Esalen (day three)

My roommate Gregg and I sit in the hot springs until 3 am ~ having another late night discussion ~ he’s in the middle of doing research for a book he’s writing ~ and says that humans are not the most intelligent species on earth ~ at best ~ we come in a distant third ~ whales and dolphins are much smarter ~ in fact, he says, whales evolved wireless Internet millions of years before Al Gore ~ they communicate with each other by sending ‘sonar messages’ ~ across a world wide web ~ that can be heard by whales in any ocean on the planet ~ he has physical evidence to prove it ~ and shows me 8 by 10 glossy photos of a whale’s brain ~ pretty impressive ~ much more convoluted than a human ~ I ask him if it's because they have such a large body to control ~ he says no ~very little of it is ‘motor cortex’ ~ those functions were distributed to areas outside the brain a long time ago. Now humans, he believes, operate from a much lower part of the brain ~ called the ‘reptilian brain’ ~ and that’s what drives our rational ‘cortical’ brain ~ not the other way around ~ as we like to think ~ he goes on to tell me that these lower brain areas assign ‘addresses’ and add ‘passion’ to information entering memory ~ that’s why feelings and people are such wonderful memory prompts ~ I sit fascinated by all of this ~ afterwards, he gives me a gift ~ a book called ‘Up from Dragons’ by Dorion Sagan ~ I’m speechless ~ I remember reading ‘Dragons of Eden’ in college ~ written by his late father Carl Sagan ~ and was fascinated then too ~ I haven’t seen anything like it since ~ until now anyway ~ Gregg is the most interesting part of this trip ~ I tell him so ~ and we hug before he disappears down highway one ~ I must remember to send him a copy of “Defending the Cavewoman”.

Workshop: I blow-off another morning session ~ without feeling the least bit guilty ~ during afternoon meditation I catch a glimpse of ‘simultaneous experience’ ~ the swoosh of an ocean wave ~ the laughter of children playing ~ the sight of other people meditating ~ the smell of a blue sky (!?) ~ all occurring at the same time ~ then I watch my mind quickly put it in order the way it usually does ~ the woman sitting next to me gasps ~ says she experienced the same thing ~ I tell her we’ll call them ‘visions of Johanna’ ~ because that’s her name ~ as well as the title of an old Bob Dylan song that I’d forgotten about ~ until now anyway.