True Esalen: History's Mysteries

It was the day before the new year and I had met Cara, who used to work at the Gazeebo school for several years, she was telling me all about the way things used to be at Esalen, a very common theme for conversations here, and while we were talking another group of people that had come to Esalen together from San Francisco joined in the conversation.

They wanted to know if I worked at Esalen, a question I was asked frequently, must have been the vibe I put out. Anyways I told them I did indeed work there and they were quick to befriend me, wanting to pick my brain about anything and everything they could regarding the place. They told me it had been there collective dream to come together for many years and only now had been able to make it a reality.

"You've come at the perfect time." I said, "Ohh? Why is that?" they asked. "It's always the perfect time to be at Esalen, no time is ever the same and everyone you meet, everything you experience, is meant to be." I said. And we decided to meet back up later.

A lot of people come from that city in particular, and have been since before even the institute existed, due in large part because of San Francisco's gay population, which is free to express itself at Esalen, but also because the city harbors liberal ideals, and has for a very long time. The most famous part of this attribute is when Hunter S Thompson was the gate guard for Esalen, and a group of gay men had tried seducing him into the hot springs, he refused and then they attacked him, throwing him over the side of the cliff. Mr. Thompson reportedly got his gun and shot at the group.

Another incident or perhaps the same one I'm not sure also involves a group of gay men who refused to leave the tubs when asked, this is before the institute existed, when Michael Murphy went to the state police for help the trooper told him, and I'm paraphrasing here from the story Michael told me, "I ain't sending my men down there with all you weirdos. Got any guns?" he said, "no" said Murphy, "Well if you want my advice, get yourself some guns, and run those weirdos out of there." and that's exactly what Murphy did.

Now back to the group I was with, we finally met up again and they asked me if id take them into the canyon, to be their guide. I happily accepted, Cara came too. We took off from the lodge together and I led the group down the newly paved hill next to the laundry room, through the old gate with a rock attached to a metal pully that kept it closed. We stopped a moment on the bridge that took us from one side of the property to the next, which had Tibetan prayer flags strewn across it and was actually quite narrow, with only one guardrail on the eastern side of it.

I've taken people there before since who refused to pass over it, feeling too uncomfortable with it to take the risk. It's not very high, but if you fell I guarantee it would not be a fun experience, even if you somehow managed to avoid all the rocks and hit the water, you'd certainly hit a rock immediately after that as the water pushed you down the river.

After that I took the to the side of the river to show them the pipe systems that draw water directly from the river and feed all of Esalens needs. There is a concrete reseviour system built into the side of the hill which water pools into, then a mesh sifts out any debris and pulls the water into holding tanks, above the property, where they are treated for legal reasons, the minimal level possible so I'm told, and then put into other tanks for distribution through out the entire institute.

One of the things that makes Esalen so special is the amount of fresh spring water that comes out of the ground at all times. If you read the book Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, you'll find that it says millions of gallons come out of the ground alone daily. But what makes the river water special is that it is some of the cleanest water in California, because there are no farms or industries up river to pollute it.

Anyways, I showed them that and then we continued on the trail, passing the hobbit house to the left, a marvelous little wooden cabin that only the chosen few it calls to it may live in. It says, private residence do not disturb, or something like that, but that doesn't stop people from going in anyways. Like Pippen from lord of the rings, they just can't help but look.

After that we rounded a few corners and I stopped them at the place where Richard Price, the cocreator of the institute, was found dead, supposedly from a fall while hiking, or murdered, depending on who you talk to. Why would anyone want to murder him you ask? Well, the way I heard it, it had something to do with the way Esalen was structured, the age old questions of "who has the power, who controls the way things are run?" As I've said before Esalen is a fascinating place full of wonderful people, but also surrounded by an air of intrigue and avarice. It's a gathering place of very powerful people and organizations, even the CIA and KGB met here to discuss "world peace" during the cold war. It's also a place for people to gather in order to find themselves. And many, are willing to fight in order to keep a part of it for themselves.

While I was explaining all this to the San Franciscans, I noticed that everyone was enraptured by my every word, not just out of scholarly interest but in... more profound ways, something about it made me suspicious, but I said nothing and took them across the fallen tree that brought us to the souther side of the river again. From there we entered the large open area I had first visited on the Solstice, we hung out a short while and they wanted me to lead them further on.

"I'll go with, yeah sure, but this is the furthest I've been, so we'll be discovering it together." I said. "That's fine, lead the way." They said. And so we went 10 minutes or so further until reaching a dead end to the trail following the river, the only way forward was to go up a rather steep and treacherous path that cut back and forth up the hillside. Cara turned to me and said she was rather tired and would rather leave, but the group wanted to continue on. Having led them that far I felt responsible to them but they insisted I go with Cara, so I did.

On the walk back we talked about psychedelics and their roles in our lives, she admitted that she was curious about how they would be for her after a bad trip so many years ago. "Place and Setting, Mind and Being." I told her.

We went to the lodge and wrote out what we want to leave behind in 2018 and what we're embracing for 2019, then shared our results. setting fire to the slips of paper the moment before midnight December 31st 2018.

Later the next day the group returned to me and said they were sorry for how they were acting yesterday, "Yeah I noticed something was off." I said. "yeah... we were all high on acid. I should have told you." I laughed and shook my head, "Yeah that would have been good information to have..." And so it was, one wild year come and gone in the outside world, passing into the next within the bubble within a bubble, within a bubble, that is Esalen. And just like the year before, but even more so, I could have no idea then, what was in store for me there.

P.S. If your interested in more in depth views of Esalen, written by those who lived and worked there, you may find great interest in the following webpage http://www.esaleaks.org/ but you wont find much because the site was mysteriously hacked and shut down.

True Esalen: Tragedy and Hope

I entered into the Esalen fold during a very strange time, not only for myself but also for the Big Sur community at large. The Bridge collapse and subsequent Land slide, the largest in use history equaling 6 million cubic yards of material and costing 54 million dollars and a whole year to fix, had devastated Big Sur after a series of fires that had already taken much from the people there. If that wasn't enough Esalen had just renovated its lodge right before it happened, spending around 7 million dollars to complete it. so they spent all that time and money closing Esalen before the bridge collapse and the mud slide, and as soon as they opened the roads were shut down for almost a year. The community was shattered, many people being laid off or leaving and finding lives elsewhere, and Esalen went into a large amount of debt staying afloat. After the roads opened and Esalen started hiring again this is where I come in.

But it wasn't just that series of tragedies which made up the back drop of my arrival. There was a tragic death of one of the beloved staff members which also filled the air in a heavy aura of grief. I remember walking past the gardens and seeing a wake for the woman that had died. I didn't know what was going on and moved to observe, but my friend B shot me a glance, one that made very clear this was a private affair, so I nodded to him and kept walking on in respect.

Esalen is no stranger to Tragedy, this I would learn soon enough in my own experiences there, but also from the many stories I would hear from new friends that had lived and worked there many years. One of my friends told me of the four suicides he knew of that had taken place in its history, some of which quite tragic, even for such an already terrible occurrence.

The paradoxical thing about Esalen is that the same energy and freedom it brings to people, allowing them to feel and experience ways of being they had long been denied, also brought them terrible grief and anxiety about the lives they would soon return to. I saw it many times, heard and felt it in their voices and body language. They had found something primal and pure within Esalen's "container" the word used by the institute to describe the safe place that the land and its community represented, and tried hard to nurture. But once the newcomers had found this peace, and tasted its forbidden fruit, the reality of having to leave quickly knocked the wind out of their sails, sending them adrift at sea. Many of the suicides I imagine had much to do with this same facet of Esalen. One of the phrases I heard once from my friend Diem, was that Esalen was like mount Olympus, a place to have all of your desires fulfilled, but just like Prometheus, who dared to share the secret of knowledge (the fire of the Gods) with the other humans, both he and the other people who taste the fruit, are cast out into the wilds of societies from which they came.

Now, the truth is Esalen has gone through many different incarnations, and the idea of there being an Esalen tribe different than the original Indians for which the Institute is named, or group of people consisting of certain energies, which was often spoken of by the staff and guests, lives on in strange ways that must be recognized for the level of complexity involved, for not only is it cast in a positive light, but also an extremely negative one, considering the terrible history of colonialism and the systematic extermination of the Indians by all the forces of empire and corporate greed coming from the rest of the world.

In California's case especially since the gold rush made the hunting down and scalping of Indians a State policy, in which the government paid people $5 for each native Indian scalp. To put this terrible crime in perspective, one must realize that the average pay at this time was in the cents per hour for grueling work, and given that the white settlers had long since completely dehumanized the native people, murdering them for what was then huge sums of money, was far preferable than tedious, hard work. This holocaust was made an even greater tragedy given that the Federal government repaid the state of California in 1950, for every bounty it paid out for hunting down the native people.

These aspects as well as others make up the many tragedies of Esalen, but whats important to understand is these tragedies mostly come from wonderful and freeing experiences felt on the land once managed by the Esselen tribe, who had imparted upon the land extraordinary healing powers, and for the vast majority of people brings alive in them the powers to continue to grow and change themselves and thus the world for the better. This happened for me and for so many of the people I met there. The fascinating thing about places of great transformational energy like Esalen, is that it attracts people of like spirit from all over the globe. Whether they are already well tuned to such energies or need time to calibrate themselves to it, as in my case, makes little difference, we are all attracted to these places, and those who have committed themselves to the path of healing, find themselves there more often than not.

In the face of such Tragedy and Hope flowing in and out and all around the Esalen Institute, I find that regardless of what the institute becomes moving forward, as long as there are people on the land who hold the sacred relationship with the land, and with the divine, there will be plenty of energy to transform the people who are drawn there from all walks of life, from every corner of the planet. I only hope that people will continue to bare the sacred flame, and commit themselves to it no matter the cost.

True Esalen : What was it Really like?

Yes D, tell us, what "really" happens at Esalen? You'd be surprised how often I got this question, both from those who came to visit and those who had dreamed about it for ages but never got the chance, or had the resources to make it here. Being someone with a flare for the dramatic, my answer is usually one shrouded in mystery, in half answers, or most commonly, with a question of my own. "What do you think it's really like?" was one of my favorite responses. More often than not this would reveal much of their preconceived notions, a fascinating study in and of itself. But no matter how many different answers I got, it seemed to me that there we're bits and pieces of my own experience found within them.

Early on in my experience I found that the underlying mythos of Esalen was freedom of expression, and the ability to drop the façade of society to be what we truly are, divine beings, on a divine world, this I was to experience for myself, on the day I met people for the first time out at the cliffs edge, eating my breakfast, when a family of people eating beside me started talking about things I was interested in, and feeling a good vibe all around I jumped into the conversation. We immediately got along and they invited me for a hike through the canyon that splits the Esalen grounds into two parts.

We hiked in for about 20 minutes and stopped in a large open grove beside the river. Little did I know it was actually the solstice, or would be in only a few short minutes. The family and I huddled together on a mound, our heads all touching, and prayed together, looking up into the sun in the exact moment of the solstice, and embracing once more. The next thing I knew we were all naked, bathing in a small waterfall of the river. All this and with people I had only met an hour ago! I titled this moment Solstice Surrender in my journal, and for me it typifies much of my Esalen Experience. An almost seamless stream of surrender to the moment, to new and unknown things. I suppose If I boiled it all down that would be the best way to answer people when the ask what it was really like there, but even if I had the perfect words to explain, they would be hallow to those who had never experienced it, so why try? It's just something you had to have experienced on your own.

The very act of explaining my experience to guests often brought it to life in them. My solstice experience is a perfect example, for the next day I went to JJ's dance awake class and started up a conversation with a girl who was there for the month long student program. She was curious about what I had done for Solstice and I told her about the people I had met and how we went naked into the freezing cold river. She loved the idea and asked If I would show her the place. I did and we ended up reliving the experience on our own. It's almost like there is a doubling effect for every person that comes to Esalen in search of new and profound releases from the ways they had lived before. They come with an expectation somewhat rooted in the stories they hear and are eager to have them too. For people like me who enjoy guiding people its a natural progression. After we returned to the lodge she took her other friends there the next day, and so it goes, day after day, year after year.

But it's not just the everyday experiences available to the guests that people are curious about, many if not most want to know what its like to live and work at Esalen. This, much like the first answer, is not something one can explain without having lived it yourself. But a good example of what it was like living and working at Esalen is the following tale.

During my first few months working the night shift in the kitchen, I got to know the Mexican night crew who trained me, showed me the ropes. They were dedicated, highly skilled men who loved to sing as they worked, always telling jokes and showing me pictures of their families and friends, of their lives away from work. The oldest among them was the father and uncle to the two youngest, he was very open and loving, so gracious and kind. Going out of his way to offer you food and comfort. After a short time I found out he had been in a mariachi band for over 20 years, playing all over Monterey county, and even having several of his own records, one of which had Big Sur in the title, but I forget the specifics. He loved to play guitar on his off hours, coming to the fireplace outside the lodge and singing Mexican songs while playing them on the guitar. He looked very much like my father, and I took a liking to him quickly. The memory I will never forget is when he brought me into the office at midnight, when our shift had ended, and he played me, "My way." By Frank Sinatra, in his broken English. I was actually in tears, much in part because he reminded me so much of my deceased father, but also because it anchored me into the new reality I had been spirited away to from the hell I had created for myself. Apparently redemption is a thing.

These two stories as well as many more make up the intricate web of experiences that both the guests and the staff have access to. Of course there are many tiers of influence, ranging from the lowest day pass guests, to the week longers and then the month long resident students. After that you get into murky waters taking into consideration the almost if not actual religious adoration and following that many of the workshop teachers have, some of which have been having classes at Esalen for decades and have long standing relationships with the staff, enjoying access to what I was eventually told were, the hidden perks of the Esalen old guard.

You see Esalen is a very complicated situation, not just in its history but also in its organizational and financial structure. If I were in possession of facts instead of a literal plethora of rumors and slanders I would be more apt to speak on the subject. Needless to say there are, or were, many embattled groups within the Hierarchy, the three main factions, going from bottom to top are, 1: The regular staff and the guests, which can be anything from a year long employee, to work study individuals who attend so often they are practically staff. 2: The old guard, those who have lived and breathed Esalen for decades. and are the most radical as well as the most True to the old ways of Esalen, those now nearly extinct to do a variety of factors, not the least of which is the near bankruptcy of the institute. and 3: The General Manager and the Board those who reign supreme over everyone below them. There are two more groups worth mentioning, which is 4: Human Resources, the enforcement arm of the institute, not exactly everyone's favorite no matter which company your working in, but in a place like Esalen where the rules are so wildly different than anywhere else on Earth, its impossible to manage without hurt feelings and bitterness, and 5: the money donors, the story goes they cannot gain any favors from the institute no matter how much money they give, I'm in no position to confirm or deny the validity of that though.

All in all the list of experiences each member of the Esalen family could share would take up endless volumes, having a thrill for every kind of person, many of which would be beyond belief, for I can hardly believe my own. As for me I will endeavor to share some of the experiences I had while living and working at Esalen, something I felt I could not do while there, but now, after almost a year after my last day in that magical land, I feel called to share. I hope you are as excited to hear it, as I am to write it.