Esalen Institute

The Esalen Institute is a retreat center/CIA front, established in 1962 by Stanford graduates Richard Price and Michael Murphy in Big Sur California as part of the 'human potential movement' (the New Age Church) and the counterculture of the 60's.

They were students of Frederic Spiegelberg, who studied with Carl Jung and Martin Heidegger and also taught at Columbia. Jung played a role in the Eranos group in Switzerland (ties to the Theosophical Society and OTO).

They were helped by Gregory Bateson (CIA, MK Ultra with Ken Kesey, married to Margaret Mead) and Gerald Heard. Heard worked for the Ministry of Information published the New Realist journal with HG Wells (British Intelligence, Fabian Society), Arnold Bennett of the HOGD and Julian and Aldous Huxley.

He was secretary of Horace Plunkett of the cooperative movement, member of the Society for Psychical Research, mentor of Henry and Clare Luce (Order of Malta) of Time magazine and Bill Wilson of Alcoholics Anonymous. Heard worked with Sydney Cohen to introduce director John Huston and Steve Allen of the Tonight Show to LSD. He was a friend of Huston Smith who participated in the Harvard experiments of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert.

The site was previously inhabited by Hunter S Thompson.

The Esalen Institute was promoted in Look and Time magazine and the NY Times. It served as a supermarket of therapies, New Age novelties and hypes. It is closely associated with other CIA/MI6 fronts Tavistock and California Institute for Integral Studies.

Richard Price was affiliated with the Baghwan (Osho) cult in India.

In 1975 Elizabeth Rauscher (SRI, NASA), affiliated with University of California Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory founded the Fundamental Fysiks Group.

People affiliated with the Esalen Institute:


- Abraham Maslow (Columbia The New School, American Psychological Association)
- Alan Watts (Zen Buddhism)
- Albert Hoffman (inventor LSD)
- Aldous Huxley (family that helped to found the UN, author of The Doors of Perception, name of CIA band The Doors)
- Allen Ginsberg (Beatniks, gay and pedophilia agenda)
- Amory Lovins (National Petroleum Council, married to jesuit Hunter Lovins)
- Arnold Toynbee (LSE of Fabian Society, Tavistock)
- Babatunde Olatunji (March on Washington with MLK, the Black Church)
- BF Skinner (Behaviorism)
- Buckminster Fuller (Black Mountain College of John Dewey)
- Carl Rogers (University of Chicago, MK Ultra, teacher of psychologist William Thetford and Marshall Rosenberg)
- Carlos Castaneda (shamanism with mescaline, inspiration for George Lucas)
- Christie Brinkley (married to Billy Joel, Elite Models)
- Chungliang Al Huang (friend of the Dalai Lama)
- Claudio Naranjo (consultant of Willis Harman at SRI, Enneagram of personality)
- David Steindl-Rast (Pantheism, world religion)
- Dean Ornish (physician consultant of Bill Clinton)
- Deepak Chopra (Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey)
- Douglas Rushkoff (the New School, cyberpunk movement, UN)
- Fritz Perls (influenced by group therapy of Kurt Lewin)
- Gary Snyder (lived with Jack Kerouac, Human Be-In in Haight-Ashbury with Leary and Ginsberg)
- George Harrison (The Beatles, given sitar lessons by Ravi Shankar at Esalen)
- George Vithoulkas (homeopathy)
- Gia-Fu Feng (Taoist, Beatniks)
- Humpfrey Osmond (Weyburn hospital, connected to LSD dealer Al Hubbard, inventor of the word 'psychedelic', research on adrenochrome, worked with Christopher Mayhew of British intelligence)
- Ida Rolfs (Rolfing technique, Phi Beta Kappa, Rockefeller Foundation, Werner Erhard's EST)
- James Bugental (humanistic therapy, American Psychological Association)
- James Hillman (jesuit, friend of Carl Jung)
- Joan Baez (father worked for UN/UNESCO, folk scene and Civil Rights Movement with Bob Dylan, March on Washington, cover of Phil Ochs, dated Steve Jobs)
- JB Rhine (American Society for Psychical Research, ESP),
- Jerry Rubin (Youth International Party with Abbie Hoffman and Paul Krassner, Black Panthers, Chicago 7, friend of John Lennon and Yoko Ono)
- John Cleese (BBC actor, Monty Python's Flying Circus with Terry Gilliam)
- John Lilly (isolation tank, friend of Leary)
- Joseph Campbell (Theosophical Society, Eranos, the Hero with a Thousand Faces book about monomyths, friend of daughter Woodrow Wilson and Willis Harman SRI, influenced George Lucas)
- Ken Kesey (Stanford, MK Ultra experiment of Gregory Bateson, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)
- Linus Pauling (friend of Robert Oppenheimer)
- Matthew Fox (jesuit)
- Michael Harner (neo-shamanism, Ayahuasca trend, Columbia the New School)
- Paul Horn (Night Tide of Thelemite Curtis Harrington, The Beatles trip to India)
- Paul Krassner (the Realist, the Merry Pranksters, Youth International Party with Abbie Hoffman)
- Peter Matthisen (CIA front The Paris Review)
- Ravi Shankar (BBC version of Alice in Wonderland with Jonathan Miller)
- RD Laing (Tavistock, anti-psychiatry approach, Dialectics of Liberation conference)
- Richard Tarnas (jesuit, California Institute for Integral Studies)
- Robert Anton Wilson (Playboy, the Realist of Paul Krassner, Discordianism, promotor of the Illuminati hoax)
- Robert Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)
- Spalding Gray (Christian Science, actors group with Willem Dafoe)
- Stanislav Grof (worked with mother of Courtney Love, California Institute for Integral Studies)
- Susan Sontag (Rosenblatt, lived with Herbert Marcuse during the writing of Eros and Civilisation, gay agenda, mother of David Rieff of the New School and Open Society Foundations of George Soros)
- Terence McKenna (friend of Rupert Sheldrake, the Archaic Revival)
- Tim Scully (LSD dealer Brotherhood of Eternal Love with Owsley Stanley)
- Timothy Leary (Milbrook estate of the Mellon family)
- Virginia Satir (family therapy)
- Warren Farrell (Betty Friedan's National Organization for Women NWO, taught at jesuit university Georgetown, promoted by Oprah Winfrey)
- William Schutz (University of Chicago with Carl Rogers, worked with Paul Lazarsfeld of Radio Project with Cantril and Adorno, trained at NTL of Kurt Lewin)

The Esalen Institute was modelled on the Eranos conferences of Theosophist Olga Fröbl-Kapteyn (OTO center in Monte Verita Ascona), with Mircea Eliade, Alfons Rosenberg, Carl Jung, Gershom Scholem, Gilles Quispel (gnostic Gospel of Thomas), Joseph Campbell, funded by the Mellon family.


Atomised of Michel Houellebecq contains scenes that are a parody of the New Age workshops of Esalen. Don Draper (Jon Hamm) spends time at Esalen in the last episode of Mad Men. The institute in Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice with Joker Joaquin Phoenix is based on Esalen. Michael Murphy appeared in BBC documentary Century of the Self with Herbert Marcuse and the daughter of Edward Bernays.

 

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