History unfolding like a bursting star. The present opening upon itself so that every scientist may become a seer, every academic a prophet. Kairos. A time when ten thousand voices in a multitude of strange new tongues struggle to utter a single thought: The atom's soul is nothing but energy. Spirit blazes in the dullest clay. The life of every man--the heart of it--is pure and holy joy.
How can we speak of joy on this dark and suffering planet? How can we speak of anything else? We have heard enough despair. We have heard enough clever restatement of the same sick old doctrine of Original Sin. Those who dismay at humanity's condition have had their turn upon the stage. They have offered intricate critiques, sinuous analyses of everything that is wrong with mankind, leaving unanswered only the questions they have almost forgotten how to ask: What do we do now? How do we change it all? How do we act to make our society and ourselves whole? At a time when at last we have all the means at hand to end war, poverty and racial insanity, the prophets of despair discover no vision large enough to lead men to the merely possible.
This is a time for action, not analysis. No man can sleep secure while others suffer. Every one of us must go on working in the usual social and political ways to help reduce the fever that saps men of their natural joy. But this is not enough. We must not merely ameliorate man's heritage of pain; we must create anew. We must not merely analyze maladies; we must show people the way towards their own true selves so that, filled with the joy of learning, loving and being, they will study hatred and war no more. We must build new societies that seek, not empires on the face of earth, but ever-receding frontiers in the infinitely rich and varied common countryside of humanity.
Listen to the new voices in a time of Kairos. Here is what they are saying: Ever since the race of man first learned to think and hope, men have been haunted by an irrepressible dream--that the limits of human ability lie beyond the boundaries of the imagination; that every human being uses only a fraction of his abilities; that there must be some way for everyone to achieve far more of what is truly his to achieve. History's greatest prophets, mystics and saints have dreamed even more boldly, saying that all men are somehow one with God. The dream has survived history's failures, ironies and uneven triumphs, sustained more by intuition than by facts.
Now, however, the facts are beginning to come in. Science has at last turned its attention to the central questions of human capabilities. Looking deep into the brain, it finds unsuspected wave forms so subtle and complex as to suggest creative capacity is infinite. Looking afresh into human action, it finds new ways for ordinary people to achieve what appear to be miracles of feeling and doing. It is a beginning, a glimmering, a curtain opening: What the mystics promised is upon us now, not out on some apocalyptic plain, but in the laboratory, the church, the classroom, the home. Here is the century's biggest news. If we read it right, life on this planet will never again be the same.
We speak for scientists, religious leaders, educators and interested citizens who have cast their lot with the future. We believe that all men somehow possess a divine potentiality; that ways may be worked out--specific, systematic ways--to help, not the few, but the many towards a vastly expanded capacity to learn, to love, to feel deeply and to create. We reject the tired dualism that seeks God and human potentialities by denying the joys of the senses, the immediacy of unpostponed life. We believe that most people can best find God and themselves through heightened awareness of the world, increased commitment to the eternal in time.
We believe, too, that, if the divine is present in the individual soul, it must be sought and found in men's institutions as well; for people will not readily achieve individual salvation without a saving society. We envisage no mass movement, for we do not see people in the mass; we look instead to revolution through constant interplay between individual and group, each changing the other.
The revolution has begun. Human life will be transformed. How it will be transformed is up to us.
by George B. Leonard and
Michael Murphy
Copyright © 1995 George Leonard
Copyright © 1995 Michael Murphy
Extrapolation
To develop the neglected sensory, interpersonal and depth aspects of human functioning, Esalen uses techniques such as Encounter Groups, Sensory Awakening experiments, Psychodrama, and Dream Theatre. The Oracle staff have formed an Esalen-led Group, where we are trying out these various techniques at first-hand. In a subsequent issue, we hope to give you a short anthology of the experiences of the various participants.
It seems to me that this is of more than academic interest - for if these tricks really work (and there is every indication that they do) then they are a natural for our own people: we live in groups, in communes, and the group is the basic unit in the Esalen dynamic. This stuff has been used to straighten out straights - pass it on to heads to grow taller with, and it could be dynamite.
