By David Gosselin
The serpent sheds its skin
to be born again, as the moon
its shadow to be born again.
They are equivalent symbols.
Sometimes the serpent is represented
as a circle eating its own tail. That’s
an image of life. Life sheds one
generation after another,
to be born again.
— Excerpt from Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth
A fellow enthusiast of the ancient mystery revivals being spearheaded by Esalen in America, Carl Jung spoke of ancient alchemy as the crucial link in his own understanding of how modern man supposedly lost his way. Jung apparently began to make sense of the true nature of the unconscious by discovering the link between the Gnostic and ancient alchemical traditions.
In Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung writes:
“As far as I could see, the tradition that might have connected Gnosis with the present seemed to have been severed, and for a long time it proved impossible to find any bridge that led from Gnosticism—or neo-Platonism—to the contemporary world. But when I began to understand alchemy I realized that it represented the historical link with Gnosticism, and that a continuity therefore existed between past and present. Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed the bridge on the one hand to the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.”
“This had been inaugurated by Freud, who had introduced along with it the classical Gnostic motifs of sexuality and the wicked paternal authority. The motif of the Gnostic Yahweh and Creator-God reappeared in the Freudian myth of the primal father and the gloomy superego deriving from that father. In Freud’s myth he became a daemon who created a world of disappointment, illusions and suffering. But the materialistic trend which had already come to light in the alchemists’ preoccupation with the secrets of matter had the effect of obscuring for Freud that other essential aspect of Gnosticism: the primordial image of the spirit as another, higher god who gave to mankind the krater (mixing vessel), the vessel of spiritual transformation.” (Jung., 201)
The connection to the archaic and intuitive “archaic man” identified by the SRI “Changing Images of Man” authors as the Gnostic and Babylonian tradition, which Esalen intellectuals identified with the Eastern “Left-handed” Tantric traditions, were found in the ancient alchemical tradition i.e., “magic.”
Expressing his fondness for the magic of ancient times, which the spiritual eyes of man had been supposedly cut off from by modern Christianity and Classical Greece, alchemical enthusiast Carl Jung reminisced about the glory of Eleusinian rites:
“That particular ceremonial at Eleusis was performed with the purpose of establishing such a connection; it was in order to partake of the serpent’s magic power, its mana. So eating the snake in dreams, as well as in fantasy and visions and ceremonial, means assimilation. It is the same idea as eating the body of the Lord in communion, in order to participate in its strength. That was also the original meaning of cannibalism, which was by no means instinctive, it was a magical ritual, and that is still the case wherever it prevails. Those who eat human flesh and drink human blood acquire additional human strength.” (Jung., 276)
Whether drinking the magical elixir of Eleusis or ritually sacrificing some animal (or human), “magical” rites were devised which conferred upon the initiate a sacred “Gnosis” or knowledge and the rebirth of one’s former identity as a newly deified self.
Interestingly, the Eleusinian mysteries of old have recently made a remarkable comeback under the aegis of psychedelic “self-help,” with LSD and psylocibin serving as the latest incarnations of the ancient magical elixir imbibed at Eleusis. From the Joe Rogan Podcast to the Jordan Peterson Podcast and Lex Friedman Podcast, discussion of the Eleusinian rites and their transformative mysteries have been quickly popularized among the general population over recent years, essentially mainlining a much longer and once-secretive project known as “MK-Ultra,” as we’ll see shortly.
As recognized by the SRI authors and summarized at the outset in the first part of this article, with the official sweeping away of archaic mystery and magic cults—all of them controlled by the reigning Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman priesthood or “magicians”—these old ideas would historically take cover under the guise “Gnosticism.”
As described in the first instalment of this report, a historical assessment of this radical departure from more ancient forms of cult control was outlined in the pivotal “Changing Images of Man” document. There, the authors use key sections of their document to contrast the older systems of belief and their related “images of man” with the dominant epistemological and spiritual paradigm established with Classical Greek civilization and the Christianized West—the latter being identified as the explicit adversary of the Roman Empire’s own particular brand of nature worship, Mithraism.
As journalist Mathew Ehret writes on the complimentary nature of the Roman Empire’s Earth Mother cult of Cybele-Attis and Mithraism:
“While there are outward differences in the rites of the two cults (Cybele and Mithra), there were also many similarities. Both featured exoteric (outward) teachings for the lower degrees and uninitiated and esoteric (secret) teachings for the higher degrees of initiated. Both pagan cults featured sacrifices, self-denying stoicism mixed with hedonistic release, following Apollonian-Dionysian models of behavior, and something called the Taurobolium.
“The Taurobolium were gruesome ceremonies involving the sacrifice of bulls, which bled onto the priests overseeing the mystery rites, which featured prominently in the rituals of both cults.
As Ehret further observes:
“The early Christian polemicist Prudentius, 348- 410 CE described the rites of Cybele in the following terms:
“There are rites in which you mutilate yourself and maim your bodies to make an offering of the pain. A worshipper possessed thrusts the knife into his arms and cuts them to propitiate the Mother goddess. Frenzy and wild whirling are thought to be the rule of her mysteries. The hand that spares the cutting is held to be undutiful, and it is the barbarity of the wound that earns heaven. Another makes the sacrifice of his genitals; appeasing the goddess by mutilating his loins, he unmans himself and offers her a shameful gift; the source of the man’s seed is torn away to give her food and increase through the flow of blood. Both sexes are displeasing to her holiness, so she keeps a middle gender between the two, ceasing to be a man without becoming a woman.” (Prudentius, Perist. 1059-1073)
“Additionally, both sects (Mithra and Cybele) featured death and rebirth rituals, involving the shedding of old identities of initiates in favor of new constructs groomed by a higher priesthood.”
Of course, in each case an exoteric and an esoteric version existed, with a popular brand of mysteries available by way of controlled images and symbols, whose real “mysteries” were ultimately only available to those who ascended in the ranks, the true “Knowers” or Gnostics i.e. the Elect.
X-Men, Gnosis and Deification
“Substance-induced changes in consciousness dramatically reveal that our mental life has physical foundations. Psychoactive drugs challenge the Christian assumption of the inviolability and special ontological status of the soul. Similarly, they challenge the modern idea of the ego and its inviolability and control structures. “
—Terrence McKenna, Food of the Gods
As Jeffrey J. Kripal notes in his Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion:
“In 1960 Price went to hear Aldous Huxley deliver a lecture called “Human Potentialities” at the university of California, San Francisco Medical Center. Although “we are pretty much the same as we were twenty thousand years ago,” said Huxley, we have “in the course of these twenty thousand years actualized an immense number of things which at the time for many, many centuries thereafter were wholly potential and latent in man.” He went on to suggest that other potentialities remain hidden in us, and he called on his audience to develop methods and means to actualize them. “The neurologists have shown us,” said Huxley, “that no human being has ever made use of as much as ten percent of all the neurons in his brain. And perhaps, if we set about it in the right wat, we might be able to produce extraordinary things out of this strange piece of work that a man is.” (Kripal., 85)
The notion of realizing one’s hidden “human potential” as a means of becoming a fully “self-actualized” human being would go on to inspire more than just an intellectual movement, replete with countless new self-actualization gurus, New Age prophecies, eastern tantric practices and psychedelic liberation schools. With generous funding from Lawrence Rockefeller, whose seed money would be handed out across California to help found a blossoming new ecosystem of “spiritual” institutions, this new religion of no religion would be one in which America and modern Western civilization would finally liberate itself from the strictures of classical Western philosophy and spirituality. In the words of Laurence Rockefeller himself, this would allow man to finally be united in “mind, body and spirit.”
For, the previous age was one, we are told, in which Being and becoming were separated. So, Kripal references Aldous Huxley’s remarks from another utopian psychedelic bible, The Doors of Perception:
“Istigkeit—wasn’t that the word Meister Eckhart liked to use? “Is-ness.” The Being of Platonic philosophy—except that Plato seems to have made the enormous, the grotesque mistake of separating Being from becoming and identifying it with the mathematical abstraction of the Idea. He could never, poor fellow, have seen a bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged…. a transience that was yet eternal life, a perpetual perishing that was at the same time pure Being, a bundle of minute, unique particulars in which, by some unspeakable and yet self-evident paradox, was to be seen the divine source of all existence.” (The Doors of Perception., 17-18)
Of course, no new evolutionary humanism would be complete if it didn’t unite man’s spiritual transformation with his bodily evolution. So, in Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy’s The Future of the Body we find a historical archive of bodily transfigurations as contained in the mystical traditions of Christianity in the West, Tantrism in the East, and everything in between.
Kripal writes of Murphy’s book and its reception by Lawrence Rockefeller, who had helped fund the project, as he did the Esalen Institute itself:
“It is also interesting to ask what is missing from Murphy’s elaborate histories of the body’s transformations. Donovan tells the story of presenting the published volume to Laurance Rockefeller, who had helped fund the project and whom Murphy thanks in his acknowledgements (Rockefeller once told Murphy that there were three people he was watching closely: Governor Jerry Brown, Woody Allen, and Murphy). According to Donovan, Rockefeller immediately noticed that two important subjects had been left out: sex and psychedelics.” (Kripal., 421)
Murphy would go on to pen a novel, Jacob Atabet, which explores in fantastical ways the bodily transfiguration of a spiritual Darwinian:
“Darwin’s theory is that full enlightenment involves the transfiguration of the body as well as the transcendence of the spirit, and that the religious traditions have generally missed this integral goal. In one passage, for example, he writes how the religions seem depressingly stuck on their knees or in the lotus posture; he wonders out loud what happened to the legs and arms of the mystical life.” (Kripal., 297)
Kripal goes on in his summary:
“Darwin also insists that the scientific theory of evolution is our best framework for understanding and furthering this embodiment. Evolution, in other words, is the key, the magical philosopher’s stone that puts together all the previously random pieces and parts of the history of religion. If this evolutionary gnosis could be joined to an adequate transformative practice, who knows what might happen? The fall Esalen catalog of 1979 at least suggests that, ‘a coming stage of human evolution may involve purposeful bodily transformation through an integration of spiritual and physical disciplines.’” (Kripal., 297)
The key to a complete spiritual evolution of man would be the unlocking of the mystical “siddhis,” the bodily superpowers developed by the meditation masters of the Tantric East (or bodied in the super heroes of modern “X-Men” lore):
“In the meantime, it is the siddhis or superpowers, so prominent in the Tantric traditions, that offer us a glimpse of the occult biology of this mystical body and its emergent potentialities. Aurobindo can thus write of “physic” or “supernormal” phenomena that derive from “an occult subtle physical energy.” We are also told that, “our life energies while we live is a constant dissolution and dispersion and a reconstruction effected by the shock of the mind upon the mind with a constant interchange and fusion of elements.” In contemporary terms, we are all in constant, if largely unconscious, telepathic contact. Here he draws on “new-born forms of scientific research” into telepathy and other similar phenomena (no doubt a reference to the London Society for Psychical Research) whose evidence “cannot long be resisted except by minds shut in the brilliant shell of the past.” It is respectively this evolutionary mysticism and this interest in the psychic superpowers that Michael Murphy will pick up and develop in his own Aurobindian ways.” (Kripal., 66)
In the case of Murphy’s Jacob Atabet, this “superpower” or “siddhi” involved seeing down the level of one’s own DNA.
Kripal goes on to draw parallels between the ancient masters and the modern “X-men” lore, which functioned as something of an exoteric rendering of the more esoteric view of self-actualized “supernormal” human beings fearlessly tapping into their hidden “human potential”:
“If I may gloss all of this with a modern American mythology, we might better speak here not of a Superman but of the X-Men, those gifted mutants whom evolution has graced with supernormal powers that need to be affirmed, nurtured, and trained by the telepath Professor Xavier in his secret Westchester Academy. Oddly—synchronicity—at almost the exact same cultural moment the West Coast evolutionary mysticism of early Esalen was introduced to the public (in the fall of 1962), so too was the East Coast evolutionary mythology of the X-Men (in the fall of 1963). Both cultural visions, moreover, imagined an esoteric or alternative academy where the human potentialities of mystical and psychical experience could be protected, educated, disciplined, and eventually stabilized within a set of transformative practices.” (Kripal., 66)
Another notable “X-men” who played an inspirational role in the genesis of Esalen was Aldous Huxley’s long-time friend and collaborator, Gerald Heard. Heard was one of the initial people encouraging Murphy and Price to establish a new kind of occult Mecca which could serve as a rock for the ideas of the counter-culture and rejuvenation of the West’s lost “gnosis.”
Kripal writes:
“In Pain, Sex and Time he [Heard] wrote about the oddly abundant energies of pain and lust in the human species as reservoirs of evolutionary energy and explored the possibilities of consciously controlling, channeling, and using this energy to cooperate with evolution and so enlarge the aperture of consciousness, to implode through space-time. Interestingly, when Heard turned to a historical sketch of these energetic techniques in the West, he began with Asia and various Tantric techniques of arresting the orgasm to alter consciousness and transcend time. Tantric Asia, in other words, functioned as something of an archetypal; model for Heard in his search for a type of asceticism that was not life-denying but consciously erotic, a lifestyle that could embrace the evolutionary energies sparkling in sex, build them up through disciple, and then ride their spontaneous combustion into higher and higher states of consciousness and energy.” (Kriapl., 93)
Kripal goes on:
“Heard had also written about the spiritual potentials of mind-altering drugs (like Huxley), about the complementarity of science and religion, even about UFO phenomena—all topics that would reappear at Esalen. And indeed, his books, rather like the UFOs, seem to swarm with strange and charming speculations, like the utterly preposterous and yet oddly attractive idea that the European witchcraft trials had eliminated a large gene pool of real psychical faculties, but that the centuries has since relaced the pool and we are now on the verge of a new “rare stock” of gifted souls endowed with evolutionary powers. All we need now is a small community, an esoteric subculture, to nurture and protect the gifted. In ta talk at Esalen in 1963, he wondered out loud whether Esalen might become such an occult school. Another X-Men scenario.” (Kripal., 92)
Finally, another essential figure in the Esalen orbit which would define this new “self-actualization” ethic would be none other than Abraham Maslow of “Hierarchy of Needs” renown.
Kripal writes:
“If Aldous Huxley was the early literary philosophy of Esalen who set down the all-important concept of human potentialities, Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) was the early psychologist of Esalen who explained how human beings self-actualize these potentialities, that is, realize them in their own persona lives (and it is certainly no accident that Maslow loved Huxley’s writings). Moreover, if the psychedelic—and by extension the neurological and biochemical—dimensions of religious experience was one of the two grand theories of religion advanced at early Esalen, the psychological nature of religion was the second. Esalen figures knew, like few religious figure before them, that religious experiences are co-creations of the human psyche They thus turned, with enthusiasm, to both earlier and contemporary psychological theories to help them form their own religious community and self-understanding. Religion and psychology had seldom, if ever, come closer.” (Kripal., 135)
Later, in the same chapter Kripal writes:
“Abraham Maslow did not begin his career talking about peak experiences and self-actualized human beings with Big Sur visionaries. He began with sex, monkey sex no less. His early doctoral work focused on the sexual behavior of primates, much of which—both heterosexual and homosexual—he noticed was clearly non-productive but nevertheless socially significant: primates, he concluded, used sex to define dominance and submission within their social orders. Later, he would note parallels between the sexual behavior of primates and the sexual fantasies of psychanalytic patients and explain how his first introduction to the analysis of Being was his exposure to the love-relations of self-actualizing individuals. In other words, it was eros that initiated Abraham Maslow into Being. Only later did he explore the same peak experiences in theological, literary and aesthetic literature.” (Kripal., 148-149)
As Kripal notes, “Esalen, in effect, was Maslow’s spiritual utopia.”
But what are these “peak-experiences” sought by the self-actualized individual, discussions of which have become so ubiquitous in our modern self-actualizing West’s obsession with “peak-performance,” “flow states” and new psychedelic epiphanies?
Kirpal writes:
“A peak experience for Maslow was an extraordinary altered state of personal history that fundamentally alters the individual’s worldview through an overwhelming explosion of meaning, creativity, love, and Being. Very much like an orgasm, the peak experience is temporary, essentially delightful, potentially creative, and imbued with profound metaphysical possibilities. One can hardly live on such peaks (just as a continual orgasm would make one’s commute to work difficult at best), but a life without them is vulnerable to becoming sick, nihilistic, even violent. It is certainly going too far, but it is still worth noting, then, that Maslow’s self-actualization of Huxley’s human potentialities resembles more than a little Wilhelm Reich’s all-healing orgasms. Energy is essentially divine here.” (Kripal., 149)
As should be clear by now, for Leary, Huxley, Watts, McKenna, and all those in Esalen’s psychedelic orbit, the unleashing of a new psycho-chemical “gnosis” would serve as the key to challenging the orthodox established view of one reality, opening the doors to new alternate dimensions which the brave self-actualized men and women of the future could freely access for their own personal “self-actualization.”
From an old-school psychedelic culture of “liberation” based on vague notions of “peace and love” to a modern Julian Huxley-inspired transhumanism premised on the mystical transcendence of man by embracing the bio-chemical engineering of a new Humanity 2.0 and 3.0, the sunny lands of California would become the petri dish for countless experiments and research into psychological warfare, behavior change, psychedelics and “genomics.”
This new “spiritual” ecosystem would include sites in Palo Alto, Santa Barbara, Berkely, Stanford, Los Angeles, Sausalito, to name a few. The organizations sprung from these sunny campuses include the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California (1962); the Institute for Noetic Sciences in Sausalito, California (1973); the California Institute of Integral Studies (1968) in San Francisco, along with a number university campuses and research labs (and Silicon Valley, of course).
In classic Hegelian dialectical fashion, while John D. Rockefeller would preside over the corporate takeover of health and pharmaceutical industry, Lawrence Rockefeller would seed those institutions responsible for offering “alternative healing,” meditation and “spiritual” transformation.
Flashback: MK-Ultra
“Many of the other dancers approached very near trance and showed states of increased suggestibility at the end of a long and intensive period of repetitive and monotonous dancing. They looked very much like fans of the Beatles or other ‘pop groups’ after a long session of dancing.”
— Dr. William Sargant, The Mind Possessed: A Physiology of Possession, Mysticism and Faith Healing
As Aldous Huxley collaborator Dr. William Sargant observed in his The Mind Possessed, a book which compiled accounts and observations on primitive voodoo and “magic”-enthused tribes across the world, parallels between ancient religious rituals, artistic festivals, and spiritual practices handed down from generations could be observed in the newly emerging “rock, drugs, sex” counter-culture of the 1960s—albeit under ostensibly different circumstances—and fuelled by a new generation of drugs (notably Albert Hoffman’s LSD, which was synthesized as the fruit of his research into ergot, a wheat fungus which was the hypothesized psychedelic ingredient used in the ancient rites of Eleusis).
So, the likes of Dr. Sargant and Huxley drew direct parallels between “rock” festivals and the kinds of orgiastic dancing and frantic emotional states typical among participants at alcohol and orgy-fueled festivals for the God Dionysus. As Huxley observed in one of his lectures, individuals participating in ancient Dionysian rites and the kinds of practices studied by Sargant could live very wretched lives, spending most of their weeks in some kind of slave-like bondage, but then find a release or “catharsis” in ritualistic and frenzied festivals. This occurred through intense, albeit momentary transformations in affect and disposition, often augmented by sex, drugs, narrative and spectacle. In a word: participants would enter as one kind of person and emerge magically reborn into their newly transformed self.
But was this some mere chance phenomenon, simply the natural resurgence of “experiential gnosis” finally weaving its way back into the hearts of a disenchanted generation who was simply tired of perfect white picket fences, vacuous patriotism, and unquestioning orthodoxy, or was there something else going on?
Interestingly, the SRI’s “Changing Images of Man” document dedicates some time to the transformative effects of psychedelics on the hearts and minds of psychedelic users:
“Psychedelic Drugs. In the last 15 years there has been increased interest in chemical substances that change the quality and characteristics of normal everyday consciousness, particularly through such drugs as lysergic acid, mescaline, psilocybin, and others. These drugs, referred to as psychedelics, hallucinogens, or psychoactive chemicals, expand or contract the field of consciousness; they seem capable of enhancing perceptions and sensations, giving access to memories and past experiences, facilitating mental activity, and producing changes in the level of consciousness, including what are reported as transcendent experiences of a religious or cosmic nature (Masters and Houston, 1966).”
The authors go on to note some the many fields in which psychedelics could have potentially life-altering effects:
“Although uncontrolled and illegal drug use in the United States has hampered scientific research, psychoactive substances seem to have many potential uses if used under proper conditions” (Masters and Houston, 1966; Aaronson and Osmond, 1970; Krippner in Tart, 1969).
• Psychotherapy using psychedelic chemicals has had remarkable success.
• Some studies have shown that creativity can be enhanced, at least in artists and creative workers.
• Therapeutic sessions using psychedelic drugs with patients suffering terminal diseases have resulted in less pain and apprehension regarding death.
• Transcendent, religious, or “cosmic” experiences occur to some.
• Hyperawareness of body states and physiological processes have been reported.
• Some evidence indicates that parapsychological abilities may be enhanced.
“These potentials, as with those deriving from hypnosis, meditation, and other altered states of awareness, are subject to the conditions set by the individual through his personality and his expectations, the setting and context of the treatment, and the sophistication with which the particular drug is used. The potential of these techniques has not been fully explored, largely owing to a combination of the problems sometimes associated with their use in ill-suited conditions and an unfavorable societal attitude.”
As journalist Tom O’Neil recounts in his groundbreaking Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties, the sudden interest in psychedelics by the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and the appearance of countless New Age cults and neo-pagan rock festivals may have been more than some mere coincidence, especially when one considers that many of the artists and intellectuals descending from the leading military families of the Anglo-American establishment were instrumental in bringing about this new “Age of Aquarius.” Notorious for its development of sinister bombing strategies and methods of psychological terror for the US military’s campaigns abroad, the SRI’s “paradigm shift” reveals a glaring irony in respect to its interest in new “mind-altering drugs.”
As one extremely glaring and telling example reminds us, psychedelics played an important role in the cultivation of the person of Charles Manson and “the Family.” O’Neil found articles authored by some of the individuals responsible for treating Manson and his disciples. Research papers found in The Journal of Psychedelics Drugs—a journal belonging to the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic (HAFMC) where Manson was treated—describe the study of psychedelics and their effects on group dynamics.
O’Neil recounts reading several articles authored by David Smith and/or his fellow researchers at the HAFMC. Notably, David Smith happened to be one of the clinicians regularly attending Manson and “The Family” at theHAFMC.
O’Neil writes:
“One of these articles hoped to find out ‘whether a dramatic drug-induced experience’ would have a ‘lasting impact on the individual’s personality.’ Another observed that feelings of ‘frustrated anger’ led people to want to try LSD: ‘The soil from which the ‘flower children’ arise,’ the author wrote, ‘is filled more with anger and aggression, thorns and thistles, rather than passion and petunias.’ Under ‘emotional pressure,’ acid could induce ‘images and sensations of anger or hate magnified into nightmarish proportions.
“David Smith had studied these same phenomena, formulating an idea that he called ‘the psychedelic syndrome,’ first articulated in 1967 or early’68.
The gist was that acid, when taken by groups of like-minded people, led to a ‘chronic LSD state’ that reinforced ‘the interpretation of psychedelic reality.’ The more often the same group of “friends” dropped acid, the more they encouraged one another to adopt the worldview they’d discovered together on LSD, thus producing ‘dramatic psychological changes. Usually the psychedelic syndrome was harmless, but regular LSD use could cause ‘the emergence of a dramatic orientation to mysticism.’” (O’Neil., 318-319)
At this point, it should be noted that Willis Harman, the project supervisor for the “Changing Images of Man” program, was also key in helping Esalen create its own psychedelic utopia in Big Sur, California.
As Kripal writes in his book regarding Esalen’s prolific role in promoting psychedelic culture and “healing”:
“They knew, for example, that they were under surveillance by any number of federal agencies, including and especially the Food and Drug Administration. Willis Harman, who was doing legal LSD research at the time, knew many of these government officials and often warned Esalen of possible raids. With the counsel of Harman and other like-minded friends, Murphy met twice wit the Northern California FDA to clarify what the issues were and how they, as an institute dedicaed to both spiritual adventures and the law, could respond most effectively and humanely. What Murphy learned was that the law protects institutions from being legally responsible for what goes on in the privacy of, say, a hotel room.” (Kripal., 133-134)
Kripal cites author Walter Truett Anderson of The Upstart Spring, a book which described Esalen’s pivotal role within the countercultural movement and its burgeoning psychedelic culture:
“In reality, Esalen’s official policy about drugs had about as much relevance to what went on at Big Sur s the nineteenth amendment had to do with American drinking habits in the 1920s.” (Kripal., 134)
Of course, drug-infused mysticism was only one way to open one’s minds to new alternate realities. As already mentioned, the “secret” gnosis possessed by other unknown alien species was also a curious part of regaining man’s suppressed gnosis.
As Kirpal recounts McKenna’s description of coming down from a DMT trip as follows:
“I cannot believe this; this is impossible, this is completely impossible. The was a declension of gnosis that proved to me in a moment that right here and now, one quanta away, there is raging a universe of active intelligence that is transhuman, hyperdimensional, and extremely alien. I call it Logos, and I make no judgements about it. I constantly engage it in dialogue, saying, “Well, what are you? Are you some kind of diffuse consciousness that is in the ecosystem of the earth? Are you a good or an extraterrestrial?” Show me know you know.” (Kripal., 373)
It turns out that these drug-infused mystical experiences could also open realities to new entities.
So Kripal writes on McKenna’s alien-encounter:
“By his 1983 address at Esalen, he had come to believe that “the human soul is so alienated from us in our present culture that we treat it as an extraterrestrial.” The UFO, in other words, is the human soul exteriorized into three dimensional space as a religious experience. We will only overcome or alienation when we realize that we ourselves are the alien, and that there is nothing more marvelous and bizarre in the entire known cosmos than what is going on in our upper cortex, right now, right here quite beyond the three extended dimensions of space and fourth of time, that of mere ordinary history.” (Kripal., 373)
Thus, even encounters with “UFOs” sightings (and in some cases “abductions”) was a supposedly natural part of man’s pursuit to regain the exiled parts of suppressed psyche.
Conclusion
Regardless of how one approaches the mystery of man’s creative powers, his ability to synthesize new ideas through great art and master the natural laws of the universe through scientific discoveries suggests something divine. That these powers are intelligible, despite never being fully understood, remains a perennial mystery and perennial reality. With this simple observation, we can note that man is for all intents and purposes uniquely made in the image of his Creator, distinguishing him from all other forms of biotic and abiotic matter.
On the other hand, whether through the secret knowledge of mythical lost civilizations, the sacred “gnosis” of shamans or aliens (or both), or psychedelics, a common thread emerges among those who would prefer to obscure the real mystery. Knowing the real mysteries aren’t going away any time soon, the magicians must content themselves with creating their own brand of acceptable “mysteries”—as the priests of Ancient Persia, Babylon, Greece and Rome always did. In this tradition, man is promised access to secret “supernormal” powers and a “hidden potential” or “gnosis,” only it comes at the cost of his actual potential, the one right before him. The former sacred “gnosis,” or “magic,” we are told, has the unique power to finally set man free and make him whole.
Instead of the Promethean love and fire of the “official view,” Kripal writes of Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy’s alternative to the supposed tyrannical “official view” as follows:
“What he finally ends up with through such a method is an evolutionary panentheism, that is, a philosophical system in which God’s transcendence and immanence are simultaneously affirmed (pan-en-theism, literally “all-in-God-ism”) and both find expression through the very process of cosmic evolution, randomness and al. Drawing on Neoplatonism, J.B. Fichte, F.W. J. von Schelling, G.W.F. Hegel, Henry James Sr., and Sri Aurobindo, Murphy suggests that the historical evidence supports the idea “that this world’s unfoldment is based upon the implicit action, descent, or involution of a Supreme Principle of Divinity,” and that, in the words of Aurobindo, “apparent Nature is secret God.” (Kripal., 419)
This, we are told, is the true redeeming mystery—a divine randomness.
Whether in the case of ancient Mithraism, Luciferianism or their panentheism varieties, the essential idea remains the same: man and nature are one; there is no unique image of man as distinct from the rest of nature.
But what if this itself were the chief trick of a master magician?
What if the real mystery is that he isn’t like all the rest? Instead, what if the real mystery is that man can unfold his understanding and wield “fire” with heart and care? What if the real sleight of hand is convincing man that he cannot and that he is just another more complex variety of butterfly, snail or monkey, that is, all are variations of the same molecules and atoms which have randomly assembled themselves over time?
What does fathoming the real mystery and recognizing the same essential potential in every other human being entail? What might such civilization and its rebirth look like today? What might its new cities and art look like?
In the conclusion to his book, Kripal asks:
“Are we really ready for such an affirming denial, for a radically American mysticism, for an America as mysticism?” (Kripal., 465)
Are we? Or might we reframe Kripal’s question and ask: is man willing to sacrifice himself, knowledge of God and Nature on the altar of a mystical Earth Mother deity? Rather than sacrifice a bull, pig, “fire” or children for such idols, should we not sacrifice our own illusions instead, however magical?
Surely, if man is made in the image of God, he should do godly things. The only question is: what is the nature of this God? How does man’s understanding of God shape his understanding and unique of his self?
When we come to adequately fathom this question, the real mysteries become abundantly clear. Rather than mystifying the Truth, the Truth mystifies us. Finally, we discover that there is no greater “magic” than the magic of Truth.
And it shall set us free.
Works Cited
Huxley, Aldous. Island. Harper Collins Publishers. 1962.
The Center for the Study of Social Policy & SRI International. The Changing Images of Man. Pergamon Press, 1982.
O’Neill, Tom.Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties.Little, Brown, and Company (2019).
Kripal, Jeffrey J. Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religions. The University of Chicago Press (2007)
Jung, Carl. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Vintage Books Addition (1989).
Bashford, Alison. The Huxleys: An Intimate History of Evolution. The University of Chicago Press (2022).