Michael Murphy (author)
Michael Murphy (born in 1930) is the co-founder of the Esalen Institute, a key figure in the Human Potential Movement and author of The Future of the Body and other books on topics related to extraordinary human potential.
Michael Murphy was born to an Irish father and Basque mother in Salinas, California.
In April 1950, while enrolled in the pre-med program at Stanford University, he mistakenly wandered into a lecture on comparative religions. This lecture so fanned the flame of his interest in the integration of Eastern and Western thought that he enrolled in the class and subsequently began meditation.
On January 15, 1951, during seated meditation by Lake Lagunita at Stanford, he experienced what he describes as a "hinge moment", after which he dropped out of the pre-med program with a new vision for the purpose of his life.
He continued with his formal education, earning his B.A. in psychology in 1952 from Stanford University. After graduation, he was drafted by the US Army and spent two years stationed in Puerto Rico as a psychologist. He returned to Stanford for two quarters of graduate studies in philosophy before he quit in 1956 to go to India.
During 1956 and 1957 Murphy practiced meditation for 18 months at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry, India. It is likely that his ideas related to the connection between human evolution, human potential, and spiritual growth developed further here.
In 1960, while in residence at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Cultural Integration Fellowship in San Francisco, he met a fellow Stanford University graduate, Dick Price. In 1962, they founded Esalen Institute together in Big Sur, California on 127 acres (0.51 km2) of property owned by Murphy's family.
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