"Now breathe."

The boy suddenly felt deep, deep gulps of air pouring into his body, felt the air pouring into his arms and chest and stomach, felt it reaching far down into his thighs. His whole body was breathing, and it was very good. He smiled, and laughed out loud.

"It's as easy as that. Now open your eyes."

The boy opened his eyes, looked at John, and held him by the arm; then he looked at Elizabeth, to whom he had come to feel close, and said, "Thank you, Elizabeth." He held her hand, and then looked around and said, "and all the rest of you too." He saw that everybody was smiling, and then felt within his won body that same high, other-world, free and beautiful feeling that he had seen on other people's faces. He returned to his place in the circle and lay on his back to practice breathing. There was silence in the room. He sat up. "Don't worry about me. I'm just lying here happily breathing," he said.

Paul would later tell the boy that he and John had been speaking so quietly that no one could make out their words. And looking back at what had happened--although it was undramatic, uneventful -- the boy sensed that when he was on his back, the whole room could have caved in and he would not have known it.

All he had done was to learn something about his body, something about his breathing. That by itself was good. It was good to feel his whole body breathing. When he opened his eyes and looked at the group, however, he felt very strange--a little closer to them, a little warmer, a little more ready to accept them. But it was not the felling toward them that was strange; it was the feeling within himself, a feeling of tender, beautiful, balmy peace -- a feeling that seemed to exist beyond words: it seemed to lie closer to truth than words can reach.