Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion

I loved Mad Men's final episode that takes Don Draper to Esalen for his series ending emotional catharsis. If you ever wondered how the human potential movement impacted our culture, this book is for you. Kripal, a Rice University comparitive religion professor, spent six years developing this book. More than just a history of Esalen's "counter culture", Kripal highlights how Aldous Huxley's "human potentialities" morphed into what Esalen founders Price and Murphy termed the "human potential" of altered states and altered worlds. Kripal believes the paranormal is normal, the physical is metaphysical. On a personal note, I attended a summer program at Esalen Institute in the mid 1970's. Needless to say, for this young 21 year old midwestern college student it was psychological epiphany, my own "X" event. Meeting Judy Collins at the Big House, Ram Dass's meditation lectures on the lawn, the hot springs overlooking the cliffs and driving to San Francisco to hear Jefferson Starship at the Fillmore, those were the days! Now that I am older and reflecting back on why that summer was a pivotal "X" moment in my life. I often ask myself what Esalen and the movement did for me and can still do for our consciousness and culture. I haven't found a better voice for this answer than Jeffrey Kripal. Below is a quote from Kripal when asked this basic question: " I am often asked about the historical influence of Esalen on American culture. I reply that this influence has been vast and deep, that it has not simply involved American culture (think Europe, Russia, Latin America, China, and the Middle East), and that much of this influence almost certainly still lies in the future. I would only add one further observation here, namely, that Esalen's signature idea of the human potential is so widespread and so popular now that it is virtually invisible. It is "in the water," as we say. Or better, it is the water. I am reminded here of the story about the fish who one day met a turtle. The turtle said to the fish: "Isn't the water fine today?" To which the fish replied, "What's water?" This is sort of where we are with the human potential. It is so common and so well known that we do not even recognize it any longer as something special, much less as something "Esalenesque.". My favorite example here is American popular culture and its embrace of various "psychical" abilities or "paranormal" powers, capacities which are commonly seen, exactly as we have it in the human potential movement, as the evolutionary buds of our own latent human supernature. Think the X-Men and Prof. Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Think television programs like Heroes. Think countless Hollywood films, from John Travolta in Phenomenon to Matt Damon in The Adjustment Bureau. The latter film is based on a short story of the sci-fi master Philip K. Dick, who was himself utterly convinced of the evolutionary purpose of mystical illuminations, his own included. My point? That the human potential movement, on its fiftieth birthday, has already instilled itself, alongside a host of other influences, in and as the very soul of American popular culture. This particular example (there are many others) may involve fiction, film, and fantasy, but that is precisely how a worldview often first shifts -- through the cultural imagination. Nothing can be accomplished that is not at first imagined. And Esalen has inspired us to re-imagine ourselves in ways that are ecstatic, visionary, future-oriented, and, above all, big. Really, really big."

California, and particularly, San Francisco is described in this book as the "place where the least resistance to new ideas occurs." Not surprisingly, the new-age genesis occurs close to the epicenter of "new ideas" in the Big Sur retreat of Esalen. The book is a historical study of the somatic, gestalt, and tantric "New Age" philosophies being tested and distilled in post-war America. Esalen, named after the Essalen Indians who inhabited the area for centuries before Spanish missions made their way North, boasts natural hot springs and spectacular cliffs in view of the majestic Pacific Ocean. Currently a non-profit and tax-exempt center, hosting workshops and retreats, this book attempts to trace the institution back to its founders, two Stanford undergraduates in the 1950's. Michael Murphy and Dick Price became enamored of Eastern philosophies under the tutelage of their Stanford comparative religions professor, Frederic Spiegelberg. They were not friends at Stanford however; they met up in a San Francisco meditation house after Price had suffered a psychotic breakdown and was recovering from institutionalization and multiple electroconvulsive shock treatments. Murphy, on the other hand, had been traveling to India and meditating, the former frat boy now a sometimes-celibate practitioner of "evolutionary tantra." His wealthy grandmother proved to be the lynchpin of Esalen's creation. Murphy's grandmother owned a large tract of land on the Big Sur coast which she eventually ceded to her grandson. Price and Murphy, along with financial backers, connections from academia, and Grandma's largesse, began the first steps towards the "religion of no religion," a hodgepodge of Eastern religion with Western intellectualism and psychology. The book describes the first fitful steps into uncharted territory, the concepts of sociologist Emile Durkeheim's "anomie" or normlessness, comes to mind. When there are no rules and no systems, disorder and dissonance can result in "solutions" as extreme as suicide.Apparently, a number of the group's adherents, subjected to "encounter sessions," with violent personal attacks on members and each other, group nudity, sexual acts, and drug use during and after sessions, resulted in such a high number of suicides and self-harming activities that several longstanding facilitators left the organization. By and large, the fawning, breathless style of the author, who has definitely drank the Kool-Aid of Esalen, leaves even an open-minded reader appalled at the lack of cohesiveness, organization, and structure in such a powerful organization. This is found throughout- such as the Russian psychic episode/s and the invisible entities that Dick Price ostensibly placed on Esalen's Board of Directors in the late 70's. Let alone the lengthy treatise on Dick Price's demise, ostensibly killed by a boulder on the Esalen property while meditating. This is not a critically crafted or intellectual evaluation of Esalen. It is a paean to its founders.And, doubtless, there has been and is powerful ongoing work at Esalen. Work that has oddly not been mentioned- such as the renowned internationally acclaimed dancer/musician Gabrielle Roth who created the Five Rhythms dance methodology/therapy. Roth's concept was created at Esalen while she was employed as a massage therapist there and recovering from a dancing injury.In the end, the religion that Eslaen promoted was not that of "no religion" but worship of the human: self, mind, and body. The fact that one of the founders was suffering from mental illness and had no formal training in psychiatry or psychology is extremely disturbing. The fact that the hodgepodge of terminology, treatments and modalities they promoted are still being used by hucksters, therapists, life coaches, shamans, and various fraudsters, many still in the Bay Area, is even more disturbing. Yet, most troubling is the fact that there is a whole terrain of somatic and mind/body work being done that is powerful and that often goes beyond quantifiable data- and this book will not convince doubters or skeptics of the vast potentials in this arena. Instead, it becomes a cautionary and troubling tale of the vulnerability of the human spirit and the caution we must all exercise in who we allow access to our spirit and psyche.

The Esalen Institute was one of the cradles of the modern human potential movement, a dynamic environment for the synthesizing of Eastern Buddhist and Tantrist beliefs with Gestalt, Freudian and Jungian psychology. Anyone who had anything to do with consciousness raising, psychic research, sports psychology, self-help, or New Age philosophy either taught at, or visited, one of the most scenic campuses in the world. It was a hippie mecca during its early years, but later became a hub for serious academic conferences. The overseas contacts it made with Soviet Bloc countries led it to co-sponsor a tour of the United States by Boris Yeltsin prior to his becoming Russia's prime minister. Some of the people referenced here include co-founders Dick Price and Michael Murphy, Sri Aurobindo, William Schutz, Fritz Perls, Abraham Maslow, Joseph Campbell, Terence McKenna, Stanislav Grof, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Joseph Goldin, Andrew Weil, Ida Rolf, Huston Smith, Wilhelm Reich, Allen Ginsberg, James Hillman, and even Hunter S. Thompson, who worked there briefly as a security guard. The author has also taught there, and is himself a brilliant synthesizer of Eastern, gnostic, occult, and secular philosophy, as well as the metaphysical aspects of American popular culture.

A clear and detailed accounting of the historical significance of Esalen in the forefront of the human potential movement. The author is a scholar and so the book has an intellectual focus on the writings and philosophical import of the remarkable individuals that Esalen provided a venue. He provides a narrative that runs through the book making the reading very enjoyable and accessible. Highly recommended for those who want to have a deeper understanding of how the 60's and 70,s unfolded. You won't be disappointed!

Esalen, on the coast of California, not far from San Francisco, was a key centre for the American counterculture, radical psychology, and radical approaches to spirituality. I hadn't realised, before I read this book, just how influential Esalen has turned out to be. A whole string of influential thinkers were closely associated with the place, and some of the "weird" ideas it took the risk of pioneering in the 60s have more recently come within striking distance of being mainstream. Founded in 1962, its early seminars and other events on drugs, religion, sex, and psychology foreshadowed the main themes of the hippie "summer of love" five years later.The book is principally a history of how the Esalen centre developed, with sections discussing on the way some of the key influences on the place (such as how it responded to Buddhism and Hinduism), many of the people most involved, and some of the issues which were thought through there and argued over. The book is very well-researched and thoughtful, and at the same time full of entertaining and interesting stories about episodes in Esalen's development, together with sketches of topics such as mysticism, tantra, and gestalt.Three things I thought I might find there are missing. Gabrielle Roth, founder of Five Rhythms dance, worked at Esalen as a movement specialist, but doesn't rate a mention. Presumably she didn't play a big part in Esalen's history, but it's a connection that would be good to see set out in more detail than she has in her own book ('Maps to Ecstasy'). Ken Wilber, though his ideas were clearly influenced by Esalen, and particularly by one of its founders, Michael Murphy, doesn't appear in the story either, even though that would also have been an interesting connection to follow up.The third thing I feel is missing is not really the fault of the book, but of the whole countercultural movement, from beats, through hippies to New Age, that Esalen has played such a key role in - the failure to really grapple with politics and the economic structuring of the world. The book mentions this enormous subject from time to time, but Esalen's emphasis on consciousness, culture, and subjectivity was never balanced by any serious attempt to analyse the world economy or the large-scale structures of political power. Until there is a movement which is able to combine both sides of the picture - "inner" and "outer", "subjective" and "objective", consciousness and economics - we are not going to get to the whole story which still needs to be told.

Great book. Lots of useful tips for further reading. Inevitably the earlier years (including but after Grof) are the most interesting.

I have enjoyed reading this book, it gives a detailed picture of the history, the philosophy and the main characters.Maybe a bit to long at times, but definitely worth reading

I 've finished entire reading and it was ok book. ;(Lots repeatable parts for US alternative mental treaties & the story was constructed mostly by the instructors' carrier histories. I m quite curious about feedback from the conference participants and the EX-workers of true Esalen but not found any comments from them. Far from understanding real empire of Esalem.