Pelecanus occidentalis: Harbin has always been hippy-flexible, Harbin bought in 1972 & sold to Heart Consciousness Church, Ownership

Harbin ethnography:


... Nudity in the 1970s and '80s, and the 1960s too, may have been much more widespread on the Harbin property.

Harbin has always been loose, relaxed and pretty hippy-flexible, and while Ishvara bought Harbin in 1972 and sold it to Heart Consciousness Church in 1975, which continues to 'operate' both Harbin Hot Springs, Sierra Hot Springs, as well as the new Harbin property in Lake County called the Diamond J Ranch, about 10 miles away, counterculture has played an important role in Harbin ownership questions, as place. So many people have come through the Harbin main gate, and it's everyone in the aggregate that have given form to the Harbin tribe on this Harbin property. And most of these people have paid to visit, or have worked at Harbin, and all are members of Heart Consciousness Church (HCC), as both an important expression of the New Age, and as a tax-advantaged organization; HCC, culturally, in my experience, plays a very low key role on the Harbin property, however. While so many things bring people to Harbin, some significant attractions are the ongoing practice of going into and out of the pools, the visuality, the dances, and the workshops, all of which comprise a kind of Harbin ownership. These are the people – Harbin residents and visitors - who enjoy being there, find freedom there and give of themselves, economically. And, emerging out of a hippy ethos, and radical way of seeing questions of ownership, no one is in charge, in important ways. In one sense Heart Consciousness Church is no one, Ishvara takes a very Taoist/New Age approach to ownership questions where Harbin kind of runs itself, and while there are some low key, hippie-minded managers, a board, and others related to a legal organization, I interpret HCC as letting things take their own course, where Harbin's culture significantly informs a kind of fluid ownership. In many ways, mingling naked in the warm pool, and pool area, is an important metaphor for ownership at Harbin, where the 'shared vision' of Harbin as place is a kind of ownership.

While there are a handful of businesses on the Harbin property, in many ways, being part of this place, this Harbin-family is what makes you able to have a business. ...

















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2011/03/pelecanus-occidentalis-harbin-has.html - March 7, 2011)