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In recent years Esalen's directors have made a concerted attempt to refurbish their image of sensual monasticism by moving farther out into the world. In 1980 they established a Soviet-American exchange program, which has opened up contacts with Soviet writers, academics and cosmonauts, and in 1982 they helped launch the first "spacebridge," or satellite linkup, between the superpowers. "We want to apply all that we have learned in personal psychology and interpersonal Gestalt to the most intractable relationship in the world," explains Jim Garrison, the Cambridge University Ph.D. who directs the program. For some loyal seminarians, however, all such gestures are a kind of heresy. "Who needs public credibility?" complains a man in textiles from Santa Monica, Calif. "I come here to get away from politics, international relations, all that stuff. I come here to hang out with my feelings."
Is Esalen then just a fancy holistic hotel? It certainly has all the amenities of a dream resort: a spray of hibiscus on every bed, ocean views from every rustic cabin. For days on end, no roar of traffic, no blast of television; nothing but the song of wind chimes. And as the Gestaltifying days of old recede, the place seems to be settling into a comfortable calm -- less a crisis center, perhaps, than an otherworldly spa where affluent mid-life professionals can come to chop vegetables, lose themselves in books and enjoy a little quiet.
The real secret of Esalen's durability may lie, in fact, precisely in its willy-nilly eclecticism, its willingness to accommodate everyone, whether in search of a perfect tan, a perfect stranger or some higher kind of perfection: here is idealism without ideology. A curious blend of anarchy and serenity has, after all, been the only guiding spirit here ever since the days when its earliest residents included Hunter Thompson and Joan Baez.
In the end, perhaps the best explanation of why Esalen will always leave outsiders bemused at best, while devotees return as faithfully as salmon to their birth waters, is delivered by Joseph Campbell, soon after the entire community celebrates his 83rd birthday with a giant cake and a night of dances, stories and songs. "This is a kind of sacred space," the scholar suggests, "where we come not to rework our practical life but to discover an inner life, to respond to a vocation, to find a calling. As I always say, 'Follow your bliss!' " And all around him, as he speaks, the clean white light of sea and stars.