Guide speaking through a microphone; the meditation may be accompanied by New Age music. Sensual meditation begins with a relaxation exercise known as harmonisation avec l'infini ("harmonization with the infinite"). One stage of this process is "oxygenation", which entails deep breathing. Practitioners are taught to relax and then envision themselves expanding their frame of reference until the self becomes only a tiny speck within the universe. They are then tasked with visualising the bones and organs of the body, and ultimately the atoms within the body itself. The guided meditation then encourages the meditators to imagine themselves being on the Elohim's planet and communicating telepathically with these aliens. Palmer found that Raëlians varyingly described a sense of physical well-being, psychic abilities, or sexual arousal during these meditations and interpreted these as evidence that they were in telepathic contact with the Elohim. The goal of sensual meditation is to achieve a "cosmic orgasm", which is characterised as the ultimate experience a person can have. Palmer quoted one senior Raëlian as describing the "cosmic orgasm" as "the sensual experience of the unity between the self and the universe". Seminars The Raëlian Church holds week-long summer seminars called "Stages of Awakening." These involve daily lectures by Raël, sensual meditation sessions, periods of fasting and feasting, testimonials, and various alternative therapies. Activities that have attracted press attention have include dressing in the clothes of the opposite gender as part of an exercise to play with the fluidity of gender expression, and observing one's own genitals and masturbating. Raëlians use these seminars as an opportunity to form friendships or sexual relationships. Attendees wear white togas with name tags; they have also used colored bracelets to indicate whether they wanted to be alone, be in a couple, or simply meet people. In 1991, a French journalist attended a seminar and taped couples having sexual intercourse in tents, something then much-publicised. Following these seminars, a second seminar, this time restricted to members of the Structure, takes place. History Origins Claude Vorilhon was born in Ambert, France on 30 September 1946. He was the illegitimate son of a 15-year-old mother; his father had been a Sephardi Jew then in hiding from the Nazi authorities. Vorilhon later recounted being raised as an atheist by his grandmother and aunt, although for a time attended a Roman Catholic boarding school. As a teenager, Vorilhon hitch-hiked to Paris where he pursued a