Whatever you think you've heard, or seen in photographs, of EsalenInstitute, located in Big Sur, you don't know until you've been there--that wild coast, that brilliant Pacific, and the air that feels like it's just been minted. What really catches your attention, though, are the butterflies. Trees of butterflies. Yes, it turns out that Esalen Institute is located smack in the middle of one of the largest breeding grounds for Monarch butterflies. There you have it; virtually millions of fluttering banners of color; it's easy to see why conversation seems so significant there. Call it insect atmospherics.
Though Mike Murphy has his share of detractors--as will predictably, his new book, The Future of the Body--the man is a serious fellow; one whose influence is pervasive, inarguable, and continuing. Briefly, Esalen, under the careful nonguidance of Murphy and Richard Price (co-founder of Esalen who was tragically killed in a freak accident in 1985), was the extremely influential center of what used to be called the Human Potential Movement and is now something much larger. According to a New Yorker article on Murphy, that means humanistic and transpersonal psychology, transactional analysis, Gestalt therapy, and encounter therapy--alongside a panoply of body-awareness techniques that are now part of the somatic vocabulary we call "New Age." At one point or another, such diverse people as George Harrison, Natalie Wood, Abe Maslow, Fritz Perls, Aldous Huxley, Jane Fonda, and Linus Pauling have passed through the place.
Murphy has been observing the goings-on at the institute, which he founded and from which he has been increasingly distant, for over 25 years. He's been writing this book for the last 7 1/2 years. We think it's an important book, though one that is uniquely difficult to excerpt satisfactorily, as we had originally planned. What Murphy says, in essence, is that we live only a part of the life we are given. And that, as human beings, we have extraordinary potentials which are not fully utilized.
Some of these capabilities are measurable scientifically; some of them require observation, hearsay, or just faith. But their existence, their reality is more certain than ever. The interview, by one of his best friends, the legendary editor and writer George Leonard, and slices of the book provide a sense of the breadth and ambition of Murphy's work, if not also the grandiosity of it. One more comment: The obvious criticism of Esalen and Murphy is that it's a relic of the 60s. Lob that back. It's a cheap shot, and too easy.
I hitched a ride back with a young college student. Frankly, she couldn't care less about Murphy or the mecca days of the 60s--about consciousness-raising or nude bathing in the hot baths. She was there to take a course on massage therapy as a psych major at San Francisco State College. She was at Esalen because the course material was unavailable anywhere else, and she said, matter of factly, that everyone in the area knows that if you want courses on this kind of stuff, the best ones are given at Esalen.
--Owen Lipstein
GEORGE LEONARD: In The Lives of a Cell, Lewis Thomas proposed that evolution is humankind's greatest story. Are you saying in The Future of the Body that evolution is still going on, and in fact is reasonably close to taking its next big step?
MICHAEL MURPHY: Yes, but where Lewis Thomas was talking about the journey from the Big Bang to the present, I'm talking about from now on, and I think I have at least a piece of the puzzle in this book. We've already seen the emergence of life from inorganic matter and the emergence of human consciousness from life. The story's not over, however. There's more to come.
GL: Like what?
MM: The future is finally unpredictable. But there's overwhelming evidence that most if not all of our human attributes have extraordinary or seemingly miraculous versions. We can now recognize the pattern of the extraordinary in human life to a degree that people in former times could not. From this pattern we begin to discern the outlines of a possible future, a future in which the extraordinary could become commonplace.
GL: What do you mean by human attributes?
MM: One human attribute, as an example, is the ability to perceive external events. Other examples include the ability to move, to communicate, and to alter the environment. I've identified 12 sets of attributes. Each of which is seen to some extent in the lower animals, and each, as I've said, has metanormal, versions. A bacterium, for example, can perceive a change in the chemical content of the fluid in which it swims. Animals and humans, which evolved from the same single-celled organisms, can perceive their surroundings with much more precision and range. Some humans have gone beyond this ability to what I'm calling the metanormal and can recognize objects and events at a greater distance still. There are other types of extraordinary perception, including the deliberate use of clairvoyance.
GL: Are you now stepping outside the boundaries of hard science?
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transpersonal psychology,
yorker article
