"How do you feel?" Susie, the ugly one, asked. Elizabeth just smiled. The boy did not understand what had happened, but felt happy for the woman who, without saying a word, picked herself up and joyfully hugged everyone in the room.

THE BOY had arrived at Esalen the night before. He had come because two of its staff members, Stewart and Sara, were friends of his friend Paul. Stewart and Sara had picked them up at the Monterey airport late Sunday afternoon and driven them the 45 miles south, along spectacular Route One, to Esalen. Route One stretches for hundreds of miles along the California coast, and it must be one of the most beautiful roads in the world--it's the road Dustin Hoffman drove on in his little red Alfa on his way to Berkeley. It winds along the coast, on cliffs that sometimes rise more than 1000 feet above the ocean. Endless time, endless space, a breathtaking, infinite expanse of water--the boy had felt the excitement of all these as they drove along that road. And he had felt the excitement as Stewart had talked about Esalen. The details would come back to him later; he only remembered Stewart saying, "We're on to something very big here, and something very big is going to happen. We don't yet know what it is, but it may turn out to be bigger than all of us."

All the boy knew of Esalen were fragments of remembered conversations, rumors, stories, tall tales. There would be a lot of nudity, a lot of touching, a lot of sex. He did not know what else, but the adventure of the drive along Route One set the energy flowing in his body.

They arrived in Esalen around 6:30. The sign, "Esalen Institute, By reservation only," seemed to be advertising a motel; in a couple of senses, perhaps, that is what the place was. At the sign, Stewart turned off Route One, down a very steep hill, around a corner, and suddenly the whole place opened up before them. It was totally hidden, self-contained, isolated. Two hundred feet above, Route One might as well have disappeared.

They went first to the lodge -- a wooden lodge much like a ski lodge, containing the office and dining room and kitchen--to register, and then went up to their room, where Stewart and Sara left Paul and the boy to settle in. Besides the sheer physical majesty of the place, what the boy noticed most was the silence. In the office where they registered, on the way up to their room, even at dinner--in the large dining room with 40 or 50 people eating simultaneously--there was an eery, unsettling quiet, which the boy was not quite able to cope with.

There was a Sunday evening meeting at 9 p.m. for all the people who had come for the "More Joy" workshop. There were about 40 of them, and after an hour or an hour and a half of exercises--breathing exercises, stretching, jumping in the air and yelling, touching -- the large group had split into three smaller groups; both Paul and the boy had chosen John for their leader.

Three other important things had happened Sunday night. First, the boy discovered that of the many incredibly beautiful girls in the dining room during dinner, all but one turned out to be staff, help, or waitresses. That one, however, was in the "More Joy" program; but the boy, after doing a couple of physical communication exercises with her, had a chance to talk to her and found out in order a) that she was six years older than he was, b) that she made him feel hopelessly insecure, and c) that she couldn't have been less interested. When the large group split into the three smaller groups, the girl at first came to John's group, but then left to go to another one--as the boy looked wistfully after her, doing and saving nothing.

Second, after splitting into the three groups, each group went down to the baths. The boy had heard about the baths before coming to Esalen. He would later find out that in one of the other two groups two people had stayed in the baths after the group left and made love. He would also find out that in October, 1968, when the vibes at Esalen had been highest, there had been as many as three different couples making love next to each other, on the rest tables next to the baths, in the middle of the afternoon. And all this, the boy thought to himself, while the mighty Pacific surf pounded on the shore below.

For the time being, however, the baths were only the baths. To get to them, the group walked down a path toward the small grey building which held them. From about 100 feet away, the boy could smell the rotten smell of the sulphur, but he soon grew accustomed to it, and with the rest of the group, took off his clothes in the semi darkness, and climbed into the hot, womblike, three foot deep, absorbing, relaxing, exhausting heat of the water. Several members of John's group had not come. Those who had come did and said little; there was no need to. For the boy the greatest moment had been to climb out of the baths into the cool darkness of the night and stand by the railing, looking out over the ocean, naked before God and the world, realizing that a soft gentle rain had begun to fall and was gently cleansing his body.

The third important event of Sunday night, however, was the boy's first breakdown. It was back in the room, with Paul. Neither of them had been tired, and they had sat up talking for a long time. The boy found himself a little nervous, restless, but uncertain why. Paul, 12 years older than him, was half a brother, half a father, and had comforted him. Suddenly, not knowing why, the boy had started to cry, out of loneliness, out of sadness, out of stored up emotions that he could not name: he had simply cried, in Paul's arms, saying that he was frightened, and when Paul asked him of what, the boy could only reply, "Of the whole fucking world.