Phone In, Strip Off, Chill Out

The Esalen institute—the 44-year-old spiritual retreat once infamous as a flashpoint of the hippy movement—is offering a spectacular new high. And this time, it has nothing to do with the LSD-inspired antics of past luminary visitors such as Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary. Instead, the not-for-profit seminar center—set amid a spectacular 165 acres of California's Big Sur coastline—has thrown open its extensively renovated thermal-spring baths to the public. You need to pay a $20 fee and make an advance reservation, tel: (1 831) 667 3047. Oh yes, and you can only visit between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. Sure, that's exactly the kind of unconventional scheduling you'd expect from a place that advertises workshops in such arcana as "ecopsychology" and "transpersonal process." But when you drive up in the dead of night and let a lone security guard with a small flashlight lead you through the estate to the edge of the cliffs, the brilliance of it all becomes plain. As you lounge in your hot tub, the stars, the sound of waves and the all-enveloping night elevate what by daylight would be a pleasant experience into an intensely poetic one.

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A $5 million, four-year-long refurbishment by architect Mickey Muennig has resulted in a beautiful multilevel deck area, perched right above the crashing surf. Baths—both freestanding traditional tubs for one or two people, and larger sunken stone Jacuzzis of varying sizes—are scattered seemingly randomly across this space, with some of them set dramatically close to the sheer drop above the waves. A massage room and a bathroom for disabled visitors are also available.

Do note that clothes are optional at Esalen's baths, and the use of open archways—rather than doors—to separate bathing areas tends to promote mingling, not privacy. But the more modest among you can rest assured that in these rarefied, New Age surrounds, the atmosphere is no more salacious than that of a Japanese onsen. And chances are there will be few other bathers around in the middle of the night. In fact, if you're very lucky, you might even have the bathing complex all to yourself. Now that really would be a trip.