Why do people label Landmark Education as a cult?

About a week ago, I posted my experience of the Landmark Education's "Curriculum for Living".  Since then, I had never experienced such a spike in viewership as I did with that single post.  Of the 500 viewers that visited my post, 3 chose to share comments onto the post which all appear to be negative with some inciting emotional reactions as much as to call me names.

Why do I find it such a challenge that people react the way they do with Landmark Education?

Is it foolish of me to open my wallet to a legitimate business offering a course that gave myself so much value that I did not question the amount it costed me?  Does the same audience share the same concerns for the participants of Tony Robinson and Deeprak Chopra who both happen to be multi-millionaires? 

These guys are preaching the same things.....the bottom line is, getting you to work out your kinks in order to maximize your worth/potential.  To some, they are 'motivation speakers'.  To me, they are personal developers.  Motivation simply is not enough for many, but it is for sure a SAFER method to carry the same message across and perhaps not getting people to consider you as driving a cult. 

Consider using the weight lost example.  If I motivate an individual to sign up for the gym and to change his/her diet, will it be enough for the same individual to remain disciplined to achieve the change they want?  Landmark allows you to explore yourself further to determine why you are not getting the results and what you figure out to be the kink in order to 'undrain the clog' thereby giving you results.  Did that make sense?  Or does that sound like cult jargon?

So if the underlying principal is similar, why do people insist on slamming Landmark as a cult?

This past weekend, I watch the film, "Transformation, Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard". Transformation is a film/documentary on Werner Erhard which is playing in NYC at the Quad Cinema until August 2nd.  It was part biography and part documentary of Werner Erhard, his creating EST and his downfall. It's beginning to make sense now.

When I asked people what they thought of individuals who took courses in personal development and whether they thought of them as being part of a cult I would consistently get an answer in disagreement.   "Personal Development" does not carry a negative connotation.  Motivational Speaking does not either.

At the roots of The Landmark Education, I find Werner Erhard who invented a course after going through a life changing experience.  He shares this with his co-workers and begin working on a training seminar series called EST, Erhard Seminars Training.  It catches on and within a few years, it was one of the biggest trends in personal development with Hollywood leading the pace in word of mouth advertising.

EST grew quickly that it started to gain media attention.  As the media probed into Werner Erhard's personal life, they found some dirt on him.  They found that he had left his family of 4 children and a wife and changed his name from Jack Rosenberg to Werner Erhard.  It was hard to swallow, after all, a man committed to creating seminars that changed people's lives and making some serious headway and capital in the same time had to be questioned if his integrity was at stake.  His reputation soon drowned as quickly as he built his business up.  He left the country the night before a major news channel were to report his dirty laundry.  Larry King interviewed him that night to which Jack Rosenberg claims that he needed to leave the country in fear of his life allegedly claiming that the people of Scientology were after him (It's rumored that Scientology higher ups were angry that Werner Erhard 'stole' some of their technology and built a successful business out of it and hence was poised in taking him down; Werner was a student before starting EST).

The film suggests that many of the media's allegations were false as in the case of Werner sexually molesting one of his daughters.  They claim that a reporter offered her $200,000 to provide that piece of information to him as a personal account which turned ugly afterwards.  His daughter sued the reporter but the story had been published.  Another account in his defense were allegations that he left the states to evade Taxes.  The IRS had in fact made the allegations but were later sued by Werner's attorneys winning him a sum of money enough to live off for a few years (Can you sue the IRS?  wow).  True or False, the media reported these stories as true thus damaging Werner's reputation for good.  He certainly was not received well when leaving the country to what the public would easily determine as an act of abandonment with a layer of admitting guilt.  To many viewers and readers of the news and the methods used to hype it up so much that public perception led EST to be labeled a cult.

That reputation lives into The Landmark Education today.  When Werner left the country, he handed his company over to his employees who later revamped it as "The Landmark Education."  The negative public portrayal (despite thousands of EST participants who would argue otherwise) casts a strong shadow into Landmark and I strongly believe why it is what it is.

Comments

[lgattruth]

Werner Erhard's brother Harry Rosenberg is CEO of Landmark Education. His sister Joan Rosenberg, sits on the Board of Directors. And his attorney, Art Schreiber, is General Counsel and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Landmark Education. Laurel Scheaf , who was in the film and was an executive within EST (and began by doing door-to-door selling with Werner Erhard as her boss in 1967), is a higher-up leader in Landmark Education. So it could be argued that he does more than just "cast a shadow" over Landmark Education.

[truth]

Once more go to http://www.rickross.com/groups/landmark.html

look under EST and Forum and see the truth of what they did to you and where they come from . it is not a good thing.