Neither a church nor a university nor a think tank, Esalen was designed more than 50 years ago as a kind of spiritual and cultural crossroads to explore the frontiers of human knowledge, to entertain bold or even transgressive ideas, from drug-induced mysticism to the mind’s potential to survive bodily death.
The institute was founded in 1962 by Stanford alums Michael Murphy and Richard Price on picturesque land owned by Murphy’s family. Deeply influenced by the work of Aldous Huxley in everything from psychedelic drugs to erotic tantric yoga, Murphy and Price looked to create a conducive space to conduct seminars in “new conception of human nature,” as Esalen’s first brochure put it.
“We just want to be the catalyst for whatever is in the shadow of the culture,” said psychologist Gordon Wheeler, who serves as Esalen’s president. “That shadow moves around from generation to generation. But the mission at Esalen stays the same — to address what should be talked about, but often is not.”
Read the full article: What’s next for the Esalen Institute? (San Francisco Chronicle)
