Big Sur (California), April 8: “In California, we don’t ask for IDs to use public libraries”, the reception clerk at the Big Sur Lodge located in the 1,006-acre grove of redwood and oak trees in the Pfeiffer State Park said, making a point.

His answer came in response to this correspondent’s query about using Internet facilities at the public library in the nearby town of Ripplewood. The Big Sur Lodge is a slice of nature: it has no data ports, telephones or TV sets in its rooms, whose porches are sometimes visited by mountain lions and bears in the darkness of night. The receptionist knew this correspondent had come from Washington, where IDs are documented and use of Internet time is recorded when anyone walks into a public library to use its facilities.

Section 215 of America’s infamous Patriot Act allows the FBI or another investigating agency to demand that librarians should provide details of books ordered or read by private citizens or residents in the US. And a librarian can be arrested for telling anyone that the FBI has made such a request.

Librarians have been protesting against this provision in the law. The receptionist was making the point that in California, George Orwell’s 1984 rules do not apply yet.

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• There is plenty of other evidence in Big Sur that this is not George W. Bush country. Visit the Henry Miller Library, once again.

As soon as you pass the gates, before you can enter the building is a notice board on which thoughts by friends of this library are put up. The current one from Jim Houck reads: “America is currently constipated, doubled over in puritanical pain. When a single tit, shot from 50 yards off, displayed for less than a full second, on Janet Jackson can even cause an eyebrow to lift, much less a global mockery of American sexual hysteria, we NEED Miller and Miller Library, like never before. Ring the firebells, a boob popped out”.

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• Twenty five miles south of Big Sur on the Pacific Coast Highway is another small town, Lucia. A large wooden cross on this highway at Lucia marks the location of the Camaldoli Benedictine Hermitage, founded in 1958 by followers of Saint Benedict.

The saint’s name goes with the Benedictine order established in the sixth century and reformed subsequently through the Camaldolese branch set up by the Italian monk Saint Romuald in the 11th century.

A two-mile winding ascent along a narrow road from the highway leads up to the stunning location of the hermitage, which has about 30 monks.

Enter the hermitage’s reception-cum-bookstore and it really hits a visitor. An anti-war statement! On the wall directly facing the entrance, next to reception, is a yellow sign no one can miss. It is a profound question: “Who would Jesus bomb?”

The hermitage’s altar has built-in shades of Hindu temple construction and on the day this correspondent arrived, there were two Jesuit priests from India staying over in the monastic quarters.

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• The hermitage’s bookstore is unlike any other bookstore in a Christian institution. There are as many books on Hinduism, Islam and comparative religions as on Christianity. Books on Mahatma Gandhi and non-violence are aplenty.

A popular collection is by Father Bede Griffiths, also known as Swami Dayananda, a British priest who went to India in 1955 and lived in Kerala and later at a Hindu-Christian monastery in Tamil Nadu until his death in 1993 at the age of 86. The engaging collection includes a Christian commentary of the Bhagavad Gita and Griffith’s autobiography, which is a rediscovery of Christianity through his Indian experience.

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• Between three to four hours by road from Big Sur towards Los Angeles is the Krishnamurti Foundation of America’s Retreat and Study Centre in Ojai. It is yet another of the pristine settings that dot California, close to the Pacific Ocean and the towering peaks of the Los Padres National Forest.

The Centre is located in the ranch house where Krishnamurti often stayed during the 60 years or so that he visited the US. The ranch house was converted into a library according to Krishnamurti’s wishes to serve as “a vessel of learning.”

The centre’s activities include a weekly dialogue, a twice-monthly study group, numerous meetings and gatherings.