Alternative Spirit

The list of people leading alternative spiritual practices in 1969 when I arrived in California is so long, I can’t do more than name them in a blog piece. But even to name them evokes the rich spirit of aspiration, exploration and controversy rife at that time at the edge of the continent, where, as my Dad said, “all the loose nuts and bolts in the country had rolled!”

Two Episcopalians probably opened Pandora’s Box. Bishop James Pike, who led Grace Cathedral at the top of Nob Hill only a few blocks from where I lived, had just died. But his charismatic personality and challenges to orthodox belief were legendary. He advocated the ordination of women, racial desegregation and the acceptance of lesbians and gays as leaders, things so common now we cannot imagine the heat they generated in his day.

Alan Watts was on the radio so often in the early 1970’s, I could hardly bear to listen. (I would be more receptive now!) He had been an Episcopal priest, but by this time was living on a houseboat in Sausalito and interpreting Eastern philosophy for the West both as a teacher in the American Academy of Asian Studies and a programmer for the radio station KPFA.

Murshid Samuel Lewis gave up his inheritance to embrace mystical and spiritual teachings, becoming a teacher in the Chisti Sufi order. Known in San Francisco as Sufi Sam, a voice told him, “I will make you spiritual leader of the hippies.” He developed the all-embracing dances which were the beginnings of the Dances of Universal Peace, now done all over the world.

Shunryu Suzuki

Shunryu Suzuki headed the burgeoning San Francisco Zen Center. His book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind was read by almost everyone. (Still is!) When he died in 1971, Zentatsu Richard Baker enlarged the focus and reach of the Zen Center, leading it to become an institution with monasteries at Tassajara, San Francisco and across the Bay in Muir Beach, as well as opening Green’s restaurant. The Zen Center became a huge educational, and even a political force during Jerry Brown’s governorship of California.

Though not associated with traditional spiritual groups, Esalen Institute, located near Carmel and in San Francisco, played a huge part in our cultural life. Studying consciousness using countless psychological and physical methods, the Institute fostered everything from meditation to organic food! Founded in 1962 by Michael Murphy and Dick Price, it is still going strong with public workshops exploring the sciences and humanities.

By the time I arrived, the Diggers, founded by Peter Coyote and Peter Berg, who met at the San Francisco Mime Troupe, had left town. The Diggers were an anarchist group which provided free food, health care and shelter in the Haight Ashbury, but then merged with other communal groups to form the Free Family.

Steve Gaskin, 1969

Steve Gaskin, a teacher at San Francisco State, was giving Monday Night Class in an auditorium on Ocean Beach (also used for rock concerts), attended by hundreds of people up and down the coast. He had been greatly affected by his psychedelic experiences and was a proponent of right livelihood and ecological practices. One night, Alan Ginsberg introduced Swami Bhaktivedanta to the group, unleashing the Hare Krishna movement upon the city! I certainly never went to Monday Night Class, but we were all very aware when Gaskin collected a caravan of over 60 vehicles in 1970 and left San Francisco, traveling across country and forming an intentional community at The Farm in Tennessee.

Werner Erhard started his est seminars in San Francisco in 1971. After a Dale Carnegie course and teaching Mind Dynamics, he felt he could develop a course of his own. Hundreds of thousands of people took est training which fueled the personal growth industry of the 1970’s.

I felt inoculated from much of this discussion by my powerful Lutheran background and I was too independent to become involved in communal movements. Being able to support myself meant that I could think what I liked, and in the shifting friendships and involvements of those years, world literature was my guide.

Neither Line nor Marty are bowled over by the self-styled gurus arising around them. Line goes Sufi dancing which leads her to herbal healers and teachers as well as the early women who worked with natural childbirth. But she is pragmatic and working at a hospital. Marty plots an aesthetic course, studying photography and reading Russian literature in addition to working full time. Nevertheless, the winds of exploration blowing through the Bay Area, the storms of controversy, and “the sunshine of your love” all wafted through their lives to some effect.