Michael Murphy || Human Potential

You know, I've been very lucky with my healthy you know, I'm ninety now, but just knock on wood, I've had I've never had a major illness. And I got the first vaccination and going to the second one Friday. Wonderful. That's good. That's in the physical front, Aslon, you know, as I've taken a lot of blows with both the pandemic and with the weather and the highway down into the Big Shore. But we are got a wonderful staff and we're gearing up to open again next month and

a lot of plans for the future. Well, that's great news. That's great news. Well, I wanted to start with if that's okay with you. I wanted to kind of start with some of your earliest childhood memories because I want to I want to kind of go and chronological order as I go through your life a little bit today. And I'm particularly interested in you know, what it was like being raised with the family of doctors, I believe, in an Irish Catholic household in a rural farming community

in South this California. I believe you know when you were a child, did you grow up with a lot of Yeah, yeah, go on, you just tell me, you just talk well, no, Selena's California's got you, Yeah, I got you. Yeah. My grandfather was indeed a doctor. My father was a lawyer. It was a farming community. It's my grandfather delivered John Steinbeck. And so if you read any of Steinbeck's books, you know, the Grape Wrath or East of Eden, you know, you get a setting of

our hometown. So that's where I started. And uh uh, anyway, did you did you I'm wondering what you were like as a kid. I was wondering did you Did you have a lot of like wonder and all as a child, Like were you? You know? I know that it didn't take until you know, you're in college till you had some of these spirit more spiritual experiences. But did you have any spiritual experiences in like your youth. I've never

asked you that. I'm curious. Well, I was. You know, my father's side of the family put a huge premium on writing, so we were read to a lot growing up, and also a big premium on skepticism. I mean the people my father talked about, you know, hl MENCN Will Rogers and Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift and et cetera. And on my father's side, it was not a family of church course, but I was a religious kid. It was an ultar boy in the Episcopal Church. I was the only one really on my father's side of the

family who went to church regularly. And so yes, and when I was in my early in my early teens, I began for me a basic metaphysical framework, really, and it was influenced by my love of things in the church, I must confess. And I was in the Episcopal church. One could think of, you know, is Catholicism light as you get the cathedrals and you get the choirs and holy communion, But you know, a lot of the ministers don't take it all that seriously. I mean they hold

their dog was lightly. You know it was so I am. I didn't. It's funny. I never I have no memory of praying to Jesus none. It was so it was a kind of a I was, in effect the Unitarian going to going to church. And but there's no doubt about it. I was religious in a non dogmatic way, and that was the way it was. And then when I got to Stanford University and walk by mistake. You and I have talked about this. I'm into the lecture by the great teacher of comparative religions, Frederic Spielberg, and

by mistake, and that really changed my life. I was a sophomore at Stanford, and when I heard that attman was Brumhunt. Uh, I'm going to changed my life. It really did. So I was subconsciously, basically intuitively set up too, not only to believe but to practice what came with this introduction. It was of course, on comparative religions, and the first lecture was on the Vedy hymns and the Upanishads.

So hearing all that bowled me over and started me on my quest that eventually led me to you know, quit my fraternity and quit pre met. My family was kind of I was designated, you know, my role designation within the family was to be a doctor. And my brother was supposed to be a writer. He did, he was a writer, but anyway, I gave that up and then you became a writer. It was a big shock, huge shock to my family. It was a huge shock

to my family. I mean this turn and so that's how I got started and particularly influenced by the work of a Sri ra Bindo, the Indian philosopher and great political leader, and spent a year and a half in his ashram in India. In my I was twenty five and twenty six and came home and started esseling and so forth and so forth. Right, Right, that's an understatement. Well, so I want to understand. So in nineteen sixty two you met Price? Right, and in what context did you

meet Dick Price in nineteen sixty two? Well, we met actually in nineteen sixty Okay, I was twenty nine years old. He and Dick had had a profound mystical set of experiences for which he was institutionalized, and he had a really suffered at the hands of the psychiatric reductionism that you know later Abe Maslow and Carl Rodgers and Rollo

May and others were in revolt against. And he it had been a very tough, deeply bruising, wounding set of insulin shock treatments in one of the most prestigious psychiatric hospitals in the country, the Institute for the Living. And you know, there's been stuff written about this, but in any case, he looked me up. We had been classmates at Stanford but had never met, and so he had you know, he knew that I had been this, you know, depart my departure into the outlaw country as an undergraduate

when I was twenty. So this was ten years later when we met, and we were now both turning thirty and finding our way forward. And one thing led to another, and we ended up in Big sur And I had had a dream to start a center such as Esslyn, a dream without a blueprint, but with a number of basic ideas and principles to base it upon that he and I shared, starting with the idea that no one

would capture the flag. It would be a place for exploration and not a traditional or dogmatic teaching and it would involve a vision of what my teacher Bendo would

call the integral body, mind, heart and soul. It was that, you know, we are psychophysical creatures, we are embodied latently spiritual creatures, and we are part of the cosmic adventure which is evolutionary and which in today's kind of parlance words that people can understand kind of pan theism, the doctrine that the divine is both transcendent and imminent, and that the evolution is the unfoldment of our latent divinity. I mean, that would be the basic metaphysics with which

we started the place. But along with that a lot of feelings about, for example, psychoanalysis and scientific reductionism, both of us were steeped in the literature of authoritarianism. You know, the authors of those days, whether it was Eric Frome or that whole cast of characters that in the fifties

emerged the true Believer, Eric Hoffer and so forth. That culture which shapes us every day of our life in ways that are hard to track because they're so ubiquitous, need to be understood, not just for help, but for a greater life that's pressing always to be born in us, always pressing, and both of us had been influenced in different ways by the Jungian ideas that many neuroses were the the budding, budding potentials in us, and that we had to have a new framework to understand these behaviors

and urges and so forth that were deemed by mainstream culture and by psychoanalysis to be pathological. So anyway, here we were thirty years old, starting this place, and this beautiful property in Big Shirt that my family owned, two miles long of priceless Big Surt property that my grandfather had purchased in nineteen ten to build a spa in

the European style. He and his he and my grandmother, they had gone to Baden, and Weisbaden, you know, in Germany, and you know, in the tradition of those days to look at those spas. So anyway, but any case, here was his property, a kind of enough buildings to house people, and we started inviting everyone who'd influenced us. That everybody came. I saw the list, Yeah, I saw the guest list. I saw yeah. And so anyway, we raised a flag and an army rallied and so as we shaped our

program up before we had done anything. Yet one night Abe Baslow drove in with his wife Bertha looking for a room and discovered this place at the end of nowhere, on this lonely dark highway. And I had purchased a dozen copies of Towardy Psychology of Being few weeks prior so the staff was reading. So he walks into this spooky place in the middle of the night at the end of nowhere, and here everybody reading Towards Psychology of Being. And I took it as an omen that we were

on the right track. And in those early days I kept a journal of coincidences because it seemed like our guardian angels are whatever was on our side. And even I, you know, I actually was not there the night he drove in, but we started corresponding and we became quite close, and he told his daughters eventually that I was the son he never had. I mean, we got that close. But then came quite a train of thinkers, psychiatrists, artists and all, and we had a new culture being born.

I mean we were hardly aware of it. I mean, the sixties, you know, in the way it's used as a cliche for an era, really didn't start till about nineteen sixty four. I would date it with you know, the free speech movement in Berkeley in nineteen sixty four. But in any case, here we were in sixty one and sixty two, so we hit a wave before the wave had hit the shore, so to speak. So we were carried in on this wave of interest, and so this thing developed and we grew it. It kind of

grew organically. One person led to another, one I did to another, and so we were very wistic about it. And Abe was there with us all the way. I mean he he was a tremendous starter from the start. And so anyway, that's that's a kind of headlines of how we got started. Thank you. Can we talk about some of these the original guest list people you had Aldis Huxley, you had B. F. Skinner, you know, you had Roll May. Can you just tell me some of these people that you met. Can you just go down

the list? Go go tell me the list? Okay? Allus. Huxley, you know, gave us some language. Really I am, because my thought then was, you know, so saturated with the thinking of Sierra Bindo and the punishads in the Vedas, I mean, very influenced by all of that, and on the other hand, by German idealism ficed and Chellian and Hegel.

I mean, so for us to start telling the world that we were going to explore the you know, the the dialectic progress of the of the geist and the staltan Debrvuerstein of you know, Hatel wouldn't have worked as well. But Huxley's essays then on human potentialities. So we use this kind of language to give ourselves an open, blank check, uh that could handle the complexities that were necessarily contained

in this seed, this acorn. There was no tree in there, but okay, but we we needed a kind of open language. So allus Huxley. And then with all this Huxy came Gerald Hurd, you know, his famous friend who you know, they had come over to together from England in the thirties and forties and embraced the vedanta, you know, from in Los Angeles. So I would say that was a

stream all right. Then on the on the psychology side, through a Maslow came Jim Bugenthal if you've read his books, Oh yeah, you could say, very mass spoken, Carl Rodgers, rollo may the whole crowd, and I remember sixty one was when Maslow with Tony Soutach started the both the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and the Association, So they were starting the same time we were. So that group, which who could, contained all sorts of folks, you know, we

don't think of a lot. The UCLA had a group Jim Clark, Tannenbaum, and Zelenski, and a number of them who were at UCLA, and I could go out and hot and name them, some two dozen psychologists, a lot of them in southern California, but across the country then because okay, for various reasons, a huge stream out of Wilhelm Reich. Maslow used to tell people who would ask him, where's the best place to go to learn about Wilhelm Reich?

He would always say, Aslin, because you had Alexander Loewen and bio energetics and the different wings of the Reichean and Neo Reichian stream which flowed into what we call somatics. Now that there's no such sting anything that's purely psychological. Everything is psychophysical. And this was in Wilhelm Reich's You'd have to call it like a volts against Freud, his master saying that you have to deal not only with character armor, but you know the somatic armor, you know

Wilhelm Wright, yep. And so the emphasis on the psychophysical. Now that cohered with the teaching of the philosopher who influenced me, Sierra Bindo, who you couldn't call really an idealist. I would call him an evolutionary panentheist. And he felt that the human body, the human body is implicated in everything we do or say. Right now, I mean the way I gesture, the way we're sitting here looking through

this machine. I mean, this is having influences on us we're hardly aware of so so we are physical creatures. So anyway, the whole Reichean world came strongly into Eescelate. And then from the beginning Gregory Bateson. If you know his work, Gregory is always an influence on us, and he yeah, well, he was profoundly influential in those days on many fronts. Married to Margaret Meade, he you know,

it was a kind of a renaissance man English. His father was William Bateson, who was the key person in the Darwinian synthesis of the turn of the century, and his name Gregory was named after Gregor Mendel, you know, and his father William Bates, and put Darwin together with greg Or Mendel, because Darwin talked about, you know, those of us who are interested in evolutionary theory. I mean it's a fact that it isn't just natural selection. I mean how do you get variation? How do you get

and their mutations? And anyway, greg Or Mendel was with his sweet peas he was a monkey, had come up with the theory of all this. So anyway, Gregory was there and he was an influence and no doubt about it. And then Fritz Pearls, you know Fittz Pearl's work. Yeah, Fritz had a clinical he had a clinical genius. He wasn't a nice guy. He was I heard he was a bit of centric, a bit of centric. Well that's a kind of understatement. He had a streak, I would

call it a clinical genius. He could look at you and see things and point them out whether you wanted to know or not. Yeah, and in the in the

spirit of that age, the exposive spirit of it. And Esslon had this carte blanche to explore things, and he felt that he moved in and we built a house for him, and he lived there for five years, and he was a tremendous influence, and he became famous for gastral therapy, which spread around the world, and he had come up with it and with others back in the forties. So that stream flowed in. Then, of course you had the Eastern Thought Alan Watts, who might iron Dick had

known before we started Estlin. So he came Arnold Toynbee, you know, the famous historian, probably the world's most famous historian then, and he told us about what he considered possibly the greatest cultural event of the twentieth century, Electure, which would be the coming of Eastern thought to the West. So as I could go on and on with this, but there were connections among all these people. But because we were not beholden to any university or any church, journey,

government entity or anything, we were free. My family owned the land. Dick and I didn't pay ourselves. We didn't get a salary of the first five or six years, but we managed better to say, we mismanaged our way forward. We were doing enough things right. The idea was right enough that we stayed afloat. And then the program evolved that would be another story. Scott on how we developed structurally. I don't know if we have time for that today,

but we learned well. We started as a business, became a nonprofit, a five to one C three, and then we evolved and started all sorts of things, and by the late sixties were widely imitated. And what we brought that was novel was a continued, sustained focus on a variety of worldviews and practices that were usually kept apart by bringing them into a single purview in this place. These centers started to spring up, and pretty soon YMCAs

and university extensions and liberal churches. We had a working arrangement for a while with the National Council of Churches. Theologians were coming down there and then. So it was an explosion that occurred in the sixties of opening up perspectives that were new to the United States and new

to many and to Europe. And we were imitated by showing that you could hold them in a single purview, and that our doctrine was no one captures the flag because you give me, you give me a set of gurus, and half of them are going to be I want to take charge, and I do think that in every population. There's so many people designed to be top sergeants, and

they will line up and start discipline. I don't care where the stream starts from the stream of influence, but nevertheless, an open ended exploration into this larger human nature that's pressing to be born in us. I mean, that's what how we talked about and still talk about what we're doing humans. Humankind is waking up to this greater destiny. But it's it has to fly into some pretty fierce headwinds, as you know, and as you talk about in your work. Oh,

for sure, I want to talk about that. I want to pick up on that theme. I just have a quick question about did Eric from ever visit? Did you ever meet him? No, that's a good question. I had read him, but no, we never cross all pals. We never did. And yes, as a bob, because he had influenced me quite a bit in the fifties, and he as as Rollo May and Carl Rodgers and all these came into prominence. He faded away and then passed away,

you know. And so he had preceded that, and there had been a number, you know, a door No, and the the whole Frankfurt school, the anti authoritarianism which had been ignited by in response to Nazism and this astonishing, unbelievable horror that took over Europe with the Nazis. Yeah, so that gave that, that gave a tremendous energy to that generation of thinkers that just preceded the humanistic psychology crowd. So no, they none of them. Most of them had

died by the time we started. What about Karen Horney? Did you ever meet her? No? These are these are good questions. No, I never did. I I had read her, you know, all through the fifties. I had read her. They proceed Erica, they proceeded, and again they Abe and all his cohorts and fitz Pearls, and all of them were younger, you know, and they they grown up to some extent with those Kurt Goldstein, you know, who influenced Abe. You know, had this term of self actualization. A've got

that from Kurt Goldstein. But see they were the older, older psychologists. Yeah, yeah, No, of course, of course, how did we get Big Barton? No, go on, I just said, of course, no, I just said, of course, that's it. Good. How did be of Skinner come? Well, that was through George Leonard and George and I became soulmates. In nineteen sixty five, he was the West Coast editor for Look Magazine, and in those days, Look Magazine and Life Magazine were the you know, the most prominent big they were the

billage newspapers. If he thought of America as a village. And he was very, very active in the civil rights movement. And we started a program pretty easy black white encounter groups as Transcendence or transcendent Experience. I think, you know, we could and those were amazing. I heard about the sixties, well, yeah, I mean Chris Cobbs was one of the principals with

George and Price. Was a black psychiatrist, psychoanalytically trade and wrote a book called Black Rage, which takes you'd have to call it a neo Freudian look at the whole black white thing. And he's it's too bad people don't read him anymore. But so he was central in this,

and so that was a big deal for us. Well, I do think it's important to talk about this a little bit because you know, there's a lot of obviously a lot of racial tensions that still exist today in America, and I don't see black whiteing counter groups as a as a thing anymore. Like what happened to them? What happened to them? Well, okay, for one thing, we it morphed. I mean, it went on. At its height, it was

about a four year creative set of programs. We you know, some of the the black leaders, my friend Mike Brown, you know, involved with sheriffs, sheriffs postseason, you know, the chefs and there, and dealing with these issues. You could say, I mean, it's the same basic issues that we had with Black Lives matter. It's but an immense amount of

humor and laughter. If you can imagine at the end of the very first groups in nineteen sixty seven, black and white folks, men and women together in those hot tubs, so you'd have, you know, with no you know, in the nude and here in you couldn't even be in the same swimming pool. In the South, black were kept out of white swimming pools. And of course when you get a thing like that going, you can't imagine the

humor and the fun we had. I had, and you know everybody tends to in those days fall in love with each other and very uninhibited. But in some ways a richer language, because okay, let's face it. I mean, we were a middle upper middle class outfit, both whites and blacks, and we learned a lot about class issues in the black community as well as you know, racial issues between blacks and whites. And Andy Young you know,

into whose arms. Martin Luther King Phil when he was shot, started coming down to Asland in those years with his wife, and he became friends. He was a wonderful friend for us because he said that we had a stealth revolution going, a sneaking revolution, and he but anyway, George Leonard Price Cobs and then so we got ourselves connected to what

I would say, this Southern Leadership Conference, not directly. John maguire had been one of the Freedom writers and was close to John Lewis and the younger you know, the younger members of the s The s A said that is the gold standard for moral political leadership what they represented, and of course it really, uh, it was lively as hell.

But then it tapered off, and it did some of the people involved did get involved in what was then eventually got swallowed up in diversity training in corporations and so then you then we were having by then, you know, the feminist revolution, the gay revolution, so diversity swallowed up the black white emphasis, so pretty soon as we have now we have a diverse city of diversity, and that

has complicated the situation. And then you get into the sexual identity thing and etc. So we, like everybody, have had our problems with that, and you could have conflicts within revolutions. This revolution threatens this revolution. I mean, we could have a program on that, a discussion of that, and that complexity of liberating consciousness raising activities can become

a tower of Babbel. And we've had to constantly exercise traffic control in the different impulses and the revolutionary impulses. You know, revolutionaries don't always get along. I mean, every revolutionary movement has a powerful centrifugal force and a tendency to fragment. So anyway that that's been in operation of Esselon two, but those were it was a very rich period there with our black white and counter groups, and but it's has not been a central focus. And then

you know, we've had many other things. We as you probably know, we got very involved with what's become called now Track two diplomacy, citizen diplomacy, with the Russians, and you know, during the Cold War years we were very active in Russia. And you know, we were probably one of the only places on earth where KGB and CIA guys were together in those hot tubs, just like blacks and whites. I love it. I love it, yes, And you know, so again we had a free place where

you could explore these things. And we you know, ended up Eslin sponsoring Boris Yeltson on his first trip over here and to the States when he flipped and saw the communism wasn't working, etc. So we am So what I want to say is that these different causes have taken hold of Eslin and we've become a catalyst for a lot of stuff that's happened in them. So Essen's been a hard place to a pigeonhole and describe even

and for some people just extremely difficult to understand. But it's difficult for people to understand who haven't been there. I saw a documentary about Esslin. I don't know if you are aware that that one part of the documentary was made, and it's just the people that who had spoke, who had visited Essline just spoke with such depth of emotion. They said that. You know, some of them described seeing like orbs, meditating on the ocean and seeing these little

did you ever see orbs? No, I never saw the orbs. It's you know, it's not unique just to Esslin. There that big surtcast scott If you've been there, I mean, you know, it's one hundred miles long and it's some steepest cliffs in the world that get up to that three thousand feet you know. I mean you can go down to Tierra del Fuego in a few places, but it's where the continent is like a sled. As it moves west and the rock it turns up vertical. What

is horizontal becomes vertical. In other words, you and it's so that highway along there, it it pushes you into nature and its wildest, you know, with these cliffs and these big waves and the winds. I mean it. You know, there are places in the world like this. You go up in the Scottish Highlands or maybe out to the west of Ireland. I mean, you can no wonder. People see the wee people and people get into oldered states

on our property. There's no doubt about it. It has a something about it that induces it, including this thing of seeing lights and so a lore has developed there. But the combination of that geography with the intentions and the practices of Esslin produce a field effect that and people feel it who come down there. It's there's no doubt about it. So it's a fortunate place to be able to explore into the undiscovered country. You know. It's yeah,

the it's still it's still part of popular culture. Did you watch The mad Men finale? Al any chance that's eessellin right, that's excellent. Well, if they wanted to film it, so they they build a place just down the highway. I actually did not know they were doing that. Uh, but are then CEO said you can't film here. Well, you know people who have wanted to film on the property. But yeah, that was that was supposedly Esslin. Yeah. Yeah, Don Draper is meditating. It's very funny. So it's wonderful.

Can you can you introduce my audience a little bit too, Integral transformative practice or ITP. I think my audience would absolutely love to learn a little bit more about it. Well,

George Landard and I started it. It was actually George's idea and I'd been writing my most ambitious book, The Future of the Body, and he had and I had been, you know, thinkas thieves since sixty nineteen sixty five when he when he became president of vessel and and was very active, and he was still the West Coast editor of Book magazine. And he through our friendship and through the whole influence of the place, first he took up ike do. He became a fifth degree black belt. He

became one of the leaders in the American martial arts. Okay, and as I was writing this book, he he came to think, let's try to start a program to anchor these a practice body, mind, heart and soul long term for people who were householders. And so when the book was published, we started the project with an experimental group. We actually did what ab Maslow used to call he that we need always in these things something he called it pre scientific to begin to study the results is

it working. And we did that for two years and published a book called The Life We Are Given, which describes the experiment and gives the rationale and so forth. And that's resulted in ah, thank you, this is my copy. It's my copy, my personal copy, with lots of notes. Okay, well, very well, thanks for showing it. It's still going. This was our first experiment was at ninety two, so it was twenty nine years later and people can go to

there's a website and just ITP International Transformative Practice. So it is a it's a community of practice of there are groups, you know, in different places, a few in Europe, and we're involved now with research studies uh Pam Kramer, Pamela Kramer is the number one spark plug uh Christina Grotte is the chairman of the board. It's a five O one C three and it supports UH it's a nonprofit supporting long term transformative practice. And the integral is body, mind,

heart and soul. It's what's the course was central to ESSL. What's this? What's what's the soul? What is that? How's that different from the heart? Yeah? Okay, those both words are quite fluid and are used in countless ways. They

refer to sets of experiences that overlap. But the shorthand way to say what heart would stand for in our you know, the practice of it t P is it's everything that deals with motion, roughly, you could say, with the territory of psychoanalysis, Jungian analysis, psychosynthesis of Robert acid Jolie. If you want to turn to the chakra systems, that it's the chakras up to let's say, the higher chakra's soul, would would refer to those territories of transcendence which defy

the laws of physical universe as they're now construed. It's beyond Newton, It's beyond this reductionistic materialism, into that place where you were, where ecstasy is possible and where you need where the great mystics come into contact with today's secular psychologists. Jung kind of tiptoed into the edges of this territory. A Maslow was really entering into it when he died in his sixties, Saul. So we're using it, you know, in the broadest sense there that it's beyond

the purview of mainstream secular humanism. It's saying that secular humanism, which carries so many good things, has come to deny incredible territories of human experience. It just has in our universities. So for example, you can talk about parapsychical research, parapsychology, telepathy, clairvoyance,

and so forth. But well, hypnosis can be viewed through a mainstream secular humanist, reductionist view if you study the history of misprism, if you go back to the early well back to the late eighteenth entry with Mesmer himself, who was reductionist. He was a physicalist. He thought there was a fluid. You know, he was you know everybody.

The god of all gods was Isaac Newton. I mean, this is the stupendous success of the principia of Newton's I mean it was such a stupendous success, and it coming with the revolt of modernism against all the superstitions of the Middle Ages and religion generally, so that when these phenomena that were released by Mesmerism were reduced. But then you had this breakout among certain strands of Mesmerism

and hypnosis. That word hypnosis is in a way, I mean that was you know, James Braid was an Englishman and British empiricism put a lid on a lot of this. This is what if you read William Blake, you know Newton's Sleep. Okay, so it was kind of captured by redictionistic, physicalistic paradigms, but meanwhile opened a lot of people up into these very far out experiences. So you know, we're cutting a lot of ground fast here, but I'm through.

But you could say all of it led through what the Buddhist would call the middle worlds of subtle bodies and and psychic powers into the further regions of ecstatic experience. We're Saint John of the Cross Plots, the great Eastern and Western philosophers who talked about this greater human nature that is through which we learn who we really are and one with the divine I mean, and so okay, so all of that is still working itself out in among us modern people, and it's it's a work in progress.

And this is one of the things. This was at the very core of why I started Estlin, where we could explore without being the prisoners of mainstream universities or churches, where we could go beyond and own what is our deepest birthright? And and so forth. So what's our deepest birth right? Well, our birthright is to come in to this greater nature from which we came in the first place. See, this is what I believe totally. You know, from this Ananda,

let's say, in the upanashats Ananda self existent delight. Okay, from this ananda. All these creatures were born in this ananda. All these creatures live and die. Uh to all into this ananda, all these creatures will rise. And it's it's a view that I mean, Neoplatonism certainly reflects that Plato. It's you know, it's haunted the Western inquiry and imagination. But it's always been in tension with Well, this gets

us very far afield. I mean, it gets us intent into well, you know, our friend John Clees of money Python fame, he's been a supporter of ours in the past, and Choven this guy, and he, you know, as he says, religion is basically one percent our quest for the divine and crowd control. So our whole Judeo Christian heritage is concerned with us being good citizens, and it's given us the great ethical gifts, and it's given us the Crusades, and it's given us degrees of bigotry, some of the

cruelest act in humankind. So it's our heritage. Religious heritage has given us wonders and given us cruelties. And modern people are trying to sort it out, and there's a whole spectrum of approaches and it's a work in progress. And I mean that's what Estan's were it's going well, maybe that's that's enough. Well, it's certainly not enough. But I could listened to you talk about this all day, of course, but I'm wondering, like, so, do you do you have it sounds like you have hope for humanity?

You know, do you still have hope even with all the craziness and divisions we see in the world today? You know, you've lived, You've lived through a lot. Where do you see humans going right now? Yeah? Okay, well, Scott, that's you know, that's uh that there's no tougher question. It's I know, it's yeah, okay, all right, from where I said, my life has taught me okay, ethically, okay, ethically, I'm an existentialist. In other words, it's up to us.

I don't think it's all predetermined, you know, I am. This is a the cosmos, the the cosmic unfoldment I have to turn to, like the Eastern idea of the Leela. It's a game, but it ain't Titaly wins. Yeah, it's that's a sough one. And okay, again, if we're going to have a talk like this, the problem of evil. Why it's that why I end up? I end up where the Buddha did. Look, I couldn't give a lot of rational answers of why. But if I say simply that it's we're here to play this game, it's not

fully satisfying. So what can we do? We can live into these domains where suddenly, wow, there's a way through, and then boil it down into our common life. They're countless ways to help one another. And I'm glad I was an acolyte, you know, in the Episcopal Church. I

appreciate that. But when I look at the Crusades, you know, I look at the slaughter, the Christian slaughter of Jews, even though Jesus Jewish, the founder of Christianity, happened to be Jewish, And so now we're slaughtering Christians, are slaughtering Jewish. I mean, the madness, human madness. And you know, when it comes to the this and now, what are our chances? Well, those of us, you know, we're quite involved in this whole thing. Beg pardon, I'm just I just want to

know if you have hope. I just want to know if you have hope. Oh no, Scott. You know, absolutely I have hope. I mean, I'm putting my money on this, I mean, and absolutely, I mean there's a ton of reasons a hope. But after you've been in the debate, the thousand debates that I have, I'm ninety. There are an awful lot of smart people who's fifty to fifty, and there are a lot of smart people are basically neolistic,

and they teach it places like Harvard and Stanford. They you know, so it's not easily apparent to everybody that we have hope. But I definitely have hope. But now let's say, if I'm making bets, we are all right, what about this climate situation, we could still have a nuclear accident. We're at you know, we're quite involved. My wife, Dulcie is the you know, start of this institute attract to Diplomacy, and their sponsoring a conference next month on

the third bomb. You know that you've heard this phrase, the third atomic bomb, and you know we've had two megaton bombs drop accidentally on the US, you know, and in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, thirteen kiloton a megaton bomb would be like five or six hundred or a thousand Hiroshima's dropping and two fallen out on you know, by accident and

fortunately didn't go off. But there's a lot of people think now that with the deterioration of Russian and American relations here we came together with the end of the Cold War and now we've gone apart, and we've always, always, always, you know, Russia and America. Why can't we finally become true comrades and get on top of this situation. But there are a lot of things, and it's I blame both countries. I mean, they've and we have failed. And I tell you, if you had two or three are

those five mega ton bombs go off? Wow? I've spent so much time in this world, Scott, so I can't say a lotti that just because we have this great vision of heaven and Earth and that we believe is I totally believe that this greater human nature is pressing to be born on us, that we'll make it on this planet. It might happen on another planet, but we have got to cross this line. Ora a Bindo, my teacher, said, there's some evolution in the ignorance and evolution in the knowledge.

We haven't crossed the line into the evolution, in the in the knowledge, and it's time for a big upgrade of Nietzsche and he has really been squashed in the modern academy of Jeff Kreipel. Who is is? You know? I wrote the main biography of Esselyn and was our chairman, and h a tremendous visionary and his new book on the super humanities, it's a call for the humanities to embrace this higher life. Abe Masow had been thrilled with what he's writing, and he his his book is going

to be a bomb shell when it comes out. It's how we fall into a sleep of prisoners, you know, how we coast into a kind of guilted gilded reductionism, and how we turn away from this big vision in a hundred ways. It's amazing. It's so we've got ways to go. I'm filled with hope. But when it comes to predictions, I finally have to say, it's up to us. We just got to keep working and doing our best. I mean, that's where I that's where I end up.

But to say that it's predetermined, I don't think. So it's a you know, I have to say, when we get into these conversations, you know, Scott, you know, did you ever read The Brothers Karamazov Dostoyevsky. Everybody should read it. But Ivan Karamazov, you know, the brother of Alyosha was the skeptic with his saintly brother and Alyosha, I will give you ten cents for your God that can allow

the death of an innocent child. And he tells this story of you know, the savage killing of this innocent child. And then he has a dream and in the dream, Ivan Karamazov hears the voice of all voices telling him you can understand, but to do that, you're going to

have to climb up this hill for one billionaeres. And so he refuses, and he lays down, and he raised them for a billion years and then he says, well, I've got a client, and he starts climbing and he gets to the top and in two seconds he understands, Now, what does that tell you? I mean, that is our situation.

We have to work. This is a really deeply personal question and it's one of which I'm feeling very emotional asking you, I would like to know how I personally can carry on the human potential movement, because it's become a core mission of my own life and to be able to ask you this question, one of the ones who's spearheaded founded the whole human potential movement. It's such a poignant opportunity for me to ask you this question. So how can I personally devote the rest of my

life to carrying on the human potential movement? And as well as others who are interested? Well, Scott, I mean I would say, keep doing and what you're doing, keep pushing the envelope, stick with it, uh, and you will be rewarded in ways you don't even anticipate. Uh. I promise you that, Uh, keep going. And you you do attempt to nurture and collate both theory and practice, vision and practice and science. It's a necessary it's a necessary marriage. I mean, we need both, and I too, And I

do think you have high regard for what research. You know, we we think of it t P and both and es and having these sometimes I say, well, therefore pegs on the and the foundation. Therefore, Uh, okay, theory, vision and so forth, practice research and then the cultivation of some sort of institutional support for it. How do you make it work down here on the earthplane? You know,

it's uh, that's a tough one. But you certainly you know your your you are pushing ahead on in your writing and in your ah uh support for a vision that's ak in the best empirical disclosures we have, you know, best evidence. And to put that combination then practice. What can you do in practice? So I would say to you, just keep going and to keep owning that combination of vision, practice, research that you uh uh, that you represent, that you,

that you're you're your embodying. Keep going, brother, just kee, keeping going. I'm gonna I'm gonna keep going towards my metanormal experiences. As as you put it, metaanormal. I love it. Extraordinary human potential that we're all capable of. Thank you for uh for just inspiring so many people in your life and and doing such amazing, amazing work showing people greater possibilities for human eature. Thanks Scott, I'd bress you too. Don't miss the psychology podcast After Party over on the

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