huxley

“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” — Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley loved the Monarch butterflies at Esalen.

Michael Murphy met Aldous Huxley only once, in January of 1962 when the author visited Big Sur shortly before his death on November 22, 1963. His intellectual and personal influence on Esalen was immense.

“Aldous Huxley was writing essays in which his worldview was shifting away from a negative view of human nature, like in his novel, Brave New World, to an ecstatic one as featured in, Island. He was using the term human potentialities and discussing people we hadn’t heard of, such as Fritz Perls and Charlotte Selver. It was through Huxley that they would come to Esalen and form part of our programming. He framed these ideas to a worldwide audience in a broad, clear, non-dogmatic way. When we started publishing brochures, they were entitled “Human Potentialities.”

“We also needed help toning down some of our fancy philosophical language into something more generally understandable. My primary intellectual influences involved terms that were hard for many people to understand in the late fifties. Huxley was one of the people who helped us do that.

Michael Murphy met Aldous Huxley only once, in January of 1962 when the author visited Big Sur shortly before his death onNovember 22, 1963. His intellectual and personal influence on Esalen was immense.

Aldous Huxley loved the Monarch butterflies at Esalen.

Cover of Aldous Huxleys book "The Doors of Perception"

Pictured here with Chungliang Al Huang, Huxley’s second wife, Laura, became a long-time friend of Esalen who led many workshops over the decades. She also acted as a “sitter” for one of Michael’s psychedelic sessions.

“Aldous Huxley’s writings on the mystical dimensions of psychedelics and on what he called the perennial philosophy were foundational. Moreover, his call for an institution that could teach the “nonverbal humanities” and the development of the “human potentialities” functioned as the working mission statement of early Esalen. Indeed, the very first Esalen brochures actually bore the Huxley-inspired title, “the human potentiality.” This same phrase would later morph in a midnight brainstorming session between MichaelMurphy and George Leonard into the now well-known “human potential movement.” When developing the early brochures for Esalen, Murphy was searching for a language that could mediate between his own Aurobindonian evolutionary mysticism and the more secular and psychological language of American culture. It was Huxley who helped him to create such a new hybrid language. This should not surprise us, as Huxley had been experimenting for decades on how to translate Indian ideas into Western literary and intellectual culture.”

—Jeffrey J. Kripal, writing about the founding of New Age retreat and spiritual center the Esalen Institute in his book Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion. The above excerpt comes from a chapter that has been reprinted on the University of Chicago Press’s website.

Carl Rogers leading in the meeting room named after Huxley.

* Photo, top: Aldous Huxley and Michael Murphy.