Est was big in the 70s and attracted a lot of celebrities. For example, there's a video on Youtube of John Denver guest-hosting the Tonight Show and interviewing Werner Erhard. His teachings were a mixture of Eastern religion, 60s ideas about psychotherapy (e.g. Gestalt and encounter groups), and the early 20th century American self-help movement that used to be called New Thought and that gave rise to such writers as Napoleon Hill. Est was controversial because its groups had a confrontational style that some people found reminiscent of a cult, and because Erhard got unapologetically rich from it. Eventually he was attacked by mainstream media. In one famous case, 60 Minutes did a hatchet job on him and were later forced to retract all of it.
It might be an ok approximation to describe Erhard as the Eckhart Tolle of the 1970s. But Erhard was more aggressive and perhaps less delicate about making money. He eventually sold Est to a group that became the personal development outfit known as Landmark, which is still going and subject to the same criticisms.
it might be bad form to just be unabashedly for anyone or anything in this world, and, the way the whole thing occurs to me is that werner erhard is one of the GREAT misunderstood mysteries of our time. He is just an average guy who really got into what he was into which was empowering others effectively, I have never met e person who was more compassionate and useful and humble and not caring about $ than this guy, yet the media and anyone with a grievance promoted and repromoted and repromoted a view quite the opposite of him and that is what stuck and what gets repeated when referring to him. Just as well, being in the public spot light sucks and is one of the most useless grotesque phenomenas in society today in my opinion. what artist or politician or person exercising some kind of leadership in life does not inevitably experience the "crowned" turning on them?
the world would be a better place if there war more werner erhards, people who made the success of all humanity as their own personal business.
What is est? Google and Wikipedia seem quite unhelpful.
Edit: found it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training