From its unpretentious early days right up
to the cyberpresent,
Esalen has remained true to its vision of encouraging the development
of the human potential.
Now, during a time of global political upheaval and environmental
uncertainty, Esalen reaffirms and
rededicates itself to this vision. This essay, the second of three
to appear in the Esalen Catalog, presents an overview of Esalen’s
role—and relevance—in the ongoing evolution of personal
and societal change.
A Personal Statement by George Leonard and Michael Murphy
Part 2.
Esalen’s beginnings in January
1962 were anything but auspicious. The full-time staff numbered
around ten people. Accounts were calculated on an abacus by a
Chinese-American named Gia-Fu Feng. In the absence of a separate
meeting room, seminars were held in a portion of what is now the
lodge. There were few trees on the property and little in the
way of landscaping. The institute’s physical assets, in addition
to the lodge, included a few motel-like guest cabins, a rather
dilapidated hot springs bathhouse, and an ancient swimming pool
clogged with algae, essentially unusable. The Coast Road that
led to the institute from the north and the south was precarious
at best. In 1962, it was lightly traveled and there was an ominous
warning sign some twenty-five miles to the north:
Hills and curves next 63 miles
Dangerous in bad weather
Road not patrolled after dark
Nonetheless, invitations to Esalen were mailed out to eminent
speakers, not just in California, but all over the U.S. and overseas
as well. The invitees included, to name just a few, British historian
Arnold Toynbee; double Nobel prize-winner Linus Pauling; Harvard
behaviorist B.F. Skinner; distinguished psychologists Carl Rogers,
Virginia Satir, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, and Claudio Naranjo;
pioneering parapsychologist J. B. Rhine; theologian Paul Tillich;
and authors Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, and Carlos Castaneda. Beyond
any reasonable expectation, all these and many more came, traveling
sometimes over great distances to a virtually unknown place that
offered the most modest of fees.
It seemed a miracle. But there was something in the air then,
a sense of adventure, an opening to new ideas, new ways of thinking,
of feeling, of being. And from the beginning, Esalen possessed
two assets that transcended the small staff and primitive physical
facilities. The first was a lovely stretch of fertile land on
the edge of the Pacific. The second was a vision of human possibilities
spacious enough to include and enhance many practices, many intellectual
disciplines, many points of view.
Genuine Novelty
In the forty years since its birth, Esalen has vastly improved
its physical facilities and has gently and lovingly tended its
land. It has created an organic garden and farm. And now there
are landscaped vistas that delight the eye and satisfy the soul
at every turn.
Our vision, too, has deepened and broadened. The fact that human
individuals rarely if ever realize their full potential has always
informed our thinking. The belief that each of us can achieve
more of it has always informed our programming. Could it be, we
have wondered, that much of the world’s unrest, neurosis,
drug abuse, illness, crime, and general unhappiness can be traced
to our failure to develop our God-given abilities? Could any tragedy
be so pervasive, so hard to justify, as the worldwide waste of
our potential to learn, to love, to feel deeply, and to create?
Esalen’s faith in the possibilities of further human development
derives from our understanding of the evolutionary adventure thus
far. From the beginning of time, we believe, spirit has been involved
with the material world; thus, the resplendent advance from atomic
particles to consciousness, from inorganic matter to the human
awareness of God, reflects the action of spirit as well as of
matter and energy. This idea has been developed in different ways
by the philosophers Hegel, Schelling, and Bergson; by the Jesuit
theologian Teilhard de Chardin; and by modern thinkers such as
Jean Gebser, Alfred North Whitehead, Sri Aurobindo, and Ken Wilber.
The world’s evolutionary advance has been far from smooth,
more a meander than a straight-line progression. But ultimately
Eros, the tendency of existence to create ever more complex, highly
organized entities, has won out over Thanatos, an opposing tendency
that disorganizes, destroys. The spirit of love has prevailed,
if only barely, over the forces of hate and destruction. The very
fact that creatures as incredibly complex as humans exist offers
proof of this victory.
Still, we reject the doctrine, so dear to 18th-century European
philosophers, of “the perfectibility of man.” An individual
totally without flaws would not be human; our greatest saints
and innovators are themselves not without blemish. Then too, perfection
would require stasis while we see change and the emergence of
genuine novelty wherever we look in the universe. What our species
may someday become lies beyond our present ability to imagine
or predict.
Vision vs. Dogma
Over the years, we have maintained and nurtured a coherent vision
of unrealized human possibilities and evolutionary transcendence
which has never devolved into doctrine or dogma. Nor has Esalen
ever been captured by any single discipline or practice. For forty
years, we have held true to the essential thrust of our founding
vision while remaining open to new information and sympathetic
to varied points of view. We have always endorsed the work of
individuals or organizations willing to see things as others see
them, to tolerate, even welcome, ambiguity. In the words of the
Argentine Nobelist Jorge Luis Borges, “in ambiguity there
lies a richness.”
This tolerance is particularly important in a world beset by the
deadly rigidity and single-mindedness of fundamentalists who would
disable or destroy all who fail to agree with their narrow and
unchanging dogmas. There are many brands of fundamentalism. The
most dangerous are religious, since religion deals with ultimate
concern—right and wrong, good and evil, life and death. Physically
or psychologically malnourished, bewildered by the complexities
of existence, the religious fundamentalist seeks certitude above
all else. And certitude, taken to its logical extreme, often leads
to violence. It is the urgent mission of the 21st century to mitigate
the worldwide economic and social disparity that provides a breeding
ground for fundamentalism. It is the crucial assignment of every
transformative organization to create models of vision open to
the marvelous surprises of our ever-expanding knowledge.
Growth vs. Survival
A quieter but no less pervasive threat to life on earth has to
do with the earth itself. Prosperity, as generally defined, entails
an annual GDP increase of three percent or more. If this kind
of prosperity, in peace or in war, were to be maintained, it would
double our present GDP in 24 more years and be well on the way
to quadrupling it in 40 years. Anything close to such a growth
rate, achieved through our present modes of production and consumption,
would totally overwhelm the essential energy and environmental
systems on this planet long before we reached 2042 AD.
Take just one example: Our U.S. water supply is already threatened
by growth and urban sprawl, and not just in the naturally arid
West. According to The New York Times, “Florida’s reservoirs
below and above ground are badly depleted and becoming briny with
saltwater seepage… In Kentucky, more than half of the state’s
120 counties ran short of water or were on the verge of shortages
[in 2001] before heavy rains brought relief.” Even in the
wettest suburbs of wet Seattle, demand for water is outstripping
supply.
The cycling, distribution, and storage of water is only one of
the services that nature has been providing us at no charge. We
could add to that the production of oxygen, the formation and
maintenance of topsoil, conversion of the sun’s energy into
raw materials, purification of both water and air, decomposition
of organic wastes, and many more. What is the monetary value of
these free services? A group of scientists figured it as $36 trillion
a year on the average and $58 trillion at the most, in 1998 dollars.
Impressive, when you consider that in 1998 the Gross World Product
was only $39 trillion. Clearly, we are fast draining our natural
capital, drawing it down to support our voracious desire for endless,
thoughtless growth. But healthy growth is possible if we work
with rather than against nature.
A Model of Sustainability
As Esalen plans its own redevelopment program, we are fortunate
to enjoy the counsel of Amory Lovins, coauthor (with Paul Hawken
and L. Hunter Lovins) of Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next
Industrial Revolution and one of the world’s foremost energy
and environment experts. Since spring of 1999, Lovins—along
with such people as Don Aitkens, cofounder of Friends of the Earth,
Greg Franta, head of an environmentally-sustainable architectural
group, and many others—has been making numerous visits to
Esalen, donating time and expertise towards transforming our vision
of a beautiful and sustainable new Esalen into a reality.
For example, recycled water from the hot springs will be piped
in to our kitchen and laundry, thus eliminating the significant
energy costs of heating this water with electric power. New buildings
will be optimally oriented to the sun, constructed of special
materials, and provided with built-in air circulation so as to
minimize the need for both heating and cooling. Whatever electricity
is needed for light and heat in guest rooms and meeting rooms
will be provided by solar panels built into the roofs of all new
and renovated structures. Already, the installation of compact
fluorescent lighting has produced considerable energy savings.
We hope eventually to use less electricity than we produce, getting
credit by returning our surplus electricity to the grid.
An above-ground wastewater treatment system will use biological
organisms rather than harsh chemicals to purify water that can
then be used to irrigate lawns and gardens. A new parking system
will isolate automobiles away from sleeping and meeting facilities.
Presently-paved areas will be converted to footpaths, gardens,
and lawns.
All in all, we envisage an Esalen that will continue to rest lightly
and lovingly on the sacred soil that has come under our guardianship.
This evolution of the physical Esalen will be accompanied by new
programs and initiatives that will further the positive evolution
of human nature. We intend to see that our longtime interest in
the integral, balanced transformation of mind, body, heart, and
soul is reflected in every aspect of our work. Our Center for
Theory and Research will intensify its investigation of frontier
topics that currently stand beyond the reach of mainstream institutions.
These topics include Transformative Practices, Evolutionary Theory,
Survival of Bodily Death, and Integral Economics. Our spectacular
new bathhouse and bodywork facilities will be balanced by an elegant
and spacious meditation hall, where seminarians can more poignantly
experience the presence of spirit in life’s every aspect.
Our intrapersonal, interpersonal, and art programs will not only
offer guidance in dealing with the anxieties and conflicts of
human existence, but will also open participants to the adventure
of embodiment, the miracle of self-aware consciousness.
A New Definition of Prosperity
The word prosperous derives from the Latin pro plus the root of
sperare, “to hope.” Today, with the rest of the world,
we face dangerous challenges and intriguing possibilities. At
best, with the help of the larger Esalen community, we hope over
the next several years to create a world model of physical
and psychological sustainability, of vision without dogma, adding
up to a new way of understanding an old but most important word:
prosperity.
Continue
with part 3.
