From Esalen to Pune, Osho and the Path of Humanistic Transpersonal Psychology Experiential E-Book

Vikrant A. Sentis

• Herausgeber: RIL Editores
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 589

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

This book fills a great void existing, until now, in the description and understanding of the history of modern psychology. It sheds light on one of the most unknown and least assumed aspects of the historical development of humanistic-transpersonally oriented psychotherapy, by exposing, in a systematic and adequately documented way, the details of the development of therapeutic processes, the personal stories of the pioneers of the Human Potential Movement and the, in many ways, profound impact that Osho (also known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) had on hundreds of psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists between the 1970s and 1990s. Numerous of the most prominent figures of the humanistic-transpersonal movement were in direct contact or were indirectly influenced by the teachings of this controversial and unorthodox contemporary spiritual teacher. This book intertwines, in an entertaining way, precise historical information and anecdotes experienced and related by the protagonists of this time.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Cover

Credits

Preface to the third Spanish edition

Preface for the first Spanish edition

Acknowledgements

Introduction

The First Part

Chapter I • Humanistic Psychology

Chapter II • Esalen

Chapter III • Other approaches

Chapter IV • Europe the new old continent

Chapter V • Reaching the limitThe limits of humanistic psychology

Chapter VI • Osho

Chapter VII • In Search of Enlightenment

The Second Part

Chapter VIII • PuneShree Rajneesh Ashram

Chapter IX • Therapy Groups in the East

Chapter X • Consolidating the Experiment

Chapter XI • The New Groups of 1978 andthe Creation of Osho International University

Chapter XII • The Last Phase in India

Chapter XIII • Geetam, the Community in the Desert

Chapter XIV • Rajneeshpuram, The Ranch in Oregon

Chapter XV • Pune IIOsho Commune International

Chapter XVI • The Sphere of Influence

Onomastic index

Glossary of terms

References

Interviews

Films

Photographs

Vikrant A. Sentis

From Esalen to Pune

Osho and the Path of Humanistic Transpersonal Psychology

From Esalen to PuneOsho and the Path of Humanistic Transpersonal Psychology

First edition: March 2022

© Vikrant A. Sentis, 2022

Cover Design: Andrea Dieterich

Editor English Edition: Alexa De Los Reyes

© RIL® editores, 2022

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In relation to the photographs used in the book cover: Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for «fair use» for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. For details, see the end pages of the book.

Preface to the third Spanish edition

The history of humanistic-transpersonal psychology, of Encounter Groups, and of personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal development, has two poles: Esalen, its western pole, and Pune, its eastern pole. Poles not opposite but complementary. A road of hundreds of therapists and facilitators and thousands of participants united these two places, which were reference centres of personal development, in the world of what was called the Human Potential Movement (HPM).

Dick Price and Michael Murphy founded Esalen on Christmas 1961. At that dinner there were Gia-Fu Feng, Hunter Thompson, the manager of the place, his partner, Joan Báez (the famous singer), Dick, and Michael. On March 20, 1974, Osho—then known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh—created his ashram in Pune, India.

Esalen had Fritz Perls, creator of Gestalt Therapy; Pune had Osho, creator of active meditations and precursor of a synthesis between the humanistic therapies of the West and the spirituality of the East.

Vikrant dedicates approximately 90 pages to the western pole and 200 to the eastern pole. It is understandable. Vikrant is a man from Pune. He knows its world and its inside things. He has been to Pune a dozen times and is a sannyasin. This does not prevent him, in honour of the truth—which in Pune is sacred—from showing us the history of the ashram and of Osho. He will tell us that Osho is an allergic, asthmatic, and diabetic spiritual master. Osho’s genius and charisma will make hundreds of people who come to him childish and fearful into extraordinary therapists who will synthesize their humanistic therapies with his own spirituality.

At Pune there will be no limits to innovation, experimentation, and interaction. Osho’s vast knowledge of both Western and Eastern philosophy and psychology will be the foundation upon which Pune will rise as an ashram for Westerners. According to Osho, Westerners only come to spirituality after deconditioning with body and emotional therapy. Fritz Perls coined the phrase about passive meditations: “it was neither shitting nor getting off the pot;” Osho says: “it is sitting on one’s own neurosis.”Primal Therapy, Bioenergetics, and Encounter Groups were the tools for therapists to drive towards spirituality those who attended the Pune ashram.

Vikrant, too, shows us Osho’s mistakes, like his clumsy decision to try to settle in Oregon (United States). Osho left Oregon literally half dead in 1985. Osho knew the life and work of Wilhelm Reich, who died in prison at the hands of conservative American authorities. How come he didn’t envision what awaited him in Oregon?! In the paragraph “The death of the Teacher” of chapter XV, Vikrant writes: “… as it happened with other teachers like Socrates, All Hilal Manzoor, and Jesus Christ, the rebellion against the religio-political canons of the status quo was paid with death. He (Osho) said that this seemed to be the inevitable destiny to live and speak one’s own truth without compromising and without conditions.”

Some of the great founders and precursors of the Human Potential Movement have departed. Osho, Fritz Perls, Abraham Maslow, Carls Rogers, Dick Price, Wilhelm Reich, Alexander Lowen, William Schutz, Ron Kurtz, and George Leonard are gone. Others, like Paul Lowe, are still with us. For those like Vikrant and I who had the opportunity to receive some of their teachings directly, they became our way of life and work. For those who join this story, that of humanistic-transpersonal psychology, the books, documents, videos, and tape recordings remain, as well as our meagre attempts at transmission.

From Esalen to Pune: Osho and the Path of Humanistic Transpersonal Psychology is, therefore, a must-read book for those of us who have entered this world and for those who are new to the history of humanistic-transpersonal psychology, Encounter Groups, and human development. In its pages are the before, during, and after Osho. There is the immense innovative contribution that therapists like Paul Lowe (Teertha), Michael Barnett (Somendra), and Alan Lowen (Anand Rajen) made to the methodology of Encounter Groups; Laura Dillon (Aneesha) to Neo-Reichian therapy; Roberta Delong Miller (Sagarpriya) to Integrative Massage; Anand Veeresh to Encounter marathons.

Pune was nourished by humanistic therapies, many of them initiated and disseminated from Esalen. Esalen, today, is a centre for personal development where the spirituality of the East is always present. The workshops being offered these days reflect this meeting between therapy and eastern spirituality. Yoga, Tantra, tai chi and Buddhist meditations are an integral part of the current curriculum.

Despite the fact that Esalen’s heroes Dick Price and Will Schutz lasted only a few days in Pune, the mutual influence is undeniable. For us it is a blessing to have been able to nourish ourselves—directly or indirectly—from both sources.

This story, so well told by Vikrant, is not someone else’s story. It is also our history. Chile, through Claudio Naranjo and Oscar Ichazo, was present from the beginning in this movement. Naranjo succeeded Fritz Perls at Esalen (after his departure for Canada) together with Dick Price as director of the Gestalt Therapists Training Program. A plethora of “Esalenians” came to Arica in 1970 to study with Oscar Ichazo, who would soon settle in New York. Likewise, the first place where Paul Lowe did his work, after leaving Pune behind in the direction of the Oregon community, was a workshop in Las Vertientes, in Santiago, in 1981.

Upon my arrival at Esalen in 1977, I was greeted with many smiles. Why? I was the second Chilean in Esalen. Several of my students have travelled to Big Sur since the 1980s. These days, my teammate, the psychologist Armando Bejarano, is at Esalen. Many more are those who have also travelled to Pune since the 80s and continue to travel. Vikrant is one of them. Somehow, Esalen and Pune have travelled to us through Vikrant’s book. It will be great if any reader goes beyond reading and goes to Esalen or Pune. They will be well received.

For all this and more, From Esalen to Pune: Osho and the Path of Humanistic Transpersonal Psychology is a book that we welcome.

Patricio Varas Santander

Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, Gestalt Therapist, Master in Educational Psycho-sociology, Master in Personal Development.

Trained at the Esalen Institute, United States.

Director of the Chilean School of Personal Development and Gestalt Therapy Esalen Sur de Chile.

Director of the Training Program for Personal Development Facilitators (Transpersonal Humanistic Therapists). E.Ch.DP.

President of the Chilean Society for Personal Development.

President of the Latin American Association for Personal Development.

Creator of the Heptadimensional Model of Training of Personal Development Facilitators (Transpersonal Humanistic Therapists).

Preface for the first Spanish edition

At the base of the most innovative therapies practiced today around the world, lies the pioneering work and explorations of a group of risky, creative, and talented people more than forty years ago. These original adventures into the human psyche and its unknown territories have, over the years, not only revolutionized therapy but also the perennial search for truth and essential human nature—the spiritual quest, the path to enlightenment. Such is the legacy of the Human Potential Movement of the early 1960s.

The ability to have a comprehensive step-by-step description of this process that developed from a few seeds and grew into today’s rich crop of alternative therapeutic methods is very welcome, and it is a great gift to all who have been—and they are still—involved in the search for their own true humanity—and divinity.

Michael Barnett

Contemporary spiritual teacher. Pioneer of the Humanistic-transpersonal psychotherapeutic movement in Europe and the United States. Founder of People not Psychiatry, Kaleidoscope, Community Growth Centre. Therapist, Consultant and Teacher. Creator of Energywork, Body Flow and Diamond Yoga. Author of People Not Psychiatry and more than 40 books on the awakening consciousness and a spiritual guide for thousands of people.

The book by Vikrant A. Sentis represents a monumental work of research that is very necessary for the field of contemporary psychotherapy, since in many parts of the world the work carried out in the academic field ignores the psychotherapeutic approach carried out in the alternative world of personal development and growth, and vice versa. And that is what has happened with the practical work carried out by the humanistic therapeutic movement known as the Human Potential Movement and its extra-academic approach to exploring the possibilities of growth and psychological healing.

Alejandro Celis

Transpersonal psychotherapist, lecturer and university professor in the areas of transpersonal and humanistic psychology, since 1975. Pioneer transpersonal psychologist in Chile. Author of numerous articles on and books on psychotherapy. Director of the Institute for the Expansion of Consciousness.

This book fills a great void existing, until now, in the description and understanding of the history of modern psychology. It sheds light on one of the most unknown and least assumed aspects of the historical development of humanistic-transpersonally oriented psychotherapy, by exposing, in a systematic and adequately documented way, the details of the development of therapeutic processes, the personal stories of the pioneers of the HumanPotential Movement and the, in many ways, profound impact that Osho (also known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) had on hundreds of psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists between the 1970s and 1990s.

As readers will be able to verify for themselves, numerous of the most prominent figures of the humanistic-transpersonal movement were in direct contact or were indirectly influenced by the teachings of this controversial and unorthodox contemporary spiritual teacher, whose validity, judging by the publications’ popularity, has tended to increase rather than decrease after death.

This book intertwines, in an entertaining way, precise historical information and anecdotes experienced and related by the protagonists of this time, that make us think and that reflect the subjective facet of personal and transpersonal growth of those who allowed Osho to be part of their lives. I can only thank the author, Vikrant A. Sentis, for the tremendous contribution that his research, presented here in an integrated way for the first time, makes to the understanding of many historical factors that condition and determine the current work of a large number of psychotherapists and humanistic-transpersonal therapists.

Andre Sassenfeld.

University Professor. Jungian and relational analytic psychotherapist and clinical supervisor.

Past president of the Chilean chapter of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP) and former member of its international board of directors. Director of the Centre for Relational Therapy (CETERE), member of the Chilean Society of Analytical Psychology and the Chilean Society for the Development of Psychiatry (SODEPSI). He has given numerous conferences in Vienna, Toronto, Rome, Buenos Aires and Lima. Author of nine books, numerous magazine articles in Spanish, English and German, and co-translator of two books by Donna Orange and one book by Daniel Stern to Spanish. Author of “Clinical Principles of Relational Psychotherapy”, “The hermeneutical space: Comprehension and spatiality in inter-subjective analytic psychotherapy”, “Being with others: Body, affectivity and bond in relational psychotherapy” and “The twists of contemporary psychoanalysis: An introduction to relational psychoanalysis”.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all those friends who collaborated in the creation of this book. To Deva Nirjara and Tatiana Yuri for the transcription of my first talk of the introductory workshop on humanistic-transpersonal psychotherapy, which became the basic text for this book. To André Sassenfeld for his collaboration with the historical data of the transcendentalist movements, the history of transpersonal psychology, and for allowing me to use his own research as a basis for mine, as well as for his work on proofreading the first manuscript. To Max Brecher for his profound and detailed Research on Osho and his movement. To Swami Neeten, Pierre Evald. Associate Professor, (Retired) from the Royal School of Library and Information Science, for sharing his research documents with me. To Maneesha James for telling me what it was like in Pune’s early years. To Aneesha Dillon for her interview on the development of OshoPulsation. To Michael Barnett for sharing his intimate stories of the beginning of the psychotherapeutic movement in London and his work with Osho in India. To Shakura for her gracious interview on Primal therapy. To Satyen for his valuable information on AA Kommunen and the group work at Pune. To Alejandro Celis for telling me his stories and providing me with his collections of brochures and catalogues from the old days. To Alan Lowen, Zulma Reyo, Tarika, Garimo, Clare Soloway, Tony Kendrew, Upchara, Velusia Van Horssen and Paul Lowe for providing so much information on the history of the human Potential movement and Osho. To Vistara for listening to my stories and offering comments on this manuscript. To Daniel Pizarro, Patricio Varas, Wolfgang Dobrowolny, Veeresh, and Amrito. To Tantra from the Osho Meditation Resort Archives Office for allowing me to dive into her archives and use her pen. To Alexa de los Reyes for editing this English version. To Teodoro Wigodski for all his endless support. And finally, to Osho for inspiring me and so many other therapists on our path to our own awakening and that of our clients.

Introduction

Transforming “neurotic suffering into normal unhappiness”; this was the phrase used by Freud to define the goal of psychoanalysis, and this was precisely the view that bothered Abraham Maslow, an American research psychologist at Brandeis University in the United States in the mid-1950s, who felt frustrated with the development and approach of psychoanalysis. Maslow found the psychoanalytic vision narrow and not very encouraging, in terms of constructive therapeutic work, that proclaimed, from a medical model of disease and cure, that the job of the therapist was to help the patient functionally integrate into the structures of what society considered “normal unhappiness.” Behaviourism did not seem, according to Maslow, to offer a better alternative. Its methods might have been useful for dealing with specific disorders, but the profound understanding of intra-psychic mechanisms and the search for inner satisfaction were beyond his conceptual model. Maslow wanted to create a new psychological force, a better alternative to both psychoanalysis and behaviourism. Maslow wanted to develop a psychology based on humanism and an existential understanding of human beings.

This new approach, which Maslow called humanistic psychology, was geared towards exploring and experimenting with aspects that both psychoanalysis and behaviourism had discarded. Maslow created a psychology that was oriented to the self-realization and expansion of the individual. A psychology where there was no room for “normal unhappiness.” A psychology where no type of unhappiness could be considered “normal.”

The objective of this new approach was the development of human beings: their potential, their dormant capacities, their emotions, their affections, and their spirit. Working, having a family, a car, and a bank account were not, from this perspective, enough to describe a human being as healthy. The concept of psychological health was no longer to be defined in functional terms. Healthy human beings would be happy and fulfilled, satisfied with themselves and their lives.

Sixty years have passed since those fruitful beginnings, and humanistic psychology has helped to create a new psychological and social context. It became possible for people to mobilize from a psychotherapeutic perspective aimed simply at solving specific internal conflicts towards a non-clinical vision of individual development. The emphasis has been on the process of updating the personal and interpersonal potential of the individual, through a conceptual model of experiential self-learning.

Within this new psychological framework emerged a movement aimed at putting into practice the renewing vision that humanistic psychology offered. This movement was sometimes called The Growth Movement or The Psychotherapy Movement in the United States. However, it was most commonly known throughout the world as The Human Potential Movement (HPM).

The Human Potential Movement had its origins in 1947, when Kurt Lewin at the National Training Laboratory (NTL) in the United States planned the first T Groups, precursors of the current Encounter Groups andTraining in Human Relation. Carl Rogers, in parallel, began his intensive training programs in counselling and psychotherapy at the counselling centre of the University of Chicago. In the following years, this movement gained strength and expanded through hundreds of personal development centres such as the Esalen Institute in California, Quaesitor and Community in London, and the Zist Zentrum in Germany.

In congruence with the contextual framework of the emerging humanistic psychotherapy, this movement was responsible for the development and implementation of the work known as personal growth, creating and innovating workshops beyond the individual sessions of traditional psychotherapy.

Its appearance in the psychological context of the time filled an urgent need for spaces and methodologies to help people work on and actualize their intrinsic potential, as suggested by the writings of Rogers, Maslow, Goldstein, Lewin, and others in relation to the practice and orientation of the humanistic psychological approach. The Human Potential Movement was the concrete expression of a passion for individual self-exploration and growth.

Psychologists, therapists, counsellors, teachers, doctors, psychiatrists, educators, sociologists, and social workers who were interested in the theoretical contributions and practice of humanistic psychology believed that working with people was more than just a career track; it was more than being locked in a six foot-square room trying to readjust an individual’s socially dysfunctional behaviour. Their interest in working with people turned into a passion to develop, expand, and explore our potential, beyond what traditional psychology assumed was possible or desirable to do with what so-called “patients.”

Six decades have passed, and the scope and diffusion of the experiences modelled after those pioneering efforts have been impressive. The HPM has contributed to the shift in emphasis and the opening of new fields of practice and research in psychology and the social sciences.

This book tells the story of pioneering men and women on a quest for growth, self-awareness, and transcendence; of their experiences, the therapeutic methods they developed, and their encounters with Osho, the man who showed them where to look and how to expand their therapeutic frontiers towards the integration of psychology and spirituality. This is the story of their search for self-realization.

Here I present the results of ten years of research carried out in India, the United States, Germany, and Chile. I reviewed hundreds of files kept at Pune’s ashram in India, I read about 50 books of interviews between Osho and his disciples, and about 250 books created from Osho’s talks over a period of 35 years. I spent hundreds of hours in the library at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, and hundreds of hours at the Library of Congress in the United States, going through the archives of magazines and newspapers in search of events and characters that interested me. Likewise, I interviewed several of the protagonists of the stories told here. Some personally, others via email or videoconference. The most difficult endeavour was locating dozens of original catalogues where the psychotherapeutic processes and the therapists who performed them were described. It took me two years to find the German film director Wolfgang Dobrowolny, creator of Ashram, who had retired to Thailand. I got him to make me a copy, the only one in the world apart from his, of the controversial documentary. Dobrowolny had withdrawn the rights worldwide of this film due to the illegal copy made by Catholic groups of his film. It contained the only extant footage made of the confrontational therapy groups led by Paul Lowe and Michael Barnett at Osho’s ashram in Pune, India during the 1970s.

As a result of all this effort I would like to present to the reader the first literary attempt to create a systematic historical description of the Human Potential Movement, the beginning of humanistic-transpersonal psychotherapy, the profound influence of the Indian mystic Osho on hundreds of therapists who came to learn and work with him in India and the United States, and of the psychotherapeutic processes and personal development workshops that they carried out.

The book is divided into two large sections. The first addresses the dawn of the humanistic psychotherapeutic movement and its most influential exponents, as well as the most prominent psychotherapeutic experiments.

Researching the Human Potential Movement in Europe was especially interesting to me, since at the time of the first edition of this book (pre-Internet era), there were no comprehensive writings about this period. I had to reconstruct the story from interviews with the people involved and the few historical accounts scattered across different sources.

The second section of the book focuses on telling the story in detail of the personal processes, conflicts, and contributions of the therapists involved in the creation of workshops on personal growth and the development of consciousness that took place around and under the influence of the controversial spiritual teacher (or master, as he was called by his disciples) known as Osho. It also explores the legacy and contribution of these experiments to humanistic-transpersonally oriented psychotherapy.

Chapter XIII of the second part contains a detailed description of the therapeutic workshops held in the community called Geetam, in the United States. This represents the transitional phase between Pune’s work in India in the 1970s and that of the United States in the early 1980s and the attempt to pursue a therapeutic approach based on Osho’s vision, but far from his direct supervision.

I have chosen to use the name Osho, which he used prior to his death, in reference to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh throughout the book, even at the time when he was known by the previous name. However, I chose to keep some of the original names of trainings and places which were named Rajneesh.

Throughout his lifetime, his name changed several times. The name he was given at birth was Rajneesh Chandra Mohan, which translates as “The Lord of the Full Moon.” When he was teaching and traveling in India, he came to be known as “Acharya Rajneesh,” which means, “Great Teacher.” As more and more disciples gathered around him in the Mumbai years, they began to call him “Bhagwan,” a traditional name that is used in India for the Master. Later, the term ‘Shree’ was added, which is an additional term of respect in India. But at a certain point in time, in 1989, he began to change his name, saying that he had never liked the name “Bhagwan,” as its Sanskrit roots allude to the sexual imagery of the lingam and the yoni, the ancient symbols of transcendent experience in Hinduism. For a brief time, he was called simply, “Beloved Master,” but eventually settled on the simple name “Osho,” which is a term of respect used in Japan for every Buddhist teacher or Master. It is not a personal name, as such, but more a pre-nominative term of respect. “Osho” is a title which means simply “respected sir,” in Japan. His wish was to be called in the ultimate period of his life on this earth by that simple name, “Osho.”

In the same way, I have replaced the original word Poona for Pune, the current name given to the city where Osho’s work originally developed.

For a better understanding of the people involved and the concepts used in this text, I have included an onomastic index and a glossary of terms.

This First English Edition is a translation of the third Spanish edition of this book. Many of the quotes are translations from Spanish, which were previously translated from the original in English. Therefore the now existing English citations may not be the accurate words originally written or spoken in English.

Editor’s Note: Osho International Foundation assumes no responsibility for the experiences and opinions reported in this book. These are the sole responsibility of the people who issued them. References to Osho’s vision and words which are not directly cited are understood to represent the understanding and opinion of the author and not necessarily that of Osho.

© 2001 - 2021 OSHO is a registered trademark of the Osho International Foundation used with permission, http://www.osho.com/trademarks - Some of the material used here (images and quotes) is Copyright © OSHO International Foundation, www.osho.com/copyright

The First Part

Chapter IHumanistic Psychology

“People climb mountains because where the mountain ends, the sky begins.

But the fact is that at every point on the mountain the sky begins.

All you have to do is jump.”

Michael Barnett

With It

The beginning

In the mid-1950s, when Abraham Maslow was seeking a better alternative to psychoanalysis and behaviourism, the two main psychotherapeutic approaches of the time, he came up with an approach he called “humanistic psychology.” Humanistic psychology was concerned primarily with people’s highest aspirations, which both psychoanalysis (with the notable exception of Jung’s work) and behaviourism seemed to ignore. Maslow posited a basic hierarchy of needs, from food and shelter, to emotional and intellectual satisfaction, reaching finally what he called the need for self-actualization. According to him, human beings were biologically programmed for growth and satisfaction, and it was society, with its repressive socializing process, that interfered with people’s ability to find deep meaning and fulfilment. Social programming was preventing people from being authentically happy, beyond simply well-adjusted.

Until then, both the Freudian and the behaviourist psychological schemes operated under the assumption that the highest aspiration of therapeutic work was to enable patients to cope with their neurosis as well as possible; to help them reintegrate into the socially accepted practices of their culture. From this perspective, the concept of a “cure” was described in functional terms; an adjustment. If someone could work, have a family, pay taxes, and be described as useful to society, they were considered a “healthy” individual. With the appearance of humanistic psychology and its psychotherapeutic applications, this narrow vision of psychological work was deeply questioned. The emphasis was placed not on people carrying their neuroses as well as possible and being integrated into the ways of society, but on developing their intrinsic potentialities and abilities, so that an extensive process of personal and interpersonal growth could occur. Anything less did not satisfy the human longing for meaningful happiness and satisfaction.

Although humanistic psychology originated in the United States, it owes its optimistic, interactive, evolutionary, and holistic perspective to the work of Europeans: Jan Christian Smuts’ biological holism; the organismic theory of Kurt Goldstein, who already in 1916 used the word “self-realization” to designate the process by which an organism develops and makes present its dormant potential, a word that was later taken by Maslow, turning it into the concept of “self- actualization;” Wolfgang Koehler›s work on “structured wholes with meaning” in Gestalt psychology; the emphasis on the subjectivity of present experience by European existentialists and phenomenologists such as Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, and Jean Paul Sartre; and, perhaps most important, at least as far as therapeutic practice is concerned, the radical Freudian revisionist Wilhelm Reich (Gordon, 1987).

Reich argued, in direct confrontation with Freudian ideas, that the so-called unconscious was not a place driven by anti-social impulses that needed to be repressed by society for us to live in harmony, but that it was precisely the repression of such natural impulses that made human beings dangerous to each other. It was not the Death Instinct (Thanatos) that produced violent, destructive behaviours, but the repression of sexual and emotional expression that transformed an alive and pleasure-oriented organism into a self-destructive being.

For Reich, neurosis (the dissociation from our true spontaneous nature) was produced in childhood, due to the systematic blockage of emotional and sexual energy. This blocked energy was not an abstract symbolic concept but a tangible process which occurred in our motor system, in the muscles. The tense, rigid muscle tissue was a coordinated system which held the psychological attitudes of the repressed individual, which had its equivalent in the psychological structures of the neurotic. Reich physically defined these self-repressive and defensive patterns in seven rings of tension that ran from head to pelvis. Reichian Therapy sought to undo such tensions and blocks by working directly on muscles and with psychological analysis (Reich, 1949). His greatest contribution to the later development of humanistic psychology was a new notion of psychological health: to be natural, authentic, and whole was to be healthy.

If humanistic psychology was a way of understanding human beings from a humanistic, existential, and phenomenological perspective, the Human Potential Movement (HPM) was the concrete form of this search for new therapeutic technologies that would facilitate personal development. Humanistic psychology was the referential framework, the theoretical framework, and the HPM its practical expression (Sentis, 2001).

One of the fundamental contributions of the HPM to humanistic psychology was the concept of “conditioning” (Lowe, 1989). The question that the pioneers of the psychological exploration and development of humanistic therapeutic methods asked themselves was: What is it that blocks human beings and prevents them from fully developing their sensitive, creative, affective, intellectual, and spiritual potential? Due to their knowledge about developmental psychology and social control strategies, the logical answer to this question was: the process of acculturation; the mental constructs that become ideological, religious, political, cultural, behavioural, emotional, and philosophical conditioning to which people are subjected from birth, as part of the process of assimilation to the values of the prevailing culture. According to Lowe (1989) and Berger (1967), from an early age our society programs us through our families so that we behave, feel, and think in the way that best perpetuates the status quo and social power structures. That is, we do not fully develop our potential because we have been socially programmed not to do so.

The concept of conditioning came from behaviourism (Spence, 1978), but within the context of human potential it acquired a different connotation. In behaviourism, conditioning describes the learning process of new behavioural models. Behaviourism said that all learning processes occur through responses conditioned by exposure to circumstances related to the pleasure or pain of an organism, which results in reward or punishment (Brush, 1985). Within emerging humanistic psychology, the same process was perceived with another assessment. Humanists and the Human Potential Movement posited that these intra-psychic structures, originating both from our process of cultural conditioning and from early adaptations of our behaviour, were precisely what was limiting and blocking the natural process of development of our potential.

One aspect concerns internalized ideas about how the universe and all its phenomena should work: our ideas of good and bad, beautiful and ugly, benefit and harm, heaven and hell, God and the devil, etc. The so-called “great values” that generated guidelines regarding how we should respond to certain situations, how we should express or repress our emotions, etc. And, of course, the behavioural patterns derived from mental programs of a religious-philosophical nature (Lilly, 1968).

Any a priori idea regarding how external and internal phenomena should occur became mental structures, conditioning, which did not allow us to directly experience what was happening around us. Instead of having direct contact with the phenomenon without the need to evaluate it, classify it and, above all, define it verbally, we viewed life through the prism of our mental programs. That is, we behaved, felt, and lived existence mechanically and automatically (Lowe, 1998; Osho, 1977).

Many of the internal programs that were not derived from religious-philosophical postulates came from our childhood and early adaptations to be accepted and survive in our family nucleus (Janov, 1970; Sentis, 1999). These adaptations become stable structures of the psyche, fostering conditioned responses and structured patterns of behaviour that recreate the original circumstances, where such structure was created, in the face of any situation that distantly resembles the event that created the adaptation. That is, we react mechanically to any stimulus similar to that experienced in childhood. The inherent problem in this way of relating to the environment is that no phenomenon is the same as another. Therefore, by constantly reacting from an internal script, without actually “seeing” what is happening outside, our ability to solve problems or obtain satisfaction of our psychological-emotional needs is severely diminished.

Finally, the conditionings work under the understanding that as human beings we create systems to explain something that is basically inexplicable: the phenomenon of being alive. As we need to live and function in this world, we create a certain order, a certain structure in which everyone knows the rules (which differ from country to country and from culture to culture). These rules form a certain structure, not only in order to create a common belief system, but also as a way to function together. This structure is not only cultural, but it represents the human tendency to create systems of compartmentalized meaning that give a global significance to their own existence. Within the conceptual structure of cultural order we have made more compartments: within the universe compartment, we have made the human compartment, and then we have made a cultural compartment and, within the cultural one, we have made a religious compartment. This endless fragmentation has been made as a safety zone; a way to escape the basic fear of being alone, the fear of death, or simply the fact that we inhabit a universe that is practically unknown. These systems and compartmentalisation inevitably interfere with our perception of phenomena around us, filtering out those that do not fit with our prevailing belief system (Holleman, 2002).

However, this does not mean that we need to get rid of this fragmentation. We need a self-made world where we can function as people, and yet the problem begins when it traps us to the point that we deeply believe in it, not as a conceptualization of the phenomenon of the universe, but as a description of its intrinsic nature. Then, our own structural creations become ideological and behavioural prisons, causing wars, genocides, and, to a lesser extent, a sense of disconnection with the rest of existence.

An important aspect of this trend towards an ideological compartmentalization of our experience has to do with the main distortion of our perception: the fact of putting the human structure at the centre of the universe and, as a consequence, living trapped in an anthropocentric vision of existence, which does not allow us to see or experience anything else. The problem is that we think that the human version of the universe is the real thing, the totality of it, forgetting that our vision is only a fragment of what happens out there. Thus, we live trapped in the idea of this world made by ourselves. Our first mistake was to put ourselves outside of nature, outside of the entire universe, thinking that we were above nature, above the universe (Holleman, 2002).

The proposal and understanding of the HPM was that human beings tend to self-actualize by themselves; they tend to grow, to expand. There was no need to push them in that direction. Every living being tends to self-actualize its latent potential. The deep sense of separation and existential dissatisfaction described psychologically under the term “neurosis” was conceived as a growth disorder. If we take an example from biology, we could say that the maximum possibility of actualization of a seed is its flowering process, becoming a flower. If this does not happen, it is because something is preventing this natural expansive process. In the same way, if human beings do not feel fulfilled and satisfied, it is because something blocked their natural ability to grow; whether this came from traumatic experiences of the past, rigid behavioural programs, or philosophical ideas about how the world works or should work. Thus, the fundamental idea is that the natural process of growth can occur only when the individual releases or abandons internalizations during the process of social acculturation, including the narrow anthropocentric vision of the universe (Barnett, 1973).

With this in mind, the Human Potential Movement undertook the work of clearing psychological-cultural conditioning and creating tools for deprogramming and personal expansion.

One of the consequences of the spread of humanistic psychological concepts was the appreciation of other cultural systems not belonging to industrialized societies. From this point of view, information about societies that seemed to have less self-repressive behavioural conditioning and resistance against organismic impulses began to be investigated and valued. Indigenous societies and their value systems of respect for people and the environment began to be revalued (Castaneda, 1968). In fact, attention was drawn to the stories of anthropologists who had had experiences with indigenous people from South America, Africa, and Asia.

One of the fundamental characteristics of capitalist industrialized societies was the overvaluation of the rational to the detriment of the emotional; in turn, self-repression and self-control were the main factors of social appreciation. As a result, any type of activity or group where there was a positive assessment of non-restrictive expressions of spontaneous behaviour seemed a threat to the existing establishment. Not surprisingly, traditional psychology supported and assisted the idea that children were “savages” and that they had to be tamed to adapt to society. The vision, experience, and feelings that children might have about their world and that of adults were irrelevant. The important thing was a rapid adjustment to the prevailing structures.

With the influence of the Human Potential Movement, the idea began to develop that it was possible to learn from children; adults could learn from children’s freshness, their spontaneity, their natural ability to be present here and now, in the moment (Krishnananda, 1998). In this way, the value of authenticity appeared when previously what was valued was etiquette, being polite, not being spontaneous, not being real, not being authentic, not expressing what one is feeling, not being in contact with emotions.

In some ways, this was a hangover from the Victorian era, where the ideal supported by society was “the more detached you are from your emotions, the more civilized you are.” Even today, despite everything that has changed the world, the public expression of emotions such as anger, grief, or fear is considered “bad taste.”

However, at that time the discoveries of humanistic psychologists led them to realize that the systematic repression of their own emotions generated rigid and neurotic psychic and physical structures, which gradually prevented the individual from experiencing deep pleasure and joy, lowering the level of sensitivity of the organism to end in a “flat” sensation of one’s own emotional and vital experience.

Chapter IIEsalen

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Mary OliverThe Summer Day

The birthplace of the Human Potential Movement was the Esalen Institute located in Big Sur, California. Michael “Mike” Murphy and Richard “Dick” Price, both philosophy graduates from Stanford, were very interested in the approaches of the emerging humanistic psychology. Murphy had been living in an ashram in California and Price had had dire experiences with traditional psychiatry. He had had to suffer a year of confinement in a psychiatric hospital because his spontaneous experiences of non-ordinary states of consciousness had been diagnosed as psychotic breakdowns by the psychological establishmentof the time.

Price had been released from a psychiatric ward on Thanksgiving Day, 1957, after a year and a half of confinement. After what they had done to him in the hospital, he didn’t have much energy to pursue his pre-confinement interests. Price had been interested in specializing in psychological research, something like an anthropologist of mental health and illness. After having experiences which had been classified as psychosis and having been confined to hospitals, he settled in Chicago to take time for himself. However, his interest was to find a place where people who had the same kinds of experiences could get better treatment.

In May 1958, Price moved to San Francisco. He lived for about a year in a cooperative home in Upper Fillmore. His last few months in the city were spent living at Aurobindo’s ashram, The Cultural Integration Fellowship (CIF), in San Francisco. In that place he met Murphy, who was then a long-time resident. Murphy mentioned to him that his grandmother had a place in the country. Dick had been talking to a psychiatrist friend, who had also been hospitalized, about the possibility of finding a place that could be more than just an ordinary mental hospital.

Murphy was not exactly interested in the same goal. He had been at the Aurobindo ashram in India for over a year, and his interests were more of a contemplative and intellectual nature. Their conversations had originally revolved around the idea of finding premises and creating a conference centre that could be open to a wide range of interests: meditation, religion, and particular experiences, whether religious or psychotic. The only private addresses they had were of people they already knew, such as Haridas Chaudhuri, who was the director of CIF and had been a professor at the Academy of Asian Studies.

Price had been a student of Chaudhuri at the time he went through what had been labelled as psychosis and which Price simply called “The State.” His studies at the American Academy of Asian Studies had occurred between 1955 and early 1956. At that time, Chandhuri was a professor and Alan Watts the dean. When Price moved to San Francisco, he began taking classes with Watts and Chandhuri again. Chandhuri had created his own organization: the Cultural Integration Fellowship.

The early years of Big Sur

In the late 1950s, Price had been deeply impressed by a lecture given at Berkley by the psychologist and writer Aldous Huxley at the University of California. The name of the talk was Human Potentialities. Huxley’s proposal had to do with the idea that humans use only a very limited fragment of their brain capabilities. Huxley ended the lecture by saying that a place was necessary where one could experiment and investigate those potentialities that he himself was already studying and investigating (Hudson, 2000).

Richard Price and Michael Murphy settled in Big Sur, California, in 1961. The land that had been inhabited by Esalen Indians had beautiful thermal baths that looked out over the Pacific coast. “Big Sur Hot Springs” was the first name chosen for this conference centre, which was later renamed Esalen Institute. Price and Murphy reached out to the connections they already had through people like Alan Watts and began organizing conferences.

One of the first programs in 1962 was a conference that Watts had organized with his own mailing list. At the time, Price and Murphy preferred people who already had their own audience (their own mailing lists, their own shows), and they simply leased the place to them as a conference centre. Initially, most of the programs were led by a group of renowned theorists, including Fred Spielberg, Watts, the behaviourist B. F. Skinner, the psychologist Gardner Murphy, the radical Episcopal bishop James Spike, the theologian and writer Norman O. Brown, the parapsychologist J. B. Rhine, the University of California professor Frank Barron, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson, and the linguist S. I. Hayakawa. In 1965, Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary (leaders of the psychotropic experimentation) gave a series of talks on the ecstatic experience (Schwartz, 2002) and Abraham Maslow, the founder of humanistic psychology, also gave a couple of seminars that year. In fact, Maslow had come to Big Sur Hot Springs by chance in the summer of 1962, the same year that he had founded the Association for Humanistic Psychology, in what C. G. Jung would have called “a significant coincidence,” a synchronistic event. Maslow and his wife were spending their summer vacations in California and one night driving on the road next to Esalen, tired and unwilling to continue driving, they decided to spend the night at the hot springs. At the reception they were attended by the martial arts master Gia-Fu-Feng, who upon learning who these visitors were, began to jump around them. For he, like almost all of the Esalen residents, had read Maslow’s recent book The Self-Realized Man (1962).

Gradually, Esalen began to create its own catalogue and to form itself as an autonomous entity. Once weekend seminars started, the concept of workshop appeared on the scene, where people not only talked or listened to the possibilities of internal exploration, but they also began experimenting, acting out, externalizing and confronting what they were feeling. The participants took off their shoes and ties and began to put into practice humanistic psychological theories, opening a space for experimentation and relegating intellectual theorizing only to the conceptual framework of their own experiences.

Among the first leaders in humanistic psychology to teach at Esalen was Carl Rogers. Rogers was a pioneer in the development of non-medical psychotherapy and group therapy. In fact, he had proposed to drop the term “patient” to designate the participants of his therapy and had replaced it with the word “client.” The therapist was now considered a process facilitator, and the participant was not a patient in need of “therapy” but a person interested in personal development who paid the “facilitators” for their services. He replaced the term therapist with“counsellor” and therapy with “counselling.”

From the perspective of the relational model proposed by Rogers, all therapeutic relationships had mutual influence between client and therapist, which was based on a non-linear flow of ever-changing inter-subjective transactions that eventually became part of the client’s transformation. The mutual characteristic of the encounter between therapist and client implied that both were affected by the influence inherent in their counterpart. From this perspective, what both experienced was a behaviour modelled on the presence and participation of the other in the relationship.

When psychotherapists approach their clients in this way, according to Rogers, their clients’ presence affects them, touches them in such way that they cannot prevent it. Any effort made to maintain “neutrality” and “objectivity” in front of the client’s experience will be ineffective, artificial, and contradictory if what drives them is the desire to understand and respond effectively to such experience.

Roger’s approach had a profound influence on the emerging humanistic psychology. From a medical, clinical model, it moved to a personal development model, where the counselling relationship was that of two human beings meeting each other on the same level. Therefore, many practices that previously were prohibited between clients and therapists were allowed. Now they could meet socially, be friends, lovers, or anything that was consensual between two responsible adults. And this was the essential understanding: responsibility. Owning one’s feelings and projections. And this extended to the counselling or therapeutic relationship. The taboo about intimate relationships between therapist and patient within the clinical psychological model was modified to a personally responsible discernment that concerned only those involved in the personal development relationship. The therapist was not more responsible for the client than the client was for him or herself. The old concept of abuse that was attached to an intimate relation between them was now seen as an intent of dishing out their own responsibility. In this respect, apart from Rogers, the main theoretical contributions came from Schutz (1971), Kelley (1972), and Perls (1969). It was the client’s or therapist’s responsibility to set boundaries on the way they related. It was up to each individual to decide for him or herself.

Another dimension that was challenged by Roger’s views, was the understanding that only clinical psychologists and psychiatrists could work with people from a psychological perspective. He proposed that lay people could be trained as counsellors or therapists depending on their own personal abilities rather than their academic achievements. Teachers, social workers and even former participants could be taught how to help people to reach their potential, how to be a good efficient therapist.

Rogers had the basic perspective, shared by people like Wilhelm Reich, that human beings at their core had an essentially nurturing, supporting, and empathic predisposition. It was the process of chronic emotional repression of their true nature that made them asocial. “It has been my experience,” Rogers said in On Becoming a Person (1961), “that people basically have a positive predisposition” (p. 24). From this perspective, neurosis was seen only as a mask for the unrealized whole. And the role of the therapist was to provide the client with an “unconditional positive attention” (p. 25) in which this “positive direction,” this healing, could be expressed. Rogers introduced his client-centred psychotherapy and a form of group approach to Esalen that he called Encounter Groups, which we will look at later.

Fritz Perls’ Gestalt Therapy

In 1962 the centre’s name was officially changed to Esalen Institute. However, the greater change occurred with the people who became permanent residents, such as Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir, the well-known family therapist.

Perls, creator of Gestalt Therapy, would undoubtedly be the most influential therapist in the early years at Esalen and later at Pune. Perls was an Austrian psychiatrist trained in psychoanalysis who had been influenced by existentialism and had been a student of Kurt Goldstein and Wilhelm Reich. Perls first visited Esalen in the winter of 1963 and was drawn to the place. Bernard Gunther convinced him to lead a demonstration workshop of his work in Big Sur. In the beginning, Esalen was simply a new place where he could demonstrate his revolutionary therapeutic approach. However, observing the interest that Price and other attendees had in his work, Perls thought that it could become his centre, a place from which he could spread Gestalt Therapy.

In previous years, Perls had been working to transform Gestalt psychology from an academic approach to perception to a powerful therapeutic system. He had expanded the concept of Gestalt formation to include the perception of one’s own feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. He had created methods—confrontations, dialogues of polarities, dramatization of dreams, psychodramas—to allow clients to recognize, remember, re-experience, and reintegrate parts of themselves that through unconscious repressions or conscious suppressions had separated from their totality. Once this was accomplished, the Gestalt, the meaningful whole towards which the organism had been striving to move, could be formed and integrated. And then change, the natural condition of life, could proceed.

Perls worked primarily with his clients’ present-day content of their inner and outer worlds. He believed that much of the retrospective orientation of psychoanalysis was misguided and eventually perpetuated the neurotic’s need to cling to his or her own past feelings, behaviours, and thoughts. In his opinion, the neurotic’s defences reflected the way in which people used the mind to distance themselves from their senses, something that occurred in predictable patterns that he described in particularly direct language. “Leave your mind,” he recommended, “and come back to your senses” (Gordon, 1987).

In 1965, at the age of seventy-two, Perls began working as a resident at Esalen. There he developed three contributions related to therapy that would shape the practice of his followers in the West and later in Pune. The first was his innovative process. Although he preferred to work with groups in intensive workshops, Perls’s therapeutic process was, unlike Rogers and other group therapists, a series of individual encounters between him and a succession of participants. The participant sat in “the hot seat.” Perls pushed, teased, and provoked them. Others in the group learned about themselves by watching the participant work with Perls.

Secondly, Perls’s attitude toward the therapeutic process was also new. In psychotherapy there was a balance between being involved, empathetic, and detached. The psychoanalyst was the model of detachment, Rogers the model of empathy. Perls seemed to be an encouragement of what Gordon (1987) called “involved detachment” in therapy and life. That is, involvement with the participant was directly related to the participant’s intention to work on him or herself, and the detachment was related to the fact that Perls considered the participant as an entity totally responsible for their own experiences, feelings and choices. Towards the end of his life, Perls became more and more interested in the similarities between his vision and Eastern meditation techniques that were designed to increase self-awareness and awareness of the present moment. Perls coined the term workshop, instead of group therapy. Therefore, participants could talk about workingonthemselves, rather than attending a therapy session.

Thirdly, Perls embodied perfectly this new approach based on self-responsibility in relation to his clients. He was a well-known seducer around Esalen. Some people saw his dirty old man behaviour around the baths with amusement and others with disgust. Nevertheless, Perls stood on his ground and epistemology that he was only responsible for himself and nobody else, and he steadily refused to take responsibility for anybody else’s feelings, choices, or opinions.

Richard Price, as one of the owners of Esalen, was very impressed with the Gestalt Therapy work and with Perls himself. Mike Murphy, not so much. He liked Perls’s theory and admired his work, but personally he thought of him as rude and too confrontational for his taste. He also didn’t like the fact that Perls would be challenging and bothering other Esalen guest speakers or therapists.

There is a story that Seymour Carter (student of Perls and later Will Schutz) told to me in one of the workshops I participated with him, which is also collected in Esalen’s Resident Alien: Secular Sceptic in a Utopian Community by John Francis Callahan (2010):

One day in 1968, two helicopters landed at Esalen, in the field where later the Point House was built. Out of one of the helicopters came Ravi Shankar and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Seymour was part of the group of people who brought Ravi Shankar to San Francisco for a concert.

So, there was Seymour sitting on the lawn with the whole crew at Esalen watching. And out of the next helicopter came Ringo Starr and George Harrison. They thought, “Oh, wow. This is fucking amazing. I mean, there were a lot of people coming to look at us to see what we were up to, but nothing like this!”

Ravi Shankar and George Harrison went out on the lawn and started a sitar concert, and they gathered about 50 or 60 people around them to listen. There was a big rock at the end of the lawn at the time. The Maharishi had planted himself on top of this rock, and he was covered with flower leis up to his ears. (They had flown in from Hawaii.) The Maharishi was sitting up on a rock with a rug under him looking beatific and radiant. As the music ended, he began to lecture everyone about how love is everything, and that the answer to all of life was to love everybody. He was talking in a strange, high-pitched voice. According to Carter, he seemed about as awkward and as phony as anybody he had ever seen at Esalen.

But also at this time, Perls was about the most famous therapist in the world. He had a cameraman following him around who was making a documentary about “Perls at Esalen.” Around the time that the Maharishi was full into his speech, and everyone was listening attentively, Perls appeared at the end of the deck with the cameraman. He stood there looking around and puffing on his cigarette (he smoked constantly and claimed he never inhaled).

Perls would brook no rivalry at that time. Whoever showed up at Esalen, Perls would do something to make them look ridiculous and to make himself stand out. He was “the big shot” at Esalen at that time. Every so often he would say something, lay a “fucking bomb,” as Seymour called it, on everyone and drop them into bed for two days of depression, because what he said was so heavy and so right on. Actually, Seymour thought the guy was a sadist in a way; at times he seemed to be just cruel. But whatever he said later usually turned out to be insightful.

“So, here’s Fritz, looking at this scene, and we’re like, ‘Oh my God! What’s going to happen?’ I’m sitting in the audience. And I know that Fritz can’t stand any competition. Clearly he’s going to do something. Here he was, the most famous therapist in the world. What he was most famous for was reading body language. I remember many of his interventions being very acute like, ‘What are you doing with your hands?’ The person, then, is focused on their hands, and Fritz would say. ‘What are you doing with your hands? Identify with your hands and express who you are.’ Often, that would reveal that they were talking sweetly about their mother, but they’re making a fist, indicating anger, which is a contradiction” (Carter, Callahan, 2010. p. 16).

Fritz Perls comes down the stairs and walks around the crowd with the cameraman following. Pretty soon he had the audience split, like in a tennis match. The audience was watching him, and then they go back to the Maharishi, then they go back to Perls. Perls is behind the Maharishi, then he goes right over to him. The Maharishi’s voice starts to fall apart, and he starts speaking in a more and more high-pitched voice. Then he starts to stumble a little.

Perls had studied theatre years before, and one of his strategies was to take a group of people and completely provoke and dominate them. While their attention was divided and the Maharishi was “freaking out” at Fritz stealing his show, the Maharishi started tearing flowers apart in his lap. Perls notices this and says very dramatically, “Look at that fool, talking about love and kindness. Meanwhile he’s tearing those flowers to pieces.” The Maharishi becomes momentarily startled, but then goes back to his canned speech. According to Seymour, it was “so cool” to see the Maharishi so masterfully deflated. All of them on the Esalen team said, “Hooray for our side!”

In a way, The Esalen Gang felt at that time “really cool.” “We’re trying to pretend that we had seen everything. So, we’re acting very gracious, like, ‘Oh, we’ve seen it all. We’ve seen movie stars.’ And so it goes… Jane Fonda was Dick Price’s girlfriend in 1962, ‘63 and ‘64. But at the same time, we’re totally excited. Like, ‘Oh my God, The Beatles are here! Holy Christ, the Maharishi is here! What could this mean?’” But we’re acting cool on the surface…like hip guys and hip girls” (Carter, Callahan, 2010, p. 17).

Another story that reflects one of the reasons why Murphy did not appreciate Perls is related to an episode with the famous Abraham Maslow. Perls and Maslow did not get along very well. Perls was quite envious of Maslow, and as Jeffrey Kripal wrote in his biography of Esalen, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion