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Esalen seeks kindred spirits in Muslim community
Sep. 13, 2007
Matthai Chakko Kuruvila, Chronicle Religion Writer
www.sfgate.com
More articles on this topic: Esalen InstituteFor more than 40 years, people seeking personal transformation have come to Esalen, an enclave on the Big Sur coast that’s been a defining home for counterculture spirituality.
Workshops on the lush 150-acre property range in topics as varied as Gestalt awareness, “massage weekend for couples” and “art as a spiritual path.” Joseph Campbell developed and taught much of his groundbreaking work on comparative religion and mythology there decades before he became famous.
Now Esalen’s leaders are trying to bring Islam into the fold. A Muslim sits on its board of trustees and the course catalog includes offerings by influential Muslims. Esalen’s leaders say understanding of Islam is vital as a spiritual matter and as a way to empower “citizen diplomats.”
But it’s not clear whether that mission will draw followers, particularly after an Oakland imam’s five-day course about Ramadan, the Islamic holy month that begins today, was canceled for lack of interest.
Faheem Shuaibe, the imam, said he had hoped to persuade participants to believe that Islam can be something outside of what they’ve seen on television or read in magazines.
“The idea is that there is something that Islam is outside of Saddam, bin Laden or even (Muslim congressman) Keith Ellison,” said Shuaibe, who is a well-respected voice for Islam in the Bay Area and nationally. “It was something before all of them. That’s what’s being lost in the smoke.”
Shuaibe believes any understanding of Islam today faces an uphill battle because of terrorists such as those who participated in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, whom he described as “insane,” and a long list of essays depicting a “clash of civilizations.”
“The twin towers (attack) becomes Islam,” Shuaibe said. “But if you have the right frame of reference for what Islam is, and then comes a twin towers scenario, then you can say, ‘That’s not Islam.’ ”
As an African American, Shuaibe believes he’s particularly aware of the value of U.S. constitutional ideals as well as Islam as a distinct culture of its own - one that doesn’t come with the baggage of Muslim countries.
“Islam has an existence separate from any culture,” said Shuaibe.
Esalen’s leaders say that despite the failure to attract participants this year, they’re committed to the course in future years.
“People are used to coming to Esalen to do couples courses, or yoga, or courses on how to recover from trauma,” said Anisa Mehdi, a documentary filmmaker and a Muslim who now serves on Esalen’s board. “When there’s a new initiative, a new look at spirituality, it takes a while to catch on … we’re not giving them up because they haven’t caught fire yet.”
Esalen has brought in another Muslim speaker, Hamza Yusuf, a Danville resident who is considered to be one of the most influential Muslims in the nation. But Yusuf’s course was given the distinctly secular title of “the alchemy of happiness.” And while 17 people came for that course, Yusuf regularly draws hundreds and his books and CDs are widely sold.
The faith of Esalen has been described as a “religion of no religion,” a recognition that the divine is not exclusive to any one people or culture or text. Esalen’s spiritual ethos is about inquiry, said Nancy Lunney-Wheeler, Esalen’s executive director of programming. And that extends to Islam.
“The survival of our world depends on our ability to understand each other across religions and cultures,” said Lunney-Wheeler, who also is an Esalen board member. “We have neglected Islam. It has taken this terrible situation that the world is in for us to recognize that there is this religion that is a very strong force in the world.”
Jeffrey Kripal, who wrote a seminal book about Esalen published this year, believes Shuaibe’s course didn’t attract interest because it didn’t fit “the theology of Esalen.”
Esalen is pluralistic, Kripal said. A monotheistic faith that claims exclusivity won’t succeed there, said Kripal, author of “Esalen: America and the religion of no religion.”
“If a course were offered on the Torah taught by a rabbi, I don’t think anybody would show up to that either,” said Kripal.
But Kripal believes that these kind of spiritual explorations could yield other benefits, much as what Esalen accomplished during the Cold War.
In the 1970s, Esalen’s leaders began making trips to the Soviet Union because they were interested in psychical research, auras and mind-body healing, which the Soviets studied. In the process, a decades-long relationship developed that strengthened diplomatic ties.
When Boris Yeltsin made his first trip to the United States in 1989, he was sponsored by Esalen, according to Kripal. The trip ended up playing a formative role in how Yeltsin wanted to introduce capitalism to the former Soviet Union, according to Joseph Montville, a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer who now directs Esalen’s efforts to bring Muslims, Jews and Christians together.
“Just the very effort of inviting an imam like this to give a seminar is an incredibly symbolic act,” said Kripal. “Whether it works or not, in some ways, is irrelevant. They’re trying to reach out again, and they’re trying to create these spaces that are nontraditional and can have some positive role in this crisis right now.”
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