Esalen, MK Ultra Self-help and How the West Learned to Repattern Its "Self"

Interview

How did Western society go from a notion that every individual has a sacred spiritual self made in the unique image of God to an unbridled worship of “Self”? In this TNT interview with host Matthew Ehret, we explore how the West “accidently” MK-Ultra-ed itself. We open with a little history of California’s Esalen Institute, which was inspired by Aldous Huxley and his final novel, Island. There, in Huxley’s Island, the inhabitants of Pala use a medley of psychedelic drugs and tantric sex practices as a means of entering “altered-states.” Through these magical altered states, the citizens of Pala are afforded the opportunity to directly experience beatific glimpses of the divine—thanks to the magical “moksha” medicine. Freed from any and all dogmas and Western Judeo-Christian notions of God, the individual, or society, the inhabitants of Pala are finally allowed to discover their full and uninhibited self-actualized self.

Thus, after beginning our TNT interview with a discussion of the s…