Murphy and Price, Death at Esalen: Stanford Zen +^

[Disbasing Zen Stories]

Toxic Zen Story #28: Stanford Zen: Michael Murphy and Richard Price at Esalen, Richard Price's Suspicious Death and Richard's Replacement by George Leonard.

From the Police Report:

. Deceased: Price, Richard A. WMA. DOB 10/12/30 of Esalen
. Institute, Big Sur, 667-2670
.
. 11/26/85 0754 HRS Tues:
.
. R/P reported finding Mr. Price dead in Hot Springs Creek
. Canyon after he had suffered a blow to the head from
. what is suspected as falling rocks and boulders.
.
. 0925 HRS Same Date:
.
. Contacted Lyke and victim's wife, Christine Price, at
. the Price home. I checked Mr. Price, who had been
. removed from the Canyon to the home, and found him
. without any signs of life and in a state of rigor-
. mortis. He had a large wound to the head and face, a
. surface bruise and abrasion on his left hip and some
. cuts on the back of his hands.
.
. While awaiting the arrival of the Coroner (Dan McCabe)
. Lyke explained the following; in the late AM on
. 11/25/85, Price took his daily walk into Hot Springs
. Canyon in order to check the water supply pond and to
. meditate.
.
. He failed to appear for two afternoon appointments and
. at 2030 HRS, Mrs. Price called Lyke expressing her
. concern over her husband's absence. Lyke and a friend,
. Steve Beck, then walked to the water pond where they
. discovered Price leaning backward in a pool of water
. with severe head injuries and said he was stiff and no
. signs of life. They noticed that a very large boulder
. (estimated by Lyke at 200 pounds) had hit the edge of
. the water pond where Price always meditates. Price was
. located only 10 feet away from this point. Lyke said
. that the recent rains have loosened the rocks and
. boulders in the Canyon thus making it very dangerous to
. hike in the area. Lyke and Beck then returned to inform
. Mrs. Price and to obtain additional help to carry the
. victim out.
.
. - The body was removed at 0315 HRS and after Mrs. Price
. had spent some time with her deceased husband, called
. the Sheriff's Office.
.
. - Coroner McCabe arrived and assumed the investigation.
. Nothing further.
.
. - Case Suspended, CC: Coroner McCabe.

____ Background for Toxic Zen Stories _____________________

https://groups.google.com/group/alt.zen/msg/b4ad0ce368728934?hl=en

____ Introduction ________________________________________

We know the basic story of D.T. Suzuki, and the fact that he had one face showing towards Japan's Imperial Way Zen, and a different face showing towards the West. And that, for obvious reasons, never the twain would meet.

We know that Suzuki went to America as a young man, to accompany his master, the Rinzai priest Soyen Shaku, to LaSalle-Peru, Illinois, at the behest of Dr. Paul Carus, a German who was the managing editor of Open Court Publishing, which was owned by Zinc magnate Edward Hegeler.

We know that after leaving America, Suzuki influenced people around the world and was one of the stalwart supporters of the Japanese War with Russia, and then in China.

We know that Suzuki's influence in academic circles in Europe was profound, and particularly in mentoring Eugen Herrigel. Herrigel's work erroneously describing the Zen influences on Japanese archery was a twisted mirror to Suzuki's work describing the Zen influences in Bushido swordsmanship.

We know that he had a variety of collaborators, a flock of followers, and influenced many others:

Collaborators in the propagation of Soyen Shaku (D.T.'s Master)-D.T. Suzuki Zen:
Beatrice Lane (wife), Paul Carus, Edward Hegeler, Martin Heidegger, Frederic Spiegelberg, Father Thomas Merton, Alan Watts, Eric Fromm, Carl G. Jung, Richard de Martino, Karen Horney, and a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to lecture extensively at Columbia University and other East Coast schools in the 1950's.

Followers of Shaku-Suzuki Zen:
John Cage, Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen.

Those strongly affected by the Shaku-Suzuki Zen Influence:
Aldous Huxley, Karl Jaspers, Arnold Toynbee, Gabriel Marcel, Herbert Read, and Lynn White Jr.
___________________________________________________

In the Nirvana Sutra it states "Rely upon the Law and not upon persons".

On the topic of "evil friends", who are a "friend" to you, but an enemy of the Law, and who gradually pull you away from the truth and into hellishness, Nichiren writes:

. 'The Buddha states: "Have no fear of mad
. elephants. What you should fear are evil friends!
. Why? Because a mad elephant can only destroy your
. body; it cannot destroy your mind. But an evil
. friend can destroy both body and mind. A mad
. elephant can destroy only a single body, but an
. evil friend can destroy countless bodies and
. countless minds. A mad elephant merely destroys an
. impure, stinking body, but an evil friend can
. destroy both pure body and pure mind. A mad
. elephant can destroy the physical body, but an
. evil friend destroys the Dharma body. Even if you
. are killed by a mad elephant, you will not fall
. into the three evil paths. But if you are killed
. by an evil friend, you are certain to fall into
. them. A mad elephant is merely an enemy of your
. body, but an evil friend is an enemy of the good
. Law." (Nirvana Sutra) Therefore, even more than
. venomous serpents or malevolent demons, one should
. fear the evil friends who follow Kobo [japanese
. true word/shingon founder: tantric buddhism],
. Shan-tao [third chinese nembutsu patriarch], and
. Honen [japanese pure land/jodo sect founder]. This
. is just a brief clarification of the error of
. holding distorted views.'

"Reply to Hoshina Goro Taro" - Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, p. 159

____ Toxic Zen Story ______________________________

From "The Study of Religion under the Impact of National Socialism", by Gerd Simon:

. 'Holding a position explicitly designated to
. the study of religion, the following were removed:
. Hans Alexander Winkler from Tuebingen university
. as former member of the Communist party. According
. to the anti-Jewish legislation Joachim Wach lost
. his lectureship in Leipzig, Martin Buber and his
. pupil Norbert Glatzer in Frankfurt. In 1937
. Friedrich, then Frederic, Spiegelberg, lecturer
. for history of religions at the technical
. university of Dresden, emigrated to the United
. States. From 1941-1962 he then taught at Stanford
. University as professor for comparative religious
. studies.'

Once again, not everyone who was driven out of Nazi Germany, was someone who, in retrospect, contributed to the well-being of American society.
___________________________________________________

From Scott London's interview with Michael Murphy:

| 'MURPHY: I got started in this interest in
| high-school. I got interested in some Jungian
| ideas and was influenced a little bit by Spinoza.
| Then I got to Stanford and went through this 18-
| year-old atheistic phase after I heard about
| evolution, which bowled me over. I had been
| thinking I would be either an Episcopalian priest
| or a doctor. By the time I got to college it had
| evolved into becoming a psychiatrist. My family
| had thought I should be a doctor.'

Umm, his family was right. His judgement was bad. Tragically bad.

| 'Anyway, I became an atheist for a year and a
| half, until I walked into a course by Frederic
| Spiegelberg -- this tremendous professor of
| comparative religions. He was lecturing about
| "atman" and "brahman." After the first lecture, I
| walked back to my fraternity and said, "I don't
| think I'll ever be the same." ...'

An understatement, to be sure.
___________________________________________________

I have made a case in Toxic Zen Story# 23 that the AAAS is the equivalent, for America, to the Shaolin monastery where Bodhidharma created the distortion of the Buddha's teachings, which is known as Zen. This was definitely not a good thing for the San Francisco Bay Area...

| 'The American Academy of Asian Studies'
| '(From the CIIS Archives)'
|.
| 'The cast: Louis Gainsborough, Frederic
| Spiegelberg, Judith Tyberg, Haridas Chaudhuri, and
| Alan Watts'
|.
| ' "The American Academy of Asian Studies was
| one of the principal roots of what later came to
| be known, in the early sixties, as the San
| Francisco Renaissance." '
| - Alan Watts

Renaissance or Dark Ages? Only history speaks the definitive word on that.

At the AAAS or later-known as CIIS, under the guidance of Spiegelberg and Watts, was where Michael Murphy met Richard Price ...
____________________________________

From Esalen's website:

| ' The Beginnings of Esalen '
|.
| ' Something exciting and important was happening. In
| the early 1960s, a pervasive, undefined enthusiasm
| filled the air, inspiring experiments and speculation of
| sorts that seemed to open up new worlds. The feeling
| manifested in individual lives by heightening a sense of
| possibilities -- a belief that you really could change
| yourself and society. During this wave of new
| beginnings, Dick Price and Michael Murphy started Esalen
| Institute, named for a tribe of Indians who have lived
| in and around Big Sur for thousands of years. '

Change is not necessarily good. Changes due to the effects of the distortion of the Buddha's teachings and intent from Zen are: evil wisdom without compassion and the evil acts that flow from that. And those changes bring disaster.

| ' Frederic Spiegelberg, a celebrated professor of
| comparative religion at Stanford University, introduced
| Murphy and Price to Eastern philosophy, yoga, Sri
| Aurobindo, and other subjects that shaped their lives
| and work. Without his influence, they probably would not
| have met nor been impelled to start Esalen. After
| Stanford, both took classes at the Academy of Asian
| Studies -- founded by Spiegelberg -- where they heard
| Alan Watts, a former Episcopal minister from England,
| who had become a student of Zen Buddhism and was making
| a synthesis of Zen and ideas from some of the more
| adventurous realms of Western psychology. '

Alan Watts is covered extensively in Toxic Zen Story #23, 24 & 25. He was an utterly corrupted person.

| ' Mission Statement'
|.
| ' The Esalen Center for Theory & Research supports
| essential philosophic, academic, and research aims of
| the Esalen Institute. It evaluates frontier inquiry,
| creates networks of pioneering individuals, and works to
| catalyze new discoveries that promote personal and
| social transformation. It carries forward projects at
| the growing edge of philosophy, psychology, comparative
| religious studies, education, sociology, somatics, the
| arts, ecology, and related disciplines that bear upon
| transformative practice and the continued evolution of
| humankind. Among these projects are an archive of
| extraordinary human functioning and a bibliography of
| scientific research on meditation.'

All that was needed for an explosion was media coverage. That came in the person of George Leonard, Senior West Coast Editor of Look Magazine:

From: "Human Potential: The Movement, the Media, and the Myth" By George Leonard:

| 'I was 41, a native of Georgia, an air corps veteran
| of World War II and Korea, author of one quickly
| forgotten novel, and, since 1953, a senior editor of
| Look magazine, which was to become, before the Sixties
| ended, the most influential magazine of its time, with a
| readership of 34 million. At Look, I had covered
| education, the civil rights movement, politics, and
| foreign affairs. I had put together special issues on
| youth of the Sixties ("The Explosive Generation") and
| California, and was finding myself more and more drawn
| to a subject that fit in no current category. We called
| it "lifestyle". '
|.
| ' Now, in the late summer of 1964, I was embarked on
| what I hoped would be my magnum opus, an article to be
| titled "The Human Potential". It was a golden age of
| magazine journalism. I was free to go wherever I wished,
| interview anyone I chose, and take as long as I needed.
| I criss-crossed the nation, visiting laboratories,
| interviewing brain researchers, biologists,
| philosophers, theologians, psychologists, psychiatrists.
| I bopped back and forth between Cambridge, Mass., and La
| Jolla, Cal., trying to convince B. F. Skinner and Carl
| Rogers that their warring disciplines (behaviorism and
| humanism) were actually joined in a common enterprise to
| unlock the enormous potential of the human organism. By
| early 1965, I had interviewed 37 experts and had drafted
| the first 10,000 words of what was eventually to become
| an unwieldy, essentially unpublishable broadside of some
| 20,000 words. '

George was going to provide the necessary media coverage to create the massive expansion of the movement that he was later to milk like a fat cow: Esalen and the "Human Potential Movement" which was a vast array of evil training seminars. He would eventually become number two at Esalen with his very own LGAT: called ITP, or Integral Transformative Practice.

And what Esalen became was a birthplace of a myriad of new religious movements that were vying with each other to be a disaster to the community and be a ruinous plague upon America and the world. They very literally opened Pandora's box at Esalen.

Esalen is the birthplace of Large Group Awareness Training systems like the following (and this is, by no means, an all-inclusive list !!!):

. - Silvan Mind Control (1966, Jose Silva)
.
. - Mind Dynamics(1968, Alexander Everett)
.
. - Leadership Dynamics (1970, William Penn Patrick)
.
. - EST (1971, Werner Erhard from Esalen and Scientology)
.
. - LifeStream Personal Growth Seminars (1973, Jim Quinn
. from Mind Dynamics, Janet Quinn)
.
. - PSI World Seminars (1973, Thomas Willhite from Mind
. Dynamics, Jane Willhite)
.
. - Lifespring - San Jose (1974, Bob White, Randy Revell,
. Charlene Afremow from EST, John Hanley)
.
. - Life Dynamics-Japan (1976, Bob White from Lifespring,
. Duncan Callister)
.
. - Actualizations Education Seminars (1977, Stewart Emery
. from EST)
.
. - Insight Seminars (1977, John-Roger, Russell Bishop from
. Lifespring)
.
. - Inward Bound (1977, Alexander Everett of Mind Dynamics)
.
. - Context Training (1978, Randy Revell from Lifespring,
. Judy Revell, Phil Holcomb)
.
. - Life Training - Kairos Foundation(1979 (Roy Whitten and
. Brad Brown from EST)
.
. - Sterling Institute (1979, Justin Sterling from EST)
.
. - Trimtab Fund in Ottawa (1981, Val Scott from EST,
. Actualizations, Lifespring)
.
. - Impact Training (1985, Hans Berger and John Webb from
. Lifespring)
.
. - New Warrior Training (1986, Robert Bly from Sterling
. Institute, Ron Hering, Bill Kauth, Rich Tosi)
.
. - Pathways - Temenos (1986, Carole Kammen and Jodi Gold
. from Actualizations)
.
. - Resource Realizations (1988, David Gilcrease from
. Lifespring)
.
. - Lifespring in Russia (1989, John Hanley, Candace
. Hanley, Svetlana Chumakov which split in two in 1995,
. up to seven companies in 1997)
.
. - Landmark Forum and Landmark Education Seminars LES
. (1991, Werner Erhard of EST)
.
. - Integral Transformative Practice - ITP (1992, George
. Leonard and Michael Murphy from Esalen, finally
. getting in on the flood of revenue they started)
.
. - AsiaWorks (1993, Jim Cook, Amelia Davis), is linked with
. - ArgentinaWorks,
. - ChileWorks (Gabriel Nosevich from Lifespring),
. - WorldWorks ... formerly Lifespring DC (Lisa Kalman and
. Gabriel Nosevich from Lifespring),
. - The Legacy Center ... formerly Lifespring North Carolina,
. - Essential Education ... formerly Lifespring Florida, and also
. - Humanus Institute - Formerly Lifespring Chicago
.
. - Landmark Forum in Russia (1993, Werner Erhard)
.
. - Momentus - Association of Christian Character
. Development (1994, Daniel Tocchini from Lifespring)
.
. - Phoenix 2000 (1995, Mike McKeon and Martha Borst from
. Lifespring, Jaimes McNeal), is linked with
. - Vistar/Serendipity (Ray Blanchard and Betty Spruill
. from Lifespring) and also
. - LifeDesign Education (Janet Beasley)
.
. - UltraMind ESP System (1997, Jose Silva of Silvan Mind
. Control)

... and finally, these movements influenced and trained the trainers for Scientology (this was a two-way sharing of training).

| ' Esalen History'
|.
| ' Esalen was founded in 1962 by Michael Murphy and
| Richard Price as an educational center for the
| exploration of unrealized human capacities. It soon
| became known for its blend of East/West philosophies,
| its experiential workshops, the steady influx of leading
| philosophers, psychologists, artists, and religious
| thinkers, and its breathtaking grounds blessed with
| natural hot springs. Once home to a Native American
| tribe known as the Esselen, Esalen is situated on some
| 200 acres of spectacular Big Sur coastline with the
| Santa Lucia Mountains rising sharply behind.'
|.
| ' The Esalen Institute has often been in the public
| spotlight, most notably for its role in encouraging new
| understandings of human nature in the sixties and
| initiating citizen diplomacy with the Soviet Union in
| the eighties. However, it has also sponsored an array of
| programs out of the public eye, some of which have had
| far-reaching effects. The following, though by no means
| complete, highlights some of these initiatives....'

Far-reaching effects indeed.

I see it this way. View the devastating effects of the LGATs on American society, as pandemic. The LGAT epidemic attacked in a spiritual way, at the same time, and with the same slowly corrupting, long-latency symptomless fashion as the AIDs epidemic attacked the physical nature of America and the world.

Think of Michael Murphy, the great and evil friend of Esalen as "Patient Zero". The person that willfully spreads the epidemic as far and wide as possible, while thinking only of himself.

And think of Richard Price as "Patient One". For he will be one of the first to die, in 1985.
__________________________________________-

From "About Esalen" at http://www.well.com/user/suscon/esalen/esalen.html :

| 'Aside from its sheer magnificence, the land on
| which Esalen sits was the home of the Esselen Indians
| for centuries. Ceremonial grounds extending along the
| coast are peppered with artifacts--some over 4000 years
| old, and others from as recently as the 1700s. In the
| late 1800s, Thomas Benton State purchased the land. Then
| in 1910, Dr. Henry Murphy, Michael's grandfather,
| purchased the property with the idea of having the baths
| serve as curative waters for his patients. It is on this
| magical land that Esalen now resides.'
|.
| 'Gregory Bateson, Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, Joseph
| Campbell, Fredrick Spiegelberg, George Leonard,
| Buckminster Fuller, Moshe Feldenkrais, Fritz Perls, Ida
| Rolf, and many other masters of the mind/body mystery
| often walked the grounds here, smelled the sweet ocean
| air, and left countless others inspired and enrichened.'

How rosy. Notice George Leonard's name. This ersatz guru will in time replace the stricken and sincere Dick Price, like an incubus. Was it an active, or passive replacement? We shall examine this "cold case" in discussing the death of Dick Price.
_____________________________________________________

This is an interview with Dick Price that has disappeared from the web, like suspicious evidence removed by the guilty. But here it is anyway ...

From http://www.akstudy.com/air/essays/dick_price.shtml

| ' An interview with Dick Price '
|.
| ' Esalen cofounder Dick Price died in a hiking
| accident in November, 1985. These are excerpts from an
| interview conducted in April, 1985 over a two-day
| period. The interviewer was Wade Hudson, a San Francisco
| writer and activist who was involved in an innovative
| cooperative living situation. He had brought some
| members of his community to Esalen to participate in a
| Gestalt workshop with Dick. Like Dick, Wade had once
| been incarcerated in a mental hospital. He and Dick had
| connected through organizations working for patients'
| rights. In celebration of what would have been Dick's
| 70th birthday (10/12/00), here are some of his thoughts
| and memories. '
|.
| ' WH: How did the vision of Esalen develop? When did
| you decide to do something here? '
|.
| ' DP: I got out of my year and a half in mental
| hospitals on Thanksgiving Day of 1957. After what was
| done to me in the hospital I didn't have much energy to
| follow up my previous interests. I had been interested
| in being a research psychologist or a kind of
| anthropologist of mental health and illness. Then I had
| my own personal experiences, going into a state-labeled
| "psychosis" and then my experience of the mental
| hospital system. After I got out of the hospital I
| worked in the Chicago area where my family was. I
| planned to save up, both financially and emotionally. I
| wanted to do something other than spend my life in
| business. My intention was to find a place where people
| who were going through the type of experience I had
| could simply get better treatment and to utilize
| whatever I might find. '
|.
| ' WH: So that was in the late '50s and early '60s? '
|.
| ' DP: I moved back to San Francisco from Chicago in
| May of '60. I was living in a cooperative house in the
| Upper Fillmore for about a year. The last few months in
| the city I was living in the Aurobindo Ashram–CIF–The
| Cultural Integration Fellowship, in San Francisco.
| That's where I met Michael Murphy, who was in residence
| there. He mentioned that his grandmother had this place
| in the country. I had been talking to a friend who was a
| psychiatrist who had himself been hospitalized. He had
| gone into psychiatry and we had talked about finding a
| place that would be more than the ordinary mental
| hospital. Michael's interest wasn't specifically in this
| area. He had spent over a year at the Aurobindo Ashram
| in India and his interests were more contemplative and
| intellectual. So we had originally talked about taking
| over the place as a conference center that would in some
| way apply itself to a range of interests: meditation,
| religion, particular experiences, whether religious or
| psychotic. The only definite direction we had were the
| people we knew like Haridas Chaudhuri, who was head of
| CIF and had been professor at the Academy Asian Studies. '

This was a terrible turn of fate. Michael Murphy was an akuchishiki, or evil friend putting many on the destructive and evil path.

| ' WH: What had drawn you to the Cultural Integration
| Fellowship? '
|.
| ' DP: I had been a student of Chaudhuri at the time
| of my going into what you might call psychosis–which I
| simply call "a state." I had been a student at the
| American Academy of Asian Studies in late 1955 and early
| 1956. Chaudhuri had been a professor there and Alan
| Watts had been dean. When I moved back to San Francisco
| I started taking the programs with Watts and Chaudhuri
| again. Chaudhuri had started his own
| organization–Cultural Integration Fellowship. So I
| started taking some courses from Alan Watts, who had his
| own set-up by that time and was no longer part of the
| Academy. I also went to a few of Chaudhuri's lectures.
| Chaudhuri's lectures were given at CIF. I moved in
| there. '

So, we can see the timeline of Dick Price's fall into hellishness right here.

Dick studies with Watts and Chaudhari at Spiegelberg's American Academy of Asian Studies from late 1955 through early 1956.

After this horrendous and destructive blow to the core of his life, he spent an awful year and a half in mental hospitals from May 1956 through November 1957. In a quote from a John Covici posting:

| ' In 1959, two offbeat Stanford graduates,
| Michael Murphy and Richard Price (the latter fresh
| from a six-month stint in a mental institution back
| East, where he was zapped with electroshock
| treatments and heavy drugs on a daily basis),
| attended Aldous Huxley's lectures at the University
| of California Medical School at San Francisco and
| became converts to Huxley's ``human potentialities
| movement,'' ... '

Dick must have really suffered terribly, as his life tried to break him away from Watt's evil. Sadly, ignoring the obvious cause and effect relationship, he comes back for more evil. Just can't get enough.

He simply can't believe that what he has done to his life is wrong.

He is a sincere seeker, with the most terrible of circumstances: he has found something unbearably fascinating that will ultimately cause his personal destruction, and the destruction of countless others.

This is the most terrible fate imaginable, finding the evil path and encountering nothing that will break your attachment to that evil, short of death.

| ' WH: Was there a particular turning point where
| Esalen took shape in the form we see today? '
|.
| ' DP: There were a number of turning points. The
| first was simply taking the place over, which we did in
| October of 1961, but at that time our business was
| rather mixed. We were putting up the people who were
| building the bridge, just taking "off-the-road" traffic.
| We had started with the connections we had, through
| people like Alan Watts, and begun to set up programs. I
| think one of the first programs–it was probably
| early '62–was Alan Watts. Alan did his own program from
| his own mailing list. At that time we tended to use
| people who had their own followings, their own mailing
| lists, their own programs, and we would just provide the
| place as a conference center for them. Then gradually, I
| think the following year, we began to get out our own
| catalogue and formed Esalen as a separate entity. Before
| that we were Big Sur Hot Springs, Incorporated, and then
| we started running weekends, we gradually got a few
| five-day programs, and we were still running it for just
| "drop-in" traffic. Then gradually–I think by 1967–we
| took the Big Sur Hot Springs sign down and put the
| Esalen sign up and attempted to make the whole place a
| conference center. The big turning points were the
| people who came in residence here, primarily Fritz Perls
| in 1964, Virginia Satir about the same time, Will Schutz
| in 1967, and then other people who became what we called
| associates-in-residence, including Charlotte Selver and
| Charles Brooks. They weren't living here but had a place
| about thirteen miles away in Big Sur. '

Running seminars for Alan Watts. Can there be any more distorted view of Buddhism at that time in America, than that of Alan Watts? What an explosively destructive activity.

| ' WH: Would you say more about what motivated you
| and why you were dissatisfied with what was available at
| that time? Why did you want to do something different? '
|.
| ' DP: Different in the area of what's called mental
| health? '
|.
| ' WH: Yes. '
|.
| ' DP: Well, very much of my own experience, as you
| know from your own experience, was quite brutalizing.
| Rather than seeing someone through a particular type of
| experience, it was an effort to suppress and negate in
| every possible way what I was going through. There was a
| fundamental mistake being made and that mistake was
| supposing that the healing process was the disease,
| rather than the process whereby the disease is healed.
| The disease, if any, was the state previous to the
| "psychosis." The so-called "psychosis" was an attempt
| toward spontaneous healing, and it was a movement toward
| health, not a movement toward disease. '
|.
| ' WH: What was it like for you experiencing this at
| that time? '
|.
| ' DP: It's a little difficult to talk about.
| Certainly a range of experience. In some categories it
| would be called mystical, really a re-owning and
| discovery of parts of myself where I set myself in
| relation to a larger cosmos. But don't try to talk to a
| psychiatrist in these terms; to them, this is simply a
| symptom of "very deep-lying illness." '

What a tragedy. His self-induced state forces more self-destruction. How pathetic for this poor guy. How tragic for the world in which many suffered the same fate from the same source.

| ' WH: What kind of space would you have wanted? What
| would have been helpful for you at that time? '
|.
| ' DP: Well, a space like Esalen, where it is
| possible to be outside and not locked up, a place where
| it's possible to get a good diet, a place where it's
| possible to live through experience rather than having
| it blotted out, a place where there aren't the same
| negative self-definitions of someone going through this
| type of experience. Also, people available who are not
| doing what psychiatrists, or at least many of them,
| characteristically do. '
|.
| ' WH: And doing what instead? '
|.
| ' DP: In my own work I have three keys: trust
| process, stay with process, and get out of the way. In
| other words, allow the space for what is happening
| without suppression and with trust. Don't suppose that a
| particular socially-conditioned way of life is the only
| correct way of being, and then define that, rather
| arbitrarily, as "health." There's a mystification in the
| language of psychiatry–at least as I experienced it–and
| given that mystification, there is justification for all
| sorts of brutalities. '

That's the influence of Alan Watts speaking through Dick Price. Trusting and opening yourself like a fresh wound to the disease-ridden ideas of Watts and mentor D.T. Suzuki.

| ' WH: Your interest in Gestalt came through Fritz
| Perls. Do you remember your first encounter with Fritz? '
|.
| ' DP: Actually he came here and did a program
| Christmas of 1963 and my first impression was not good.
| As it turned out Fritz had just had a heart attack and
| thought he might die at any moment. In a lot of ways he
| wasn't the most pleasant person socially, even when
| healthy, so it took a couple of years, actually two
| years from that day, for me to really start working with
| him. I started working with him around Christmas time of
| 1965, New Years of '66. And I was very impressed by what
| the man was doing and how different he was in the group
| than I had experienced him in just regular conversation. '
|.
| ' WH: What impressed you about his work in groups? '
|.
| ' DP: He was insightful. He was present. He was
| compassionate. All the things I didn't view him as when
| I was seeing him around the lodge or the property. I was
| very impressed that this man, a psychiatrist, was doing
| such good work compared to what I had experienced. As it
| worked out, Fritz was not qualified by the State of
| California to do psychiatry. There was nothing here that
| was psychiatry. A person can be a psychiatrist but they
| are not to do psychiatry here, they're to do
| experiential education. So he effectively defined a new
| category. I shouldn't say it's new. By Fritz's own
| comments, Gestalt is as old as the world. It's a type of
| healing that's closer to so-called "primitive
| societies," a category of shamanistic healing and
| ritual. These approaches are humane, they come into
| contact with people as people, not as objects that are
| to be some way fixed. '

Dick Price is right about Psychiatry, but doesn't understand that the problem is wider than clinical therapy.

The evil function in all forms of therapy is simply that it enables you to cope with the evil that is present in your life, and that coping allows you to accept more and more evil into your life. More therapy, more evil, in an endless and building cycle of dehumanizing life-rending hopelessness.

But you do keep the therapists permanently employed !!!

That is the major evil of therapy, it's mesmerizing and hypnotic effect of dulling the natural ability to "sense the evil".

Zen and Psychiatry go hand in hand, building new levels of slander of the Law, and then tolerating the evil effects. But you're tough, you can take it, right? Be a man !!!

| ' WH: How long was it before you started doing
| Gestalt yourself? '
|.
| ' DP: I started working with Fritz in early 1966.
| Then in the spring of '69 I had a second psychosis,
| largely the effect of not being able to finish what I
| was experiencing thirteen years previously. Most of this
| experience I was able to work out in Big Sur. Not here
| [at Esalen]. I was actually staying with a couple of
| non-psychiatrist friends who had their own properties
| and who would protect my space for me to experience just
| what I was experiencing. So rather than having the year
| and a half of hospitalization that I had to go through
| in 1956 and '57, I managed with only ten days. After I
| got out, which would have been the summer of 1969, Fritz
| was reestablishing himself. He left here after six years
| and reestablished himself at the Gestalt Institute of
| Canada at Adelaide College on Vancouver Island. I went
| up there near the end of 1969 for two of his last three
| teaching months. At the end of '69 I left Canada and
| came back here. Fritz left Canada and went for a tour of
| Europe that winter, got sick in Europe, and sicker still
| when he got back to this country, and never got back to
| Canada. He died en route in Chicago in March of '70. In
| the months I spent with him in Canada there was a
| training institute. I had gone up there less to train
| than to integrate the experience of my previous year and
| he said, "Dick, it's time for you to go out and teach
| and do your own groups." And so I started doing that
| when I got back here in 1970..... '

So, here below is where Dick makes a profoundly evil cause. He stirs together Perl's Gestalt with Aikido, a variant of Physical Zen. This makes him a founder of his own, new school of Zen. A major distortion of the Buddha's teachings and intent. And since Aikido is proud to show it's heritage back to Bodhidharma, Dick now follows in that tradition.

That tradition of stealing the Buddha's identity and co-opting his teachings as your own, while still considering it in the mind as Buddhism, is proved by the connection: calling it Buddhism, instead of your own tradition (say, Price-ism), or establishing a link to a tradition that has done this in the past, like Aikido.

| ' WH: How is your approach different from others,
| would you say? '
|.
| ' DP: In relationship to Fritz–Fritz had a
| background in theater and acting. I don't, and I don't
| have a whole lot of interest in theater, really. And so
| I would say that Fritz was more entertaining. And he
| wouldn't stay with a person as long in process as I
| would, so there was less permission. Permission is
| either given explicitly or implied. There was less
| implied permission to go deeply into emotion. So I'm
| more available than Fritz at what I would call a deeper
| level. And I'm probably not as entertaining. There are
| what I call conceptually two categories of Gestaltists.
| One does Acid Gestalt. They tell you how you should be
| and they frustrate. Fritz would talk about skillful
| frustration. Not everyone doing the work frustrates
| skillfully. If I frustrate you skillfully, then you are
| almost forced to find another way beyond your usual
| neurotic defense. This works well for some people, both
| as initiators and reflectors-or patient and therapist.
| Acid Gestaltists tend to be confrontive and sarcastic.
| And there's what I call Soft Gestaltists, the Aikido
| Gestaltists. They're simply present with whatever
| happens without having to put in their own judgments or
| frustrate. My own attitude is that you frustrate
| yourself enough. I don't have to frustrate you. All I
| need to do is be present to reflect your self-
| frustrations back and then let you choose whether you
| want to continue to do that or want to find another way.
| I don't have to be your judge. '
|.
| ' WH: How much training or skill is needed to be a
| reflector? '
|.
| ' DP: Compare massage and Rolfing. You can give a
| massage that feels good with very little training and
| very little experience. Rolfing requires more training.
| Some people just have a great aptitude to do that. Some
| people can train forever and never really be good
| masseuses or masseurs. I consider Gestalt more like
| massage. Of course, there's a value in training, but
| this is an approach that you can do at almost any level.
| You can do it almost as a game. It's not so much about
| training. The experience you have at doing it and a
| particular type of aptitude are more important than any
| kind of training. Effectively, Fritz didn't train in the
| usual sense, by supervising carefully. You hung out with
| him. For me, you learn Gestalt by hanging out with a
| master and picking it up; then, like Fritz did with me:
| "Dick, time to go out and teach." I'd never say that he
| carefully trained me, with this unit and that unit, like
| a college. The model is much like learning weaving, or
| any folk skill or art. It's relational–in relation to
| your own particular aptitudes and interests. It's made a
| big difference for me to do it a lot. Most training in
| this particular area–in social work, in psychiatry, and
| certainly in psychology–is mistraining. I have an
| undergraduate degree in psychology and did graduate work
| at Harvard in clinical psychology. It's mistraining.
| It's attempting again to put people in cognitive boxes
| with a lot of denial of the stuff of life, which is
| sensation and feeling. '
|.
| ' WH: What pitfalls or dangers do you see in the use
| of Gestalt? '
|.
| ' DP: In the softer Gestalt approaches, I don't see
| any because, for me, Gestalt, more than being a therapy,
| or perhaps even a practice, is simply an alternative way
| for people to be present with one another. It's a way
| that is likely to be quite a bit more nourishing than
| many of the ways that people tend to be together. It's
| being available for another experience, just as that
| experience is, without trying to define it to be a
| particular way. I think that you could look at Gestalt
| as simply a way to be present with yourself in the world
| and a way to be present with another person or a group
| of people. '
|.
| ' WH: What do you think is required of people in
| order to do Gestalt with one another? '
|.
| ' DP: A little experience and the willingness to
| play. '

And in Price's case, a willingness to distort the teachings of the Buddha and create your very own, brand new Buddhism.

Dick Price would only live another six months ...
_____________________________________________________
=====================================================

Monterey County Sheriff's Department - Salinas
Miscellaneous Report
Date and Time Reported: Tuesday, 11/26/85 0754 HRS

1. Report No.: 3-96807
2. Nature of Report: Casualty - D.B.F.
3. Date - Time Occurred (Day) 11/25/85 Unknown Time
4. Location: 30 Monterey County, Hot Springs Creek Canyon.
5. Beat Area: 9-B/S
6. Name - Last, First, Middle (Reporting Party): Lyke, Brian Robert
7. Address: Esalen, Big Sur
8. Telephone Residence: 667-2569
9. Occupation: Instructor
10. Race - Sex: W/M
11. Age: 42
12. DOB: 10/29/43
13. Business Address (School if juvenile): Same as #7
14. Telephone Business: Same as #8
_____________________________________

Monterey County Sheriff's Department - Salinas
Supplemental Heading [Marked as: Misc., not as Felony or Misdemeanor]

70. Code Section: N/A
71. Crime: N/A
72. Classification: Casualty - D.B.F.
73. Victim's Name - Last, First, Middle: Price, Richard
74. Address (Residence): Esalen Institute, Big Sur
76. Suspect (Last, First, Middle): None.
_____________________________________
Text:

. Deceased: Price, Richard A. WMA. DOB 10/12/30 of Esalen
. Institute, Big Sur, 667-2670
.
. 11/26/85 0754 HRS Tues:
.
. R/P reported finding Mr. Price dead in Hot Springs Creek
. Canyon after he had suffered a blow to the head from
. what is suspected as falling rocks and boulders.
.
. 0925 HRS Same Date:
.
. Contacted Lyke and victim's wife, Christine Price, at
. the Price home. I checked Mr. Price, who had been
. removed from the Canyon to the home, and found him
. without any signs of life and in a state of rigor-
. mortis. He had a large wound to the head and face, a
. surface bruise and abrasion on his left hip and some
. cuts on the back of his hands.
.
. While awaiting the arrival of the Coroner (Dan McCabe)
. Lyke explained the following; in the late AM on
. 11/25/85, Price took his daily walk into Hot Springs
. Canyon in order to check the water supply pond and to
. meditate.
.
. He failed to appear for two afternoon appointments and
. at 2030 HRS, Mrs. Price called Lyke expressing her
. concern over her husband's absence. Lyke and a friend,
. Steve Beck, then walked to the water pond where they
. discovered Price leaning backward in a pool of water
. with severe head injuries and said he was stiff and no
. signs of life. They noticed that a very large boulder
. (estimated by Lyke at 200 pounds) had hit the edge of
. the water pond where Price always meditates. Price was
. located only 10 feet away from this point. Lyke said
. that the recent rains have loosened the rocks and
. boulders in the Canyon thus making it very dangerous to
. hike in the area. Lyke and Beck then returned to inform
. Mrs. Price and to obtain additional help to carry the
. victim out.
.
. - The body was removed at 0315 HRS and after Mrs. Price
. had spent some time with her deceased husband, called
. the Sheriff's's Office.
.
. - Coroner McCabe arrived and assumed the investigation.
. Nothing further.
.
. - Case Suspended, CC: Coroner McCabe.
_____________________________________

Prepared By: Thompson
Investigating Officer(s): Thompson/McCabe
Date & Time Prepared: 11/27/85 1230 HRS
Date & Time Typed: Same.
Further Action: [Marked as: No]
_____________________________________________________
=====================================================

There are two alternative endings to this story, since there is no APPARENT witness to the death of Dick Price. And, also, since the authorities were so quick to close the case and move on, even though some of the facts are curious, indeed.
_____________________________________________________
=====================================================

COLD CASE: The Freakishly Coincidental Death of Dick Price
Alternative Ending Number One:
_____________________________________________________

Dick Price always goes to same water supply pond in Hot Springs Canyon to check the levels and meditate. He has done this since the 1960's and he always sits and meditates in the same spot. It is calm, peaceful, quiet in its stillness, and always a little cooler by the water. It is his spot, more than any other.

He has been trying for some time, in his Dhyana, to deconstruct his mental blockages, to break through. Lately, he feels close. Like the recent rains have washed away some impurity, revealing the truth.

There has been, since his interview and his public exposure, wide acceptance and appreciation of his new Soft Aikido Gestalt Therapy. This has brought Richard a feeling of completion, like he has finally accomplished his mission in life. George Leonard, the expert in Aikido, has turned out to have a really beneficial influence on this creation.

He has made a concrete contribution to the therapy community. A contribution that is apart from Esalen, his own identifiably Richard Price place in history. It feels good, to be Richard, now. It hasn't always, but it feels good, now.

He hears a noise behind and above him. The thought flashes through his mind, that the recent rains have loosened the rocks, and that rock climbing is dangerous here after the rain.

His hands go up to cover the top of his head, as pebbles rain down on him.

He tilts his head up to see what is coming, and just as he does, a 200 pound boulder hits him in the face, opening a deep gash in his head and face and cutting the backs of his hands that were simply inadequate to protect him against such a large boulder.

He staggers to his feet, blood pouring into his eyes and blinding him, and stumbles towards the water instinctively to try and clear his sight.

He slumps down in at the edge of the pond, tilting back to wash his eyes, so that he can clear his vision by splashing water up on his face.

He is afraid to tilt forward because he might pass out from the shock of the injury. He leans back to clear his head, and to keep the blood from draining into his eyes.

He waits for the bleeding to stop.

It doesn't.

He loses consciousness.

Richard Price dies.

It will be nine hours before Richard is found.
_____________________________________________________
=====================================================

COLD CASE: The Carefully Premeditated Murder of Dick Price
Alternative Ending Number Two:
_____________________________________________________

Dick Price always goes to same water supply pond in Hot Springs Canyon to check the levels and meditate. He has done this since the 1960's and he always sits and meditates in the same spot. It is calm, peaceful, quiet in its stillness, and always a little cooler by the water. It is his spot, more than any other.

He has been trying for some time, in his Dhyana, to deconstruct his mental blockages, to break through. Lately, he feels close. Like the recent rains have washed away some impurity, revealing the truth.

There has been, since his interview and his public exposure, wide acceptance and appreciation of his new Soft Aikido Gestalt Therapy. This has brought Richard a feeling of completion, like he has finally accomplished his mission in life. George Leonard, the expert in Aikido, has turned out to have a really beneficial influence on this creation.

He has made a concrete contribution to the therapy community. A contribution that is apart from Esalen, his own identifiably Richard Price place in history. It feels good, to be Richard, now. It hasn't always, but it feels good, now.

He hears a noise, someone is behind him.

He turns to see someone strong and fast, who sneaked up behind him soundlessly, wielding a rock of about twenty pounds, swinging it up into the air as if to smash him.

His hands go up to cover the top of his head, he awkwardly tries to lurch to his feet to get away from his attacker.

The attacker is too fast for him, though, and he cannot get away, and is too off balance to protect himself.

The rock comes smashing down with perfect force and angle, as if the attacker is punching through him, targeting beyond his head..

The rock opens a deep gash in his head and face, and cuts defensive wounds into the backs of his hands that were simply inadequate to protect him against such a forceful and perfectly-aimed attack.

Richard loses consciousness.

His attacker throws the twenty pound rock into the pond.

He moves Richard over by the edge of the pond.

He goes up to loosen a two hundred pound boulder that he had spotted in perfect position the other day.

The boulder falls and he rolls it over to the correct spot of the attack.

He takes blood from Richard with his hands and covers an edge of the rock with it, and adds a few skin fragments from Richard's gaping wound.

It is dirty work, but his heart is like a stone.

He shoves Richard into the water and leans him back, to wash Richard's head and remove any physical evidence that might tie him to the body, like the attacker's finger prints in the blood on Richard's face.

Then he washes himself in the pond and carefully hikes out, like he hiked in, using a path that is rarely used, but known to a few.

Richard Price dies.

It will be nine hours before Richard is found, for the second time.
_____________________________________________________
=====================================================

So, who could have done it? Richard is certainly responsible for his circumstances, viewing the big picture.

In the first alternative ending, he loosens the boulder gradually over the years, with his mind.

In the second ending ... well, who can guess might have done this?

You'd have to ask George Leonard, who took Richard's place at Esalen.

George Leonard would know who was around during that time.

And as an Aikido and martial arts expert, George Leonard knows who was physically capable of pulling off a ruse like that, and who had the physical confidence to try it.

And George Leonard would know who had something to gain from such a crime.

____ Epilog _______________________________________

The Buddha's highest teachings were the purpose of the Buddha's advent on this earth.

The Buddha did not appear on this earth to drain people's compassion with discussions of the emptiness and meaninglessness of life which is just a void.

The Buddha did not appear on this earth to teach people to live in such a narrow and momentary way, that there would be no context for self-examination and conscience.

The Buddha did not appear on this earth to possess people's minds with such illogic as to befuddle their ability to choose correctly between what is good and what is evil.

The Buddha did not appear on this earth to teach people how to commit atrocities and genocide, in the exploration of their "infinite possibilities", or "new states of being".

The Buddha did not appear on this earth to teach people how to maim and kill with their hands efficiently, quietly, loudly, with increased terror inflicted, or to maximize their subjugation to control the public sentiments for political ends.

These are all profoundly evil distortions of the Buddha's true teachings, which introduce infinities in the variables holding good and evil, removing all shades of gray in the propositional calculus of value.

Simply stated, the Buddha made his advent on this earth with the purpose of teaching the compassionate way of the bodhisattva, which is at the heart of the true entity of all phenomena, which is the eternal Buddha at one with the eternal Law. Which is how to navigate the sea of sufferings of birth, aging, sickness and death. He originally set out on his path, because of his observation of the sufferings of common people and wanting to understand the source of those sufferings (enlightened wisdom) and how to transform those sufferings into unshakable happiness (enlightened action).

When you embrace the void and acausality, your initial intention to experiment with and learn about Eastern philosophy doesn't matter ... the result is always the same: chaos and misery, and utter ruination and emptiness to you, your family, and your country.

But things don't have to be that way ...
___________________________________________________

Nichiren Daishonin writes (Encouragement to a Sick Person, WND p. 78):

. "During the Former and Middle Days of the Law, the
. five impurities began to appear, and in the Latter
. Day, they are rampant. They give rise to the great
. waves of a gale, which not only beat against the
. shore, but strike each other. The impurity of
. thought has been such that, as the Former and
. Middle Days of the Law gradually passed, people
. transmitted insignificant erroneous teachings
. while destroying the unfathomable correct
. teaching. It therefore appears that more people
. have fallen into the evil paths because of errors
. with respect to Buddhism than because of secular
. misdeeds."

Because Bodhidharma discarded the Buddha's highest teaching (the Lotus Sutra), and due to his lazy nature turned to shortcuts to enlightenment, he came to the distorted view that life is acausal and empty, that the true entity is the void.

This erroneous view really comes from a misunderstanding of the Sutra of Immeasurable Meanings, where the True Entity is described by negation (the only way it can be): "... neither square, nor round, neither short, nor long, ..."

The description of the True Entity is logically voidal, but the True Entity itself is not. Bodhidharma was simply confused, due to the slander of negligence (laziness), and false confidence. The truth of life is that at the heart of the True Entity is the compassion of a bodhisattva for others.

Non-substantiality does not mean empty. Life has value. Humans are respectworthy. There is a purpose to everything. And every cause has an effect, so we are responsible for our thoughts, words and deeds. Zen is acausal. Zen is the greatest poison, which compares to the even greater medicine of the Lotus Sutra.

Suffice it to say: the purpose of Zen in the world is to corrupt and undermine everything that is not based upon the truth and the true teaching. All religions, disciplines, institutions and organizations which are undermined by Zen will eventually fall after glaring revelation of their worst defects, sooner rather than later.

If there is some good in your family, locality, society and culture, or country that you would like to retain, then cease the Zen, and begin to apply the medicine of the Lotus Sutra to heal the Zen wound in your life.

"Zen is the work of devilish minds." - Nichiren

-Chas.

. a prescription for the poisoned ones:
.
. The only antidote for the toxic effects of Zen in your life ...
.
. be that from Zen meditation, or the variant forms: physical
. Zen in the martial arts, Qigong, Acupuncture, Falun Gong,
. Copenhagen Convention of Quantum Mechanics, EST,
. Landmark Education, Nazism, Bushido, the Jesuits,
. Al Qaeda, or merely from having the distorted view that life
. is acausal, and that the true entity of all phenomena
. is the void ...
.
. with the effects of the loss of loved ones, detachment,
. isolation or various forms of emptiness in your life ...
.
. is the Lotus Sutra: chant Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo
. at least 3 times, twice a day, for the rest of your life,
. in at least a whisper ...
.
. and if you can, chant abundantly in a resonant voice !!!
.
. The full 28 Chapters of the Lotus Sutra,
. Nichiren Daishonin's Gosho volumes I and II,
. the Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings
. (Gosho Zenshu, including the Ongi Kuden) and the
. SGI Dictionary of Buddhism are located at:
.
http://www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/
.
. To find an SGI Community Center:
.
http://www.sgi-usa.org/sgilocations/
__________________________________

LS Chap. 16 .....

All harbor thoughts of yearning
and in their minds thirst to gaze at me.
When living beings have become truly faithful,
honest and upright, gentle in intent,
single-mindedly desiring to see the Buddha
not hesitating even if it costs them their lives,
then I and the assembly of monks
appear together on Holy Eagle Peak.
At that time I tell the living beings
that I am always here, never entering extinction,
but that because of the power of an expedient means
at times I appear to be extinct, at other times not,
and that if there are living beings in other lands
who are reverent and sincere in their wish to believe,
then among them too
I will preach the unsurpassed Law.