About three years ago, when I was in California, I went with a friend up near the Russian River. And he took me to a place called the Berkeley Music Camp. This is a campground with a lot of big redwood trees, and a lot of people from Berkeley and the Berkeley area, who are musicians come there with tents and trailers. A lot of symphony musicians. The San Francisco Symphany Orchestras. And they would bring their instruments with them. And we were having breakfast in a little place near there. And we saw a sign saying there was going to be a concert with some Hyden and Mozart, not formally rehearsed or anything, they were just muscians who were coming together. They all knew this music, they were all professionals. There was a man conducting it. And they were playing classical music, and we sat on some very rough benches that they made on a hillside, surrounded by all of the towering redwood trees. Very peaceful, and very calm, and very quiet, and very beautiful music.

And as I was listening to that, something suddenly caused me to focus my attention. One of the redwood trees, about five feet above the ground had a mark that focused my attention. And then, in imagination that my eye began to climb the tree. Climbing. A foot, two feet, three feet. Then I was up twenty-five feet off the ground. And when you do something like that, when you allow your imagination to do something like that, when you climb that tree like that, when you get up to twenty-five feet, then you begin to experience yourself up above, looking down at everybody. And you look down, and the first thing that you see is that people look different, when you look from the top down. You see the tops of their heads. The instruments all look different. And you keep going up, and you let yourself climb up another 25 feet, and then fifty feet, and you feel yourself up there. And you feel yourself relaxing in a different way. It is very pleasurable. It is also different. You continue to climb that tree. You go up 100 feet, and now sounds begin to sound different, because they are coming from a distance below you. They are no longer coming at you, but they are rising up a little more lightly, a little more carefully. And you begin to feel very light as you continue to move up the tree. You are up to a hundred and fifty feet, and at that point you are only half way up. And you can feel lighter, and lighter, and lighter. The higher you let yourself go. And you can let yourself go up to 175 feet, and go up to 185 feet, and you can go up to 200 feet, and a lot of things now seem to be very distant from that point, very far away. The sounds are all very different. Your body feels different, because of where you now are.

So you can be aware of all those changes. Going up to 250 feet, 275, and finally you break off at 300 feet, near the top of the tree. And up there you are no longer in the shadow of the tree. Up there, it is bright sun, all around you is that bright golden sunlight. The sky is so blue. The sky is so blue. There are white cumulous clouds, white with silver grey, and a warm gentle breeze that blows. And you can feel the tree as it swings slowly from side to side. And you can give yourself up to that swaying, to the comfort that it brings, experience the pleasure as you let yourself go swaying side to side. And behind your closed eyelids, you can now begin to see the things that you are seeing right now. And feel the swaying of the trees. And even though you closed your eyes, you are aware that you are feeling very very light. Because you have gone from high up and you feel light, and lighter, and lighter.

And you begin to notice how this is affecting your body sensations. And you may notice that one hand and arm is lighter than the next. And of course, I have no way of knowing which arm is lighter. But this I know, with everything that grows in nature, absolute mechanical symetry doesn't exist if it is growing object. There are always differences that I can be aware of. Therefore, I know for a fact that one hand and arm are lighter than the other, but I don't know which it is. I don't know which it is. But whichever it is, it might become so light that it will start moving, and continuing it's upward journey. It feels light and starts to move up in the air. You maybe feel that inclination to move.

And if your eyes are closed, you may find at this point, that your eyelids are so relaxed that when you try to open them when I count to five, that they won't open. And the more you try to open them, the more completely and pleasantly you relax. You stop trying and you let yourself go. One, two, three, four, five. So you can try to open your eyes. And you can have that experience of whatever happens. Be aware that I haven't made any suggestions to you at all of whether they will or will not open. But you may try to open them, and you may find that they don't open. Or you may find that they do open.