Terry Patten
The Undiscovered Country of Our Supernormal Potential
In our June 10th conversation, human potential pioneer Michael Murphy began poignantly, as he looked back on the 50 years since he founded Esalen, and identified the disappointments as well as the triumphs of the decades since.
He reminisced that Arnold Toynbee, Paul Tillich, and others—a total of eight of the forward-thinking “evolutionary panentheists” (more on what that is in a minute) who offered early workshops at Esalen—were influential enough in mainstream culture that they were pictured on the cover of Time magazine. The emerging synthesis of East and West , and an advance into the “undiscovered country” of consciousness was inspiring big-picture thinkers at Stanford and other leading universities.
And today? Big-picture thinking and meta-narratives that unify consciousness and matter (such as integral thinking and evolutionary panentheism) have been pressed to the “thriving margins” of mainstream cultural institutions (such as Esalen and Beyond Awakening). Which is a shame, because it is important to have good maps, and the culture seems to be “meandering” in a direction that is not all about progress.
So that is a disappointment, says Murphy. On the other hand, there have been remarkably fast cultural transformations.
For example, transformative practices have caught on and gone mainstream in a big way. 20,000 yoga studios dot the nation and meditation is taught at corporations and studied in leading universities while sports psychologists help athletes get “in the zone.”
And this is where he feels most optimistic. When we practice, there are “answering graces” and every one of us can, through practice further our own development and the world’s development. And if we marry it with social activism, we will have an even greater impact.
Meanwhile, the imagery of supernormal human capacities permeates popular culture through films, TV, science fiction, and extreme sports. So an evolutionary view of human potential may be coming up from the bottom, “up through the floorboards” and preparing us culturally for the piecemeal “stealth” emergence of an evolutionary panentheist worldview.
What does he mean by it? Murphy defined it as including 3 essential components (1) The acceptance of the facts of evolution as revealed by science; (2) Intuiting the divine (by any name) as both immanent and transcendent; and (3) Recognition that the deepest roots of our own human nature are at least profoundly intimate with the Divine if not identical with it. And, says Murphy, this has dozens of immediate benefits in terms of (a) Practice, (b) Research, and (c) Theory-building.
Murphy is now 81, and he has explored and led a vast sweep of the foundational breakthroughs that create the foundations for everything we explore here. My conversation with this scintillating, brilliant thinker, ranged through a vast territory, addressing supernormal abilities, “The Future Of Human Evolution”, reincarnation, Evolutionary Panentheism, and much more.
You’re invited to listen here.
Re: Murphy’s disappointment…Two gargantuan unattended matters so many people in this movement are ignoring which pertain directly to his (and our) disappointment about these beautiful deep ideas taking more widespread hold and integrating more widely: (1) what Reich called The Emotional Plague, and its being rooted IN THE BODY; and (2) the ancient teaching (most recently by Gurdjieff) that, if you want to rise to the next rung, you have to pull those behind you up a rung. Re: (1), Esalen and the Human Potential Movement in general owe an enormous amount to Reich’s work, but they have preferred to ignore its most basic tenets, in order to avoid accepting his radical ideas. The fact remains, however, that until Humanity learns one simple thing (simple, I didn’t say easy)–to experience deep, direct emotion in a conscious manner WITHOUT ACTING IT OUT–we will not progress up to the next rung, no matter how clearly and beautifully we can perceive it. Until then, Tantra and Kundalini will revert to sadomasochism (witness S/M’s huge popularity in “sexually liberated” millions around the world), and all progressive movements will end up doing exactly whatever it was they were supposed to “cure” or “eliminate” in the first place. I love and respect Michael Murphy, but all his beautiful talk and thought about The Body is just thought and talk until The Emotional Plague is addressed honestly and directly. Think of this this way: If we’re “All One”, if H. sapiens is a collective Mind (and I believe we are, I was an actual student of Gregory Bateson)…then all the “negative emotions” you up at the top can afford to meditate your way around are being diverted to those less agile and “intellectually sophisticated” than you, to be embodied and experienced. I.e., the politically and spiritually poor, the children, and the animals. Until we learn to have ALL our emotions (all my loving respect to the Dalai Lama and Deepak Chopra, but still!) and ENJOY THEM WITHOUT ACTING THEM OUT, they will still be flying around the collective human mind, and somebody ELSE will have to do our dirty work for us. Another way of saying this is that all of us are still wiping our emotional ass on an unwitting somebody else. And I believe that this is the crux of (and key to resolving) Michael’s disappointment.
To continue: The more enlightened the “upper echelons” of H. sapiens’ collective mind becomes, the more the “lower echelons” go through the trauma of having to act out the very things the monsters that have been hiding in the dark all along are holding onto. That is exactly what is going on right now–H. sapiens is in deep collective TRAUMA RECALL. THIS is the psychology we should be applying–i.e., making CONSCIOUS to and for all of the Collective Mind right now. As seductive as the Next Rung looks, we can’t attain it without pulling the WHOLE Mind out of its current PTSD re-enactment. Otherwise H. sapiens goes extinct. Perhaps you are choosing this? To “evolve” into a new species while 9/10 of the rest of your brain–and, most importantly–your BODY reverts to being a lemur? I just hope there are enough cetaceans left after we’re gone. They have the best chance in that case.
Perhaps the rapid emergence of autism is an evolutionary counter-thrust (or at least a buffer) to the offloading onto the “unenlightened” of the “shadow” of the “enlightened.” See http://tinyurl.com/659lvh8
I guess my question concerns (1) above. How does evolution square with re-existence? The facts science presents do not really support the idea of any ancient human history prior to say 9,000 BCE, and certainly none which includes civilizations more developed or at least as developed as our own. How does the idea that we are nothing more than animals that developed out of apes bear acceptance? As opposed to the long ages of degeneration leading to the present period, referred to as the Fall in the West and Kali Yuga in the East? Evolution as conceived by science certainly isn’t true, so what sort of mechanism to account for both is true?
What a great guy! And he sounded so young! I found this to be an exceptionally rich offering in this superlatively rich series. Thank you Terry.
Dear Terry and Michael, thank you for this inspiring and interesting interview!
Specially I liked Michael`s very healthy review of all his years of engagement in this work and his opinion about where we are today.
I agree that the spiral of evolution doesn`t look like always going up. There are clearly periodical regressions although the arrow never changes direction.
There is though the troublesome fact of the population growth, which is growing mostly where the consciousness of the people is extremly low, so one gets the frustrating impression that all the yoga schools in our part of the world will never be able to caching up to make a difference.
I also agree with the guy (Joe) who called in about our dissociation from nature specially the realm of the animals. Also Ken Wilber mentions this fact as a great threat to our life. Most of animal farms today are mini-Auschwitzes we anthropocentricly ignoring them.
Interesting to hear about the bottom up movements which are more important these days than the top down ones. One could also imagine a synergy of these two, both influencing each other.
Thanks again!
An insight I took from this talk is that people aren’t listening to leaders anymore. If there is to be more goodness and beauty brought to our world it will come from the bottom up. We influence our own lives and our world. Our best chance for goodness is to marry integral practice with selfless social service. The divine can come to us through any of our circumstances. I will no doubt lose these insights by Thursday. I have to hyperaccelerate into materialism now. God bless you Michael.