WHITE BODY-MIND-SPIRIT / BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY $17.95 / CAN $18.95 A new story for our time by a pioneer The Jeweled Highway RALPH WHITE of the consciousness movement FILLED WITH BEAUTY, TRANSCENDENCE, and vitality, Ralph White’s The Jeweled Highway memoir takes us on his quest for a life of meaning and the many ways he has found to share its secrets with others. ON THE QUEST FOR A LIFE OF MEANING An adventurous story at the forefront of a deep cultural shift, it transports the reader from his early years in the Celtic world and gritty Northern England, down Route 66, hitchhiking to Machu Picchu, and across the Eastern Himalayas into Tibet. Readers gain an insider’s knowledge of the origins of major centers of holistic clearing and why they serve as focal points for the emergence of greater sanity, wisdom, and awareness in the world. “Written with a poet’s eye and a seeker’s urgency, Ralph White’s hunger for truth leads him down many alleyways. A LIFE OF MEANING FOR ON THE QUEST He rewards the reader with hard-won wisdom.” — Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way “If you want to know where we’ve been and where we’re headed in these times of great danger and opportunity, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.” — Robert Thurman, author of Inner Revolution; president, Tibet House RALPH WHITE is cofounder of the New York Open Center, America’s leading urban center of holistic learning. An organizer of many international conferences, he was editor of the award-winning Lapis magazine. Born in Wales, he lives in New York City. www.ralphwhite.net DIVINE ARTS | DIVINEARTSMEDIA.COM Foreword by Thomas Moore DIVINE ARTS CHAPTER ELEVEN The Global Network of Holistic Centers An Ecology of Consciousness, West Coast Style or thirty years I have had the good fortune to be involved in F a growing global network of centers, an ecology of conscious- ness becoming aware of itself that spans the planet. When we meet, we do so in a spirit of openness, mutual support, friendship, and love. We are autonomous initiatives within our own cultures, but we also recognize that we are facets of a greater diamond of expanding consciousness. I have come to know centers throughout North America from British Columbia to Big Sur, California; from San Francisco to New York — also in Europe from Spain to Russia and from Scotland to Italy. Many more flourish in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, South Africa, and other parts of the Southern Hemisphere. Today people are creating centers in Vietnam, Laos, Kenya, India, and even China. Attending these Gatherings has been one of the delights of my life. Not only have many friendships formed, but these events have often led mysteriously to fresh openings of destiny. We can live with a broad if somewhat diffuse conviction that a more holistic approach to life is truly developing throughout the planet, but these Gatherings give it form, substance, and specificity. They 165 THE JEWELED HIGHWAY • RALPH WHITE have warmed my heart and strengthened my convictions around the growing influence of beneficent and life-enhancing powers in the world. Here are some glimpses of these focal points for the emergence of a new culture. Driving down Route 1 in California south of the Monterey Bay, I entered the enchanted world of Big Sur, much beloved by Henry Miller after his sojourn in Paris. Mountains sweep down to the Pacific Ocean; the road winds around headlands, over bridges, always framing the shining, crashing sea below, with its long streams of spray and spume sweeping in waves to the rugged shore, the bright sunlight glinting off the waves into 10,000 ever- shifting, flashing shards. I first had a small taste of Esalen Institute at the heart of Big Sur in the mid-’70s after returning from Colombia. Then my friends and I had driven down from Berkeley with little money and the intention to spend the night in the legendary hot tubs. Back in 1962, the same year as the founding of Findhorn, Michael Murphy and Dick Price, graduate students at Stanford University, established Esalen Institute on the site of hot springs used for millennia by the Esalen Indians, twenty-one acres of beauty pervaded by the constant rhythm of the crashing ocean. To this day, to sit naked in the hot tubs, listening to the waves below and gazing at the star-filled sky, is to enjoy a quintessential experi- ence of the human-potential movement. It was at a pioneering retreat center named Rancho La Puerta in Baja California, Mexico that Michael Murphy met Aldous Huxley in the late ’50s. Huxley encouraged him to start a center for the exploration of new ideas about consciousness, psychology, perennial philosophy, and the new practices necessary to turn away from the looming prospect of a Brave New World. How appropriate that the writer of one of the two great dystopian 166 The Global Ne Twork of holisTic ceNTers novels of the twentieth century should play an inspirational role in seeding one of the seminal institutions underscoring the explosion of consciousness of the ’60s. But it was another expatriate Brit, Alan Watts, who taught the first seminar at Esalen. Nobody at that time made Buddhism and Eastern spiritual teachings more accessible to the West than him, doing so in his debonair, nonsectarian, joyous way. Then came the psychologist Abraham Maslow and his pioneering work on the hierarchy of human needs, self-actualization, and peak experiences. Fritz Perls and Gestalt psychology followed, and Dick Price, Esalen’s cofounder, became his leading student. The emotional candor and intimacy, the clearing of blocks and angers, became the core practice at Esalen. This must surely have been crucial in ensuring that fifty years later Esalen continues to flourish, showing no sign of losing its enduring appeal. When I visited Esalen for the Centers’ Gathering, I imme- diately felt that this gorgeous spot was continuing to serve a beautiful purpose. It was teaching people ways to connect with their authentic selves, and reach out to others in a spirit of warmth and service as independent beings free to express them- selves without dogma or inhibition. Whenever I spend time at Esalen, I experience it as one of the heavenly realms on this earth. The steady, soothing crashing of the ocean below; the comfort with nudity; the vibrant, multi- hued gardens and organic farm; the commitment to sustainability and emotional honesty; and the ongoing range of programs concerned with personal and social transformation — all of this maintains Esalen’s position as a brilliant achievement, an engine for new ideas, and a place where the commitment continues to wholeness, living in the moment, and creating a healthy future for humanity. 167 THE JEWELED HIGHWAY • RALPH WHITE Breitenbush Hot Springs in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon is the only worker-owned cooperative I know among the centers, and a place totally off the grid. It heats itself in the snowy winters with geothermal energy from pipes that run deep underground, and generates electricity with hydropower from the multiple cascading falls around the property. This thirty-five-year- old experiment in radical democracy and ecology flourishes with more vigor than ever today. Peter Moore, Breitenbush’s business director, exudes the rough and ready charm of a man who signed up thirty-five years ago, after four years in Europe and India, to convert a broken-down old spa resort into an alternative community. Working without pay in the early years, delivering his first child in the snowy darkness without electricity, heat, or midwife, Peter captures that progres- sive Oregonian tradition — can do, ready for anything, undeterred by obstacles, willing to get one’s hands dirty, and committed to doing things differently, democratically, and cooperatively despite the arduous nature of this path. Tom Robinson, the program and marketing director, brings the suave air of a man well versed in business practices in his earlier life but also psychologically sophisticated, calm, and deeply attuned to group process. When I met Tom, I knew I had an ally committed to the continuity of the Centers’ Gathering, someone who saw its value and was fully present and organizationally adroit. It will come as no surprise that the West Coast of both America and Canada is home to the greatest concentration of centers on the planet. One of my favorites is the Mount Madonna Center in the Santa Cruz Mountains above Monterey Bay. Its spiritual inspiration was Baba Hari Dass, a Hindu spiri- tual teacher who appeared in Ram Dass’ Be Here Now in which he found his guru in a remote ashram. Baba Hari Dass had 168 The Global Ne Twork of holisTic ceNTers taken a vow of silence before Ram Dass encountered him in the ashram. He was skilled at creating mountain ashrams, and came quietly to America before Be Here Now was published. Such a vow precludes celebrity, and he maintained a low profile, gathering students in the San Francisco Bay Area and eventually buying an old apple farm in the late ’70s on a mountain ridge, where he started a community and learning center from very modest beginnings. Mount Madonna is rare among holistic centers in that it has a living teacher from India. The members of the community are creative, and possessed of an independent spirit. Brajesh, the program director, has lived a life emblematic of the way a deeper calling interrupts an academic career. He is the only person I know who went from receiving his PhD in political science from Harvard to working as a Volkswagen mechanic in an alterna- tive community in the Ozarks, and then to finding his way to Mount Madonna.