Voices of Esalen

This interview is part of the Shulgin Foundation's Oral Histories Series. Voices of Esalen and Shulgin Foundation collaborated to bring you a wide-ranging interview with Mariavittoria Mangini, known to many as Maria, is a nurse-midwife, scholar, psychedelic historian, and longtime advocate for the preservation of underground psychedelic knowledge.

Maria’s life intersects with several crucial streams of modern psychedelic history: early LSD culture in the Bay Area and at Millbrook, the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, Esalen in the 1970s, the work of Stanislav Grof, the emergence of midwifery and nursing as practices of care, and the long, complicated passage from psychedelic prohibition into the current renaissance.

In this conversation, we explore:
• Maria’s first encounter with LSD as a teenager,
• The strange mixture of recklessness and reverence that shaped early psychedelic exploration.
• Her years at Esalen and her encounters with figures such as Stanislav Grof, Gregory Bateson, Leo Zeff, and others.
• The relationship between birth, death and psychedelic experience
• Her doctoral work, Yes, Mom Took Acid, and what long-term psychedelic users told her about social responsibility, and care for the larger world.
• Her work in medical cannabis, and what today’s psychedelic movement might learn from the successes and failures of cannabis legalization.
• The founding of the Women’s Visionary Council
• Her relationship with Ann and Sasha Shulgin, whose partnership helped shape the modern psychedelic imagination.
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This talk was originally recorded in a live format created by the Shulgin Foundation, and hosted by Stacie Blanke. The shulgin foundation is an organization dedicated to preserving and extending the legacy of Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin and Ann Shulgin. Sasha Shulgin was of course a visionary chemist credited with creating more than 150 psychedelic compounds and helping identify the distinctive psychological properties of MDMA. Ann Shulgin was a writer, artist, Jungian lay therapist, and an early practitioner in psychedelic-assisted therapy, especially known for her work with the Shadow.

Please enjoy this conversation with Maria Mangini.

Learn more about the Shulgin Foundation at https://shulginfoundation.org/

Magnus Toren has been Executive Director of the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, California, since 1993. A native of Sweden, he circumnavigated the globe delivering yachts across five oceans before settling in Big Sur. Under his leadership, the Library has evolved into a vibrant cultural hub for literature, music, and community, dedicated to preserving and celebrating Henry Miller’s legacy. In addition to hosting A Big Sur Podcast, Toren writes and speaks widely on Big Sur’s cultural history, Henry Miller, and the arts. He lives in Big Sur with his wife Mary Lu.

In the third episode of our series on the subtle body, we’re discussing the book "The Serpent’s Tale: Kuṇḍalinī, Yoga, and the History of an Experience," a sweeping and deeply researched tome by Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Anya Foxen, who trace Kundalini from its roots to its many reinterpretations in modern yoga and global spirituality, examining the forms by which Kundalini has been embodied across traditions and how this elusive force has been interpreted, practiced, and sometimes misunderstood across time.

Sravana Borkataky-Varma is a historian, educator, and social entrepreneur. She is a scholar of Hindu traditions at the University of Houston. Her scholarly work investigates Indian religions and delves into topics such as esoteric rituals, gender issues, and bodily concepts, especially in relation to Hindu Śākta Tantra traditions, often referred to as Goddess Tantra. She adopts a research methodology that blends social anthropology — examined from an outside perspective — with elements of reflexive autoethnography that reflect her personal experiences. She is a member of the Esalen board of trustees and a Center for the Study of World Religions fellow at Harvard Divinity School.

Anya Foxen is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a Research Associate at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions. She is a historian of modern yoga whose work maps the intersections between South Asian traditions and Western esotericism.

They are interviewed by Esalen’s Simon Cox.

Today’s episode is our second in a series where we take a deep dive into a concept that hovers just at the edge of language: the subtle body. It’s one of those ideas that seems to belong everywhere and nowhere at once -- the subtle body is part of Daoist practice, Indian yoga, Christian mysticism, and, of course, the experimental, boundary-blurring culture of Esalen itself. Depending on who you ask, it might be described as an invisible anatomy, a field of energy, or a map of consciousness.
To help understand this topic, today we're joined by Charles Stang and Simon Cox.
Charles Stang is a professor at Harvard Divinity School and director of the Center for the Study of World Religions, where he focuses on early Christian thought and mysticism. Simon Cox is a scholar and martial artist who trained for six years in Daoist internal arts in China. He is the author of The Subtle Body: A Genealogy, a book that traces how this concept evolves across cultures and history.

Today we begin a three part series in which we explore the idea of the subtle body, a concept found in many contemplative and healing traditions around the world. From yogic energy channels to Daoist internal alchemy, the subtle body refers to the layers of human experience that lie between the physical body and consciousness, suggesting that our lives may unfold through more dimensions than the purely material.

In this episode, scholar and martial artist Simon Cox interviews Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy. Murphy was born in Salinas, California in 1930, making him a lively 95 years old at the time of this recording. He is a longtime student of Sri Aurobindo’s integral philosophy and the author of numerous innovative books that approach the topic of the subtle body — including 1992's The Future of the Body and 1995’s In the Zone. Throughout his career, Murphy has made it a priority to investigate extraordinary human capacities and the further evolution of human nature.

Simon Cox brings a unique perspective to this conversation. he spent six years training in Daoist internal arts at Wudang Mountain in China before earning his PhD from Rice University. His book The Subtle Body: A Genealogy traces the history of subtle body concepts across cultures, and his research explores how these ideas have shaped both Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. He’s currently a research fellow at Esalen’s Center for Theory and Research. He holds weekly conversations with Michael Murphy as part of a collaborative effort to illuminate the deeper architecture of Esalen’s mission. Simon is currently writing a new book on Esalen’s intellectual history — a mythic excavation of Murphy’s “Big Vision”: the radical, reality-bending aspiration that seeded Esalen’s creation and continues to shape its evolutionary field.

Photo of Michael Murphy: Kate Kondratieva