Voices of Esalen

Charles Stang, Professor of Early Christian Thought and director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, is our guest for part one of our multi-part series, The Psychedelic Moment, where we speak to thought leaders within the modern world of psychedelics and psychedelic psychotherapy. Stang and Harvard Divnity School have partnered with Esalen to create a series of free online lectures that examine the psychedelic renaissance. Today, we spoke about the so-called first wave of psychedelics, and how the Harvard Divinity School played its own crucial role, as well as the importance of the mystical experience in achieving positive therapeutic outcomes in psychedelic trials, "divine darkness" and how that affects a psychological reckoning, how somatic practices, apart from any intoxicant, can traditionally bring on a mystical experience, the use of sacraments in the ancient mystery religions of the mediterranean, and much more. To check out the Center for World Religion's psychedelic collaboration with Esalen, please visit: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/09/29/video-psilocybin-and-mystical-experience-implications-healthy-psychological https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/11/03/video-medicalizing-mysticism-religion-contemporary-psychedelic-trials https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/hds_cswr-0

Deborah Medow is an Esalen legend. She came to Big Sur and the Esalen Institute in the late 1960’s, and found it so much to her liking that she never left. Deborah was an early acolyte of Dick Price, who encouraged her to become one of Esalen’s first yoga teachers. Deborah found her home as a massage therapist, where, as part of an early crew that featured trailblazers like Peggy Horan, Brita Ostrom, and Vicki Topp, she helped to develop and shepherd a school of touch that would influence practitioners around the world. Through more than 50 years of service to Esalen, Deborah has been a beloved community member, teacher, and leader - insightful and intelligent, curious and kind, hilarious and unapologetically unique. Our interview begins in Indiana, where she grew up, and it ends with an incantation, featuring her famous rattle.

Matthew Ingram is the author of Retreat: How the Counterculture Invented Wellness. His book is a primer covering the historical unfolding of a host of topics including Allen Ginsberg, Stanislav Grof, LSD psychotherapy, the Prague Spring, psychoanalysis, Freudian Marxism, ego dissolution, the CIA's MK ULTRA program, Tom Wolfe, Libertarians, cultural revolt, and more.

Fred Dust is a former Global Managing Partner at the acclaimed international design firm IDEO, where he worked with leaders and change agents to unlock the creative potential of business, government, education, and philanthropic organizations. Fred has worked with the US Agency for International Development, the US Office of Personnel Management, and the US Social Security Administration to create citizen-centered strategies and the structures to implement them. He’s also collaborated closely with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and Bloomberg Philanthropies to improve the impact and reach of their programs. Fred is on the Board of Trustees for the Sundance Institute, on the Board of Directors for NPR, and is Chair of the board of Parsons School of Design. His new book is Making Conversation, a primer for creating effective strategies that yield creative and pleasurable conversations.

Today, another archive edition. We’re presenting part two of a lecture series given at Esalen in 1992 by the one and only Terence McKenna, ethnobotanist, mystic, psychedelic adventurer. The talk is entitled "Politics and Ethos," but as you’ll hear, McKenna forsakes those topics quickly in favor of a more robust discussion that includes shamanism, synesthesia, paranormal phenomena, climatology, astronomy, renaissance humanism, and telepathy-- all of this subsumed within the discourse of the psychedelic experience. It’s good fun to listen to McKenna’s playful explorations with language - for example, some of his ecstatic phrasings include references to “the heaving notions of the spaghetti of ambiguity” as well as (ahem) “the indwelling entelechy that creates the cohesion of the nexus of actual occasions that is the coordinated prehension of an organic system.” McKenna often stated that language failed when called upon to convey truly complex meaning, but in truth, he was one of the masters of the form.

Guest Terence McKenna, an acclaimed ethnobotanist, mystic, and hyper-articulate lecturer, discusses topics such as the failures of capitalism, embracing mystery, limitations of human understanding, the provisional nature of knowledge, psychedelic experience, societal restrictions, the concept of freedom, a transformational process, and creating a just and caring society.

This archival talk was delivered at the Esalen institute in September of 1966 by famed American psychologist Abraham Maslow, best known for creating Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated around the idea that the most basic or pressing needs, like food, safety and security, must first be satisfied in order to address needs such as love and belonging, esteem, and finally, self-actualization. Maslow and his school of humanistic psychology was extraordinarily important for Esalen’s development in its early years. Maslow's curiosity about the psychological development of basically normal and healthy individuals in part formed the foundational approach of Michael Murphy and Dick Price’s programming for Esalen. In this speech, Maslow expounds upon what he calls B values, short for Being-values, among them goodness, beauty, uniqueness, Justice, simplicity, and richness. He also explores motivations, metapathologies, and truth.

James Fadiman is known as the author of The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide and as one of America's most well-known proponents of microdosing. While a Harvard undergrad, he was the "teacher's pet" of Ram Dass, then known as Richard Alpert; as a graduate student at Stanford University, he became a research assistant at Myron Stolaroff's famed International Foundation for Advanced Study, an early non-profit situated in Menlo Park that guided the uninitatited into the psychedelic experience and studied the outcomes. Fadiman was also one of the first teachers at the Esalen Institute, beginning in the fall of 1962 with the workshop "The Expanding Vision," co-taught with Willis Harman. He has continued a lifelong association with Esalen and with psychedelics, and has appeared in countless films as an authority on such matters, including 2013’s "Science and Sacraments" and 2009’s "Inside LSD." Other books authored by Fadiman include Be Love Now, Essential Sufism, and The Other Side of Haight. Together we explored microdosing, the mystical experience, the Human Potential Movement, his friendship with the Merry Pranksters, and more.

Tiffany Yu is an entrepreneur, disability advocate, and CEO and founder of Diversability, an organization that aims to rebrand disability through community. She is also the founder of the Awesome Foundation Disability Chapter, which sources monthly micro-grants for disability projects. Tiffany serves on the San Francisco Mayor’s Disability Council, appointed by San Francisco Mayor London Breed in 2019 and was named one of the 100 most influential Asian Americans in 2017. She has been featured in Marie Claire, Forbes, the Guardian, and the Wall Street Journal, and has spoken at the world economic forum in Davos, at TedX, and Harvard. In this interview, she spoke about disability and identity, inclusion and empowerment, visibility and disability, semantics and their function within the context of social justice, PFJ (Play Fun Joy), dating, and how disability has begun to function within the wellness space. Awesome Foundation Disability Chapter: http://disability.awesomefoundation.org/ Diversability: https://mydiversability.com/

Raafi Rivero is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and artist and is the creator of Unarmed, a series of printed basketball jerseys designed to commemorate victims of racist police violence. Rivero installs large-scale versions of the jerseys in urban areas, so as to honor those who have been slain, and to create awareness around ongoing violence perpetrated against people of color in America. In this two-part interview, the first recorded two weeks after the killing of George Floyd, the second several months later, the day that a verdict came back regarding the police officers charged in the Breonna Taylor case, we spoke about the complexity of racial identities, Raafi's artistic pain and process, and friendships that cross racial boundaries. To learn more about Unarmed: www.unarmed.co To watch Raafi's short film about Unarmed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0-cOOskq1w&feature=youtu.be