Brandy- Mental Manipulation — Occult Research Institute

Esalen Institute 1962

About Esalen: History, Mission, Vision, and Leadership | Esalen

“The creation of Esalen Institute was a rare kind of kismet, one that attracted thinkers such as Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, Abraham Maslow, Joseph Campbell and Paul Tillich”

The roots of Esalen run through every notorious name involved in the 1960’s counterculture, psychedelic movement, & the CIA’s MK Ultra. Founders Michael Murphy and Dick Price were heavily influenced by those making their legacy within psychology history. Michael Murphy began the Human Potential Movement along with George Leonard, who served as President of Esalen, past president of Association for Humanistic Psychology, and co-founder of Integral Transformative Practice International.

Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell & Paul Tillich

Moving into the Human Potential Movement, you have Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, and Paul Tillich who tie together the beginning of Russian Jewish Psychologists merging with the psychedelic MK Ultra counterculture.

Born an only child in London, Watts was sent to an Oxfordshire prep school in his early teens. ‘A school for aristocrats,’ Watts said, ‘attended by relatives of the royal family, of the imperial House of Russia, of the Rajas of India, and sons of industrial tycoons. After leaving The Kings School, he spent time at a UK Buddhist lodge where he studied under a Serbian philosopher by the name of Dimitrije Mitrinović. “Mitrinović was himself influenced by Peter Demianovich Ouspensky, G. I. Gurdjieff, and the varied psychoanalytical schools of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Alfred Adler.” While touring Europe, with his father, in 1958, Watts met Carl Jung and the German psychotherapist Karlfried Graf Dürckheim, who, “after obtaining a doctorate in psychology, became an avid supporter of the Nazi Party.”

In this same year, Watts began to experiment with psychedelic drugs, starting first with mescaline and then LSD. Watts was given mescaline by Oscar Janiger, “a University of California Irvine psychiatrist and psychotherapist, known for his LSD research, which lasted from 1954 to 1962, and for having introduced LSD to Cary Grant and Aldous Huxley, who became the guiding figure behind MK-Ultra.” During Watts second marriage, he was lucky to meet Joseph Campbell, who not only became a lifelong friend but also helped him obtain a grant from the Bollingen Foundation.

The Bollingen Foundation, established in 1945, is named after Bollingen Tower, Carl Jung's country home. Funding for the Bollingen Foundation was provided by Paul Mellon (co-heir to the Mellon Financial Corp) & Mary Conover Mellon. Mary Conover Mellon is mother to Catherine Mellon who is John Warner IV’s mother. Paul Mellon is the son of Andrew Mellon, who is the son of Thomas Mellon, whose 2nd son, John Ross Mellon, his son, William Larimer Mellon is Christopher Mellons’ great grandfather.

“Watts and his new wife traveled to San Francisco, where Frederic Spiegelberg was then founding the American Academy of Asian Studies. Among its students were poet Gary Snyder, the later Yoga guru Richard Hittleman, and the two founders of the Esalen Institute, Michael Murphy, and Richard Price.” Then, in 1967, “he brought together the ecologist Gary Snyder, Timothy Leary, author of The Psychedelic Experience, and the pedophile beat poet Allen Ginsberg at the so-called Houseboat Summit.”

From the Library of Consciousness, the transcript for the “conversation between Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder on the problem of whether to “drop out or take over,” conducted on Alan Watts’ houseboat in 1967” can be found at The Houseboat Summit - Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder (organism.earth) and stock images can be found at Alan watts timothy leary ginsberg Black and White Stock Photos & Images - Alamy.

Aldous Huxley is born from an influential family of which one member was knighted and Huxley, himself, turning down knighthood in 1959. Huxley’s father was an avid supporter of Charles Darwin, and his step niece married the great grandson of Darwin. Huxley was strongly influenced by F. Matthias Alexander, whose wife founded the Walden School and assisted Alexander in setting up a practice, including recruiting influential pupils such as Arthur M. Reis and Waldo Frank. Waldo Frank was considered a political radical and “broke with the Communist Party, USA in 1937 over its treatment of exiled Soviet leader Leon Trotsky, whom Frank met in Mexico in January of that year.”

As we learned above, Aldous also experimented with LSD via Oscar Janiger, who was a key figure behind MKUltra. Aldous initiated his first psychedelic experience by contacting a British psychiatrist who was working at a Canadian institution. Huxley returned to the US, along with Dr. Humphry Osmond, who was brought in by Allen Dulles to play a prominent role in MK-Ultra. MKUltra truly began in 1952, the year Aldous Huxley returned to the United States.

After being diagnosed with cancer in 1960, Huxley wrote Island, and gave lectures on "Human Potentialities" both at the UCSF Medical Center and at the Esalen Institute. These lectures were fundamental to the beginning of the Human Potential Movement.

Most known for his “Hero’s Journey”, he was also a professor at Sarah Lawrence College, and has been summarized by his own often repeated phrase: "Follow your bliss." He gained recognition in Hollywood when George Lucas credited Campbell's work as influencing his Star Wars saga.

Campbell was a member of the Eranos Circle and who introduced Watts to the Bollingen Foundation funded by the Mellon family. The Eranos Circle was formed in 1933 as the study of psychology, religion, philosophy and spirituality which met annually in Ascona Switzerland.

Lecturers of the Eranos Circle conferences were Leo Baeck, Carl Jung, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Erwin Rousselle, Thomas Mann, Alfred Adler, Paul Dahlke, Leo Frobenius, Leopold Ziegler, Max Scheler, Ernst Troeltsch, Rabindranath Tagore, and, from the Stefan George circle, Rudolf Kassner and Oskar A.H. Schmitz. A member of the first Eranos conference was Friedrich Heiler, who was in contact with occultist Arnoldo Krumm-Heller, founder of the Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua, member of the OTO, and knew Aleister Crowley and others. Heiler was also patriarch of the Gnostic Catholic Church, the ecclesiastical arm of the OTO.

In May 1974, a “Stanford Research Institute study titled “Changing Images of Man.” was prepared by a team that included Margaret Mead, B. F. Skinner, Ervin Laszlo and Sir Geoffrey Vickers of British intelligence. Others involved in this project included Carl Rogers, Ralph Metzner, Joseph Campbell, and Harman’s partner at IFAS, James Fadiman. The stated aim of the study was to change the image of mankind from that of industrial progress to one of “spiritualism.” The report stressed the importance of the United States in promoting Masonic ideals, effectively creating the ideal Masonic state.”

“Joseph Campbell was an important figure at the Esalen Institute, which became a center for the development of new psychotherapeutic techniques during the 1970s and 1980s. Campbell helped Mary Mellon, the original sponsor of the Eranos conferences, found Bollingen Series of books on psychology, anthropology and myth.”

Upon Campbells’ death, “600 former students, colleagues and other people whose lives he touched - people like Jacqueline Onassis, Mr. Moyers, the ''Star Wars'' creator George Lucas, Laurence Rockefeller and Joan Konner, dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism - gathered on the campus here to remember Mr. Campbell and to try to articulate what made him so special.”

Tillich is a German philosopher who taught at the Union Theological Seminary after immigrating to the US. This is the same Union Theological Seminary which both Carl Rogers and Rollo May graduated. While serving as a Professor of Theology at the University of Marburg, Tillich met Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher.

“In April 1933, Heidegger was elected as rector at the University of Freiburg and was widely criticized for his membership and support for the Nazi Party during his time as rector.”

Tillich was also a member of the Eranos Circle conferences and has essays published in the Eranos Yearbooks found here: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks | Princeton University Press. Teachers of the German Conservative Revolution and the Eranos conferences, such as Rudolf Otto, Paul Tillich, Martin Heidegger, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell taught Frederic Spiegelberg who co-founded the American Academy of Asian Studies along with Alan Watts.

“As explained by Hans Thomas Hakl in Eranos: An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, “Spiegelberg not only lectured at Esalen, as also did the Eranos speaker Paul Tillich, the historian Arnold Toynbee or the parapsychologist J.B. Rhine, but he also steered Esalen’s founder, Michael Murphy, on to the spiritual path that would lead him to Esalen.”

The Humanistic Psychology movement

“The humanistic psychology movement, formally established in 1962, sought to address broad questions of individual identity, expression, meaning and growth that had been largely neglected by post-war American cultural institutions in general and by the discipline of psychology in particular.”

Founders of the Humanistic Psychology Movement were Abraham Maslow, Gordon Allport, Rollo May and Carl Rogers drew on the work of William James’ “radical empiricism”. Let us look into each of the founders to travel back through the timeline that would become the inspiration and establishment of the Esalen Institute.

Born the son of Russian- Jewish parents who immigrated to New York in 1908, Maslow described himself as “neurotic, in part to the prejudice he experienced owning his Jewish appearance”.

Maslow not only influenced the foundation of programs at Esalen but took part in the programs. “The tubs were focal point of the Esalen Institute. Maslow soaked there, along with almost every other important humanistic psychologist, he also gave a lecture there in 1966, titled Motivations of Self-Actualized People.

Abraham Maslow's 1966 Lecture at Esalen: Motivations of Self-Actualized People

Maslow was very at home at Esalen and described Michael Murphy as “the son I never had . . . ”. Maslow is known for his hierarchy of needs, but we will be focusing on another psychologist under which three of the four studied, Alfred Adler.

Meeting Sigmund Freud had a significant influence on Allport, the same Freud who was a considerable influence for The Tavistock Institute along with his daughter, Ann Freud. Allport studied under Hugo Munsterberg , the father of Industrial Psychology and Film Theory – “that cinema must have its own method for fundamentally changing reality, that the manner in which close-ups bring objects into the center of awareness is similar to the way our own acts of attention bring objects into the center of consciousness, and that the manner in which flashbacks retrieve information about the past or postulated past is similar to the manner in which our memory retrieves information about the past” , “film is a unique medium because it speaks the language of the mind” and also contributed to forensic psychology.

However, Freud made the largest influence on Allport: “For him Freud was this huge personality that made him awestruck. It was that meeting with Freud that marked the initial thrust towards developing his own theory of personality – a theory that is very different from the psychoanalytic perspective. In this respect, Allport’s trait approach to personality, in some way or the other, has a connection with Freudian psychoanalysis..”

Rollo May was influenced by his friend and teacher, Paul Tillich, who, along with May, was an early leader at the Esalen Institute. Paul Tillich taught at German universities before immigrating to the US and considered himself a Christian socialist and identified with socialist ideals, as well as a Lutheran Theologian. Tillich also contributed to pamphlets encouraging Christian leaders to enter the socialist movement.

May created Existential Psychology / Psychotherapy (life has no predetermined or innate meaning; individuals use free will to create identity & sense of being), Anxiety Theory (anxiety is essential to the human condition). May also studied art in Poland before graduating with a divinity degree in 1938 from Union Theological Seminary. “May suggested that sometimes individuals might reasonably oppose the standards or morality of their society, however, only when an individual is living an authentic life should their opinions be valid” and is the second of the three to have studied under Alfred Adler.

Carl Rogers was raised in strict religious home, was an altar boy at the vicarage of Jimpley and his father was a congregationalist. Like Rollo May, he attended the Union Theological Seminary but left after 2 years. In 1922 he went to Bejing China for international Christian conference and in 1926 he attended Teachers College, Columbia University. Rogers graduated with a masters in 1927 and a PhD in 1931. There are many interesting graduates of Teachers College at Columbia University, and I am sure it deserves its own rabbit hole.

Rogers developed Person centered psychotherapy and is the third to have studied under Alfred Adler, from 1927 to 1928 when Rogers was an intern at the now defunct Institute for Child Guidance in New York City.

Born into a Jewish family, Adler would establish Individual Psychology, the Inferiority Complex, the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Adler was initially a colleague of Sigmund Freud and helped establish psychoanalysis and influenced other important psychologists and psychoanalysts, including Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Karen Horney, Rollo May, Erich Fromm, and Albert Ellis.

Adler had converted to Christianity, his Jewish heritage led to the Nazis closing down his clinics during the 1930s, where he sought to combat shame and alienation and encourage concern for the common good — a psychological application of his socialist values.

Adlers wife, Raissa Epstein, was a Russian political activist, a committed Trotskyist, and her politics no doubt served as the foundation for much of Adler’s political thought. The Adlers were also regulars at the Vienna Café along with other notable names with whom they met. Regulars at the Vienna café central include Leon Trotsky, Peter Altenberg, Theodor Herzl, Alfred Adler, Vladimir Lenin, and Egon Friedell. During this time in 1913, Adolf Hitler, Leon Trotsky, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler and Joseph Stalin all lived in Vienna.
Alfred Adler was also a part of the Eranos Circle Conferences.

Leon Trotsky was born to a wealthy Jewish family within the Russian Empire (current Ukraine) and considered a Russian revolutionary, a soviet politician, journalist, Marxist, and a Leninist. Trotskys’ interpretation of Marxism is referred to as Troskyism and is based on the theory of permanent revolution. Trotsky was part of both the Bolshevik party and the Russian revolution and exiled three separate times in his life.

His first exile is when he met Lenin, having escaped the 1898 exile to Siberia and found his way to London in 1902. Meeting with Vladimir Lenin, he and Trostky, along with Georgi Plekhanov (Marxist, founder of the social-democratic movement) and Julius Martov (leader of the Menshaviks faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party co-founded by the Jewish Bund ), became editors and writers of a paper they called Iskra. Trotsky returned to Russia in 1905 and began working with the Bolsheviks as well as the Menshaviks.

While in his second exile to Siberia, Trotsky escaped back to London and eventually moved to Vienna in 1907. “For the next seven years, he often took part in the activities of the Austrian Social Democratic Party and, occasionally, of the German Social Democratic Party.” During this time in Vienna, he became a regular at the Café Central along with Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Adler, Freud, and Franz Ferdinand. Trotsky became close friends with Adolph Joffe during this time. Adolph Joffe complained of nervous issues and was being psychoanalyzed by Alfred Adler. It was through Adolph Joffe that Trotsky was introduced to Alfred Adler and psychoanalysis. A substantial portion of Adlers’ supporters, to include his wife, were avid socialists. Adlers’ wife was “an intimate friend of Russian revolutionaries; Trotsky and Joffe constantly frequented her house.”

In 1915, Trotsky moved to Paris where he was the editor of an internationalist socialist newspaper. He would attend the Zimmerwald Conference, an anti-war socialist party, in Switzerland where he would advocate a middle ground between the Second (socialist international) and Third International (communist international). Trotskys’ proposal was adopted by the conference and by Lenin, who first opposed, wanted to “avoid a split among anti-war socialists.” Afterward, in 1916, Trotsky was deported from France and taken to Spain. Opposition by Spanish authorities lead to Trotsky being deported to New York City in 1917, where he would only stay a few months before boarding a ship that was intercepted by the British Naval Officials. “By the end of 1917, Trotsky was unquestionably the second man in the Bolshevik Party after Lenin.”

Other food for thought:

“Michael Aquino Says MindWar Came from Esalen’s Transformation Project and the Russians…

Aquino revealed here for the first time that Esalen founder Michael Murphy introduced him to Steve Donovan, who shared his para-psychology research from the Russians. Esalen spin-off the Transformation Project was the foundation of MindWar and the subsequent book.”

Michael Aquino Says MindWar Came from Esalen’s Transformation Project and the Russians - Revolution Television