Michael Murphy - Esalen: A Living Laboratory for Human Potential

When many people think of Esalen, the legendary spiritual retreat center on the California coast, what comes to mind are its ’60s psychedelic experiments, the assortment of countercultural icons who frequented its “clothing optional” natural hot spring pools, and the smorgasbord of personal growth workshops that made it a mecca for a generation of spiritual-but-not-religious seekers. But contrary to its New Age reputation, says founder Michael Murphy, Esalen Institute has always been primarily a cutting-edge think tank and living laboratory for some of society’s most revolutionary scholars, artists, and visionaries to explore the outer edges of human potential.

In this interview with EnlightenNext’s Joel Pitney, Murphy brings his characteristic charm and more than four decades as a defining voice in the human potential movement to bear on Esalen, the counterculture, and the emerging evolutionary worldview that he’s dedicated his life to helping pioneer. He describes the history of Esalen, which is peppered with names like Aldous Huxley, Abraham Maslow, Boris Yeltsin, and Joan Baez, and speaks about the role it played in the cultural ferment of the ’60s and ’70s. Finally, Murphy talks about Esalen’s Center for Theory and Research, which over the past decade has hosted a series of invitation-only conferences that bring together leading scholars from around the world to explore new perspectives on a diversity of topics, including religious fundamentalism, paranormal phenomena, evolutionary metaphysics, and how to bring sustainability to China.

BIO
 
Michael Murphy is the chairman of Esalen Institute, which he cofounded with Richard Price in 1962. He is also known for helping to spark, along with George Leonard, what has come to be known as the human potential movement. During his over forty-year involvement in the human potential movement, his work has been profiled in The New Yorker and featured in many magazines and journals worldwide. After graduating from Stanford University in the mid-fifties, he studied at Sri Aurobindo Ashram in South India, where he developed the spiritual and philosophical foundations that led to the founding of Esalen and guided the rest of his career. In the 1980s, he helped organize Esalen’s pioneering Soviet-American Exchange Program, which became a premiere vehicle for citizen-to-citizen relations between Russians and Americans. In 1989, Boris Yeltsin's first visit to America was initiated by Esalen. Murphy is author of many nonfiction books that explore evidence for extraordinary human capacities, including The Future of the Body, The Life We Are Given (with George Leonard), In the Zone: Transcendent Experience in Sports (with Rhea White), The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation (with Steven Donovan), God and the Evolving Universe (with James Redfield and Sylvia Timbers). He has also written four novels: Golf in the Kingdom, The Kingdom of Shivas Irons, Jacob Atabet, and An End to Ordinary History.