Travels

by Michael Crichton

  However, I felt increasingly convinced that this cactus was my teacher. Challenging and annoying and silent, but my teacher.

  I decided to draw the cactus, because drawing something makes you pay close attention to it. Also, I wouldn’t feel so self-conscious if someone came across me while I was sitting there drawing the cactus. I drew the cactus a dozen times. It was very revealing.

  The cactus was at the edge of civilization. The cactus was positioned where the pavement stopped, like a sort of sentry. The cactus had been transplanted from a natural setting to a manmade garden, making it somewhat on display its entire life. A kind of showpiece, despite its own personal preferences. The cactus had a crew cut of thorns, giving it a military appearance. This cactus had had a rough life, and had been injured when young; one side of it was scarred and atrophied. You could see where the injury had occurred in earlier growth, and had twisted the growing cactus permanently. The thorns were especially dense and protective over the injured area. The only part of the cactus that was growing was the green tip. The rest was just supporting history. The cactus had equanimity; ants ran over its surface, and it didn’t seem to mind. It was certainly attractive, with red thorns and a green body; bees were attracted to it. The cactus had a formal aspect; its pattern of thorns gave it almost a herringbone look. This was an Ivy League cactus. I saw it as dignified, silent, stoic, and out of place.

  I drew it again and again.

  One day, as I arrived with my notebook and pens, the cactus said, “Where have you been?” In that same irritable, resentful tone.

  I was surprised. It hadn’t spoken since the first day. And this time I really felt as if it had spoken aloud.

  I said to the cactus, “What do you care? You haven’t said one word to me; why should I hang around all day in the hot sun waiting for you to say something?” Because I was defensive. I felt I had been criticized.

  The cactus didn’t reply.

  Immediately I regretted my words. Boy, I thought, now I’ve blown it. After days and days of waiting, the cactus finally speaks and I immediately attack it because I feel defensive, and now it won’t talk any more. My one chance, and I blew it.

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

  No answer from the cactus.

  I wasn’t going to ask it to forgive me. That was too much, for a grown man to ask a cactus for forgiveness. On the other hand, maybe if I did it would speak again. I really wanted to know what it had to say.

  “Will you forgive me?”

  No answer. Hardball from the cactus.

  Well, maybe it would reveal something more in drawings. So I drew it again. And today I seemed able to see the injury to the cactus particularly clearly. I felt that the injury had been caused by a person who had scraped the cactus in passing—a preoccupied person who wasn’t watching where he was going. A person who had cursed the cactus when he got a few thorns for his mistake. But the cactus had been hurt far more than the passer-by.

  I noticed that the cactus had experienced a twisted development for several years following this injury, but that afterward it had grown straight above the injury, and perhaps a little stronger for its tribulation. I thought the injury had toughened the cactus. Made it a better cactus.

  I also thought that, although the cactus had recovered physically, it was still psychologically defensive and guarded. I thought the cactus tended to be judgmental. The fact that the cactus would attract me and then refuse to speak suggested that he might be a little hysterical. The cactus had not allowed his mental development to catch up to his physical development.

  A roadrunner came by and hung around me while I was drawing the cactus. He was a comical bird, and his presence made me feel good. Even if the cactus still refused to talk.

  From then on, whenever I visited the cactus, I had a funny dissociated attitude. On the one hand, I could not escape the sense that I was projecting onto the cactus. An Ivy League cactus! Who was I kidding? But, on the other hand, I was having an interesting time seeing this cactus as separate from me. And certainly I was attracted to it again and again.

  * * *

  Brugh had warned us that a great deal of projection would take place among members of the group, since we didn’t know one another. We should be alert to what we felt about other people, what we liked and didn’t like, because those feelings were likely to be our own projection and we should “own” them.

  Often, in the afternoons, a group of us would walk in the desert. On the first day, we were walking along and a woman said to me, “Are you angry?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I feel you’re very angry.”

  “Well, I’m not.” I was actually having a really nice time and was in the best of moods. I thought, Projection. Interesting. She’s evidently an angry woman; I’ll have to keep an eye on her.

  Brugh was particularly interested in what he termed “energy work.” He had discovered, by meditation and medical experience, that there was a kind of energy in the human body, unknown to medical science. This energy tended to be focused in spots located on the body. He had mapped these spots, and later discovered that they corresponded roughly to the chakras of Indian Yogic belief.

  I knew something about chakras. In Tantric Yoga, for example, it was thought that the vital force, or prana, was distributed through the body along seven junction points, or chakras. These chakras located in the midline of the body. The first two chakras were located in the groin; the third, in the solar plexus, beneath the ribs; the fourth, over the heart; the fifth, on the throat; the sixth, at the forehead; and the seventh, at the top of the head.

  The chakras were thought to bridge the everyday physical body and the astral body of emotions and feelings. Each chakra had a characteristic color, and a characteristic function. The first two chakras were concerned with primitive survival and sexuality. The third chakra involved the sense of worldly self—a very highly developed chakra in the West. The fourth, or heart, chakra was the source of unconditional love; the fifth, or throat, chakra was concerned with creativity; the sixth, or “third eye,” with bodily secretions, intellect, and the higher self; and the seventh, or crown, chakra with cosmic consciousness.

  Sensitive people were said to be able to see these chakras, generally perceiving them as swirling spots of colored light. Each of these chakras could be “awakened.” The energy flowing between the chakras could be “balanced.” And there was a very dramatic form of energy, called Kundalini energy, that sometimes aroused and alarmed people when they awakened their chakras.

  All this, and a great deal more, was believed about the chakras.

  Of course, the Yogic concept of a body energy following specific pathways over the body was not so different from the Chinese concept of qui energy in being distributed along acupuncture meridians. And I was aware that acupuncture worked. But I did not believe that because acupuncture worked its theoretical framework was therefore correct.

  And I had always regarded chakras as a sort of metaphysical delusion. Of course, it might be helpful to think of the breath as drawing in the life force, which was then distributed through the body along a series of energy points. That might make metaphorical sense, as an aid to meditation, a way to visualize what was going on. But I didn’t consider chakras real in the same way as the heart and arteries and nerves were real.

  Yet here was a physician saying that chakras were absolutely real, and that there were many other energy points on the body as well—over the spleen, the nipples, the knees and toes, and so on. That this energy could be felt by anybody, easily. That it could be seen as well. That disturbances in health could appear as disturbances of this body energy. That body energy was a tremendous force for healing. That the energy could be transferred from one person to another, by touching, or laying on hands.

  Brugh believed all this.

  I was unconvinced, to say the least.

  To begin, Brugh announced that he would do energy work on each of us. He did the seminar in two groups.
Since I was in the afternoon group, I could watch what happened to the morning group.

  Soft music played. The people receiving energy lay on massage tables. Brugh’s assistants, who had been to the conference before, touched the people on the tables in ways that were supposed to activate their chakras and balance their body energy. Then Brugh walked from table to table, spending about five minutes at each. He held his hands over different parts of people’s bodies, and then moved on. After he had finished, the people lay on the tables for a while, covered with blankets. Eventually they would get up and leave the room.

  That was all there was to it.

  It was incredibly undramatic.

  I had anticipated some violence, some tension and shaking and wrenching, the way faith healers worked on television. But Brugh just quietly moved from one person to the next. And the individuals receiving the energy didn’t gasp or jump. They just lay there on the tables. So there wasn’t much to see, to observe, about this energy work.

  The only thing I noticed was that the atmosphere in the room got thick. Sitting in that room was like sitting at the bottom of a jar of honey. You felt immersed in something dense and thick. It was very peaceful and pleasant to be there.

  Nobody was supposed to talk about his or her experience, so I didn’t know what happened to the first group. They walked around and smiled, and I noticed that they tended to disappear from the group after the energy work. But I couldn’t tell anything in particular.

  My turn came in the afternoon.

  I lay on the table while the assistants worked on my body. What I noticed was that they would touch a limb at, say, the knee and the ankle, and for a while it just felt like somebody had placed a hand on your knee and your ankle. Then, after a minute or two, a sensation of warmth would suddenly spread up and down my lower leg. As soon as that happened, the assistants would go on to another part of the body—say, the knee and the hip—and wait until the warmth occurred again. Sometimes this spreading warmth was accompanied by a little twitch in the limb, but usually not. In any case, the assistants seemed able to tell when the warmth began, because they immediately moved to another part of my body. As more and more of my body was treated in this way, I drifted into a deep relaxation close to sleep.

  I was vaguely aware of Brugh standing over me. He held his hands a few inches from my body, and they were noticeably hot. It was exactly as if somebody were holding a hot iron over my body. I was surprised at first by the intensity of it, but in my relaxed condition, I couldn’t really pay attention. It was all as if I were dreaming. I drifted off to sleep.

  After a while someone touched my shoulder and whispered that I was finished, and I could leave if I wanted to. It was dinnertime. I got off the table and walked outside.

  There were oleanders in bloom, explosions of oleanders along the path. The sun was setting on the red mountains. Everything was glowing and alive and vivid. I wandered through the oleanders and came upon a little playground. I’d been at the institute for nearly a week, and this playground was right by the path, but I’d never noticed it before. I sat on a swing and rocked back and forth. I felt incredibly benign.

  I got lost on my way to the dining room. When I arrived, I discovered I was not hungry, but it was nice to look at the food. Everything looked nice. I could stare at a cut strawberry for an hour, noticing the patterns, the colors. Or bread—a slice of bread was fascinating to look at. Everybody looked wonderful, too, even though I didn’t want to talk. My sensations were too immediate, too compelling, to be reduced to conversation.

  I became aware of my glasses, artificial frames that stood between me and the world, so I took my glasses off. I could see all right without them, and I was much happier to be rid of this barrier.

  Then it began to dawn on me, what all this was: Bothered by his glasses. Doesn’t want to talk. Not hungry but likes to look at food. Gets lost in familiar surroundings. Discovers new things under his nose. Finds the world extremely vivid.

  I was demonstrating all the characteristics of a psychedelic experience, but I hadn’t taken any drug. This vivid feeling lasted for two days, and slowly faded.

  A few people began to have mystical experiences. The news flashed around the dining-room table. So-and-so had had a vision. So-and-so had heard voices. Inevitably, all this took on a competitive aspect. Brugh himself had said that we were all on our own paths, and that we should not compare our experiences. But we did. At least, I did.

  How could I help it? I had come here to have some mystical experiences, and all around me other people were having very dramatic experiences—Joan of Arc–type experiences—and I wasn’t. I was just pretending to have an occasional line of dialogue with a cactus. That was the extent of it.

  I was jealous. Let’s face it, to have a mystical experience is a sign of favor from God. Everybody knows that. And I wasn’t getting any favors. It really made me feel bad.

  One night, during a coffee break in the cafeteria, when we were having coffee and fig newtons, a psychiatrist named Judith said, “During the session tonight, I could see everybody’s aura.”

  “Is that right?” I said, backing away from her slightly. One more person having a mystical experience. A psychiatrist seeing auras.

  “Yes,” Judith said. She was smiling and happy. “Have you seen anything like that?”

  “No,” I said, miserable. “What did they look like?”

  “All different colors. Mostly yellow and white. I can still see them.”

  “Now?” I said. “Here in the cafeteria?”

  “Yes. I see everybody’s aura. Sarah’s is yellow and pink,” she said, nodding to a woman next to us.

  “Yellow and pink. How far out does it go?” I said.

  “About a foot from her head.”

  I held my hand over Sarah’s head. “This far out?”

  “No, not so far.”

  I moved my hand down toward Sarah’s head, slowly. And suddenly I felt warmth. Surprised, I stopped my hand.

  “There,” Judith said. “Right there.”

  I could feel it.

  I ran my hand over Sarah’s head. I could feel a distinct contour of warmth. It was as if she had an invisible warm Afro that extended out about a foot beyond her hair. I ran my hand along this contour. I felt a sort of lump on the left side.

  “The aura goes out further on the left side,” Judith said, nodding. “Like a bump. Yes.”

  I went around the room, feeling above people’s heads. The minute my hand felt the invisible warm contour, Judith would say, “There.” We repeated it again and again, with different people.

  I was terrifically excited, like a kid with a new toy, a new discovery. I didn’t think about it, I just kept doing it.

  Then I began to wonder: what does this mean? What am I feeling when I lower my hand? Am I actually feeling an aura? Is there such a thing as an aura? Because I thought auras were metaphysical delusions, too.

  I got a little paranoid. Perhaps Judith was taking a visual cue from me, saying “there” when she saw my hand stop. So the next time I stopped my hand above the warmth.

  “Come on,” Judith said. “It’s not out there.”

  I lowered my hand until I felt the warmth.

  “There.”

  And suddenly I was panicked. I thought, This can’t be happening. I have no explanation for this.

  It was impossible, but it was happening anyway. I didn’t know what to do with my experience. I didn’t think I was crazy. I could feel this warm contour, just as distinctly as you can feel hot bathwater when you put your hand into it. You know when your hand is in bathwater and when it’s not. There’s no mistaking it. It’s a physical phenomenon. Your hand will get warm and wet, even if you don’t believe in bathwater.

  What I felt now was every bit as clear and unambiguous.

  But I had no idea what it was. I was frantic to explain it. Yet I knew I couldn’t explain it. So I just gave up. It was a reproducible phenomenon that I couldn’t explain; as far as
I knew, nobody could explain it; but it was real, anyway. And if I had had a psychotic break sometime after dinner, did I believe that Judith had had one, too, so that we now agreed on phenomena that weren’t really there?

  No, no. It was real, all right.

  Something cracked in my way of looking at things. I had to accept this experience, so I did. I thought, Maybe I’ll figure it out later. Meantime, I just would have to live with it.

  Walking in the desert during the afternoons, two more people, on two separate occasions, asked me if I was angry or upset. I couldn’t understand why. Nobody ever asked me if I was angry at other times, just walking in the desert. So if these people were projecting onto me, they were doing it in a pretty odd way. What was going on?

  The conference continued. We were assigned meditative exercises. One was to send unconditional love and forgiveness to everyone in your life whom you hadn’t forgiven. We were to envision the people standing before us, and then send love and forgiveness, and release them.

  I discovered I had a long list of people to forgive. It was startling, how long the list was. I was also startled to see who I could envision and forgive quickly, and who was hard to visualize, hard to forgive. My mind would wander when I tried to forgive these difficult cases.

  I took days to work through my list. Everybody else had gone on to other things, and I was still forgiving people. I thought, What a cluttered life I have, carrying all these grudges around with me. It was a relief to get rid of my old animosities, but it was often accompanied by deep sadness.

  After I discovered I could feel auras, I relaxed a little about having mystical experiences. And then I had more experiences, although none turned out the way I imagined.

  For example, I heard voices.

  One hot afternoon I was sitting in the meditation room. There were a couple of experienced meditators there, people who immediately dropped into the lotus position and looked peaceful and serene. I hadn’t meditated much before, and I found the positions uncomfortable. I kept shifting around. It was hard for me.