Esalen’s Wellspring
Esalen’s Wellspring
Foundational Doctrines
This chapter considers the Institute's central spiritual doctrines. Michael Murphy's sojourn at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in India inspired him to found the Institute with Dick Price and to popularize concepts of everyone's essential divinity/godliness and individuals' ability to maximize their full potential in spirit, psyche, body, and mind. Every aspect of Esalen's doctrine reflects the assumption that people are capable of transforming themselves, their societies, and the Earth. Esalen's founders and their comrades built the Institute to reflect their own yearning for meaningful spirituality and personal authenticity. They assumed all people were basically like them and shared similar abilities and desires to select, combine, and revise highly personal paths to self-actualization and social transformation.
Keywords: Michael Murphy, Dick Price, Esalen's foundational doctrines, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, self-actualization, social transformation
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