This was probably the only religious site where I was naked.
Last night, I went to Esalen, a 120-acre New-Age resort near Big Sur, in the middle of the Los Padres National Forest. A place where people come to “discover ancient wisdom in the motion of the body, poetry in the pulsing of the blood,” Esalen was at the center of the new spirituality movements of the 1960s and 1970s, when free love reigned.
Free is certainly not part of the equation anymore. People used to come from all over the world to Esalen to engage in religious alchemy to the beat of bongo drums. They still come from all over the world, but now for extremely expensive retreats, courses, and vacations. That’s right, the home of hippies now caters to the rich liberal elite of San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and everywhere in-between.
I wrote to Esalen to say I wanted to write about them, and they said I could visit, with a reservation. So I called to make a reservation. I was told that the cheapest they could offer me was $400 for a night. (In case you’re wondering, I can’t afford that.)
I asked if I could just come by for an hour or two in the day and talk to someone, and stay somewhere else. Not without paying $400. It was like they were asking me to pay for an interview, which is horribly against journalistic standards. I asked if there was someone I could just call to talk to. Nope. Not unless I came by during the day, which I couldn’t do without $400.
I think this is indicative of the changes going on at Esalen.
The only thing I could do was come bath in the natural springs of Esalen, which are actually the centerpiece of the retreat. Best of all, it only cost $20. But it was at 1:00 in the morning.
So I biked there in the middle of the night, over precarious hills with cars whizzing by. Was it worth it?
Oh, yes.
I arrived a little early, waiting by the road next to their illuminated sign, as cars slowly filled a tiny parking lot. Due to the darkness of the night, and the fact that there is nudity involved, unfortunately, a picture of the sign is all I have to offer:
Slightly after 1:00, a woman with an accent (Scandinavian?) drove up a huge slope from Esalen in a golf cart, took our names, and told us to follow the road, where another man took our names. There were 20 of us, consisting of a few couples, some Japanese tourists, and me.
We were led quietly through the campus, past a parking lot filled with Priuses and rows of dark-windowed cottages until we came to the ocean. The baths were gorgeous. After going through an entry-way that seemed vaguely Japanese and getting a towel, we all took a shower before entering the tubs. Nestled between the cliffs and the sea, the brown-tiled tubs lined small walkways, interspersed with old claw-foot bathtubs.
With no moon, the stars were brilliant, and the sounds of the waves beating the coast were lulling. As the sulphur coated my skin, I thought I was in Heaven.
Now, about the nudity. Sure, it was weird showering in mixed company and walking around in the buff. But I got used to it. After all, I wasn’t in the most uncomfortable situation – I was in a tub with another avid bicyclist and his sister. (I could never be naked with family.)
We had an avid discussion about bicycling, equipment, and my trip. When I explained my experiences with Esalen staff, they weren’t surprised. It was his second visit, as he had come as a teenager, when he enjoyed the nudity as only an adolescent might. “It seems that the $20 bathing is the last vestige of any equal opportunity spirit this place once had,” he sighed.
And that might be. While Esalen has always been a bastion of the highest in uber-liberal spiritual thought, offering classes from drug-induced mysticism in the 1970s to an overwhelming array of spiritual massage currently. But now, a class costs at least $895 and as much as $1,715 for a non-member of their “friends” society, and that’s even if you choose to sleep in a sleeping bag in a storage room. (That’s really an option.)
What’s going on? Is this what liberal, non-exclusionary spirituality has become? They don’t care about race, sexuality, creed, left-handedness, voting record, or grammar, but they apparently do care about class.
The prices surprised me a bit. This was a place that shunned dominating religions (i.e. anything Abrahamic) and sought to mix Eastern religions with Western individualism. After all, this was the “Me Generation,” when many people decided they felt constrained in the faiths of their ancestors and went out on their own path. By using the ideal of the individual to be able to pick and choose parts of religions they liked, they could become whatever they want and feel unique doing it.
This was a place that had teachers like Joan Baez, Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, Deepak Chopra, and Spalding Gray. (I don’t recognize the names of any of the current teachers in their program, though.)
This was a place where sensuality and faith were so intertwined that the retreat need its own venereal-disease clinic. (True!)
Well, basically Esalen got stale. Like the Sundance Film Festival, it was copied infinitely until there was a retreat in every part of the country. There were so many New Age nexuses, especially in California, which always strives to be ahead of the curve. And elitism was encroaching, if only to keep the place running, as shown by cruel graffiti once scrawled its welcome sign: “Jive s*** for rich white folk.” (If it can be called a welcome sign. What kind of welcome is “By Reservation Only?”)
Who needs Esalen now? Can a resort for the rich really be a center for new egalitarian thought? Probably not. There are tons of exclusive places dotting the coastline by Los Padres, and now Esalen is indistinguishable. Believe me, I passed them all.
