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Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religionby Jeffrey J. Kripal To purchase, please call the Esalen Bookstore at 831-667-3049 or buy through amazon.com. Esalen receives a small portion of proceeds of purchases made using this link.
List Price: $30.00 Amazon price: $19.80 View a larger picture of the cover or see other featured books. "At last here's the book for all those who have ever wondered of Esalen, 'what's it all about?' Most of all, in addition to being an astonishing sweep through Esalen's role in the most important cultural trends and movements of the past 50 years, the book is also one hell of a good read. Like Esalen itself, Kripal's portrait is a delight for the embodied visitor/reader, an inspiration for change in our consciousness and our culture, and food for the soul." — Gordon Wheeler, President, Esalen Institute Jeff Kripal's "Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion" is the first scholarly study of Esalen by a professional cultural historian and the first comprehensive account of our history since Walter Truett Anderson's The Upstart Spring appeared 24 years ago. Much, of course, has happened since Anderson's book was published, and Kripal has taken it in, pondered its meaning, and interpreted it through his broad training as a scholar of Asian religions and comparative mysticism. The result, we think, is stunning. For so many of us, Esalen means an embodied experience of healing, personal exploration, contact and relationship, and deep transformation. Kripal's book takes this rich legacy and puts it in its context of cultural initiative and societal transformation. Among the features of our history he brings into view are: Big Sur's Henry Miller and his love of a famous painting, Hieronymus Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights"; Aldous Huxley's Tantric utopian island, Pala, and its "fictional" connections to the inspirations of the counterculture; Frederic Spiegelberg's mystical experience of nature in a wheat field as a young man, which led to the comparative theology he called "the religion of no religion" that influenced Michael Murphy and Dick Price; Price's embrace of Taoism and Buddhist meditation (as well as his intense sufferings at the hands of a psychiatric institution); Abraham Maslow's unexpected appearance at the lodge in the summer of 1962, as our staff was reading his latest book; George Leonard's human potential writings, his work with psychiatrist Price Cobbs on black/white relations, and his pervasive influence on Esalen; Fritz Perls's rise to new prominence in the 1960s at the Institute and the subsequent development of Gestalt Therapy by, among others, our President, Gordon Wheeler; Joseph Campbell's hero mythology, which he explored at Esalen for twenty years, and its influence on the making of Star Wars; Don Hanlon Johnson's vision of mind/body relations and his worldwide leadership in the field of Somatics; the metaphysical and healing work of Stanislav and Christina Grof; and a study of Michael Murphy's evolutionary panentheism. There are also extensive treatments of Esalen's citizen diplomacy with the Soviet Union in the '70s, '80s, and '90s led by Dulce Murphy, Jim Hickman, and Jim Garrison; an account of Esalen's place in the long-term development of American spirituality; and finally, a sweeping conclusion in which Kripal reflects on all of this history and suggests ways to re-vision Esalen's future, what he calls "the future of the past." There is a great deal of buzz around this book at the University of Chicago Press, one of the world's finest academic presses. Kripal will go on a book tour this spring to the West Coast, Denver, Chicago, and New York. Al, Lydia, and Patrick Dugan, three longtime Esalen friends, generously funded this book tour. Our and the author's sincere thanks to them again. We are all excited about this. We hope you are too. About the Author Jeffrey J. Kripal is J. Newton Rayzor Profesor of Religious Studies and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University. He lives in Houston, Texas.
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