Religious Riptide: Eastern Spirituality Comes West [Excerpts]

Secularism didn’t supplant religion in the Western world, as some Twentieth Century humanists had anticipated. Instead, new spiritual expressions and movements entered the landscape, often with roots firmly planted in the metaphysical soil of the East. This article, excerpted from my book, Game of Gods: The Temple of Man in the Age of Re-Enchantment explores some of these changes.

Ashrams and yoga and LSD – Eastern oneness blossomed with Western psychedelic wholeness. But the religious message was not limited to chemical experimenters.

In the 1960s, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi traveled around the world lecturing on Hindu beliefs and Transcendental Meditation (TM). His tours took him into the lofty towers of academia and within the esteemed halls of political power, including a meeting with UN Secretary-General U Thant. In the United States his technique of meditation, TM, soon became a sensation.

Sold as a way to find “infinite inner happiness,” Maharishi was endorsed by The Beatles, sending the guru’s popularity soaring. And although The Beatles soon distanced themselves from the guru, other notables such as Mike Love of the Beach Boys and television host Merv Griffin embraced his message.

Others from the East traveled to Europe and America. Yogi Bhajan packaged a syncretistic version of Sikhism, teaching Kundalini Yoga and preaching an immanent shift in global consciousness. Sri Chinmoy, arriving in America in 1964, attracted the attention of musicians and politicians with his brand of meditation. Invited by U Thant, Sri Chinmoy convened twice-weekly meditation meetings at the United Nations in New York City. But it was not just the East coming west, affluent and searching Westerners departed for India.

Michael Murphy, a Stanford University student who traveled to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in India during the early days of spiritual tourism, returned and co-founded the California-based Esalen Institute in 1962. Here, nestled among pine trees and redwoods in the Big Sur region south of San Francisco, visitors and residents could soak in the hot springs, bask in ocean vistas, and explore conscious development through chemical substances, integrated yoga, humanistic psychology, and sensual pleasures. A stream of Hollywood insiders and influential personalities embraced the blending of LSD, group play and Gestalt therapy, sexual adventurism and Eastern philosophy. Over the decades, a steady stream of diverse workshops have covered everything from “Modern Shamanic Initiation” to “Spiritual Psychology” to “Yoga Works” to “Deep Mythology” and “Spiritual Democracy.”

From transformational art to energy healing to leadership development and relationship building, Esalen became the go-to-place to acquire tools for personal transformation and social change.

“By the late 1960s,” explains the Institute’s chairperson Jeffrey Kripal, “Esalen, through Cromey, had helped open up a cultural space to address the intersection of sexual orientation, spirituality, and social justice.”

Pike ended up repudiating Christian tenets and “saw the historical Jesus as a kind of political revolutionary or social critic.” Today these same themes resonate in progressive Christian circles.

Professor Marion Goldman comments on the “sweeping impact on American religion” that emerged through the Esalen experience, opening up spiritual options that were previously in the shadows of culture,

Esalen played a critical role in introducing and promoting esoteric spirituality so that it flowed into mainstream culture…

Money interests, too, were watching and participating. Lawrence Rockefeller, whose Baptist father had reportedly been influenced by Vivekananda and whose mother showed interest in Zen Buddhism, provided special funding to Esalen and other related organizations.¹² In fact, Murphy related in a 2012 public conversation that “[Lawrence] has seeded so much, I mean, he’s the single biggest donor we’ve ever had at Esalen.”

“From the early 1970s until his death, in 2004,” elaborated Marion Goldman, “Rockefeller donated millions of dollars to Esalen and three related organizations that promote inclusive spirituality and synthesize Asian and Western traditions: the San Francisco Zen Center, the Lindisfarne Association, and the California Institute for Integral Studies.”

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