Esoteric Renaissance, Esalen Center for Theory & Research

The Esoteric Renaissance
A Five-Year Conference Series at Esalen

Overview by Frank Poletti

Below is a brief overview of the background and goals for CTR's conference series called the Esoteric Renaissance. If you would prefer to go directly to the conference summaries: click here for the 2004 summary, click here for the 2005 summary, or click here for the 2006 summary.

The Dawn of Esoteric Studies in Modern Academia

The word "esotericism" refers to the inner, hidden side of humanity's spiritual and cultural life. Throughout the ages, the esoteric quest for truth and personal illumination has been approached not by mere belief (faith), nor by logical argument (reason), but by means of gnosis—the direct and unmediated apprehension of reality, which can be realized in vision, dream, intuition, and ecstatic states. In a broad sense, what we today call mystical or contemplative experience has been called "esotericism" in the past.

Until only recently the significant influence of the varied rich threads of esoteric practice on western culture and history has been largely ignored by religious scholars and cultural historians. This esoteric heritage of the West has been largely overlooked or buried beneath the surface events normally chronicled in the history books. As a result, most scholars have missed what is essential to our own cultural self-understanding today. And they have missed the signs pointing to a deeper and more profound message about what it means to be human as well. But today academia is in the early phases of a tectonic shift of vision. In the past decade a genuinely new discipline has emerged under the banner of Esoteric Studies, with its own peer-reviewed journals, a small but growing handful of endowed chairs in major European universities, and its own scholarly societies. This growing momentum has led some scholars to clear the haze from their eyes and engage in a fresh and unclouded reappraisal of the meaning and purpose of the history of western culture itself.

Fostering a Renaissance of Cultural Vision and Human Potential

Because the Esalen Institute is an innovative educational center dedicated to the broad exploration of the world's diverse transformative practices for cultivating our human potential (meditation, yoga, psychotherapy, body-practices, etc.), it seems fitting that in the spring of 2004 Esalen's Center for Theory and Research (CTR) launched a new annual conference series that is inquiring into the way esoteric practices throughout western history have served as a deep wellspring for both our rich cultural heritage as well as our understanding of the full human potential. In particular, this series of conferences is looking at how diverse esoteric insights from the past and present can contribute toward a epochal re-visioning—a real renaissance of thought and perspective—of humankind's inherent capacity for the transformation of body, mind, and spirit.

To intrepidly title this series "the Esoteric Renaissance" is to draw on a powerful historical analogy. More than five-hundred years ago, scholars first received ancient Greek texts that had been lost to the Latin-speaking West for hundreds of years. The rediscovery of esoteric texts (specifically hermetic and Platonic documents) at that time was what inspired one of the greatest flowerings of culture the world has ever known: the Italian Renaissance. The imagination of the young scholar Pico della Mirandola was set aflame by the rediscovery of these long dormant ideas about humanity's potential for empowerment and transformation. And as a result, Mirandola brought forth his own visionary manifesto for the human future. Soon, painters like Michelangelo were drawing inspiration from this new humanistic vision for western thought and culture. As the vision spread outward, in the span of just a few decades the West thoroughly re-envisioned its own cultural self-understanding through a collective act of remembrance, revival, and rejuvenation. A doorway was opened to a new vision of human capacity and confidence. And on the other side of the door was nothing less than the subsequent rise of the modern world and all that is has entailed.

Today, Esalen's CTR ventures to draw on this potent historical analogy. Just as Renaissance scholars and artists of a former era had been inspired by the discovery of ancient esoteric texts, today we think that a fresh look at the hidden threads of esoteric practice throughout all of western history can lead to a similar renaissance today—a renaissance of both our vision of human potential and the meaning of the historical process that has brought us to this moment of cultural self-reflection.

Leading Scholars as Facilitators

To lead this ambitious series, Esalen's CTR has partnered with two highly regarded scholars of esotericism: Wouter Hanegraaff and Jeffrey Kripal. Hanegraaff comes from the Netherlands where he is professor of history of hermetic philosophy and related currents from the Renaissance to the present at the University of Amsterdam. His landmark book New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (SUNY, 1998) caught the eye of many American scholars of religion and psychology due to its cogent insights into the relationship between the contemporary New Age movement and the history of esotericism. In it, Hanegraaff proposes that we must understand the contemporary quest for non-traditional forms of spirituality in light of the West's rich history of esoteric practices. With this context in mind, contemporary spirituality takes on an entirely new meaning. The growing thirst for personal transformation and spiritual fulfillment can now be seen as rooted in a much deeper historical process. We are all children of a long lineage of similar quests dating back beyond even the ancient Greeks, who have served as both a symbolic and real fons et origo for our uniquely western quest for gnosis, mystical apprehension, and personal transformation of body, mind, and spirit.

Joining Hanegraaff is Jeffrey J. Kripal, who is the chair of the Religious Studies department at Rice University in Texas. His first book Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (Chicago, 1995) won the American Academy of Religion's History of Religions Prize in 1996. Because this book looked at the homo-erotic life of Ramakrishna, it also demonstrated what has become Kripal's own characteristic daring and brilliance at tackling taboo subjects in religious studies. In 2007 Kripal will be publishing with University of Chicago Press a historical monograph of Esalen itself, titled Esalen: America and the Religion of No-Religion. In this trailblazing piece of scholarship, Kripal will describe the unique cultural ambiance of Esalen and its role within the larger American cultural quest for spiritual awakening. As Kripal puts it, Esalen is a place to celebrate the "religion of no religion" and is a uniquely American Mecca, or pilgrimage site, for contemporary seekers to realize their own "enlightenment of the body."

Together, Hanegraaff and Kripal comprise an excellent team for bringing together both American and European scholars for this endeavor. They quickly have become seasoned facilitators of this annual inter-disciplinary gathering, which has been showcasing different thematic topics each year.

Accomplishments Thus Far in This Conference Series

In March 2004 this conference series began with a nod to William James's famous book on the study of religious experience by exploring the theme of "The Varieties of Esoteric Experience." It addressed the nature and variety of esoteric experiences, which often challenge conventional means of classification. In lively discussions, participants sought to clarify the approach that scholars should take to extraordinary claims of personal experience. Must scholars in this field be detached in order to objectively study the esoteric? Or do they really need to participate in actual esoteric practices to understand them on their own terms? In an effort to move beyond the typical dichotomy between skepticism and dogmatism, the conference participants looked at the potential for a middle ground—a third way faithful to the rigors of contemporary scholarship and to the radically participatory nature of the subject studied. Eminent scholars in the field like Antoine Faivre from the Sorbonne in Paris and Arthur Versluis from the University of Michigan participated in this seminal first conference.

In April 2005, the second annual conference focussed on the relationship between eros, sexuality, and the esoteric. Throughout history, the taboo topics of both esotericism and sex often have been hidden from the public eye. Thus, their relationship is more than a mere accidental connection. In fact, the esoteric has always been deeply intertwined with the erotic. At this conference, the participating scholars inquired into the complex relationship between these two domains and gave presentations on the role of sexuality in the esoteric traditions of the last two millennia. The new insights into the connection between these two domains that arose at this conference have the potential to provide alternative ways for understanding the controversial and contemporary topics of gender, identity, and sexual-orientation. The participating scholars all agreed that the esoteric traditions that incorporated (rather than repressed) humanity's erotic life into the realm of the sacred are better guides for our own contemporary cultural explorations of spirituality. Interestingly, as participants noted during the conference, transformations in cultural attitudes toward sexuality (like the sexual revolution of the 1960s) have often been foreshadowed and even drawn inspiration form the varied esoteric currents of western history.

In May 2006, this series turned its attention to the role that esotericism has played in inspiring works of literature, fiction, and the imagination. Participating scholars looked at the ways in which creative geniuses like Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Yeats, Dostoevsky, Saul Bellow, Umberto Eco and others have drawn inspiration from the rich spiritual themes in western esoteric thought, including alchemy, astrology, Kabbalah, theosophy, and gnosticism. One interesting theme that arose during the conference was how western literature has often displayed a subtle back-and-forth influence with the esoteric traditions. The participants thought this interplay was apparent in the great books of the western canon, the pulp fiction of Lovecraft, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, and even comic books. A number of the scholars underlined the influence of esotericism on twentieth century poetry, from W.B. Yeats to the Australian Christopher Brennan and the contemporary American poet, Ronald Johnson.

Overall, the discussions at this gathering opened up new areas of research and generated interest in further exploring the interwoven relationship between literature and esoteric thought and practice.

As is the case with most CTR conferences, it is important to note that the impact of the three conferences thus far in this esoteric series will extend beyond the conversations of the participants involved. This will be accomplished by the publication of edited anthologies growing directly out of the conversations had by scholars while at Esalen. Also, more comprehensive summaries of the conference discussions can be found at these links:

2006 Conference Summary
2005 Conference Summary
2004 Conference Summary

Goals for the Future and Your Support

Esalen's Center for Theory and Research believes that by gathering together the most important and profound voices in this dawning field, we are already helping to catalyze the exciting new discipline of Esoteric Studies. This alone makes it a rare and worthy occasion.

But as this brief overview has noted, our goal is ultimately much broader. Our aim is to have an impact on the West's—and the world's—cultural self-understanding. Just as the Renaissance was seeded in Florence more than five-hundred years ago, so too have bold new visions been seeded at Esalen during the course of its forty-plus year history. Esalen is a fertile place to discover and plant new visions. And a number of the scholars involved in the Esoteric Renaissance conferences have been bold enough to recognize in their own work the seeds of a profoundly new vision at this time in history. Likewise, a new vision of human purpose and potential has been explored by the thousands of participants who have come to Esalen since it started in 1962. The essential message of the Esoteric conferences is that the quest for human transformation has a much deeper historical rooting in the esoteric threads of our collective past. Our aim is thus to continue to interweave the historical message of the Esoteric Renaissance conferences with the ongoing vision of Esalen in the present and future. But to do so, we will need your help.

To strengthen the mission of this conference and bring its message to a broader audience, we are currently seeking the proper funding for the following action items:

Expenses to fly in and house scholars for the conferences
Honoraria for scholars writing books and essays
Media outreach and publicity to reach general audiences
Scholar-in-residence fund for visiting scholars to Esalen

The pioneering scholarship by participants in this series has already begun the process of "cultural remembering" of our vast esoteric heritage. We think this academic discipline is uncovering valuable cultural resources laden in the historical lineages of esoteric thought and practice. More importantly, though, we think that this conference series is enabling all involved to re-imagine the vision and mission of Esalen in a much broader and richer historical context. It is helping us see the deeper roots of the quest for human potential and transformation. The esoteric quest for gnosis is thus both an ancient and contemporary one. Finding the common thread between them enlivens and enriches both sides of the historical continuum.

A new renaissance is being seeded right now—a real renaissance of thought, perspective, and vision that has the potential to impact humanity as we continue to grow and change on the global stage. The new field of Esoteric Studies is substantiating the view that humankind has always had an inherent capacity for transformation of body, mind, and spirit. Our aim is to root the contemporary quest for transformation in a much richer and broader historical self-understanding, and thereby give birth to a new vision.