His later years were devoted to experimental psychotherapy, the rising psychedelic movement, and parapsychology. Heard was for a substantial period of time a successful public speaker and writer. Heard envisioned it as a sort of semi-monastery, where he would mentor a new class of neo-brahmins, spiritual leaders for a new age. It was a retreat center for the just beginning Human Potential Movement and is generally credited as the pattern for Esalen Institute. In 1943 Heard purchased property in Trabuco Canyon in Orange County, where with Aldous Huxley he established his Trabuco College. And, well, through his imprint on all three I’m writing about here… That and through Isherwood’s memoir My Guru and His Disciple. I met him mainly through his translation work with Isherwood. The swami founded monasteries and convents in Hollywood, Santa Barbara, and Trabuco Canyon.Īs I think of it, the swami is a fourth figure in my spiritual formation. It was there that he met the remarkable Swami Prabhavananda, a monk of the Ramakrishna Order and minister of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. Noting the physical similarities between Southern California and the ancient Near East, he reveled in both the prevalence of crank religions and it being the meeting place of authentic traditions gathering from east and west. His longtime friend Aldous Huxley accompanied him. Although, as he saw it, this positive direction was constantly stymied by this imbalance, where humanity over focused on individuation to the detriment of our sense of interdependence, wonder, curiosity, and love. He believed there was an evolutionary spiritual movement connected to mysticism. Heard was deeply interested in the conflict between human advances in technology while remaining stagnant or worse regarding the spiritual and psychological life. Ultimately he wrote thirty-five books ranging from mysteries, to science fiction, to science, philosophy, history, and religion. He was widely admired, although some saw the very range of his interests reduced him to gadfly status. He was first known in the 1930s as a popular science commentator on the BBC.
He graduated from Cambridge University, and then taught briefly at Oxford. Henry Fitzgerald Heard was born in 1889, the son of an Anglican priest.
More actually, as I was beginning to think of having an adult life. It inspired me to pause and gather a few thoughts about these three people and the threads that came together to inform me at the beginning of my adult life.
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