Michael Murphy (Author)

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Michael Murphy (* 1930 in Salinas , California ) is a co-founder of the Esalen Institute , a member of the Integral Institute , a person in the American Human Potential movement and the author of books on extraordinary human potentials.

Life

Murphy's father was Irish and his mother was of Basque descent. Legend has it that John Steinbeck recreated the characters "Aaron" and "Cal" from his novel Beyond Eden Murphy and his younger brother Dennis. (Steinbeck had been a friend of the Murphy family since Murphy's doctor grandfather who gave birth to Steinbeck). In April 1950, while studying pre-medical at Stanford University , he happened to be attending a class in comparative religion which sparked an interest in integrating East and West schools of thought, enrolled in the subject and later began meditating . Then on January 15, 1951, while meditating on a lake near Stanford, he allegedly had a key experience that he called the pivot point. He retired from pre-medical studies and pursued a new vision for his life.

Murphy continued his studies formally in psychology at Stanford University and obtained a BA in 1952. After completing his studies, he was drafted into the United States Army and was stationed as a psychologist in Puerto Rico for two years . He then returned to Stanford for half a year and began graduate studies in philosophy until he finally went to India in 1956 . In 1956 and 1957 Murphy meditated at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry , India. His ideas about the connections between human evolution, human potential and spiritual development probably originated here, at least in part.

In 1960, while in San Francisco , Murphy met fellow student Dick Price . Together with him he founded the Esalen Institute in Big Sur , California in 1962 on 51 hectares of land belonging to his family . In the course of 1972 he withdrew from active work in Esalen to concentrate more on writing. He remained chairman of the institute's management and continued to be a key figure in research projects at the Esalen Center for Theory and Research . In the 1980s Murphy organized the Esalen-based Soviet-American exchange program, which is said to have been the initiator of Boris Yeltsin's first visit to the USA in 1990.

In 1992 he published his book "Der Quanten-Mensch" (original title: The Future of the Body ) in which he describes the extraordinary abilities of humans (healing, hypnosis , peace research , yoga , telepathy , clairvoyance and heroic superhuman power development) through history and in documented and comparatively commented on all cultures. In it he collected evidence for the existence of the extraordinary phenomena. Murphy is a golfer and has written two fictional books on golf and human potential. His novel "Golf und Psyche" (original title: Golf in the Kingdom ), written in 1972 , has been published several times since its appearance.

bibliography

  • Golf in the Kingdom (Fiction) (1972)
  • Jacob Atabet (Fiction) (1977)
  • The Psychic Side of Sports (not fictional, shared with Rhea White) (1978)
  • An End to Ordinary History: A Novel (Fiction) (1982)
  • The Future of the Body: Explorations into the Further Evolution of Human Nature (1992). German: Der QuantenMensch. A look into the development of human potential in the 21st century. Integral, Wessobrunn 1994. Translated by Manfred Miethe . ISBN 3-89304-699-2
  • The Life We Are Given: A Long-Term Program for Realizing the Potential of Body, Mind, Heart, and Soul (not fictional, together with George Leonard ) (1995)
  • In the Zone: Transcendent Experience in Sports (not fictional, revision of The Psychic Side of Sports , together with Rhea White) (1995)
  • The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation: A Review of Contemporary Research With a Comprehensive Bibliography, 1931-1996 (not fictional, second edition) (1997)
  • The Kingdom of Shivas Irons (Fiction - building on Golf in the Kingdom ) (1997)
  • God and the Evolving Universe: The Next Step in Personal Evolution (not fictional, shared with James Redfield and Sylvia Timbers )

Works

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated May 4, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stanfordalumni.org
personal data
SURNAME Murphy, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author of the Human Potential movement
DATE OF BIRTH 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Salinas, California