Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More
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Steel Balls

Napa Valley, California, USA

August 31, 2026


Early on: "Now if you'll just take a hold of that, it will make you free."
... 
to his upset brother Nathan Rosenberg, quoted by Nathan to Professor William Warren "Bill" Bartley III, Werner's official biographer, in the account titled "The Prodigal Son Returns" in the chapter called "One Big Family" in part IV, "Completion", of "Werner Erhard - The Transformation of a Man, The Founding of est"

Later on: "Experienced experience disappears."
... 
This essay, Steel Balls, is the companion piece to I am indebted to Donovan Copley who inspired this conversation, and to Keith Czarnecki who contributed material.

Photograph courtesy Superior Ornamental Supply Photograph courtesy Superior Ornamental Supply
Two identical steel balls
In the 55 years since Werner's work first burst forth onto the startled world's stage, its promised results of transformation and the access to living a life you love, have stayed unchanged. In fine-tuning the vehicles for delivering the results, some of its methods, processes, and conversations have been reworked, changed, supplemented, even eliminated entirely as clearer paths for delivering the results are discovered, and become more reachable. Some of the other original vehicles are just as effective now as they were when they were first introduced 55 years ago and have not changed at all. They've been left alone.

One of those original vehicles, the postulate that "experienced experience disappears" works just as well today as it did at the get-go, largely because it's a fact rather than a notion. Experience a headache, and it disappears. Really? So how do you experience  a headache rather than merely have  a headache? Examine it closely. What shape is it? What color is it? What temperature is it? What consistency is it? You literally create a headache that's exactly the same shape, color, temperature, and consistency as the headache you're having. And more than that, you make sure that the headache you're creating, and the headache you are having, are identical and occupy the exact same space. Eventually when the two headaches (the one you're creating and the one you're having) are identical and occupy the exact same space, both headaches disappear. You may not get that intellectually. It's what I call an "experiential get".

A friend of mine is a long time leader of Werner's work. He worked for an airline. He was checking over some small aircraft parked on a runway beside their hangar. Not paying close attention to what he was doing, he turned around ... and walked into the spinning propeller of one of the airplanes. It opened his cheek to the bone, needing immediate surgery. He chose to undergo the procedure without anesthesia. "What? No  anesthesia?" I asked him incredulously, "But why?". "To see if I could experience the experience and have it disappear, and not need anesthesia" (he was putting it to the test). I could almost not believe what I was hearing. "Then  what happened?" I asked. "As long as I stayed at the edge of the scalpel and experienced the experience right there, I could bear it. It was a kinda cool sensation. But the instant I forgot to experience the experience, it hurt like crazy"  (except that he didn't say "crazy" - he used a four-letter expletive deleted instead). Headaches and surgery are worlds apart. Yet they are similar inasmuch as experienced experience disappears.

If disappearing a headache or undergoing surgery without an anesthesia doesn't fully convey what experiencing an experience involves, try this on for size: imagine that you have two steel balls which are identical in every way: weight, diameter, consistency etc etc. Now, hold one in each hand. Then, push them together until both of them are occupying the same space. Then notice: what happens to each of them? That's right, both of them disappear. Two identical steel balls occupying the same space, disappear. Again, you may not get that intellectually. You certainly won't get it in your "head". It's an experiential get.

My head  says that's impossible. My head says two identical steel balls can't occupy the same space at the same time. But in my experience  however, it's not only possible: it's I can experiment there with disappearing any  experience I've been putting up with or trying to change. Creating an experience that's identical to the one I'm having, while I'm having it, in the same space as I'm having it, has both experiences disappear. Its applicability* is enormous and far reaching, providing transformed respite from anything with which it seems I'm stuck. Please don't believe  experienced experience disappears. Deploy it.

* Four ways to regain control when you're out of control:

When you're out of control, you can:

• be out of control because  you're out of control, so you're being the way it is;

• create being out of control, making you the controller of your experience of being out of control;

• re-create being out of control so that the experience of being out of control, disappears (any experience that you re-create, disappears);

• experience being out of control so that the experience of being out of control, disappears (experienced experience disappears).
* Footnote:

The analogy I've deployed in this essay, Steel Balls, uses identical steel balls to illustrate experienced experience disappearing.

In both of these earlier companion pieces to this essay, I used identical golf balls to the same effect.

There's no significance to this change other than later I came to prefer steel balls to golf balls. It simply works better.

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