Word: esalen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Life promised Miller a glorious, fun filled imitation of picaresque art. He had persuaded his bosses at the State University of New York to spring him for a year at the Esalen Institute. The university was searching for new routes to learning, and as a 29-year-old bachelor, Miller would be its one-man Lewis and Clark Expedition to the encounter-group center in Big Sur, Calif...
...Objective: Girls. He arrived at Esalen in a silver Corvette. In the trunk, as Miller tells it, were "a properly scuffed Florentine leather suitcase, a gray-green but charmingly ineffective Olivetti, and a Cardin-imitation blue blazer bought at Barney's." Miller was to participate in Esalen's curriculum as a member of one of its residential programs. But his first objective was girls. Martha, Catherine, Sandra, Lorraine-all proved cooperative. What Miller did not count on was thai his sex life would become data for encounter sessions. Catherine told Martha that she did not enjoy going...
...sensitized (worried, infuriated, charmed) by what he sees that a flash of understanding takes place, a kind of epiphany. Setting out on a jagged perambulation of our cultural landscape, Thompson finds little revelation in Los Angeles, a prime gap candidate if there ever was one. Big Sur's Esalen Institute, another potentially numinous spot, does not produce much cosmic insight either. But it does offer some memorable scenes, particularly a moment when Joan Baez disrupts a "Future of Consciousness" seminar by angrily demanding that the participants stop talking about themselves and declare their positions on Viet...
Mazurky is simply too close to his subject. While he could laugh, with some hints of sympathy, at Bob's strained attempts to find equanimity through Esalen encounters, he treats Alex's abortive struggles to come to grips with his "art" all too seriously...
...entry Problem. There is genuine concern as well at the lack of follow-up procedures to determine the long-term effect of the group experiences. Says Psychologist Richard Parson, an Esalen adviser, "All research shows that people have the most tremendous subjective reaction after it is over-as a rule, more than 80% say they are overwhelmingly responsive. But the objective results-testing-show virtually no lasting effects. It is difficult to show as much as a 5% change in anybody even after the most intense encounter." The movement admits the need to learn why the benefits appear...