Integratron

Somewhere off of Highway 62, a few miles from Joshua Tree, there lies a rather odd domed building painted white and sporting a number of metal rods jutting out from its exterior. The building is known as the Integratron and was the brainchild of a one-time aerospace engineer, George Van Tassel. He became heavily involved in UFOs, channeling and healing. Van Tassel moved his family out into the desert to a location known as Giant Rock. Here, he conducted meditations which lead to him contacting space beings who told him about the Integratron. According to Van Tassel (as told to him by space beings), the Integratron is a machine, a high-voltage electrostatic generator that would supply a broad range of frequencies to recharge the cell structure.

The Integratron is located at a vertex of Earth magnetic fields and, because of its design, acts as an amplifier for these magnetic waves.

Okay, so that is what they say. The dome is quite fascinating and is built out of wood, fitting together essentially like a Chinese puzzle and containing no nails or screws. It is supposed to have incredible acoustics and is really a beautiful piece of design.

Inside of this structure are two floors. On the second floor, people lie down on the wood floor, under the dome and they play 9 quartz singing bowls, live, one at a time, each one keyed to the energy centers or chakras of the body, where sound is nutrition for the nervous system. Your body is bathed in sound for 30 minutes. That is why I went there with my friend, to get a sound bath and engage in some healing or, at the very least, experience a little adventure.

I must admit that the experience is rather interesting and, with these tones being played and gently reverberating against the dome and through the floor, it is not too hard to begin falling into something akin to a hypnagogic state. I really began to sort of float and my thoughts drifted all over the place. Is it cosmic healing? Is it the magnetic fields? It probably has little to do with it but the place and atmosphere is quirky enough for me to recommend it to those who are looking for an interestingly odd experience.

The crowd visiting the Integratron was quite mixed. There were older men and women, new age, hippy types and even a bunch of guys from the local fire department. One woman had blue hair and I looked at my friend and said, in a serious tone, “I think that is what happens if you have sound baths too many times.”

It was a beautiful day to be out in the desert. The sky was magnificent, with big white clouds against a gorgeous deep blue. The clouds cast odd and ever changing patterns of shadow across the desert landscape.

Following this experience, my friend and I came back to L.A. and had a massage and then went for dinner at Yang Chows and a purchase of some almond cookies at the Phoenix Bakery.

If you want to look at a few of my digital shots of my little adventure, here is the link:

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v233/ericsanomie/Integratron/

A brief afternoon meeting

The other day, I had a conversation with someone who I think is crazy. It was my boss at work. I don’t mean to say that she is crazy as in being a resident of Bedlam but crazy in the sense of not seeing the forest for the trees, sacrificing her soul for the sake of minutae. I see it all the time. I see it so much that I often question whether it is they who are nuts or me. Of course, it may be me but I will write, for now, under the assumption that I still have one arm out of the straight jacket.

So often in life, I find myself listening to people who are so enamored by details and things that, to me, seem rather meaningless. It is not to say that detail is not important, especially if one happens to be a brain surgeon or the like but, trust me, I do not work in a field that involves life, death or scalpels.

I suppose I should back up a bit and try to explain this odd feeling that crept over me the other day. It was a sense, a quiet revelation, in which I came to realize that the most frightening of crazy people are not those who live in Frigidaire boxes along 5th Street. Rather, the worst are those who drive in new automobiles, live in attractive homes and inhabit the world at large.
You may well ask what prompted this judgment on my part in response to our conversation. Oddly, it was nothing terribly extreme. She was doing a regular review of one of my cases. She was sort of mixing positive and negative feedback in a form which left me entirely uncertain as to whether I had done anything right or wrong. Again, that really was not what disturbed me. I have had plenty of bosses who provide feedback poorly and have grown quite accustomed to it as a natural part of life in the business world. It was while she was speaking that I began to sort of step out of myself and look at her eyes which seemed lost and empty, save for her work. I felt strange and out of sorts. Part of me wanted to find another person and validate what I was feeling but I knew that was impossible. Whatever I was sensing was in no small part a product of my own odd experiences.

I realize that none of this may make sense. I had to write it down, though. It seemed somehow important, even if it is only important to me. I hope I never become one of those people. I don’t think that I can but I certainly hope that is the case.

A Melancholy Day

Perhaps it was the weather but I felt a bit sad and spacey today. I am still trying to recover from a bit of pneumonia, albeit a walking pneumonia. Still, I found my thoughts wandering.

I grew up in Orange County, close enough to the ocean that many days were overcast and grey. Today reminded me of those days, grey and cool. I remember, as a child, after school, wandering around the empty playground, lying in the grass and watching the seagulls. They would swoop dive and cry out as they picked at pieces of food from that day's lunch scraps.

I remember it being still and grey, in the background that strange sound of tetherball chains clinking against the metal pole like some sort of odd wind chime.I feel a certain sadness about those days. I also feel like those days were so long ago, as if they were lived in another lifetime by someone else.