Searching for the Fountain of Youth
Researching the locations of power places in the Caribbean was not as easy as it had been for Japan. Because the region had no ancient pilgrimage temples or sacred mountains, it was necessary to search for other clues. Initially at a loss for where to begin, I happened upon a fascinating book entitled The Atlas of Geomorphic Features, by Ronald Sneal. This volume lists hot springs, mineral springs, and geysers throughout the world. It includes an especially fine section for the Caribbean Islands, with notes regarding archaeological finds in the vicinity of certain hot springs. Next, I consulted a few books on the anthropology and history of the region and learned of Indian tribes, called the Arawaks and the Caribes, who had inhabited the Caribbean Islands prior to the arrival of the Europeans in the fifteenth century. While I was unable to find evidence of their having religious pilgrimage sites, I found, with both the Caribbean Indians and the neighboring Florida Indians, a frequently recurring legend about a mysterious fountain of youth. This legend, assumed by contemporary historians and geographers to be no more than a fairy tale, had captured the imagination of Ponce de Leon and a number of other early Spanish explorers.
The legend of the fabled waters also fascinated me, but I had a few questions. Was it possible for water to confer actual immortality, or was this legendary power simply a metaphor for a thermal or mineral spring that had amazing therapeutic powers? The lifespan of many ancient people was shorter than ours and their knowledge of the healing arts was limited. Certain diseases were incurable. Severe accidents resulting in broken bones or deep cuts could often be fatal. Perhaps a spring or a series of springs had been found that had the capacity to somehow cure diseases and heal wounds. If such a spring existed, and they do all over the world, it is easy to see how people might have described the spring as having a magical power to prevent death and prolong life. The story of this spring would pass from generation to generation and from tribe to tribe, resulting in the gradual development of a legend regarding a fountain of perpetual youth. This explanation of a myth as a metaphor for an existing healing spring seemed a reasonable possibility to me and one well worth investigating. That investigation took me to numerous springs through the Caribbean Islands, one of which was Bath Hot Springs in Jamaica.
While archaeological evidence suggests that the Arawak and Caribe Indians knew of these springs, the first historical evidence of their miraculous healing properties comes from 1609. In that year, a slave brutally beaten by a plantation owner escaped from confinement and fled into the jungle, coming upon the springs. He bathed his cut and battered body in the hot mineral waters and was completely healed within a few days. After some time he returned to the plantation looking well and strong. Everyone, slaves and owners alike, was amazed and believed a miracle had occurred. The slave told how he had bathed in the hot springs for several days and had been healed thereby. Hearing this, the plantation owner promised the slave he would receive no further punishment if he would reveal the location of the spring. The slave agreed. On seeing the steaming stream of water pouring from the rocks, the plantation owner decided to fence off the area and station the slave nearby as a watchman. In 1699 the local government cleared the area and built a small lodge. From that time forth, Bath Hot Springs became famous throughout the entire Caribbean. Incidentally, Bath is the only thermal spring in Jamaica, and it is named after the only thermal spring in England, the Bath Springs in Avon.
Upon my arrival at Bath in Jamaica I checked into the old colonial hotel and then headed off to the springs. Hot water from the springs flows into pools in the hotel, but I felt more attracted to the undeveloped springs a few hundred yards away in the thick jungle. The sun was setting. A few Jamaican children were playing and bathing in the hot water. At this site the water gushes out of a rock cliff, and you may stand beneath the stream to let the scalding water beat down upon your head and back. It is very soothing. When the heat begins to make you a bit dizzy you merely step a few feet away and slip into the cold mountain stream flowing from the foothills of nearby Blue Mountain.
Soon the children departed, running deftly along dark trails to their huts in the jungle. Now I had the place all to myself. Over the next few hours, as I moved back and forth between the hot and cold waters, I began to notice two distinct feelings in my body. The first was a feeling of great physical vitality that resulted from the invigorating effect of alternating the hot and cold waters. There was nothing mysterious about this feeling. I had experienced it many times before going back and forth between a hot sauna and rolling naked in the snow. The second feeling was unfamiliar and is difficult to describe. It felt as though a subtle electric current was pulsating throughout my body. I could sense it everywhere, in my chest, limbs, and head simultaneously. After some time I became conscious that this energy, while present all over my body, seemed also to be moving about. Concentrating my attention on this moving aspect of the energy, I slowly became aware of a system of energy pathways distributed throughout my body. At the onset of this awareness I did not recognize what I was perceiving. Then it dawned on me that I was physically and psychically experiencing the reality of the acupuncture meridians and the chakra system.
This was a most extraordinary experience. Since my boyhood years in India, when I had first come upon books on the healing systems of Indian Ayurvedic medicine and Chinese acupuncture, I had been aware of the theoretical possibility of these energetic pathways flowing through the body. However, I had never actually perceived them in my own body. The energetic pathways seemed a plausible reality, especially since they were the basis of the world's two oldest healing systems, yet I had always lacked personal proof that they indeed existed. Now I had that proof.
As I continued to focus my attention on these pathways I perceived two different energies flowing along them. One was the energy of my own body; the other was an energy coming into my body from the Earth. Focusing my attention completely upon the inflow and movement of the terrestrial energy, I began to feel a wave of awareness pass through my mind. From this awareness wave, I recognized that one way in which the power places exercise their therapeutic effects upon human beings is through their capacity to stimulate, strengthen, and balance the flow of our bodies' own internal energies.
To better understand this idea, consider the Eastern medical practices of Chinese acupuncture and Indian Ayurveda. According to these ancient healing systems, various subtle energies flow throughout the body along channels known as acupuncture meridians and the chakra system. When the flow of these internal energies is a free and unobstructed, health manifests on physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional levels. However, when there are blocks in the internal energy flow, physical illness, psychological disorders, emotional problems, and spiritual anxiety may appear. A number of factors or combination of factors including physical accidents, poor diet, and mental stress may contribute to the development of internal energy blocks. Not all symptoms of ill health result from such identifiable causes. Sometimes the energy flow through all or part of the human organism is simply sluggish or imbalanced; because of this various symptoms of disease will occur. To alleviate the symptoms of illness, in either case, the practitioner of acupuncture or Ayurveda deals not so much with the symptoms themselves but with the fundamental energy flow of the body. By stimulating the energy flow, energy blocks will be released. The entire organism will then come into a balanced and healthy state. In this regard Eastern therapeutic techniques do not actually make a patient healthy; rather they alleviate stresses that have prevented the natural manifestation of health.
The energies present at the power places affect human beings in a way similar to these ancient practices. The charged energy field in the general area of a power place has an invigorating effect upon the energy field of a human being and promotes a balanced, vital, and unobstructed flow of the body's own subtle energies. As with the practice of acupuncture, the power places do not actually produce health but assist the body in healing itself by stimulating the release of energy blocks and strengthening the internal energy flow.
The power places exercise their therapeutic influences in another equally fascinating way: through their capacity to induce remarkable and lasting sensations of ecstasy in the human psyche. On numerous occasions, at sacred sites all over the world, I have experienced power-place energies entering my body and filling my entire being with palpable sensations of joy and well being. These sensations would increase in intensity with the passage of hours spent at a site. They would often continue for many days after I had departed and begun traveling to my next destination. Sometimes the experience of delight was so exhilarating, so sensuously intoxicating, that I was unable to do anything but simply lie down and surrender to the loving embrace of the Earth.
During many years of having such experiences I noticed a definite increase in my emotional capacity to receive, enjoy, and benefit from deep happiness. The implications of this, in regard to both the fountain of youth legend and the current theory of psychosomatic illness, are truly remarkable. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a psychosomatic illness as one that is caused or aggravated by mental stress. From this it follows that a lessening or cessation of mental stress might mitigate or even entirely alleviate an illness. Disease could thus be explained as dis-ease, a lack of ease. And what of ecstasy? Could not the feeling of overwhelming joy be the ease that is the antidote to disease? Could not the sublime joy I had experienced at certain power places relieve one of mental stress and promote radiant health? Perhaps, in some mysterious way, an energy of happiness is found at certain power places, and this energy accounts for the miraculous healings that have given rise to the fountain of youth legends.
