“IN ENGLAND SEVERAL DECADES AGO, A BOY WAS BORN. He came and his mother went. There was no rejoicing.

About the same time in the forbidden land of Tibet, in a weird temple in the heart of inscrutable Asia, wise men were mourning the passing of a beloved brother lama and mourning still his infraction of their rigid code of conduct—-an error which they held to be the psychic cause of his death. Believers in reincarnation however, they confidently expected his return before the passing of many years.

Though the two events took place on opposite sides of the world, though no one imagined their connection at the time, though the one group spoke English, and the other an ancient Asiatic tongue, though one was West and the other East, there was a link—-it was ordained that in the boy just born the twain should at last meet. The boy’s name was Edwin John Dingle.”

So begins My Life In Tibet, the memoir and travel record of Edwin John Dingle, also known as Ding Le Mei, founder of the Science of Mentalphysics. On the Institute’s website, Mentalphysics is defined as “an experiential method of self-realization that teaches the oneness of life embodied in all substance, energy and thought.” It combines Eastern methods of breathing, diet, and yoga with Western (specifically Christian) religious traditions in a mash-up of East-West spirituality referred to as “super-yoga for the Western way of life.” With an emphasis on methods rather than belief, this “provable philosophy” purports to offer keys for unlocking the hidden meaning of all the world’s holy books.

Dingle himself was a journalist and map-maker, a self-described “explorer of geography and the realm of thought and spirit,” who spent over 20 years in China, India and Tibet, where he was (as described above) apparently identified by a holy man in a remote monastery to be the reincarnation of a deceased lama. His intensive studies with this holy man led him to create the Institute of Mentalphysics in 1927. The Institute has enrolled 216,000 member students since its founding.

The physical site of the Institute of Mentalphysics, also called the Joshua Tree Retreat Center (presumably to invite a broader range of visitors) is quite lovely. The buildings were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and his son Lloyd Wright. The buildings are composed of many triangular angles and Wright’s signature low-slung roofs, earth-hugging walls, latticed and jutting overhangs for shade. The chapel building is especially beautiful - the ceiling rises in triangular planes to a high peak, there is a crystal piano, and stained glass windows letting in colorful light. The grounds are landscaped with a huge variety of beautiful desert plants, a labyrinth, and medicine wheel for walking contemplations.

The land is supposedly home to multiple energy vortexes (areas of increased energy). The office offers a map of the vortexes so that you can seek your own energetic experience. Nobody at the institute could explain what constitutes a vortex or how to identify one.

If you choose to visit the Institute, it is best to check in at the office for maps and information. Sometimes, they host silent retreats and visitors are asked not to wander the grounds so as not to disrupt.

59700 Twentynine Palms Hwy, Joshua Tree, CA 92252