In addition, Clint Eastwood is planning to direct the movie version of "Golf in the Kingdom" (Viking), Mr. Murphy's metaphysical novel ahout a golf coach who views the sport as a door into The Higher Self.
By the 1970's, with Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, Jerry Brown and Joan Baez, Esalen's reputation became such that corporations sent employees for workshops. Mr. Murphy never imposed himself or any one dogma on the place, discouraging the cult atmosphere associated with other charismatic leaders of the day, like Werner Erhard, the EST founder, and the Rev. Jim Jones, who led followers to mass suicide in 1978.
Sarfatti News Flash: Night Line just did an expose on a clone of Werner Erhard who body-snatched 4,000 employees of the FAA responsible for airline safety. What other government agencies have been infected by authoritarian cult memes spawned at Esalen? Oh, well, mistakes happen! :-)
In the 1980's, long after he had moved away to concentrate on writing, Mr. Murphy set up the Soviet-American Exchange Program at Esalen to help ``demystify the Soviets.'' He assembled leading thinkers for seminars, like Boris Yeltsin on his first United States visit, in 1989.
Sarfatti Humorous Note: As the planet gets more interconnected it becomes more nonlinear and chaotic amplifying small perturbations. Esalen's much vaunted "Hot Tub Diplomacy" is a good example of a small perturbation getting amplified to stupendous geopolitical proportions. It shows, as Our Once and Future Fuhrer, Werner Erhard, repeatedly told his adoring Estoids, how "to make a difference"! Why did Werner choose Moscow for his exile? He claims to be influential in Yeltsin's government and told Larry King that he will return to the USA to clear his name from a dastardly "Scientology" frameup. Do the pods stir again? Is Werner our new Nixon? :-)
``The New Age literature is about beginnings,'' he says. ``But the great task of the New Age is to create a comprehensive vision and adequate practices.''
Sarfatti Note:We, in the PCRG, have created the "comprehensive vision" it's called the "New Physics" in which the universe is created from the future, by the future, and for the future - and this is the "Meaning of the Universe" in the "Final Secret of the Superluminati".
To that end, he and Mr. Leonard, his colleague, have arranged the financing for a ``transformative-practice center'' in Marin County. With backing from a chain of San Francisco Bay-area health clubs, it would be a kind of maintenance center for the metaphysically prone. Mr. Murphy describes it as a cross between a health club, a community center and an ashram, where no Walkmans would be allowed and everyone would be required to meditate before using the Nautilus equipment.
``I look around and see a wilderness of broken hearts out there,'' says Mr. Murphy, recently separated from his wife of 23 years, with whom he has a 10-year-old son. ``But if we knew the joy we could find by living fully in our minds and bodies, and if we had a culture that encouraged us in contemplative practices, we wouldn't need Prozac. The Ramakrishna said that the winds of grace are always blowing, but you've got to raise the sail.''
Later in the day, a fierce wind is blowing, and the sail of a 40-foot sloop is raised. Mr. Murphy is out with some friends on the San Francisco Bay. ``We're natural voyagers of body and spirit,'' says Mr. Murphy, who raises his head to the sky, yells a thank you to God for the beauty of the day. He's big on the value of howling into the wind.
It's one of his typically exuberant gatherings, and the spiritual-socio-political wheels are spinning. A. Lawrence Chickering, an economist, is on board, as is James Ogilvy, whose Global Business Network helps develop `alternative scenarios' for profit-making.
Synchronicity strikes again!