Intellectual history of Esalen explores creation of a place where spirituality, not religion, could flourish
Esalen
America and the Religion of No Religion
By Jeffrey J. Kripal (Book Review: University Chicago Press Title)
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My assignment was to address the religion writing class at the Columbia University School of Journalism. Professor Ari Goldman, a former religion writer at the New York Times, informed me that the title of my talk would be "Religion, California-Style."
And the first word to pop into my mind was:
Esalen.
There were other ways to approach the topic. The largest organized religion in the Golden State, by far, is Roman Catholicism, and the Catholic Church has a long, colorful and sometimes tragic history here, starting with the founding of the California mission system by Father Junipero Serra.
Another approach would be to give the East-meets-West lecture. After all, California is the gateway to the Pacific, and the gate swings both ways. Mystics and missionaries coming to our shores and bringing with them Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and, most recently, Islam have profoundly influenced our spirituality.
Then there's the story of the "nones," perhaps the fastest-growing religion on the West Coast. These are the folks who tell religion pollsters that they adhere to "none of the above." They are not atheists or not necessarily agnostics, either, but are famously into "spirituality, not religion."
Which brings us back to the Esalen Institute, which is a great way to talk about "all of the above" and the subject of an impressive new book by Jeffrey J. Kripal, "Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion."
Esalen Institute -- named after the California Indian tribe that once flourished there -- is a retreat and learning center perched on a green shelf on the magnificent Big Sur coast. It is best known -- much to the dismay of its intellectual founders -- for its natural hot springs baths dug into the side of a cliff overlooking the Pacific. It 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. It has also been identified -- again to the dismay of the Esalen intelligentsia -- as one of the midwives of the New Age movement. (Continues)
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"Esalen's religion of no religion has no official alliance with any religious system," Kripal writes. "It can provide, like a kind of American Mystical Constitution, a spiritual space where almost any religious form can flourish." It can flourish, but to quote one's of Michael Murphy's laws, no one sect or philosophy must be allowed to "capture the flag."