ESALEN - Human and Spiritual Potential
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HideRachael Kohn: You know that category on the census 'No Religion'? It's got a lot of people fooled into thinking it's a new phenomenon or that it's the end of belief. Nope on both accounts. Enter Esalen, the home of new spirituality, the human potential movement, and it's been going since 1962. You guessed it, in California. But its reach has been worldwide. Hello, I'm Rachael Kohn, welcome to The Spirit of Things on RN, find us at abc.net.au/radionational.
Think of just about any of the new ideas in the mind-body-spirit realm and they're likely to have been invented or tested out at Esalen: rolfing, yoga, Gestalt psychology, primal scream, NDE research. And then there were the theologians who came through like Alan Watts, Matthew Fox and Paul Tillich. In fact the list of Esalen's alumni is staggering. Here's one of them, the Zen philosopher who promoted Buddhism as a form of psychotherapy, Alan Watts, in 1967:
Alan Watts: [OM recording] Listen. This sound is you vibrating. And who are you? Don't give me your name address and occupation; you know that's just a mask, a front, a big act. Who puts it on?
Rachael Kohn: Today you'll hear from two people who've had long associations with Esalen and wrote the definitive accounts of the place that put California on the new-age spiritual map. Jeff Kripal of Rice University in Texas, whose interests go to the paranormal, is the author of Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion. AndMarion Goldman, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon is the author ofThe American Soul Rush: Esalen and the Rise of Spiritual Privilege. I recently spoke to Marion when we were attending an academic conference in Phoenix Arizona:
Marion, California is known as the incubator of alternative spirituality. How much is that actually due to Esalen?
Marion Goldman: Well, I think Esalen played a really foundational role because it brought lots of people together in networks where they could explore these ideas together, and then they went out and there was a waiting audience because a lot of Californians did not have a religious affiliation in the '60s and '70s, they were, if you will, religious and spiritual, but they weren't organisationally attached. And so they were seeking something more and trying to make better lives for themselves, one of the reasons they got there.
So Esalen was at the right time, in a very affluent state, and definitely the right place, and it connected with the people who were making movies and changing the way the film community thought, and also with the burgeoning growth of the California State University system. And so there was a lot of interest. And then people found out.
Rachael Kohn: Well, let me ask you more specifically about its location, the Big Sur. Describe it for me. What's so inspirational about it?
Marion Goldman: I should say, I think I said it in the book, every California story kind of begins and ends with real estate, and Big Sur is an extraordinarily beautiful location on the cliffs of central California, Highway 1, which runs between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Esalen is particularly unique because there is a confluence of a freshwater stream that is part of a river and the ocean, and then extraordinary hot springs. And since the 1900s it had been a place where people, Anglo Californians, went to heal themselves in the hot springs, and before then the Esalen Indians were there, and it was never a settlement but it was someplace they passed through and they traded. And that in fact, the Esalen Indians' name, is the origin of Esalen Institute.
Rachael Kohn: You've finally clarified that for me. I used to think it was some sort of made-up composite. Well, its origins in 1962 makes Esalen 50 years old this year.
Marion Goldman: Yes, and there are already a number of anniversaries, and some of the most famous people who were there at the beginning, like Hunter Thompson the writer who actually never participated but he was a caretaker for the land. Joan Baez spent a lot of time there and she is going to be back for the anniversary. And you have a number of people who are paying tribute to the remarkable impact that Esalen has made on their lives.
Rachael Kohn: You already mentioned that it was a period of extraordinary economic affluence and growth in America, a rising affluent class. How much do you think that actually influenced the approach to spirituality itself?
Marion Goldman: I think it definitely influenced the approach to spirituality itself. There was a rising affluent and educated class. In the wake of World War II in the '50s and early '60s, people thought that everything was possible, their horizons were limitless. And so liberal Christianity and Judaism, which were kind of foundational in a way, as well as Asian religions, taught that there is a spark of divinity in everyone, and Esalen brought in humanistic personal growth psychology and said we can cultivate that spark of divinity in everyone, and we are all connected, and as our divinity and human potential grows, we can make the world a better place.
Rachael Kohn: Gosh, you said a lot there, but you haven't mentioned the term that you use in this book called 'spiritual privilege' to describe it, Esalen's central operating principle.
Marion Goldman: I think the operating principle is that everyone has the privilege and the right to cultivate their best selves and to continue to revise and think about their personal spirituality throughout their lifetime, so they can add things on, they can move in different directions, all because there's an assumption that every religion that is a worthwhile religion engages that core of divinity within every person that can connect to a larger divine spirit, not necessarily an embodied God but some sort of divine spirit.
So I quote Alan Ginsberg who was overheard in the hot springs at Esalen, one of their famous conferences in the early '60s, talking to a bunch of clergy from the Episcopal Church who had been invited down, and they asked him, 'What is your spiritual practice?' And he said (and this is paraphrasing), 'Well, I like Buddha, I like Coyote, I'm kind of into Jesus, basically whatever works.' And that's their spirituality.
Rachael Kohn: 'Whatever works', well, that certainly stuck. But there's a sense in which one spiritual practice is then constantly added on to. That is, you're never finished, it is never complete.
Marion Goldman: That's absolutely right because there are always more paths to explore if one accepts the idea that they are all compatible and you can bring one thing into another, and also that each of us can keep on growing to achieve a full human potential that is connected to a divine spark.
Rachael Kohn: You've mentioned that divine spark a few times, that certainly makes me think of Jewish mysticism and the concept of the divine spark, but it also makes me think of Hinduism, of the yogic tradition. Was that the origin of the founders' notion of divinity within?
Marion Goldman: Well, there were really two founders, and they definitely had been inspired by a Stanford professor who was teaching Hindu tradition and was a devotee of Sri Aurobindo. And then the model for Esalen in the living cofounder's mind, who was the senior partner, his family owned the land that they purchased in various ways from the family trust, was very much a believer that people needed a retreat where they could explore different kinds of spirituality, they could personally grow, and he modelled that retreat after the Aurobindo ashram in India near Pondicherry.
Rachael Kohn: There were two founders, as you said, two fellas, one of them particularly privileged.
Marion Goldman: Well, they were both privileged in different ways. I think the most affluent and privileged one was Michael Murphy whose family had been landowners in Big Sur where Esalen was built and who had grown up in the milieu of San Francisco when San Francisco was very socially stratified. His mother and grandmother were brilliant in terms of real estate, and his dad was a physician. The cofounder and really equal partner at the time was the son of an executive in Sears Roebuck who had been from a poor family. His dad had risen in the ranks. His family seeded the building of Esalen, so they were very much co-partners. I think the divergence in terms of particular privilege is that Michael Murphy had grown up in what was not necessarily old for western Europe but was an old Californian family of two or three generations of wealth.
Rachael Kohn: Esalen was also known for its interest in alternative psychotherapies as well as spiritualities, and the human potential movement is very much associated with it. Does this fundamentally change then the purpose of psychology from a recovery method to seeking personal growth?
Marion Goldman: Absolutely, and Richard Price, the other founder, was the one most interested in psychology, and he had very bad experiences in terms of psychotherapy. Abraham Maslow became an early supporter of Esalen for a relatively brief time. He really focused on the idea that we should look at the most creative and personally successful in the sense of having great relationships, but also contributors to society as a whole. This is a time of limitless horizons, and he believed that America could become both more equal and more affluent, and that creative people and intellectuals were the leaders, but we all had an ability to grow into our best selves and live our best lives.
So there was definitely that element. But what Maslow also said was that somewhere in us there is the possibility for peak experiences which are very much like spiritual experiences. And he himself said he was not at all spiritual or religious, but in fact he believed in a kind of diffuse spirituality that then could come into the personal realm, and at the highest point of personal development there would be a connection not just with the whole human race but something beyond the human race.
Rachael Kohn: So this is where self-actualisation becomes a spiritual experience, a full-blown spiritual experience.
Marion Goldman: Absolutely, it's tracked into humanistic psychology, and there is a division in the American Psychological Association, humanistic psychology, but within that there is a very strong group who believed in transpersonal psychology, which is the spiritual and the humanistic psychology merging together. And the core mission that Esalen still serves is giving continuing education units to psychologists and family therapists who explore many different approaches to self-actualisation and the idea that healing and personal growth can be linked together.
Rachael Kohn: Well gosh, it sounds like Esalen has inserted itself very much into the established educational system for psychologists, but in the early days it was also a place for a lot of experimental psychologies or psychotherapies.
Marion Goldman: Absolutely, and one of the things that happened is through their outreach and the publicity that Esalen had they attracted a large number of people who were at the margins and then moved into the mainstream in terms of traditional psychology, but they also really believed in exploring, in the early days, every possibility for human growth. So there was some kinds of therapies associated with psychedelics, and a number of movie stars...the one that everyone has probably heard of, Cary Grant was involved in some of those early experiments.
Rachael Kohn: That's very hard to imagine.
Marion Goldman: Yes, absolutely. And they had a number of supporters in Hollywood, notably Jennifer Jones who was an Oscar-winning actress. And so she introduced Esalen to Hollywood, gave a variety of parties with people in Hollywood who learned about human potential and personal growth, and a number of them came to Esalen.
Rachael Kohn: Wasn't the film Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice loosely modelled on Esalen?
Marion Goldman: It was loosely modelled on Esalen, and initially Natalie Wood had a very bad experience at one of Jennifer Jones's parties where a lead Gestalt therapist, a fellow named Fritz Perls, who's still pretty well-known, spanked her. She was furious and she walked out, and that was kind of the origins of this spoof.
One of the other stars in it was Dyan Cannon who was married to Cary Grant, and they would also kind of surreptitiously go up to Esalen and try some of the groups and soak in the hot springs. Not for very long, but for a couple of years. So Esalen actually was based on their experience and then they talked with writers and producers, that's howBob and Carol and Ted and Alice came into being. And then there was another movie starring Kris Kristofferson and Burt Reynolds called Semi-Tough, and that had an Esalen influence too, that was a little bit later.
Rachael Kohn: Some of the experimental therapies could become quite dangerous to one's health. I recall the controversy around Stanislav and Christina Grof's therapies of hyperventilation. They could lead to heart attack or seizure.
Marion Goldman: I think that's true, and that was a bit later in Esalen's development, but there was...I think it's called holotropic breathing, and there are a lot of meditation techniques, and hot yoga right now can be pretty dangerous to people, but I think there is this theme that has run historically in religions for thousands of years, you have this idea that if you mortify your flesh you can transcend it and you can somehow learn and explore something new. And in the case of the Grofs and their use of psychedelics it was more about changing the pathways of your mind and the breathing too, they did both. But again, it was the idea that the spirit can transcend the body. But nevertheless, and I think this is an important contribution Esalen made, they really took away this idea that mind and body are dichotomous, and you had to look at mind, body, spirit and emotion together to become fully self-actualised.
Rachael Kohn: Hence the Mind Body Spirit festivals that have spread the world over promoting self-transformation. Marion Goldman's study of Esalen is called The American Soul Rush. Later, other dimensions of Esalen are explored with Jeff Kripal who really does believe that we're all, deep down, supermen (or superwomen).
Esalen, founded in 1962 on the Big Sur coast of California, was the brain child of two men, and that's what I explore next with Marion Goldman:
The interest in psychology and alternative psychotherapy also reflects the unhappy experience of one of the founders, Dick Price, who had undergone some pretty severe psychiatric treatment for psychosis.
Marion Goldman: Absolutely, and it's unclear, the diagnoses were so vague about what was wrong with people, but he seemed to have had both very difficult relationships with his family and also a break that some people would say was a spiritual emergency now. But what happened was that he was forced into shock therapy. And he was a brilliant and very charismatic person.
One of the themes in Esalen for which they got a number of grants from the US government originally was to see whether other kinds of therapies would work well for people who were diagnosed as schizophrenic, which was really a wastebasket diagnosis at that point. And he emphasised the point that each person could be healed without the use of extremely invasive drugs, things like Stelazine were coming on the market, but that also shock therapy was unnecessary, and that understanding the reality of the person and letting them heal could be as effective as either drug therapy or shock therapy.
And there were a number of projects that he initiated in state hospitals that MDs carried out but he was an inspiration that indicated in many cases, not all but in many cases, that was true, that people could work through and go through their psychotic episodes, which were merely episodic.
Rachael Kohn: And what happened to him? Did he manage to overcome his mental health issues?
Marion Goldman: What I have reconstructed from both interviews with him that are on tape at the University of California Santa Barbara archives and also interviews with people who knew him, including family members, is that there were times when he was quite depressed, as all of us can be, and times when he was a little bit hyper, but in fact he functioned very well. And he was a leader of a small community of people at Esalen who were exploring Gestalt awareness practice, how to put their past into their present to understand how their bodies reflected their feelings, you know, something we are just really exploring even more now scientifically.
And so he became the leader and organising force in the Esalen community from the late '70s until 1985 when he died in an accident. There was a landslide and he died when he was hiking. And he regularly hiked. And another thing that I think he innovated was the idea of nature as therapy, and he was one of the first people...he didn't write, there was much more of an oral tradition with him, but in fact he was doing a lot of innovative psychotherapy at Esalen and leading the development of something called Gestalt awareness practice.
Rachael Kohn: Gosh, that's extraordinary. What a sad and terrible end to someone so creative. But the other founder of Esalen, Michael Murphy, was on a different path. He hopes to be able to cultivate extraordinary abilities like ESP and other things, and that desire certainly has been an engine for the establishment of all kinds of new religious movements, including Scientology, the desire to have extraordinary abilities. Did he maintain that interest and did he exhibit any of these extraordinary abilities himself?
Marion Goldman: He plays fabulous golf. He believes that that has to do with personal spirituality and a kind of Zen. I think that he does believe and has cultivated relationships with people who claim to have extrasensory perception and other kinds of unusual abilities, but he and his colleague George Leonard, who recently passed away, developed a program called Integral Transformative Practice, again based on this notion that people could fully actualise themselves and they could have a diffuse spirituality that became (and this is Aurobindo's tradition)...allowed them to morph into extraordinary people in every way.
Rachael Kohn: Well, was he extraordinary? Is he?
Marion Goldman: I think he is absolutely extraordinary. First he is in his early 80s and he has incredible energy. He has written a prolific number of books based on his philosophy, including a book on extraordinary human functioning called The Future of the Body, and he is determined to see that people become their fullest selves so that society and the world can advance. And he is absolutely brilliant. So he is extraordinary. I think both he and Richard Price were.
Rachael Kohn: Were they the origin of the idea that we are on this evolutionary path, that people can actually evolve their human potential over time? I've always wondered how much this is actually a faith belief.
Marion Goldman: I would agree with you that I think it's an act of faith rather than an act of science. It goes back a long way. The concept of evolutionary human potential, as Michael Murphy sees it, really originates in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy, and the idea that people can, by cultivating every aspect of their mind, body and spirit...it didn't really deal with emotion or soul…but can morph into something different. And the human race can actually evolve by intense spiritual practice.
Rachael Kohn: So did Michael Murphy and Richard Price think that Esalen was the wave of the future, the spirituality that awaited us all, that churches and synagogues and temples would fade away?
Marion Goldman: I think Michael Murphy has been very clear that any worthwhile religion is inclusive and would embrace all other religions in a diffuse spirituality that could ultimately lead to people focusing on their personal potential leading to an evolutionary human potential. Richard Price was more interested not so much in the ideas as in the day-to-day practice that would allow people to lead better lives through healing and then personal growth, that he was much more from the ground. Michael was really the theorist, and he founded a Centre for Theory and Research at Esalen.
Rachael Kohn: And did that notion that we could all spiritually evolve necessarily mean that other traditions, the old traditions were in fact less evolved?
Marion Goldman: Very interesting question. I think yes and no, that at the level of the liberal and inclusive traditions, many of which are thousands of years old, say Gnostics, there was an idea that these were the seeds that produced a religion of no religion, because it was of all religions. But the religions that have fundamental tenets and that are exclusive, 'you must believe this is the way', where in fact less evolved.
Rachael Kohn: Marion, I want to ask you about the gender dimension of Esalen, because the founders were both men. I'm not sure if either of them married, but Esalen seems to have been a place where notions of the new masculinity were evolved.
Marion Goldman: When Esalen began, one has to go back a long time, in the early '60s masculinity was really rarely questioned, and Esalen grew up at a time when free love and free sex meant men got to pick partners. And then I think because Michael and Richard Price were both leaders, they really thought about spirituality on their own terms. They began to interrogate masculinity, but it was primarily the notion of the quest. And then other things that have been more relational, more feminist, if you will, have come into play. But by and large the core leadership of Esalen at its centre has always been there for men, with men's prerogatives.
And one of the first things they tried to do was eliminate stereotypes, that spirituality was somehow feminine or un-masculine. And so they brought sport and sex almost inadvertently into spirituality, and they were interested in creating warriors, that's a term one heard in the men's movement in the '80s. There were many influential women, particularly in bodywork, involved at Esalen since its founding. A woman who many people may have heard of worldwide is Rachel Naomi Remen who is very important in the holistic health movement. They passed through Esalen, and in some ways they feel indebted to Esalen but they didn't feel at home at Esalen.
There was a group of women who began just developing a special kind of massage under the leadership of Charlotte Selver who taught at the New School for Social Research and came out of a very liberal German tradition and had to leave Germany during the Nazi occupation. And what happened to her is that she moved on from Esalen but she implemented the idea that sensory awareness and massage could be combined to develop a kind of spirituality. And a worldwide tradition of Esalen massage developed too.
Rachael Kohn: Extraordinary. But was there ever a sense that masculine and feminine spirituality were different?
Marion Goldman: No one ever defined masculine and feminine spirituality as different at Esalen. There were people who were dissidents who left and were very active in the feminist spirituality movement, but at Esalen there was an idea that this is what we do in each group, and there was a kind of distant respect, but in fact there was no full exploration of the idea that there might be differences, that one might be more relational and involves relations to other people and a connection to the universe. The other is more interested in the cultivation of self. And you can guess which was which.
Rachael Kohn: Well, I want to ask you about another kind of gender question, which is the gay and lesbian movement that really started to gain ground in the '80s, which is about 20 years after Esalen was founded. How did Esalen respond to that new reality?
Marion Goldman: Well, at the time that Esalen was founded, being gay was so stigmatised that many people denied it, including Ram Das who was at Esalen for a while, and there were very early on in the '70s leaders of the gay and lesbian psychology movement there at Esalen. Now there are workshops for gay and lesbian, transgender, bisexual at Esalen. But by and large the assumption was always that everyone was heterosexual. And the myths that people have developed, the legends of Esalen really is a better term, the narratives that defined them all involve heterosexuality.
Rachael Kohn: Marion, Esalen has come so well known around the world. It seems to have been a place, as you already mentioned, where people passed through and then established almost little Esalens in other places. Has that been an approved model, as it were, by the Esalen people themselves, or have they been jealous of the other, smaller organisations?
Marion Goldman: There are a million different answers. When Esalen began it was a model for a number of different short-lived personal growth organisations, and it was estimated that within eight years of its founding there were at least 90 little Esalens. It has only maintained a close relationship with Findhorn in Scotland and Hollyhock in British Columbia, and to a small degree Omega Institute, and that relationship has grown. And so I don't think there was a branding of Esalen, that there has always been, since the late '60s, a group of people who gave workshops at a number of different personal growth institutes. Most of those didn't last very long.
What has happened is Esalen has been incorporated into this large culture of personal growth, a many-billion-dollar industry called lifestyles of health and sustainability, those ideas of becoming your best self. In that way I think Esalen is in competition with the urban spa that offers yoga classes, with the meditation classes offered at a local community college, with the personal retreats that may be provided by an upscale hotel, and in that way their ideas have seeped into the culture and it has made it very difficult for them to sustain a constituency among people under 45, and it's kind of a victim of its own success.
And one of the important differences about Esalen is it has always emphasised spirituality, as Findhorn does, as Hollyhock does, as Omega does to some degree. And another difference is historically...this is diminishing, but historically there has been a place for people who didn't have very much money, not a lot of them, who could come and be work-study students for three months or six months or for an extended year.
Rachael Kohn: So Esalen has become something of a midwife to social and spiritual change. But does it have a future then with the younger generation?
Marion Goldman: I think that's a question about how people think about their spirituality. And as we know, there's a growing number of people who say no, I'm not affiliated with a religion but I'm still spiritual. There is some recent research that indicates that people who don't believe in God still believe in an afterlife, so you begin to have some spirituality there. And I think a lot of people are constructing personal spiritualities, that there are urban centres where people can go to explore these things.
And so the question is; what is Esalen's identity? And there are hard-fought battles right now between the old Esalen communities, the very ageing hippies, the people who lived there and who, say, started bodywork or have been doing psychology for 30 years, and a new generation who sees that it needs to be more solvent. But the newer generation is still in their 50s. And leadership with Michael Murphy's focus on the intellectual aspects of understanding theology and how it relates to personal growth, moving into places like the California Institute for Integral Studies, that Esalen will continue as one of the most beautiful and historically important places in spirituality.
And every so often, and I mention this at the end of my book, you run across somebody...I was talking with someone about Esalen in a coffee shop, and someone came up to me in Los Angeles and said, 'Oh my goodness, I'm going there in two weeks,' he was a barista. He'd been saving his money so he could go there. So I think there will be people who'll come there.
I think Esalen has diffused its mission, awakening people to their possibilities for personal growth, and as it has lost its uniqueness it has become less important to people who have those other options in other places, which is people who are in younger generations.
Rachael Kohn: It strikes me, Marion, that Esalen might be the kind of spirituality behind that category 'no religion'.
Marion Goldman: I think that's absolutely true because the idea of spiritual privilege is that we all have the privilege to be seekers and explore ways of becoming our best possible selves.
Rachael Kohn: Marion Goldman, it's been such a pleasure speaking to you, your bookSoul Rush is absolutely incredible.
Marion Goldman: Thank you so much, I'm really honoured to participate in this conversation, thank you.
Rachael Kohn: Marion Goldman's book is The American Soul Rush: Esalen and the Rise of Spiritual Privilege. Check our website for further information about her and Esalen at abc.net.au/radionational and scroll down to The Spirit of Things where you can download the audio.
This is Terence McKenna, acid guru, shaman, and former teacher at Esalen Institute, with the UK group The Shamen in 1992.
[Music: 'Re:Evolution', Terrence McKenna and The Shamen]
The belief that the human mind has limitless potential is a core belief in Esalen, the experimental institute which turned 50 this year, located at Big Sur on the north coast of California. Jeff Kripal, the chair of religious studies at Rice University in Texas, has an expansive and post modern view of spirituality, which is reflected in his many books that combine popular culture, fantasy, the East and spirituality. His book Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion was published back in 2007, but he has a continuing involvement with Esalen. He's speaking to me on the line from Houston, Texas:
Jeffrey Kripal, welcome to The Spirit of Things.
Jeffrey Kripal: Thanks for having me.
Rachael Kohn: I like the motto of Rice University, 'unconventional wisdom'. In your case I'd say there's a real attraction to unconventional wisdom.
Jeffrey Kripal: That's a fairly new motto too, by the way, and we liked a lot here in the department of religious studies.
Rachael Kohn: Well, according to your website you've gone from Roman Catholic Benedictine spirituality through to psychoanalysis and Tantra, on to the paranormal. What do you think gave you your spiritual curiosity in the first place?
Jeffrey Kripal: That's a good question, and with most things spiritual I'm not sure I know. I know as a young boy I was intensely interested in fantasy and in science fiction and comic books and that sort of thing. But early on I also became really interested in religion and had a really profound experience in a college seminary, trained by the Benedictines, and that's really what set me on my path I think to try to understand religion.
Rachael Kohn: What sort of an experience?
Jeffrey Kripal: Well, not in the sense of one overwhelming out-of-body experience or anything, but the monks and the training and the seminary revolved largely around psychological and spiritual questions, and we were all made to dig deeper into why we thought we had a religious vocation. So I learned to think about religious questions in ways that might go beyond what the belief is or what the tradition happens to say. And that was sort of the beginning of it I think.
Rachael Kohn: I guess that's why you ended up being associated with Esalen. And it was a book that you wrote on Ramakrishna, the Hindu Saint, that prompted Michael Murphy, one of the founders of Esalen, to get in touch with you. So what piqued his curiosity?
Jeffrey Kripal: That book Kali's Child was my first book, it was my dissertation, and it was both celebrated in the academy but roundly condemned in Hindu fundamentalist circles. Mike got a hold of me in 1998, kind of really at the height of the ban movements and the censorship campaigns, and I think he was drawn to the book by its interweaving of Tantric metaphysics and Western psychology. From my end of things, I was drawn to Mike because he was lifting me out of a foxhole I'd been in for a number of years at that point, so it was kind of a happy meeting on both sides I think.
Rachael Kohn: Your book was bound to stir controversy due to your observations about Ramakrishna's homoerotic tendencies. But Jeff, your research generally has gone where others fear to tread, more recently to the paranormal. Is that an area that Michael Murphy shares a fascination with?
Jeffrey Kripal: Oh absolutely. My latest interest in the paranormal really comes out of the Esalen project. I spent about seven or eight years in the new millennium writing this history of Esalen, and in the course of that research encountered a number of stories and people whom I deeply trusted that had things happen to them that really couldn't happen by any normal, rational measure. So the project forced me to take these things more seriously and I realised we didn't really have a way of thinking about them in my field. So that's really what drew me to that particular topic.
Rachael Kohn: Is that your association with the Centre for Theory and Research at Esalen? I understand you ran a symposia series there on Western esotericism, and that resulted in the volume called, intriguingly, Hidden Intercourse.
Jeffrey Kripal: Right. So the Centre for Theory and Research is sort of the research and development wing of Esalen, and I've been associated with it since 1998. And the series you're referring to was a four-year series that Wouter Hanegraaff from the University of Amsterdam and I ran on Western esotericism. I also ran a three or four-year series on the paranormal and popular culture there, and I'm part of a group that has been running now for almost 15 years on the survival of bodily death. So there are a lot of things coming out of that centre and that network of scholars and researchers.
Rachael Kohn: Are there real experiments conducted there at the Centre for Theory and Research?
Jeffrey Kripal: No, it's not that kind of gathering. There are lots of folks who come there who do laboratory research or who do history or philosophy in their own institutions, but we bring them to Big Sur each year really to network and to encounter each other's work and each other's persons and try to connect the dots that otherwise would not be connected.
Rachael Kohn: A series has been run there at Esalen called Sursem, which I gather is focused on life after death. Now, belief in life after death has been around for a long time, so what's your new angle on it?
Jeffrey Kripal: I'm sort of a latecomer to that group. That group has been led for all these years by a neuroscientist at UVA named Ed Kelly. What sets that group apart from these earlier belief systems is that they want to establish the truth or the falsehood of this belief based on something other than belief. And so there's a lot of emphasis and focus on looking closely at people's out-of-body experiences, people's near-death experiences, children's memories of previous lives, and really examining that evidence and then trying to come up with a model or some sort of theory of mind that would make some sense of that. It's a venture based not on belief but on really comparison, classification and theory building.
Rachael Kohn: Is that like the Institute for Psychical Research back in late 19th century London?
Jeffrey Kripal: The Society for Psychical Research, or the SPR as it's called, goes back to 1882 in Cambridge, focused around Cambridge University. This is really an attempt to update that in an American context, but it's doing a slightly different kind of work, but it is very much inspired by that group, and we're constantly talking about those folks as revered ancestors, as it were.
Rachael Kohn: So do you believe, then, in Esalen's mission statement that we all have a 'latent super nature', which, if I can paraphrase, we're ethically bound to develop for the good of ourselves and society?
Jeffrey Kripal: Yes, I do actually, that's why I do what I do and why I write what I write. I think we're working with grossly inadequate models of what a human being is and what the mind is. I see all of this work aimed at expanding those models.
Rachael Kohn: Do you think Esalen's many experimental forays into the human potential movement, psychology and spirituality have actually developed that super nature within people, and in particular someone like Michael Murphy?
Jeffrey Kripal: I think that that super nature simply is, and it is manifesting very gradually and in fits and starts in human history. I think a place like Esalen serves a broader cultural function in that it authorises people to speak about these experiences and gives them models and actual practices that they can use to actualise these potentials. I think it's harder to say whether Esalen itself has done such things. I think its influence is largely indirect and is largely on a cultural level. I think it's much more humble. When it comes to those sorts of questions I would want to be humble as well.
I think it's much more a project of authorising people to speak about these things and creating a cultural space and a safe space in which people can acknowledge that they have these sorts of experiences and that these things are valuable and real and do not need to be demeaned and shamed.
Rachael Kohn: Is it important to scientifically verify these manifestations of the super nature which occur in fits and starts, as you say?
Jeffrey Kripal: Science is by far the authority in modern society. So if you want to carve out a space for something you're going to have to address scientific method and the scientific world view. And any kind of simple return to religious belief or a previous mythology isn't going to work. It seems much more hopeful and much more positive to do this now with the scientific world view and with cosmologies and knowledge that can be used to advance this stuff. The truth is that science is far weirder and far stranger than pretty much anything we have in the history of religion now. So it's quite compatible with these sorts of experiences.
Rachael Kohn: I know you wrote a book about Esalen called The Religion of No Religion. So are the manifestations and experiences of super nature precisely what you're talking about, the religion of no religion?
Jeffrey Kripal: Well, the phrase 'the religion of no religion' comes from a man named Frederic Spiegelberg who helped inspire both Michael Murphy and Dick Price to found Esalen. He was a professor of comparative religion at Stanford. And what he meant by that phrase and what I mean by it is that you can affirm the religious nature of human beings without buying into any particular religion or set of beliefs. In other words, you can affirm our super nature or the transcendent aspect of human beings without believing X, Y or Z. And so the religion of no religion is an affirmation of that, it's a way of being spiritual but not religious.
Rachael Kohn: Jeff, is there any necessary relationship between experiencing the super nature and the good?
Jeffrey Kripal: Well, it depends on whether you think ultimate reality is good or not. Super nature is about accessing levels or dimensions of reality that are in some sense ultimate or fundamental. And I think if you look at the human potential movement as a whole, there is an overwhelming sense that reality is good and is beneficent, and the deeper one gets in touch with reality, the better or the more whole a human being will be. So wholeness here is goodness, and goodness is wholeness.
Now, does it make you a better person, a better citizen, a better father, a better daughter or son? I'm not sure. That's certainly part of the project. But I think the human potential movement is aiming at something else that's more basic than that.
Rachael Kohn: Jeff, have you had intimations of that super nature within you? And if so, what did it look like, what did it feel like?
Jeffrey Kripal: I've written about this. I had an out-of-body experience while I was living in India in 1989, it was kind of an energy influx as well that was really overwhelming and really life-changing in some ways. It was a singular humble event, it's all I can really claim as that kind of experience, but it was enough to shift the way I think about myself and the way I think about the world.
I think a lot of writers and creative people sense these things as well, to the extent that their creativity is based on something other than themselves. There's a kind of release or a kind of trance quality to creative work, and I certainly experienced that a lot. I'm certainly not claiming any kind of omniscience or enlightenment or anything like that. I'm struggling with these questions like anyone else.
Rachael Kohn: I'd like to ask you finally, we live in a scientific age, it's often called that, and the proofs of science are foregrounded all the time, and yet you're interested in the paranormal and popular culture is still very interested in the paranormal. How would you explain that seeming dichotomy?
Jeffrey Kripal: Well, by the paranormal I mean an event in the physical environment that corresponds perfectly to a state of mind or a form of subjectivity. And science works by removing subjectivity, so it has a very hard time with paranormal events. The paranormal is fundamentally denied in orthodox science, it is often demonised in orthodox religion. And so it goes to the form of culture in which…really the only form of culture in which it's embraced, and that is popular culture. And I think it's so popular because it is actually so common in human experience, and it seems to engage the imagination in ways that fit quite well with film and literature and graphic novels. So it basically migrates to the place where it can be heard, which is popular culture.
Rachael Kohn: Can I just ask you finally, what do you think is the future of Esalen now that it is 50 years old? Is it embracing this new paranormal interest?
Jeffrey Kripal: You know, everybody asks me that question and I always stumble at this point. I don't know what the future of Esalen is. I think to the extent that Esalen has a robust future, and I think it does, it will be because it embraces the questions and problems of today and of the near future, and not the questions and problems of the '60s or '70s, you know, to the extent it looks forward and not backwards it will prosper. And so one of those questions I think it is going to have to address and embrace, which it already has, is ecology and the environment and to what extent that is part of our super nature as well.
Rachael Kohn: Well, Jeff Kripal, I look forward to continuing this conversation in the near future, particularly about our super natures. Until then, thank you so much for being on The Spirit of Things.
Jeffrey Kripal: Thanks for having me, and have me back, I'd love to come back.
Rachael Kohn: We certainly will have him back to talk about his latest book Mutants and Mystics. His work is also morphing into films. Jeffrey Kripal is the chair of religious studies at Rice University in Houston Texas.
That's our look at Esalen, and before it fades, hurry up and book a place for yourself in one of its hot tubs, or just rent the DVD of Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.
To download this program put The Spirit of Things in your search engine. The program is produced by me and Geoff Wood, with sound engineering this week by Philip Ulman.
Ever wonder why of all places kids get abused in religious settings? Maybe it's partly because there is a distinct lack of child theology. I speak to the expert in child theology next week on The Spirit of Things at the same time, right here on RN. Until then, so long from me, Rachael Kohn.
Guests
- Emeritus Professor Marion S. Goldman
- Author of The American Soul Rush: Esalen and the Rise of Spiritual Privilege (2012), Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, University of Oregon, is a specialist in New Religious Movements (cults) and religious violence. Professor Goldman's books include Passionate Journey: Why Successful Women Joined a Cult (1999) as well as Gold Diggers and Silver Miners (1981) a study of frontier prostitution.
- Professor Jeffrey Kripal
- J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought (and Chairman of the Department of Religious Studies) at Rice University inHouston, Texas. Author of many books including Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (2007), Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (1995, 1998) and Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics and the Paranormal(2011).
