so looking out over Cape Town known by the ancient mariners as
"the fairest Cape in all the world" contemplating what a future of
transformation in South Africa would look like.
On a whim I took the Mensa test which I aced. Coming into contact with
the Mensa Society was a lot of fun and, given their literally mind
boggling intelligence, a challenge. Of course I shared my experience of
Werner and his work with them too. In order to give my remarks some
context I described Werner as an American
Zen
master and his work as living
Zen
without the b.s. The Mensa Society loved that and invited me
to present a seminar for them which I did. About twenty people
attended, and the conversation was rapt and lively. I spoke with them
about
Zen
and Werner's work which is also the subject of another essay in this
collection,
Zen And Werner's Work.
What fascinated the Mensa Society most was the
moment Werner became
enlightened
or, to use the term Werner prefers, transformed. Werner has said that
"enlightenment" has an eastern connotation which he does not require.
He prefers the term "transformation" and does not refer to what
happened to him as enlightenment.
I knew of no better way to share
that moment
with them than to read the electrifying coverage of it verbatim from
Professor William (Bill) Warren Bartley III's official biography of
Werner titled
"Werner Erhard: The
Transformation of a Man - The Founding of est".
I sat in front of the room raised up on a bar stool reading from the
chapter named "True Identity" in part three of the book,
"Transformation". There, in an account called "Once Upon A Freeway",
Werner generously shares the
exact moment
he got it -
the Big "IT".
As Bill said, "somewhere between Corte Madera and the Golden Gate
Bridge, the man in the car on the freeway was transformed" (Werner
later specified the location more exactly as on the Golden Gate Bridge
itself). It was a priceless moment. There I was reading to
some of the most brilliant minds on the planet who were listening to
every word of that extraordinary account with jaw-dropped amazement.
You could have heard a pin drop.
Speaking of Bill's biography, it proved to be the most useful source
document and reference book I could have asked for, out there at the
southernmost tip of Africa thousands of miles away from the
Franklin House.
I read it and re-read it repeatedly, looking up explanations of
concepts and historical facts to supplement my answers to questions
fascinated people were asking. Another source of reference material
during those halcyon days was Werner himself. I stayed in contact with
him by tape recording every guest seminar I led and mailing the
cassette to him to critique. He responded by mail, answering my
questions, trusting me to come from my experience. That trust, in and
of itself, empowered me to look into my own space to determine what to
do next. Werner did not simply give me a recipe to cook up. In fact, he
pulled back from doing that if I asked him "how to" questions. Rather,
the complex support space he created for me by correspondence alone
enabled me to see for myself how things would work best. Not only did
that set the stage for the introduction of Werner's work to and the
transformation of South Africa but it also changed my life forever. It
is a space that I have lived from ever since. It drives, directs, and
guides every aspect of my life. It did then and it does today.
There was no structure for support in South Africa then. If I didn't
create it, there wasn't going to be one. I am not a graduate of any
leadership program. I got what I got by being around Werner. I knew
that all I had to do was to get up to the front of the room, be with
people, open my mouth, and speak. I was often the last one to find out
what was going to happen in my seminars. Like everyone else, I found
out how my seminars turned out by listening. I trusted the process. I
counted on it working - which it did, time after time after time. I
never prepared or followed notes. There did not seem to be any need.
Nothing was calculated. There was no strategy. And it worked. Usually I
spoke for an hour standing, then took questions or conducted a process,
like asking the group to recall the first time they remember being
upset. Then I would ask them to recall the time they were upset before
that, and then the time they were upset before that etc. It was a very
basic process designed to give them a sense of what an originating
incident is and how the decisions they made about it have shaped their
epistemology
and their lives subconsciously ever since. A man came up to me at the
end of a seminar at the Newlands Hotel and said to me in a thick "boer"
accent: "You spoke for an hour. I didn't understand anything you said.
Whatever you've got, I want it.".
The Newlands Hotel was the venue for three more guest seminars, and it
was no longer necessary to have full page articles in a major newspaper
to publicize them. What sufficed instead were small ads in the
classified section: "est guest seminar with Laurence Platt, Saturday
night, Newlands Hotel, telephone 64-3468". That was it. Anywhere
between fifty and a hundred people responded to each announcement and
showed up.
Another publication to which I owe a debt of gratitude for making our
intention known is Odyssey published by Jill Iggleden. Simone Williams
interviewed me for Odyssey. Simone knew I had practiced yoga and
meditation in earlier years. She asked some brilliant questions about
the distinction between them and Werner's work. Actually there are no
valid comparisons. Yoga and meditation are yoga and meditation and
Werner's work is Werner's work. But what came out in the interview was
very useful and struck a chord with a lot of people, and it was this:
When I practiced yoga and meditation, what I had in mind was to get
somewhere. I considered yoga and meditation to be a path I was on,
and if I practiced enough, I believed I would get to the end of that
path which I believed would be a better place than where I was. From
participating in Werner's work people get clear This Is
It! There's no place to get to. You are already here. The
train has reached the station. So rather than practicing yoga and
meditation all the while trying to get somewhere else, I practiced yoga
and meditation while practicing yoga and meditation. This is a
contextual shift. Simone got that brilliantly and made it the focus of
her interview which caused seventy guests at my next guest seminar.
The way I handled registration was to invite people to sign their
commitment to participate in Werner's work when it was delivered in
it's full form in South Africa in a book which I carried around with me
wherever I went. At that time the closest real offering of Werner's
work was in London England, eight thousand miles away. It is said that
if the mountain will not come to Mohammed then Mohammed must go to the
mountain. Some people were unwilling to wait for a real offering of
Werner's work to come to South Africa, and nor were they willing to
wait for apartheid to end which would open the space for a real
offering of Werner's work to be available in South Africa. They opted
instead to fly to London immediately to participate in Werner's work
there. One of them, a fellow by the name of Craig Houseman, sent me a
postcard from London which simply said: "I did it. I got nothing out of
it. It was worth every penny. Thank You.". To this day as far as I
know, eight thousand miles may still be the longest distance anyone has
traveled anywhere on the planet specifically to participate in Werner's
work for the first time.
I was invited by the Theosophical Society of South Africa to address
them. The invitation was caused by a member who attended a guest
seminar. I enjoyed being with them. Forty people were present.
Theosophy is a synthesis of science, religion, and philosophy. Into
that listening I shared Werner's work. The ensuing conversation was
delightful and fresh about the religion of religion - "meta religion"
may be a better way of saying that. I shared with them my own religion
and how my religion is two feet eleven and three quarter inches long in
a life that is three feet long. I shared that what kept me stuck in my
own religion was that I believed it very fervently. Until I
experienced transformation, there was no distinction for me of direct
experience. In a religion that is two feet eleven and three quarter
inches long in a three foot life, transformation is that final quarter
inch. They got from my sharing that Werner's work is not a religion and
that their own religious experiences would be greatly expanded once
they could see where they believed their own religious experiences to
death. I shared with them that when I was able to simply let my
experience be, I began to have direct experiences which are arguably
the ones written about in the holy books and which - in spite of
ourselves - we then believe. We mistake the menu for the steak. All the
great spiritual and religious masters are simply people who found out
that this is it! The Theosophical Society presentation was one of my
favorites. I really loved being with that group. They listened like
sponges. They wanted everything I had.
I led guest seminars in Johannesburg, Durban, and Plettenberg Bay
paying my own airfare yet never wanting for accommodation. All told I
enrolled the first thousand people into the possibility of Werner's
work and real, thrilling, alive transformation in South Africa. The
first presentation of the
Landmark Forum
in South Africa would have to wait until the apartheid era was over. I
don't think anyone would have been enrolled in the idea of presenting
one of Werner's trainings for white people, and another separate
training for non-white people. Bear in mind that in those days, a
non-white person in South Africa was simply someone who
was not a white person. That means that people of mixed
race were considered to be non-white, Indian people were
considered to be non-white, Chinese people were considered to be
non-white, Black people were certainly considered to be
non-white, but Japanese people were considered to be honorary
white. Go figure.
Until apartheid ended (as we said it would out of our stand for the
transformation of South Africa), I continued to enroll people around
the world in the possibility of Werner's work as transformation in
South Africa. I created an international group which I called The
Friends of the
Landmark Forum
in South Africa whom I sourced, communicated with, and coached by
national and international telephone calls, by mail and by e-mail. In
as many conversations I had as possible, I asked people to listen for
the possibility of the
Landmark Forum
in South Africa. By the time the first
Landmark Forum
was delivered in South Africa, the Friends of the
Landmark Forum
in South Africa was one thousand strong.
One thousand enrollments in Werner's work in South Africa. Another one
thousand Friends Of the
Landmark Forum
in South Africa. Another one thousand readers of this
Conversations For
Transformation
website every month. And more.
Someone whom I enrolled in the possibility of Werner's work in South
Africa said: "Laurence has reached out and touched the whole world".
I don't consider I did anything special. Sooner or later someone
would have done exactly what I did. I was just fortunate enough to have
been the first. There's nothing personal about transformation. You
can stand for it but you can't claim it as your own. Transformation is
a distinctly human property, the possibility of Being for all human
beings, and I knew once I heard it call me I would do something with
it. I like it that I was the first on the ground in South Africa with
Werner's work. I own that expression. But if it hadn't taken that
specific form it would have taken another one. And if it wasn't me it
would have surely been someone else.
As I said right in the beginning, there never was any strategy for
this. I had no ulterior motive for doing it. Truth be told I didn't
share Werner's work in order to accomplish anything, like the end of
apartheid for example although I didn't hear too many people complain
when that did happen just as we said it would. I shared Werner's work
for the joy of sharing Werner's work.
Actually, to be specific, what I shared was my relationship with Werner
and how inside of our relationship new possibilities for being call me
powerfully into being and new openings for action call me powerfully
into action. I heard that call and I called back. That's what enrolled
people. That's what introduced Werner's work to South Africa in 1979.
Follow Through
The following communications are reproduced from my archives in the
original form in which they first appeared. I created them in the
United States to provide a powerful support for the people currently
generating and participating in Werner's work in South Africa. For
convenience of delivery I designed them as websites which were then
printed by friends and partners in South Africa who included them in
the folders of paperwork given to each participant in their meetings.
