From Esalen to the Algorithm

The modern spiritual teacher as a recognisable type owes a great deal to the human potential movement that grew up around centres such as the Esalen Institute, founded in California in 1962, which brought Eastern contemplative practice, Western psychology and countercultural experimentation together in a single setting and trained or hosted many of the independent teachers whose approach later spread through the broader New Age movement of the 1970s and 1980s, a period that established the now-familiar figure of the teacher who blends several traditions freely and answers to no single one of them.

Social media and online publishing have since removed even the informal gatekeeping that a retreat centre, a book publisher or a paying in-person audience once provided, allowing a spiritual teacher to build a following directly through video and social platforms with no institutional vetting of any kind at any stage, a shift that has multiplied both the reach of genuinely helpful teaching and the reach of exploitative or false claims alike, and that has drawn comparison, not always flattering, with the entirely separate and licensed profession of psychotherapy, which spiritual teaching resembles in function for many students without carrying any of its regulatory oversight or accountability.