Beginning with this interview with Stefan Rechtschaffen, co-founder
anddirector of the Omega Institute - the largest spiritual retreat in
America - Psychology Today introduces the first of its "site visits." In
future issues, we are going to make trios to other medical and healing
centers (some of them traditional, some not) such as AIDS clinics,
rape-counseling centers, abortion clinics, and drug rehabs. Often, there
isn't a lot of first-person reporting in these places because the hurt
there tends to distance people or because they're so
controversial.
In this column, it is our intention to be your eyes and ears. Other
than picking the sites, we'll stay out of it and let you be the fly on
the wall. -The Editors
Psychology Today: What gave you the idea to start Omega?
Stefan Rechtschaffen: In the late 1970s I was involved in a
spiritual community, and the belief at that time was that we could create
a better opportunity for people to learn if we introduced into it a
combination of a sense of spirit and community. Omega has its early
tenets in community and environment - a place of spirit where people can
come and feel nurtured and learn on all levels of their being. It isn't
just learning of the mind but a learning of the heart and the spirit as
well.
Initially, Omega began with just three weeks' worth of programs. In
the first four years we rented small campuses, boarding schools, and one
year we rented Bennington College. At that point we realized we really
needed to have our own campus where we could fully develop the atmosphere
and the environment, so that it was in all ways consistent with the
teaching. So we came and bought this old summer camp, and have for the
last 11 Years been upgrading it to meet our requirements. We now have
10,000 people who come here every summer. And the numbers are rapidly
growing.
People really want this as a part of their life. Ultimately, what
they're looking for is a retreat from their lives where they feel that
they are on vacation, they can rest, they can feel nurtured, and they can
see changes happen in their lives. They want to start to move their life
in a way that works for them, start to integrate their life with what
feels good and what is ultimately healthy.
PT: Your background is more scientific than spiritual-what brought
you into this area?
SR: I'm a physician, board-certified in family practice, and from
the beginning I was always interested in what is now termed holistic
medicine. From my early days I was involved in meditation and so, in a
way, there was always a marriage of spirit and science. It became very
clear to me that what was missing in the disease-care model is the proper
emphasis on prevention - empowering individuals to take charge of their
own health and to become involved in living a lifestyle that involves
good diet, exercise, opening themselves up to their emotional life,
dealing with their stresses, and looking into the spiritual understanding
of life. The important question here is: How can we bring our inner
spiritual values into a form that will address some of the ills of
society?
PT: Is there a spiritual revolution occurring at Omega at this
time? If so, why?
SR: People are feeling unconnected with their environment, with
society, and in fact they are feeling an increasing pain and stress from
their own personal lives. There is a growing discontent, we saw it in our
presidential election last year, but it has been mounting over the years.
The stress of living life is getting greater and greater. As society is
speeding up, people are having more trouble feeling a normal state of
peace and having a sense of equanimity in their lives.
Omega is an oasis for many people in a crazy society. We live in a
world that is chaotic and spinning out of control, and many people come
here because they feel at least for a period of time that they're able to
slow down, they're able to feel a type of peace in themselves in such a
way that they are able to start to bring it back into their lives.
Hopefully, it can help them create more balance.
PT: Is this something new and different from what was happening in
the late Sixties and Seventies, or is this simply retro for aging
hippies?
SR: No, I think we are evolving here. I think that this had its
birth in the Sixties, but as we are maturing and hopefully getting
somewhat wiser, we're recognizing that this is no longer an issue of
dropping out. You can't drop out from society. I think the task at hand
is working with our society and changing it. That's my real hope - that
we are not just going backwards, but are recognizing that our society is
evolving in some ways into habits that we don't like, and it's going to
be up to us to change those habits. I think that we only survive as a
species when we recognize that we cannot isolate ourselves from each
other, but that the survival of humanity is recognizing the
interdependency of the entire human family. Such recognition happens when
we also see that our consciousness is really linked, and that the way we
live and the way we think and the way we deal with each other really has
a lot to do with the survival of this species and our planet.
PT: Who attends these conferences and what are they interested in
learning?
Tags:
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campuses,
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eyes and ears,
first person,
fly on the wall,
health,
Omega Institute,
place of spirit,
rape counseling,
retreat,
spiritual community,
spiritual retreat,
spirituality,
stress,
summer camp,
tenets
