Esalen

Carl H. Flygt

June 2005

The Esalen Institute is facing a minor crisis in its history, and the current budget shortfall is a symptom of this. With $10,000,000 in annual incomes and over $11,000,000 in annual outgoes, something probably needs to be done both in terms of program and in terms of physical plant. Frequent course cancellations, due apparently to lack of demand, are a major concern, as is a good bit of deferred maintenance which undoubtedly has accrued in the wake of a splendid remodeling of the baths. Esalen of course remains a profoundly attractive and healing venue, but I detect a certain drop-off in the quality of the interactions there since I last visited. People wander aimlessly in their interactions and around the grounds. Platitudes and trivial contents abound. The sense of inner direction, once so prevalent and vibrant, is missing from the place. The human potential movement appears out of touch with itself, bypassed by the outside world, suspended in abeyance.

The problem appears to be twofold. In recent years the outside world has demonstrated a great deal of demonic energy, focus and all-consuming interest with the advent of communication technology and more recently, with the price of real property. Increasingly the inner world is represented effectively in the outer world, in the movies, on television and on the internet, providing in many cases a reasonable and satisfying surrogate for personal transformation. At the same time, real estate prices have climbed to speculative levels, causing many an erstwhile Esalen retreatant a legitimate preoccupation with his (her) financial future. In the outer world, and perhaps to an extent in the inner as well, the line between perception and reality has begun to blur.

At the same time, and this is the important point, the human potential movement appears to be out of fresh ideas. The Institute of Noetic Sciences is stuck on the innocuous and socially unilluminating topic of healing, and has been for more years than I can enumerate. Neurolinguistic programming is stuck on corporate and interpersonal manipulation, to the extent that is possible, and in the wake of Anthony Robbins and his revivalist get-ahead culture, appears merely anachronistic. Anthroposophy is stuck wondering how to achieve healthy clairvoyance without being an affront to others, and defending itself from allegations of cultism and teaching religion to minors. And Esalen is more or less stuck on massage, orgasm and the contemplation of nature, with the “Esalen Initiatives” page of the website listing virtually no new activity since 1998. This at least is how things appear to me.

Now there is something very new on the horizon which appears capable of reviving the excitement, the intensity and the innovation of the human potential movement of the early years. It is an academically sound and energetically focused theory of conversation, a general claim on semantics as such and on the social contract long purported to underlie all intentions to communicate and to give public expression to the inner life of the individual. It is a theory of cosmic evolution taking place in and through the human being, both at fully explicit and consensual levels such as outer behavior and language use, and at heretofore implicit and occult levels, such as the cosmic etheric and astral bodies. It is, in short, a theory of how to conduct ourselves quite literally as cosmic spirits in the presence of other cosmic spirits, of how to comport ourselves as angels, or as though we were angels.

Imagine the attraction and the power of a place like Esalen in which human beings act quite literally as natural laws, all the way up to the level of their thoughts and their freely realized actions. Imagine the glory of the human male, striding Apollonic amid the harmonies of the elements, of his challengers and of the cosmic hierarchies as a work of art in himself and in his inmost thoughts and deeds. Imagine the dreamlike beauty of the human female, settled comfortably into herself and her radiant goodness, responsive to the cosmic principles of inner creation welling up in her from moment to moment and from circumstance to circumstance. Imagine nature herself appearing to respond to all of this, and exhibiting an etheric harmony among the densities of the earth and rocks, of the sea and the atmosphere, of the sunlight and the astral firmament, of the plants and the birds, of the warmth and the cold. All of this, and more, can be expected to emerge from the human potential when its real origin is discovered, not so much in the body, although certainly it is there, but in the mind and the will to imagine, to envision and to communicate with exactitude the logos of the human spirit.

There is truly a great tradition at Esalen of innovative scholarship, research and original enquiry, from Fritz Perls to Gregory Bateson to Stanislav Grof and many others. Something may soon be added. In late 2005 and early 2006, Carl H. Flygt’s Conversation: A New Theory of Language will appear in print, published by Lindisfarne Books. Pursuant to that, public lectures and workshops will be scheduled, and some of these may be at Esalen. Should the germ of a response be detectable in the market, in academia and in the political life, a systematic attempt should begin to blend scholarship, partnership, research, travel and teaching, and Esalen could play a significant role in that program. Pursuant to that program, and I think almost certainly to no other,  Esalen can expect to enjoy a bit of a comeback from the spiritual lull it and its sister organizations have recently experienced.