A BUDDHIST-PSYCHEDELIC HISTORY OF ESALEN INSTITUTE Interview with Michael Murphy and George Leonard Allan Badiner

ALLAN BADINER: In the past, we’ve talked about Aldous Huxley and Alan Watts being at Esalen. Some of the previously unknown tales were told, like when a young Hunter Thompson chased a nude gang of S&M motorcyclists out of the baths with barking Dobermans. Beyond the periods of a frequent sea of faces with red eyes in the lodge, what, essentially, is the psychedelic history of Esalen?

MICHAEL MURPHY: Esalen was hatched conceptually and physically in 1961. In 1962, the idea that drove me, and my partner Dick Price, was the vision that we could have a cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary place for exploration of integral transformation.

BADINER: What is integral transformation?

MURPHY: It is the result of long-term practices that may include philosophical inquiry, contemplative practice, psychotherapy, somatic education, and the martial arts. Integral means to integrate mind, body, heart, and soul, and transformative means to aim at positive change.

BADINER: What inspired the vision to create Esalen? Were psychedelics involved?

MURPHY: I’d been influenced primarily by Sri Aurobindo, who saw human nature as part of cosmic evolution and participating in the awakening of the latent divinity in all things. In framing the language about Esalen, we got considerable help from the last essays of Aldous Huxley, who was writing about human potentialities. His language was more accessible than Aurobindo’s. So, our first brochure was titled “Human Potentialities,” and the first seminar was led by Willis Harman and Jim Fadiman.

Fadiman was getting his PhD at Stanford, studying psychedelic drugs. Willis Harman was in charge of an institute up there with Myron Stolaroff, researching psychedelics. But when we hatched the institute, I hadn’t had a psychedelic drug experience. My path had been, and still is, meditation.

BADINER: And Dick Price?

MURPHY: Dick had come in his own way to this partly through personal upheaval and partly through Eastern philosophy. Many of the philosophers of transformation like Anton Wilson—and later, an early Ronnie Laing—-and Stan Grof already had a shamanistic perspective, and saw some forms of psychosis as a way forward.

BADINER: So while Esalen had significant psychedelic origins, you weren’t there yet?

MURPHY: I was not impelled by any knowledge of or interest in psychedelics, but once we started, there it was. It was there, first of all, among the first famous figures who came here—like Aldous Huxley. In Mexico, he gave me Sandoz laboratory LSD and his wife Laura was my sitter. We did it in such a way that it was perfectly legal.

BADINER: Speaking of legal, what legal conditions did the ascendancy of drugs here create?

MURPHY: We had to clarify our legal status, because it became a great issue. We went to the head of the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] in Northern California twice in 1963 and 1964 because Willis Harman suggested we get straight about our responsibility. People were coming in and out of Esalen stoned and possibly selling stuff. So, we became very clear what our responsibilities were.

Under the Second Amendment of the Constitution, an innkeeper or a hotel person can’t just come in and search your room. They have no right to do that. Freedom from that kind of search is a fundamental right. So, the head of the FDA twice told me, “Your responsibility is in the dining room, and on the public grounds.” Now, while we didn’t go around giving blood tests, we prohibited and actively stopped any trading in illegal drugs. Esalen has been in business thirty-eight years and has never been in trouble with the law about drugs because we’ve obeyed the law. But, there were occasions when I would come out and look at the audience, and by the expanded eye pupils, knew that half of them were stoned while they listened reverently to this or that program leader. But we abided by the law.

BADINER: Who were some of the psychedelic figures of early Esalen?

MURPHY: Gerald Heard, partly a mentor to Huxley and the furthest out in a group that included Swami Prabhavananda, Christopher Isherwood, and Igor Stravinsky. Heard was attempting to relate the expansion of human consciousness to the world’s evolution. At the time, he was giving LSD to Clare Boothe Luce. I made my decision to start Esalen after listening and talking to Gerald in his Santa Monica home.

Humphry Osmond, who invented the word “psychedelic” [psyche—the psyche, delic—opening] taught seminars here. In 1964, Tim Leary came here with Dick Alpert (Ram Dass). There was a crazy night here with Dick Price, Bernie Gunther, Erica Weston, me, Ram Dass, draped in sheets, walking around on LSD. Stan Grof came here with Virginia Satir in ’65. He was doing LSD experiments in Prague, and ended up living here for fourteen years. John Lilly arrived about that time. Claudio Naranjo was very important to us, as was Mike Harner, who brought Carlos Castaneda—who wrote part of his first book at Esalen. And of course, Alan Watts.

BADINER: So, as you explored this larger territory of the human potential, psychedelics was part of the package from the beginning.

MURPHY: They came with the territory. Marijuana, LSD, peyote, mescaline, morning glory seeds. Later there came ayahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms. Much later came the designer drugs, such as MDMA, 2CB, and others.

BADINER: At this stage, early in the game, is there a relationship to Buddhism? Of the people you mentioned, is there a double track going at all?

MURPHY: For some, but not all. For Alan Watts, it was Buddhism, of course. For Aldous Huxley, it was the Vedanta. To Harner and to Carlos Castaneda, it was shamanism.

We had a seminar with Willis Harman and James Fadiman. And shortly thereafter, I took my first psychedelic trip. I got into this extraordinary laughing thing that, you know, people have, and it went on for a long time. It has happened to me again and again in very intense meditation when I confront just the utter hilarity of existence. I had to leave a sesshin at San Francisco Zen Center once, because I couldn’t control it. Along with the laughing, another significant experience stands out as being common to both modalities: a simple movement of the heart. People who were perhaps less than good looking—even homely—became utterly radiant, shining with their inner beauty. What could be more luminous?

It’s a quality of attention, that with practice, I have managed to achieve without drugs. The gift of meditation is that you quiet the mind and you notice. Esalen became a place to sort out and bring forth to the world the issues relating to all of this.

BADINER: So you are not an advocate of psychedelic use?

MURPHY: My commitment that I share with George is to long-term integral transformative practice, without psychedelics, involving physical practices, psychological work, contemplative practice, and education of the whole person. My bias is apparent in my book, The Future of the Body. Tim Leary criticized it. He said, “My God, there’s not a single chapter on psychedelics in there.” And it is in a sense a shortcoming. But it does reflect my bias.

BADINER: George, you have described your psychedelic experiences in your books Walking on the Edge of the World and The End of Sex.

GEORGE LEONARD: When I started coming down to Esalen, I began exploring altered states of consciousness. That was one of the big ideas—to see this ultimate reality, this non-dual state. We were having a talk in Esalen’s Big House, and I was asking Michael questions—maybe interviewing him for a big Look magazine piece on human potential. Michael told me about the state of being where you’re in touch with everything at the same time and so forth. And I said, “How can I experience that?” And Michael said, “Well, of course, meditation.” Well, that takes a long, long time. And then he said kindly, “There’s a lot of people who are now doing it a shorter, faster way through plants and chemicals like LSD.” And of course, I had heard of LSD. And I said, “Well, maybe I’ll try it.” After all, I’m a journalist, and I have to go wherever the story is.

BADINER: Where did it take you? Was it a good trip?

LEONARD: Everything was exactly the way it had been before except much, much, much more so. I did have some strange hallucinations, but mostly it was just intense realism—the quality that cannot be expressed in words. Everything was utterly real. It was Plato’s chair—the absolute ideal chair where everything was perfect.

BADINER: In your journalistic explorations, did the story take you to the Buddha?

LEONARD: I went to Zen Center, Tassajara, and Green Gulch to practice on numerous occasions. I knew more about Buddhism at that time, and I was more of a Buddhist than I was a Christian. But I was not a regular practitioner. I found the psychedelic way very valuable and I realized there are other forms of reality, or “Another Reality.” But also that there must be a better way to do it than slamming through the wall. There must be a better way than drugs to do it.

BADINER: What would you say to someone twenty years old who had just done a retreat at Green Gulch and was now considering taking mushrooms or ayahuasca or something similar? What advice would you offer this person?

LEONARD: Well, I’m fairly conservative on it. First of all, I’m very concerned about possible brain damage with many psychedelics. Now that we know more about the subtlety of brain chemistry and brain structure and so forth, I’d give words of caution. And then the second thing I would say is, be damn sure what you have is very pure and that you have good circumstances.

MURPHY: People ask me from time to time. I say, “First, I look at what the whole psychedelic culture has produced, and not produced. Has it brought forth a Buddha or Ramana Maharshi? Or an Aurobindo? Or a Ramakrishna? Or any saint, or great realized mystic like St. Teresa or St. John of the Cross? It hasn’t produced that yet. All I have seen through the Esalen window and meeting many of the psychedelic leaders is, at best, openings or illuminations that have led people to an ongoing path. My big fear about the drugs is when they are used in a trivial way, they reinforce the quick fix habits of our culture … the school of fast, easy, and cheap. And—

LEONARD: And blow your mind.

MURPHY: And blow your mind. The patience required for this other drugless transformative practice, as we conceive it, opens you to such beauty and depth. This is what I wish the world knew more about. And I say, “Thank God for these great Buddhist teachers, for these Zen Centers like Richard Baker is creating.” And for the other practices we’ve seen here at Esalen. Psychedelics can be just another distraction.

BADINER: Has the psychedelic culture survived at Esalen?

MURPHY: To some extent. But often in the form of an attractive nuisance or a trompe l’oeil, when they compete with the long-term and more subtle practices. Nondrug programs at Esalen have survived because they are the fittest. What I think will happen over time is that these drugs will have their place as initiatory agents with the right set and setting. We’re developing a culture of consciousness connoisseurs that range from very high connoisseurs to, you know, the people who are just getting on the path.

BADINER: Has meditation, as a practice, grown in importance at Esalen?

MURPHY: Yes. Esalen has a beautiful meditation zendo and we are planning to build a new and larger hall to balance the power of the new baths. We’re asking Richard Baker Roshi to help us, because he really has an amazing aesthetic sense, and he’s designed three world-class centers. The Buddhists have great aesthetics, I believe, for accessing direct contemplative practice. For Esalen, Zen particularly has emerged as a primary form of Buddhist practice because it’s stripped down and relates more to the kind of awareness practices we’ve promoted, whether it’s out of Gestalt or the many other forms of body-mind awareness practiced here.

LEONARD: I’m probably more influenced by Zen than I might think, because my wife Annie lived for six months in Mt. Baldy under Suzuki Roshi, and also a year and a half at the Lama Foundation in New Mexico. You can’t escape Buddhism.

BADINER: Who are some of the other psychedelic characters that found Buddhism inescapable?

MURPHY: Alan Watts. I have never met a more generous person than Alan in terms of praising people and enjoying life and everything. My guru said no sex, so I was a virgin until I was thirty-two, but here we have Alan writing a book about mysticism and sex and saying drugs are another way in. He was ahead of the curve by about ten years. He was even ahead of the beatniks. He was not a celebrant of long-term contemplative practice, but he was a glorious human being. Alan would come down here and stay in the Big House. He led his first seminar here in January 1962. So before I got into gear to create a brochure and build a program, he was already one of the marvelous characters at the beginning, along with Abraham Maslow, Aldous Huxley, and Gerald Heard. After all the trips; the eye openers; the jaunts down the primrose path; there is, as Jack Kornfield puts it, the laundry. We all come back to our breath—to the need to quiet and concentrate the mind. Esalen has always been a place of encounter—between Buddhism, psychedelics, and all the worlds in between.