The Visionary State: California's Spiritual Frontiers

Erik Davis, author of Tech-Gnosis, and hundreds of other fun and facinating articles on cutting edge culture, has a new workshop at Esalen the weekend of April 8-10. The title of the workshop is The Visionary State: California's Spiritual Frontiers. The title of the workshop comes from a new book he is writing along with photographer Michael Rauner.

As someone who grew up in California, I spent a good part of my life so immeshed in the culture of spiritual experimentation that I never considered that it was so revolutionary compared to how most of American looks at the world. At no time was this point pushed home harder than this last election.

"Over the last one hundred and fifty years, California has developed one of the most innovative spiritual cultures on the planet. Many of our contemporary concerns with deep ecology, human transformation, body-positive spirituality, and the technoscience of mind are rooted in the state's maverick "culture of consciousness." California has been home to spiritual mavericks like Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley, to popular visionaries like Starhawk and Carlos Castaneda, to spiritual poets like Robinson Jeffers and Gary Snyder, and to visionary organizations like Esalen and the Ojai Institute. Why did all this happen here?

This seminar will explore and try to explain this rich legacy using poems, film clips, music, photographs, and slides drawn from Erik Davis's own exploration of California's hidden temples and sacred spots. The program will examine the idea that California's alternative spirituality forms a distinct religious tradition on its own—a kind of West Coast Hinduism, full of diverse and often contradictory sects, philosophies, and spiritual technologies, but sharing a a common cultural landscape."

[note: Future Hi is now the official home to over 100 hours of Ojai Workshop and Seminar Audio in our media section]