Most people believe so many wonderful things that I decided to investigate why they did. And what has been referred to as my curiosity for investigation has landed me in a difficulty where I found so much junk that I’m overwhelmed. First I started out by investigating various ideas of mysticism and mystic experiences. I went into isolation tanks and got many hours of hallucinations, so I know something about that. Then I went to Esalen, which is a hotbed of this kind of thought (it’s a wonderful place; you should go visit there). Then I became overwhelmed. I didn’t realize how MUCH there was.
At Esalen there are some large baths fed by hot springs situated on a ledge about thirty feet above the ocean. One of my most pleasurable experiences has been to sit in one of those baths and watch the waves crashing onto the rocky slope below, to gaze into the clear blue sky above, and to study a beautiful nude as she quietly appears and settles into the bath with me.
One time I sat down in a bath where there was a beautiful girl sitting with a guy who didn’t seem to know her. Right away I began thinking, “Gee! How am I gonna get started talking to this beautiful nude woman?”
I’m trying to figure out what to say, when the guy says to her, “I’m, uh, studying massage. Could I practice on you?” “Sure,” she says. They get out of the bath and she lies down on a massage table nearby. I think to myself, “What a nifty line! I can never think of anything like that!” He starts to rub her big toe. “I think I feel it,” he says. “I feel a kind of dent—is that the pituitary?” I blurt out, “You’re a helluva long way from the pituitary, man!” They looked at me, horrified—I had blown my cover—and said, “It’s reflexology!” I quickly closed my eyes and appeared to be meditating.
That’s funny. I truly did not know much, if anything, about Esalen before reading this post, and yet it’s been there for decades. A former good friend of mine, however, lived in Colorado (and California), and would frequently visit (I guess they were) public hot tubs and hot springs. She said she and her husband (who no longer is a he) would be naked and others in no dress would follow. One day, however, a man got into one of the tubs who was partially covered in his own excrement. It took them a few moments (as they weren’t focusing on him) to realize what was going on, then they high-tailed it out of there, of course, but I couldn’t help but think to myself, that type of enjoyment (bathing with complete strangers in the nude) is all a bunch of crap anyway ...