The university system has a vice-hold grip on what we consider ‘true’. However, academia has for a long time only served a materialistic picture of the universe, and so ‘truth’ really just means ‘scientific materialism’. This state of play is kept going in universities by a culture of group-think, dogma and disenchantment – where student well-being is left by the waste side, writes Jules Evans.
‘Esalen existed in the liminal space between academia and the counterculture.’
So reads a line in Jeffrey Kripal’s history of Esalen, where he’s the director of the Centre for Research. It made me think of my own relationship to academia.
Esalen is a place in Big Sur, California, set up in 1962, which offers week and weekend-long courses, mainly in personal growth. It is like an alternative college, exploring topics that academia was scared to touch (ecstatic experiences, psychedelics, alternative medicine etc), but also exploring new ways of knowing, beyond the lecture format, like the encounter session, the trip. Why did it require a non-academic college to explore these ideas?
Join the conversation