On the Edge of the Future

Esalen and the Evolution of American Culture

Bibliographic Data

ID10047716
AuthorsShane Pike (0000-0002-9199-712X, California State University, Chico, corresponding author), S M Pike
Year2006
Volume93
Issue2
Pages611-612
Publication date2006-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/4486383
OpenAlexW2328348221
LanguageEN
Citations received6

Considering its formative role in promoting alternative spiritual and holistic healing trends since the 1960s, Esalen has garnered little scholarly attention. The essays in this book go a long way toward giving Esalen its due as an important site of religious and therapeutical experimentation and coalescence in twentieth-century America. The essays are mostly the result of a conference held at Esalen in 2003, and they are shaped by that context. Many of the authors emphasize the ground-breaking role Esalen played in the melding of body, mind, and spirit during an era when religion and physical healing were usually clearly demarcated, each within its own institutional boundaries. Long before sociologists identified the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries as periods of spiritual seeking, Esalen had institutionalized that approach to religious knowledge and experience. Even in the conservative evangelical imagination, as Glenn W. Shuck points out in his contribution, “Satan's Hot Springs,” Esalen has been a potent symbol of humanistic, non-institutionalized spirituality

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Context (archaeology · Environmental ethics · Formative assessment · Humanism · Pedagogy · Political science · Sociology · Spiritual practice · Spirituality · Symbol (formal · History · Law · Paranormal Experiences and Beliefs · Philosophy · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

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