Esalen has some phenomenal hotsprings, and they built a pretty incredible resort around them, it's like Rainbow Gathering meets Los Angeles Spa, with up to 100 guests (and it's usually full) staying in various teepees, yurts and cabins but arriving in Cadillac SUVs with gold plated tow hooks. I swear there's almost a 1-to-1 ratio of guest to workers, and many of the workers are actually paying to be there, in "work study", which is what Mabel's doing. The work-study costs $700 for the month, then there are people called "Zeros" who stay for free, then there are actual paid staff. Interestingly, no one at Esalen, paid or not, is allowed to work more than 32 hours a week.

Work-study is probably the best way to experience the place, or at least it's way better than being a guest, since the "workshops", where you "process" - which is doing things like sitting in a circle speaking without pause for 10 minutes straight on the premise that eventually you'll start getting into your sub-concious, and they even have tissues conspicuously on-hand for the expected crying -- are balanced by working in the gardens, which is where they get almost all the food for the place.

Apparently Esalen was big with the Timmoty Leary and Alan Watts set, and it sure does look like an ideal psychedelic hamlet. First off it's intentionally isolated from the world, the sign on Route One says in smallish letters "The Esalen Institute" and in bigger letters "By Reservation Only". There's a guard at the gate, and even though I was on the books as a guest, he still seemed to let me through only reluctantly. You're definitely made to feel like you're passing through some barrier. Then you're in and it's all little houses built over waterfalls, lots of little fire pits and garden installations, art and prayer flags absolutely everywhere, and all of it looking right over the ocean and up and down what must be one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world, fog clinging to craggy cliffs and that sort of thing.

The most interesting thing about Esalen to me is that it's absolutely top flight, nothing jurry-rigged at all, everything's really well built, even if it's built from recycled rebar. There's nothing dilapidated anywhere, all repairs are made well before anything actually breaks. The structure holding the various hot tubs is probably the most beautiful piece of architecture I've ever seen, definitely built by some really high brow architect ala Frank Lloyd Wright, and I'd read about buildings like that, where they assimilate perfectly but interestingly with the landscape, and where at every time of day the light makes something completely different happen, and where the electric lighting is never obvious. It reminded me of a good jazz song, where you never really know what's going to happen next, there's a recognizable pattern but it never goes where you expect, and just when you think it's going to resolve, something different happens. The best example I can think of is you'll be looking at the circles cut into the oddly gorgeous concrete wall that hangs out in the middle of nowhere, back-dropped by the cliffs that rise above you, and then just after dusk, as you're lazily sitting in one of the tubs, with your chest out of the water to keep you cool in the light breeze coming off the ocean, and you're watching the pulses of wave energy make their way through the glassy ocean 200 feet below, and you look back at the building and see that there are pinhole lights embedded in those circles, and the top two are lit from below pointing up, and you think you see the pattern, but then you see the third is lit from above, pointing down. And it's foiled again, but then you realize the perfect logic: you can put things down in that bottom circle, and you won't be covering the light. And plus the assymetry looks really cool. Anyway, it's hard to explain, but it felt like my first experience of truly great architecture on a non-municipal level. Some pics that can't possibly do justice but give an idea: http://www.esalen.org/place/hot_springs.shtml.

For the "work scholars" the place seems like summer camp. They work from 7am to 1, then eat an incredible lunch, most of which they grew and picked, then go for a soak in the tubs for a bit, then have Tai Chi from 8pm to 10. In between it's New Age summer camp, they pass each other and say things like "can you believe how good the energy is today? AMAZING!" and they'll say it through flushed cheeks and blazing eyes, and it's easy to get turned off since it smacks so hard of Rainbow Gathering, but they're so obviously flushed in great energy that it's hard to argue with. And that's where the "institute" thing comes in: according to the mission statement the place is designed to explore human potential through experimental lifestyles, and it seems to actually be pulling it off. From my very short encounter with them, it seems like they're on to something, or maybe they're just re-experiencing a thing they've been doing since the place was founded in the early 60s. Again, hard to describe. I think for me the place was summed up by watching the guy who seemed to be the head of the Work Scholars, leading them through a parody of the 52 movements of Tai Chi. They were doing a pretty funny spoof of each of the names of the basic Tai Chi maneuvers, pretty clever from what I could see, obviously very smart, both the scholars and especially the guy who was leading them, and it smacked to me of that Harvard psychedelic thing, like Timothy Leary, but working out in the open, a real, established, non-guilty place. Again, hard to explain.