Kuantan was a big, ugly town—cement factories and Honda truck dealerships. It seemed an unlikely place for a resort hotel, and I didn’t see any signs for the Hyatt Kuantan. I drove on.
Night approached. The features of the countryside began to recede into grayness. The road was badly marked, and I did not want to be driving at night. I missed the road for the Hyatt, asked directions at a little roadside restaurant, doubled back, missed it again. This wasn’t high adventure, it was mundane frustration. When I finally arrived at the hotel, I saw immediately it was the kind of place that gives Hyatt a bad name. I wished I hadn’t come.
But charming guesthouses on the east coast are not easily telexed at short notice, and I had come here in the spring of 1982 for a particular reason—to see the seasonal egg-laying of the giant Malaysian leatherback turtles.
For several months beginning in May, the turtles emerge from the ocean to lay their eggs on the isolated beaches of the east coast. In fact, so remote are the beaches that the turtles were presumed extinct until the 1950s, when they were observed still laying their eggs.
This was all I really knew, but I assumed I would find out more at the location. So as I checked into the hotel, I asked the receptionist.
“I’ve come to see the turtles.”
“Yes? We have no turtles at the hotel.”
“The giant turtles that lay their eggs?”
“Yes. They are not here.”
“But on the coast?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps farther north. You will have to ask.”
“Whom should I ask?”
“Ask the tourist desk in the morning. But I think it is the wrong time.”
“It does not begin in May?”
“I don’t know. I think there are no turtles, it is the wrong time.”
A negative person, I thought, and uninformed as well. The hotel should think twice about having such a person behind the reception desk. After all, the turtles must be a great attraction in this region; a hotel person would logically be expected to know about them.
But in subsequent days I became discouraged. Nobody seemed to know about the turtles. They knew about the windsurfers. They knew about the jungle tours. They knew about the native dance excursions. But no one knew about the turtles. I went into Kuantan town and found the local tourist office. It was closed. They said the woman who ran it was in Kuala Lumpur and would be back in a week.
Finally, one day, as I was arranging for a windsurfer, one of the men who worked at the beach shack said casually, “They saw turtles yesterday.”
“Who did?”
“Chinese people.”
“Where did they see them?”
He named a hotel.
“Where is that?”
“Up the coast. Fifty kilometers.”
“And they saw turtles last night?”
“About two a.m. Three turtles,” he said, nodding. “Big ones. Two hundred kilos.”
I told him I wanted to see these turtles.
“Yes, why not? It is the season.”
“Well, I haven’t been able to arrange it.”
“No one can arrange it. The turtles do as they please.”
“What do I do to see them?”
“Go up to the hotel. They have turtles there.”
“Every night?”
“No, not every night. You can call first before you drive up.”
I called the hotel. Yes, they had seen turtles. They had seen them three of the last four nights. Yes, I could call later on and they would tell me if they were seeing turtles.
I called around ten that night. The woman said they had not seen turtles yet; it was too early in the season.
I called at midnight. No one answered the phone.
I drove up anyway.
On the way, it started to rain. Fifty kilometers to the north, I pulled into a modern hotel, gray concrete structures, grassy lawns. The rain was coming down hard. There was a beach directly ahead. I got out of the car and walked to the beach. There was no one there, and nothing to see. The rain slashed down heavily.
A man came up in the darkness. “Why are you here?”
“I came to see turtles.”
“No turtles tonight.”
“But I thought—”
“No turtles.”
I went home.
I called the following night. The hotel said they had seen many turtles last night, but none so far tonight.
At midnight, I called again. A man said they had seen a turtle. It was on the beach nearby. How long would it be there? I asked. Many hours, he said.
I drove up.
There was again nobody around the hotel. The lobby was deserted. I pushed the buzzer for the manager. Nobody came. I walked out onto the beach. It was a beautiful night, a full moon, fleecy clouds, warm air. I saw nobody on the beach, which extended away for miles in every direction.
Pretty soon a young boy on a motor scooter buzzed down the beach, near the water. I watched him go, the sound fading. About ten minutes later he came back.
“Turtles?” he called to me softly in the darkness. He might have been a drug dealer.
“Yes,” I said.
“I am looking for them. I find them, I take you there.”
“Good. Thank you.”
“You have seen them?”
“No, never.”
“You have not seen the one?”
“Where?”
“Close. By the tree.” He pointed.
There were trees at the edge of the beach, casting shadows in the moonlight. Beneath one I saw a shape in the sand. I went over and clicked on my flashlight.
The turtle was enormous, the size of a desk. She was facing the ocean. With her flippers she had dug a pit of sand perhaps three feet deep. Now she was laying her translucent, slippery, soft eggs in the pit. Her magnificent head moved slowly back and forth. A tear came to her eyes.
The turtle must have weighed three hundred pounds, perhaps more. To crawl a hundred yards up the beach, dig a pit with her clumsy flippers, and lay her eggs had required an enormous effort. She had an exhausted, dazed look on her face. There were more tears, but these were apparently excretions from the eyes and not true tears. I watched the turtle with astonishment, amazed by the effort, the ancient ritual that led her to do this each year. I was quite content to stay there all night.
There was a commotion to one side. A dozen people, Chinese and Malays, came up the beach. They had heard about the turtle. They brought powerful lights, which they shone on the animal. I began to feel uncomfortable. There were now a lot of people standing around this turtle while she laid her eggs.
The others began to fire flashbulbs, taking pictures of the turtle. They got very close to her face and fired flash after flash. Finally the father of the Chinese family said something to his son, and the boy climbed on the turtle’s back while his father flashed another picture. Pretty soon his whole family was posed astride the turtle, as she moved her hind flippers ineffectually.
Finally she managed to flick sand into the face of one of the young children standing nearby. The child began to cry in the darkness. The Malays yelled at the turtle and cursed it. The Chinese took more flash pictures in rapid succession. One of the Chinese men posed near the turtle’s head, holding a bottle of beer to the turtle, as if to offer it a drink. Flash. Laughter.
The boy on the motor scooter zoomed up, parked his bike. The other people fell silent. I wondered if he was an official of some sort, but when he stepped into the light I saw he was only ten or eleven. He spoke quietly, apparently telling them about the turtle. From his gestures, it seemed he was explaining what the turtle was doing. He pointed out her tracks, all the way up the beach. How she had laboriously turned around to face back to the ocean. How long she had worked to dig her pit. How much effort it was costing her to lay her eggs. And, after she laid her eggs, how many hours she would lie here, exhausted, trying to find the strength to struggle back toward the water, to return to the sur
f by daybreak.
They listened in silence. The young Chinese boy got off the turtle’s back. The child stopped crying, and was encouraged to touch the turtle’s shell, to make peace with the great creature. The entire atmosphere became more respectful. They stepped back from the pit. I thought, They only needed to understand what was happening to this creature. They could not imagine without being told, but once they were told, they became sympathetic and understanding.
Finally they drifted away. I sat there. The boy sat near me in the darkness.
“English?”
“American.”
“Ah, American. Rono Reagan.”
“Yes.”
He pointed to the departing people. “They go now. They see the turtle and they go.”
“What did you tell them?” I asked.
“They say, want to buy eggs,” he said. “I tell them where to buy eggs, they leave now.”
“They will go and buy eggs?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I tell them about the turtle, about the eggs. They listen.”
“Ah.”
“And I tell them the cost for eggs. The woman say too much. I think they will not buy.”
“No?”
He shook his head. “No.”
The turtle remained in the pit, moving a flipper occasionally. After an hour, another group of people arrived. There were more flashbulbs, more poses. I went home.
Cactus Teachings
In the fall of 1982 I attended Brugh Joy’s conference in the Lucerne Valley desert, in California. Brugh Joy was an eminent Los Angeles physician who had, through intensive meditation, moved progressively away from medicine into areas of personal growth, psychic healing, and so on. For several years he had run two-week conferences in which he shared his findings.
To me this seemed like the first appropriate opportunity to do something in an area of interest which I had had since 1973. After all, when you read a book by Ram Dass, you could see he was always doing something new: living in a Zen monastery, doing breathing exercises, fasting, staying with his guru in India. You had the impression that he was trying many different kinds of experiences.
I had only read about such experiences; I hadn’t actually had any of my own. For ten years I had done nothing except read. And ten years is a long time to maintain an interest at arm’s length. I was beginning to wonder if my interest was genuine, or if I was just making excuses.
It was with relief that I learned that Brugh Joy, a somber medical man, trained at Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic, had taken his own spiritual journey and now was helping others. His conference seemed the ideal starting place for me.
* * *
The conference was held at the Institute of Mentalphysics, in Lucerne Valley. The institute buildings, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, must have been advanced for their time but now looked distinctly eccentric. The science of mentalphysics (“The Faultless Philosophy of Life”) was founded by Edwin J. Dingle, who had been to Tibet in the 1920s. There were faded photos of Tibetan holy men, and Art Deco posters showing the right way to avoid constipation and other health problems. Thus the institute displayed all the hallmarks of California-oddball spiritualism, with the added disadvantage of being out of date.
Brugh Joy turned out to be a pale, slender man in his forties. He drove an old Cadillac, wore jeans and a casual sport shirt. He was gentle, soft-spoken, and noticeably reserved.
Forty other people attended the seminar. I was reassured to see a large number of buttoned-down professional types, including many physicians and psychologists.
At our first dinner, on Sunday, Brugh announced the rules for the next two weeks. No telephone calls in or out. No leaving the grounds: if we needed anything, someone would go into town and get it for us. No sex, and no drugs. There would be daily group sessions, but he didn’t care if we attended them; we would get the benefit of the sessions whether we attended or not.
He said we could either sleep in our rooms or in the desert. He talked about rattlesnakes, and said that nobody had ever been bitten by a snake during his conferences but that if we insisted on being the first, this is how we should behave.…
Implicit in his talk was the idea that soon we would all be wandering around in different states of consciousness. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded interesting.
The conference followed a daily routine. There was silence every morning from six-thirty until eight, when we met for breakfast. Meditation during this time was encouraged but not required.
At nine we met in a large conference room. We began by lying on the floor on pillows. Brugh would play loud music from huge speakers for about half an hour. The intensity and vibration made the experience very powerful; people would have waking dreams, and often cry. Afterward we would sit in a circle, hold hands for a moment, and discuss our dreams. Then Brugh would give an informal lecture, and we would break for lunch at twelve-thirty.
In the afternoons we met in small groups, or hiked, or sat around the swimming pool, or slept.
Dinner was at six, followed by an evening session, which again started with music. The evening session continued until ten o’clock, and then we broke for the night.
Brugh played all sorts of music—classical music, electronic music, popular music. Brahms’s First Symphony, the soundtrack from Chariots of Fire, the William Tell Overture, the music from West Side Story. You never knew what you were going to hear.
Meals tended to be light and nearly vegetarian. Just when you got used to that, you’d get Southern fried chicken and corn on the cob, or roast beef and mashed potatoes.
Brugh generally lectured, but sometimes he broke up the group to do exercises. One day he passed out notebooks and boxes of colored pens, and said we should draw pictures or write—whichever we were least comfortable doing.
Then, in the middle of the conference, he announced we would have two days of fasting and silence.
Soon it became clear to me that the sense of routine was illusory. Brugh was carefully orchestrating events so that, in a gentle way, you were constantly kept off balance. You didn’t know what to expect. You didn’t know what was going to happen next.
Early on, he said he wanted us to walk in the desert until we found a rock or a tree or a plant that seemed to have a special relationship to us, and then to spend time with this “teacher,” and talk with the teacher, and learn what the teacher had to teach us.
I had read about such practices, using an inanimate object as a meditative or spiritual teacher. Why not? I was here, I might as well go along with the program.
So I set out to find my teacher.
Brugh had said the teacher would make itself known; all you had to do was be receptive. I looked at every rock and bush and Joshua tree in the desert, wondering if it was the teacher.
I had a romantic view of all this. I imagined myself sitting out in the desert for hours, communing with my teacher in splendid solitude. But nothing in the desert seemed compelling to me. Instead I had the persistent feeling that my teacher wasn’t out in the desert at all, but within the institute. I didn’t like this idea. I wanted a teacher far off. A teacher near these Frank Lloyd Wright buildings just didn’t suit me at all.
There was a small meditation room located in one corner of the institute grounds. In front of this meditation room was a rock garden of boulders and many kinds of cacti. And one particular cactus, right at the edge of the pavement, where the rock garden began, caught my eye whenever I passed by.
And kept catching my eye.
This made me unhappy. The rock garden was artificial, a contrived version of nature. It was bad enough that my teacher might be on the institute grounds—but to be in this artificial garden was adding insult to injury. Furthermore, I didn’t like this cactus. It was common, a sort of phallic cactus shape with lots of thorns. It was rather battered, with scars on one side. It was not in any way an attractive cactus.
But I kept staring at it. And mean
while the days were going by, other people were finding their teachers, and I still hadn’t settled on mine. I was feeling some pressure. I was feeling like a lazy student. I was falling behind.
One morning I was walking to the meditation room and I passed the cactus and I thought, Well, if this cactus is really my teacher, it’ll speak to me.
And the cactus said, “When are you going to stop running around and talk?” Irritably. Like a grouchy old man.
I didn’t hear it as an actual voice, I just felt it like an impression. The way you can see someone and get an impression of what is going on with him or her. But I was startled to get a sense of personality coming from a cactus.
It was early in the morning. Nobody else was around. So I said out loud, “Are you my teacher?”
No answer.
“Will you talk to me?” I said. I was really looking around now, making sure nobody could see me standing there talking to a cactus.
The cactus did not answer.
“Why won’t you talk to me?”
No answer.
It was just a cactus, sitting there. Of course it didn’t answer—it was a cactus. I thought, I am talking out loud to a cactus, which is bad enough. But, worse, I am felling annoyed that it won’t answer. This is definitely crazy behavior. They lock people up for this.
Yet at the same time I had the feeling that the cactus was sulking. Its feelings were hurt, or else it was just being hard to get along with.
“I’ll come back and talk to you later.”
No answer.
I came back and talked to the cactus later. Again there was no one around. I sat for an hour with the cactus, and talked to it. The cactus never said a single word in reply. I felt self-conscious and foolish. Of course, it would have been pretty alarming if the cactus had actually spoken. But from the standpoint of a person engaged in a spiritual exercise that involved projecting one’s thoughts onto an inanimate object, I wasn’t doing very well if I couldn’t imagine any responses from the inanimate object. I was a poor student of metaphysics, with poor concentration, poor ability to imagine. I berated myself. I suspected other people were having wonderful, informative chats with their rocks and shrubs.