Esalen

I came across this Times 2 article on Esalen, famed centre of Californian counter-cultural New Age exploraton, where everyone from Joseph Campbell to Timothy Leary to RD Laing to Stanislaf Grof once worked and taught. You could say that Esalen was the birth-place of modern pick n' mix spirituality. Indeed, the centre just brought out a book called 'The Religion of No Religion'.

It's meant to be an amazing place - ancient hot springs, once held sacred by American Indians, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, into which the sun sinks pink and red as a Californian grapefruit. I was thinking of going out there to write a story about it, but looks like I was beaten to it by Stefanie Marsh, who I remember from the dark days of my work experience at Tatler magazine back in 2000.

Anyway, her feature is pretty funny, and she seems to have been slightly mellowed by her experience in California.