78: Jeffrey Kripal - Esalen: America & the Religion of No Religion

Conversation starts @ 8:15 What happens when the place where expansive, meaningful, transcendental, and just simply weird conversations becomes just as important and meaningful as the conversations that began there? Esalen. We begin our conversation exploring the birth and development of The Esalen Institute and then the boundaries of the geographical container dissolve and the ideas emerge to the foreground – religion, psychology, mysticism, & psychedelics. Jeff and I discuss the founders and the origin story of Esalen, religious comparativism, the counterculture in America, Russian & United States relations through the Cold War, diplomatic solutions through psychic research, the psychological and the social/political, the influence of Asian philosophy, Tantra, plant medicine, psychology, somatic process, Aldous Huxley, Abraham Maslow, social justice, sameness and difference, cancel culture, the need for unifying language and shared understanding of difference, and the 5-times jacket prize. Bio: Jeffrey J. Kripal is the Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he chaired the Department of Religion for eight years and helped create the GEM Program, a doctoral concentration in the study of Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism that is the largest program of its kind in the world. He is the Associate Director of the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, where he also serves as Chair of the Board. Jeff is the author or co-author of eleven books, seven of which are with The University of Chicago Press, including, most recently a memoir-manifesto entitled Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions (Chicago, 2017). He has also served as the Editor in Chief of the Macmillan Handbook Series on Religion (ten volumes, 2015-2016). He specializes in the study of extreme religious states and the re-visioning of a New Comparativism, particularly as both involve putting “the impossible” back on the academic table again. He is presently working on a three-volume study of paranormal currents in the history of religions and the sciences for The University of Chicago Press, collectively entitled The Super Story. https://jeffreyjkripal.com/life/ https://impossiblearchives.rice.edu/registration/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MG5gFtZ3U8&t=9428s John’s Workshop: https://www.esalen.org/workshops/exploring-our-shadows-through-the-psychology-of-fame www.junghouston.org Website for The Sacred Speaks: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com WATCH: YouTube for The Sacred Speaks https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOAuksnpfht1udHWUVEO7Rg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ @thesacredspeaks Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/ Brought to you by: https://www.thecenterforhas.com Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com