"What you need to know is that the explanation is irrelevant. True understanding only comes after you have experienced something. I could explain how to ride a bicycle all night, but that wouldn't teach you how to ride a bike. That wouldn't even give you the experience of it. But once you learn how to ride a bike, you don't need the explanation. Do you see that the explanations are irrelevant?"

"Uh . . ." I blushed. I was embarrassed. "Yes." I sat down. Everybody applauded. We applauded everything and everybody. We created our own excitement, Jason said. "Life is not what happens to us; it's what we create it to be. Here, we create our own enthusiasm."

I wished they wouldn't. It seemed so artificial. I didn't want to sit with it. So I stood up and announced, "I'm upset."

The circle cheered. "H'ray! Jim's upset." Jason said, "Thanks for acknowledging it."

I said, "What are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing. It's your upset. You handle it."

I said, "Don't you even want to know why?"

"No, not really. But you feel a need to share it, don't you?"

"Yes, I guess I do."

"So, go ahead. We have space for you to share your upset."

"I don't like all this cheering and yelling and hollering. It feels phony."

"I got it. Anything else?"

"No." I sat down. Everybody applauded. I felt foolish. But the upset was gone. Somebody leaned over and clapped me on the back. Other people smiled their love at me.

Jason said, "I want to talk about transformation tonight." Everybody cheered. This was a favorite subject.

He said, "Actually, I need to talk about experience first. Because I'm going to use the word experience a lot and we need to be clear what we're talking about. When I talk about your experience, I'm not talking about your history. I'm not talking about the rules and the beliefs and the stories you carry around. That's all bullshit. That's all over. That's the past. This is today. Now." He snapped his fingers to illustrate the point. "Now, now, now, now, now-and so on. Now is always now. That's where you live." He paused and grinned at us. "Now, now, now, now." Almost instantly, the whole circle was chanting with him, "Now, now, now, now-" until he raised his hands and cut us off laughing. "Right. You got it. That moment of now-that's who you really are. You are the place where the experience of now occurs. You are not the ideas or the judgments that you create. And you are not even the raw experiences. You are the place where it happens, nothing more. You are not your body. You are not your name. Get it! You are not a thing. You are not your attitudes, you are not your judgments, you are not your beliefs. Those are just concepts that you create and that you hold and have. But you are not your concepts. You are simply and only the place in which all of this occurs. You are the place where you create your life.

"We're going to do an exercise now, to give you the opportunity to experience your ability to create yourself as a being. This is a game where everybody wins. There's no way to do it wrong. So don't worry if you're doing it right. You are. The purpose is to experience yourself playing. It is in your play that you create yourself. So let yourself experience whatever comes up for you. It's all right. Everybody stand up. Now, first, we've got to shake you out of your heads. You're all with your thoughts, so we're going to shake you into consciousness. So everybody find a partner. . . ." He waited till we had done so. My partner was Frankenstein. "Now, grab each other's hands-and start jumping. Up and down, up and down, around and around . . .

It was a shock to see Frankenstein's monster smiling and grinning and laughing and jumping up and down. I had to work to keep up with him-I was afraid he was going to rip my arms out of my sockets if I didn't.

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.