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Esalen Founders Michael Murphy is cofounder and Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Esalen Institute, and serves as Director of Esalen’s Center for Theory & Research (CTR). Born and raised in Salinas, California, Murphy graduated from Stanford University in 1952. He lived for a year and a half at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India before starting Esalen Institute in 1962 with his fellow Stanford graduate, Richard Price. In Big Sur, Price and Murphy co-created a magical and magnificent living laboratory on land owned by Murphy’s family. Michael insisted that Esalen focus not only on the wonders that happen for the thousands of people that come to be healed and made whole, but that it also work for social advance in various fields and support fundamental research into the potentials of human nature. In the 1980s, Michael and his wife Dulce were instrumental in organizing Esalen's pioneering Soviet-American Exchange Program, which became a premier vehicle for citizen-to-citizen relations between Russians and Americans. In 1989, Esalen initiated Boris Yeltsin's first visit to America -- a trip that contributed to Yeltsin's change of heart regarding the United States, capitalism and the future of the Soviet Union. This success led to Esalen citizen diplomacy programs with China, an initiative to further understanding and healing among Jews, Christians and Muslims, and further work on Russian-American relations. Murphy is director of the Center for Theory & Research (CTR), the groundbreaking research center for Esalen Institute. In addition to serving as Director, Murphy leads a number of CTR initiatives, including one that explores the empirical evidence of post-mortem survival, another to explore encompassing visions of evolution that reconcile scientific and mystical perspectives, and one on meditation research. The Life We Are Given was released as a full-length feature film in 2011, and is still a best seller 30 years after it was published. He also wrote three other novels: Esalen Our mission at Esalen to facilitate such change within self and society has never been more vital than it is now. – Michael Murphy, Esalen CTR Founder The goals of the Esalen Center for Theory & Research (CTR) span a wide range of commitments, projects, and passions. One of these is the development of a new worldview that can make sense of all of this and a transformative practice that can embody it, since vision without action is lame and action without vision is blind. Under the banner of “Toward a New Worldview,” CTR seeks to nourish and support an emerging 'school' in which theory, research, and practice will co-evolve to embody our latent supernature. 1-888-8-ESALEN (888-837-2536)