Richard Price; Co-Founder of Esalen Institute
Richard Price, a co-founder of “the gymnasium of the mind” known as Esalen, has died after a fall while hiking in Hot Springs Canyon near the Big Sur institute. He was 55.
In 1962, Price and former Stanford classmate Michael Murphy founded the institute “to explore human potentialities and personal and social development,” Murphy said.
Price, who was born in Chicago and died Monday, graduated from Stanford University in 1952, did graduate work in psychology at Harvard University, then served in the Air Force.
Later, he went to India to study with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the sex-oriented guru who left the United States earlier this month after pleading guilty to immigration fraud charges.
Price and Murphy, who had a similar educational background, were inspired by the writings of Aldous Huxley on how human potentialities could be realized.
Murphy supplied the site for the institute (it belonged to his family) while Price managed Esalen.
Although it was conceived as a serious seminar center, Esalen’s faculty over the years included LSD guru Timothy Leary, and its curriculum once involved est, the awareness movement founded by Werner Erhard, a flamboyant former car salesman.
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