Jason kept calling. "Come on, jump! Jump! Jump! Dance with each other! Dance! Shake yourselves loose! Shake yourselves awake." Everybody was laughing now. I couldn't keep up with Frankenstein, so he grabbed me in a big bear hug and held me to him like a child and started bouncing around the circle. Everybody was hooting and pointing. We collapsed in a silly heap on the grass and Frankenstein kissed me and told me he loved me and I felt so happy that I kissed him back and told him I loved him too. And then we got up and did the next part of the exercise.
"All right," Jason said. "You need to start getting in touch with your breathing now. Everybody put your hands on your knees. Lower your head. Close your eyes and just breathe in slowly. Hold it. Breathe out now. Hold it. Breathe in slowly. Let yourself experience your breathing. Just concentrate on your breath. Hold it. Breathe out now. Let yourself be your breath. Hold it."
At first I was annoyed: Then I was frustrated. After a while, I was bored. How long was this going to go on? I started concentrating on my breathing. I stopped listening to Jason's words and just let myself count and breathe, count and breathe, let myself live in my lungs. After a while, the rest of the universe disappeared. I could hear Jason's voice as if from a distance. He was my guide back, if I wanted to come back. I didn't.
"All right now, good. You're doing fine. It's time to stretch. Reach up and touch the sky. Everybody. Come on, Jim, reach up and touch the sky. As far as you can."
After we stretched, he had us sway. He transformed us into trees. We swayed in the wind. We felt the breeze move through our leaves. We stood there, a grove of human pines, turning to face Jason, the sun, as he circled around us. There were small trees, clambering to see his face. There were tall trees, stately and calm. There were male trees and female trees. There were stiff trees and supple trees, brittle trees and quiet trees. We breathed in and out. We swayed. The days passed. The seasons. It was spring and we blossomed. We showed our sex in our flowers.
And then we were birds, gliding above the trees. We sailed on the currents. We watched our leader and sailed with him. We caught the updrafts and rose lazily. We circled and dove. We wheeled and coursed across the blue and white ocean of air.
And then we were water. It was cold and we were snowflakes drifting softly onto the grass. We tumbled gently down, one on top the other. We melted where we fell. We rolled into each other, we became one another.
And finally, we were monkeys, naked and squatting and bouncing and making monkey noises at each other. We huddled together against the night: There was no language except pats and grunts. Words hadn't been invented yet. We were apes again. We were animals, being animals. The puppies were already curling up and falling asleep. Two of the monkeys had begun to quietly copulate. The female was old enough to be thick in the waist. She had pendulous breasts. The male was an adolescent. He mounted her eagerly and enthusiastically. I watched in appreciation.
I was sitting next to a young female with large breasts. I reached over and patted her. She patted me back. We nuzzled. It was nice. I thought about mating with her. It would have been nice. I patted her some more. I started touching her breasts. She laughed and pushed my monkey-hands away. I shrugged and turned and looked at what was happening on the other side of the cluster. The tall monkey, our leader, was making sounds. Oh, he was inventing words. "All right, now, it's time to come back. Let's invent centuries. Let's invent a lot of them. Let's invent this one, the twenty-first one. Let's invent human beings. Let's be human beings for a while."
I looked around. We were a group of naked human beings sitting on the grass. Some of us were too fat or too skinny. Some of us were dirty. Some of us looked unkempt. A boy with pimples on his ass was pumping away at an older woman who had no shame. I felt embarrassed. I invented embarrassment.
I didn't like being human. I wanted to go back to being an ape. I stood up and shared it. Everybody laughed and applauded. Jason grinned proudly. "You see what happened. You went back into your judgments, your attitudes and opinions-and it automatically separated you from the rest of your family. So, what's more reaclass="underline" the experience of the monkey colony or the judgment about this group of human beings?"
"They're both real," I said. "Aren't they?"
"Inside your head, yes," he said. "But one is experience and one is the story you made up about your experience. Which gave you the most satisfaction?"
"The experience."
"Right. Judgments and beliefs do not produce satisfaction. So, I want you to notice, Jim, that what we are here is a colony of monkeys who have invented language and technology and a whole bunch of other stuff, including judgments and beliefs. Now, we have the choice to stay true to our experience or get lost in the machinery of our inventions. What do you want to do?"
"I think I'll be a monkey." I jumped up and down and scratched my side and made grunty noises through my nose to emphasize the point.
Jason laughed and led the applause. I sat down, satisfied. "That's perfect," he said. "That's a perfect example of the point I want to make here. Experience produces transformation. Look at Jim's face. He's not the same person. See the aliveness there? The self that is home is now more available to us." They cheered and applauded and I felt good.
"That's a transformation, Jim-and you can feel it, can't you?" I nodded enthusiastically.
"So, you see: the experience of yourself playing, creating yourself-that's the experience of yourself as cause. You have each of you now experienced yourself as the source of your own experience. That experience of source is that source of transformation. Is there anyone who doesn't get that? Because we need to talk about transformation, and until you are clear about the source of it, we can't go on.
"So, here's the abstract. Experience of self as source produces transformation. That's how you can create your own transformations all day long. When you are the source of the experiences you create, you are the source of your transformation, and you can create any transformations you want.
"Now. Let's talk about creation for a moment. Is there any way to control creation? In one sense, no. You can't start it. You can't stop it. You are always creating-until you stop. And when you stop, you also stop doing everything else too. We have a technical term for someone who has stopped creating. We call him a corpse.
"But what you do have control over is what you create. You can create joy and enthusiasm every bit as easily as you create misery and despair. But most of you are experts in misery and despair and you've made it up that joy and enthusiasm are beyond your reach. Something has to happen outside you before you can have joy and enthusiasm. You say that, so you can be happy being miserable and depressed.
"Listen," Jason said. He was totally alive and on fire now, "You are creating even when you don't know it-and that's unconscious creation, and that's creation that's separated from source. Get to your source and transformation follows naturally. It is a natural condition. It's the natural function of experience, to transform, transform, transform-and that's how you live at the extraordinary level.
"Look, people: I'm talking about the quality of your lives. You can be like the unawakened-the people out there-or you can be like gods. Gods are responsible. Gods are sources. When you forget who you are, you know what happens? You sink. You stop transforming. You go southward!" He pointed down. "Toward anger, grief, and despair, right?"
"Right!" we cheered back.
"And when you're being responsible for what you create, you will transform yourself upward-toward joy. Right?"
"Right!" we screamed joyously.
"That's all there is," Jason said. "Joy and despair. And all the stations in between. You're either headed toward one or the other. You're either creating your life, or destroying it. So which do you want to do?"