Professor and religions studies scholar Jeffrey Kripal will sign ‘Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion’ on Saturday, June 9 from 4 to 6 p.m. at Village Books, 1049 Swarthmore. Founded in the 1960s as a center for the human potential movement, the Esalen spa perched on a cliff in Big Sur has drawn illustrious guests, countercultural figures and world leaders over its 40-year history. In his book, Kripal describes it as ‘a utopian experiment creatively suspended between the revelations of the religions and the democratic, pluralistic and scientific revolutions of modernity. He gives in considerable detail both the gossip and the intellectual developments at Esalen since it founding as ‘ a center to explore those trends in the behavioral sciences, religion and philosophy which emphasize the potentialities and values of human existence,’ as the first brochure put it. The Esalen Institute had considerable intellectual seriousness and was unexpectedly influential in global affairs, with leaders like Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev having some connection. Co-founded by Michael Murphy and Richard Price, Esalen enlisted the support of Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer in helping to bring the Soviet Writers’ Union into International PEN. It was also of use to the C.I.A., which spent a lot of money looking into ESP, with experiments involving ‘ the laser physicist turned C.I.A. psychic spy turned American mystic’ Russell Targ, who gave parapsychology lectures at Esalen. Kripal gives particular emphasis to the work of co-founder Michael Murphy, whose family happened to own the seaside real estate, 150 acres of beauty and abundant natural hot springs. Murphy is the author of a considerable body of philosophical writing or pop-mystical tracts such as ‘Golf in the Kingdom,’ which has sold more than a million copies and made a culture hero of its protagonist, Scottish golf pro Shivas Irons. ‘Esalen’ recounts in intimate detail how the co-founders sought to fuse the spiritual revelations of the East with the scientific revolutions of the West. In this religion of no religion, the natural world was as holy as the spiritual one. It is a prehistory of our current fascination with Asian religions. Today Esalen is at the center of the human potential movement, whose basic claim is that human beings possess immense untapped reserves of consciousness and energy that cultures have repressed in different ways.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
