History, Religion, Reviews

Esalen gets four bunnies

jacket imageThe current issue of Playboy reviews Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal and gives it a four-bunny rating. Not bad for the J. Newton Rayzor Professor in Religious Studies at Rice University. Playboy advises:

Esalen Institute … was ground zero of the 1960s social revolution: the sweaty hot-tub commingling of free love, tantric yoga, Buddhist meditation and Gestalt therapy—as well as the academy for the propagation of the human-potential movement. Outlaw all-stars like Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg and Hunter S. Thompson felt the pull of the place. Now scholar Jeffrey Kripal has produced the first all-encompassing history of Esalen: its intellectual, social, personal, literary and spiritual passages. Kripal brings us up-to-date and takes us deep beneath historical surfaces in this definitive, elegantly written book.

At least, we think it’s in the current issue of Playboy. We combed the website for the magazine for several hours—it’s a distracting place—but we didn’t find it. If you see it, let us know, OK?
Read an excerpt from the book. And have a good weekend.