The history of Esalen is like a picture of a tiny stream that feeds into the Amazon – what starts as a small trickle of “travellers of the mind” feeds into a rampaging philosophical torrent destined to cut through the passion-depleted monoculture of 1950s America.
“Esalen: American and the Religion of No Relgion” reads like a grocery list of cultural mayhem; its guest list a gang of crazed midwives about to birth the freak-out of the 1960s. You could seriously spend the rest of your life diving into the lives and works of all the people mentioned in this book; it’s like a manual of post-war counterculture.
- “Male Continence” and Oneida
- Prof. Frederic Spiegelberg
- Sri Aurobindo
- Nagarjuna
- Alan Watts
- Jack Kerouac
- Gary Synder
- Joan Baez
- Hunter S Thompson stayed at Esalen as a sort of security guard
- Charles Manson had tried to get into Esalen shortly before the murders, and Sharon Tate was there on her second-to-last night alive
A course in Miracles, Helen Shucman
Psychotherapy East and West, Alan Watts
Abraham Maslow
Ed Maupin
Fritz Perls
Russel Targ
Michael Murphy’s An end to ordinary history
Terrence McKenna