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From Publishers Weekly

Many readers will probably not have heard of Esalen—but that doesn't mean they won't find its history fascinating. Esalen is a legendary sacred place, but legendary among the privileged few like Aldous Huxley, Henry Miller and Joseph Campbell, for whom Esalen was a spiritual playground. Kripal, a professor of religious studies at Rice University, tells the story of this beautiful retreat in California's Big Sur region—its history at once sexy, salacious, intellectual and political—with reverence and playfulness, alternating between the hushed tones of awe and the glee of partaking in Esalen's infamous sinful delights. The community itself, Kripal explains, is centered around the idea of a "religion of no religion," which provides "a kind of American Mystical Constitution" for its visitors and "a spiritual space where almost any religious form can flourish." Kripal jumps among a wide range of historical moments, from Esalen's alleged relationship to the collapse of the Soviet Union to the idea of the disembodied erotic. Readers shouldn't be scared off by the book's heft. Kripal is an engaging storyteller, Esalen a worthy subject (a kind of Us Weekly for the discerning intellectual), and it's as easy to jump from the introduction to chapter 14 as it is to continue in order. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Review

“This is it: the definitive history of the original American human potential center and the people who first envisioned it and made it work. A truly astonishing story of spiritual inspiration, global vision, political adventure, and delightful humor, and just at the right time. A genuinely hopeful vision of what we yet could be in the mirror of what we have been. Stunning.” (Deepak Chopra)“In this engaging book, Jeffrey Kripal assesses one of the world’s most engaging places, and finds in Esalen a perfect metaphor for America’s unique creed of science and religion. Here—literally on the western edge of the North American continent—the European enlightenment meets Asian spirituality, Einstein confronts Walt Whitman, Calvinism takes on mysticism, and secularism encounters the divine. It’s a wild ride, filled with ironies and tensions, but it’s also America at the start of the twenty-first century, and perhaps the future of the world.” (Robert B. Reich)"Kripal tells the story of this beautiful retreat in California’s Big Sur region—its history at once sexy, salacious, intellectual and political—with reverence and playfulness. . . . He is an engaging storyteller,Esalen a worthy subject (a kind of Us Weekly for the discerning intellectual), and it’s as easy to jump from the introduction to chapter 14 as it is to continue in order."—Publishers Weekly (Publishers Weekly)“In this history of the institute, readers will take a spellbinding journey through art, pop psychology, Tantric sex, Cold War physics, psychedelic drugs, and, of course, religion. Kripal becomes a raconteur of stories involving a cast of characters—from folk singer Joan Baez and Gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson to gay bathers, Hell’s Angels, and others attracted to the coast of California’s Big Sur country. Kripal explains the institute’s mixing of popular and political culture with the transformative spiritual practices of humanistic alternative education; its embodiment of East/West philosophies and dedication to the continual exploration of human potential. Upon finishing this book, readers will feel compelled to visit this remarkable place, where all are accepted.”—Library Journal (Library Journal)"An impressive new book ... [Esalen] is, by many accounts, the birthplace of the human potential movement, which advocates the raising of spiritual consciousness, human functioning, mystical awareness, and interpersonal connection. [Kripal] has written the definitive intellectual history of the ideas behind the institute."—Don Lattin, San Francisco Chronicle (Don Lattin San Francisco Chronicle)"Esalen Institute is a combination alt-think tank, academic community and sensual retreat perched on the Pacific-facing cliffs of Big Sur, California. Its thinkers formed the leading edge of American culture for decades. Here was ground zero of the 1960s social revolution: the sweaty hot-tub commingling of free love, tantric yoga, Buddhist meditation and Gestalt therapy—as well as the academy for the propagation of the human-potential movement. Outlaw all-stars like Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg and Hunter S. Thompson felt the pull of the place. Now scholar Jeffrey Kripal has produced the first all-encompassing history of Esalen: its intellectual, social, personal, literary and spiritual passages. Kripal brings us up-to-date and takes us deep beneath historical surfaces in this definitive, elegantly written book."—Playboy (Playboy)“Kripal examines Esalen’s extraordinary history and evocatively describes the breech birth of Murphy and Price’s brainchild. His real achievement, though, is effortlessly synthesizing a dizzying array of dissonant phenomena (Cold War espionage, ecstatic religiosity), incongruous pairings (Darwinism, Tantric sex), and otherwise schizy ephemera (psychedelic drugs, spaceflight) into a cogent, satisfyingly complete narrative. That he reconciles all this while barely batting an eye is remarkable; that he does so while writing with such élan is nothing short of wondrous. This essential volume achieves what Esalen itself ultimately couldn’t sustain: a true gestalt.” (Atlantic Monthly)"This history of the Esalen Institute describes how the Big Sur hot springs became a crucible for a brand of secular metaphysics known at 'the religion of no religion.' Founded in the early 1960s, Esalen drew eccentrics and artists like Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Henry Miller, and Joan Baez, and soon became a sort of sybaritic commune, where life consisted, according to Kripal, of 'sodomy in the baths, glossolalia in the lodge, fistfights in the parking lot, folk music in the cabins, and meditation in the Big House.' ".—New Yorker (New Yorker)"Although several memoirs by participants and popular histories of Esalen and its creative role in American culture are available, this book is nothing less than the gold standard. Essential." (Choice)"I savored every page of this exquisitely crafted book. . . . Wisely, Kripal--having given the fairest and most comprehensive account of the Esalen story we will probably ever see--does not make any judgment." (Harvey Cox The Sixties)

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Product details

Hardcover: 594 pages

Publisher: University of Chicago Press; 1 edition (April 15, 2007)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 9780226453699

ISBN-13: 978-0226453699

ASIN: 0226453693

Product Dimensions:

6 x 1.8 x 9 inches

Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds

Average Customer Review:

3.9 out of 5 stars

25 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#497,356 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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."

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.

This is a very big, thick book. It's a little intimidating. But it reads so easily and is so interesting I found I was disappointed when I finally finished. I'd have liked to have had the presentation go on. The book is structured around the history of the Esalen Institute in Big Sur along the California coast, but it's about so much more than just Esalen. That's partly because Esalen proved to be very influential in West Coast thinking and then worldwide culture. So a discussion of Esalen includes all those issues of the last half of the 20th Century that are roughly called New Age and/or Countercultural. Esalen was a part of the transformation of how modern culture understands religion. The subtitle of the book is "America and the Religion of No Religion." The Religion of No Religion is the modern religion now. The popular term in social media is "Spiritual, not religious." Kripal writes about very heady stuff, but I found it easy to read and easy to understand. I've also read Kripal's The Serpent's Gift, and found it really enlightening. I resonate with his idea of a "gnosticism" that comes from the study of religion from over and above. Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion is wonderful both for its broad generalizations about meaning and the evolution of consciousness and for its minute details and intriguing stories of the history of the land and people that constituted Esalen.

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!

complicated and interesting history, I have been considering a retreat there. The author and book were recommended to me by a good friend. After staring it from the library decided to buy for a slower ead and also because it has so many great references.

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Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion PDF