Psychology in Sequoia Seminar

Psychology was the most poorly defined of all the elements that made up Sequoia Seminar's philosophy, yet it was one of the most important and, even more than the ideas of Buchman or Heard, it set Sequoia Seminar apart from the tradition of Henry B. Sharman. Since Harry always argued that psychology would eventually prove what religion already knew, why bother with psychology at all? Because, among the three appropriate objects of love—God, self, and other—love of self or integrity required that people come to understand their subconscious needs and fears so that they could be free to carry out the will of God. The movement believed psychology could help people toward religion, and religion could help them psychologically. A physician participating in a 1953 seminar wrote that he had learned that psychiatry taught, "To be happy you must be properly oriented to your environment and totally integrated, so that every action is a productive one leading to full potentiality." The seminar taught him that Jesus had said the same thing two thousand years ago and, he concluded, "a well-adjusted person is, by definition, religious."^[81]

Psychology was, nevertheless, also perceived as potentially dangerous; when wrongly used it could either undermine the religious message or become the primary purpose of the group, relegating the teach-

ings of Jesus to a secondary role. Freudian psychology, which defined religious belief as neurotic, was an example of the first danger. Harry believed that "Freudian psychology leads to a mechanistic view of the universe and to a philosophy of meaninglessness."^[82] There is some indication that the Rathbuns felt, not without reason, that Boyden and her followers fell into the second danger when they split off from the main Sharman group in 1941 and began their own work.^[83] The Rathbuns referred to them as "the psychologizers."

The exact role that psychology played in Sequoia Seminar meetings prior to 1955 is not clear, although its flavor is suggested by a list of recommended readings from 1950 that included works by Rollo May and Erich Fromm in addition to books by Kunkel, Jung, and Heard.^[84] Much of the psychological activity that did occur took place under the direction of Emilia with the assistance of Betty Eisner. Eisner had been a student of Harry's in the business law course. She had attended a Records study group at the Rathbuns' home in 1936 and was at the first Sequoia Seminar in 1946. She had gone on to earn a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and came up from her home in southern California to help lead some special seminars in the mid-1950s.^[85]

A set of very complete notes from a 1952 continuation seminar gives some insight into the kind of psychological activity that took place in the sessions. A parenthetical comment near the beginning of the notes indicate that there were "several sessions during which Seminar participants verbalized their 'seventh veil' matter, their inmost blocks to further growth and progress on the Way."^[86] These group confessions may have owed something to Emilia's years of experience hearing confessions in her Oxford Group work. When she told the participants, "nothing that has been said is a surprise, at least to me," she was repeating language she had used to describe her Buchmanite experience. Emilia assured the group that they became more lovable when they opened up and admitted their "inmost natures and problems," and explained that it was all part of the process of discovering what they could be so that they could see where they were and how they could move toward what God intended them to be.^[87]

As the decade progressed the role of psychology in the group's activities increased. In 1956 Emilia and Betty Eisner were coleaders of a group that wrote spontaneously on themes suggested by Emilia, "trying to express their own feelings rather than intellectual concepts."^[88] In addition to spontaneous writing, they also did Jungian dream interpretation in groups and used art to express their feelings.^[89] The 1958 annual

report explained, "painting and other art work is becoming an increasingly important part of our program, particularly at the Continuation seminars. We are learning how such activities can contribute to the process of individual change with which we are concerned."^[90] So pervasive was the psychological approach by 1958 and 1959 that almost all of the continuation seminars given in those summers were psychologically focused and many included art. The most explicit was a seminar entitled "Group Therapy" led by Betty Eisner. It was described as "an intensive group therapy situation and will be conducted on a very personal level aimed at removing barriers within the individual which obstruct his growth in creative living. . . . The use of art materials will play an important role."^[91]

Two comments made in 1959 indicate that the heavy emphasis on psychology may have gotten out of hand. The announcement letter for the 1959 seminar season cautioned potential participants that the leaders were "neither qualified nor intended to perform the function of psychotherapy," and they would not accept anybody who seemed more interested in that than in pursuing a religious life. About the same time, a handwritten memo from Emilia asked if people should not be "well grounded in the teachings of Jesus and have made the decision to follow the 'way' before they are enrolled in any group which has as its objective the process of introspection (therapy)." And, conversely, she asked if people who started work in psychotherapy should be "told that the process in the seminar structure leads to a choice of 'the way' of life commended by Jesus (commitment)?"^[92]

Emilia's fear that the psychotherapeutic aspects of the work might have begun to take precedence over the religious purpose seems particularly apt in retrospect. Although nobody knew it at the time, Sequoia Seminar was one of a stream of sources for what would become the "human potential" movement of the 1960s. Their stress of religious values kept them from total involvement, but for several years in the late 1950s they were the place where some of the California activists in the human potential movement got their start. One was Del Carlson. Carlson was a Marine Corps veteran who had been attracted to a Records study group at San Jose State College in 1947 and who had participated actively in Students Concerned. He stayed with the movement after the demise of Students Concerned and was, for a dozen years, one of the mainstays of the group. A high school art teacher, he had his summers free and devoted them to Sequoia Seminar. He was the group's registrar, business manager, and leader of art therapy sessions until 1962.^[93]

Carlson was also a friend of Michael Murphy, the man who founded Esalen. In fact, Carlson was a coleader of the first formal seminar ever held at Esalen in 1962, when it was still called Slate's Hot Springs.^[94]

Even more important, both to Sequoia Seminar and the human potential movement, was Willis Harman. An engineering professor at Stanford, Harman had attended a study group led by Harry and then had gone to a Sequoia Seminar in 1954. He had not expected the heavy emphasis on meditation, introspection, and self-exposure, but he found that his engineer's rational world view was "permanently destroyed" as a result of his experience there. He embarked on an extended period of self-education in mysticism and psychic phenomena and moved into the inner circle of Sequoia Seminar.^[95]

Harman had been very impressed by Gerald Heard's lectures on his experience with mescaline; he also made contact with Myron Stolaroff, one of the original American experimenters with LSD, who was also briefly involved with Sequoia Seminar. On November 16, 1956, eight of the Sequoia Seminar leadership group accompanied Harman to the home of a physician member of the movement, where Harman took LSD for the first time. In subsequent years almost every member of the Sequoia Seminar inner leadership group experimented with LSD on a number of occasions. Many of the drug sessions were led by Betty Eisner who was very interested in the psychotherapeutic possibilities of low doses of the then legal hallucinogen. She and Harman disagreed strongly, however, on how the drug should be used since he preferred larger doses that would provide the user with mystical experiences, rather than the milder effects that Eisner sought.^[96]

Even though LSD was still a noncontrolled substance and, therefore, legal to use, Sequoia Seminar employed it very cautiously. It was never distributed to anyone other than group leaders, and their sessions were carefully planned and supervised, usually with the presence of one of the planning group members who was a medical doctor. There appear to have been few if any "bad trips," and the drug-induced mystical experiences and psychotherapeutic sessions are usually remembered positively by those who partook of them. Experimentation with LSD stopped after 1959 because most of those involved felt there was nothing more to be gained from continued use and perhaps also because of a difficult confrontation between Emilia and Betty Eisner that may have involved the use of the drug. Those, like Harman, who wished to pursue further interests in the drug left Sequoia Seminar and became active in other

groups such as Esalen and the International Foundation for Internal Freedom.^[97]

Just how far the Rathbuns had moved from the tradition of Henry B. Sharman by the end of the decade is illustrated by the controversy that surrounded the last meeting of the trustees of the Sharman will in 1959. Harry was not only one of the trustees of the self-liquidating foundation set up by the will; he was also its executor. In 1958 plans were made to dispose of the last twenty-five thousand dollars of the funds from Sharman's estate, and Harry apparently hoped that the bulk of the money could go to Sequoia Seminar. To convince the others that his group met the intention of the will, Harry invited them out to California for a seminar.^[98] Opposition from the other trustees to the kind of program that the Rathbuns were running killed both the visit and any hope Harry had of getting Sharman funds, although Harry did lead a seminar for the trustees the next year at Springfield College in Massachusetts.

Word of the psychological emphasis had spread, and those who toed the orthodox Sharman line were not pleased with what they had heard. One trustee reported that a number of students of his had gone to Stanford and had reported back unfavorably on the Rathbuns' work. Another summed up his objections by telling Harry that he believed Sequoia Seminar was "quite different from those led by Dr. Sharman. Very little serious study of the Records themselves seems to be attempted and much time is devoted to the personal problems of the individual members. Training and skill in psychology and psychiatry seem to be very important."^[99] And finally, a third pointed out that Sharman had wanted efforts directed at students and faculty, but Harry and Emilia were working mainly with nonacademic adults.^[100]

The alienation of the trustees and the experimentation with LSD were both aspects of the way psychology had come to dominate the work of the group. This domination could have made the group an ongoing force within the new human potential movement in California. That course was not followed, however, because in the period between 1959 and 1962 Emilia underwent a number of severe personal strains that eventually climaxed in a religious revelation. This revelation was the basis for a reclarification of the whole meaning and purpose of the movement. The psychologizing that Emilia had first questioned back in the early 1940s when it was led by Elizabeth Boyden had slowly worked its way into her own group, and by the end of the decade it threatened to eclipse the religious work completely. The philosophy that had

evolved was based in part on the validity of psychology as a means for personal insight, but it also used the evolutionary and mystical theories of Gerald Heard, and always the objective study of the life of Jesus in the Sharman tradition. Emilia's personal crisis of the period after 1959 would have the effect of redressing the balance and putting psychology back into a secondary role. Psychology would be exchanged for a new interpretation of the religious message that would finally move Sequoia Seminar from proto-sect to a fully self-conscious religious movement.

The increasing stress on psychology toward the end of the 1950s, and the growing formalization of ideology, were both indications that the group was moving away from the churches (both literally and theoretically) and toward the sect end of the church-sect continuum. The codification of the movement's ideology decreased the likelihood that they would change to go along with trends in the larger society. The focus on psychology was perceived by members as a "service," exactly the kind of service predicted by the economic model as compensation for the increased cost of sect membership. The transition was not yet complete. The most obvious component of a sect is its divergence from standard church values. It is that divergence that makes membership so costly. At the end of the 1950s, Sequoia Seminar was still primarily a gospel study group that could operate from within the churches. There were signs of uniqueness beginning to appear, but they would not be fully embraced until after Emilia had her vision of a New Religion for the Third Age.