Awake - Conscious Pilgrimage – An Evolving Soul’s Journey (Partial Draft)

AWAKE - CONSCIOUS PILGRIMAGE

By A Pilgrim

Copyright © Any Pilgrim 2019 This publication may be shared freely. ISBN: 9781093116403 (paperback)

DEDICATION

“From the One Source Through Many” To those many who have blessed me with their lives and teachings.

CONTENTS

Dedication Dedication Contents Acknowledgements Introduction

iii v ix xi

1. 1950 ─ 1959 - Beginnings in Canada & Minnesota Memories of ‘home’ in another dimension

1 1

Life in this world as awareness Realizing I am in the timeless Increased awareness of threshold consciousness

2 6 8

2. 1959 ─ 1968 – In Venezuela and Montreal

10

3. 1968 ─ 1971 – Mexico City and Vancouver – Mysterious Realms Beckon Jose Silva – tuning in to brainwave frequencies Colin Wilson – Introduction to Gurdjieff

14 14 16

4. 1971 ─ 1974 – Brantford and Mexico City – Mindful of Thoughts 1972-3 – Eschatology – “Thinking Makes It So”

18 19

5. 1974 ─ 1980 – London, Mexico City and Toronto – I Remember Myself 1974 – Gurdjieff Group and ‘The Work’ ‘Remember Yourself’

22 24 25

Using Attention

26

Essence Vs Personality Identifying, Considering and Justifying

27 27

Our Different Centres

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A, B and C Influence Influences s What is Meaningful More Eschatology Mexico City Gurdjieff Group – Eva Sulzer, Christopher Fremantle, Edgardo Vazquez Hugh Harleston, Jr. 1978 – A Course in Miracles (ACIM) – the world as our dream 6. 1980 ─ 1987 – Ruislip - Writing and Management Consulting 1980 – Sogyal Rinpoche – chanting and a taste of Dzogchen

28 29 30 31 33 37 39 39

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7. 1987 ─ 2000 – Clapham, Hawaii, Japan - The Inner Journey Intensifies 1987 – Shaun de Warren – Growing awareness and publishing 1988 – Swami Shyam – A taste of bliss Barry Long – I am Vs. me 1989 – Rebirthing – the body has a mind of its own Ram Dass – the unfolding karmic predicament 1990 – Chuck Spezzano – A map for personal evolution 1991 – Dr Robert-Mich Robert-Michael ael Kaplan – Transforming our doors of perception Douglas Harding – Sudden Awakening 1992 – Arkaji – Conscious Awareness 1993 – Amma (Mata Amritanandama Amritanandamayi) yi) – Blessed by Love Deepak Chopra – “the body is in the mind” Volunteering and Trinity Hospice – opening my heart Anthony Robbins Robbins – Unleashin Unleashing g the Power Power Within 1994 – Christine Longaker – A Tibetan Buddhist approach to dying Arjuna Ardagh – ‘Circle ‘Circle of Being’ Being’ John Shodo Flatt – lessons from a Zen patriarch 1995 – Robert Aitken Roshi – the world as our ‘hologram’

44 44 47 49 54 54 58 62 66 71 75 76 79 81 83 86 89 95

cc 98

1997 – Ajahn Sumedho – the mind Vs. the Way

101

Others 1998 1999

102 104 105

8. 2000 ─ 2009 – Rickmansworth, Dover and Japan – Solo Explorations 2000 - 2006

106 106

2007 Oneness Blessing 2008

107 110 112

Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Awareness Awarene ss Watching Watching Awaren Awareness ess – Michael Michael Langford Langford 2009 – Rupert Spira

112 113 114

2010

117

Robert Monroe and the Binaural Beat

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9. 2010 – 2013 – Japan and Dover - Glimpse of the Primordi Primordial al

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2010 January 16 2011 2012

120 122 123

June, 2012 – Notes re consciousness-bei consciousness-being-awakening ng-awakening - Dhammajiva talks June 9 – Self as Vasanas (latent tendencies) July – Draft map of self and mind

124 126 127

2013

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Awake - Conscious Pilgrimage

10. 2013 ─ Anadi – The Puzzle Comes Together Search for a true advance teaching with practical advice

Anadi Map Diagrams

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130 130

134

Involvement in publication and editorial work for the teaching

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Personal evolution both confirmed and advanced through working with the teaching

137

Teaching overview and some key pointers Sleep Transition

138 140

Levels of External Attention 10/2/2015 - View from Awareness Notes 2015 – Traditional Chinese Medicine, Tai Chi and the Tan T’ien 31/3/2015 - My Body Turns 65 2016 - First meeting with Anadi -16 August Meeting Anadi

141 142 143 144 144 145

Practice issues

146

Background, teachers and teachings Grace/Transmission, Books and end of meeting

148 149

Notes on the retreat Summer 2016 diagram

150 152

26/8/16 19:30 – Myself as the Universal I Am

153

Observer levels diagram (prepared 20 Aug. 2016)

157

Essential Channel and Observer Levels (Prepared 14 Oct. 2016)

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11. Summary of meeting with Anadi 16 May 2017 – Karuna Center, near Monchique, Algarve, Portugal Complete Map of Awakening: Diagram Anaditeaching website - 2019 (Jan.) The Five Centres of Consciousness Diagram (Anaditeaching website, 2018 Nov.) Inner Knower – Internal Perspective – (Anaditeachin (Anaditeaching g website, Nov Nov.. 2018)

159 165 166 167

12. 2017 – fwd

168

2017 2018

168 168

Ramaji

169

13. Reflections

171

APPENDICES

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Appendix 1 - Primordial Experience Experience - later comments comments and excerpts excerpts from from others

175

Traveling in our Consciousness

178

Mystical Level Musings on memory levels

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Appendix 2 - PoV’s Triang Triangle le Journey Model and and Buddhism’s Buddhism’s Five Skandhas Skandhas and Wheel Wheel of Life Psychology of Vision’s Triangle Journey Model Buddhism’s 5 Skandhas Buddhism’s 6 Realms Beyond the Wheel and the Triangle

Appendix 3 – A Light Light on the the sayings sayings of Jesus? Jesus? ‘Created by the Divine’

184 185 186 187 190

191 191

The Living Light Heaven The Lessons

192 192 193

Select Bibliography

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to virtually all of the teachers and friends who are named and/or alluded to here. It is to a

large degree thanks to the mirror they provided that this journey has been possible. In some cases, short passages from the writings some of them have been included. As the intention of this effort is to help others in their own journeying, such excerpts should result in those sufficiently interested exploring these teachers and their writings further.

Many of the photos and other illustrations used were my own, though I have taken the liberty of copying a few others found online. Like those, this story will also be freely available to any online, so there is no material motive in the use of either borrowed excerpts or such photos and other illustrations. The

‘Awake’ art at the top of the front cover was drawn by my first wife, S. D., before our marriage as part of her Montessori studies in Mexico – with eyes closed and then coloured. Aside from names of of teachers teachers and authors whose profiles profiles are publicly available available,, most other names names and identities, including my own, have been kept anonymous.

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INTRODUCTION

This is both an outer and inner story.

The outer story, in addition to being historical facts, is the kind personality usually likes to tell – what my teacher Shaun referred to as ‘puffery’. With personality now largely having removed itself into what might at best be described as a more backseat and transparent position, the outer story’s value here is more that of a fictional-type read. It does, however, serve a purpose as something of a skeletal spacetime structure and continuum on which to hang the gradual unfoldment of the inner journey and story. The inner story, which is about a continuing individual and personal awakening, contains the potential real value this manuscript may have. Some of the explorations, pitfalls and discoveries may provide the odd clue or pointer to help another on his or her journey. While this is a narrative of seeking, it is also one about finding and of the deepening of that. In addition to it being a potential help to others, there seems a possibility that if I do not complete my human journey this time around, I may well come across these jottings in the the next time and find it a great help in retracing retracing some of the steps taken so far (although (although there is no expectation of remembering a previous life’s personality and history, there will be a resonance with what the soul is ready to hear from its past evolution).

My awareness of, and fascination with, conscious states was with me as a young child, but then later, although still present, took a secondary position to outer life during boyhood and early to mid-teenage years. However, from about my later teens, it re-emerged, along with a keen desire to ‘awaken’, although without any clarity as to what this meant.

Some of my key findings seem to have taken me back to states I knew (but then forgot) as an infant. Over the years, I have tried to share some of these with others. Despite many of these others having been on spiritual paths, and often for decades, there seems to have been on their parts surprisingly little real comprehension of – or appreciation for – what I was trying to share. What to me has been incredibly precious and of tremendous importance seemed either incomprehensible or mistakenly considered as

something to do with the mind or intellect to others. Despite this, perhaps there will be some who resonate with parts of the journey described here. For many years, I have felt I have been living between two worlds – inner and outer ones. The outer one has been made up of the mind and of the psychological states one has oneself, including how one relates to the psychologies of others and to the whole of the external world. It has largely been taken up

with looking after worldly responsibilities, including looking after the physical body (more consciously latterly than formerly). A good part of this outer world management has also been involved in clearing and

healing psychological and emotional issues (appreciating J. Krishnamurti’s apt description of a person

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as ‘a psychological disturbance in space’ and Ram Dass’s reference to himself as ‘an unfolding karmic predicament’ .) .)

The inner world represented a ‘home’ which I had somehow become separated from. Not being home and not understanding what it really was and how to return to it was a source of great suffering and a feeling of being an out of place alien in the outer world. Almost all the spiritual teachings and teachers

I’ve been drawn to have invariably pointed my attention inwards. Some of these pointings have been to objective aspects of the inner world, such as our psychological structures, thoughts, feelings and perceptions. Other, deeper, ones have been to subjectivity itself and its subtle, even etheric, energies, finding a new and truer identity aligned with the one who is perceiving, conscious, being and feeling at the level of the spiritual heart.

While the outer journey has been one which can be shared to varying degrees with different people, it has been almost impossible to share the inner one with even the those I can share deepest with as respects the outer one. When I have made attempts to share about this inner realm, I might as well have been speaking a language foreign to my listener.

It is so true that we each journey alone on the inner path. I have only found inklings of the same language in very occasional and exceptional sharings . . . and those mostly from ones who are no longer living. Note about anonymity and the photos

As the whole point point of this this message message is about about a self which which is before before and beyond a personality personality,, it would would be counterproductive to attach a name and personality to it.

Photos of some of the teachers who have influenced or touched me are included, together with some photos of myself. The ones of myself are not intended to be about me as an ego identifying with a particular physical form, but to be viewed more as an unchanging awareness looking out and which, on this journey,, is associated journey associated with a mind and and body while while becoming becoming more conscious conscious of of itself. Obviously, those who know me as a personality or recognize ‘me’ in the photos will know who I am as a mind-body with a name . . . but that is not relevant to the message here.

1 1950 ─ 1959 1959 - BEGINNINGS IN CANADA & MINNESOTA The physical body is like a spacesuit we put on when we are born. We identify with our own spacesuit, or physical body, so completely that we actually believe that we are separate from each other and from the rest of the Universe. Paraphrased from Barry Long

MY PHYSICAL VEHICLE WAS CONCEIVED in the summer of 1949, when my parents and 1-year old older brother

were living in Calgary, Alberta. Dad was a Head Miller trainee with a major North American flour milling company.

Very soon after this event, in September that year, my family moved to Port Colborne, Ontario, on Lake Erie, where my father continued his Head Miller training at the mill the company had there. They rented the top floor of a home close to the lakeshore. Port Colborne did not have a hospital then so, at the end of March 1950, I was born at the one in nearby Welland, a town on the canal of the same name. Both Port Colborne and Welland are very close to the spectacular Niagara Falls, a place the family visited at times when we lived hear enough. “When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.” Shakespeare, King Lear , Act 4, Scene 6   

MEMORIES OF ‘HOME’ IN ANOTHER DIMENSION Experiences and memories are of different categories and levels. Our waking experiences, the ones we are most used to, are those that imprint themselves on what we think of as our conscious mind. Another level of experience and memory are those of dreams, in which the mind inwardly objectifies, or projects out, stories with differing casts of characters, giving rise to a kaleidoscope of emotions. This level of memory is a deeper one than that of what we call our conscious mind, much more fleeting, and 1

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usually forgotten by the time we have had breakfast. I recall having nightmares as an infant which were

incredibly vivid and terrifying at the time, but then evaporated away in daytime’s waking world. It has later occurred to me that some of what seemed like ‘nightmares’ could have been entering what might be termed ‘source dimensions’ which are completely alien from the perspective of this world and would have seemed shocking and threatening to my infant personality.

Even deeper than the dreaming realm were experiences outside of the mind which were literally not of this world, but of ‘returning’ to a completely different reality realit y and dimension, so different that words cannot pretend to do it justice. It was to a reality of such difference and great wonder that the word ‘primordial’ carries the sense of it, an altered dimension of enormous power which seems to underlie and precede the manifested reality of our waking world. The experiences of this deeper reality were frequent ones as an infant, but then decreased in frequency, perhaps as the power of – and identification with – the mind/ personality complex increased. When the experiences recur, there is a sense of great familiarity about them, a familiarity dating back to the earliest infancy – if not before – and perhaps even one of going home. However, for these to emerge however briefly in our waking consciousness, our usual memory fails us, even more than it does for our nightly dreams. To remember them requires something of a conscious interface between a state of the deepest sleep, when we leave our mind behind, and the awareness of our waking mind returning. This interface is such a brief one, and the other-worldly experience so astonishingly other-dimensional, that our normal mind would usually pay it no attention, or perhaps consider it some brief aberration best forgotten, as it almost instantly is. If it is such a rare occurrence that the world we enter in deep dreamless sleep is ever recalled by our waking memory, it is no wonder that past lives, if they the y are true, are not remembered remem bered either. (“ The shades of the dead were required to drink the waters of the Lethe in order to forget their earthly life. In the Aeneid , Virgil writes that it is only when the dead have had their memories erased by the Lethe that they may be reincarnated reincarnated.” .” – – Wikipedia)

As a baby and and very young young child, these these experiences experiences of of a primordial primordial realm at times times of going to sleep sleep and letting go of the conscious mind did not seem unusual and I would have imagined that, just like waking reality, they were something everyone else also experienced. Even now, my sense is that they could well be more commonly experienced than one would imagine, but the barrier to them being shared and spoken of more is that it is extremely rare that they interface with wit h the conscious mind and, even if they do, the memory of them is almost instantly lost. There is also the difficulty that, where there may be the memory of these experiences, they are so other-dimensional that words are inadequate to describe them.   

LIFE IN THIS WORLD AS AWARENE AWARENESS SS Internal perceptual memories – those detached from the mind, and its thoughts and emotions - are different than the mind’s external ones, and some of my own of the former kind go right back to times in a baby carriage – ones of being just clear awareness looking out. In this looking, there was no


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identification with being a personality with a name, or even as a mind of a person with a head. It was just awareness awareness with all of the perceptua perceptuall sensations sensations alive. This clear state state was later entirely entirely forgotten forgotten ─ sacrificed at the altar of the mind’s attachment to external attention ─ until my rediscovery of Douglas Harding’s headlessness 40 years later.

Aged 3 months and 7 months with my older brother   

My mother has told me that, unlike most babies, I did not wake with a smile or happy look, and she has said this made her feel there must be something in reincarnation which wou ld explain my being this way.

She has told me that, as many babies do, I would drop some of my food on the floor when eating in my high chair. However, she noticed that, after I was let down, I would pick this food up after to keep for eating later, so my dropping of it had been intentional and with a plan. I have sometimes wondered if this may have been a sign of having suffered from hunger in a previous life.   

Later in 1950, before my first birthday, the family moved again to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where Dad became Assistant Head Miller at the company’s local mill. My younger brother was born there in the summer of 1951.

According to to mother, mother, as a very very young child, I baulked baulked at being managed managed by by another, another, and and said that that each person is an individual having their own separate rights and choices respecting their lives.

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In July of 1952 we moved to New Prague, Minnesota, USA, where Dad had his first stint as Head Miller. An early external memory is of having my US visa photo taken when I was 2 and wearing my then favourite shirt depicting animated Disney characters in cowboy scenes.

US Visa photo June 1952

A year later, later, in May 1953, we relocated to Montreal Montreal where Dad Dad continued continued in the same post for the company’s mill there. During this time, we lived at 3 different addresses in Montreal: fir stly, in Côte-Saint-Luc, Côte-Saint-Lu c, then in nearby Notre-Dame-De-Grâce and, finally, further out in the suburb of Dorval, where we stayed until I was nearly 7.

The many moves we made had its challenges, especially especial ly for very young children. children . There was the sudden loss of friends and familiar places, including one’s home and the special personal space one had there. Being a stranger at a new school, before having any new friends, was a time of being assessed ─ and not always favourably ─ by the other children. As a very young young child there was was an importance importance in saying saying a feeling goodbye goodbye to places places and objects, objects, as if they, too, were friends and had feelings. When my father was upgrading to a new car when I was about 5, I made a visit on my own to the old car in the drive and climbed into the back seat, where my brothers and I had spent many hours on journeys in it, to thank it and tell it good-bye. I would occasionally sleepwalk as a child. This continued later into adult years before it stopped. Where I went and what I did in sleepwalking seemed sometimes to be triggered by subconscious thoughts and

impulses I had before going to sleep. At other times, the sleepwalking seems to have occurred because of a full bladder and looking for the bathroom. The moves did not help in this, as my still asleep mind would have imprinted in memory of the layout of the t he last home we lived in, and the sleepwalking would take me to the position of the bathroom in the old home, sometimes with unfortunate consequences.   


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We would visit, and be visited by, relatives. My father’s father, who lived with his only other child, my father’s sister, had been widowed when he was 50, so I did not remember my paternal grandmother – though I heard many stories of what a wonderful and loving woman she had been. This paternal grandfather was an important railway executive based in Winnipeg during some of my early childhood, which was some distance from us, and it was always special seeing him and my aunt. Our family spent Christmas 1957 at his home in Winnipeg.

It was also a great treat to visit the farm this grandfather’s brother and wife had on a lake in Prince Edward County, Ontario, where my father had spent many of his boyhood summers. This is where I first rode a horse and rode on a tractor and hay wagon. My 8 th birthday was spent at the sap house in the farm’s maple sugar bush. The family on this paternal side mostly originated from Devon, England, but also partly from Northern Ireland.

We would regularly visit my maternal grandparents at their home in Sarnia, Ontario. With our constant moves, their home ─ like my paternal great uncle’s farm ─ seemed to provide a constant and stable base we could always return to. My brothers and I (and later our younger sister, too) greatly enjoyed visiting them and seeing our maternal cousins. I developed a great love for these grandparents, especially for my grandmother, who took care to treat each of her grandchildren (eventually 18 in all) with equal love, respect and understanding. This grandfather worked for the national Canadian railway company and had the exciting job of driving the trains. The earlier family backgrounds of these maternal grandparents were a mix of Scottish, French and German. While memory of external events and of thoughts and emotions seems continuous when one is a child

(much as it does when one is an adult), a great deal of it, especially the detail, is forgotten in time. This period of living in Montreal stands out as the one with my earliest external memories of reasonable clarity. Some scenes from visits to relatives and an early birthday party, perhaps beginning at about age 2, are still with me, as well as that of my much anticipated first day of school in Dorval and early impressions of mixing with other children at school. A few few of these early memories seem more more meaningful than the usual everyday ones. One of these must have occurred sometime between the ages of 2 and 3. We were visiting my paternal great uncle at his farm and I was listening to my father and his uncle talking. I had heard them doing

this on the previous visit, too, but at that time had not reached the stage of knowing they were communicating in a language. To me they were just taking turns making noises to each other (much like I probably did as a baby, too). However, by this visit I finally had grasped the basics of language, and was struck by the fact that they were actually a ctually using words to say things of some meaning to each other

and I realized this is what they had been doing on our previous visit, too (rather than just taking turns to make noises).

Looking back, as a mature adult, I seem to have come full circle, as it is true that most of the words people say to each other really r eally do not mean as much as the emotions and energy the expression of the

words carry. Most conversations are not too different than ducks quacking at each other. More important

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than understanding the words is the pure act of listening and allowing the other to release the energy and feeling which lie under the words.

Another memory relates to times being in a field near our home. Where we lived in Dorval was a new development and there was still a lot of undeveloped land nearby. My brothers and our friends would play together in these fields, which were mostly flat open areas in which tall grasses and other weeds grew. I do not remember many trees. This one time I was alone there. I seem to recall being there to

bury or hide a secret ‘treasure’ I had, which was probably a few bits of broken costume jewellery I had found. There was something instinctive in this behaviour, which seems almost like it may have come from another lifetime.

However, the more meaningful part of this memory is of feeling utterly alone there on this flat land and becoming simultaneously aware of both myself and the immensity of the sky. There was an awesomeness about this perspective and relationship, which was entirely foreign to normal everyday life. It was surprising, and simultaneously frightening and terribly important. It did not seem to be something I could share, as I did not feel it of being something others were aware of or gave any importance impor tance to. And, if they were, they did not talk about it either.   

REALIZING I AM IN THE TIMELESS

Aged 4 with my uncle at the farm,


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A third memory memory,, which which was more of a surprising surprising insight, insight, was seeing seeing a photograph photograph which had been been taken taken of myself and my uncle at his farm when I was 4. This photo had been put into my photo album. At that

age it was terribly important to be older. Children view adults, and even older children, as being more special and deserving of more privileges, independence and respect. Several months after this photo of myself and my uncle had been taken, I looked at it again and remembered myself posing for the camera and the photo being taken when I was the younger 4-year old. I was astonished to realize that the ‘me’ looking at the photo now was the same ‘me’ that had looked out at the person with the camera taking the photo. This was perhaps the first time I became conscious of being – and looking from – an awareness before the mind. Despite being physically older, and seemingly different and ‘more important’ when seeing this photo later, the aware ‘me’ inside had not aged or changed at all!   

Aged 5, 1st day of school, Dorval

I found learning the alphabet difficult. It did not seem natural to associate particular sounds with shapes. (The memory came back to me more than 40 years later when attempting the same with the Japanese

Kana syllable alphabets.) Once Onc e I did master it, I discovered the amazing worlds hidden between the covers of books. This must have been in 1 st grade.

Before I could read, I was constantly sent to the ‘Turtle Desk’ at the back of the classroom, as punishment for being slow or talking in class. Once I found out I could read to my heart’s content if I finished my lessons quickly, I stopped dragging my heels, and spent all my spare time with my head in books.

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With reading and the fascinating world books presented, I had my first desire to be a writer and become part of making that magic.

Also, having more contact contact with other other children at school, there there began a deep fascination fascination in and respect respect for the variety of their characters. Each child was a new fascinating ‘package’ of their own individuality combined with their collective psychology, based on their particular family and cultural background. There was also a beginning appreciation for my own character and psychology, including the mix of nationalities (Canadian and American, but also earlier ones of English, Scottish, Northern Irish, French and German) in my own family background. It was while in Montreal that my brothers and I, encouraged by our parents, began collecting stamps of the world. This introduced us to the extraordinarily diverse panorama of countries and peoples all

over the whole of the inhabited globe. While the differences between cultures, costumes, customs and languages were striking, it was clear to me that there were also aspects people everywhere had in common.

In early 1957 we moved again, now back to Port Colborne, where wher e Dad continued as Head Miller, but now at one of the mills where he had previously trained. The family bought a new house w ith a large garden

plot. Quite a bit of work, mostly on my father’s part, went into preparing the garden, which had just been levelled soil ending in a ditch at the back.   

INCREASED AWARENESS OF THRESHOLD CONSCIOUSNESS It was while we were in Port Colborne that my younger brother and I had our tonsils taken out. The operation took place in a hospital and we were given general anaesthesia first. While this might normally be seen as just another event of little note, I was quite profoundly struck by the process of losing consciousness through being anaesthetized. I seemed to enter a different world or dimension in which I, or my awareness, was struggling to stay in control. The image I had then was of myself on a sphere which was turning or spinning. The sphere had large holes in its surface, and I was running on the sphere and had to keep jumping over the holes when any approached me. Eventually, Eventual ly, as the anaesthesia increased its hold, I was unable to continue and fell into one of the holes and lost consciousness. I see this now as being taken to the very doorway between this world and the unmanifested, staying conscious to a farther and deeper degree than normally in falling asleep (when we also let go of the mind

and consciousness and – in deep sleep – enter the unmanifested), but then becoming unconscious for the operation.

I’ve since learned the terms ‘threshold ‘thr eshold consciousness’ and ‘hypnogogia’ are used to describe the changing state of moving from wakefulness to sleep or the reverse. It would also apply to my experience with the anaesthesia and is additionally used with reference to states encountered at times in meditation.


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This inner world with its other dimensions d imensions has been something which was familiar to me as an infant and

has recurred with varying, but mostly decreasing, frequency since. Despite being other dimensional, the states seemed as real, if not more so, than what we call our waking life. These experiences made it quite clear that our normal everyday waking consciousness may only be part, and perhaps just the surface, of reality, and very probably not even the real one. It seems extraordinary that people do not talk to each other of their experiences as they transition in

and/or out of consciousness, especially as it is something we do on a daily basis. When one does come across rare references to it, there is more of it being a hallucination or as if it is a problem, such as what is called ‘sleep paralysis’, something to be ‘fixed’. I did come across references to the transition state in Edgar Allen Poe’s and H. P. Lovecraft’s writings, and I mentioned it in an unpublished play written in my late teens: “When one is falling asleep, one’s mind is the scene of the most grotesque battle between the conscious and the unconscious. It is in this hypnagogic state that the most fantastic dramas play upon the human psyche.” – – Scene Two, Contemporary Alienation into the Shadow .   

Very early in 1958 Dad was promoted to Plant Superintendent at the company’s mill in Buffalo, New York, just across the border from Ontario. Although we continued to live in Port Colborne, while Dad commuted by car, a move to Buffalo was planned and my parents started house hunting there. However, early in 1959, my father was offered a transfer to the post of Plant Manager of the company’s still to be built flour mill in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Dad went down to Thunderbird School in Arizona for six weeks to learn Spanish. He returned home briefly and then went on ahead. The rest of the family, after a short stay with wi th maternal grandparents, grand parents, made the exciting excit ing trip to Venezuela, flying via Toronto Toronto and New York.

2 1959 ─ 1968 1968 – IN VENEZUELA AND MONTREAL WE ARRIVED AT VENEZUELA’S M AIQUETIA airport just north of the capital Caracas in the summer of 1959. Our

shipped goods, including the car, had already arrived and we drove across the country from Caracas to Maracaibo with stops in Valencia and Barquisimeto. The difference in culture, climate, food and language impressed us deeply.

In Maracaibo we stayed for a while at what was probably the best hotel in the area for some time while my mother looked for a home. The temperatures outside, average daily highs of 35 and nightly lows of 26 C (79 – 95 F), were too hot to be out in for long. My father attended at the mill and advised in its construction and equipment. Mother found a suitable home and we boys were enrolled in a British school, as our parents felt it would have higher standards than the local American one. It was called St. George’s and run from a large and rather dilapidated house by an eccentric widow from British Guiana with some help from her children. As had occurred to me with my first school days, there was a fascination at the different characters in my classmates, many of whom were either British, Venezuelan or from other South American countries ─ all of whom were very different than previous classmates in Canada. I had my fir st taste of British children’s books, from the Secret Seven series, and Britain seemed a very different and exotic place.

This time in Maracaibo is recalled as being a time when our family was especially close. We were in a very different environment and culture and were definitely strangers, without even having the local language. Despite this we children did make friends with local neighbourhood boys. Some vivid memories

include the fish and shaved ice vendors coming with their products on donkeys. Guajiro Indians in their pom-pom sandals would come to the door begging. We had a maid and a Spanish tutor came to the house to help my brothers and I learn the language. My father’s father came to visit, bringing with him his new second wife. This was the first time most of us had met her. We only stayed 9 months in Maracaibo before Dad was promoted to General Production Manager for the whole of the company’s Venezuelan subsidiary, subsidiary, based at their mill at Puerto Cabello, a port on the north coast in about the centre of the country. Rather than live in Puerto Cabello, we found a home in the more elevated and cooler city of Valencia, about an hour’s drive south, which had an international American school and an all-denomination Union Church for English speaking Pr otestant Christians. 10


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We boys were enrolled in the American school. The teachers and a good number of the students were

American, though there were also a fair representa representation tion of students from different European countries and some from other South American ones. It was a wonderful exposure to a variety of cultures. In total, there were about 200 students covering all grades from kindergarten to the last year of high school, so the classes for each year were not very large and everybody knew everybody else.

Waiting for the school bus with my brothers

A major highlight of the years spent in Valencia Valencia were our annual holidays during which we would visit different exotic places, as well as return to see family in Canada. These travels included very memorable visits to Mexico, Trinidad, Barbados, California, Florida and Vancouver. We rented a home in what had been an orange grove, and so had orange and other citrus trees in our garden. Both sets of grandparents visited visit ed us in Valencia. Valencia. We joined the local golf course, which was very hilly and on which we boys learned to play with a set of children’s clubs our mother’s parents gave us. Our younger sister was born bor n a little over a year after our arrival arr ival in Valencia and it was fascinating to have a first inkling of how an infant begins to develop in terms of personality and language, including referring to oneself in the third person.

We attended the local Union Church which, despite being a blend of Protestant Christian worshippers, seemed to have a prominence of Baptists from the American south. I recall being drawn to the Church

and religion for part of this time. This must certainly have been emotional in origin, as it would have made no sense on a rational basis.

After two years there, my older brother chose to attend a private boarding school in Ontario, which he continued at for the next two years.

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The time in Venezuela is probably when it became apparent that, in addition to my classmates (and adults) having their own make-ups in senses of nationalities, ethnicities, religions and belief systems (or limitations), they also had psychological, emotional and behavioural characteristics which were not necessarily tied to the other aspects of their thei r backgrounds. Some children childr en were leaders, others were shy, and they had varying positive and negative qualities. Some were needy and others kind and helping. Somehow, these psychological and mental characteristics had become present in them, seemingly independently of how they had developed in their other – such as national, ethnic and religious – senses. The question arose as to whether the negative elements of these characteristics could be transformed or not . . . and this would be something I would spend many years studying and experimenting with. This was a time when some of the books I read outside of school ones made profound impressions on and was amazed to realise that the history of me. I read and re-read Michener’s historical novel Hawaii and

a place is something of a ‘time-map’ and explains how its present is. Later, I would also understand that this goes a long way to explaining how people are in their present, too. Atom by Shirer Another book that fascinated me was a science fiction novel called Children of the Atom by which was about children who had been born different because their parents had been exposed to

atomic radiation. There seemed a resonance for me in the sense of being different, though I could not pinpoint it as relating to any particular quality, except perhaps in feeling I was more serious (though not necessarily more studious) than most of my classmates.   

After four four and a half mostly really really enjoyable enjoyable years years in Valencia, Dad was was transferred transferred to a new job back back at the Canadian company’s head office in Montreal as Production Manager for all of the company’s mills in Canada. We moved in December 1964 and spent that Christmas at a high-rise hotel in downtown Montreal, before moving into an apartment in Westmount. We boys (including my older brother) all attended Westmount High School, where we were required to wear ties and jackets and found there were several classes for each grade, and that the individual classes were much larger than those we had been used to in Valencia. Our younger sister started primary school in Westmount.

The school was a major comedown from what we had been used to at the private American school in Valencia. My interest and studies suffered to the extent I usually attended summer school to make up deficiencies from the normal school year, especially in French, which we were behind in after years of studying Spanish instead. Also, in the summer, I found paid work (usually part-time) during the time when I was not at summer school. One summer (1966), this work was with an uncle by marriage in Ontario at a cold food storage company his family owned and ran. Outside of school time I continued reading and writing in almost every spare moment. Both hobbies

included a wide variety of subjects, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama. I arranged private publication of some poetry and plays p lays which were then largely given to friends and family.


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High school yearbook photo

I was very grateful to be able to graduate from high school at 17, as it was the last year before the province instituted a new system requiring more time in high school. I enrolled at a university in Montreal to study business. However, in 1968, after my first year, Dad was transferred again, this time to a General Manager post for a Mexican subsidiary his company had bought a half share in. I was delighted that we would be moving back to Latin America.

3 1968 ─ 1971 1971 – MEXICO CITY AND VANCOUVER – MYSTERIOUS REALMS BECKON gated home in the southern Mexico City suburb of Pedregal, built on land which was black volcanic lava rock. This suburb was adjacent to the main campus of Mexico’s National WE

RENTED A WALLED AND

Autonomous University. University.

My older brother and I continued our studies at a small American University which was then just outside of Mexico City on the highway to Toluca. Our younger brother elected to do his university studies in residence back in Montreal, while our much younger sister attended a local primary school for foreign residents.   

JOSE SILVA SILVA – TUNING IN TO TO BRAINWAVE BRAINWAVE FREQUENCIES In addition to having diverse creative talents, mother had also shared with us her keen interests in the arts, culture, religions and spirituality. During our time in Mexico, mother took a course in the then fairly new Silva Mind Control. Control. She told us about the course and the practices and exercises they had done. I was struck with different aspects of the teachings of the Silva course. One of these was that there are

different levels of brain activity, or rhythms. The basic four and their approximate frequencies are: The fastest, beta, from about 16 to 31 (or higher) Hz cycles per second, is the one we use during our normal waking life.

The slower alpha, from about 8 to 13 cycles per second, is what occurs during periods of rest, light meditation or dreaming sleep.

Deeper meditation, trance states and hypnosis is at a theta level, ranging from about 4 to 7 cycles per second. This is the level at which painless surgery and dentistry can take place.

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Delta, at under 4 cycles per second (about 0.5 to 3 Hz), is experienced expe rienced in deepest dreamless dreamles s sleep when we are effectively unconscious. Delta is also considered to be a doorway to the spiritual dimension and

higher intelligence – though it is one we are only rarely conscious in. Another Silva practice was to use a tone and hand position together with counting down to achieve an alpha state. While in the alpha state students found it was possible to perform remote physical checks and diagnoses of others who were strangers to them. What seemed especially remarkable was that there was virtually 100% success rate among the Silva course students in such remote diagnoses.

Jose Silva (1914 – 1999) and Mother Michel

One of the professors at our university, a Roman Catholic nun named Mother Michel, also spoke to me about the benefits of the alpha and theta states, especially in a spiritual sense. Silva, despite his modest background, was extraordinarily innovative in helping people access deeper aspects of their inner selves and improve their own creativity and lives. Many other teachers and systems piggy-backed on Silva’s work. Silva’s trainings had been especially inspired as a means of helping his own children improve their potentials.   

Transcendental Meditation had become popularized around this time, too. Our American family doctor was a practitioner and he recommended it to me, but purely on grounds of lessening stress and improving general health. I was still too outwardly oriented and did not try it.

By taking a heavier than normal load of courses each trimester, I was able to graduate in Business Administration Administratio n in late 1969 and also, because of large number of literature and writing courses having been taken, managed to achieve a further degree in Literature early in 1970. By this time the main

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campus of the university was being relocated from the Mexico City area to the historic town of Cholula in the state of Puebla.

As what seemed to be a next step toward my working life, I opted to study for a Master of Business Administration Administrati on degree degree back in Canada Canada and went to Vancouve Vancouverr in June to commence commence doing this. I lived in student residence there. Although my studies there did not last long and were not very successful, I met a British student, J, who became a very close friend.   

COLIN WILSON – INTRODUCTION TO GURDJIEFF

Colin Wilson (1931 – 2013)

I also continued to read voraciously. It was here that I first encountered the writings of Colin Wilson and was captivated by his insights and syntheses of the writings of others (though never could understand

his fascination with the minds of murderers). It was through his writings I first heard of a teacher named Gurdjieff, who seemed to understand more about humans, including their purpose and consciousness, than anyone else I had encountered and whose teachings seemed entirely novel. I was not only fascinated, but also sensed a resonance with his teachings, and wanted to find out more about this most mysterious man and his message.

Many years later I would hear Wilson speak in person at Alternatives in St. James, London, and it would confirm to me my conclusion by then that, despite all his ‘spiritual’ writings, his quest never extended beyond seeking answers for the mind.   


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While in Vancouver, I had one experience which struck me as mystical in nature. It was an autumnal evening and, after dinner, I had fallen deeply asleep in my residence in Totem Park. I woke up, with my mind full of a thought process which seemed to cover everything, and felt very confined, and a need to get out and be one with the great expanse of the ocean and sky and enormous fir trees out on the Marine Drive. I walked through the trees down to the seashore. There was a sense of ghost beings in the night air, perhaps from my not being fully full y awake yet, and somehow these ‘beings’ fit into my thoughts, which were of an attempt to unite all into one great pattern. And, as each thought came to mind, it fit into this very credible pattern of life in a beautiful continuum of time and space. My mind was abnormally clear, with almost the feeling of having woken from my normal life which seemed like living in a fever or sickness.

When I reached the beach, everything was so wonderful and interesting that I couldn’t possibly do anything but just look at them and marvel. These included the trees, rocks and even memories of people which came to mind. From my notes written at the time, ‘I saw how the quick and the dead formed one magic tapestry in which my own life was interwoven with the life of everything on earth – the ghosts in the mist and the water, in the trees and the stars . . . everything.’ I everything.’ I felt possessed by something that

transcended transcende d normal ‘reality’.   

After a short short 6 months in Vancouver Vancouver,, another another friend and I drove drove back down to Mexico in December 1970. I returned to live with family in their newer home in Pedregal and re-enrolled at the Mexico City evening school of my old university. university.

This time I was successful in the studies and completed the Masters degree in Business in December 1971. Following this, I returned to Montreal, the part of Canada I was most familiar with from high school days, to seek a career.

4 1971 ─ 1974 1974 – BRANTFORD AND MEXICO CITY – MINDFUL OF THOUGHTS job-seeking from Montreal, I was hired early in 1972 by Massey-Fergu job-seeking Massey-Ferguson, son, an agricultural equipment manufacturer, to work from their Brantford, Ontario, offices. The position was that of Property Accountant for their Canadian operations and the beginning salary was about Cdn$7,000

AFTER A

FEW MONTHS OF

per year.

This was near where my older brother was working and, when he ended up being between jobs, he came to stay with me. We moved from sharing a large room to our own flat, where we became good friends with the German landlord. Soon after, though, my older brother found a new job in Toronto and relocated there.

In working for a large company, I was, in some respects, following the models set by my father and both grandparents. (While in Montreal, I had, in fact, even applied unsuccessfully at the companies my father worked for and the railway one his father had worked for.) Family patterns leave formative marks, and this did seem to be the expected course for me. However, fitting into a company mould at that time, when they were extremely hierarchical and paternalistic, did not work well for me. I felt much as the central character in Hesse’s novel, Beneath the Wheel . I did not have much in common with fellow workers or others in that small-town mentality community. Feeling unhappy and very lonely, I would spend weekends with my older brother in Toronto. Toronto.   

I did return to Mexico City for annual holidays with my parents and sister and it was always a relief to be back in a culture I felt more at home in. I was also able to see a few friends from university days. One of these friends introduced me to an American lady named P who had abandoned her husband and young

children to come to Mexico to train in and teach the Montessori method. There seemed to be something magic about P, as if she were living from some special personal base of profound and natural peace. I was entranced, especially as her state seemed diametrically opposite to my own of profound unhappiness, and I wanted to be nearer to this source of what seemed a better answer answer..   

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1972-3 – ESCHA ESCHATOLOGY TOLOGY – “THINKING MAKES IT SO”

P with pets Tricks and Gray Lady

P told me she had found her answer in studying a spiritual teaching called Eschatology. This was an off-shoot of Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science, itself based on the teachings of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, an American clockmaker turned hypnotist and healer, who is considered the father of the New Thought Movement, which includes the Religious Science and Unity Churches. Eschatology had been started by William W. Walter, who had used Christian Science principles to heal himself of a serious and long-standing illness.

P. P. Quimby (1802 – 1866) and Mary Baker Eddy (1821 – 1910)

I wrote to the then head of Eschatology, Genevieve Rader, to learn more and was advised there were a couple in Toronto, Lillian and Bill Clayton, who taught it. I began taking lessons at their home when I was in Toronto on weekends.

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(L) William W. Walter Walter (1869 – 1941) and (R) Lillian and Bill Clayton in 1969

Somehow, I had already realized that belief is not really more than a mental decision, often having little to do with one’s being or reality. Most traditional religions have beliefs as part of their required package. Eschatology, on the other hand, asked its students not to believe anything it was teaching, but to test it and experience for oneself. This appealed to me. Probably the most valuable lesson which came to me from these studies was that of being aware of

my thoughts and the words I use. Both of these definitely program our experiences, contribute to our feelings and can significantly impact our mental and physical wellbeing. Mary Baker Eddy, on the frontispiece of her Science and Health, has a quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet , “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

I developed a very keen awareness of my thinking and of the words I use, both spoken and written. This aspect of mindfulness has continued as a constant and treasured companion and often (but not always) helped in altering thinking which would have otherwise contributed to physical and emotional anxiety/ worry and even illness. What did not strike me at the time was not only to direct the awareness outwards to thoughts and words but also to direct it back to the me in whom the thoughts were arising and who has the awareness.

Part of the end result of being an Eschatology student was to reach a level of working as a healer both on oneself and others, much in the sense that Christian Science has healers. We were warned against trying this prematurely. While I did make efforts at changing negative thought patterns in myself that I


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became aware of, I never attained a level of becoming a teacher or actively working at healing within their system. That would have involved attending their annual Teachers Graduate Course (TGC) in California.   

My work at Massey-Ferguson and lonely personal life in Brantford went on. I continued to read voraciously, including more about the fascinating Gurdjieff and, rather haphazardly, began keeping a diary of my inner feelings. My British Bri tish friend, J, from university univer sity in Vancouver Vancouver came to stay one summer on his way back to England from a long trip to Mexico and he invited me to come to London for an extended visit. I was promoted twice, latterly to the post of Cost Accountant for the Foundry Division. I had two assistants who spent most of their days doing calculations with comptometers. I did enjoy visiting the company’s single foundry operation, a grey iron one which was also in Brantford, and watching the transformation of scrap iron into agricultural component pieces, and I learned a great deal about using budgets and accounts for management information and decision-making. This was to stand me in good stead when I began work as a management consultant and, much later, invest in my own rental properties. When I enquired if a transfer to their Mexican operations would be possible, I was told that could not be possible for several sever al years. I was offered a post at the North American headquarters in Des Moines, Moine s, Iowa, but I declined that due to the location. Finally, wanting my life to be about more than company life in what seemed a rather back-water town, I resigned from my post in March 1976, so I could go to London and devote my time to studying, writing and what I could afford of occasional short trips to the Continent.

5 1974 ─ 1980 1980 – LONDON, MEXICO CITY AND TORONTO TORONTO – I REMEMBER MYSELF “ The The change from being to becoming seems to be birth, and the change from becoming to being seems to be death, but in reality no one is ever born, nor does one ever die. ” - attributed to Apollonius of Tyana (1st century CE)

at his attic flat in Maida Vale in fairly central London. The flat was part of a conversion of an older 5 story terraced house on a 99-year lease from the church. J’s flat was rented and the landlady, who had the lease from the church, lived in her own flat in the lower ground floor with a garden backing onto a playing field. J’s top flat had a bathroom, but no running water in the kitchen. I

JOINED MY FRIEND J

Although I already had lived in large cities, London was a very different experience. experience. Being my first exposure away from the ‘New World’, London seemed to have a palpable sense (almost like an energy and vibration, such as one might experience in at a sacred site in nature or an old church) of its history embedded in its streets and buildings.

I spent time exploring the city, especially bookshops and some museums. The British Museum became a favourite and I was particularly drawn to the Egyptian rooms. My favourite bookshop was Watkins on Cecil Court. On my limited funds, I did a lot of browsing and my rarer purchases were from their used shelves.

While based in London, I did make a few visits to Paris on cheap physically demanding one-day return trips by train and ferry which gave me brief tastes of that quite different people and culture. A couple of very memorable weekend trips were going with J down to his parents’ home in rural Kent where I had my real first experience of English countryside and village life. It was breathtakingly beautiful, especially in the spring with the new green of the countryside and the lambs in the fields. Much of my time was spent in some attempts at writing and huge amounts of reading. I was finishing a short novel I had begun in Brantford called called Ashtoreth Ashtoreth Nascent , based on a variation on the plot of Ingrid combined with one of its character modelled loosely on Aleister Berman’s film The Hour of the Wolf combined Crowley. It was about a solitary man going through a dark night of the soul, though the plot faltered at 22


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the end in an attempt to show him finding some light at the end of his tunnel (as I was hoping to find for myself).

Reading-wise, I covered a wide range of both fiction and non-fiction, including about Indian spiritual teachers and more of Colin Wilson, but I especially focussed on Gurdjieff. I read widely about his teachings and his remarkable life. The most helpful insights to the teaching came from Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous , the remarkable story of Ouspensky’s own time with Gurdjieff. These teachings were sometimes referred to as ‘esoteric Christianity’ and said that people go through their lives in a state which can be likened to hypnotized ‘waking sleep’. It was noted that the New Testament in the Bible refers to this sleep many times, but it is not understood. A man cannot wake up until he accepts that he is asleep. “Gurdjieff divided consciousness into four levels, ’sleep’, ‘waking’, the ‘self-consciousness’ state and ‘objective consciousness’ – that is, a fully awakened state. ordinary man lives only in the first two and may be compared, he said, to a man living in a richly furnished house who lives in only two rooms in the basement. These two rooms are sleep and the waking state in which we spend our lives, make war, commit crimes, and try to solve the problems for which this state itself is responsible. The real awakening is experienced in the upper rooms, the third and fourth states of consciousness.” “Gurdjieff’s structured idea, comprising the four above-mentioned states of consciousness and five functional centres – those of thought, emotion, movement, instinct and sex – with two higher functions beyond the range of normal awaren ess, provides a framework which allows the whole range of human experience, in all its complexity, to be connected together in an orderly whole. Without such a framework, effective self-study proves almost impossible. Even w ith its help, selfobservation is inevitably subjective and needs careful verification in group or “school” conditions to eliminate the rise of fantasy and to achieve objectivity.” objectivity.” “Self-study is the means of acquiring a special inner attention which participates in the inner state of connectedness, and also serves for acquiring exact knowledge of conditions leading to higher states of consciousness – those in which knowledge has a universality and timelessness far beyond that of ordinary subjective knowledge. Examples exist in sacred literature, architecture, art and music which testify to these qualities and to the existence of such knowledge.” “Gurdjieff emphasized that the key to changes of consciousness is in the attention. Only through correctly understood and adequately developed powers of attention can self-observation become deep enough to reveal the knowledge called, for this very reason, the “secret” doctrine. All exercises of concentration, posture or breathing, as Sri Ramana Maharshi once remarked, are for the sole purpose of gaining control of the attention; when the attention is controlled such exercises are not necessary.” necessary.” “The particular forms of attention required – those in which the field of attention includes both

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the “outer” sense perceptions and the “inner” awareness of movements of thought, feeling and bodily energies – were known in all periods and described by such names as recollection, contemplation, sativichare, and so on. Gurdjieff coined a word to renew the concept of this practice in contemporary terms – “self-remembering” was the expression he used.” “This controlled attention never occurs automatically and is the very antithesis of the over-involved attention characteristically found in everyday living, in which the attention is hypnotically drawn to the outer world, so that almost no inner movements are experienced and no objective knowledge of them can arise.” “Unless the form of attention is changed and a special inner awareness is cultivated, exact knowledge of the inner conditions which govern voluntary changes of state is impossible. It is to create the possibility of acquiring and transmitting knowledge of this kind that esoteric schools exist.” – Christopher Fremantle, On Attention: Attention: Talks, Essays and Letters to His Pupils. Pupils .   

Gurdjieff (? – 1949) and Ouspensky (1878 – 1947)

1974 – GURDJIEFF GROUP AND ‘THE WORK’ The groups studying and practicing Gurdjieff’s teachings did not promote themselves but expected those who were ready to find them to do so spontaneously. I wrote to a post office box address, which I or Alternative London and managed to join a Gurdjieff group which seem to recall finding in Time Out or Alternative met weekly. The group was run by Peter and Betty Gloster from their rather luxury flat, 24 Chancellor


25

House, 17 Hyde Park Gate in central London. (When I first met them, they noted that Winston Churchill’s last London home – and where he had died – had been across the street from them. Another student told me the Glosters’ car was a Rolls-Royce.) The Glosters had been long-time students of Dr. Maurice Nicoll, who had himself studied directly with both Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.

Maurice Nicoll (1884 – 1953)

I was very struck by different aspects of this teaching, which those involved in it called ‘The Work’. Later, I learned that Michel de Salzmann defined ‘work’ as one’s active attention ( Notes on the Next Attention, Fran Shaw).

‘REMEMBER YOURSELF YOURSELF’’ Gurdjieff’s admonition to his students to ‘remember yourself’ was itself something of an inner explosion - a major wake-up call - for me. I realized that I had spent virtually all of my life focussed outwardly (including in thoughts and emotions), reacting to the objective, and had literally forgotten to be also aware of my subjective self, the one who was experiencing everything external to himself. Ouspensky says this about it: “I saw that I really only remember those moments of the past in which I remembered myself. Of the others I know only that they took place. I am not able wholly to revive them, to experience them again. But the moments when I had remembered myself were alive and were in no way different from the present. . . . Later, when I began to learn to divide attention, I saw that self-remembering gave wonderful sensations which, in a natural way, that is, by themselves, come to us only very seldom and in exceptional conditions.” ( In Search of the Miraculous , Chapter 7)

I began to practice two-way attention, being simultaneously aware of myself and whatever I was focusing on externally. It seemed almost as if I had, up until this time, been living with myself absent from the picture and now had suddenly become part of my own life. [Much later, I came across an

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article which called two-way attention ‘Ouspensky’s tragic mistake, as the true journey, as taught by Ramana Maharshi, is to remove the outward pointing arrow of attention and have one’s attention focussed inward only only.] .]

The weekly sessions, as well as in homework assignments we were asked to do in our daily activities, included practices focussed on remembering ourselves and self-awareness. One exercise was to answer the telephone with the hand we usually did not use for that task and to be aware of ourselves while using the phone with this difference. Another was to note how we were when speaking with our boss at work.

USING ATTENTION The use of attention was also extremely important. We were asked to put our attention to different parts

of our bodies, and I found it a great eye-opener that I could go to any part of the body (internally or on its surface) with my attention and become aware of sensations, muscular tensions and even the pulse, in each of these parts. I could relax any muscular tensions I found. It was a surprise to find how tension had rather unconsciously built up in different parts of my body (notably – but not limited to – shoulders and back) without my having been aware of it. I would practice moving my attention around to different parts of the body and feeling the aliveness in

each part of me. This ‘movement’ of attention from fr om the awareness, or my me’s headquarters, headquarter s, in my head to any part of the body was as instant as the intention to put it there (and reminded me of how I had read

that people in spirit – or in stories of genies – just had to wish to be at a certain place and they would rather ‘magically’ instantly find themselves there). I found that, not only could I have my attention at any single place in my body, but that this attentionawareness could be expanded to different regions of the body, and even to encompass the whole of the body simultaneously. This felt to me like a sense of being in the body, or ‘beingness’, as opposed to having been used to living with energy and attention purely in thoughts and emotions, largely centred in the head (or even outside of – disconnected from fr om – the body). Life became more of a holistic holist ic experience. This was a valuable additional practice to the two-way attention for me, awareness of myself as subject and as my body, while continuing to be involved in my daily life. This use of attention for awareness of internal objects, either on particular parts of the body or throughout, was especially powerful when in bed with eyes closed, either just before going to sleep or just after coming back to waking consciousness. I ‘tuned in’ to the body and an overall awareness of it, including using the awareness for added muscular relaxation. Wherever there is tension, there is some discomfort, which is some level of suffering. I later came to understand that just being present inevitably involves some level of tension, often that we may well not even be conscious of. There is complete repose – no tension – in absence, which perhaps is why it is equated with Samadhi.


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ESSENCE VS PERSONALITY Gurdjieff’s system makes what seemed to me a profound comment on humans having an essence they are born with, which is their own and truly belongs to them, and then, everything acquired after birth, which effectively makes up their personality, and which is not their own or does not really belong to them. This made a great deal of sense to me, in terms of our really possessing an identity of some sort (this ‘essence’) when we commence in the world, because all of the rest we are taught or pick up from modelling, influences and other experience (and this will vary according to the family, religion, and country culture one is brought up in). This solved for me a little of the mystery of who we are before we become who we think of ourselves as being, because, after all, we must have been ‘somebody’, had some identity however conscious or unconscious, to begin with, too.

IDENTIFYING, CONSIDERING AND JUSTIFYING Gurdjieff also spoke of the problem of identifying and of people’s normal thoughts largely being made up of ‘considering’ and ‘justifying’. My understanding, or interpretation, is that, in ‘identifying’, we attach ourselves to whatever our attention is on, be it a thought, emotion or object, and this (our identification, and hence our identity) is constantly changing as our attention shifts. “Man has no individual I. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small “I”s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, “I”. And each time his I is different. Just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another ano ther thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man’s name is legion.”

– Gurdjieff Gurdjieff In ‘considering’, we are assessing our relationship to everything that is around us and happening to us. We are deciding if it is good or bad for us and what our reaction will be to it – either like, dislike or neutral.

‘Justifying’ has more emotion involved. A good example can be seen in our usual automatic reaction to criticism, in which we find reasons to defend ourself against it and against being wrong. As I was now now usually usually conscious conscious of my thoughts and mental mental and and emotional emotional reactions, I began began to see that that this really was how my mental-emotional self was operating. It also became quite clear that this mental process was what is going on in others around me, too. We are just reacting, rather than acting, and changing identification – and hence our identity – as soon as our mind shifts to a new thought or emotion. In this sense we are fragmented – with no continuous identity. Gurdjieff called the normal person the ‘man-machine’, which is effectively going through life mechanically. Accordingly, Gurdjieff said mechanics are more appropriate than psychology for people.

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OUR DIFFERENT CENTRES The system also spoke of people being made up of different centres. The lower ones are the moving

(physical), emotional and intellectual. The moving centre is made up of 3 separate sub-centres: instinctive, motor and sex. There are also two higher centres, the higher emotional centre (with which one has a more evolved sense of self-awareness/self-consciousness) and the higher intellectual centre (involving what is called ‘objective consciousness’, in which our consciousness and awareness is beyond the normal one of the mind or personality). This also made a good deal of sense to me in reflecting how the mental-emotional-body complex is designed and works. An illu illustrat stration ion of thes these e cen centres tres and wha whatt they requ require ire is call called ed a ‘foo ‘food d diag diagram’ ram’.. The movi moving ng cent centre re requ requires ires actual food, the emotional centre takes in air and the intellectual centre’s nourishment is impressions. In order for the foods of the different centres to be transformed into higher substances for our evolution, a series of shocks is required. A major initial shock for the intellectual centre is that of self-remembering, which is not normal to man, but requires a conscious effort. Orage said self-observation is the digestion of impressions. Certainly, self-remembering as awareness of our own awareness aligns with practices specified in a number of key spiritual traditions. A second second important shock comes from intentional suffering.

At a private meeting with the Glosters, I shared with them a write-up of my mystical experience from Vancouver and Betty said it was an example of the higher emotional centre.

A, B AND C INFLUENCES Gurdjieff spoke of there being 3 types of influences on man. ‘A’ influences are created in life, within the world, and these are all that most people are open to. These include our families, societies, cultures and all the things which make up a normal person’s conditioning. Living solely under ‘A’ influences is being subject to the law of accident. One has no control oneself over what happens to one in the world.

‘B’ influences are of a higher level and have conscious origins outside of life in the world but are influenced or adapted to some extent by the world and are mixed in with ‘A’ influences in the world. Much of religion and some philosophy and art could be considered ‘B’ influences. Their origins may have been conscious, but they have been diluted by being transmitted by followers who have not been conscious. A limited limited number of people are sensitive sensitive enough to recognize recognize the differences differences between between ‘A’ ‘A’ and ‘B’ influinfluences and will even resonate resonat e with and be drawn to ‘B’ influences. They may, over time, build up a heightened sensitivity, which Gurdjieff called a ‘magnetic centre’, which would make them seek more ‘B’, and even ‘C’, influences. Those without such sensitivity, or the beginnings of such a magnetic centre, will not resonate with or give any importance to ‘B’ influences. ‘C’ influences will similarly not be seen as having any value to such people, even if they are told that these ‘C’ influences are of tremendous import. ‘C’ influences are conscious ones which come directly from outside of life in the world as we know it and have not been modified by life. A man who has been sensitive enough to ‘B’ influences to have


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strengthened his magnetic magnet ic centre may have the good fortune fort une to find or be drawn to a conscious teacher, or ‘C’ influence. Now, he no longer needs his magnetic centre to guide him, but can rely on his teacher and on his own understanding of the teachings he is given.

WHAT IS MEANINGFUL At one of our our weekly weekly meetings, meetings, Betty commented on meeting meeting someone she knew knew when out at at the shops in London. She spoke about this person a s if she were someone intelligent and fairly upper class (maybe

even titled), and as probably being in late middle age, but noted how, when this lady had spoken to her, it had been to impress Betty with how much she was ‘doing’, including starting studies towards a professional degree. Betty then shook her head and said to us, ‘Her life is meaningless.’ I felt some shock to hear her say this about someone who seemed to be intelligent, respectable and reasonably responsible in the everyday world. It struck me as being a needlessly cruel comment at the time but, much later, my conclusion is that the meaningless comment applies to most lives in the sense of any meaning the mind

and the acquired personality attempt to find. Meaning must be found in the inner – and only then expressed out into the external relative reality. If we do not remember ourselves, there is no awakening of the inner, and we remained identified with the outer, the mind and our personality. Without the inner, the outer on its own has little if any meaning except in work to awaken aw aken the inner.

I discovered that a fellow student, Eduardo L, from my small university universi ty in Mexico was not only in London, but also a student in another London Gurdjieff group (which was part of the same association as mine). I had really only known him to see him at the university, as he was a year or so ahead of me and had completed a Master of Economics degree when I was still an undergraduate. He had a posting with the Mexican Institute for Foreign Trade office in London. We met occasionally and enjoyed sharing our discoveries and experiences in the groups. He once made a comment about the biggest material fortunes of individuals being of infinite less value than the potential riches from our Gurdjieff and similar studies. This was a novel way of looking at our studies, but one which made great sense to me. (I lost touch with Eduardo, but have noted since that someone with the same name has spent many years at Ramanasramam and translated Ramana Maharshi’s writings into Spanish.)

After 5 months of living in London, I went back to Toronto Toronto for a short while before returning to Mexico in the autumn of 1974 with the Canada-Mexico Exchange Programme. I had told my Gurdjieff group leaders, Peter and Betty Gloster, I would be going to Mexico and they said there were groups in Latin America, including including Mexico, which had had been started there there in the early 1950s by Christopher Christopher Fremantle, Fremantle, who now oversaw the group work throughout the Americas. Earlier groups had also been started in Mexico in the late 1940s by Rodney Collin Smith (better known just as ‘Rodney Collin’), some of whose books I was already familiar with. Peter and Betty told me I could join a group there and continue in

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‘The Work’. They gave me the contact details and wrote an introductory letter to Eva Sulzer, the lady in charge of The Work in Mexico.

My exchange ‘work’ in Mexico City was with the national government development bank, NAFINSA. I attended at their offices and was permitted to study some of what they did, but not allowed to participate in any active sense.

At first, I stayed with my parents at their newer home, a condomin condominium ium they had purchase purchased d in Tecamach ecamachalco, alco, but soon moved to an apartment on the Toluca Toluca highway near to my old campus of the University of the

Americas, and and also near near to where where P was living.

MORE ESCHATOLOGY I had continued to do some Eschatology studies by correspondence with Lillian Clayton whilst in England and, in November 1974, through P, I joined classes in it with her teacher, an engineer named Mario Estrada Elizondo, at the gated company and office premises he had in Colonia Vista Hermosa, Cuernavaca. His family owned land in the area and Mario was building and selling homes on some of that. He gave lessons in this office. It had a large safe and he would open the safe to put our lesson payments into it.

L. Gen Rader (1905 – 1983) R. Mario Estrada (1929 – 2014) - Annual Teachers Graduate Course, Pacific Palisades, California, ca. 1978

Mario had complete faith in this teaching. He had very senior teachers visit from California to speak with us. He wanted to become the head of the teaching, but Genevieve Rader, who had been a successor to Walter, held on to the reins until her own secretary, Evelyn Durling, took over in 1981. Not being able to


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lead the organization, Mario splintered off to head up his own group. He also wrote and published books about the teaching in Spanish, calling call ing it by the same name. Although the books and teachings were supposed to be kept secret by the students, Mario’s books were wer e available to anyone in mainstream Mexican Mex ican bookshops. Traditional Eschatology students’ copies of the teachings, which were expensive books and booklets for them to buy – especially the more advanced texts by William W. Walter – were even supposed to be returned to the teaching when one died. Much of the information was probably positive for the general public to find out about, in the same way that New Thought and Christian Science concepts can benefit everyone. However, feeling one could rely on them for healing before one really understood them, could have unfortunate consequences.   

MEXICO CITY GURDJIEFF GROUP – EVA SULZER, CHRISTOPHER FREMANTLE, EDGARDO VAZQUEZ In mid-December 1974, preparatory to starting with the Gurdjieff group, I met with the lady, Eva Sulzer, old house with who oversaw the groups in the country. She lived at 4 Gral. Aureliano Rivera, in a very old thick walls and an interior courtyard right on San Angel’s Bazaar Sabado market square. Some of the houses in that district dated back to the time of the Spanish conquistadores. Eva seemed to be from Europe and appeared fairly elderly elder ly to me (I later learned she was Swiss, a violinist, photographer photogr apher and art patron, and in her early 70s at this time). My impression was that she had been involved with Gurdjieff’s work for a very long time. tim e. As it happened, Christopher Fremantle (who ( who had worked with both Ouspensky and Gurdjieff and was then based in New York and helping guide the groups in the United States and Mexico) was visiting visi ting Mexico at that time and he was there at her home, too, t oo, so I was interviewed by both of them. Christopher gave me the news that J. G. Bennett, an author and long-time follower of Gurdjieff, had just died. I told Christopher I had read some of Bennett’s books, and noted several of the other books on Gurdjieff and his teaching I had read. He told me I had read more about the system than he had, which astonished me, considering the very long time he had been in The Work . . . though it occurred to me later that may have been a subtle message on how little value ‘information’ on its own has.

(L) Eva Sulzer’s San Angel home where I met her and Christopher Fremantle (R) Christopher Fremantle (1906 – 1978)

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I subsequently discovered in a published letter to a student, Christopher said, “Some reading, as you mention, is good, but do not read too much – you yourself are the book to study – everything is there.”

I was assigned to join a Spanish-speaking group which met once a week in the evenings in Mexico City, as well as occasionally on weekends at an outdoor retreat centre in the country country.. The rural retreat centre

was intended to become a Gurdjieffian community and some of the members were planning to build homes there.

My group’s leader, Edgardo Vazquez Gomez, seemed a fascinating man. I was told he was new to The Work but chosen because of how much he had already evolved in an inner sense through other spiritual

studies and practice. There was another man who led the movement sessions. I was fascinated just watching how this latter teacher walked, comported himself and made any simple physical movement. He seemed to have a base in beingness and just to flow in everything he did. There were also some younger assistant group leaders leader s (my notes from the time shows these included Carlos M., Beto O, Jorge R, and Eduardo P). The Mexican Gurdjieff group was very different to my experience of the one in London. It was much more feeling and physical, which reflected the difference in the cultures and people. We went to the country retreat on some weekends for outdoor activities. This was mostly doing physical work, like sawing wood, as consciously as possible, while noting there were ways of doing it which used our energy to different degrees. We also met as a group and shared experiences, asked the leaders questions and even experimented with drumming a simple repetitive beat and noting how our bodies resonated with some of the rhythms.

Practicing remembering oneself in the now was also referred to as ‘taking photographs’ of oneself, shining the light of consciousness on a snapshot of oneself for an instant which, without the self-remembering would have been unnoticed and have otherwise passed one by in the ‘unconscious’ state in which we usually live our lives. lives . One senior student spoke of having discovered discover ed that there was a witness watching his witness. The leader, Edgardo, said this was an important observation. When asked what his work or pastime was, another new student said he taught the Bible. Edgardo laughed and said one cannot teach the Bible because, each time a person reads it, they understand it at a new and different level.

I noted in my diary at the time (1/5/75) that I felt I was fine in observing thoughts and ideas, but there was no feeling involved. It seemed important there should be a balance between awareness in the body

and awareness in thought. Edgardo told me I had very high reasoning ability and knowledge and would do well to let being grow and have these in balance.

I also had some introduction to trying the Gurdjieff movements for which various local groups came together (such movements being bei ng performed by actual members member s of Gurdjieff groups can be seen at the end of the film Meetings with Remarkable Men). We did this while Christopher Fremantle was still visiting, and he helped to lead them. The movements (sometimes called sacred dances) required remembering


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oneself while making a series of movements with different parts of the body. It did strike me as being

similar to learning to drive a car and having to co-ordinate different parts of the body, which one ends up doing almost automatically. When I put this to Christopher, he said the movements were not at all the same, and never became automatic. I later learned that Christopher was an art teacher and a respected painter of abstract landscapes. Some of his talks, essays and letters were published after his death as On Attention: Talks, Essays and Letters to His Pupils. Pupils .   

HUGH HARLESTON, JR. One of the most memorable aspects of these meetings meeti ngs was the involvement of another English Englis h speaker, Hugh ‘Hugo’ Harleston Jr., an American engineer and polymath. Hugh and his Mexican wife lived in a modern style home at 237 Paseo Lomas Altas in one of the fashionable Lomas districts in the hills above

Mexico City. He had then recently ‘retired’ early to devote himself to esoteric matters. He was a leading expert on the pyramids and ruins at Teotihuacan and had contributed the dimensional drawings and scientific analysis in the technical part of Peter Tompkins’ Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids . In 1972, through countless measurements at Teotihuacan and studies, he had re-discovered the standard unit of measurement (STU) the builders of these monuments had used when doing their building and also

found that selected monuments of the greater site corresponded in scale to a model of the solar system, including some planets discovered long after Teotihuacan had been built (though one of the ‘planets’, Pluto, was later demoted from planet status and subsequent mapping of the city discounted this theory). Hugh told me he had spent an hour alone in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid at Giza, which he understood was the longest time anyone had been in it alone since Paul Brunton had spent 12 hours Egypt ). there one night in the 1930s (described in A in A Search in Secret Egypt ).

Hugh Harleston (d. 2013) interviewed at Teotihuacan

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As Hugh lived not not far from where I was on the the Toluca Toluca highway highway,, I would stop at his house house and he would would give me a ride to and from the Mexico City group meetings, which were held on Wednesday evenings at the home of one of the assistants (Carlos M) on Calle Morena in Del Valle. After the meetings Hugh would invite me in to his home and down to the basement, where he had a grand piano and a drinks trolley. On the wall of the stairway down was a huge original drawing he had

made showing the creation of the world according to an interpretation of Mesoamerican mythology. It is reproduced in black and white in much smaller scale on page 270 of Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids.. Pyramids Hugh was a student of all things esoteric and his enthusiasm was contagious. He introduced me to plant sentience, which had been the subject of Peter Tompkins’ The Secret Life of Plants , and to the work

of Cleve Backster, who had had remarkable results in his experiments with plants using lie detectors. Hugh also told me he had been able to straighten his own nose through focusing on it daily while he was shaving.

On a later trip to Mexico I found and bought a subsequent work of Hugh’s at a local English bookshop, The Keystone; A Search for Understanding – A New Guide to the Great Pyramids of Mexico – Book 1: The First Dimension , which had been published in 1984. Its introduction shows it was intended as the first of an ambitious 7 books in the series. He published A Mayan Treasure – Space and Time Unified at Teotihuacan online Teotihuacan online in 2001 which lists some of his other publications p ublications in its bibliography.   

During this time in Mexico my mother shared with me some of her experiences of encounters with Mexican healers (known as brujas, which literally translates as ‘witches’) and from a meditation group she participated in at the Cuernavaca home of the well-known psychic and author Ruth Montgomery. Mexican markets invariably had one or more stalls offering herbs, votive candles and religious objects, as well as special candles and mixtures which could be used for healing, prayer or casting spells. My mother also belonged to a book club group and I felt a very strong resonance with one of their books Monastery by Janwillem van de I borrowed, The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery Wetering. This began a decades-long interest in Buddhism, Buddhism , and in Zen in particular, as well as a fascination with Japan. I subsequently read Janwillem’s other books about his Zen monastery experiences. He did, latterly, seem to have some important insights to what Zen teachings were pointing to. A school friend from Venezuelan Venezuelan days, Bill A, made a brief visit and told me about being at a meeting with an American spiritual teacher who called himself Ram Dass. He had been a professor at Harvard, experimented with LSD in its early days and had been kicked out. He went to India to find someone who could reveal to him what the LSD experience meant and did find a very evolved holy man, known as Neem Karoli Baba, who was able to do so. Once back in America, Bill sent me 4 of Ram Dass’s books, which I found good reads and helpful. Ram Dass’s own search and journey, written in Be Here Now , was the most enjoyable of these.


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Another book which impressed me deeply deeply at this this time was G.R.S. G.R.S. Mead’s Apollonius of Tyana, a summary of the life and writings of this first century centur y philosopher and wonderworker who has sometimes someti mes been compared to Jesus of Nazareth. I was especially struck by this passage: “There is no death of anyone, but only in appearance, even as there is no birth of any, save only in seeming. The change from being to becoming se ems to be birth, and the change from becoming to being seems t o be death, but in reality no one is ever born, nor does one ever die. It die. It is simply a being visible and then invisible; the former through the density of matter, and the latter because of the subtlety of being - being which is ever the same, its only change being motion and rest. For being has this necessary peculiarity that its change is brought about by nothing external to itself; but whole becomes parts and parts become whole in the oneness of the all. And if it be asked: What is this which sometimes is seen and sometimes not seen, now in the same, now in the different?—it might be answered: It is the way of everything here in the world below that when it is filled out with matter it is visible, owing to the resistance of its density d ensity,, but is invisible, owing to its subtlety subtlety,, when it is rid of matter, though matter still surround it and flow through it in that immensity of space which hems it in but knows no birth or death.” - words attributed to Apollonius of Tyana (1st century CE): http://gnosis.org/library/grs-mead/apollonius/apollonius_mead_16.htm

I was doing occasional visits to a women’s prison in Mexico City with the Salvation Army to help some of the American inmates there, who were mostly there because of drug offenses, complete their high school math studies, but we usually ended up just conversing. I gave my copy of Mead’s book on Apollonius to one of them.

A dear friend, J. Z., who was studying with a spiritual teacher who had Indian and other occult background, met with me regularly and we both shared about our spiritual searches. This friend told me that one of man’s big problems is that he is always focussed out in front, in the directi on his eyes point, rather than being more holistically focussed. This comment has grown in importance to me since then. He also told me that when Marx spoke of different types of countries economic states in Das Kapital , what was

really being referred to were psychological states. How true! Each country indeed has its own unique collective psychology – and each of which is evolving over time. It was also during this time that I first heard of Ramana Maharshi through reading Paul Brunton’s A Search in Secret India. India . I felt a resonance and have continued to study him since.   

A dramatic change change to my life and activities was meeting a lady who was to become my wife, who was training in the Montessori teaching method in Mexico City. She was a Texan, had a Protestant Christian religious background and was drawn to service to others as well as to some of the more progressive

aspects, such as the charismatic movement, of that religion. She was four years my senior and had already been married and divorced twice. While she joined me with more of an intellectual and emotional

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interest in some of my studies, she did not share with me the same keen interest in finding out who we essentially are, what consciousness and awakening are, and how those can be attained. I felt at home in Mexico and preferred life there to that in Canada, but my father recommended we return to Canada and that I find work there. Although I had had a job offer with an international American company in its Mexican subsidiary, Mexico had just significantly devalued its currency and the country’s foreseeable outlook did not appear a rosy one.

We returned to Toronto in the autumn of 1976 and married soon after, as marriage was a requirement to obtain Canadian residency status for my wife. I commenced work as a management consultant with

the consulting arm of a largely Jewish international accountancy firm, mostly attending to manufacturing clients, many of whom were in clothing and textiles. As we were now now living in the same city city as my Eschatology Eschatology teacher teacher,, Lillian Clayton (her husband husband Bill Bill had died while I was in London), I recommenced my studies with her and my wife joined me in this. In addition to studying many of Walter’s Common Sense pamphlet series, we completed studies of the two Sickle and The Sharp Sickle , as well as the Primary Course workbook Course workbook key volumes by Walter, The Sickle and material which had been put together by Genevieve Rader later. [After almost 100 years of The Sickle and The Sharp Sickle only being permitted to be bought by students who were deemed ready for them, these two advanced teaching books of Walter’s were finally republished in editions available to the general public in 2017.]

Lillian Clayton with photo of Bill up high, Holly St., Toronto


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Other than reading and the continuing studies in Eschatology’s metaphysics, my consulting job took up most of my time. On vacations, we visited one set of parents (in Texas) or the other (in Mexico) or spent time with them when they came to visit us. My wife completed her Montessori training and did a year of teaching at a school using that method.

In 1978, my father was transferred back to the Venezuelan subsidiary of his company and my parents moved from Mexico to Caracas, where the national headquarters was then located.   

1978 – A COURSE IN MIRACLES (ACIM) – THE WORLD AS OUR DREAM Just before this move to Caracas, my mother had discovered a newly published channelled work, A Course in Miracles, or ACIM , which she bought to take with her to study at her new home. She shared with me how much this new book was teaching her.

Here are a few summary quotes from The Complete Story of The Course , by P. Miller (1997): “Fundamentally, the Course says that only spirit is real and that there’s nothing else. It “Fundamentally, also says that God is not involved in the world of matter. Where it really goes beyond other traditions is in saying that we made up the world - as well as time and space - in an attempt to attack God” In the words of the Course itself: “The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love`s absence... Thus the world was meant as a place where God could not enter and where His Son could be apart from him” (ACIM him” (ACIM W-pII.3.2:1-4) This message is so disturbing to some Course students, says Ken Wapnick, that “they alter the message, deciding that the Course means God did not create the horrors of the world. But the Course is quite clear that the entire physical universe is not of God`s making, but our own.” Adds Gloria (Wapnick), “This is the one concept to which people have always had tremendous resistance. People find it very difficult to deal with because the direct implication of God not being responsible for the world is that we are. This means that you have to take responsibility for your existence and everything about it – and who wants to do that...” (pp. 112-113) Buddhism and the Course are very similar in their suggestions that our way of thinking literally creates the world we see, says Walsh, “because a lot of the deeper meaning of the

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great traditions is hidden unless you get the implications of this message: that what we take to be a fully wakened state is actually a dream.” Walsh feels that the Course`s explanation of our waking hallucinations is among the best available in the world`s traditions: “Dreams show you that you have the power to make a world as you would have it be, and that because you want it you see it. And while you see it you do not doubt it is real. Yet here is a world, clearly within your mind, that seems to be outside ... You seem to waken, and the dream is gone. ... and what you seem to waken to is but another form of this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your Your waking and your sleeping dreams have different forms, and that is all.” (ACIM: all.” (ACIM: T-18. T-18.II.5:1-3 II.5:1-3 ... 8 ... 11-13) (pp.131-2) Per the Course, the discipline of accepting and extending forgiveness is what everyone must undertake in order to awaken from the dream, in which evil (not to mention time, space and matter) - seems so real. It should also be noted that in the view of the Course, the only hell is the one the unforgiving ego constantly creates for itself: a nightmare separation from God, albeit a nightmare spiced with just enough pleasure and temporal love to keep most people addicted to it. (pp. 148-9) I got my own copy of ACIM of ACIM and and have never stopped learning from it (though have found it easier to read

commentaries on it than the work itself!).   

While I enjoyed the challenge, travel and variety of the Toronto-based consulting work much more than I had liked working for a single company as I had done before, it still did not feel right for me and we dreamed of going back to the land and living simply. We were exploring doing this with my older brother, but he was killed suddenly when the motorcycle he was a passenger on went off the road. His sudden

death at the age of 29 in July 1977 was a great shock to me and to all the family. It increased the importance to me of using my time to seek out and focus on the most important purposes in life. I became determined to stop working as soon as I could do so to pursue this end further.

After much reflection, together with some savings and and a very very modest inheritance from my late late brother’s brother’s estate, my wife and I decided we would leave our jobs and spend an indefinite period of time based at my friend J’s home in Ruislip, a suburb of northwest London, where I would be free to do further studies and some writing, and from where we would be able to do some travelling. (This move to England turned out to be a more or less permanent one for me – and my later sense has been that there is less of our own free will about decisions like this than we normally like to think

we have. It has seemed to me that deeper impulses, or what might be considered a soul’s choice, had already been made, and that my ‘conscious’ decision was just aligning with pre-established tendencies. As I was later to learn, it is more likely we generally make our choices and preference preferences, s, possibly according to the soul’s homework and programming we brought in with us (i.e., they are almost made by themselves, and we only afterwards rationalize the reasons to support them.)

6 1980 ─ 1987 1987 – RUISLIP - WRITING AND MANAGEMENT CONSUL CONSULTING TING 1980 and and settled settled at my friend J’s flat in the northwest northwest suburb of Ruislip. Ruislip. The WE ARRIVED IN LONDON IN April 1980 relief and sense of freedom I felt at not having to work in a formal sense was palpable. It was wonderful

to explore the local libraries and spend time writing, which I then planned to be my future profession. Our budget was limited, as I wished our savings to last for as long as possible. We did some modest travelling to the Continent, including to Bruges and Paris, in a low budget style. Our main trips were driving ones with J, mostly staying at youth hostels, on extensive holiday trips throughout England, Wales, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland.

Having dropped out of the Gurdjieff groups before leaving Mexico, I did not feel drawn to resuming group attendance back in London. It seemed not as convenient to do so – now as a married man – from our new base in London’s outer suburbs.   

1980 – SOGY SOGYAL AL RINPOCHE – CHANTING AND A TASTE OF DZOGCHEN My spiritual studies were mostly restricted to reading, though, on October 16, 1980, I did attend an evening group meeting held by Sogyal Rinpoche at his then centre in Kilburn. Sogyal had chosen Rigpa, meaning the essential nature of mind, as the name for his work. The meeting included accompanying some deep-throated ‘Daily Practice’ chanting on a tape. We were given 8 pages of the words to chant in Tibetan with English translation. It was a combination of compassion, praise and prayers for current and previous masters, promises of the fruits of practice and reasons for practice: “Joyful to have such a human birth, Difficult to find, free and well-favoured; But death is real, comes without warning This body will be a corpse. Unalterable are the laws of Karma 39

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Cause and effect cannot be escaped; Samsara is an ocean of suffering, Unendurable and unbearably intense. Recognizing this, may my mind turn toward practice.”

Towards the end it noted that Dzogchen, the tradition of Padmasambhava, is the only short path of all the Buddhas. There was a talk and each attendee was given some rice for ceremonial use. Sogyal was an animated

speaker and announced a retreat in the country at which he would share some important practice secrets. A number of the audience, which was Western and of both genders– with several dressed in what looked like Tibetan colours and style of clothing – seemed quite excited by this and keen to attend. Although I had had been curious about Tibeta Tibetan n Buddhism, nothing really clicked for me me from from the meeting, the deep throated chanting, or from Sogyal’s energy, despite my later acquiring a great respect for the core teaching of Tibetan Buddhism – especially for the Dzogchen tradition tradit ion and the Nyingma school – and can also see the attraction of the ritual and practices for some.

Sogyal Rinpoche (b. 1947) from a ‘What is Rigpa?” brochure

As I was leaving the meeting, I bought a booklet by Sogyal called “ View, Meditation and Action ”. It seemed something of an introduction to the teaching and practice. Some of its message: “There is nothing to grasp, nothing to attain. We are already enlightened, but do not recognize it. We are clouded Buddhas.” “Meditation is the complete relaxation of body speech and mind. There is a simplicity, humour, and an ordinariness which is almost magical.”


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“Our first deception is that there is an a n effort in meditation. Meditation is not a special state of sanity,, but just letting go, letting be, and giving up trying. It is not not doing, ity d oing, not not speaking, not not having thoughts. Just suchness. Just thatness.” “View in meditation is the natural intelligence which sees our Buddha nature and ordinary mind on one level. Compassion is the working of this intelligence.” “In this awakened stateless state everything is of one taste. There is no bad to put down, no good to elevate. All contradictions, confusions and ironies are harmonized.”

There was also a summary of the qualities required for applying meditation in everyday life, ‘view in action’. The observations on meditation had some passing resemblances to Zen’s shikantaza (‘just sitting’, or ‘just mind sitting’) practice and the outcome like what I understood as meant by the ‘dhyana state’ in Hinduism and ‘jhana states’ in Buddhism. The challenge is progressing from practice to such states.   

At the time I was was working working on a time-travel novel I had titled titled Ashtoreth Nascent . It was intended to be a creative work which would reveal and teach me about myself as I wrote it. However, I soon met a friend of J’s who was a publisher and suggested I write a book on English calendar customs as a coffee table style one which might be a popular Christmas item.

I started on this, with each month becoming a chapter in the book. It was designed as a narrative of the year, with the calendar customs which had their origins in the natural year, together with their histories, set within descriptions of the seasonal changes and the annual round of farming an d pastoral activities.

My style of doing it required extensive and meticulous research, and the whole project turned out to take about half of my time for two years. My publishing friend had lost interest in it by this time. I offered the book to several other publishers, but was turned down, and I finally just reproduced a few copies as gifts to family. (Many years later, in 2012, in beginning to address and complete unfinished business in my life, and as a means of not throwing away all the work that had gone into it, I slightly revised and retyped the manuscript to have it in an electronic format and published it myself online.)

As I was nearing the the last few few chapters chapters in the English customs customs book, book, our savings savings were were running out and I began applying for management consulting jobs with firms in London. My wife and I were still on visitor visas, which we had kept renewing by travelling out of the country and then returning to obtain a new ‘extension’. This method of staying in the country longer (after we had been doing it for 3 years) began to be questioned on our re-entries and a work visa would be the answer to being able to stay longer as well as give us much-needed funds. After quite an exten extensive sive perio period d of job-h job-hunting unting,, I was finally offe offered red a posit position ion by an Americ American an manag management ement consulting firm’s London office, which would provide the important work visa. At the time they were considered the US industry leaders leader s in strategy consulting. The work I did with them was mostly manufacturing

based – largely in supply chain management –, and most of the clients I worked for were in the automotive

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industry, either as major component makers or actual vehicle assemblers and manufacturers. As this part industry, of the firm operated a Europe-wide practice, I was travelling constantly, often away all week, and managed to work in most of the major countries in Western Europe, as well as in the USA and on projects involving Mexico and Japan. My five-year passport of this period has more than 300 stamps in it, almost all related to business trips, most of which entailed my being away from home for all the work-week. The work for them was the most demanding I have ever done, requiring being very fast on the learning curve about each new client and industry and working to extremely tight deadlines. The use o f personal computers was still in an embryonic stage and an enormous amount of time was spent doing manual

tables using calculators. An extraordinary amount of research had to be done very quickly, and I often worked very late, sacrificing sleep to do this. There was one assignment in which I was required to work in French after a two-week cram course in the language in Paris (I had had a couple of years of high school French in Montreal and having Spanish helped). The firm had an ‘up or out’ policy, meaning that if one did not move up one was ‘counselled out’ of the firm (let go). Although my work as a junior and senior consultant was considered exceptional, I did not have the makings of, or interest in, working at the higher levels of principal or partner. I was, accordingly, told I had to leave the firm, but I managed to secure an agreement whereby I could stay long enough to complete 4 years of the working visa with the same firm, which allowed me to attain permanent residency status in the UK. When I first realized I was to be let go, I was terribly upset. I remembered earlier times of being without funds and the job was the financial lifeline for myself and my wife. While extremely demanding, it was also both fascinating and exciting work, with the travel on expense accounts and exposure to so many different companies, industries and people. Looking back, that kind of work was a form of madness. With few exceptions, the upper echelons of the firm were comprised of individuals motivated by personal gain, the trappings of wealth, and the admiration of others for being visionary and innovative in their niche areas of work – in other words, driven by possessions and self-image, caught up in the external and the psychological. One of the partners in our office was an exception and particularly considerate in treatment of staff. I was puzzled and asked a senior colleague why such a nice man would stay in the firm. He answered, ‘His wife needs the money.’ When another colleague’s wife had a miscarriage and asked for time off to be with her, he was told he was being disloyal to the firm. A further colleague was told he could not have time off the day after his house had burnt down in the night. The travel and dedication required was such that many relationships foundered because of it. My own marriage also suffered. I later heard the phrase that many people confuse adrenaline with happiness, and that could also be said to be true of many in this industry. In hindsight, losing that job was a major blessing, but it took me quite a long time to appreciate this more fully.   

During the late 1980’s the BBC featured a series covering Japanese sumo tournaments with commentaries in English. I was fascinated by the history, rules and etiquette involved. It seemed to be something


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of a sport in which one needed to be as conscious or ‘present’ (remembering oneself while engaged in it) as possible.

One of the aspects I heard at the time was that the two wrestlers need to be breathing br eathing together, together, which is to say that their in and out breaths would be at the same time, just before commencing the match. While I have never confirmed this actually to be true, it caused me to reflect on breathing as it relates to resting and activity. I realised that, generally, it is natural for us to commence activities (such as the sumo wrestlers starting their match) on the in breath, and the out breath reflects a relaxation and surrender. I began to use the awareness of this (together with the awareness of any muscular tension) in my

quiet times of inner exploration with attention, particularly when working at relaxing to the maximum degree.   

As I knew knew I was was on my way out of the consulting consulting firm, I hunted hunted for for a new job and was hired hired to a very unusual post as manager of the personal fortune of the previous Minister of Taxation for Saudi Arabia. His fortune ran into several tens of millions of dollars and was invested in land, building projects and stock markets in both the Middle East and the west. It was doing disastrously performance-wise because of a mix of the slump the world was in at the time and appalling management. I found offices for the new company set up to manage this in i n the City of London, and travelled travel led to the Continent to meet some s ome of the people involved in the projects, so I could assemble a summary of the state of the whole of the investments for an upcoming management meeting at which a new head of the company was to be chosen and introduced to everything.

Although I had only been been on this job for about about three months by the early autumn autumn of of 1987, 1987, the new head, head, an American banker, paid me off and put his own man, an ex-colleague, in my place (at double my salary), and I found myself suddenly without a job again. I went through with the purchase (which had been started before the loss of this job) of a semi-detached house in Ruislip about a block away from J’s house. The house was an estate sale and required a lot of updating. We managed to do some of this, including putting in central heating heat ing and a new kitchen, but never moved in as, without work, there was no way I could manage to keep up the mortgage payments. We managed to sell it for the amount we had

paid, plus the investments we had made in it, and continued sharing J’s flat with him. After the tense period in the consulting firm and landing the new job at a significant salary salary,, I had breathed something of a sigh of relief, as I felt our financial future was secured. Suddenly, this was no longer true, which triggered a combination of depression and apathy. I felt, at 37, somewhat over the hill and also knew many companies were not keen to hire ex-management consultants. I went through a period of such very low energy that I spent much of each day in bed and thought I might be suffering from a

chronic fatigue syndrome. Things appeared quite black. I could not see a way forward, but, like the loss of the consulting job, this apparent setback became a turning point back to spirituality and higher priorities for me.

7 1987 ─ 2000 2000 – CLAPHAM, HAWAII, JAPAN THE INNER JOURNEY INTENSIFIES 1987 – SHAUN DE WARREN – GROWING AWARENES AWARENESSS AND PUBLISHING this low period, my wife began attending some evening gatherings and talks at the Battersea home of a teacher/counsellor teacher/c ounsellor named Shaun de Warren. One person, a conductor whom w hom Shaun had counselled, made notes of the t he talks, copies of which whic h could be freely taken away. When I read some of these, I found a striking consistency consi stency in them, in the sense of it being clear the t he writer was coming from a non-personal base in the writings, as if they were intuitive or inspired and bypassed a personal ego. They reminded me of the transcriptions of talks by J. Krishnamurti, in which there also seems to be no ego, personal preferences, or judgements. WHILE I

WAS GOING THROUGH

Shaun de Warren, about 1988

I arrange to to meet Shaun and told him about losing my jobs and how I found myself without energy or motivation for finding my next step. He suggested I come for a personal 10-session counselling course he had designed which he called PEP, PEP, short for Personal Empowerment Program. Progr am. Part of my severance package from the last company had included a generous £5,000 which was to be used for helping me find another job. I had had these funds placed in the care of an outplacement firm, where I had had a 44


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little counselling, counsell ing, but they concluded it was best for me to take a year off. I proposed they put a good part of these funds towards the counselling work with Shaun and they agreed to do this. Shaun had had a curious background for this kind of spiritual counselling. He was from a British military

family which had been based in India. Shaun had gone into the military and had been a cavalry officer before leaving that and training to be a barrister. He found himself being able to see the dynamics underlying the problems his legal clients thought they would have to solve through the court and then would often

give them counselling insights so they could resolve the matter without really requiring his legal skills. He was doing himself out of work and left the profession. Shaun was subsequently given a position as a leader for the European arm of the Eckankar spiritual church. However, after some time of playing this role, he found himself at odds with the hierarchical system it had with its Living ECK Master at its head. He then began counselling people privately and helping them become sovereign in their own lives.

It turned out that Shaun and I had read r ead and studied many of the same spiritual authors, though his experience and understanding of the Hindu tradition was much deeper than mine, and he had already made the leap to being able to step out of his mind and into awareness. When he spoke in public, including at the gatherings at his home, the messages largely came through him rather than being by him. Once, just before Shaun was to give a talk, I told him it was a privilege to be conversing with who would be speaking on the stage in a few minutes. He replied, “You are not speaking to who will be talking up there.” Even when Shaun was counselling or responding to questions, he would pause before answering, waiting for an intuitive response, rather than one from his mind. I was taken with the wisdom which came through Shaun and, when I recommended it be put into a book, he asked me if I would help him do that. I agreed to this, partly for the great benefit of working with him and the material. We put together a first book, with Shaun speaking it and I writing and then editing. Shaun wanted to call it I Am the Key , but some of us around him recommended it be You Are the Key , so that readers would not feel the title referred to the author. Its subtitle was A was A Guide to Self-Discovery .

The book covered the main topics which concern most individuals – relationships, vocation, prosperity, attitude, dreams, health and healing, and the importance of the alpha, beta and theta levels of the mind, but also ventured into more spiritual topics like awareness, meditation and consciousness. It included a chapter on the mirror principle, which was new to me, but basically explained the concept that the world each of us experiences is our own projection and is mirroring ourselves back to us. Shaun’s teaching on awareness and meditation was basically about reconnecting with our alert and aware centre of oneness inside, before the mind-body complex, and living from that centre. Shaun once said to me, “Meditation is awareness”, a comment of great importance which I did not really appreciate until later. In addition to what came through for publication, I learned much from Shaun, the most valuable of which was not information, but concepts which helped me understand myself and my own make-up. Shaun introduced me to the concept of vasanas, an Advaita term describing the sub-conscious or unconscious tendencies we have. In Hindu terms, they speak of the impulses or drivers which we bring into this life at birth, before even becoming rational or acquiring a personality. This concept made great sense to me

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and explained why people (including myself) often make choices and live lives which seem irrational. It

is as if our soul has made decisions, even before its next physical body has been conceived, about what is important for it to do in its next ne xt lifetime and these become the hidden drivers for the individual who is

born as that soul’s vehicle for its next level of training in the school of the manifested world. vrittis and Two other valuable terms from the Hindu tradition which Shaun introduced me to were vrittis and samskaras.. Our samskaras karas samskaras are are results of past actions and experiences that have left an imprint on our mind. Their expression give rise to vrittis (‘waves’ or disturbances in one’s psychological-emotional self, sel f, which disturb the otherwise calm of consciousness). Collectively vrittis vrittis represent represent the behaviour that makes

each of us unique: our desires and repulsions, our predispositions and complexes. In the Yoga Sutras, it teaches that one’s practice is to calm the waves and return, or reunite (yoga = union), one’s mind to its calm state, or samadhi. Shaun also told me that, when he was in the military, he would know someone was ready for promotion when they were already effectively doing the job they would be promoted to. Later, on more reflection, I realized there is a deep principle involved in this which has since helped me make choices in my own life. If I ever wish to know what it is I should be doing (notably as an occupation or even as a pastime

with meaning for me), I just need to see what it is that I already do without being prompted, which tells me about the skills and talents I have which I love exercising. (I used this principle some years later to choose working as a legal representative rep resentative for asylum seekers. This combined the talents of working with

people on a one-to-one basis, hearing and writing their stories down and then researching their stories and the countries they came from to support their applications to the Home Office.)


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and distribute it ourselves. We elected to self-publish You Are the Key and

My work with Shaun was not restricted just to him, but grew to encompass other teacher s he either knew or was interested in.

With Shaun de Warren in Battersea, 1999   

1988 – SWAMI SHYAM – A TASTE OF BLISS One of these was Swami Shyam, who had established an ashram or meditation centre ( International Meditation Institute ) in Kullu, Himachal Pradesh, north India. According to Shaun, Swami Shyam had been part of the entourage of Mahar ishi Mahesh Yogi Yogi in his early tour of North America, but the Maharishi kicked him out because of his popularity with the followers. The Swami, on his own now, had an awakening experience when in British Columbia. He began speaking to people there and some of his fir st followers joined him . Later more would come from the Montreal area. He coined the phrase or mantra, “Amaram Hum Madhuram Hum”, which means, “I am eternal, I am blissful.” This became a favourite mantra of his followers.

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Swami Shyam (1924 – 2017)

The Swami invited Shaun to visit him in Kullu in 1987 and Shaun went for a couple of months. The Swami made a short visit to London with some of his followers in 1988 and I attended the single evening meeting I was aware of that he had there. His wife and children were in the audience and he gave an

animated talk. I only recall vague bits of it, including the story of attachment about a woman who was happy and free until she got a cat . . . and began to worry over it. The striking aspect of the meeting was that I had a rar e and overwhelming feelin g of happiness being

there (which presumably was influenced by his presence or by the energy of the whole group – many of those in attendance were his family and followers). I have since come to realize the feeling I experienced must be what people mean by the word ‘bliss’. It was so powerful I wanted to find some way to go to Kullu and be nearer to the source of such a wonderful feeling. I told Shaun about this desire and Shaun said he accepted that he would lose my assistance if I went. However, it did not seem financially feasible to go, partly because my funds were l imited and dwindling, but also because I felt financially responsible for my wife and did not feel I could either take her or leave her on her own. Another person, pe rson, drawn dr awn to Shyam Shya m from his early earl y teaching time in Vancouver Vancouver,, describes descri bes the power pow er he had, “When I was with him, I felt both that he knew me completely, more than I knew myself, and that he accepted me without reservation and loved me more than a human being could love. A human being might love me for this o r that quality, but Swamiji quite simply loved me because we were one. It was not that he had to tell me this, I knew it, could see it and feel it. It was an acceptance and love far, far beyond even that of a mother for her child. It wa s complete and eternal, for it had no beginning and no end; and it existed independently of all qualities and happenings because it was the self-luminous being of the Self itself.” Brijendra Brijendra (Robert Eaton), Genesis Dawn – I Meet Myself , 2006 and 2017.


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Shaun told of seeing Shyam meet a Jewish religious leader. Shyam reached out, removed the religious cap the man was wearing and put it on his own head, saying to him, ‘We come from the same source.’   

BARRY LONG – I AM VS. ME The purpose of evolution evolution at any time is to make life on earth more conscious. Barry Long, The Origins of Man and the Universe – The Myth that Came to Life

Also, in 1988, as I was distributing distributing You Are the Key to to London’s bookshops with a new age presence, I noted flyers posted in them speaking about the visit of an Australian spiritual teacher named Barry Long. The most prominent of these featured a photograph of him over some text which had a headline along the lines of, ‘ I am the Master of the Western World ’.’. There were also postcards with his photo and the words ‘The earth has few living masters – Barry Long is one of them ’. These could clearly be heard as

provocative and controversial statements and, when I asked Shaun what his sense of Barry Long was, he said, ‘He’s very full of himself.’ [Barry Long himself said that he had studied J. Krishnamurti and that, if he had read Krishnamurti’s last book right, the latter had said that, after 60 years of teaching, he was lucky if 5 people had heard him. Barry then added, “Well, I am one of them.”] Nevertheless, I was curious enough to attend a talk he gave on August 24 th at the Friends Big Meeting House on Euston Road.

Barry Long (1926 – 2003)

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Barry Long makes a distinction between ‘I am’ and ‘me’. He speaks of ‘me’ as our ego and ‘I am’ as the living master of the here and now. This ‘I am’, which was also the one in the flyers, he told us, refers to each of our ‘I ‘I ams’, not just rather exclusively ex clusively to his own. The ego, as ‘me’, is ok once it has surrendered sur rendered to ‘I am’ as its master. He also referred to our false personality as ‘the tenant’. Some of what he said resonated with me. From my notes: “Insanity is defending the right to be unhappy in this body.” body.” “Will you be I or will you be unhappy? Ego is me. It is ok when the ego surrenders to the master, resulting in oneness. Then I can enjoy the beauty of life through the senses.” “A master is responsible for being free of unhappiness.” “You will never find the truth while you believe in anything.”

I had such a better feeling of well-being in the focus on ‘I am’ coming away from this meeting that I stopped the use of nicotine chewing gum, which I had been on for 16 months following 15 years of smoking. I also attended a weekend workshop of his on sexuality and another 3-day seminar on self-transcendence at Regents College London (now Regents University London). During the lunch break at one

of them, Barry saw me as he walked into the cafeteria and came over to greet me and ask me a little about myself. At another meeting, I met Clive Tempest, a long-time student of Barry’s who did most of the organizing of the publications and activities in the UK, and I was able to obtain some pointers from him about these, especially on publishing and distributing books and tapes (which I was then involved in for Shaun de Warren’s work). There was a requirement that one had to have listened to Barry’s audio cassettes on the same subject as a prerequisite to attending the sexuality workshop. The workshop itself turned out to be surprisingly powerful – more of him talking and then responding to questions than an interactive workshop. As part of it, he had those in the audience put their attention into their stomach/digestive areas and spoke about this as something akin to a hot cauldron, an area used for processing and transformation, and not just for nutrition, but also for doing so on an energetic level. There was a focus on staying anchored in the body and listening to the solar plexus area (rather than to the mind) to get a sense of our real reaction to externals and our feelings about our state of being. He said many people spend much of their lives about a foot higher than their corresponding body parts. “Be aware of the good (God) In you and coming from you and know it can be nowhere else. You will lose all except the good you find in yourself.” “Until we are ready to lose all – which we will lose anyway anyw ay – we are still not ready to embrace life fully.” “I am with you at death.”


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At one point he told us that that he had been met by some some journalists who wanted wanted to ask him questions questions for a write-up about him. Barry said he told them he only answered conscious questions. When they asked what a conscious question was, Barry told them it is one which has ‘I’ in it. This was an important message for me to always be present to our I, our subjectivity. Otherwise, so much of our life is wasted by being fully involved in – and identified with – the objective (which is what focusing on the purely intellectual is).

He elevated the sexual aspect of our lives to being one of worship of the sacred, and most especially of the male worshiping woman as God. My then wife, who was attending with me, said afterwards that she had been waiting all her life to hear this message. One middle-aged man attending this workshop actually left his wife of years to start a new ‘truer’ relationship with a talented middle-aged single lady, who happened to be a friend of ours. We had dinner with them on the middle evening of the two-day workshop and listened to his story story.. He had been extremely dependent on his wife and very much controlled

by her. His leaving her sounded to me like something of a schoolboy’s rebellion rebel lion against authority. authori ty. He had told Barry what he had done (giving credit to Barry’s teaching as the impetus) and, in the next day’s talk, Barry cited his case as an example (perhaps of following truth). However, as I knew the new lady in his life, I learned later that this man soon left her – she was heartbroken, upset and angry – to return to his previous relationship with his wife. The meditation Barry led had us being conscious of the inner and outer simultaneously. “Normally, we are in without only or, through traditional meditation, in within only.”

My wife and I wrote to Barry in Australia to thank him for how his messages had helped us and he replied with this curious response: “ I thank you both . . . each [of our messages] communicates in its own way precisely what you intended for all real communication is beyond words. Barry, 24 December 1988 ” Barry Long came across to me as not being fully at peace in himself at that time. Although I was in no doubt that he had experienced some kind of awakening beyond the mind people normally identify

with, and I resonated with quite a bit of what he said, I was not drawn to follow him as ‘my teacher ’. His teachings did point me further inwards, included i ncluded the crucial use of ‘I am’ and ‘being’, and indicated the direction of attention into and throughout the body while simultaneously also being on the externals.

He was, too, adamant that we must sooner or later relinquish all attachments, including all relationships, outside of the ‘I’, as it is inevitable that they will all be lost anyway. Another very gifted friend of mine, Roslyn H, left her life in the UK and moved to Australia to follow Barry and his teaching more closely.

After these workshop workshops, s, I did listen to some of Barry’s later later ‘Talks from Tambourine Mountain” . My friend who had gone to Australia to follow him wrote me that, after a year of his teaching there, she had found joy and beauty through a lasting stillness in her body body,, “A lasting stillness created by the truth. And in the stillness there is love as a tangible feeling sensation within my physical body, my true body if you like. . . .That is my learning of the teaching …be vulnerable to love? Yes, through the pain of losing all that I loved my resistance was broken, I had to go to Australia. A year later I realised the truth of the master ’s words – be vulnerable . . . but only to love . . . Roslyn ”

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Of those I knew whom had experienced this teaching, some did seem to have reconnected with their physical bodies and to have found some more answers and an increased experience of peace which, in themselves, are remarkable achievements. Perhaps this might be described as having stepped back from the mind, but while still using the mind as one’s identity base, rather than having stepped out of the mind altogether.

I attended a further talk of Barry’s on 6 January 1990. From my notes: “Take some deep breaths. Be easy. “Take easy. Smile. The smile on the face reconnects with the smile in the solar plexus area.” “Me is in darkness, unhappy and rebellious when ignored. When I is with me, we are being. Being is the only place we know love/good. Thinking does not know love.”

Definitions: The unconscious starts where we note the good feelings. The subconscious is where I retreats to in dreams. The conscious is aware. Thinking is outside of who we are.

In a closed eye practice, he spoke of grounding ourselves “through returning awareness/being to the ‘bottom of the bottle’, the bottom of the trunk, bladder, bowels, genitals. Me is happy when I of senses am aware of experience of external world simultaneous to being with internal ‘me’ bodily feelings.” “Pain/fear in me tells me about areas of my life that need changing/clearing.”

Barry’s The Origins of Man and the Universe- The Myth that Came to Life , which is a work of insight and introspection, makes the important point that the external evolution theory espoused by Darwin and science make valuable points, but completely ignores man’s inner evolution, from psychic principle, to sense perception, to intelligence and emotion and, finally, to self-consciousness. He points out that myths of creation, as in the Biblical Genesis, speak of this inner evolution, while Darwin and science are limited to speaking about the evolution of the physical.

Years later, I read the posthumously published autobiography of his life to 1982, My Life of Love and Truth. It was very interesting and extremely frank, but also disturbing in parts. He made decisions on his relationships (including ending them and abandoning his first wife and children) as if they were divinely guided, though admitted later to having made mistakes in some of his conclusions about them. He and his 2nd wife were dramatically affected by a black energy which seems to have come from another dimension and a friend/student he called ‘the Blessed John’ (who became his teacher for a brief period) was involved in a very unconventional healing of them. This John lived very spontaneously


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and was in and out of mental institutions. Barry credits Blessed John with taking him from his previous immanent (inside us) realization of the divine to a transcendent (outside this dimension) realization of the divine.

Barry notes he heard this teaching as a voice in the top of his head towards the front and was told, ‘This is a part of the seat of consciousness. I am in your consciousness.’ “ . . . the voice giving instructions in my consciousness was intelligent beyond my own conscious powers. One could, of course, say it was my higher self. . . . What it is called is really irrelevant when one experiences this wonderful inner integrity. For there is no doubt it is intelligent and vastly wise. The important thing it is there, within each of us, the individual.” . . . “At the end of two weeks I noticed that a different voice was now instructing me. Also that the voice had moved to the top of my head, the centre of my consciousness. This voice was John’s.” Truth ) (p. 155 and 162, My Life of Love and Truth) He says: “In the spiritual life when you go deep enough into the unconscious within your body you eventually enter the reality of external space – what we call outer space, or the space between the stars (astral space from the Latin astrum astrum,, star). This is another world of supreme stillness and nothingness. Conversely, Conversely, if a man is ever able to travel deep enough into outer space (far beyond the influence of the solar system), he will end up in his own unconscious, the same other world of sublime stillness and nothingness. But unless he has been spiritually prepared, which is most unlikely, he won’t perceive any difference and will fill this space - as he fills his inner space – with the mundanity of his thinking and rationality. For finally ‘out there’ or ‘in there’ – the outer and the inner – merge to become the one consciousness.” ... “The cosmos – the deep unconscious where inner and outer space merge – is filled with such extraterrestrial beings or intelligences. But they are too deep within or without – too spiritual or refined – to ordinarily be perceived by the human mind.” (pp. 160 – 161, My Life of Love and Truth)) Truth

Soon after, the evolved aspect of Blessed John is carried away from this planet by highly intelligent visitors from outer space – which John names Archons –, leaving just a shell of the man behind. Barry did seem to have become vulnerable to dark forces, which he implies may have caused his second wife’s illness and which must have been the source of the black energy. Had I been aware of some of these things in Barry Long’s history at the time, I might not have attended his talks and workshops, but I am glad I did, as he imparted some very valuable pointers to me.

A filmed interview of Barry not long before his death, called Scenes from an Enlightened Life , released

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in 2014, gives a sense of him having mellowed and as being more at peace than I had felt from him at the meetings I had attended 15 years earlier.   

1989 – REBIRTHING – THE BODY HAS A MIND OF ITS OWN In 1989, I explored rebirthing breath therapy which had been discovered and developed by Leonard Orr. It is meant to help one re-experience one’s birth and heal the trauma one may have had from that and is used to help heal other aspects of one’s life. Breathing is done circularly (without gaps) through the mouth or nose while one is lying down with a trained rebirther beside one. The rebirther

I chose, Hilary T., T., only did this practice as a very occasional sideline. Her main work was in shiatsu massage. I found the sessions powerful and continued them for about half a year. Although I did not have any

particular traumas surfacing, the sessions may have resulted in some healing and the breathing helped anchor my awareness in my body. Toward the end of some of the sessions I experienced a combination of an extremely strong involuntary locking of my body’s muscles, called tetany , together with involuntary breath suspension for a few min-

utes and a loss of consciousness. When I ‘came to’ it felt as if I had been in another world, somewhere very familiar, but a place I could not remember once back to the waking consciousness of this world. My facilitator, Hilary, was watching over me at these times and said I had not started turning blue, so she knew I was ok.

These experiences underlined for me how little we know about our own bodies, when our muscles have such shocking power to lock up. It was also a reminder that our waking consciousness must be viewed as only a part of a much fuller reality we are virtually never aware of.   

RAM DASS – THE UNFOLDING KARMIC PREDICAMENT During the prior summer (1988), Shaun had attended a 10-day retreat in France led by the American Ram Dass, some of whose books I had read and been impressed with when I had been in Mexico in the mid-1970s. Although Shaun came back with the feeling that it had not been a very worthwhile trip for him, I still felt drawn to Ram Dass and arranged to attend the same retreat in the summer of 1989. The retreat was held at the Chateau des Celestins, which had originally been a monastery, at Colombierle-Cardinal near Lyon. I borrowed a tent and sleeping bag from friends who were also there, but who wanted to sleep in the Chateau, so I could be on my own out in the grounds.


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Ram Dass (b. 1931) and his guru, Neem Karoli Baba (d. 1973)

At the retreat Ram Dass announc announced ed from the outset that he was not enlightened. However, However, he had a sense of awareness and, like Shaun, spoke after pauses, waiting for intuitive wisdom to provide the words. He was also a marvellous raconteur. The retreat was a mixture of talks, question and answer sessions, meditation and chanting bhajans. The bhajans were led by another American named Jai, who had come with Ram Dass, and who was reported to have visits from the spirit of the now late Neem Karoli Baba (Ram Dass’s guru).

Left: Chateau des Celestins – view of rear from my tent Right: In the meeting room with words to Hanuman Chalisa chant

This was my real introduction to chanting and to participating in it with the whole of the group, which consisted of about 100+ attendees (many of whom were ex-Rajneesh – Osho – sannyasins). I was

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entranced by it. In addition to the standard call and response chants we also did the Hanuman Chalisa

one at different times, using handout sheets to follow the chant. I found the sitting meditation challenging, but also enjoyable and rewarding. However, we committed to two or three days of having no eye contact with others, no reading (except for the 6 th Patriarch’s Zen Poem) and no speaking. We were advised to spend this time mostly in sitting or walking meditation. It

was difficult – and bordering on painful – not to speak with others nor even to have eye contact. I suffered the most with the walking meditation. I could see that the movement I had been used to making all

of my life had some intentional destination or purpose, but this meditation had none, except in the now of the walking itself. I found this ‘going nowhere’ so difficult that I more or less gave up on the walking and instead spent 5 – 7 hours a day in sitting meditation.

Ram Dass and Jai on stage in the meeting room with the puja table to the right under Neem Karoli Baba’s photo and Hanuman’s picture.

All of the participants participants were offered offered a short private meeting meeting with Ram Dass. In my meeting meeting with him, he was wearing a yellow t-shirt and yellow shorts, reflecting the hot weather there then. I told him I had really enjoyed his books over the years and thanked him for making Eastern ideas more palatable to Westerners.. I presented him with a copy of You Are the Key Westerners Ke y , saying it was from the author as well. He remembered Shaun from his photo on the back cover (Shaun had attended this retreat the previous year).

I also had some questions in mind. My main question was, “How can I open my heart?” Ram Dass reflected and responded that I could take a certain amount of a specific drug (he named the drug, MDMA, and the amount, noting a low dosage) when with a guide in a safe environment – and that this would


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give me a taste of it. He said one or two times would suffice. He paused and then added “. . . another good way is that of service. Work with the dying, for example, really opens the heart and compassion.” was very very much a heart (I became a volunteer at Trinity Hospice for 2 years in the early 1990s, and it was opening experience.) Love for me. When I asked if I could He signed copies of his books How Can I Help? And And Miracle of Love for do something for him, he smiled and said, ‘You’re doing it. Each of us who works on himself works for everyone.’ When I thanked him and got up to leave, he stopped me and said, ‘I need a hug’ . He held the hug for about 10 seconds before letting me go.

Ram Dass covered many topics during the retreat, the talks of which were made available on cassette later. I offered to tidy these up and publish them through our small press, but Ram Dass declined the offer as requiring too much editorial work on his part (he had several other projects ongoing at the time). Some of the things he said gave me insights and deeply impressed me, such as (paraphrased), He used an apt phrase, ‘connoisseurs of clay feet’, to describe seekers who would look for and find a new teacher, but then drop that one and move on as soon as they discovered what they considered a failing in them. “You can’t go straight into being a nobody. It’s It’s important to become somebody before you go into nobody training.” (This (This view is an important message for those who access different mystical –

or drug induced – states or even Buddhism’s emptiness before having established a subjective identity beyond the mind.) “The problem is the Queen thinks she’s the Queen and the Pope thinks he’s the Pope.” (Several (Several

years later it came home to me that this is a common problem – believing our primary identity is who we think we are – the personalities we have acquired from outside of whom we are essentially – and living our whole lives in what is effectively a deluded state of self-hypnosis or trance.) Ram Dass humorously referred to himself as ‘an unfolding karmic predicament.’

My father retired on his 65 th birthday while I was on this retreat, after 41 years in different of the divisions and subsidiaries of the same company. company. His career with the company had involved working for about 10 years each

in four different countries. My parents hosted something of a family reunion at their lakeside cottage in Prince Edward County, Ontario afterwards and I elected to attend that rather than the retirement retirem ent event in Minneapolis. Later in 1989 I was able to purchase a two-bedroom lower ground flat with a garden in Clapham for about £112,000 on one of the roads running from the Common to Wandsworth Road/Lavender Hill. The mortgage on it was most of the price and, with very high interest rates of the time, the monthly payments were challenging to make.   

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1990 – CHUCK SPEZZANO – A MAP FOR PERSONAL EVOLUTION It was through Shaun that I met Chuck Spezzano, a doctor of psychology, who calls his teaching the Psychology of Vision (PoV). Chuck is a charismatic speaker and workshop leader – he is also gifted with inspired messages, which he told me he literally hears. His teaching is substantially guided by the principles of A of A Course in Miracles (or Miracles (or ACIM ACIM ), ), which purports to be a work channelled by Christ, expressing his teaching for today’s world. Chuck’s wife, Lency, who is also gifted in different and rather complimentary ways, teaches with him.

With Chuck and Lency Spezzano 1996/7

A major part of PoV’s teach teaching ing is abou aboutt one’s one’s relatio relationship nships s – spous spouse e or or partner partner,, family family,, friends friends,, collea colleagues gues and community. community. Understanding and healing one’s relationship issues can dramatically improve i mprove one’s life, as well as the lives of those affected. This often involves the forgiveness principle ACIM teaches. teaches. In the

end, what one realizes is that one is just forgiving oneself and that our ultimate relationship is the one we have with ourself, which is – at a deepest level – the one we have with our source, the divine. A powerful prayer Chuck has quoted from ACIM invites us to turn seeming adversity into a blessing, paraphrased as, ‘How can I make this barrier to peace a means to peace?’ Another part of Chuck’ Chuck’s s teaching, his triangle of spiritual evolution, especially fascinated me. It was a like a map guiding one to enlightenment. I felt that a deep er understanding of it would help one progress

out of suffering and into awakening. The outside of the triangle describes the negative states we find ourselves stuck in and, opposite them in the inside of the triangle, are shown the means to get through them and move forward, which is to evolve further around the triangle’s path to enlightenment and oneness. The first two sides of the triangle, dependence and independence, helped me understand the real meaning of Buddha’s teaching about desiring nothing and resisting nothing. We are dependent on (slaves to) whatever we desire and, as the other side of this coin, coin , resist what we try to be independent of.


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As respects Chuck’s ‘hearing’ voice messages, when someone else he knew started receiving channelled messages, Chuck told me it was important that person understood that the source of such channelling is not separate from the channeller.

As a way of of understandin understanding g the map more more deeply deeply,, I helped to put put this triangle on paper paper and and make make it available to PoV students. Later, in 1994, we printed a small booklet, illustrating the triangle with sayings about it, which was made available for students to purchase. This was revised, expanded somewhat and re-issued in 2001 for sale via the various PoV country websites. Finally, as part of the editing work I did with Chuck, a manuscript, called Steps to Oneness, was written, but this was only made available to advanced students.

Cover of the revised September 2001 version of the Triangle booklet

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Much later I wrote an article which described the journey around the triangle and drew parallels to the journey spoken spoken of in Buddhism’s Buddhism’s wheel wheel of life. (Reprinted (Reprinted here here in an appendix appendix.) .) Chuck is a detective of the mind and his insights and teaching were often a revelation to me about

the mechanisms of our psychologies which we are normally unaware of. He told me he had a flash once telling him no one can break another’s heart. He knew immediately this had to be true. Only the person whose heart is involved can make the decision to feel heartbroken – no matter what another person does to them. (This further reinforced the ‘thinking makes it so’ teaching I had had from Eschatology.) In one workshop, there was a young lady who was the focus person. She was very soft-spoken. Chuck interrupted her to ask, ‘Did your parents fight a lot?’ She confirmed that they had. Chuck had realized that her tone of voice had been an attempt to be a peace-maker she had acquired as a child. To those with acute discerning perception, everything about us, our expressions, body language, the words we choose and tone of voice, speaks volumes about our inner selves. Our relationships with others is also revealing. If we had reacted against our fathers, it invariably shows up in similar feelings we carry with us to all figures of authority (including our superiors at work, bank manager, and police). There were also deeper insights about the Oedipus complex. This complex reflects a competitive dynamic between a son and his father over the mother/wife. If the son ‘won’ this competition, such as through the parents being separated so the son would ‘win’ the mother’s attention exclusively, it would also be understood by him at a deep level to have broken the societal taboo concerning mother son love

(whether actual incest was part of the relationship or not). The son, realizing at some unconscious level that he could never really be successful in this prohibited relationship, would carry that same dynamic into his everyday external life, including work and business, and would feel he could not be successful there either.

I learned that, when we feel drawn to someone, it is like a hidden message from our deeper self, telling us that the other we feel drawn to has some lesson or gift which would help us. Very often such an attraction to another is reciprocated in that they feel a similar draw to us. Somehow, we can help each other, so it is usually alright to follow such attraction. However, it is important not to confuse every such attraction to another as being sexual or necessarily meaning there should be a relationship.

Chuck had had a Hawaiian Kahuna teacher. The Kahunas were the spiritual ‘wise people’ of the native Hawaiians. They often had a usually benevolent alignment with nature, including what we would call powers to influence it. Most used these for the good. Those who did not would find negative influences sent out boomeranging back onto them. One of the most insightful teachings Chuck shared which he

had learned from the Kanunas was that they could listen to someone and hear what was said on seven levels. There was the everyday level of communication which the person speaking thought they intended, but other levels were also being revealed revea led sub- or unconsciously. These other levels included the emotional, the sexual and even the spiritual. This is partly what has become known in western circles as


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‘Freudian slips’, or ‘slips of the tongue’ in which the speaker unintentionally reveals more than he had wanted to. Anecdote

In one of my first workshops of his, Chuck asked, “If you wer e to know, what would it be that is holding you back from moving forward in your life?” The immediate intuitive answer I got then was that I had not forgiven my parents or a person I had been in an early ea rly relationship with. That my parents came up

was a surprise, but I realized such a decision (if it actually happened) would have been made when I was pre-rational and it would have been completely repressed. My rational mind knows my parents had always done the best they could for me and I had just misinterpreted things and come to a wrong conclusion as an infant - through emotional feelings rather than reason. It was very easy now to let this go. Roughly a similar pattern related to the early relationship ... the lady involved simply had been incapable

of behaving any better, so I let that go, too. Curiously enough, very soon after, I was invited to visit the city (Vancouver) where the lady li ved and we met again after 20 years and even renewed a friendship. It seemed like a miracle and felt

like a great healing. On my way back home to England, I stopped to visit my parents in Ontario and went through some papers I had stored there. Some of these were letters dating from the

time of that relationship break-up. I had never read them since but thought that, because of the recent healing, it would now not be a problem. However, when I did so, there was an immediate resurfacing of the intense raw pain I had felt at the time of the break-up. I was amazed to find it was seemingly still with me. However, by re-feeling it, there was a sense of it largely being released. What I deduced from this

a.) some of our stored pain still with us in the now may be from pre-rational decisions we made as infants.

b.) The process of forgiveness here not only benefited my relationship with my parents, but seemed to alter the possibilities and experience in the external world by opening up the opportunity to meet the lady from the early relationship and heal that situation further. c.) The experience of stored pain was incredibly real (and in the now) and feeling it helped its release.

I helped make tape records of Chuck’s workshops (which allowed me to attend the London ones as something of a staff member without paying the normal charges) and edit a number of Chuck’s manuscripts. In 1991, the small press I ran with Shaun and his partner Gill, published Chuck’s first book, one of sayings called Awaken called Awaken the Gods. Gods.

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Front cover and Title Page of Awaken the Gods 1 st edition 1991

Latterly, during the time I spent with him, Chuck noted that grace was far more powerful and effective than however much psychology one learned and applied.   

1991 – DR ROBERT-MICHAEL ROBERT-MICHAEL KAPLAN – TRANSFORMING OUR DOORS OF PERCEPTION I attended a talk given by Dr Robert-Michael Kaplan in May 1991 on vision training and healing. Dr Kaplan is a Doctor of Optometry, author of the book Seeing Beyond 20-20 and and an international authority in vision training healing. Robert is no ordinary optician. He assists people in balancing their perceptions and in healing both their vision and purpose for living. As he notes in a training flyer of the time: “Your eyes and the way you use them reveal a lot more about yourself-expression, attitudes and be haviour than you might imagine. Your Your relationships with your parents and your life experiences are indelibly sketched like a blueprint on your eyes and vision. These memories reflect your curren t perceptions in your daily living.”


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From one of Robert’s 1996 London Workshop announcements

Robert shows his clients how their eyes and vision speak about how they see themselves and project that inner knowing externally in their eyesight and in how their two eyes either compete or unite into a

unified focussed view. Our eyesight reflects reflect s how we wish to see the world. As an example, Robert told me that nearsightedness nearsight edness is a strategy for pushing the world away from oneself.

At the time I was meeting meeting him, there there was a trial going on in England of a young lady accused accused of murdermurdering her ex-boyfriend. After being put on trial, the lady had gone blind. I asked Robert if she could have caused this – though perhaps unconsciously – as a way of not seeing and facing what was happening. Robert not only confirmed that she could definitely have done this and that our minds have this power, but he added that, in cases of people with multiple personalities, their vision and glasses prescription requirement instantly change when they shift from one personality to another. I learned from Robert that real correction of vision includes understanding the hidden dynamics underlying one’s way of perceiving the world, that holistic vision is seeing from a healed inner self and that standard optician practice just treats the external symptoms, rather than root causes.

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Since I met with Robert, he has gone on to author further books, including, Seeing Without Glasses, The Power Behind Your Eyes , and Conscious Seeing – Transforming Your Life Through Your Eyes .   

It was about this same time, in 1991, that I met John Woodhall, known as ‘Dr John’, who had a reputation as a chi gong, or energy, master. Chuck’s London organizer knew him and invited him to a 3-day workshop so that he could massage Chuck during the breaks. When my wife and J attended the closing

ceremony of the workshop, my wife wif e felt very drawn to Dr John and said she wanted to be treated by him. him . I invited him to come to our home to treat her. However, on the first occasion, he put all his attention on me and said he would give me a massage. He told me I had the potential to be like him, which I felt was a great compliment. His massage was VERY powerful and his fingers pressed quite deep. My natural reaction was to resist, which added to the pain I felt. He told me he was not giving me that pain, but that I was making it. This sounded unlikely unlikel y to me, but when I relaxed (as he asked me to do), I found fou nd the pain disappeared entirely – despite him continuing to massage just as deeply as he had before. This was an amazing lesson about pain being our own resistance and the power of surrender. [As will be noted later, I learned surrender and transcendence are virtually interchangeable.]

Dr John

After this John would come over to chat, sometimes with an assistant/student, assistant/student, Nina P, whom he was training. There were occasions when he would stay talking all night. He spoke of how he accumulated

energy from what was around him – that batteries would go flat because of him drawing their energy – and he would use this as his ‘chi’ energy in his healing work. He spoke of attending international healer conferences and said he visited a small hospital in Sri Lanka after one of these where he cleared the hospital by healing all the patients. He said it was in the interest of the doctors running the hospital to

keep the patients ill – despite their job being to heal. John showed us photos he had taken which showed a glowing Madonna floating in the sky and other paranormal objects normally invisible to the eye. He told us he had been an orphan and was very grateful to have been brought up in an orphanage, because he had no parental influences which would have limited him. Despite his seemingly disadvantaged upbringing, John had exceptional insights and


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intuitive wisdom. He told us different times he could walk away from everything, all possessions, including his wife and daughter, and start over with nothing. He would say he could do his healing even if he possessed nothing and was just standing in a ploughed field. He did give my wife her treatments. The first one was in front of me, asking her to undress for it, which she did completely and then lay on a blanket on our living room floor for him to treat her. He stopped by at other times, including sometimes when I was not there, and I understand further fur ther treatments of my wife took place. These must have been powerful, because she started having unusual other-dimensional dreams in which he figured. [This, in itself, seemed a strange effect of ‘healing’, but – more weirdly – had seeming parallels to the ‘healing’ Barry Long’s teacher, the ‘Blessed’ John, had on Barry’s second wife in 1970s London.] I later heard that Dr John had left left his London family and everything else behind to start a new life on a

Spanish island. Perhaps he had put his relinquishment relinquishm ent of all possessions to the test and found there that ‘ploughed field’ he so often talked of.   

Later in 1991 I met Dr Chet Snow at a talk he gave in a private home. Chet’s unusual book, called Dreams of the Future: A Preview of the Futures that Lie Before Us (also issued as Mass Dreams of the Future ), had just been published. In it, he described carrying on the earlier work of Dr Helen

Wambach in hypnotic progression, taking people into their future lives. He had accumulated sufficient of these future life progressions to find common future scenarios in many of them. Using only ones which were in times beyond our present possible lifetimes, he narrowed these future scenarios down to five common ones, which effectively indicates how humanity will be living in the next centuries. The scenarios ranged from lives of hardship on rather bleak and isolated ranches to lives in simple natural

jungle paradises paradises to people living living on spaceships. spaceships.

Chet Snow

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This was fascinating, but it also raised questions about what hypnosis is and, in particular, questions about the real meaning of past and future life hypnosis. To what degree is it just our conditioned mind which is imagining or fantasizing a different time? Is there a deeper and more permanent subjective self, or soul, who is seeing and experiencing such time travel? Or are present and other lifetimes both just waking dreams? Sometime later, I attended a talk Chet gave at Alternatives at St. James. He spoke about his previous findings again and noted some changes in the world. I especially recall him featuring the ‘hugging saint’ Amma [see later] and speaking of influences like hers on the world. After the talk I spoke to Chet and asked him if people have healings and evolve spiritually, would that affect and change the futures they would see in their hypnotic progressions. Without any hesitation, he replied that it absolutely would. This seemed to me a reasonably informed inform ed view that, when we change ourselves, we change our futures. futur es. Of course, this is still largely limited to being about a self which believes it is a mind-body. Once one identifies oneself as being beyond the physical and mental, one steps out of time and space.   

At the end of of 1991, 1991, my first wife wife left me. Soon Soon after, after, in early early 1992, 1992, she asked for a divorce, so she would be free to remarry. I agreed to the divorce and went through with that, despite it saddling me with a significant level of debt we had jointly accumulated. While this end to our marriage seemed to trigger a deep depression in me, it is likely it just revealed what had already been there but hidden and not really appreciated – and it commenced a lengthy period of profound healing. (When suffering from some depression himself, my friend J told me that everybody is depressed, but that most people are just too stupid to realize it.) It became clear to me later that some marriages, like some friendships, are best for only certain periods of time and can actually be damaging to both parties if continued too long.

I became involved in volunteering and found that helped, especially when assisting at the day centre at Trinity hospice on Clapham Common, which I did for two years. Although I was supposed to be helping the hospice patients there, I felt they were giving me much more than I was giving them. It was at the hospice that I met Zen Master John Shodo Flatt. Working at the hospice also helped me see that there are states of heightened sensitivity for those who

are near death. Arkaji [see below] had told me that it is the newly born and those near death who are closest to the Divine.   

DOUGLAS HARDING – SUDDEN AWAKENING 1991 – I had a profound ‘headless’ awakening experience on reading Douglas Harding’s Little Book of Life and Death with the first exercise (see 1995 article below) I tried from it. It was something quite


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simple, like: “. . . please turn the arrow of your attention round 180 degrees, looking in at what you’re looking out of, and see see what’s what’s being pointed at by this pointing hand [illustration of a hand with forefinger pointing back at where the reader is looking from]. Don’t think about it. Just see see!! See See what’s what’s taking in these black marks on a white ground, those blurred hands and shadowy vignetting sleeves, and go by what you find.” (paraphrased from p. 76).

Perhaps you might point your finger back so that your attention steadies on your True Nature — clearly free of patterns or plans. Two-way attention.

From an experiment by Richard Lang with illustration by Bryan Nuttall from http://www.headless.org/experiments/creating-from-emptiness

It was an explosion of re-awakening for me, because it took me right back to the experience of life as an infant – looking from a beingness in empty but aware space. How could I have forgotten something so important?! I spoke to Shaun about it, as Shaun was a long-time friend of Douglas. Shaun did not attach too much importance to this headlessness, saying he just grasped Douglas’ teaching immediately. Perhaps Shaun’s centre of identity ident ity did not shift for him as it had for me . . . or maybe he had never shifted out of it . . .

I found another book or newsletter for the Headless Way which had a telephone number for enquiries. It was the number for Ann S., a long-time student. I called Ann, wanting to connect to someone else who must be as excited about this as I was. She sounded quite normal and was cooking Sunday lunch for her family. I shared with her my feelings and she suggested I attend their annual summer gathering at Douglas’ home in Nacton, near Ipswich. However, prior to that I attended a workshop of his and Richard Lang’s at the Friends Meeting House in Hampstead. I had purchased a first edition of The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth – A New Diagram of Man and the Universe , published in 1952 with a preface by C.S. Lewis, which Douglas signed for me. Later, I went to the summer workshop in Nacton

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where I stayed at Ann’s home (in a sleeping bag on her utility room floor) and also met Douglas’ 2 nd wife Catherine. One of the long-time students told me that Douglas had said his discovery of being headless happened when he was in the Himalayas to add credibility to it, but in fact, Douglas had already been aware of his ‘headlessness’ for a long time before that.

With Catherine and Douglas Harding, Nacton, Headless Summer Gathering 1995

Here is a paraphrased extract from an article I wrote about this sudden awakening experience, which was titled ‘Re-discovery of Self’ and and published in 1995: I still remember when and how it happened. It was in 1991 and I was in my flat in Clapham reading a copy of Douglas Harding’s The Little Book of Life and Death . Immediately on trying the ever-so-simple experiments in it, I was astonished to find I was not learning something new at all, but rather being reminded of long-forgotten memories of how the experience of life had been for me during infancy and early childhood. It was so obvious . . . and definitely – from where I am looking – plainer than the nose on my face! What still amazes me is how I could have forgotten so completely that this is the way things are! With this remembering, I had immediate and first-hand e xperiential insights into mysterious phrases I’d been stumbling over for years, such as – – – –

that nothingness spoken of in Buddhism, much of what is said in Nisargadatta’s dialogues, Shaun de Warren’s ‘become the space’, and Krishnamurti’s reported definition of a person a s a ‘psychological disturbance in space’.


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This new way of seeing also gave me a genuine insight into what Sufi Shaykh Fadlalla Haeri meant when, not much later (after overhearing me speaking of the importance of service to his Hawaiian wife), he said to me, “Who are you serving? And who is doing the serving? You don’t even exist! ” ” At first, first, coming coming from this new new perspective perspective had something of the air of a marvellous marvellous game about it. I could choose to step into this way of being at almost any moment and would stay in it until I had forgotten myself and re-identified again with what I could call my ‘not-self’. Some obvious clues I was back in this ‘not-self’ would be feelings of worry, fear, guilt, ‘not-self’ consciousness, or any less than constructive emotional identification stemming from personality since, for me, this experience is not only stepping back from having a head, but also back from having the negative emotional entanglements personality/ies personality/ies involve. As a consequence, an enormous benefit of coming from this perspective is that virtually all of my old phobias disappear . . . and it is my experience that they are now very significantly significantly,, and increasingly increasingly,, diminished – even when I am not in this state. This makes something like, for example, public speaking no longer a potential terror. Whereas I used to be nervous, o r afraid I would not no t know what to say, now is no – from this space – there is no one to be nervous, ner vous, no one to be afraid. I still may may not know what to say; it just does not bother me. Today oday,, nearly five years since the initial re-discovery, re-discovery, there has been an important shift. I now no longer have to make a conscious choice to come from this truer perspective. It has become my increasingly continuous reality – and so much so that I sometimes wonder when others look towards and address this space. I have to pretend I am here as a person, when the reality is that that person is not who is here. But there are also other times when I find myself surprised to remember that I have forgotten, having resumed my ‘personhood’ again . . . and such times tend to be my best reminders of where my ‘not self ’s’ (the personality’s) deepest tentacles are rooted. It even seems there are times when this awareness of coming from whom I am, so evidently e vidently not limited to – or confined in – a body, is also beginning to be conscious/present through some of the ‘sleeping’ hours (reminding me of that eye which ‘never sleeps’ referred to in the 6 th century ‘ Hsin Hsin Hsin Ming ’ poem by the Third Patriarch). One curious feature of this new way of being is that, with the shift, nothing actually changes . . . and, yet, everything is is irrevocably different. I no longer need so so much that used to seem indispensable and, yet, the potential for a more natural enjoyment of everything is is immeasurably enhanced. The touch of another, the taste of a meal, a glass of water or cup of tea and other sensory impressions from experiences like travelling are an endless wonder from the ease of ‘here’, whereas what I might otherwise have striven for from a dysfunctional sense (such as more knowledge, more possessions, or more power from feelings of inadequacy, inadequacy, guilt, worry, worry, etc.) has no meaning. And it is from that ease of ‘here’ that I find I am able to come from peace, from love, or from whatever else is important for me, rather than seek such value anywhere else. The title of a book of talks by Gurdjieff, Views from the Real World , suddenly makes sense. In this place it is looking from from a a realer world, rather than at or to one.

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Enjoyment from this space is without attachment and can only happen in a ‘now’, which is not the difficult to grasp ephemeral instant I’d always imagined it to be, but such an all-pervading sense of presenc pre sence e that th at any limi limitt to it – or that t hat anyt anything hing othe otherr than t han this ‘no ‘now’ w’ could cou ld even e ven exis existt – is inco i nconcei nceivvable. From ‘here’, I don’t have to worry about being in the ‘now’; there is simply nowhere else to be. Time, then, is just a concept which can only be imagined, and which has nothing to do with the reality whom I am is coming from. This becomes especially evident when I am asked my date of birth or age. The awareness which answers has neither and can only respond using a socially agreed fiction of a point set in an artificial timeline timeline or in so-called so-called years the body has seen. I am convinced convinced I would fail a lie detector test with a response of ‘I am (so many) years old’. It is inconceivable that death, birth, or anything which happens in a sequential way could ever affect – or have anything to do with – this space. It is just as patently true that that which comes from this space cannot have a name or possess a gender in a human sense. Another interesting feature of this ‘other’ country is that no one can tell me about how it is for me. They might, at most, point to interesting aspects, but I have have to check them out for myself. There is nothing I can learn by rote, or in the usual intellectual way we normally associate with learning, concerning this state. It is a place of being, or simple ‘isness’ before thought, for which any substitute for actual experience is impossible. While I have shared the experiments and experience with friends and others, I am always amazed how little they seem affected in comparison to the profound impact it has had on my own life. In most cases, there seems to be not much more than the novelty of a new perspective at a purely intellectual level, rather than the more important shift in being it brings to me. As mentioned menti oned above a bove,, there has h as been an a n evolution evolu tion in this th is state since si nce its re-dis re -discove covery, ry, and I can’t help sometimes wondering where it is leading . . . and what may be next. The idea, for example, that we are not separate is infinitely more conceivable when viewed from this perspective. Indeed, just over a year ago, I had a perceptual experience (which seemed entirely natural at the time) of having an entire roomful of people happening inside ‘my’ space. space. When I recounted this to a teacher-fri teacher-friend, end, I asked him if this ever happened to him., he responded that it was a frequent occurrence but, rather than just being perceptual, it was also at a feeling level, in that he was connected with and felt what others inside his space were feeling (doubtless much like I’ve heard some healers experience). Will there be a further new re-discovery to an even earlier remembering at a feeling level which will be as profound as this has been at an awareness and perceptual level? Will I feel who I really am, in addition to seeing who I really am? Will I achieve through this that place of being able to unite with what’s ‘out there’ to the degree spoken of by a Zen monk who said he didn’t have to worry about dangers such as a bomb dropping on him or of being engulfed by fire, since he would just become the bomb or become the fire? Coincident with the growing evolution of the experience of this space, there have also been periods of deep insights in which I find that what is and has been problematical for me ‘out there’ actually


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reflects deeper patterns ‘in here’, although the ‘in here’ referred to is still at a hitherto buried level of personality, rather than back to the neutral space. What I do find is a tendency, or yearning, for more of the empty freedom of this space. To attain this means clearing more of Krishnamurti’s ‘psychological disturbances’ that I have in the forms of, for example, resentments, grudges, incomplete relationships or nagging unfinished commitments, each of which seems to reflect in feelings of unease, or energy blocks, b locks, I have in my body. This tendency to freedom seems, willy-nilly, to be leading me back to a naturally conscious w ay of living, which I suspect is also at the roo t of genuine spiritual teachings. One thing I can be sure about this ‘other’ land, it is always new!   

1992 – ARKAJI – CONSCIOUS AWARENESS In about 1992, I met a teacher who was then mostly known as Mahaguru Yogi Arka through my local post office lady, Priya Y, who recommended I meet her guru when I went to visit family in Toronto. I did go to attend a meeting which was held in the city suburbs at his then Toronto ashram, the house at 25 Shadlock Street, Markham. As part of the talk at that meeting, he said, “If you do not look in a mirror or wash your face for a week, you will forget f orget you have a face.” This struck struc k me as essentially being the same as Douglas Harding’s message. Later, when I attended a meeting of his at a church hall in Tooting, he seemed to recognize me when I went for his blessing and invited me to make the announcement about

the blessing of water. When I said I would not know what to say, he said not to worry and that he would inspire me with the right words.

Arkaji is from Karnataka Karnataka state state in south south India, where he has has an ashram ashram center. center. His travels have resulted resulted in followers and centers in several countries. He calls them ‘Centres for Conscious Awareness’, a striking name which suggests self-remembrance and awareness of one’s own subjectivity, and also underlines a distinction between consciousness and awareness. I saw more of Arka and he asked me to help with the organization of the meetings. Almost all of

those drawn to him in the London area were from the Indian community, though everyone was welcomed to his meeting and teachings. I ended up staying at the homes he would be in when he

visited London and acted as something of a part-time assistant to him. I developed a closeness to many of the other members of the circle of individuals around him, through which I had a most wonderful introduction to their homes, vegetarian foods, shops and restaurants favoured by Indians living in London.

On a later occasion, Arka told me we had known each other in a past life in what is now north India (though he normally avoids speaking of prior life matters). He said I had been a Brahman priest then.

Much later, another student of his told me Arkaji had said that he and I had meditated together in that previous life.

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Arkaji at a meeting and receiving his blessing - ca 1996

Arka asked me to ‘lead’ Arka Dhyana meditatio meditation n meetings for his circle and we hired a hall for this purpose when the meetings convened. Arkaji would send instructions for these and guide the sessions ‘remotely’ from wherever he was in the world. In this sense I was acting more as a channel for him than as the leader of the sessions myself.

I helped organize and assisted at a meeting at the Wandsworth Town Hall in 1996, which friends of mine filmed professionally. The film was accompanied by Arka’s own music. The audience was not large, because I was told it was also the day many were celebrating Sai Baba’s birthday. We sat on the floor in Asian style. The inspired talk Arka gave was on ‘Sound and Silence’ and the film included interviews with some of his followers. As Arka was giving blessings at the end, a family group came up to him. The son, a young man who may have been in his hi s late teens was on crutches. cr utches. Arka blessed him and asked him to hand over the crutches, which the young man did. Arka then led him so that he walked down the stairs from the stage into the audience and even squat down and then stand up again – all without his crutches. It seemed miraculous and the young man’s mother was crying. Later this part of the film was shown on Canadian television and Arka’s centre in Toronto Toronto was inundated with calls from people who wanted healing. Arka asked that the film be withdrawn, saying his purpose is not that of being a physical healer. A short while later, I saw the young man and his parents with the group who had come to the airport to see Arka off. The young man was using his crutches again. At

first, I thought, “What has happened about the ‘healing’?” But, then, I noticed that the young man was smiling and radiant, a dramatic change from the sadness he had had when he went up on the stage for Arka’s blessing. For me, the change to happiness seemed a more important ‘healing’ and even a ‘miracle’. Latterly, along with several others, I assisted in editing Arka’s book Adventures in Self-Discovery – The Journey from Mind to Heart to Consciousness , composed of transcripts of a selection of his inspired talks, which was first published in 1998.


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Cover of 1998 Edition of Adventures in Self-Discovery

I continued to see Arkaji and attend meetings when w hen I could for some years. He H e stopped in Oahu, Hawaii, on a return journey from visiting followers in New Zealand, when I was there doing editing work and I was able to show him around the island and enjoy some vegetarian meals with him. I was able to prepare a Mexican dinner for him at the Spezzano home. Chuck had met him before, but was away at this time. Lency appreciated meeting meeti ng him and was able to ask him different questions. She noted the inability to reach some of the PoV students and Arka advised her not to waste love on those who are wearing raincoats against it.

Soon after M joined me in the UK, we went to Madrid to be there for Arkaji’s first visit and meetings in Spain.   

I went to other meetings the group attended at times, including one for a Sai Baba group. A blind young lady in a wheelchair was there who had had over 30 operations, mostly because of falls. It was her birthday and a birthday cake had been prepar ed for her. She spoke of how blessed her life was and how

happy and grateful she was. Her joy was so great, genuine, and palpable that I actually envied her (or her state). The lights were turned down and we meditated. When they came back on there was vibhuti, the sacred ash, formed in holy symbols on framed pictures on the altar, on a chair and stool (which were

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under glass), on the cake and on other pieces of furniture in the room. To my knowledge no one had moved during the meditation and this ash had simply manifested out of thin air. The blind lady and other Indians present took this for granted and it seemed to be a usual experience at these meetings.

Sai Baba meeting - Vibhuti on pictures on the altar and vibhuti writing and symbols on a chair and stool

I understood that some students received quite important spiritual experiences through Arkaji, though am not sure if these were awakening ones or more like passing experiences of bliss, and I asked him once why that had not been the case with me. He did not seem to have a clear answer but said that perhaps it was because I had not committed to him as my main teacher. I did not say this to him then, but my view of many who had committed to him in this way had done so as mental decisions, meaning their personalities had committed. Any real transmission of awakening from a teacher would help us realize our essential self before and beyond our mind and personality and any such commitment of value would have to come from that realer self.

I reflected afterwards that I really had experienced further awakening and personal evolution since meeting Arkaji. While I associated these with contact and work with other teachers and teachings, it may well be that these came, at least in part, from the time and work I did with Arkaji as well as what I had done with other previous teachers and/or from previous lifetimes, or some combination of these. I am aware of instances of Arkaji not wanting to take credit for some of the things which happened around him – and of not wishing to be associated with having special powers. Grace and transmission work in mysterious ways!   


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1993 – AMMA (MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI) – BLESSED BY LOVE

Amma

I was at the Battersea Arts Centre on Lavender Hill and saw a friend, Dominique d H, from Shaun’s evening group waiting with some others. I found out there was to be an evening meeting with a visiting

Indian spiritual lady, considered by many to be a saint, named Amma (short for Mata Amritanandamayi). Amma was born in 1953 1953 to a poor family family in the south Indian Indian state of Kerala. Kerala. She composed composed devotional devotional songs from a very young age and was also drawn to serve others. She had to leave school after only a

few years so she could work to help her family, but they found her spiritual behaviour so unusual, they locked her out of the house. She meditated and slept outdoors. Animals brought food to her. She had

a vision of the Divine Mother and a message to serve humanity by showing them the way back to Her. People began calling her ‘Mother’ and she started guiding and teaching those who came to her. An ashram was established for her and the work gradually spread out to be international.

I stayed for what turned out to be an entrancing evening of Indian music, chanting, sacred dances and blessings. It was a charged atmosphere and I felt as if I had found a home of sacred love. Those in the

audience could queue to receive a hug and some murmured words from Amma. Hence, she is known as the ‘hugging saint’. She will remain seated giving these hugs until everyone has received one – a process that can take several hours.

I continued to attend Amma’s meetings at Battersea Town Town Hall and at other later venues whenever whene ver I was in the UK and able to, which was most subsequent years until 2008, taking friends when they expressed interest, including Lency Spezzano in 1997. Shaun himself attended at times, too.

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I loved being in the meetings, listening to the music and chanting, watching the dancing and just absorbing the love energy which permeated permea ted the atmosphere. When I could, I would attend each evening of each visit. It was so special that I wished to capture the happiness of being there in some way to have with me and I recorded songs being sung by devotees. Just listening to those brings back the

magic of being there. Also, on another occasion, I took a photo from high up in a gallery of Amma giving her blessing hugs to the queue of people, although taking photos at these events was frowned upon.

Ca 1997 - Amma under the parasol giving her blessing hugs

There was one visit when I attended on an evening which preceded a 2-day consulting trip to Milan. The job was an assignment seeking new technology partnerships for a major UK company in the metal industry. I had, during this trip, two days of the most powerful experience exper ience of bliss I can remember. Sacred chants were running through my mind the whole of the time. Not only did I feel like I was floating in a bubble of happiness, but my feeling seems to have radiated to those I contacted for business. I was invited to join these business people for meals at Milan’s best restaurants, and doors were opened for me which were totally unexpected. As a result, I came back with new potential partnerships (a surprise one was in thixoforming – a semi-solid metal forming process I’d never even heard of before) which significantly contributed to resolving what had been a very challenging consulting project.   

DEEPAK DEEP AK CHOPRA – “THE BODY IS IN THE MIND” I had read about Deepak Chopra and knew he combined Western medical training with wit h extensive meditation experience and an understanding of the Indian ayurvedic approach to healing. He had had a lengthy

association with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of the TM (Transcendental Meditation) movement, though this had come to an end. I mentioned my interest in Deepak’s view on consciousness and ‘quantum healing’ to a friend, CC, a London-based new age/spiritual workshop organizer and she told me she was having


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him come to give a talk in the living room of a London home on 12 September 1993. She invited me to attend and asked me to record and transcribe it for publication.

The talk had the same title titl e as his seventh book, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind – A Practical Alternative to Growing Old Ol d , which had only just been published.

Deepak Chopra, early 1990s

The talk noted that people do not really die from old age, but from preventable diseases. It cited examples of trials which had shown, contrary to traditional belief that it is a one-way street, human aging actually can be reversed through a variety of interventions. This had been proven through measurement

of people’s biological ageing markers (such as bone density, body temperature regulation, muscle muscl e mass, hearing threshold, vision, sex hormones in the blood, etc.) before and after such interventions. The two trials Deepak cited were, firstly, one which was just using exercise with a group in their eighties and nineties and a second one which put elderly people in an environment similar to the

one they had known 30 years previously. In the latter one, it seems the memories themselves had evoked physiological responses which reversed their physical ages. Deepak gave examples to

show this, such as closing our eyes and imagine licking a lemon causes the secretion of salivary enzymes, or imagining holding a hot coal (or ice) causes the temperature of our hand to go up (or down).

When the elderly people in the second experiment were returned to their present-day environments, their biomarkers started going back in the usual ageing direction again. “So, what we call ‘everyday reality’ in our society is possibly a socially programmed hypnosis, which we have collectively agreed to participate in. A motley group of sages, psychotics psychotics and geniuses are some of the people who break out of that socially programmed hypnosis.”

He quoted Nietzsche, “We live under the presumption that we think, when most of the time we are being thought.”

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Deepak said we must move beyond working with mechanisms of disease to understanding origins of disease and then go even beyond that to understanding the essence of life. “In less than one year you replace 98% of all the atoms in your body. . . . So, if you think you are your physical body, you have a bit of a dilemma: which one are you talking about? . . . Perhaps what we call our physical body is just the place our memories call home for the time being.” “Seen through the eyes of a physicist, the human body is proportionally as void as intergalactic space. . . . What people have to realize is not only that the essential stuff of the universe is nonstuff, but it may be THINKING non-stuff, because it generates the impulses of energy and information which ultimately transform themselves into material events.” “ . . . the first major breakthrough in mind-body medicine is that you cannot imprison the mind in the brain, since it expresses itself through every cell in the body body.. The body is the objective experience of consciousness, while the mind is the subjective experience of consciousness, and the two are inseparably one in every aspect of our physiology p hysiology.” .” “The second major breakthrough is even more significant in that . . . our minds are not confined to our bodies either. If anything, the mind is not in the body at all. It’s the other way around: the body is in the mind and the mind is in something else . . .” And, if our mind extends outside of

our bodies, then – along with mind, body and spirit – the environment also has to be taken into account in healing.

Deepak cited Wilder Penfield’s findings that the brain executes choices, such as moving one’s arm when a probe stimulates it, but the brain is not the ‘me’ making the choice. “Where is the intention generator? . . . It is spaceless, timeless and dimensionless . . . and, yet, it could be the thinker of the thought.” “The ego . . . [and] all experiences are timebound. . . . But the experiencer is the timeless factor in every experience. . . . When one can see all space-time events against the background of the timeless. Then one wakes up to a new reality.”

At one point, point, Deepak said said that giving giving a patient patient a spiritual experience experience is an important important part of the healing healing process. I asked him afterwards how one gives another a spiritual experience and he clarified by saying that you create an atmosphere for a patient which is conducive to them having a spiritual experience. Deepak signed a copy of Ageless Body, Timeless Mind for me. He spoke a day or two later at

Alternatives Alternative s at St. James Church, Piccadilly Piccadilly,, giving virtually virtually the same talk again, which seems seems an overview summary of the book.

Deepak was, and is, an impressive and charismatic speaker. I felt he had reached some extremely important conclusions, particularly about what he called ‘consciousness’ coming before – and being the creator of – body, mind, and the material realm. However, there was nothing in his talk which indicated


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to me that he himself had awakened beyond an identification with his own mind and personality, though later writings of his certainly show he is aware of such higher states.   

VOLUNTEERING AND TRINITY HOSPICE – OPENING MY HEART During these years of having no regular job, I got involved in voluntary work. I became a director of Wandsworth Voluntary Bureau and of the Wandsworth Bereavement Society. I also did short-term selfemployed consulting jobs through different firms, notably Autopolis and Reliance. On a very part-time basis, I continued the small press publishing. Perhaps the most important ‘work’ I did at the time was volunteering at Trinity Hospice, which was on Clapham Common at the top of the block I lived on. Trinity Hospice, with its hospice proper, day centre, training facilities, centre for MacMillan nurses and a large beautiful garden, then had about 300 regular volunteers, including some who would bring pets to visit the inpatients and even an artist who would paint people’s happiest memories for them. Trinity was then considered the longest established hospice in the country, as it had been taking in the dying for more than 100 years, from when it was run by an order of religious nuns. Those admitted to the hospice proper during durin g my time there had, on average, less than two weeks of their physical life left.

My volunteering was in the day centre, to which patients were brought from their homes. This was a break not only for those coming, but also gave some respite to their family carers. To be eligible to attend the day centre, a patient had to have been medically diagnosed as having less than a year of life left. My ‘work’ consisted of joining the ‘ambulance’ van to make the rounds of collecting patients from their homes in the mornings, bringing them back to the day centre, being with them for about half a day there, including for lunch, and then joining them for the trip back home. My job on the rides and at the centre was almost exclusively what could be called ‘active listening’, being very attentive to whomever I was with. The patients shared their life stories with me, and I helped the process by prompting them with occasional questions. Patients could also have their hair done and there were volunteers who came to give them different treatments, like massages. I was continuing to feel quite low during this period and, although I was volunteering to help these patients, pati ents, I generally found I felt I was being ‘helped’ much more from the great love I received from them. And this was ‘real’ love, in that they sought nothing in return. They were just giving. I did this volunteering for a day a week for about two years and it was probably the most rewarding and heart-opening ‘job’ I have ever had. The rare occasions I attended inpatients at the hospice helped it become clear to me that there are states of heightened sensitivity for those who are near death. One example was of a patient being aware

of – and commenting on – what was happening around her, despite her eyes being closed. Arkaji told me that the newly born and those near death are the ones closest to the Divine. Here are some words I wrote in Sept. 1994 about a hospice experience:

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Just a month ago, I began having some involvement on the hospice wards. It is so different and so rewarding. Part of this is because, when you are with people on the wards, there are no more masks, no more social pretending, and nothing to pr ove. Also, in being with someone there, I can’t have an answer for them in what they are facing, as we traditionally try to do in our everyday life. I met another volunteer who said that when she told a friend she was working at a hospice, the friend said, “But you are so FULL of life! Why would you choose that place to volunteer?” When the volunteer coordinator heard this, she responded, “You won’t find any MORE life anywhere else.” While I was at lunch, after having been on my ward for the morning, a minister who comes to the hospice sat down across from me. I told him how rewarding just being with people on the wards wa rds has been for me, sometimes when it didn’t even involve words being spoken, and that it more often seemed as if just the opposite interaction was happening – the people I was seeing were serving me, rather than my serving them. I was getting so much from it that it was absolutely not a doing in any sacrificial sense. He said, “Yes. You know, I’ve discovered this, too. If I feel duty-bound to go and help someone, especially when I am tired and it’s being done in sacrifice, it absolutely burns me out. But, if I just get out of the way and, even though I feel I have no energy, yet somehow still go out and be there for someone – but not in sacrifice – the strange thing is, I find THEY give to me.” I thought, later that these words actually restate the principle that you can’t really be giving without also be receiving, that true giving-receiving has to be a cycle. I’ve been discovering so much about myself through this work. There was one day in particular – I think it was my first time on the wards – when I became aware of my own neediness, in feeling the need to be needed. It requires req uires some sensitivity, sensitivity, especially with total strangers in these circumstances, to judge when you are being intrusive and when you are being appreciated for being helpful. In one case that day, it was more my needs which seemed to surface. It was with a man the nurses had asked me to feed some ice cream to. He only seemed to want a couple of spoonfuls. I fed him these and then just sat and held his hand, waiting to see if he would have any more. He was so poorly, he could hardly move. One was mostly aware of his very laboured breathing. I didn’t think he could talk, but he then tried to say something. It was barely a croak and the whistling of the breath of intention through his throat. I could just hear the words, “I want . . .” and then I could could not make out the rest. He tried to say it again, but I still still could not understand. I bent down so my ear was right next to his mouth and he tried again twice, but both times all I got were the words, “I want . . .” and “I want . . .” again. In an attempt to be helpful, I started suggesting things he might be asking – Did he want me to turn the television off? Did he want some water? Did he want more ice cream? Did he want wa nt the curtains drawn? Did he want a nurse? He just stared at me with no sign that anything I had suggested was what he was wanting. Finally, Finally, he began making one more, now very strenuous, effort to tell me what he wanted, and I bent my ear close to his mouth again. This time, I could just barely make out what he was saying, which was, “I want you to go.” But it came out o ut in such a beautiful way because, at the same time he was saying this, he was squeezing my hand just slightly, and the message I got was that he wanted some privacy, but that it wasn’t in any way a rejection. He just wanted to be alone. alone . It was a wonderful awareness awaren ess lesson


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for me about my need to be needed, and that it could also be per fectly fine to be a volunteer/helper and not be needed.   

ANTHONY ROBBINS – UNLEASHING THE POWER WITHIN In October 1993 I was invited to staff at Anthony Robbins’ 1 st UK event (which was the only way I could have gone, as I had no funds). It was a weekend workshop called ‘Unleash the Power Within’ (UPW) held at the NEC Forum in Birmingham. Robbins was well known in the UK because of his books on personal development. I had also heard of NLP as a means of programming our minds and und erstood

that Robbins’ approach was largely based on that. Tony was an impressive presenter, extremely tall and loving the limelight. His then wife had come with him and helped in some of the sessions when we broke up into groups.

The Friday evening of the weekend included the famous barefoot firewalk on burning coals. While the evening presentation went on, we could see the wood fires outside in which the coals were being prepared and Tony helped prepare us psychologically. The coals were finally ready for us at 1:30 am. Virtually everyone every one in the very large audience did the walk over one of the several severa l lines of hot coals, being guided by staff, with just a handful experiencing minor blistering. Tony was guiding my line and, when it was my turn, he told me I was not ready and instructed me in preparing myself further. There were lines he gave us to repeat to ourselves to ‘psych’ ourselves up. The next time I came to the head of my line he told me to go ahead and I was able to walk across the coals. Another staff member was waiting at the

end of the line to hose my feet down. The firewalk was intended to show us we could break through our greatest fears and go beyond what had previously been our accepted limits.

Some of the training given to us that weekend has stayed with me. Tony told us that only 7% of communication is in words, 38% in voice quality and 55% from physiology. So, if you mirror the voice quality, posture and movement of someone you are with, you will easily develop a rapport with them. Another part was on the unconsc unconscious ious physical movements we make, particularly with our eye behaviou behaviour, r, which tell an astute observer about our thinking and intentions and can also be used as an aid in memorizing. A further important point was using questions to ourself (self-communication) to trigger an inner resolve and motivation. On that Friday evening, the question he asked us to ask ourselves was, “How can I make this the most valuable weekend of my life?” This required us participating in the process of making the weekend and its training valuable.

There were also techniques for manifesting or making something happen in one’s life, which included reviewing in one’s mind the steps one would take for this and then visualizing some physical evidence which would show it had happened (like seeing one’s bank balance had increased). These techniques could be remarkably effective, and I used them off and on afterwards, sometimes with close friends.

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Notwithstanding how impressive impres sive Robbins and the training were, the methods seemed to be (at that time, anyway) directed to the level l evel of the ego and personality, so one could influence others, achieve achiev e business success or gain other material objects. So, for example, if one wanted to get a Rolls-Royce to impress others and as a means of making oneself lovable, Robbins’ techniques would indeed help one get the Rolls-Royce. What it would not do is help one understand why one felt unloved and remedy that without the need for the Rolls-Royce. One of the flyers had his saying, “I know no matter where you are in life, you want more.” Helping others get more clearly sells books and seminar seats. The problem with a belief like this, though, is that one will still not have enough when on one’s deathbed. It could be a valuable statement if the ‘wanting more’ refers to experiencing peace, freedom, and more of one’s personal spiritual evolution, but that is not likely what was intended by the flyer.   


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1994 – CHRISTINE LONGAKER – A TIBETAN BUDDHIST BUDDHIST APPROACH TO DYING In September 1994, to add depth to the work with the dying at the hospice, I attended a three-day seminar called ‘New Dimensions in Spiritual Care for the Dying ’ given by Christine Longaker at London’s Rigpa Centre. Christine was a student of Sogyal Rinpoche and I understood her considerable experience of working with the dying had been drawn on by Sogyal to help him write his acclaimed classic, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying . Dying . Christine had been led to this work through the early death of her husband. The seminar was deeply moving and helpful in different ways. One was a better understanding of what

the dying were going through, such as not knowing what was happening, physical pain and the pain of the loss of everything, including the loss of control over one’s own care and environment. “What we are frightened of at death de ath is facing ourselves and facing how little we know ourselves.” “One’s presence in a visit [to someone dying] is 90% of its value – words, ‘answers’, and doing is 10%.” “Communication is important, even if the patient is in a coma or has just died. Hearing is not the last to go. It’s awareness - awareness is always there . . . . Their awareness is so alive!” “A dying person’s mind agrees to expand into the whole room and therefore absorbs in the feelings of those who come into the room.” Christine recounted an experience of visiting a dying person and noting how the dying was used by both the dying lady and her family to forgive and heal old wounds among them. When she returned again

just after the young lady had died, she was told the death had been a ‘happy’ one. She was not sure she understood, but when she sat alone in meditation with the lady’s body, she felt the latter’s happy awareness, now expanded throughout the room, and she realized it was in a higher state than her own meditative one.

Another way the seminar was helpful was its Tibetan Buddhist Buddhist perspective on dying, including including discussion of the Bardos, which are largely about intermediate states, in particular those between death and Bardos of of other states within this life and after it. The Tibetan teaching is rebirth, but can also include Bardos that one goes into a high level of the light at the time of death, but that one then descends down to whatever level one is evolved to or ready for, which might be quite a low one indeed. Christine said that her teacher Sogyal illustrated how quickly one descends from this high level down to the level one is at: Sogyal said that when we are obsessed about a problem – one which is present to us in every waking moment – the brief lapse of time between waking in the morning and then remembering this problem is the equivalent time it takes to fall from the high level to the lower one we are ready for. “The extraordinary opportunity at death is the loss of personality.” “Awareness of death can be our biggest gift. It helps us to live more fully.”

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“Who we think we are wasn’t before birth and won’t be after death – it’s not our original nature.” “The darkness at death is the loss of our cloudy nature, and our real self dawns – fully awake to our [real] nature.” “The karmic seeds of our actions, words and thoughts – our habits and conditioning – will go on after death unless purified. The point of practice is to change our habits. Develop good habits, so they naturally come to us at the moment of death . . . and we can consciously direct ourselves towards the realization of our absolute nature.” “Our state of mind or last thought at the moment of death becomes our next reality rea lity.” .” “The moment of death is the crossroads of eternity. The crossroads is now. Waiting until the moment of death is too late.” “The teaching for all the Bardos are: how do you use that particular Bardo, whether it’s this life, dying or the after-death state, to obtain enlightenment. . . . use that time to create an atmosphere of love, or peace, of non-grasping . . . use that time of the moment of de ath to practice to obtain enlightenment.” Essential advice for the dying person: “Be free of attachment and aversion, keep your mind pure and unite your mind with Buddha.” “In Buddhism, healing is purification, not necessarily getting well.” tonglen is is the term for the Tibetan practice Compassion is an integral part of working with suffering, and tonglen of compassion. Tonglen is giving and receiving and includes the use of the breath. Through it, we joyfully give out love and take on the suffering of others. And, as we help alleviate the suffering of others, so is our own suffering alleviated. The beautiful Metta, or Loving Kindness, Meditation Meditat ion is used, in which one wishes happiness and ease to all beings. It was easy to fall in love with the love and presence which expressed itself through Christine as she shared these meditations with us.

I was so touched by Christine’s teaching about working with the dying that I wanted to absorb it more deeply. I volunteered to transcribe some of the tapes from the workshop, so that Christine could use suitable parts of them in a book on this she was putting together (and I did so again for the tapes of the 1995 workshop). Her book, Facing Death and Finding Hope: A Guide to the Emotional and Spiritual Care of the Dying , was published in 1998. It has been translated into several languages and is used by hospices around the world.


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Christine Longaker and the original edition of her guide

A passage passage from from Christine’s Christine’s June 1995 workshop workshop at Rigpa in London: London: “ . . . you start to get a new passport and a new set of credit cards and, before long you’ve constructed this whole new sense of self. But, is it your real self? No. You didn’t know who you were, so you took on this new identity. And it’s temporary. It will go away. It wasn’t who you really were. So, at the time of death. This temporary identity that we’ve taken on disintegrates. All the passports go back. The credit cards go back. The family history goes back. It literally disintegrates at the time of death, at the time that the body dies. Because of that, there is the extraordinary opportunity to attain enlightenment because, when the clouds are finally blown apart after a big storm, the vastness and the radiance of the sky and sun are naturally and fully revea led. In that state, we get a glimpse of our enlightened essence of our being. It’s easier to attain enlightenment if we recognize it. And this is the key to the teachings . . . if we recognize it, or if we’ve ‘died’ already through spiritual practice in a very inspired state of devotion, compassion, or just heartfelt prayer – if we die with our mind and heart in a very good or positive state – there’s more possibility that we can use that moment of death to attain liberation, because the clouds are gone, the suffering, the sense of self, all that I normally thought was me, is – for a moment – gone.”

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I wondered how I could feel so moved by Christine and her seminar when I had not really felt any attraction to her teacher, Sogyal. My sense is that the draw I felt to Christine was because of the depths to which her heart had opened through her compassionate work with the dying, while Sogyal wisdom had more to do with the Buddhist focus on consciousness. If so, the draw for Christine to Sogyal must have had more to do with the Nyingma/Dzogchen tradition and teaching themselves, rather than with the specific teacher (‘the song, not the singer’).   

ARJUNA ARDAGH – ‘CIRCLE OF BEING’ I met Arjuna Ardagh in 1994 through a mutual friend fr iend at a time when he was passing through London and offering a few meetings. This was not long after he had completed a long stay with Poonjaji and the latter had told him to go out and lead satsangs. I attended one of these meetings. At it, Arjuna had placed photos of his ‘lineage’ at the front. These were of Poonjaji and of Poonjaji’s teacher, Ramana Maharshi. I had been very drawn to Ramana Maharshi for years and told Arjuna this and that I had been born within two weeks of Ramana’s death. Arjuna immediately asked me if it was before or after the death, perhaps wondering if I were a reincarnation. I told him it was before. He told me later that he felt a ‘Ramana Maharshi’-type energy about about me. I took this as a very high compliment, though I wondered how he could know what Ramana’s energy was like. The meetings were called ‘Circle of Being’. We sat in a circle and started by observing 45 minutes of silence, after which people could speak from their truth. Subsequently, for Arjuna’s next visit to London in May-June 1995, I helped publicise and organize these meetings. When I told Arjuna I was involved in editing and publishing, he asked me if I would help him on a book he was writing. Because he soon left London to return to America, I only had a modest input on the first part of it, though subsequently did some further transcription and editing of audio material Arjuna sent me. This book, with the marvellous title Relaxing into Clear Seeing , was published in 1998. My favourite part of it is in the preamble, in which Arjuna describes an awakening experience as not only being outside the ego, but realizing that the ego is just an illusion, which occurred during his first visit to Poonjaji in Lucknow in 1991. His decision that he wanted to kill the ego, resulted in the realization and experience of a self beyond the ego. The book shares an enormous amount of wisdom garnered from

Arjuna’s decades of spiritual spiritual exploration exploration and research together together with guided guided meditations meditations and and other other practices based on Arjuna’s deep relaxation therapy work. It was from Arjuna, during a workshop at Regents College he gave called ‘Dissolving the Myth of Personal ID’ , that I learned the story of Padmasambhava, who brought and gave much of the highest Buddhist teachings, including Tantra and Dzogchen, to Tibet in the 8 th century. As Tibetans were not ready for some of these teachings at that time, Padmasambhava wrote those down and had them hidden in temples, caves and other places in the country and the Himalayas to be discovered later by the reincarnations of his students. These writings ar e called Termas, meaning hidden treasures. [As an


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Scrolls about aside, this has something of a Judeo-Christian parallel in the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls about 2000 years after they were hidden.]

Arjuna recommended a key one of these Termas, the John Reynolds translation with commentary of Self-Liberation Through Seeing with Naked Awareness , which was discovered six centuries after Padmasambhava. It is a central text in what is known as The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation , teachings on the Bardos, or intermediate states of existence (a part of which is better known in the West as The Tibetan book of the Dead ). ). The intrinsic awareness the Self-Liberation … book … book speaks of

struck me as being very similar to my own experience of Douglas Harding’s headlessness.

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Arjuna Ardagh

I had experience of other individuals, besides Arjuna, who were reported to have been given permission to lead satsangs by Poonjaji: I attended an evening with Catherine Ingram at Friends Meeting House in Hampstead. There seemed a love about her presence that was wonderful to be near, though it is unlikely that what touched me about her was something she received from Poonjaji. I later purchased her book, Passionate Presence – Experiencing the Seven Qualities of Awakened Awareness . The

seven qualities are: silence, tenderness, discernment, embodiment, genuineness, delight, and wonder.

When I visited Maui, I attended one of Gangaji’s meetings, including a short private time with her after, although both her presence and what she said did not especially resonate with me.

In London, I went to a meeting held by Andrew Cohen, but was so unimpressed with him that I left during dur ing his talk, which was – up to that point – one mostly criticizing other teachers. I reconnected with Arjuna for a brief period several years later because of his association with the Oneness University in India. By this time, he had become a fairly well-known author in the new age field.   


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JOHN SHODO FLATT FLATT – LESSONS FROM A ZEN PATRIAR PATRIARCH CH

John Shodo Flatt (3rd from right) with his teacher Dennis ‘Genpo Sensei’ Merzel (2 nd from right) at John’s shiho ceremony (recognizing him as a Zen patriarch – 82 nd in lineage from Buddha), Amaravati Buddhist Retreat Center, Sept. 1993. The lady on the right is Catherine ‘Genno Sensei’ Pages, who received Dharma Transmission from Merzel in ’92 and supported John through his training as Head Monk in the summer of ’93.

I sent this message to the Quaker Community who were preparing a testimony to John Flatt’s life: 30 January 1995 I met John Flatt only in the last months of his life through my involvement as a volunteer at Trinity Hospice’s Day Centre. I only remember him coming there once while I w as also in attendance, but I was immediately drawn to him, because I had been told of his Quaker background and Buddhist interests. Although I did not see him at the Day Centre again, I learned soon after that he had been admitted tem porarily to the hospice as an in-patient, and I was able to visit him two or three times before a work assignment called me away. On these visits I was mostly interested in asking him about Zen and he would tell me of retreats he had been on and of trips to Zen centres in the U.S.A. He also recommended a few books. He had ha d only two books with him (which I believe were Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and and the thirteenth century’s Dogen’s From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment: Refining Your Life ). He wasn’t interested interested in my offer to bring him any other books along similar lines, lines, as these two were enough for him. When I expressed interest in one of his bo oks, he loaned it to me. Soon after, when I returned it, I was surprised at how grateful he was. It obviously meant a lot to him and, yet, in loaning it to me, it seemed he had been prepared never to see it again.

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I was reading Philip Kapleau’s The Three Pillars of Zen then Zen then and, although John very strongly approved of Kapleau’s own teachers, he disagreed with the amount of emphasis this book had on enlightenment. He told me a few classic Zen stories and I especially remember his emphasizing h ow the Bodhidharma’s response of ‘I don’t know’ to the Chinese Emperor ’s question ‘Who are you?’ was a very valid one. At the time I was quite qu ite worri w orried ed over ov er whethe wh etherr or not n ot I was wa s capable capa ble of o f performi per forming ng a new n ew manage ma nagement ment consulting project which I was about to start, and I always came away from these meetings with John feeling he was being a far more reassuring presence for me than I, as a hospice volunteer, must have been for him – even though the issues he was facing were far greater than my own. I never remember him complaining or even of showing signs of feeling pain from his illness except, perhaps, perh aps, when ther there e woul would d be a very sligh slightt winc wincing ing when he peri periodica odically lly adju adjusted sted the posi position tion his legs were in. After that, over the Christmas holiday period, I visited family abroad and then was away on the work assignment. Although I wanted to see him again, I wasn’t able to until I was back home on the first Saturday after my project had finished. As it turned out, I arrived at the hospice with the express purpose of visiting him just three hours after John had died. One of the nurses I knew there broke the news to me and then very kindly let me have a few moments of silence alone with him. Unlike my experience with some others, there was no sense of tragedy about this ‘death’, and it was clear that the real regrets I had about it were not for him, but for me. Later, I was very touched when his daughter Debbie invited me to attend the Memorial Meeting held at the Wandsworth Meeting House to give thanks for the Grace of God in John’s life. It was a simple service with an added contribution from those he knew from his Zen membership. This included a brief talk from his teacher, Dennis Genpo Merzel (whose book, The Eye Never Sleeps, Sleeps , John had recommended to me). John had mentioned in passing, without making much of it, of having been honoured in a ceremony by the Buddhist Community but, until Merzel’s talk, I had ha d no idea of the degree of acknowledgement that honour was, or that John had been the first Englishman to receive it. In some ways, this honour did not gel with how very easy and ‘ordinary’ it always felt to be around John. The things he had spoken of with the most interest to me had never been conceptual (I even remember him looking at me rather blankly on our first meeting when I asked him if he thought meditators suffered less from illnesses like colds). Instead, his interests seemed to be more in things like the enjoyment of the meal rituals on his intensive meditation Zen sesshin retreats (he relished describing the details of these meal rituals to me), the depth of impressions from an American trip (and a wry grin when he commented on being too low on funds to extend some aspects of the trip), working in the sunshine, and the taste (and religious associations) of the herb basil ba sil he had had on a trip to Italy Italy.. Even though he could be emotional (when, for example, speaking of his late wife and of how valuable the support of the Quaker Community had been for him following her death), there was a sense of him being very present, and yet without it being the presence of an ego. This ‘ordinariness’ only began to fit for me with the honour he had been acknowledged with when I read about one becoming an ordinary person in the third and last stage of Self-nature (as described in The Hazy Moon of Enlightenment , of which one of the co-ordinators, Maezumi R oshi, was teacher to John’s own teacher). On learning of the honour, I wondered at John not having had more of the ‘air of a teacher’, and yet, in retrospect, realized


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an important teaching was just in the example he was continually setting, particularly considering his own physical condition and circumstances at that time. John Flatt’s presence seemed to have had a similar benign influence on many whose lives he came into contact with, and hospice staff (one of whom I didn’t even meet until months afterwards) would often later mention him to me. I received this response:

John Shodo Flatt - Shiho 1993 – by Big Mind Zen Center

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John’s daughter told me he had said to her that Quaker’s ‘meditation’ and experience of silence in their meetings is in no way comparable to the practice and experience of meditation in Zen.   

I travelled to Vancouver and Hawaii at different times while I did some of the editing work with Chuck (and to a lesser extent with Lency). These trips were enormously valuable experiences for me and as a teenager and had something of a ‘homecoming’, too, as I had deeply loved Michener’s book Hawaii as

a real sense of the history and confluence of cultures underlying the state. It helped further heal some of the depression I had been experiencing following the end of my first marriage. The work obviously gave me very clear understanding of the Psychology of Vision’s teachings. During this time, I had a private session with Chuck using his intuitive method. Chuck asked me for my intuition about why I felt having a partner was a betrayal of my parents pa rents (an issue I had mentioned to him).

The immediate intuition came to me about a long-ago past life in a place like Egypt during a time when there was some kind of natural disaster, such as a flood. At that time in that life, I had had to make and act on a quick decision of either being able to save my wife or my parents, but I could not save both. I saved my wife and my parents perished, and I had been feeling guilty about that ever since. Whether this intuition over an incident in a past life was imaginary or had really happened did not seem

to matter. Just being able to have the understanding from that possible explanation was quite effective in releasing the negative betrayal feeling (making it a more comfortable and enjoyable experience of having both a partner and my parents, rather than it seeming to be an either-or choice). What matters is that the healing – psychological and emotional – happens in my inner reality now, not the past. Separately, I had a ‘gazing’ session with Lency, who is able to feel others’ emotions. This involved us each looking into the other’s eyes with as little blinking as possible. This session went on for some considerable time and Lency told me later that she felt she was drawing an enormous issue from me, which she described as being a ‘big dragon’. I felt uncomfortable for some time after, though cannot say for sure if it was because of this session. An interesting sequel was that, following my return to London, a spiritually sensitive couple, S and T, informed me that my heart had finally opened.


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I also had other very deep insights during this time in Hawaii. I met Aitken Roshi, participated at his Diamond Sangha Zen group at times, including my first sesshin, and was able to attend an Insight meditation weekend.   

1995 – ROBERT AITKEN ROSHI – THE WORLD AS OUR ‘HOLOGRAM’ I made my first trip tri p to Hawaii in 1995 to work as editor with wi th Chuck Spezzano and also attended a 1995-6 New Year’s Year’s Vipassana (Insight (I nsight Meditation) weekend w eekend at the Honolulu Diamond Sangha Zen centre there. ther e. It was led by Michele McDonald, a co-founder of Vipassana Hawaii in 1984. I also went to Zen meetings at both the original Koko An centre in Manoa Valley near the University of Hawaii and the later more substantial main Honolulu Diamond Sangha in the forested Palolo Valley hills above Honolulu. It was at the Diamond Sangha that I participated in a week’s sesshin and was able to experience the strict ritual of the Zen retreat’s mealtime that John Flatt had described to me in such detail from his bed at the hospice in London.

Koko An meditation hall and statue of Bodhidharma Nakagawa Roshi helped Robert choose in Japan in 1951 to use at a new Hawaii Zen centre.

A big highlight of this visit to Hawaii was meeting Robert Aitken (one of the earliest American Zen Masters) near the end of that year. My first meeting with Aitken Roshi was in a traditional student-Master interview during a meditation session. I knew Douglas Harding had visited his centre years before to

demonstrate his headless exercises to the Zen students, so I told him I had discovered I was an aware emptiness, rather than being an ego and personality. He replied that, notwithstanding this, something would get out of my chair at the end of the meeting and walk out of the door.

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With Aitken Roshi

Aitken Roshi’s beloved wife had died recently and he was apparently feeling very low emotionall emotionally y (which (which I have since discovered still happens to many ‘enlightened’ individuals). I heard he was open to being taken out to dinner (vegetarian (vegetari an ones) by visitors, so I happily happil y volunteered to do this. We went to a Chinese restaurant he knew where vegetarian imitation seafood and meat was served. I was reading a biography at the time and was in awe of being with this living legend. I told him I had met Douglas Harding and

he commented that Douglas was probably dead by now. I said that, on the contrary, Douglas was thriving and had just remarried. I also asked him if he had met Joseph Goldsmith, a Christian Science/New Thought-style teacher famous for his Infinite Way books, books, as Goldsmith had also been based on Oahu. Robert said they had not met, but that he knew of Joseph and had occasionally referred students to him when that teaching seemed more suited to the student.

Honolulu Diamond Sangha from the road


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I told Robert I was in awe of the great Zen teachers he had met and worked with, including the famed Haku’un Yasutani. Years previously, a friend of mine, Peter S, had had a private interview and tea with Yasutani. After drinking his tea, Yasutani had thrown his teacup at the wall, smashing it. He then asked Peter, ‘Is the cup whole, or is it broken?’ Robert had been a founding member of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and I attended some of their local meetings while in Hawaii.

Diamond Sangha meditation hall

Aitken Roshi and sesshin group, Honolulu Diamond Sangha, 1996

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THE BARRIER BEYOND B EYOND THE GATELESS... (published in Share It – The Journal of The Headless Way in 1996 ) 1996 )

By the last week of January, I had been in Hawaii for nearly four months on a project editing psychological books and card deck manuals aimed at clarifying our journey home, or what could be called that shift from becoming to Being. My last contact with the “headless way” conference, which often especially reminds me of my own personal journey, had been during a brief break back to Vancouver in October, when I had stayed with a friend who had email facilities. facil ities. But now, I was just opening an internet subscripsubscri ption for the Hawaiian office I was working at, and so, after a three-month gap, able to reconnect again. When I finally began going through some of the backlog over the next week, a feeling of frustration hit me. Here I was seeking a next key forward and the conference material just seemed to be going over and over the same ground again and again. Here was Richard speaking of the constant centre of nothingness, steady with him through a time of moving house and outer turbulence. And there was Alan echoing a connection to the emptiness on a trip he was making on the other side of the world. w orld. And here I

was, feeling that - some years year s back by now - I had made a huge step (through Douglas Harding’s Hardi ng’s “headless/seeing” exercises) in returning to an awareness of a (pre-personality and neutral) emptiness as a truer reality, but now increasingly having a sense of being stuck in this ... and yet knowing from many accounts that much more is available, particularly on a feeling level. Reading on, there was a further message from Richard speaking about the experiences of being his neighbour, being other species and being his planet, as well as being his body. It is one thing to be clear about the emptiness, the space, but, except for rare, and seemingly unaccountable, experiences, I had no sense of a union with others or with my world ... in spite of this being the main focus of my meditation

practice. How did Richard know about this experience of being the other, his world, etc., as well as his body? What trick or technique was I missing? How could I move on from a sense of being a separate “See-er” to an actual feeling awareness of a greater self? What point is there to having a heart if one is stuck in a neutral emptiness? When I mentioned this to Chuck Spezzano, the author whose books I was editing, he said that this neutral emptiness must actually be something of a counterfeit peace, good for a break now and then, but connected and alive (and added that, although my experience of not the real thing, since reality is very connected emptiness seemed timeless, timeless, it is more likely time slowed to something of a “soul-level time”, since the experience of true eternity is full of love and joy). During this time in Hawaii I had also been attending some of the meditation evenings and weekends at

the local Diamond Sangha Zen Buddhist group. I spoke of my predicament to the master, Robert Aitken (whom Douglas had visited at his zendo on Maui a quarter of a century before). Aitken Roshi said there were a number of cases in classic Zen literature of individuals indivi duals being caught in emptiness. I asked him for an example and he recommended Case 46 from The Gateless Barrier (his (his translation with commentary of the thirteenth century koan collection The collection The Mumonkan), a copy of which he had inscribed to me with

the words, “To Brian, clear about the gateless ... now about the barrier...”.


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Case 46 poses the question: “How do you step from the top of a hundred-foot pole?” About 1,100 years ago, as part of this riddle the Chinese master Ch’ang-sha had said, “You who sit at the top of a hundred-foot pole; although you have entered the Way, Way, it is not yet genuine. Take a step from the top of the pole and worlds of the ten directions are your total body bo dy.” .”

In his commentary on this koan, Aitken Roshi quotes (via Miura and Sasaki’s Zen Dust) Ch’ang-sha as also saying, “The entire universe is in your eye; the entire universe is your total body; the entire universe is your own luminance, the entire universe is within your own luminance. In the entire universe there is no one who is not your own self.” Now, I thought, “ How do I know my body, including physical, emotional and mental sensations, isn’t the world (or, at least, isn’t m m y world)?” world)?” “What proof do I have, have I ever had, that there is any separation between what I call my experience of my body and the world? ” (Just as, what

proof did I ever have that where I come from is locked into a head . . . And yet, for decades - if not lifetimes! - , I fell into the belief that that was the way things were). Aitken Roshi has written of the world existing (from our perspective) as something of a hologram o n our senses. This has to own n perception and experien ce of it. And, be true. For each of us there is no worl d except for our ow

as Douglas Harding so clearly points out, as far as our (notably visual and auditory) sensory evidence is concerned, there is no place we can find where the world stops and our senses begin. Further along in the conference backlog, I noticed Richard’s query: “Where is sensation? Where is breathing?” Is it in us ... or in the world? What if my whole experience is always just about this connection, in which I and everyone else are inextricably one with our worlds, joined at e very sensory level -- and we just thought we we were separate? What if there is actually nothing to do, except to remove the thought, to come home to union and oneness? Suddenly, many things began to fall into place for me... If my (sensory) body is the world, I would obviously care for this body just as much as I would care for

the world, and vice-versa. It would be impossible to play a win-lose or lose-win game between the world and my body if the latter is the former. Any damage to the world would simultaneously be self-destructive self-de structive (hence the expression “live by the sword, die by the sword”), making it impossible for me to take in any way I could truly gain, whenever it is at the expense of a world which is actually myself (this would be analogous to trying to enlarge myself while reducing my shadow). Clearly, I can also never give in a way that others would truly win whenever it is at my expense (or, enlarge my shadow while reducing myself). An awareness of this union would be the end of feeling depend dependent ent on my world, the end of rebelling against it and the end of being a martyr to, or for, it.

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Furthermore, it must also follow that, not only are we born with our body, but our whole world (including our culture, nationality, race and family) is the spacesuit which is born with us; our fuller, truer, body from which we are never separate. Only later conditioning shrinks us to the belief we have a physical body separate from our world.

I mentioned this to Chuck and he said that, not only is this true, but it is also true that we continue to project our world ‘out there’, adding, addin g, somewhat wryly, that what we most want, we project ‘out there’, too. And, since since our world is our body body, as we heal heal and transform transform personally personally,, so does does our world. How could I ever be unworthy of being in a world which is me?

How could I not forgive a world I projected out there in the first place? This means the problems I see in the world - or have with the world - are absolutely my problems ... although not necessarily ones I may be aware of at a conscious level of my mind. If I am a victim, it is not of the world, but of part of myself ... victims would perforce be victims of their own creation.

From a feeling perspective, my life (aliveness) is the/my world’s ... and vice versa. When I feel nothing is special, then so does the world I projected out there seem. On the other hand, when I feel joy, so does the world become a joyful place . All we need do to be in touch with our world, and to come home to the truth of who we are, is to stay aware of what is arising ar ising in our mind and body body.. These include physical sensations, emotions connected to bodily feelings and similar roots which are the source and trigger of mental reactions. Really, really , practicing this awareness, must inevitably be the true the true experience of this non-separation, or oneness -oneness -an experience of here and now (in the sense of being the here and now) as a continuous process ... with no separate enduring self as the “see-er”, doer or experiencer . experiencer .

Here’s a rough paraphrase of a recent summary of this shared with the conference: “For me, and there may be others whose experience is similar, headlessness, or ‘Seeing’, was a marvelous escape into the space/void from the chains of the old personality. But there also

seemed to be something lacking, because it seemed so neutral. Not only did it mean an end to painful feelings; it also tended to imply operating at some ‘remove’ from the body and ALL feeling . . . a dispassionate way of seemingly being in the world but not of it.

With these new insights, my own more recent focus and evolution has been one of coming BACK to this body, and yet NOT in the old way; for the ‘headless’ awareness now forms part of the ‘package’. Now, there is an awareness of physical sensations and emotions (especially in, though not limited to, the heart region), but invariably without the identification of ‘my’ illusory old self as the experiencer. And what a difference it makes in terms of connecting with others, of coming alive, and of being and enjoying the experience of each conscious moment ...”   


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I spent the 1995-6 New Year’s Year’s Eve weekend on a Vipassana retreat ret reat at the Diamond Sangha Zen Center in the hills above Honolulu. The meditation session included sitting through the turning of one year to the

next, which was memorable for the sound of New Year fireworks coming up to us from Honolulu.   

1997 – AJAHN SUMEDHO – THE MIND VS. THE WAY On Easter Day, 1997, when visiting the Amaravati Buddhist Buddhi st temple and monastic centre centr e Amaravati, near Hemel Hempstead with a friend, we encountered encounter ed Ajahn Sumedho seated on a cushion and having tea in the dining hall. His tea included some small cakes or sweets, which I wondered about, as this monastic tradition prohibits eating after their mid-day meal. Ajahn Sumedho was originally from America. He had served as a navy medic during the Korean war and then, following a degree in South Asian studies, worked with the Peace Corps in SE Asia. When he was 32, he became a novice monk of the Thai Forest Monk tradition under the guidance of Ajahn Chah. Ajahn Sumedho Sumedho went on on to found two monasteries monasteries in England England and and was was instrumental instrumental in helping to set up centres throughout the world which follow the teaching and lineage of his teacher Ajahn Chah. It was mid-afternoon and there were monks and visitors there, too. Ajahn Sumedho warmly welcomed us to join him. He had a genuine smile and I felt very at ease in his presence. He asked us questions about ourselves and shared comments and insights. Others, who were students of his, gathered round. I asked him if our presence was preventing them from approaching and speaking with him, but he said they just wanted to listen.

Ajahn Sumedho having tea and giving a talk to monks at Amaravati

I noted my interest in Zen Buddhism and in Advaita, especially the teachings of Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta. He said he had read much of the latter two and very much valued their teachings. He especially liked the wisdom which is in Nisargadatta’s I Am That .

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He asked me what my two greatest lessons or teachings had been, which may have been a standard question he used with visitors and new monks. I told him the first was probably Gurdjieff’s admonition to remember myself, as that had been a wake-up call for me to turn my attention inward, and the second had to have been Douglas Harding’s headless exercises, which had one become aware of oneself before the mind (at least, it had done so for me). me) . It turned out that Ajahn Sumedo was himself an admirer of Douglas Harding. Two of his novice monks had attended the Headless Retreat I was on in June, 1995, and then two more of his senior monks were at Douglas’s funeral in 2007, and the latter told me Ajahn Sumedo himself would have come had he not been out of the country at the time.

I then returned the question to him, asking what his greatest teachings had been. He responded that it was his own Master’s favourite, from Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, that any suffering brings a teaching with it and will cease when the attachment causing it ends.

Ajahn Sumedho Sumedho said he was destined destined to be a monk and that the life suited suited him very well. He noted he would soon have to travel to Thailand and said that, as he aged, he grew less and less fond of travel (he was 62 at this time). Thirteen years later, in 2010, he retired to Thailand, where he is known as Luang Por Sumedho – Luang Por meaning meaning ‘venerable father’. My own sense of awareness deepened considerably in the years that followed this meeting and I have often wished I could meet with Ajahn Sumedho again to share at a more evolved level than I felt at the time I met him. When I was seeking writings which spoke of having awoken to awareness, I found one of his books, The Mind and the Wa y, helpful. helpful .   

OTHERS During this period, I attended at talks and meetings of a number of other teachers and authors and met a few of them independently indepen dently.. Just a couple of these were:

Marianne Williamson William son – in May 1994, I attended a talk and a two-day workshop on A Course in Miracles with her. I was drawn to this as she had been a major influence in popularizing ACIM through her best A Return to Love. The impression I was left with was that she was interpreting ACIM for mental selling A selling and psychological levels (rather than coming from the living gnostic experience of it) which is all that

most can hear. At the end of the workshop, the head of the London ACIM group, Patrick, presented Marianne with transcriptions the group had done of her prayers, thoughts and words used at different ceremonies. She was very moved by this and these were later published as Illuminata. Marianne has since published several more books.

John de Ruiter – Shaun had suggested I might like to hear this man – possibly because he is a Canadian. I went to a single London meeting of John’s. He is a striking looking, but controversial, individual. The ‘meeting’ was unusual in that John would speak pointedly to the questioners, rather than


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to all the others in the room and then, only invariably, after a very long uncomfortable silence. I had the impression that what he was saying was coming through him and that he was acting as more of a

messenger than a teacher in his own right. And, to me, the messages coming through seemed to have an Old Testament Testament type flavour about them, as if not yet including New Testament aspects of love and forgiveness. 

Later in 1997, I put my Clapham flat in the hands of an agent to let out and returned to Hawaii, where I continued working with Chuck and Lency Spezzano. I remember closing and locking the do or to my old

flat with the thought that I was going to a new birth and leaving my old life, the last home I had lived in with my first wife and the years of depression, behind. I would never live in it again. Almost immediat immediately ely after after my arrival arrival in Hawaii Hawaii I went went for for a swim on my own, own, locking my wallet wallet with money and credit cards, Nikon camera, tape recorder and other key possessions in Chuck’s pickup truck. While I was swimming, the truck was broken into and these possessions, which I had valued highly, were all stolen. When Chuck learned of this, he said, “I hear you’ve had a visit from Kali.” And so it had been. I took this incident to mean my old identity had been taken and I was at the point of a new birth.

I thought my new life was to be in Hawaii, sought out possible places to live there and was open to work or business opportunities opportuni ties (despite not having a visa vis a to be there as more than a visitor). visitor) . Things, however, were to turn out very differently differently..

While staying in the ‘barn’, an outbuilding at Chuck and Lency’s home on Oahu, I participated in a short workshop run for Psychology of Vision’s international organizers. These included people from the UK, Continental Europe, Canada, Taiwan and Japan. In one session on this workshop, I was paired with a lady named Hiromi, the key Japanese PoV organizer for Japan. The ‘exercise’ involved each of us staring into the other’s eyes for a protracted period. At the end of the exercise, Hiromi, who was noted for having intuitive – or even psychic – powers, told me that she had seen an old and dying man inside me (which, in a way, was a rather good description of how I had felt after my last years in London). Hiromi went on to tell me she saw this old man rejuvenated and returned to life through riding a horse in green countryside. This latter part did not make sense to me. I had only been on a horse once as a child, and then when it was led, rather than me riding it. I did not feel any particular affinity for horses. I thanked Hiromi and, soon after, some of us departed Oahu for the Big Island of Hawaii, where Chuck was leading an all-Japanese workshop at the Waikaloa Village hotel and conference centre to be followed by a longer more international Trainers’ Training workshop. It was during the Japanese training that I met a lady, M, on that course who would become my second wife. (Ironically, the Japanese symbols for her surname, 関口, translate as ‘gateless barrier’. Her first name means ‘gift from Heaven’.) We had our first ‘date’ on the last night of the workshop. It included an interpreter for the first part of it, as we neither could speak the other’s language. M left with the group to return to Japan the next day. M and I corresponded afterwards (she, rather than me, using a translator), and she invited me to Japan. I was pretty much broke, but M said that, if I paid the airfare, she would

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take care of all my costs in Japan. It made sense to go, as I no longer had a home to return to in London (it was let, and the rent was largely going towards the mortgage payments and the agents’ fees).   

1998 I arrived at Narita airport north of Tokyo on Valentine’s Day, 1998, where M was waiting for me. We took the train back to her home area, in Gunma, a landlocked state in the middle of the biggest island, Honshu, and M drove me in her car, which was a British Mini) to her apartment home in a small town called Komagata just outside the state capital. Once I was there, I learned that M had been born in the year of the horse (by the Chinese horoscope – my own birth year is that of the tiger by that system), her apartment building was called ‘Pony Heights’, and both the town and state we lived in had the word, or symbol for, ‘horse’ as part of their names. The countryside around was covered in green fields with mountains in the background. Hiromi’s prophecy seemed to be coming true. I stayed in Japan for about a year and a half in total with occasional breaks abroad to renew my visa.

While there, I did some workshops for Japanese attendees in Gunma and Niigata states using translators. The workshops which meant the most to me were ones in which I presented headlessness to those attending, which included a series of participative experiments. Douglas’s On Having No Head had been translated into Japanese some years before and he himself had visited Japan and given talks

and workshops at that time – some in Zen monasteries. My workshops were modelled on those which Douglas and Richard Lang also gave in the UK and elsewhere, and Richard was kind enough to send me some of the structure and material I used. Those attending seemed appreciative enough, but none seemed to be affected to the degree I had been.

With M and friend R and attendees at one of my Japanese workshops


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During 1998, while I was in Japan, my father was diagnosed with cardiovascular problems and had a quadruple bypass, from which he recovered quite well. The check on his heart had also revealed an aortic aneurysm which was also corrected by operation once he had recovered sufficiently from the bypass surgery.   

1999 In the spring of 1999, I returned to London and put the Clapham flat up for sale. It sold in June for £156,000. It had been in joint names with my ex-wife and in negative equity when she left me. I had offered it to her for nothing shortly after the separation, but she declined and eventually transferred her share of ownership to me. I had only been able to manage the large mortgage payments for it through its rental income. The proceeds from the sale were almost entirely used in paying off the mortgage and

clearing the debts I had built up over the last few years of either no work or editing work on just a living allowance.

I stayed briefly with friend J back in Ruislip but then, as M was joining me, rented an apartment over a shop on the Uxbridge Road in Rickmansworth, in London’s NW outskirts, but with underground and rail links to central London.

It was important I find work now to make ends meet. My father had admonished me that I had to be responsible now that I had a partner. After quite a few unsuccessful applications, I finally landed a job as Acting Manager for a Vo Volunteer lunteer Bureau in south south London. London. The job was just just for a year year and paid less than than I was used to getting in my consulting work, but it was full-time and steady for a year. I celebrated my 50 th birthday with M and my parents, who were visiting from their home in Florida, at a London restaurant on a Friday and then started my new job on the Monday following. M attended English school part time and found some part-time work in a residential care home for the elderly.

8 2000 ─ 2009 2009 – RICKMANSWORTH, DOVER AND JAPAN – SOLO EXPLORATIONS 2000 - 2006 As it turned turned out, the the work at the Volunteer Volunteer Bureau Bureau was only to be be for a year. year. A permanent manager was was advertised for, but I found the chairman of the Bureau’s committee too temperamental and interfering to wish to work under him any longer (despite having benefited from learning an enormous amount about the charity sector, which was a new one for me to work full-time in, from him). This meant I was out of a job again . . . and had had now just turned 51. I applied for different jobs focussing on the charity sector, including jobs at other volunteer bureaux, which seemed to have more heart than the businesses I had worked for before.

I was hired as a Legal Representative for a national asylum seekers’ charity at their new Dover office in Kent, near to Stowting village where J’s widowed father lived. After rooming in Dover for about 5 months (following staying at J’s father’s bungalow for about 5 weeks) and weekends back in our Rickmansworth flat, I bought a house with £5,000 deposit in Dover in November, married M (allowing her to obtain a spousal visa) and we moved to our new home. My sister and her husband visited us at both Rickmansworth and Dover on the week of our move.

Realizing that I could not count on my job or employer to provide for my financial future, in 2002 I bought my first rental flats with minimum down payments (£5,000 deposit on the first and the rest was borrowed on credit cards) and, as prices rose, continued re-mortgaging properties and buying more until 2007.

In 2004 we moved to a bungalow in the nearby village of Lydden, after deciding not to move to a previous 2nd home we had bought for ourselves. We sold that previous 2nd home and rented out our 1 st home in Dover. Just after my 55 th birthday, in 2005, while M was on a long visit to family in Japan, I was diagnosed with

diabetes. I had experienced fluctuating vision for several months, which required changes to my prescription glasses. One change followed another until I was tested to check if diabetes was the cause. 106


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My doctor’s office told me I now had a progressive incurable illness and I would be on medication for the rest of my life. I had been vegetarian for some years and thought I had been eating reasonably carefully, but this new situation caused me to become much more conscious of my food and lifestyle.   

2007 By 2007, I had bought a total of 12 properties over 6 years, though had resold a few. At the peak during this period I had owned 9 properties at the same time (with an estimated market value of over £1 million, but with mortgages totalling over 80% of that). It was challenging having a full-time job, managing the cashflow, rentals and tenants and also important to spend spare time with M. We also both needed to visit families in Japan and North America, usually each year.   

Douglas Harding died in January, 2007, aged 97, and M and I drove up to attend his funeral at the church in Nacton, near Ipswich, Suffolk. The church was full, but we managed to find space at the back. The service included moving music. There was a reception at the village hall and I was

able to speak with different of the attendees, including two monks from Amaravati. Those who had followed his headless way were invited back to his home where his widow Catherine and Richard Lang and other senior students lead some headless group exercises and we were able to visit and reminisce.

Douglas Harding’s headstone depicting his model of the view out from the headless mystery at the centre

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Douglas’s headstone was custom-designed and expensive to make, so an appeal went to his students to raise the funds for it.

Later this year, I attended the Headless Way gathering in Salisbury, Sali sbury, the first without Douglas being there in person. I enjoyed the many practice sessions and seeing friends from the one I had attended in 1995, including Catherine Harding, Richard Lang and Anne S. Richard has been an indefatigable worker in sharing Douglas’s work and exercises through managing the internet website, publi shing books and running workshops around the world.

With Richard Lang and Catherine Harding, Headless Gathering, Salisbury, 2007   

Early in 2007 M returned to live in Japan so she could help family through illnesses. Over the next few months she established herself in i n Japan asked me to join her there, where she would start full-time full- time work and support us. This sounded ideal to me.

At Eas Easter, ter, my clo closes sestt fri friend end J had an eme emerge rgency ncy ope operat ration ion at Hil Hillin lingdo gdon n Hos Hospit pital al whi which ch dis discov cov-ered he had advanced colon cancer and required the removal of his large intestine. I stayed at his flat and visited him in hospital as often as I could, though managed to take a break to visit my parents and have a family reunion celebration of their 60 th wedding anniversary at Disneyworld

Florida. During J’s illness, I decided to resign from my work at the charity. In my six years there, I had represented about 500 asylum seekers (sometimes with family members) at initial applications to the Home

Office and latterly in initial appeals at courts in London for those who had sufficient merit. My cases had achieved well over a 50% success rate in being allowed to stay. stay.


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Now that I had stopped working, I was able to spend some days with Arkaji in Birmingham and, at his Programme (IIP). It was request, wrote a draft towards the spiritual side of his Intuitive Intelligence Programme (IIP). largely focussed on helping people turn their attention around and back at themselves. Arkaji felt what I had produced might serve just as an introduction to the spiritual side of the programme he had in mind (rather than work as the spiritual part of the programme itself). However, to my knowledge, it was never used. Arkaji asked me if I would help use material from his transcribed transcr ibed talks to put towards this thi s IIP work. I did take a copy of that voluminous material but, despite going through much of it over the next few years, was unable to turn it into a product which would satisfy the requirements for such a teaching.   

I decided to sell the Lydden bungalow, as the mortgage payments on it were higher than achievable rents from it. This would reduce the property portfolio to 8 modest properties; 7 of which would be rented and one kept for our own use.

I visited M for 6 weeks in the autumn, staying at her parents’ old traditional-style home in the foothills of the Japanese Alps, where I had most of the tatami-matted upstairs as my study.

M’s parents’ home in Asabara, Gunma, and my upstairs study

While here, I was able to reunite with good friend R, who lent me different books of his. These inUniverse and Your Immortal Reality . These cluded Gary Renard’s The Disappearance of the Universe books recount teaching conversations Gary had with two visitors from another dimension, both of whom had had lives on earth at the time of Christ. The books came across as helpful adjuncts to A Course in Miracles. It was especially interesting that the visitors shared with Gary a fuller version of the Gospel of Thomas, which are comprised of sayings of Jesus (pa rt of which were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls). book with CD. The R also loaned me Roshi Genpo Merzel’s Big Mind Big Heart – Finding Your Way book book shows one a process by which one can step out of limiting self-beliefs and into and awakening of a ‘big mind and big heart’ awareness. It offers what is, in effect, an accelerated means of awakening.

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Later, when back in the UK, I met a man who had attended retreats with Merzel (and John Flatt) and who later attended a Big Mind workshop in London and was amazed to watch a participant ‘solve’ the Mu koan quite quickly using this process. This Big Mind process is an important discovery and teaching which, in my sense of it, has one achieve a state simply by ‘imagining’, sensing and believing one is already in that state. I could see some similarities to the NLP ‘manifesting’ practice and also to Jesus’s admonition, ‘…whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. ’ Mark 11:24 11:24 (NIV).   

Meanwhile my friend J had had some initial recovery. He was discharged into the care of a friend at her home. However, after a couple of months there he decided to return to his own home where, aside from visits from friends, he was on his own. His condition deteriorated, and he died in mid-November, two weeks after my return from the visit to Japan.   

ONENESS BLESSING In 2007, friend R in Japan writes me about Oneness Blessing and, and, because he knew I had known Awakening ing into Oneness – The Power of Arjuna Ardagh, tells me about the latter’s book on it, Awaken Blessing in the Evolution of Consciousness . I bought and read the book, which told quite an incredible story about a couple running a school for children in India. The students received mystical

experiences and blessings and they, in turn, were able to pass on blessings, also called deekshas, to others.

The couple, now known as Sri Bhagavan and Amma, together with select of their student s bought land in southern Andhra Pradesh state where they built a huge Oneness Temple Temple and established the main base

of their Oneness University. The purpose of this university is to help people awaken, become enlightened and return to the state of oneness. Subsequently they have spread out through an international program. I located oneness blessing givers in my area and in London and attended several of these blessing

meetings, and when I went to Japan I did one there as well. Most of a meeting was in meditative silence with background Moola Mantra music and chants and a 15-minute guided meditation helping put attention on our hearts. There was a mini-deeksha/blessing near the beginning, involving a short placing of hands on the top of each participant’s head from one of the Blessers and, later, full Deeksha blessings – with both of their hands placed on top of our heads for a longer period and then at the sides of the head/

temple - from each of them separately, all during closed-eyed meditation. I did experience a reconnection with a ‘love energy’ I feel when meditating – especially in a group – which often lasted some days, together with improved well-being.


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With Oneness Blessing givers in the UK and Japan (L) With Maureen C and Jane M (R) With assistant and meeting hostess Mieko H and Blessing giver Yuka M

Later, I attended a workshop on this theme run by Arjuna and the blessing givers in London. I noted that Arjuna had definitely matured, honed his style and acquired great familiarity with many techniques (some from his own inspiration, inspiration , which I have never encountered before) – largely for helping people step out of their minds and be present with who is experiencing now …and to distinguish what is an ok use of the tool the mind is without letting it continue to run us.

After this, I did the the weekend weekend Oneness Oneness Blessing Blessing training training which which was then required required if one wished wished to attend the course at the Oneness University (the latter costing about US$5,000 at that time), but never went on to do the training in India. I kept a journal of my experiences with the oneness blessing and note from it that I received a total of 55 blessings. The movement generated some controversy through how much was being charged for people to take the course training for being able to give the blessing themselves and also because there had been an initial impression that everyone who received the blessings would become enlightened. There was also

disagreement over whether this movement had a monopoly of this kind of deeksha, or blessing. I asked an Indian spiritual teacher I knew if he knew about Bhagavan and Amma and Oneness University.

He referred to Bhagavan as Kalki Bhagavan and knew of them and where they are based. He said that he had been asked to go there to speak to the students, but had declined, saying he had his own purpose to follow. He had been told that all other spiritual teachers who had been invited, had gone and that he was the exception to this. He clearly did not want to be critical of them but did d id comment on their being

known to be offering enlightenment for money (an issue addressed in Arjuna’s book). He said it could be possible that any beneficial spiritual effect might actually come from the land they are on having been associated with powerful spiritual beings in the past – and that such things are not unknown in India. I also asked him if he knew about the buildings there, including the big temple for 8,000 people to be in at the same time. He said he did, calling it ‘the building with the big room with no pillars’. He said it would be

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easier to meet in an open field where 80,000 could gather and agreed with me that it is also preferable to be open to the sky and touching the ground – and I remembered Jesus having his meetings and talks to gatherings in such open spaces. He said there was nothing wrong in going to the Oneness University if one wanted to spend money on a spiritual holiday. holiday. He agreed with me that such teachers and places do not have a monopoly on Divine energy and blessings and also added that teachers who charge for spiritual work often end up suffering depression.   

2008 In January-February 2008 I visited my parents in Florida and attended a weekend reunion in Miami of the school I had been to in Valencia, Venezuela (and had left 43 years prior at the age of 14!). It had been my favourite school and place to live, perhaps until going to Mexico. Seeing fr iends one had known intimately after such a long separation made me aware that, although we change psychologically and physically over time, much of our essential selves remains the same. After I stopped overnight with friend K at her home in Pompano Beach. In May, the sale of the bungalow in Lydden went through and I moved into the previously let studio flat to use as a UK base while expecting to be in Japan most of the time. And, finally, finally, in August, I went to Japan to rejoin r ejoin M at an apartment she had rented in Ogo, Maebashi, Gunma, where I stayed for 11 months. We helped her daughter and son with purchases of their new cars and her daughter began a 2-year course in hairdressing.   

RAMANA MAHARSHI AND NISARGADATTA “Renunciation is always in the mind, not in going to forests or solitary places or giving up one’s duties. The main thing is to see that the mind does not turn outward but inward. It does not rea lly rest with a man whether he goes to this place or that or whether he gives up his duties or no t. All that happens according to destiny. destiny. ... The only freedom you have is to turn your mind inward and renounce activities there.” - Ramana Maharshi, Padamalai “To be free in the world you must be free of the world. Otherwise your past decides for you and your future. Between what had happened and what must happen you are caught. Call it destiny or karma, but never—freedom. First return to your true being and then act from the heart of love.”

- Nisargada Nisargadatta tta Friend R in Japan has been a long-time student of the teachings of Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta. He had visited Ramana’s ashram at Arunachala several times, meeting Lakshmana Swami, Annamalai


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Swami and David Godman. Through R, I intensified further studies of the talks and writings of these two teachers.

Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj

While I had, rather indiscriminately, read almost any of the writings and transcribed talks of these two, it seemed difficult to find specific instructions for one’s practice. I learned that much of what was reported of their talks was actually intended to speak to the level of the audience they were with. Talks with different audiences accordingly had different messages, with some messages seemingly conflicting with others. I therefore focused on what they had said to their inner circle of more advanced followers.

Nisargadatta’s I Am That seemed a good source of his message, probably partly because Maurice Frydmann had helped edit and produce it. Later I would also appreciate his teacher’s, Siddharam eshwar’s, Self-Realization . book, Master Key to Self-Realization. In the case of Ramana Maharshi, his sayin gs as recorded by Muruganar in his Guru Vachaka Kovai (Garland of Guru’s Sayings ), later re-edited and published in Padamalai by David Godman, and Sadhu Om’s The Path of Sri Ramana Maharshi – Part 1 , are very distilled and valuable material.   

AWARENESS WATCHING AWARENESS – MICHAEL LANGFORD Of the many valuable and appreciated books my friend R loaned me, there was an unusual one called The Most Direct and Rapid Means to Eternal Bliss . It was written with each of its statements numbered and intended to be read (and re-read) as a teaching book. There was no author’s name in the book, but through research I found the writer was Michael Langford. Immediately on commencing it, I was aware of it having a very important message for me. It speaks of how to identify the ego, which it calls ‘the imposter’, and goes on to describe seven methods of reaching eternal bliss. The first, and key one for me, is called ‘ awareness watching awareness’. As soon as I saw this, I knew this added a BIG step forward in my practice.

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I HAD awoken to awareness, a state outside of the mind and thought, as my realer identity. I could be that awareness and live from it for awareness of thoughts and perceptions. But what I had been missing

was turning the awareness back on itself, rather than looking outwards with it. Staying with the awareness is abidance in oneself and truer meditation than watching watchi ng the mind or breath. Michael recommends staying with the awareness, to the exclusion exclusi on of everything else, for several hours hour s every day until you find yourself established in that eternal bliss. The problem for virtually all people is that they have NOT awoken to an awareness before their mind.

This means they will read this book with their mind and will not understand what awareness is, never mind how to turn awareness back on itself.

In a separate writing, How I Discovered the Awareness Watching Awareness Practice , Michael spoke of working for many years with Ramana Maharshi instructions to ask oneself ‘Who am I?’, but without success. He then explored what this question could really mean in the way that Ramana intended it. He determined that I am must be a feeling and that this feeling was actually his own present awareness. He then went on to show how he found in numerous sayings of Ramana to his key followers which clearly says the same thing. ‘The only true and full awareness is awareness of awareness. Till awareness is awareness of itself, it knows no peace at all.’ (Garland (Garland of Guru’s Sayings No. 418, Muruganar) ‘Is it not because you are yourself awareness, that you now perceive this universe? If you observe awareness steadily, this awareness itself as Guru will r eveal the Truth.’ (Garland (Garland of Guru’s Sayings No. 432, Muruganar)

Michael went on to confirm his conclusions with Sri Ganesan, the then head of Sri Ramana’s Ashram. My practice was deeply affected through Michael Langford’s Awareness Watching Awareness practice and further focused study of the key sayings of Ramana Maharshi to his closest followers.   

I spent July to December 2009 back in the UK with a visit to my parents in Florida in October.   

2009 – RUPERT SPIRA Rupert describes his awakening experience as occurring when he was with his teacher, Francis Lucille. He heard a dog barking in another place in the valley where they were and he noted this as being


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separate to him. Francis asked him to place his hands on the carpet and tell him where the feeling was. Rupert immediately became aware that it was in his awareness, which is also what he is. It was equally true for him that all perceptions p erceptions occur in that same awareness. This struck me as being the experiential answer to The Gateless Barrier’s Case 46 – that Rupert had stepped in the th e 10 directions from fr om the 100foot pole.

In November 2009, I attended one of Rupert Spira’s meetings at the Study Society’s Colet House on Talgarth Road in London. I arrived early and was able to have a good long chat with Rupert prior to the

meeting. He is very pleasant and quite clear and focussed on the experience of what is really happening now, rather than the hypnotised illusion virtually all people walk around believing. He admits it is fine to use one’s mind and concepts such as time for doing one’s work and daily activities but has found – with practice and continually testing what the real experience is – to increasingly come from being the ‘knowing presence’ - the aware colourless, formless subject that cannot be found in any location. He referred to the rapidity of Ramana Maharshi’s early death fear and experience of finding this, saying that others are not usually so quick in its discovery.

Rupert Spira

He also has found that the substance of our physical bodies and all of the world in our experience is

made out of the same knowing presence or conscious awareness. Hence, it is both the emptiness and the fullness. Nothing in our experience is separate from that which is aware of them (the waking dream is

analogous to a sleeping dream). When we identify with being this awareness, there is an end to identifying with being a physical body and personality. We We can be in relationships without coming from need or

fear. There can really be love for and empathy with others, whom we experience as no longer separate from us. True friendship can be discovered for the first fir st time. Having this as a more or less continuous conti nuous living experience does not mean that there is no more suffering or that challenging and problem situations

do not arise, but it does mean that we no longer need to be lost in them and feel helpless or victimised. Rather, it allows us to deal with them with intelligence and love. We are much more effective in living our

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lives. (As an example, he noted that on the previous weekend he had seen his ex-wife and 10-year old son, who is with her in Oxford, and that he had to deal with his son who was extremely troubled, angry and upset.)

He says that every night we gladly surrender our personality ‘selves’ to sleep and are regenerated by it. Why not just do it all the time - while still behaving appropriately (playing the ‘we are somebody’ game) in our daily lives and relationships? relationships? I asked him about awareness watching awareness, to the exclusion of watching/witnessing objects. He had heard about Michael Langford’s book, but not read it. As far as I understand his response, since the knowing presence is inseparable from its objective experiences, one cannot divorce subject from object. Being the witness is only a step towards being everything. (I did not feel this fully answered my question, or explained what very evolved masters have described, but it was helpful in understanding his perspective.) He noted to me privately that some try to be the witness only as a means of escaping from/

distancing themselves from the world’s reality, and that this can be really more of a resistance than an enlightenment. I noted Ramana’s reported two enlightenments - the first took him away from the world, while the 2nd brought him more back into it and into interaction with others.

However, when I asked him about the difference between consciousness and awareness, he said they were the same thing. My own sense (and concurring with what Arkaji has told me) is that they are different, in that one is more source and the other the activity of that source. It has occurred to me since that one’s degree of awakening will definitely affect one’s understanding and views on these terms. Rupert’s teachings are known as being of the non-dual sort, which includes a broad range of teachers who have themselves experienced a broad range of degrees of awakening.

I was very glad to have attended the evening and feel more deeply grounded from it – also more prepared to offer similar meetings in Japan or elsewhere. It was much like the Douglas Harding workshops, but I feel clearer about what Rupert means by the unity experience. He signed a copy of his book, The Transparency of Things – Contemplating the Nature of Experience , to me. I told Rupert I had read it in Japan and invited him to visit us there. He told me he had done a touring exhibition of his pottery in

Japan in the past and loved Japan’s traditional crafts and culture.   

I returned to Japan in December of 2009, so I would be able to see my father-in-law, father- in-law, who was in hospital with incurable multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow. M had quit her job to nurse him. Almost immediately after my arrival, we moved from our apartment in Ogo to a low costing older pre-fab house in Omama, in the same compound where one of her brothers lived and nearer M’s family and the hospital her father was in.


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Our pre-fab home, Watanabe Jutaku, in Omama, where I re-experienced the primordial – so familiar to me during infancy   

2010 In January 2010, M’s sister-in-law, sister-in-l aw, who had been in hospital for several years with a lupus-type condition died, and I experienced my first elaborate Japanese funeral.

Aspects of a Japanese funeral – focal point for the Buddhist ceremony at the Memorial Hall and an elaborate hearse

M’s father died just 3 weeks later, and we went through the ritual again. Despite his death affecting her very strongly, M found new work. Her mother, now unable to manage on her own, was moved into a nursing home.   

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ROBERT MONROE AND THE BINAURAL BEAT From my very early days of exploration explor ation I had been interested in out of the body experiences. I had bought and read some of the early classic books on it, including Sylvan Muldoon and Hereward Carrington’s The Projection of the Astral Body (1929), (1929), but any experimentation I tried had not been successful in terms of being able to do it consciously. (I had been similarly fascinated with past life exploration, es and had had more success pecially after reading Morey Bernstein’s The Search for Bridey Murphy and in experimenting with hypnotic regression with my first wife – though only managed to take her to reexperiencing infancy of her present life, not to past lives.) The book which had impressed me most on the astral projection topic was Robert Monroe’s Journeys Out of the Body (1971), (1971), which I had read soon after its publication. publicat ion. He had seemingly had spontaneous success in such experiences, which came about through his experiments using audio material to assist sleep learning. It was only while in Japan in 2008-9, that I learned Monroe had written two sequels, Far Journeys (1985) Journeys (1985) and Ultimate Journey (1994), (1994), which described his further adventures and discoveries on these journeys. Perhaps more importantly, he founded what became The Monroe Institute to help others use audio material for various beneficial purposes.

Robert Monroe

In addition to offering retreat courses for people, Monroe’s organizations also produce audio material people can buy to use at home. He coined the term ‘Hemi-Sync’ to describe this material, because it produces audio patterns with binaural beats which one listens to with both ears. These binaural beats synchronize the brainwaves of the two hemispheres of the brain. This brain synchronization has been

likened to rapidly reaching deep levels of meditation that would otherwise require years of practice. I had first come across brainwaves when studying Jose Silva’s work and then reviewed that again when working with Shaun on a chapter on that subject. Our normal waking consciousness is at a frequency called the beta brainwave. The alpha one is a more relaxed one. Deeper ones are theta and delta brainwaves, the latter of which is normally associated with the deep dreamless sleep state. Long practice of


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meditation is normally required to be able to relax one’s brainwaves to the lower frequencies, but the Monroe Institute Hemi-Sync products can often help one reach such relaxed states very quickly. In fact, there was a published report in which the head of a Zen Buddhist centre said that the Hemi-Sync material could take one to the state he had only achieved after 30 years of sitting.

I managed to obtain a copy of the full course of the Monroe Institute’s Gateway Experience (6 Waves), as well as the Going Home series, which had been developed together with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross for use with dying patients and their families. I listened to most of these many times. While they did help me

enter a deeper relaxed state, there was never any conscious sense of astral travel. There were, however, many times that I fell asleep while listening to them and very possible some of the dreams I then had may have been such out of body experiences.

There were some occasions when listening to this material, which I always did lying down with my eyes closed, that I would become aware of ‘physically’ ‘phy sically’ seeing patterns, such as one finds on a wallpaper – despite my eyes being closed. In these experiences, experiences , there was a feeling that I was looking and seeing from a different place – and to a different place/dimension - than when I used my physical eyes in the world. Similar binaural beat audio material has become available through many others, some of which I have tried, including Holosync. In some of these cases, there are claims the material takes one to even deeper levels of frequency than theta and delta, such as the gamma one. I discovered there were also numerous new books about astral travelling, some by individuals whom had benefited from the work of the Monroe Institute. I bought a few of these and found some of the descriptions and interpretations of the experiences helpful – though the how-to ones did not make much difference to me.

I realized the ‘problem’ with astral travelling, as described by the writers of these books and, indeed, almost certainly by Monroe himself, is that it is the who one thinks one is (one’s collective personality) who is doing such travelling, NOT who one is in one’s essential subjectivity. If who we think we are is not much more than a hypnotized collective self living a waking dream, it would just be the same relatively unconscious self doing the astral travelling. While this insight took the ‘shine’ off the idea of such out of body experiences for me, the audio material is still helpful for reaching deeper states of relaxation.

There may be very evolved individuals who do such ‘travels’ as their subjective selves, but they would be extremely rare. rar e. A possible example might be of the ‘travelling’ ‘t ravelling’ during sleep that Yogananda describes Yogi . doing when training with his teacher, Sri Yukteswar, in his Autobiography of a Yogi However, truly being with one’s subjectivity already implies being out of this material dimension and with no motivation for any travels in what is objective, whatever the dimension.   

9 2010 – 2013 – JAPAN JAPAN AND DOVER GLIMPSE OF THE PRIMORDIAL 2010 JANUARY 16 period, following taking a Melatonin tablet to help sleeping at 1 this am, had an other-dimensional instant of beingness which was not related to ‘me’, but an expanded live vibrating pulsating and not limited awareness - being both here and out there with no separation beTHIS

MORNING, DURING A WAKING/DOZING

tween the two ... and except for the awareness base there was nothing in it to do with anything I have

ever personally, or even humanly, identified myself as being. This being/awareness seemed to be an alive and extremely powerful vibrant mass, with an ‘image’ much like a large tangle of spaghetti, which, although darkish in colour was glowing throughout and giving out a yellow light (the word ‘image’ is used in the sense of an image or impression which comes to one in a dream – not a sense of any physical form whatsoever). I knew it to be immensely powerful, yet entirely benevolent, and the beingness of which was one of happiness, fascination and wonder simply with itself. It was also clear that nothing else existed outside of it and yet, although alone, it was not lonely. It was realer than what we term our waking material world, and so primordial and powerful that it seemed ‘before the world’ and perhaps not inconceivably what all that is material emerges from.

Importantly, this was not a new experience, but one which I had forgotten, and at the time of the experience I knew it as a very familiar state, or ‘place’ I have been to many times through my life – especially from infancy while entering or coming out of the deep sleep state , but one I have not remembered consciously afterwards until this time (unless I had remembered it as an infant and very young child and have since forgotten that). It is a bit similar to the state that can happen in that instant

when one surrenders to sleep and all the defences are let down - though usually we have lost conscious awareness when this point comes, comes , so there is usually no memory of it. i t. However, it may also occur during the transition from sleep to waking.

There seemed an other-worldly almost magical power about it (from a person perspective), as if a sleeping giant, who had forgotten who s/he really is and of his/her natural aliveness - not identified with any physical body presence and not limited to just here, but here and out there - a no limited ‘everywhere’ 120


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about it, though there was nothing it identified with as being part of its ‘out there’ ... it was just not limited to here - it is a beingness with no here or there - an expanded and alive unlimited ‘here’ ... AND SO alive and pulsating/vibrating. There was also nothing else ‘out there’, just this here expanded presence to which no limit was evident.

(added later: The ‘unlimited here’ had nothing to do with this world as we know it, either in an outer or inner sense – it was just alive and not limited to any point in space awareness ... but aware it WAS/is!) The above experience was one of only about 1 to 2 seconds, which I was conscious of and then either fell back to sleep or next came back into my usual conscious mind. My sense is that the seeming brevity of the experience was not because it was short, but because the waking mind has only brief memory connections to the dreaming mind …and presumably even briefer ones (if ever!) to the deeper dreamless dreamless sleep sleep mind. What has become clearer is that that very

deep mind is always present and active, but not accessible when we are in waking or dreaming states.

For me, re-experiencing this – even so briefly – is even more profound than the Douglas Harding awakening experience and the experiences spoken of in many other advaita teachings I normally read about.

While it encompasses their messages as part of it, my sense of it being primordial means it is a FAR higher sense of living and being it.

[Added later: When I say this was a familiar experience, it is one I remembered – while in the state - having had for very brief conscious periods off and on through my life, from earliest infancy – and possibly from even before birth in the womb . I have an intuition that this is the ‘magic’ state

infants in a womb may well be in constantly, and perhaps which they re-enter in sleep after birth for the first while, which might explain the profusion of their joyous smiles – for many – on awakening ... or perhaps they are smiling because they are still based in that state when awake.) How could I have forgotten such an important state – even though it seems to be of a dimension not of this world? NOTE: Further thoughts on this experience and some excerpts from others which seem to allude to similar experiences are included as an appendix,   

I spent a further 11 months in Japan, until November 2010. Both Christmas 2010 and 2010-11 New Year were spent with my parents in Florida. My sister and brother with his wife visited separately – the latter couple staying separately in a rented apartment there for Christmas.   

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2011 After New Year Year,, I went on to Ontario for 10ish days days staying at aunt aunt and uncle’s uncle’s company apartment, apartment, to clear out long-stored letters let ters and papers, so I would not have to continue paying the storage costs. These were mostly my archives from my earliest days until I had moved to England in 1980, so it was roughly covering the first 30 years of my life, the most recent of which was now 30 years old. The culling and sorting brought up a lot of emotions and memories. A fair number of the correspondents were now deceased and several others I had long lost contact with. I kept my correspondence with my parents (their

letters and copies of mine to them), as it is a continuous and reasonably detailed record of our lives and activities through the years. I discarded almost all the rest.

Despite being in the hands of an agent, our rental business was not doing too well. A couple of the properties had acquired difficult tenants who did not look after the properties and were seriously in arrears in rental payments. My state pension would not start for another four years, so this jeopardised a significant part of the income we depended on. M’s salary from her job in Japan was entirely used up for day to day living there.

As a result of the above, I stayed the whole year in the Dover studio flat dealing with problem tenants (including taking steps to commence court proceedings, if necessary, which my letting agent would not do) and refurbishing the properties when they were finally vacated. However, there was a major silver lining lini ng to staying on my own for this period. Aside from dealing with wi th the minimum required externally, I lived what was virtually a monastic retreat type lifestyle, only going out when necessary, largely in a non-doing mode, staying with the subjectivity of awareness and watching consciousness – especially as it transited from sleep to waking states. I also ‘worked’ extensively with the Monroe Institute’s binaural beat audio material. This resulted in some interesting states, though not any conscious astral travel.

I kept a dream journal for some of this time, partly to see how lucid the dreams were (to what extent I la J. W. could influence the directions they took) and partly to see it any turned out to be prophetic ( a la J. Time). Dunne’s An Experiment with Time). I had reasonable success in influencing dreams – meaning I retained some level of aware consciousness during them. I noted this: One sign to me that what I am experiencing are lucid dreams is t hat I am able to make decisions in them to influence in at least a limited way the direction of the dream. And yet, I do not consciously choose the dream setting, subject or participants. Also, my influence on the dream seems to be able to avert major problems in the dream, but my control – especially of my physical self in the dream – is oft en strangely limited, as if my body is sluggish and unable to follow my somewhat conscious commands. (04/18/2011)

I did not note any of them being prophetic, but did not keep the experiment up very long.   


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2012 After a short short visit with my parents in January January,, I finally returned to Japan in February February.. I had just been started on low (20mg) daily dosage of simvastatin more as a precaution for diabetics to keep cholesterol at good levels. This medicine had various side-effects, including fatigue, peripheral neuropathy and, worst of all, profound depression. I felt a hugely negative sense of meaninglessness of this world and all that happens in it (with the exception of love – and found the best relief when in nature and by a flowing river – which can be felt as expressions of natural love). The chemical depression was so powerful it seemed difficult, if not impossible, to manage to continue living. I actually thought I would need to find some means of being looked after by M in almost a nursing type environment. There was some relief from being in nature, especially among trees and other plants by the running water of a river. Later, after having stopped the statins, and once the depression had largely lifted, it was pretty clear that the meaninglessness of all but love had not changed, though is just not felt with such powerful negativity.

Also, in 2012, it became became shockingly shockingly clear that our true essential essential self forgets forgets itself in our mind/ego/intelmind/ego/intellect/personality. I had an image of advertisements, television, shop displays and people and things we are drawn to being like fishing hooks catching us and pulling us away from ourselves towards them. We are constantly being bombarded with temptations from around us triggering desires (and aversions/worries) which continually draw us out from who we really are to be lost in/hypnotised by our minds being

entranced by these externals. These may be equated to the Hindu concept of vasanas (unconscious tendencies) which cause our rebirth.

I had some of my deepest insights during this period of profound depression. One was that the meaning we as humans usually give to how we live our lives and what we may accomplish in the world really

means nothing. It seemed to me that only the t he love we share has any meaning, as well as doing whatever we can to increase our relationship with the divine. I had the feeling that life might just barely be liveable when spent in prayer and meditation in a monk’s cell or a hermitage in nature. In mid-March, I saw the Japanese GP, and he agreed that I stop the statins, but keep a careful check on my cholesterol levels. All of the symptoms noted above almost immediately disappeared. The insights

did not, however, lose their meaning. I could see they were entirely valid but now without the depression the painfulness of them being part of the picture.   

My father was hospitalized hospitali zed in April with congestive heart failure due to a leaky heart valve. valv e. I spoke to him by phone in hospital in what I felt could be our last conversation. I was able to share how much I loved and appreciated him and I thanked him for having always stood by me during my toughest times.

He was, however, later able to return home with new medications, though it was recommended he not

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have surgery because of his age and frailty. His energy and ability to be out and about was significantly curtailed.   

JUNE, 2012 – NOTES RE CONSCIOUSNESS-BEING-AWAKENING CONSCIOUSNESS-BEING-AWAKENING - DHAMMAJIVA DHAMMAJIVA TALKS TALKS A Mind Revealed (a (a short free book of some talks in Holybooks website) contains a collection for discourses of the Dutiyadvayam sutta given by Dhammajiva to the monks and yogis at the Meetirigala

Nissarana Vanaya Buddhist monastery in Sri Lanka. It notes that consciousness is is the discerning ability of the mind , enabling us to identify separate sense objects, - consciousness and is a primordial form of our being giving us aliveness even in absence of thought and feelings. The

other skandhas are body, feeling perception, mind. All are impermanent. - the 6 consciousnesses 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

eye consciousness ear consciousness body (sensation) consciousness nose consciousness taste consciousness mind consciousness

- (senses and mind ... and feeling/emotions?) are happening with continual shifts from one to another without separation between the object and consciousness and that they are all projections from - The operation of our mind is far more intriguing than what we see. The attributes we see are proqualities s our mind attributes attributes to the objects objects experienced experienced . This is jections of our mind. We project the qualitie the reality of projection and external perception . A beautiful mind projects qualities of beauty and vice-versa. mind observes observes the external object as object as separate from the sense faculty receiving it and - an enlightened mind knows the operation of sensory consciousness as seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, etc. and is aware of impermanence, suffering and non-self underpinning them. So its reaction is equanimity – choiceless awareness and detachment.

- an unenlightened mind indulges in sensory consciousnesses – the experiences created by the operathem . Consciousness connects subject and tion of consciousness – attaching to them or rejecting them. object.


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practice we we note ‘object, object’ when when we see something (or ‘thought, thought’ when when we think - in practice (or ‘thinking’ something), rather than project qualities to it. More advanced is to note ‘seeing, seeing’ (or thinking’ ), between per- ), so that we are aware it is a process, leaving less opportunity for the interaction between perception and ception and memory , which would reinforce our identity with identifying with the object.

- there is the awareness of shifts between senses, such as from body to eye. Later it is just awareness as ‘knowing’ – one remains in a state of knowing about sense impressions without having to note continual shifts from one to another. You are at home in an impartial state of knowing , rather than shifting from a being in one and then in another sensory state.

- consciousness is dependent on impermanent objects and so is also impermanent. Contact activates the sense consciousness.

- consciousness connects us to our world and creates the world in which we operate. When we impart a self and self-view to what we experience, we create a conceptual reality around our existence. - It is our reaction which gives rise to defilements . Otherwise, sensory contact is just a neutral occurrence. It is perception which makes us grasp or reject sensory experience. - The mind gives priority to one sensory experience at a time and experiences the associated sensations. Generally, we seem to switch from one sensory consciousness to another in a constant mind chatter all day. With practice we can stay focussed on one, though there can be times when another one, such as pain (in body) or sound (in ear) can come to the foreground temporarily and our primary focus, such as breath, may fall to the background. Gradually you begin to understand the nature of sensory experience without reacting to it.

- For there to be sound there must be hearing. (No clapping without both hands and tree falling in the rainforest has no sound if not heard.)

- Sense faculties and sense impingements exist separately and independently. We react to incidents of the world from morning to night and personalise them through greed, conceit and self-view. However, observing without an ‘I’ gives a taste of the truth underpinning our existence. object . When perception and thought come in (e.g. - for sensory contact there must be mind and object . egoic attributes) there will be good/bad, pleasant/unpleasant, etc. causing tension in the world . world . When one reaches a stage of no mental reaction, one has transcended the personalisation and one may not perceive the qualities of the object sensed, as no usual mental attributes have arisen.

-With practice we gradually dispose of our attachments and cleanse our consciousness of the five hindrances, but to drop the 5 skandhas, we must transcend sensory indulgence and be virtually free of sensory contact and experience. experience . At this point one can get beyond space and time and experience

great joy and there is opportunity to free ourselves of the greed which keeps attachment to the five skandhas.

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experience . Without it there is no ‘I’ - we realise sensory contact has largely fuelled our samsaric experience. and we awaken from the dream. dream .   

JUNE 9 – SELF AS VASANAS VASANAS (LATENT (LATENT TENDENCIES) Last night had started rereading my notes to Padamalai , and this morning, when waking from vivid

dreams, recalled it (and other sources) –note the mind does not exist, except as thoughts, which are impermanent and ever-changing. Others, such as Krishnamurti, say we are driven by memory (associations) reacting to perceived external situations.

I wondered, then, who are we? Who is running the show behind what we call our personality (or ego)? Vasanas are the habits or tendencies of the mind, Ramana, on p. 35 of the Padamalai, says 19 ff Vasanas are such as likes and dislikes, that makes it behave the way it does. The term is usually translated as ‘latent tendencies’.

The personality operates largely through the Lower mind, which is concerned with the intellect and logical thinking. However, much of what we call logical is merely our response to pleasure and pain stimuli . In fact, it is our conditioned subconscious repressed urges that dictate most of our actions. - H. Benjamin on Gurdjieff 8. The first three realizations that we may experience may be that: a) we never think - only recall; b) we never make any conscious decision - some part of memory decides for us; c) we are all automatic - obliged to meet the present with the past. - H. Benjamin on Krishnamurti But all say there is a real essence or Self underlying this – our true self we are not usually in touch with or operating from reviewer comment: Sri Ranjit Maharaj’s Illusion Vs Reality reviewer When a person clears his own mind, he finds that the outer world is a powerless illusion. It doesn’t exist. It feeds on his thoughts. Freedom is only a matter of dropping the thoughts. The nonsense out there continues in pictures, but he is no longer affected by it. It has nothing to do with him. The amazing thing is, everybody is free all the time, but they must remember this truth instead of getting caught up in their own thoughts about the illusion!   


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JULYY – DRAFT MAP OF SELF JUL SELF AND MIND Map of Self and mind/Ego – based various sources, but these seemed to come together when reading Premananda’s Blueprints on Indian Masters 12/7/2012 Self Source Witness Awareness

“I” Mind (Mind includes ego, intellect, memory, volitionary) (Above influenced or run by vasanas and karma) (I or mind is always the subject in the world of duality) Key is to turn attention back to Source or Self or Awareness or Witness, which return to oneness, including with the world, with no mind in the way.

5 Skandas: Form, Feeling, Perception, Intellect (discriminating ability) and consciousness (combining emotions and thought patterns)

(Consciousness projects and attributes qualities from memory - defiling perceptions with likes and dislikes – attaching and rejecting)

What is experienced or cognised including:

external object(s), thoughts and emotion (above three apply both to everyday waking life and dreams)

Notes:

Triad:- Experiencer – Means of experience – Experienced - Cogniser – Means of cognition – Cognised world The ego is always found with the other two, but if the ego becomes introverted, the other two go out of existence.

The ego is just a bundle of desires (and resistances).

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The mind is a mirror and cannot see itself as empty of reflections (as on its own) because it is a reflection itself. You cannot have mind without an object.

This is why we do not notice emptiness or no mind - there is nothing there, not even sense or thought (despite awareness actually being there).

ACIM – Mind Mind plays God God in the external world world analogy analogy..   

In September, I moved from the studio apartment to a two bedroom one on the hill under the castle and overlooking Dover, as M was now returning to t o join me. After getting it ready, I went for a visit with my parents. Despite his frailty, my father insisted he and my mother go on a cruise in the Caribbean. It seems he caught pneumonia before boarding the ship. His health worsened and he was airlifted from the boat at

Gran Turks and taken to intensive care at a hospital in Miami. Despite seeming seemi ng to rally for a time, he died of heart failure on 8 December, aged 88.   

2013 In February 2013, M’s mother died fairly suddenly after re-admission to hospital for leg bone surgery and M returned to Japan for about 6 weeks for ceremonies, including interment of the ashes. I visit my mother in Florida for about 2 weeks of this time.   

Subtle changes noticed in me - developing over last year or so (2013 – 4/22 Recorded over past few weeks, but noticed for some months now) 17/3/2013 Notes made as coming in to land on flight Orlando – Gatwick

Lessening of ‘I’ sense identification Less desire, but much more aware of hooks of desire desir e pulling the mind out from awareness to the world wor ld of objects – often seems just simple curiosity about something or how something (such as a TV program) will turn out or being struck by the sight of a pretty lady – much less having to do with being drawn to food or drink.

All in world meaningl meaningless ess except for love (includ (including ing through authenti authentic c servic service) e) and one’s soul homework.


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Awareness of vasanas (incomplete business Awareness business)) we are born born with with and how these connect to one’s one’s purpose – and and how how one’s one’s purpose very critically limits what what one will be be able able to do on earth earth - severe severe limits limits to physical/external free will, if there is any at all! …seemingly more true that ‘free will’ is largely (or completely) limited to the inner choice to be consciously aware …or not (as Ramana says).

increasing sense that, just as great acts – such as healing – are done through rather than by us, everything we do is done through, rather than by, us. This has to be true if there is no real ego or mind, but just a varying collection of attractions, attractions, repulsions and associated associated thoughts just passing through through as our constant experience. Noted last couple of days:

drastic reduced interest in personal ambition or in acquisitions, other than the daily requirements and looking after basic future physical (and still some emotional?) needs reduction in use of ‘I’ and ‘my’ …in other words in sense of ‘me’ and ownership. On awaking, increased enjoyment of AWA (awareness watching awareness practice) – almost trancelike sense which is pleasant like that of just falling asleep (when we let go of the mind) – though usually retaining a sense of consciousness through it (but sometimes falling back to sleep). VERY aware of inner (nada (nada)) sound especially during this prolonged awakening state time.

Much more aware in dreams, especially esp ecially those of the morning or which whi ch come after falling back to sleep in the morning, and also of more lucid dreaming potential during these dreams (that is awareness of being in a dream and able to influence how it develops – but not to switch in the dream state to AWA) Very reduced interest in non-spiritual social interaction (though interaction involving love/service is still of value).

Increased enjoyment of and valuing simple sensory pleasures – more of transitory experiencing in the now without a sense of ownership of them. 5/6/2013 Wonderings

If there is no real r eal individual (ego’s) (ego’s) free will in external activities, activities, is there any free will in the dream state (which is mind projected internally instead of externally as in waking state …but externally we are channels for divine and working out of karma and vasanas)

Explore more of free will at the internal or awareness level as noted by Ramana. Note real shift from witness state to being state.

10 2013 ─ ANADI ANADI – THE PUZZLE COMES TOGETHER SEARCH FOR A TRUE ADVANCE TEACHING WITH PRACTICAL ADVICE HAD A A THEORY THAT really true advanced teachings and practices would not b e hidden but free and in plain I HAD

sight, except they could only be found and recognized by a sincere enough student sufficiently ready for them. In a sense, although seemingly freely available to anyone, they are incomprehensible, and so ‘hidden’ to those not ripe enough.

Anadi – an early-ish photo

In my continuing search, among what is now an abundance of teachers and teachings online, I had come across a photo of a teacher named Aziz Kristof but, initially, had not explored his teaching further at that time. The appearance in that particular photo did not strike me as being of someone who could help me further. He looked very young and his shaven head, simple dress and expression gave something of an appearance of someone trying to impress others as being a teacher . . . rather than being someone who actually ‘knew’ and and had no need to impress anyone.

However, in mid-to late spring 2013, I found a website of a man named Freddie Yam, which included quotes from different teachers, including Aziz Kristof, who now used the name Anadi. Some of these teachers were ones I had the highest respect for, including Ramana Maharshi, several of Ramana’s leading students, Nisargadatta, Paul Brunton and a few others. 130


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With this endorsement, I read Anadi’s/Aziz’s quotes and was immediately struck by them. They were (at that time) largely a selection from his earlier books, which had been published under the name Aziz Kristof. It was clear that this Anadi had awakened, understood the meaning and importance of it and was determined to help others.

Orienting Myself to the teaching I explored his website, which included a map of awakening, writings, recordings from meditation talks, practices and his own precise prec ise terminology, defining and describing the inner wor ld and the tools one can use to evolve on the inner journey. There was so much material on the site that I felt overwhelmed. I started listening to some of the recordings, but they covered a span of several years, so there were hundreds of hours of them. The glossary, glossary, which was a living and evolving one, was a major challenge. I had to do my best to equate the terms used (the ones I had some sense of) to my own inner experiences, which I had never tried to label with such precision. In addition to continuing to explore the website, I decided it might be easiest to follow Anadi’s own journey by reading his books in the chronological order they had been written, even though he made it clear that he no longer used the earlier ones in his teaching – which also meant the terminology had changed since. My theory was that it might be easiest to follow his evolution using his own footsteps and the words he had used as his journey unfolded . . . and I have continued to find it helpful to refer back to the early writings, while maintaining an awareness of the changes in terminology and further evolutionary steps.

I mostly found copies of the earlier books online, though was also able to order a copy of The Human Buddha from Buddha from the Indian publisher pub lisher..

Rather than the terms used being something like learning a foreign language, I discovered Anadi takes great care in finding words which convey the closest meaning to what the term is intended to convey (his success in doing this is a remarkable feat for someone working in what is not his first language). So, for example, ‘me’ in any combination, such as conscious me or pure me, is always referring to one’s subjectivity, particularly when it has been embodied (established as part of one’s identity). The ‘I am’s’ (such as in universal, absolute, immanent and primordial) are all states of ‘being’. They are other-dimensional in the sense of being in absence, or not in the presence of the reality of creation. Such absence, or being, is where great repose is experienced. This is felt as blissful at first, but later experienced as simply neutral and wonderfully peaceful – meaning the suffering, or just tension or discomfort, which is usually part of normal life is no longer with one. Attaining any of these states of I am, or absence, is samadhi. [Another good definition of samadhi is ‘the state of oneness, in which the individualized consciousness is united with the whole.’ ( Genesis Dawn, Robert Eaton)] ‘Conscious me’ is just what it says; who we are in our essential dimension, normally not conscious of itself, is now conscious.

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The internal knower , now most appropriately called awareness, is our main centre of intelligence,

intention, recognition and of the activity of pure attention. When he directs recognition to any other centre, he is bringing awareness and intelligence to it. (This was later amended so that the internal knower is the secondary center of intelligence, with the primary one being the person – despite him not being conscious in most people.) Pure intelligence, or intelligence of the soul, is equated to light, which one shines, together with rec-

ognition, wherever it is directed. (An aside not from this teaching: The halos around saints’ heads in religious paintings are intended to convey this spiritual light they are connected to.)

Bringing intelligence to any pure center, and especially to the inner knower, is critical in order for them to become conscious. This is especially true of the primordial. There are times when we are out of our

waking minds, but these are usually one sin which we are not conscious. We can only own such other dimensional states when we bring conscious awareness to them.

The recordings proved of great value to me. At first, I focussed on the topics which seemed to me most relevant for my own development but, gradually, ended up listening to them almost indiscriminately, always with headphones, so the sound came through binaurally – and usually when lying down or during the night when I could not sleep. This meant I was in an extremely relaxed and receptive state while listening to them, but also that I fell asleep many times. It took me two years to listen to (or sleep through!) all the ones which were on the website, as well as those being added to it during that time. I experienced what could be called a very heightened ‘pure sensitivity’ when listening to the recordings, in that when they spoke of a centre I had not identified or named in myself previously (such as external observer or internal knower) and described how to locate it, I would often feel I could pinpoint and experience the centre in myself. Occasionally, it would be an aspect of myself I had previously known about but had not troubled to call by a name. More often, it would be a new experience and I would wonder that I had not been aware of it before.

There were other rarer occasions when I located a centre being described but found it in a slightly different location to where Anadi put it. For example, beingness as a state – as I understand it – has been an important long-time friend but is more a rather pervasive rootedness in profound peace, rather than localized through a lower tan t’ien. However, in cases like this, I am more than willing to explore Anadi’s experience and recommendations, as perhaps I have not yet attained the full degree of absence and samadhi for that aspect of the soul. As Anadi said, “The absence of vertical absence is the presence of suffering”. (3/2/19 suffering”. (3/2/19 11:00am)

[Another example of this might be Ramana’s location of the spiritual heart in a different place to Anadi’s finding.] I also wondered how much of this kind of my experience of these centres was real and how much

might be a product of imagining and visualizing – but did it matter if the experience was a felt one which could be repeated and even strengthened through establishing a more permanent presence in the

centre? However, a more likely explanation is that one may well be open to the energy from Anadi and


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the retreats themselves carried by the recordings and some degree of transmission is received. It will, undoubtedly, not be anywhere near as strong as what is transmitted live when attending the retreat in person, but my own experience suggests a fair amount of its power still comes to one through the recordings if one is ready and one’s own inner self is sufficiently receptive. It helps one open to the grace available from one’s own divine source. This was an intense period of ‘listening and assimilation practice’ and it resulted in a marked deepening of my own evolution into subjectivity. 2013 28/7/2013 Note to friend K

A note note to friend friend K dated dated 28/7/13 28/7/13 on the effect this this was having having on me: I seem to have had more gradual experiences - especially as respects awareness separate from the mind - which really have deepened over time. I went through a rather strange recluse stage when I stayed on my own in the studio flat here the year before last - really only surfacing to deal with the minimum necessary. Had reached a feeling that most usual human interaction is meaningless (except for the love it might contain) and was focused on inner awareness. This dramatically altered dealings with others (notably in minimizing them!). The awareness part of Anadi’s teaching is clearest to me - and the terminology is becoming clearer with listening to the retreat talks. It is also increasingly clear that there has been a relatively unconscious ‘me’ operating for most of this physical life and any ‘doing’ from a more conscious/aware self works on another level entirely - largely without ulterior motives apart from looking after basic daily requirements ... and with love/compassion underlying interactions. Realizing that others one deals with (including family) may also be living their relatively unconscious ‘me’s seemed a stumbling block (how and why relate with them?), but brings out some compassion, too, with the feeling that each has their own stage and ‘soul’s homework’ in evolution to go through, just as I am doing mine (and, hopefully, others far more awake than I have similar compassion towards me ... certainly most spiritual teachers have such to be able to do their teachings ... even in silence). . . . Despite our (you and I) living as ‘fakes’ (to use your term) - we still seem to gravitate to the essence of kindred spirits... (-: ... and am grateful for your friendship. Silent time of course is extremely precious and feel very blessed to be able to manage without formal working for now. n ow. The relationships aspect you speak of also surfaced for me in the sense of wondering if it would reach a stage where they would not work anymore - and felt pretty down earlier this year when that seemed imminent. My sense is that if such a point comes a solution will present itself (i.e., will require my surrendering to it). Watching friend J go through his illness and death (nearly 6 years ago now), brought VERY strong motivation to 1.) work towards maintaining reasonably good quality of health (minimizing chances of going

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through such an illness) and 2.) focus on ‘waking up’ (whatever is required for my personal evolution) while I have the use of this current mind/body. ... And these last 5+ years have brought such dramatic changes and shifts that it seems the person back in 2007 when I made those intentions was another person or another lifetime. A wonderful aspect is that it keeps becoming more and more focused and really exciting with the newness and discoveries, rather than stuck in the depressing belief I am not more than the body and mind. Am not interested in more knowledge (in spiritual/religious matters), except those pointers which help the practice and experiential evolution towards crystalizing the more permanence of beingness, and that is what am looking to in Anadi’s (and any others’) teachings. Am esp. drawn to his messages on being/ presence at the moment.

ANADI MAP DIAGRAMS My first two attempts at diagrams of the system in 2014

The Three Centers, Consciousness, Being, and Heart


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Evolution of Consciousness The two vertical parallel redl lines show grace or transmission intervening, firstly to awaken conscious me and secondly to open up to universal I am. The lower section follows the birth of the soul and it is now able to be one’s base from which one transforms both conscious me and the subconscious me, resulting in one having a transparent observer and thinker. The very bottom bit suggests that living from the soul has a cleansing and purification effect on one’s psychology and emotions.

INVOLVEMENT INVOLVE MENT IN PUBLICAT PUBLICATION ION AND EDITORIAL WORK FOR THE TEACHING I wrote to Anadi’s website to request the more recent Book of Enlightenment , noting I had had involvement in editing and publishing. I had a response from his team member Lior asking if I could help find an external publisher for this title.

Although it took several months, we were finally able to have this previously internally published published book published externally by Mantra Books, an imprint of a publishing house of a long-time friend. I was cautious (I thought) in forecasting it might sell a couple of thousand in a couple of years, because I knew

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they would publicise it widely, but it turned out to appeal to a much smaller market than I would have thought, despite Anadi adding several youtube videos and articles to his website during this time and doing a long Buddha at the Gas Pump interview which had wide coverage in ‘spiritual’ circles online. However, an incredibly important by-product of this work was the opportunity to begin editing work with Anadi on material for articles and books. I could not believe my good fortune. This work seemed to pull

together most of the spiritual studies st udies and even previous editing work I had done – almost as if everything I’d done before had been a preparation for this. This work was done as part of a larger team and mostly under the supervision of Gaia, a long-term student deeply committed to making the teaching available in both online and conventional book form. A number of other dedicated students also assist in different aspects of the teaching and these publications – the latter part including transcribing, other editing, proof reading, as well as continuous updating and maintenance of the extensive website (where all this teaching is made freely available).

An invaluable invaluable benefit benefit was the the direct learning learning I could could do in working with with Anadi. One One of the first series we did was the many articles which made up Beyond Traditions , a very comprehensive survey of the most prominent enlightenment teaching traditions and teachers going into the positive aspects they had and noting what they were missing. I was deeply grateful grateful for the panoramic spiritual education this gave me.

Among other things it finally finally made made clear what had been of importance importance in Gurdjieff’ Gurdjieff’s s teachings teachings and where those still fell short.

About Gurdjief Gurdjieff, f, Anadi commented commented,, “ . . . based on my readings and meeting people who did some work in Gurdjieff’s groups, I am inclined to think that most of his work with consciousness was done on the level of the observer. What he calls self-awareness appears to be self-conscious and solidified observer. On the other hand, what he calls ‘objective consciousness’, appears to be not pure consciousness but conscious me experienced in a spacious way, or what some people call ‘awareness’.” And And “Frankly speaking, I do not feel that he [Gurdjieff] was in the state of surrender to I am. His evolution was different. He was genius in many areas, but he did not seem to penetrate states of pure subjectivity that well. His state is more on the level of conscious me or expanded awareness. Pure consciousness is not that common.” Beyond Traditions also covered the key branches of Advaita and Buddhism, including a clarification of

the meanings and shortcomings of koans used in Zen. Beyond Traditions “is Traditions “is an extraordinary and panoramic review of the major eastern enlightenment traditions, as well as of some of the more widely known and respected modern spiritual masters and teachers. Coverage includes Buddhism (Theravada, Zen, Mahayana, and Tibetan Mahamudra and Dzogchen), Advaita Vedanta Vedanta (with a separate chapter on Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj), Yoga Sutras, Shaivism, Sufism, Taoism, Taoism, Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti, and Osho, as well as a seven-chapter section at the end on Human Spirituality commenting on contemporary spiritual paths and religion. The treatment of these is from the perspective of Anadi’s own unique map of awakening based on his past research, dedicated practice, and personal experience and evolution. This perspective allows him


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to cut through the intellectual dross and cosmology which has accumulated around most of these teachings and teachers and focus on their value to the seeker from an awakening point of view. As a long-time student of Gurdjieff, Buddhism (notably Zen) and Advaita (especially of Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta), I found this book to offer remarkable and refreshing insights. These have helped me finally to make sense of the key values offered by these traditions and teachers, without becoming lost in all of the less relevant details and commentaries with which they have been ‘window-dressed’. Anadi gives them praise and credit where that is due, but also very clearly points out where each has shortcomings. One need not be familiar with Anadi’s teaching and map of awakening to be able to benefit greatly from this title, because it offers a wonderful survey and summary of these traditions and teachers, giving an introduction and background from which one can then explore any of them further on one’s own. Any one of the chapters on Buddhism (Why Buddha was Discontent with the Eighth Jhana, and the Zen ones – The Ten Ox-herding Pictures, Koans and Shikantaza), Advaita and the modern teachers made this book one worth reading for me.” After that we worked on Secrets of the Inner Universe , which noted how the advances in physics had some parallels to what Anadi had found in the inner world. We completed the Book of Being and and a draft of the Book of Heart .

PERSONAL EVOLUTION BOTH CONFIRMED AND ADVANCED THROUGH WORKING WITH THE TEACHING Anadi had confirmed to me that the other-dimensional other-dimensional experiences I knew as a child and had experienced consciously again at rare intervals as an adult were ones of the primordial and had likely been

brought from a previous life. In his description of the levels of reality there is the universal, absolute, immanent and primordial. This led me to a hypothesis that if I have had experience, however fleeting, of the deepest level, I must also have some experience of the stages leading up to it. If this were true, it meant I already knew them intuitively (if not consciously), but probably did not equate the experience itself with the name which Anadi’s teaching gave it. I was continually on the lookout for clues which would help me identify my own experience and understanding with these realms Anadi was describing, and also looked out for practice pointers on how to enter and deepen the different states of inner evolution.

Sure enough, as I worked more and more with the material, I very slowly began to find that I already had some familiarity – albeit often just intuitively – with different of the levels and states. I feel this explains why Anadi felt comfortable with my helping on first level editing for some of his material. In addition to my background in editing in English and other spiritual studies, I brought at least some degree of experiential understanding – even if just intuitive or as a resonance – to the material I was working on. Also, when I really did not understand something I did not hesitate to ask for clarification. Not only was I able to learn (via living experience, rather than more knowledge) through the teaching that I already had made important progress on the path, but what underlined the further great value of

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these studies and my editing work with this material was the very tangible deepening of my personal

state and experience. Whereas, Wher eas, previously, I had had clarity about being able abl e to step out of the mind and come from a state of just awareness, this now became my permanent identity and home. And, energetically, a strong base for this home was w as felt to be in the back b ack half of the head, where whe re Anadi notes the home of pure consciousness is. For me, there was also a strong base spatially situated in the lower part of the brain, just above the back of the mouth. This shift to a realer self seemed to me to be an important part of the answer to Ramana Maharshi’s ‘who am I’ self-inquiry. Living from this unwavering awareness also made very clear how insubstantial and fragmented living from the mind as an ego or personality is. It now became abundantly clear that, when living as a mind or ego, we always require an object, be it perception, thought or emotion, as a reflection back to us to relate r elate to. In other words, words , we are not conscious of our own subjectivity, subj ectivity, but always living outside of it. When living from awareness or consciousness, we are based back with the subject and, when with this subject, the mind is quiet. However, it is also possible to engage the mind, but still remain centred in our realer and more stable identity. identity.

As Anadi Anadi points out, being conscious, conscious, or who we are who is relating to the world, is of incredibly more importance than whatever we may do in the world (if what we do is done without being conscious).

One soon learns that living from subject in this way is, by definition, a very lonely existence. One only has oneself as one’s subject and the further inner work and explor ations can only be done on one’s own. As one one of Anadi’s long-time students phrased it to me, ‘I do enjoy connect connecting ing with with those on our path, path, and find it very supportive to know others, too, are ploughing a parallel solitary furrow.’ It is virtually impossible to explain this state to others or to try to help them shift into it. It seems only

rare individuals – even within so-called ‘spiritual’ communities – are fertile enough ground for this message. This means, of course, that even though one is living from subject, one still must have one’s daily interactions with others who are all unconscious of their own subjectivity, unaware of who they are. They are identifying with being their names, personal histories and physical bodies, limited by the collective beliefs they have been conditioned with.   

TEACHING OVERVIEW AND SOME KEY POINTERS The teaching does not limit itself to consciousness (as many others do) but b rings in being and heart as

important dimensions in their own right, each of which can be awakened as aspects of the soul. These three facets of the soul resonated deeply with me and confirmed my best sense of my studies and experiences of many teachings. Consciousness itself is in more than one centre. Pure me of consciousness is a secondary centre

(as are the pure me centres of being and heart) and, as such, could be considered more as one’s


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impersonal self. Its physical position is in middle or back of the head and it links to the universal I

am. One’s essential self is one’s more individual personal self which, when awakened, is conscious me. It is located in the prefrontal cortex and it is this inner self which makes the continuing journey of evolution culminating in a conscious return to the source, primordial I am. I did not just mentally accept about the location of my personal self, or person/thinker, as being true, but observed inside and was able to confirm it for myself, and also confirmed there is a slightly deeper separate observer or watcher

The concept that one’s me, or individual self, is also an integral part of a full awakening or holistic enlightenment also seemed an obvious truth. After the sudden awakening experienced in the early 90s, it was clear to me that one shifts into a truer identity and I understood the saying that the drop (oneself)

does not disappear into the ocean, but that the ocean disappears into the drop. One’s awareness remains, even without the old identity, and it is a greater self that includes the whole of one’s experience. A part part of the teaching teaching which, which, for me, responded responded to to a gap in many many other traditions, traditions, is that enlightenment enlightenment to one or more facets of the soul does not bring wholeness, because one’s realization has also to be felt in and transform one’s personality and even one’s subconscious mind. The mind becomes transparent and then translucent, meaning one is anchored in and living from the soul, so there is no longer a conflict between one’s enlightenment and psycho-emotional life. Not making this transformation to our everyday worldly selves is evident in spiritual teachers who have definitely achieved some level of awakening but whose personal lives are still at odds with their spiritual side.

I was especially pleased to find a veritable gold mine of practice instructions in the many talks, articles and books, just what I had been seeking for so keenly for many years. Moreover, some of the practices were ones I already had been tentatively trying, just because they made sense to the level I had reached, such as looking from the different centres of one’s subjectivity in the horizontal channel of consciousness. Some points from the teaching which resonated with me and helped/help me progress further:

Attention carries carries intelligence intelligence with it and the intelligenc intelligence e brings recognition recognition of of what one’s one’s attention attention is on. When this is internal, or pure, attention, directed towards one’s subjectivity, it can be established in one or more centres of subjectivity as bare attention (embodied attention which is simply aware of itself) and that centre then becomes one’s identity – or part of one’s wholer identity if more than one centre has acquired such intrinsic recognition and intelligence. The shift in identity requires a shift in intelligence. A further important important realization is that one’s attention can also also be equated to one’s one’s inner inner and real energy energy.. One effectively is where one is devoting one’s attention, or energy. The path to the realization of one’s soul in a holistic sense, and especially including the evolution of the inner knower, one’s core identity, is a journey to less and less suffering and more and more bliss and peace. This means that anyone with sufficient sensitivity to their own suffering or discomfort, however subtle, will naturally do whatever possible to evolve towards reducing that.

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Sleep Transition

It has been important to me for years to watch my transition into and out of sleep as much as possible, and especially to try to be conscious of the point at which the mind disconnects (falling asleep) and then reconnects (waking from sleep). Here is a passage from a meditation talk: “. . . it is quite curious how the observer falls asleep. It is through the trick or diversion or distraction through daydreaming; it becomes more and more subconscious until it dissolves in subconscious me. And then, suddenly, you are asleep. In the art of falling asleep consciously, consciously, we do not look for such diversion or such distraction. We want the outer knower to be a witness to his own ow n dissolution in the sleep state. But for him to be a witness, he needs to be connected to the inner knower. The deeper the outer o uter knower is connected, the more we can experience falling asleep consciously. It is a very fine practice because the very intention to be conscious is obviously preventing you from falling asleep. Since the outer knower is present, he cannot dissolve. But within him being conscious, he is melting into the inner knower, gradually relinquishing his alertness. He is not falling asleep throu gh daydreaming but through the inner knower. And the inner knower himself is melting in the direction of fundamental me. If the fundamental knower is realized, there is of course no difference between the inner knower and fundamental me; they have become one and then this can be much more effective. The inner knower creates a much deeper foundation for the outer knower to dissolve consciously. The highest expression of integration, connection between the outer knower and the inner knower is the state of inward fusion because the outer knower is in samadhi in conscious me. And, therefore, conscious falling asleep eventually should be based on inward fusion. The outer knower is melting into the inner knower; the inner knower is melting into fundamental me. If all of that is challenging for some of you, to grasp all these nuances, what you can always do is something quite simple – fall asleep [while in] in fundamental me. Fundamental me is your inner bed, in which you are lying and dissolving into sleep state. In this way way,, the process of falling asleep becomes beautiful, meditative, and you are actually not rushing to fall asleep; you are not anxious, or thinking, ‘I still cannot fall asleep’. You enjoy that transitory period. But now, coming back to our meditation, try to experience all these things while sitting – coming to the sleep threshold while sitting in meditation. The sign of coming to the sleep threshold is a deep relaxation and, as we said, a change of breathing. If you remember, as we spoke about exhaling fully, people inhale prematurely because their subconscious mind is controlling their breath, or their semi-conscious observer is controlling their breath, interfering with it. When you are at the sleep threshold, the body has no choice but to exhale completely because there is no one controlling it. And, after exhalation, the only reason the body inhales is that it lacks oxygen; oxygen; it is not in a rush to inhale. Sometimes in this transition between regular breathing and sleep threshold breathing, you can become confused because there’s confusion between spontaneous breathing of the body and your memory of how you usually breathe. And, occasionally in those instances, you can notice that you are out of breath, and so, for instance, you consciously try to inhale. But, if you fully let go, the body knows how to br eathe; nobody has to teach it.


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Relaxing, melting in the direction of the sleep threshold, but not letting yourself actually fall asleep; that minimum alertness needs to be maintained – melting into fundamental me. Fundamental me is the place to fall fal l asleep from. fro m. The closer you are to the sleep threshold, thr eshold, the more you begin be gin to experience exper ience the essential channel exclusively. All the other centers of pure me are being deactivated because the outer knower which is responsible for the navigation of pure attention is falling asleep. And that which remains at the end is the closest to who you are; it is your core identity. At the end, only the knower remains. The moment you find yourself drifting into daydreaming, you n eed to capture it and come back to yourself, falling asleep in no mind.” - 2017-05-31 - 25 - d8-2030 – Sleep Threshold – The Art of Falling Asleep from the Knower

Levels of External Attention

In addition to making the distinctions between external attention, internal (or pure) attention and bare (or intrinsic) attention, Anadi clarified important differences in types of external attention (in later terminology, the ‘observer’ has been replaced with the ‘watcher’): The relaxed observer is activated when there is no need to concentrate on external details, such as when walking in a park and looking at the surrounding nature. The focused observer is activated when we need to pay more attention to outer reality. An example would be the attention one requires when having a conversation with another person. The extra-focused observer arises when we ne ed to be more alert, or pay extra attention, to our external environment, such as when crossing a busy street. The double-focused observer occurs when we are simultaneously engaging in two types of focused attention – visual and mental. Our attention has evolved in two directions, towards visual world and in the mental one. Even though other sensory gates also involve external attention, it is the sense of vision that concentrates the observer. This is because more primal and subconscious parts of the brain are responsible for the sense of hearing, hear ing, smell or touch, which are by nature more receptive or passive; even though there is an element of receptivity in visual perception, to see the world our brain actually creates perception through active participation of the observer. Usually we alternate back and forth between these two types of attention but, occasionally, they are fully active at the same time, such as when intensely involved in computer work or while driving a car and referring to a road map or satnav at the same time. The double-relaxed observer is one in which two types of attention, mental and visual one, are engaged at the same time, but in a relaxed manner. Watching television or movies – or reading a book – for pleasure are examples of the double-relaxed observer. - Doing Mental Work from Pure Conscious Me (March 2016 article)

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The importance of being aware of these different kinds of attention, which we shift between throughout our waking day, is so that we do not lose our connection with our identity in pure consciousness when different types of external attention are activated. This allows us to practice staying in our surrendered conscious me until seeing and living from our pure conscious me (whereby the watcher is transparent and then translucent) becomes our second nature.   

10/2/2015 - VIEW FROM AWARENESS NOTES There has been a gradual subtle shift over the last year and a half, during which time I’ve been quite deeply focusing on Anadi’s teaching, including increased ‘practice’ in terms of staying with the subject (recognition, abidance and increasing surrender – especially with closed eyes when lying in bed, but also throughout the day - when remembered! - in almost any activity). What has become especially clearer is hugely greater separation from identifying with being my old

personality. This is especially evident when I note how seriously seri ously others take who they think they th ey are. I’ve come to liken my earlier identifying with being the mind/body state as living in ‘the twilight zone’. Some time back it became apparent to me that one’s psychological self in normal life is actually usually not really more than a state of hypnosis (the same as if one were literally hypnotized on stage to be

someone else with resultant dramatic transformation – which is how it works, as it is just a shift from one state of hypnosis to another). Krishnamurti referred to a person from a ‘who they think they are’ point of view as ‘a psychological disturbance in space’. Gurdjieff used the term ‘waking sleep’ to describe the state in which virtually all humans spend their whole lives.

When we step out of this ‘who we think we are’ and strengthen our centre of identity as pure awareness, most (if not all) old attachments, ambitions am bitions and even fears drop away, though some personal preferences and enjoyable pastimes remain. While there are memories of the past one identified with as personality/ ego in the earlier sense, one’s centre of identity has shifted to more of a non-personal identification with – and enjoyment enjoyment of – being being associated associated with with a mind-body mind-body complex. complex. However, However, have noticed noticed (in my case, case, so far) there is still some suffering and even some depression at times, though it is diminished. Family and other relationships are still there and treated as if unchanged but actually are experienced from a very different perspective.

It is also apparent that simplified life seems most appealing – having sufficient in a material sense so that the body is kept healthy and one is able to do what one enjoys/finds purpose in (which includes opportunities to focus on subjectivity to a much greater extent). Accumulating much Accumulating much more in terms terms of possessi possessions, ons, money money or or personal personal power power over over what what is a comfortable comfortable level has less meaning, and it seems insane to see others (still in the twilight zone) focusing right up


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until their death on accumulating more materially that they can never fully use. In some cases, it is even worse, where accumulating riches takes a priority over health. In such instances, quality of life, even just for the mental self, can be appallingly diminished. The ego’s need to show off with past accomplishments or abilities has virtually disappeared. Being near and in nature has become more of a must, rather than a preference, along with a corresponding much stronger dislike of being in highly populated urban settings.

Focusing on subjectivity has become more of a pleasure, rather than a chore. And now there is the relaxation of surrender included.

Most fiction, movies and radio and tv programs have no appeal, especially if they are contrived – made up by people lost in the twilight zone of their own psychologies. It is so clear how others seem to be living in dream worlds in which all of their priorities relate to a lower

identity – who they have come to think they are, which runs their lives. The advertising hooks, family and relationship hooks, work hooks are so clear and so less important. Even the dramas people have over the idea they will die seems irrelevant, as it is clear from this deeper perspective that it is only the mind/ego and body that die. die. One’s higher identity cannot have any possessions or ambitions, as it is outside of the whole worldly realm. While it is not (yet) clear what will happen to one after the body dies, there

is little if anything to lose, except what one enjoys through the body and mind (including emotions). Great compassion is felt for fo r others who are less awake, especially especiall y loved ones, who have not shifted their centre of identities from their personalities/who they think they are and who are either not open to the

idea of there being a possible more spacious reality or incapable of grasping it (no matter how many explanations and experiments are tried with them). One also feels deeply for generations of past ancestors

who lived very hard lives, probably often having suffered terribly, never appreciating there was anything more than who they thought they were.   

2015 – TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE, TAI CHI AND THE TAN T’IEN In January, M and I met with a man who may be the leading Chinese herbalist in England, Dr Zanyu Chen, to see if he could help M over a skin complaint that 6 NHS doctors had successively misdiagnosed and failed to resolve – largely addressing symptoms only through steroids. Dr Chen had studied and taught at Beijing University. He diagnosed the cause of M’s illness being a weakened immune system (which he said was at the root of many ailments) and prescribed a specific blend of herbs. Within two weeks, M’s conditioned had substantially improved. I was so impressed I also started taking a herbal blend for my own health and began having acupuncture, mostly from Dr Chen and sometimes from his wife, who also trained at Beijing University specializing in acupuncture.

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M and I also participated in some Tai Chi classes, which were very therapeutic. Dr Chen told us he practiced Tai Tai Chi daily and had come across some very advanced practitioners in Ch ina. I was

fascinated by the importance of the tan t’ien, or dantian, in Tai Chi. The lower tan t’ien is the centre of qi, or life force energy energy.. There is also a middle tan t’ien at the level of the heart, having to do with internal organs and where qi is refined into spirit, and an upper tan t’ien in the middle of the forehead, having to do with the pineal gland and where qi is refined into emptiness. Dr Chen did confirm that, as Anadi had noted in Beyond Traditions , the principal motivations for developing the lower tan t’ien t’ie n in Tai Tai Chi and Taoism Taoism is for longevity long evity and powers. The powers power s largely come from fr om evolving a ‘little man’ in the tan t’ien area who can do one’s bidding – such as travel astrally to find out things for one.   

31/3/2015 - MY BODY TURNS 65 Very grateful still to have a body in fairly good health. Since being diagnosed with diabetes 10 years ago and J’s illness and death 8 years ago, key priorities have been awakening/self-realization and maintaining quality of life so as better to enjoy each day and effect the further work on personal evolution. The last 8 years have been especially important in understanding the importance of awareness and of

turning attention back on the source/subject itself. This has been underlined by further research into what appear to have been the key teachings of both Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta. While Michael Langford’s Awareness Watching Awareness method was a big eye-opener about 5 years ago and a main focus for practice since, the discovery of Anadi’s Anadi’s teaching – which describes the practice and map of awakening in much more detail – has taken my practice further than others have been able to. It has been an especial privilege and education to help manage to publish his Book of Enlightenment

with a mainstream publisher (Mantra imprint of John Hunt Publications) and then to work in editing on some of his key material.   

2016 - FIRST MEETING WITH ANADI -16 -1 6 AUGUST Arrival at Hofgut-Rinec Hofgut-Rineck k retreat center center,, Germany Following about 6 hours driving from Metz, where I had spent the night after the drive from Calais, arrived at the Hofgut-Rineck retreat center at about 5 pm.


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The courtyard at Hofgut-Rineck

Meeting Anadi

I finally met Anadi in the courtyard just before dinner. From the photos of him in his late 30s in The Human Buddha, I had thought of him as a rather slight figure and likely to be short. However, he was taller than I had imagined and more filled out. He is balding and it looks as if he usually shaves his head, as the hair on the sides and back of the top looked to have just 2 or 3 days of growth. He would be 54 now and, up close, does look more his age than photos of him I’ve seen. I greeted him with clasped hands and a ‘Namaste’. He greeted me with a smile, handshake and hug and thanked me for all the editorial help I have given. I thanked him for blessing me with his work and for building a bridge for others.

From his online videos, I had been concerned he might be a little aloof and overly serious, but there was a genuine sense of warmth from him. He said he had w ondered why I had not attend ed a retreat before now. I noted great resistance to coming and that it may be related to the level of free will we have [a topic which has figured in one or more articles I’ve edited for him] . We sat at

an outside table to talk while we waited for dinner to be brought to the self-serve area in the dining room. [The notes of our conversation below were done from memory afterwards. They are not complete and may not be 100% accurate.]

Ana di aske Anadi a sked d me if I am free f ree now. I note n oted d that th at I am pret p retty ty much m uch so and a nd that t hat I have ha ve the t he rent r ental al prop p rop-erties, but they are now in the hands of an agent and should require minimal input from me. I noted I expect to be based more in Japan, where my wife is, though will be also back to the UK, as well as visiting my mother in Florida. He wondered where in Japan we are and noted where he had been in Japan, which included a period of teaching near Yokohama – using interpreters - after his awakening. He said Japan is a very emotionally damaged or restr ictive country, indicating it is not one he is drawn to being in now. When I asked if India was the same, he said it was the opposite, but he added that health aspects in India were not good and one had to be very

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careful about food. He asked me if I had been to India and, when I r eplied I had not, he said that India has lost its spiritual sense now with the people very materialistically minded (in the early

stages of being caught up in capital ism). He said he has 2 houses, both of which are rented: one in India in the Himalayas and the other on an island in Thailand (he mentioned the name in a

later conversation and that it is in the Gulf of Thailand). He noted Bangkok, with its congestion, is only worth spending a day in at most, and said that mosquitos, including periods when they can transmit dengue fever, are very prevalent in Thailand. He has to apply for a 6-month tourist visa to return to India each time and these are usually not too difficult to obtain. In the old days, he was able to get one-year visas. He asked me if I had children, to which I replied no. I asked him the same and he said he does not. He said the world has enough children being produced, and probably even too many. He said the country around this retreat centre is similar to that of Poland. I asked if he goes back to Poland and he said he does not and has not been there for about 20 years. I asked if he still has family

there and he replied, ‘They are all expired’. I asked if he spoke German, but he does not, and questioned if he had Thai or Hindi. He said he did not but can manage at the shops and restaurants in Thailand

without the language and that most people speak English in India. He said in his experience the (relatively few) people who are ready to awaken come from the west, from countries like the USA, England, Germany and the Scandinavian ones. People from the East, southern (Mediterranean) and eastern European and Latin American countries (including Mexico) have not shown similar readiness. I asked if any students had been able to r each a level to teach and he asked me if I meant Aziz. I thought

he was referring to his old name [on reflection reflecti on it is likely he meant ‘in the days/time of Aziz’, when he was using that name]. He said it had been tried and it was a disaster. I asked if they had just led meditations or also talked, and he said they talked as well. When I asked if he thought it might happen someday, he said he did not know. I noted different people have different talents and some may evolve spiritually, but not be suitable for teaching. As an example, I noted my gift seems to be in editing, and he smiled broadly.

Practice issues He asked about where I am in my practice. I said that I had been very clear about remembering myself

and recognition, but that his teaching had especially shown me the importance of adding surrender, which I had not noted in other traditions. He said that in Buddhism there is no one left to surrender. I

added that most of my meditation had been done while whil e lying down. He laughed and said, ‘The lazy man’s way’. I said it had the danger of one falling asleep. When I asked if the gravity effect helped for horizontal expansion when lying down, he said the same principle of gravity used for moving into the absolute I am is not applicable for this horizontal surrender. (I think he added that a different energy is involved.)


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I noted uncertainly about universal I am and absolute I am, saying they are not really described in his teachings, except as being in absence and other dimensional. I said I was clear about having an identity established at the back of my head (pure me of consciousness) and had a feeling of an energy interface with what was behind that. He said something to the effect that the experience is not like such an energy

interface. He clarified further for me by saying it is possible to embody pure me of consciousness without merging with the universal I am behind and described the process of the further surrender through falling back from pure me of consciousness and using pure attention to push further out and help draw it (pure me) further back for it to merge with the universal. It is a matter of practice. [Later that evening before bed I meditated listening to talks 18 and 19 of the Nov 2015 retreat which specifically address this topic of horizontal surrender.] I said that my experience where I live is something like being the only human on the planet of the

apes, but where the apes are all hypnotised to think that they are human, conscious and know who they are – and, when I am with them, I have to pretend that this is true and that I am like them. He seemed to understand and concur with the analogy [this comment is not intended as insulting or demeaning – and could apply to any other place in the world as well – , but intended as an objective observation about those who live only as products of their conditioning and collective cultural influences, somewhat similar to what Gurdjieff meant by the term ‘man-machine’, or when he compared unawakened people to hypnotized sheep – and this must have resonated with Anadi because, 2 nights later, in a talk at the evening meditation, he used the analogy, saying something like, ‘people not having a me are like apes – very clever apes -, but to be a human being you have to have a me’]. I noted that I had been working with attention for more than 40 years, since my introduction to it in my Gurdjieff studies. I said my experience experienc e of attention, including pure attention, is that it is a function of intelintel ligence and intention and its movement is not gradual, but instantaneous to any point (including multiple points) and he agreed with this.

He asked me to see if I was experiencing pure conscious me, and I said I felt I was and was glad of his clarifying how to distinguish it from conscious me (only conscious me will be aware of thoughts – so, when you are watching a thought, that is is conscious me, whereas pure conscious me, on the other hand, is self-aware and surrendering vertically). I also noted being quite surprised at what a clear distinction there is between the sense of subjectivity in the back portion of the head (pure me of consciousness) to conscious me and pure conscious me at the front of the head and that the latter certainly are more to do with our individuality. He noted this is true. He asked me if I could look at him and also simultaneously be aware of pure conscious me resting. I

did so and said I felt I could. He said that with practice it becomes natural to see the world through conscious me, while simultaneously having pure conscious me at the front of the head resting and pure me of consciousness at the back of the head surrendering. He noted this does not stop one from having

some (emotional) reactions to what one is involved with in the world, but one is much more ‘removed’ and relaxed about it.

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When I asked, he did confirm that his terms ‘essence me’ and ‘the observer’ can be respectively equated to Gurdjieff’s terms ‘essence’ and ‘false personality’, though he said it is important to understand that essence me, which everybody has, is unconscious. [When we turn our (pure) attention back on it, so that it is embodied as bare attention’, it then becomes our conscious me. In a talk given on the 27 th, Anadi said there are 3 centers of personality: the mind/observer, feeling/heart and emotions/ solar plexus.]

Background, teachers and teachings

He talked about his begging time in Japan and about the discovery of pure me of being after many experimental attempts in 1996. He said it was ironic that Nisargadatta’s talk about the absolute had inspired him to seek this, but what he found was a different absolute to what Nisargadatta was referring to (which was the Universal I Am). He mentioned meeting Ramesh

Balsekar who claimed to have inherited the mantle from Nisargadatta, but he said Balsekar had not been truthful when he said Nisargadatta asked him to succeed him. [Elsewhere he has said Balsekar was overly intellectual and his experience of actual opening/awakenings was limited.] Nisargadatta had been a student of Siddharameshwar and he said he had visited another disciple

of Siddharameshwar in Bombay, Ranjit Maharaj, who was a sweet man who lived in a small and very simple apartment. Despite the wonderful book I Am That , he said Nisargadatta did not r eally offer practical instructions. I said I had heard [his fellow Pole] Maurice Frydmann had finally become enlightened when with Nisargadatta, but he replied that Nisar gadatta thought Maurice was already enlightened when he came to him, so perhaps Nisargadatta just helped Maurice realize the state he was already in. I asked if Taoism also described this pure me of being [because it works with the tan t’ien] , but he did not think so. We spoke of other teachings and teachers and he commented on how traditional teachings omit me as an important aspect. I said I wondered if previous masters/teachers had made the same discoveries he

is making but had not had the same ability to describe them so well, noting the Upanishads describe part of the path.

He said he had visited Ramana Maharshi’s center, but it no longer had its power [the impression he gave was that it has been hijacked by others there now]. He said a Karoli Baba [referring to Neem Karoli Baba, Ram Dass’s guru] ashram ashram or shrine is quite near where he lives in India and he passes it often.

I asked him if he had heard of Douglas Harding, and he knew of him as the ‘no head’ man. I said I had had a sudden awakening to subjectivity using one of Douglas’s simple exercises and had gone on to give workshops in Japan – also using interpreters – to try to help others awaken similarly – though few seemed ready to grasp it. I also noted how the no head experience demonstrates how there is no place


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where external reality stops and our awareness starts – notably for seeing and hearing -, and that this effectively shows external reality only exists to the extent we perceive it. So, this is rather supportive of Ramana Maharshi’s view that we create the world each time we wake up and ‘uncreate’ it each time we fall asleep. He said that even though the world may temporarily stop existing for us, it continues to exist for others who are awake and that the problem with the no head concept – which is of becoming space – is that it fails to speak of the me. I did say I felt Douglas had advanced advanced his own own personal personal experience experience of it in his later years and this might have included that me, as well as further dimensions of the soul [such as heart].

I asked him if he had experienced Amma, the ‘hugging saint’ of Kerala, but he had not. I said I had been to her and had that experience a number of times in London. He said that might be ok for people who need a hug. I told him I had had an experience of bliss from being with Amma that had lasted for several days.

I noted having met Ajahn Sumedho, a student of Ajahn Chah, of the Thai Forest Monk Tradition and he said there was one of their centers near where he lives in Thailand. He said some of their

rules did not really serve them, like the one of not eating after their mid-day meal. I said they still beg, but he said that was more practice related, as they receive enough donated food for their needs.

I reminded him of my previous Gurdjieff studies [he knew this from when I worked with him on the lengthy Gurdjieff article in his book Beyond Traditions ] under under students of Maurice Nicoll in England and subsequently with an associated group in Mexico in the mid-70s and of also having spent time with two Zen masters. He said none of Gurdjieff’s students ever really understood Gurdjieff’s teachings. He asked who the Zen masters were and if either were Japanese Japanese.. I noted one was American, American, Aitken Roshi, who learned about Zen when a prisoner of war in Japan and had had Japanese teachers, like Harada, and the other I knew was the first English Zen master [John Shodo Flatt, a student of Genpo Roshi Merzel] . He said Zen is helpful, but has its limitations, especially as its students limit the understanding and possibility of development to the accepted traditional teachings. I said it seemed largely restricted

to consciousness, but he noted they may sometimes make additional breakthroughs breakthroughs into being (like the bottom of the bucket falling off), but do not know what to make of this or how to stabilize it. His experience of Zen is that it is much purer in the beautiful temples in the mountains of South Korea than it is in Japan now.

Grace/Transmission, Books and end of meeting

He said we would have a meeting as part of my first retreat, that these meetings involve transmission and there would be more guidance about practice. I mentioned I had wondered if it would be

possible for someone to evolve exclusively through the books, recordings and other material online, but he felt this was extremely unlikely. [Elsewhere he has said we must do our part through practice and active cooperation and then grace can do its part.] He He said grace always comes from a person.

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I asked if he knew about the University of Oneness started by a man who calls himself Bhagavan [I asked because I had heard it said that the land it is on is so sacred, it transmits blessings and ex perience peri ences s to the stude students nts ther there] e] . He said his sense was that the man behind it is a businessman. I

said he has built a big temple costing $75 million and he said; ‘then he is definitely a businessman’. [Other staff – Atma and Robert - I spoke to here also said the retreats are more about transmission, which happens as a key aspect of the retreat, than about information. Robert even said that his sense of it was that most attendees open up to Universal I Am – which seems surprising to me, as Anadi says this was the state Nisargadatta called the absolute – but then Nisargadatta achieved the state as a permanent one, rather than just an opening or transitory taste of it. Another student, Christine from Norway said the meetings he has with students include him laying his hands on their heads. At another time Anadi told me that most new students who come to him have not had an awakening beforehand.]

I mentioned the idea of a Book of Practice as being important for me and probably others, and he spoke of a Book of [Beginner’s Guide to?] Self-Realization which is being prepared which addresses a lot of this. I said I felt schematic diagrams showing the stages which show where the process is happening in the human head and body bod y could be helpful and he said some of such illustrations accompany the more

recent articles. He said the diagrams of his map are quite straightforward and simple with just the different centres and arrows pointing out the movement of attention.

After dinner dinner when offered tea, he said he did not want herbal, herbal, but but green or black. I offered offered a coffee coffee bag, bag, but he had green tea and said he had a capsule coffee machine in the room where he is staying in a town about ten minutes away. He said caffeine is very good for us.

Anadi – more as he looked when we met

NOTES ON THE RETREAT The retreat is in silence with no eye contact with others and we are not even meant to observe others.

We may write notes if we have important questions about practice for Anadi or if we need to ask staff about something to do with the practicalities of the retreat or administration.


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Meditation Hall

There are 6 hours of formal meditation spread between four sessions a day (8-9, 11-1, 4:30-6:30 and 8:30 -9:30). The two middle periods of two hours are broken by 20 minutes of formal walking meditation in the middle. As one is meant to be seated 5 minutes before each session and one

tends to stay for a little litt le while at the end of a session, one ends up doing closer to 7 hours of formal meditation a day. Anadi Ana di att attend ends s mos mostt medi m editat tation ion sess session ions. s. He spe speaks aks in alm almost ost hal halff of the them m on the ret retrea reatt top topic ic or

on new inspirations (sometimes referred to as ‘guidance’) and answers questions which have been left for him. In other sessions he is in silence and I have a sense of this being an active silence of transmission. In the few sessions he does not attend (or before he arrives) there may be music played.

Although attendees attendees bow when entering and leaving the meditation room, and also bow to the front of the room when Anadi rings the bell at the beginning of his time in a session, I have heard him say this bowing is to our own sacred selves.

There are some similarities to Zen sesshins, meditation retreats, though much less arduous. A Zen student will have a daily meeting, called ‘dokusan’, with the master, so progress can be checked and guidance given. Anadi has meetings with all first time retreat attendees, but meetings with others are irregular The food prepared and served at retreats is vegetarian and largely organic.

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SUMMER 2016 DIAGRAM prepared in my room at Hofgut-Rineck during the retreat for my first student meeting with Anadi on 22 August 2016, 2016, so I could show show him where where I felt I was was and to to clarify my next steps steps

Note to Anadi about progress on his practice guidelines: 25/8/16 Dear Anadi, Thank you for your clear guidance, the recordings of which I listen to more. The lower belly focus is easier for me in meditation than in activity (so far). I am surprised to find I am beginning to be aware of an energy presence in the area slightly away from the top and front of the bladder. Surprised it is this low and for this region to be a centre of me. I am working with


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further embodiment and resting, including practicing to find and extend the rest at the bottom of the exhalation and to hold that before inhaling. So far, I find the horizontal surrender is easiest with unfocused external attention (less focused on seeing and more on relaxing pure attention at the back of pure me of c.). It is harder during activity with focused seeing and I am practicing this more (though I often forget) while also keeping attention in the lower belly belly.. In love, B

26/8/16 19:30 – MYSELF AS THE UNIVERSAL I AM After some painful and interminable sittings today and yesterday in which had difficulty focusing on being with closed eyes and even on really listening well to the talks, over dinner I suddenly noticed a relaxed feeling of ‘seeing’ from behind the back of my head. There was a subtle energetic sense of it being there. There was no feeling of bliss or great happiness, just quite strong repose – a relaxed feeling of myself (and identification of who I am) being there while also seeing whatever I was looking at – and wonderful relief at such freedom from normal tensions. This is an experience of samadhi, beyond simply deep relaxation, and is now owned as a clear benchmark by me. This means there was a lot of habitual stress and strain (suffering) which had been there that I had become used to. Also, the feeling was quite different from the old effort of ‘remembering myself’’. I wanted to explore it more while walking around to see if it continued, and so I walked to where my car is parked and then around aroun d one of the big barns here. On the way to my room I noticed Anadi waiting by the car for Atma to drive him away and felt the urg e to tell him about this new discovery but resisted it (it would have broken the rule of silence and no eye contact). It is still with me now while writing this about

30 minutes later and I very much want to keep it alive and even strengthen it, so will keep relaxing (surrendering pure me of c.) and merging with the universal behind. It would be lovely to live always with this

relaxed presence, not just in the background, but permeating my experience. I was concerned about going into the closed eyed meditation – that it might disappear, but it remained there and made resting from pure me of c much easier.

The question is will it be with me after a night’s sleep? 27/8/16 Dear Anadi

Last night, after dinner, I suddenly noticed a relaxed feeling of ‘seeing’ from behind the back of my head. I would not call it a feeling of great happiness, just quite strong repose – a relaxed feeling of myself expanded into a new space behind while also seeing whatever I was looking at. This tells me there was a lot of habitual stress and strain (suffering) which I had not even noticed. The relaxed feeling was so wonderful I wanted to explore it while walking around outside. It was

so enjoyable I did not even want to focus on the lower belly bell y. It continued in the closed cl osed eyed meditation as an expanded peaceful feeling.

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It is with me after waking this morning, though less strong. I definitely want to keep surrendering into it.

Thank you. In love, B Below note written on leaving the retreat

29/8/16 Dear Anadi, It has been a very important step for me to meet you and to experience the energy of the retreat.

Thank you so much for the generous time, work and guidance you have given me. In love, B   

1/9/16 EMAIL TO FRIEND K I had really been resisting going to one of the retreats. Of course, it was out of the question while M was here, as she could not be left on her own. Then it was important to visit my mother. However, I was also really concerned whether I could manage through one, as they are quite demanding in some ways. There are 4 periods of meditation per day, 2 of one hour and 2 of 2 hours. The 2-hour ones include a 20-minute walking meditation in the middle, so you have a chance to get the circulation moving again. There is a choice of cushions or chairs to sit on. You need to be seated 5 minutes before the med. starts and one usually stays for a few minutes afterwards - so the total med time per day can be close to 7 hours. The WHOLE of the retreat time (all the days - 24/7) is in silence with no eye contact with others, including not with Anadi. One is not even supposed to observe others. If something urgent or practical

needs to be communicated, one writes a brief bri ef note. One is also not meant to read outside material, material , even of a spiritual nature. Obviously, there is no TV or radio. I thought I would oversleep in the morning and/or fall asleep during the meditations. However, it did work out ok. I did find sitting on the cushion did not work all of the time - physically painful or circulation cut - so ended using a chair. For first timers (like me) there is a meeting with Anadi Anadi (maybe for others, too) and he checks progress. There is some transmission happening in these meetings, and probably in the med hall, too. Anadi attend most meds. Sometimes he gives an inspired talk (some of which become the recordings

on the website). Other times it is silent. In the evening ones, gentle music is sometimes played. The heat was uncomfortable (as high as 35 C) and there was no air con. Anadi asked me if I could stay

longer than the week I had committed to, as the next topic coming up was very relevant to my stage. I reluctantly agreed to a further 5 days into the next 2-week retreat. I am glad I did, because it is powerful and I had a breakthrough which I am still working on consolidating. However, as there were a few more people attending this 2nd 2-week one and not enough rooms, I had to share with a young man and I found that quite difficult. He was, I guess, an ok person, but it seemed like almost all of our preferences


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were different (lights on or off, curtains and window open or closed, when to go to bed and when to get up, being tidy (him) or cluttered (me), when to use the bathroom so it would not interfere, him being a noisy sleeper to my sensitive ears, etc.) and we could not have eye contact or speak to each other. I felt he was unhappy with me as a roommate (though I could be totally wrong on this count) and I tried to avoid the room if he was in it. Having my personal space in my own room was an important part of making the long meditation times kind of balance out and losing that made it much harder for me. Some

attendees came and stayed in tents they had brought, and I think I would prefer that to sharing (even without the electricity and the longer trek to the bathroom).

The food was excellent, and they made special meals for my requirements. All the staff in the team (and from the participants) are volunteers and the cost of the retreat probably only covers the out of pocket

costs of hiring the center and food . . . and possibly key staff travel. It is definitely not a money-making venture.

Meeting Anadi was very important for me and I even had dinner with him on my first evening before the retreat started. He was very grateful for the editorial help I have given. The effect of the retreat was

powerful – and I did not realize how much so until after I got back. There were 35 - 40 there and many were long-time participants - ones who go for 6 - 12 weeks of these retreats each year and have been doing so for 10+ years. So, one is in an atmosphere of the state of all these long-time meditators. I am feeling there has been an important transformation, perhaps a little like having been rewired, and that I am looking at my old ‘familiar’ world from a new relaxed and different centre (which seems to include some realignment of priorities and values).

I am still digesting it and am doing more meditation on my own now - plus specific practice focuses. 13/9/16 Later sent friend K the following comments on my breakthrough(s) from the retreat:

Re the breakthroughs on the retreat, it may be counterproductive to share these with another in that we are all on our individual paths, which require that we focus on whatever is our own next step. As I noted some time back to you, my sense is you have a stronger emphasis on the heart center and mine has been stronger on consciousness. Of course, it is important we grow to completeness in a wholistic sense and eventually attain a balance among the soul’s centers. I have not been a big believer and fan of transmission from teachers - though have been a great fan of grace from the divine. My feeling has been that the Hindu Advaita tradition are overly dependent on a teacher’s transmission, and insufficiently emphasizing the work that the student has to do to reach ripeness and readiness to receive grace or transmission. So, I was a little skeptical of the idea of transmission. However, I had been told that Anadi’s meeting with first time retreat students included a transmission which opened the portal at the back of the head, which allows the merging of what he calls pure me of consciousness with the universal I am. Although he did do a couple of minutes of hand on the

head ‘work’ with me at our private meetings, I did not feel anything special at those times. However, 2 days after the second of such treatments (which happened to be the day after I had very poor and insufficient sleep due to sharing the room for the first night) I had a sudden breakthrough of

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being in - and looking from - a space of great ease which was behind my head. There was an incredibly wonderful sense of relaxation about it, making me realize that I had been constantly living with and even been accustomed to tension and discomfort (i.e., suffering) without even being aware of it. Perhaps this was not just the transmission and the retreat atmosphere with its long group meditations, but also because I was extra tired. The feeling was so marvelous I walked around the grounds just enjoying it and did not want to attend the next meditation or even go to sleep for fear of losing it. It has stayed with me since. I did tell Anadi about this and he said the opening was not permanent if I did not work with it to maintain and strengthen it (which I am doing). An important part of this is that I can only

be with it through relaxing into it. I cannot be in control or have any sense of ‘doing’ it or ‘making’ it happen. This is something we can only let go and surrender into. There is a key lesson here in that we have to get

out of our way to allow the divine to be present. However, despite there not being our ‘doing’ involved, involved, we do require the understanding of where to direct our intention in this work and where to direct the light of intelligence (our internal, or pure, attention), which is not controlling or doing in the worldly sense. In a recent talk I listened to, my understanding deepened when I heard the word ‘surrender’ being equated with the word ‘transcendence’ . The more we relax. let go and get out of our way, the more the divine becomes available to us and the less suffering there is.

Perhaps the other most important outcome of the retreat for me, in addition to the energy itself, were the meetings with Anadi and the clarity it brought to where I am on his map and what it is most important I

focus my practices on. Practicing is so important for me, especially when on my own, that I have recommended a Book of Practice be prepared based on the meditation talks which are focused on instructions for specific stages. I had a small photo of the painting Russell Ashi did of Anadi with me and showed it to him in our last meeting, telling him it had been painted by a friend and that – for me – it represented him in more of a ‘non-personalized’ transparent sense, as a bridge to and from the beyond. Although I know Russell sent him a copy, copy, he did not seem to recollect that when he looked at it briefly br iefly.. I offered the photo of it to him, but he declined it, saying he does not like pictures of himself. However, I do love it, and feel it is one of R’s best portraits.


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11 SUMMARY OF MEETING WITH ANADI 16 MAY MAY 2017 – KARUNA CENTER, NEAR MONCHIQUE, ALGARVE, PORTUGAL

View from the center south to the coast and some of the rooms and entry to dining area and kitchen

Summary with select transcript extracts of my Portugal meeting with Anadi AFTER

WE NAMASTE’D EACH OTHER, Anadi

asked me if my sudden ill health and time at hospital during the

retreat had been a heart attack. I confirmed it had been and said that a reminder of our mortality is a great motivator for focusing on what is truly important.   

I noted this retreat has been a very important one for me, saying, “I think I now understand what the absolute is, but only at the level of consciousness, which is strange. Yesterday during the three silent sessions, I felt energy first in pure conscious me, next it was in fundamental me area, and next it was like I was, ‘knocking at the door of the primordial’ and, although maybe I was not in the primordial, it was like I was looking at the world from a great height.” “You did a beautiful answer today, today, but it gave me a feeling, a taste of the answer to that question, that when you look from I you are removed, but you still can deal with things, it doesn’t affect you, 159

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you do what is required, but you are not lost in the world a nymore. I can see what you said about the outer knower evolving with each level of the inner knower – that is the translucent knower. As the inner knower evolves up, the outer knower’s relationship with the world changes.” “And what your self-absorption has shown me is that I can now see a path to what I knew as a baby, which was that my home was like the primordial or immanent I am, but I lost it. It’s not something I could find again . . . maybe in deep sleep, but not consciously. consciously. But, for me, this has shown me a conscious path back to it . . . it’s a different dimension, of course . . . but I didn’t have any idea how to get back to it.” “I am so pleased. But I wondered, can I do it [return [return consciously to the primordial] , as I still haven’t developed the anchor of being. . . . there is a sense that I could do it without that now, so I am just not clear how am I able to have this experience of the absolute and this feeling . .”

Anadi responded, responded, “Well, this is the question. There are two options. Either one can experience these things, but some things might be missing – a certain level of absence. And the second is that maybe there is some grace or shortcut. It’s good for you to work on being.”

About being, I said, “There is much more of a presence there in the sense of having a pure me [of being], but still not sort of any ‘bottom of the bucket falling off’.” Anadi laughed laughed and said, “Maybe you push this bucket stronger!”   

When I commented on only having had rare experiences of bliss, but much more of a neutral but alive sense of peace, Anadi said that peace is a relative term and that, when something is a novelty, it can be bliss, but afterwards it becomes more neutral. It has to be natural and balanced. Otherwise, something like bliss is too elevated.   

He asked me if I was maintaining the depth, about my experience of pure me of consciousness vertically. I responded, that I had added the surrender part from this teaching, that the recognition had been there for years, but I had not known about the resting and surrender part. He chuckled, “Abidance. The pitfall of abidance.”   

and expanded on my He then asked me, “What happens if you go to the second level of absorption?” and response to describe the process.


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He also clarified about being able to distinguish between the outer knower and conscious me, saying, the outer knower is active just in inward fusion, so it already has an internal alertness in feeling its own subjectivity with pure attention – without the need for external attention. He proceeded to describe the next step, that of circular self-absorption, which is done by the outer knower acquiring what has been called ‘a second level of identity of pure attention’, a ‘pure identity of pure attention’. This is a deepening of the penetration of the inner knower, so, in the inward fusion, there are like two levels of activity of pure attention, a two-pronged approach. One is of the inner knower, the dynamic identity. He’s self-absorbing. And the second is from the outer knower. . . . It is at such a point that, when you activate external attention, the outer knower goes to the outward fusion mode. I noted that self-absorption and fusion were key elements helping me in visualization, making things much clearer, as they made the idea of entering the primordial seem more like a white hole than a black one, like the sense of going into a whirlpool and changing dimensions there. I asked Anadi why, if I knew the primordial as a baby, do I have to relearn how to be in it consciously again. He said it might be so that I could own it, that being bei ng there as a baby may not be the same, perhaps it was more an intuitive experience then and it needs nee ds to be attained more deeply deeply..   

He went on to ask me where I was with fundamental me, noting that one had to, on one hand, take care of the vertical dimension of essential me, but also cultivate internal samadhi, sometimes emphasizing the one and other times emphasizing the other.

He also spoke of my need to emphasize the vertical surrender into being, using the pause at the bottom of the exhalation, which is the deepest access we have to rest. Then, from that pause, we can fall a bit further below, as is described as the second level of exhalation in the Book of Being – – the vital force is still falling further below ‘ to where it is like two worlds meet’ . He added that the point of this second exhalation was to counteract the impulse of the vital force which

would normally not allow one to stay in this place of rest, even before one began to inhale again. So, the second level of exhalation is like putting a weight on the vital force pressuring it to stay down. Then, even one does inhale, you are still keeping the pressure there. The idea is that you are always there.   

I told Anadi that I had been using a practice of maintaining attention in a holistic way throughout the body

since learning about focusing attention during my Gurdjieff studies more than 40 years ago. I said this was helpful in his teaching for being with the different centers simultaneously though that I could appreciate the importance of emphasizing one center at times, where more development of it is required.

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He replied that it is not just developing a presence in the center that is important, but we also need to its portal to absence. ‘First you master absence there, and then it will be much easier for you to understand absence in consciousness. . . . the problem is that people are not sensitive to difference between relaxation, resting and actual absence. It’s like they don’t have the capacity to recognize the difference. It’s important to get acquainted with the different levels of surrender. Basically, if the experience of being is not perfect, you are actually still suffering there. . . . you are still still lost in the prison of presence, you cannot still really let go. But, mostly, one does not realize that one is suffering . . . the sensitivity to the imperfection of the experience is missing.’ missing .’ ‘So, you need to refine your relationship with being to really . . . it’s like internally constantly rebelling against fluctuations, against the inability to be fully in the complete state of rest . . . putting this weight constantly.’ ‘There’s another tool, which is the self-absorption of pure me of being [ I do not recall this from the Book of Being]. So, when you go deeper with the exhalation, when you let go with exhalation, you ne ed to be one with pure me of being. Then, as you do the second level of exhalation, you self-absorb in pure me, which allows this squeezing. This minimizes it, but it is still present, the recognition is still there. It is small enough it can pass through. It becomes like a tiny ball and can pass through.’

He then guided me in practicing circular self-absorption and reminded me of the importance of distinguishing between conscious me and the outer knower.   

Anadi next spoke of the importance of my being in self-absorption in the outer knower knower.. At first what I described to him of what I thought he meant was actually the experience of the outer knower being

conscious or transparent. He first asked me to imagine, while my eyes were open, doing the same as with the second level of self-absorption, but then asked me to close my eyes and to feel what I do when I try to self-absorb in the outer knower. Then he asked me to do the same with eyes open. I told him it was a very lovely experience [of being and seeing], with a flavor of self-remembering for me – a being in the world while having the emphasis more on the subjective. He corrected me and said the emphasis is more on self-absorption and that this would not lead to inward fusion but remain outward fusion because my eyes were open. The experience is the outer knower, which is looking through your eyes, is one with his pure subjectivity, and the subjectivity is being with pure attention. The outer knower has to rest.

As I was not quite grasping this, he guided me in practicing practicing it, noting noting that when it is intrinsic it will will eventueventually become automatic.

I commented on my experience of the practice, ‘There’s a feeling of the unity, of the self-containment. And it is a much better way to be in the world.’ And he laughed and said, ‘We don’t want to be in the world!’ So, I corrected that to be a better way to relate to the world and he agreed with that.   


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He had known I had had a difficult time in Japan earlier in the year and said he, too, had found it difficult, depressing and something of an alien dimension, rather than a place to live. He said his experience of South Korea was lovely and very different   

He asked me if I had any other questions. I noted that he had said the soul, once established, can go beyond death (rather than the personality), and here I was also thinking of the secondary centers as being the soul.

He said, ‘The I is the soul. The knower is the soul. The secondary centers cannot survive death. They can be perhaps reactivated in the next form, but they are secondary centers. They are only in the waking reality.’   

I noted how alone I now felt, with old friends and spiritual teachers I had helped in the past not responding to communications. There was also a distance in my marriage with M (based in Japan) and more of an estrangement from my mother due to her great age and inability to communicate much or to sustain visits.

I said that I was unable to find people I could communicate with – even in the students of this teaching. I found each student to be in his or her own world . . . and that some of them treat the teaching like a

religion and that, to my sense, a number of those I’d met still primarily identify themselves as being their personalities. I had thought, ‘here are people I could share aspects of the journey with’, but it doesn’t work. And in this I was even referring to sharing outside of the silent retreat. I said I was reaching a conclusion of really having to step out on my own and be absolutely alone.

He replied that everybody in this group is very individualistic. There is no sharing. Each is for himself. The teaching has zero sangha. You could share with others in the times of Aziz, but not now.   

I asked if the power for transmission is automatic with evolution, as a sort of a by-product. Does one automatically become a bridge to the beyond? He said that ideally ideall y, it can be. ‘It depends on how you define transmission, you know. There are different doorways that need to be opened. They will not open by themselves, necessarily. You know, like you need to . . . keys to open these doors. If you don’t have the keys . . . even if your intention is to enter this door, but you still don’t have the key key,, right? So, transmission is basically is [giving? getting?] the key to different things, to different experiences, which we cannot realize on our own effort.’

I commented that many Indian masters, like Muktananda, for example. develop different siddhis, transmission powers.

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He replied that they play with kundalini energy, which is not a transmission of awakening. Kundalini and awakening are two different things. He said he had been to Muktananda and his teacher’s, Nityanada’s, big ashram near Mumbai, now run by a lady successor, adding that their tradition was one of kundalini yoga, an Indian hocus pocus, not a transmission of awakening.   

Meditation hall in the daytime

I told him that this has been a valuable retreat for me, and so different from my first one in Germany. I said things had deepened in this retreat and there was a feeling of being at home in the meditation hall, and even that, sometimes when I am sitting, I ask myself, ‘Is this as good as it gets? What could be better?’ It It was very powerful, very peaceful and very wonderful.

Meditation Hall in the evening

Anadi commented commented that that every retreat is differen differentt and noted noted having having seen the Jack Nicholson comedy film film of that name.   


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To finish our meeting, Anadi did the focused direct transmission to me, which is apparently more powerful than the transmission which comes through him to those in the meeting hall during meditations – In my experience, the latter kind especially seem to happen when he attends these meetings but remains in silence without giving an inspired talk.

In this direct ‘work’ ‘ work’ with me, Anadi stood beside me and first placed one hand, or the t he fingers of one hand, on the nape of my neck – the first time I recall he has done this – and the other on the top of my head. After a short period – perhaps perhaps a minute and a half – he shifted and just just had his right hand with the fingers on the top of my head and the thumb immediately above the bridge of my nose, a position he used before with me in Germany. Here, again, he held this position for about one and a half minutes. After this he asked me to stay seated where I was for a couple of minutes and left the room.

COMPLETE MAP OF AWAKENING: DIAGRAM ANADITEACHING WEBSITE - 2019 (JAN.)

*Please note that this flow chart is struct ured to represent, in sequence, the major stages of the awakening process; it does not reflect the location of the awakened states in the human body.

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THE FIVE CENTRES OF CONSCIOUSNESS DIAGRAM (ANADITEACHING WEBSITE, 2018 NOV.) NOV.) Outer Knower Inner Knower (Conscious Me) Pure Conscious Me Fundamental Me Pure Me of Consciousness

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INNER KNOWER – INTERNAL PERSPECTIVE – (ANADITEACHING WEBSITE, NOV. NOV. 2018)

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12 2017 – FWD 2017 SPENT

THE FIRST THREE MONTHS

in Japan during which time I experienced high glucose problems, only re-

solved when I consulted a specialist doctor at the state university who prescribed new medication.

My plans to visit my mother for her birthday were cancelled by her at the last minute, as she felt unable to see visitors for long.

Attended Portugal retreat in May where I experience experienced d a heart attack. I was taken by ambulance to Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Faro Hospital. I returned to finish the retreat – now on heart medication – after 3 days in hospital, hospital, 2 of which were were in intensive intensive care. care. Following this I experienced daily angina and was in and out of hospital in UK until I was finally transferred to a London hospital where I was given a triple heart bypass at end Aug.

During this period M gave up her life in Japan to re-join me in the UK. She returned to Japan for a short period to finalize the termination of our house rental and the disposal of contents, including shipping some things back to the UK. I continued editing work for Anadi teaching, notably on parts of the Knower books, books, revision of Divine Path of Me, and finalizing the Book of Heart . Personal evolution also continues.

2018 After 13 years, finding I was was unable to maintain satisfacto satisfactory ry blood blood glucose levels through medication and lifestyle, I finally started using insulin in April. There was an immediate improvement. I was able to monitor this and adjust the dosage when required and soon changed from long to intermediate acting insulin.. In October, I started using the FreeStyle Libre continuous glucose monitoring sensor with reader which 168


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finally, together with the insulin, diet and exercise, gave me the ongoing control I had sought for so long. What a relief! As a result of experienc experiencing ing further pains which seem to be angina, I was able to have a second angiogram with the insertion of a stent on 2 November. It seems one of the 3 bypasses had not grafted

well, allowing only a partial flow. The stent is meant to improve the passage of blood in that particular coronary arterial branch. My best hypothesis as to the cause of the heart issues was the fluctuating glucose levels together with levels which were too high at times – though my cardiologist said vulnerability to heart issues came just from being a diabetic male over 50. I asked her if my cardiovascular system would now be fine, assuming I could control my glucose levels going forward, and she said I could still be vulnerable to issues just ju st from a time point of view, adding that there would be an increased probability pr obability I could have more issues if I lived to 100.   

RAMAJI Friend R advised me he was trying sessions with a teacher called Ramaji. I looked him up on the internet and found he had written a few books, one of which was called 1000 . In this book he had rated the spiritual LOCs (Level of Consciousness) of two hundred contemporary Western teachers of non-duality and advaita using biokinesiology (also known as “muscle testing”) to grade them on a scale - one which seemed to me to have parallels to the one David Hawkins used in his books.

Ramaji had had a kundalini experience when he was 16. After years of further spiritual practice his kundalini journey completed, including an awakening of the causal heart on the right side of the chest (where Ramana Maharshi also experienced it). With this experience the world became the Universal Self.

Ramaji had also developed a method of transmitting grace to students, called RASA, which helps them evolve to the 1000 level. This was the top of the scale he uses, and seemed to me to be one of having a clear and established awakening, but is by no means the end of one’s spiritual evolution. Attunement) delivers the Grace of Divine Mother for acIn his words: “ RASA (Ramaji Advaita Shaktipat Attunement) celerated spiritual awakening. Even though this Grace or Blessing has the power to quickly raise your level of consciousness, it is very gentle. Some people have shifted into enlightenment (stabilization in a non-dual LOC above well above 600) immediately after receiving RASA.” ( You You Are Everything , 2013 )

Rasa does not work indiscriminately on just anyone. Three factors are required for success: a strong desire to awaken in the recipient, an openness to the rasa energy, and the grace of Kali Ma. I read about the experiences of different of his students who had themselves become rasa givers. Time Time

after time they said their search and the suffering which had motivated it, had ended. More importantly,

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I was clear that this same was true of my friend R. I was deeply impressed, as helping others awaken, even if just to a level of awareness beyond the mind is a remarkable achievement. My friend R did give me a couple of rasa sessions. He found at the end of the second session that my LOC is at 1000. He asked me to send him a photo so he could show it to Ramaji’s partner, Ananda, which he did. She confirmed the 1000 LOC. I joined a couple of group rasa sessions with friend R and some of the other rasa givers, which I found to be pleasant. It seemed clear that these rasa givers understood what they were doing and had definitely attained some degree of awakening. Subsequently I joined a rasa given by Ramaji and Ananda covering post 1000 issues. It also seemed clear they knew what they were talking about. Some aspects of this teaching remain unclear to me.

Kundalini seems to be a factor in it, which I am not totally comfortable comfor table with. They also speak of the crown chakra and that is an area on which views are divided. However, the heart plays a big role for them, so it is not all consciousness oriented.

Am also not clear how the transcendent transcendent and primordial is treated, or what the view is of what survives death.

13 REFLECTIONS Douglas Harding’s simple exercise has, during the intense involvement with Anadi’s teachings, deepened to such a degree that there is a feeling of being a stranger, or even different species, in the world. THE

RE- AWAK AWAKENING ENING

I

EXPERIENCED THROUGH

It is impossible to share shar e what is of highest value and priority priori ty for me now, which is largely the inward focus and practice, even when in outward activities. It is obvious that others who still identify themselves as being their personalities and bodies could not begin to understand.

Over the years, I’ve come across analogies which try to illustrate the difficulty (impossibility) of trying to convey the experience of awakening to one who is not awake. The simplest is describing the taste or smell of something to someone who has not experienced it. No verbal description can come close to the experience itself.

Plato’s cave is another brilliant illustration, describing people who are chained inside at the back of a cave so they can only face the rear of it. Behind them figures pass in front of the cave entrance, but those chained can only see the shadows of these on the back wall of the cave, so that is their reality. They will have no concept of these figures actually being 3 dimensional and having colours other than the black/grey one of shadows.

Nicoll suggested the analogy of two-dimensional creatures living on a plane, such as a sheet of paper. If one stuck a three-dimensional object, like the tines of a fork, through the sheet, the two-dimensional creatures would just see two dimensional (flat) circles on their plane. They would have no inkling of the rest of the three-dimensional fork. 

What children have of their parents, aside from material gifts, are physical dna and personality influences. Since parents are invariably unconscious of who they are and of their own subjectivity, personality influences transmitted to their children just end up in similarly unconscious vehicles, as are collective 171

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mentality traits picked up in one’s upbringing from outside of one’s family. Nothing of who one really is, nothing of one’s soul, is transmitted from an unconscious person to their physical offspring. Despite knowing others cannot comprehend how such an awakening changes one, it still seems astonishing how others – –

–

are so totally hypnotized and lost in identifying with who they think they are, are preoccupied with continuing to follow their tendencies, obsessions and the collective mindset priorities even when these make no rational sense, do everything they can to prolong lives identified solely with their minds and physical selves . . . even when remarkable suffering is involved.

Right up until the edge of death, instead of focussing on finding out who they essentially are, people still value cleverness and the learning of subjects which are of no importance to the soul whatsoever – – –

try to accumulate physical wealth, cling on to worldly power for themselves and their descendants, or follow their religious and ‘spiritual’ practices or teachers/gurus with a heightened devotion that suggests desperation.

–

Efforts are made so that, even after death, the ‘false’ self or personality one has identified with, is immortalised in some way. This can be through a legacy with one’s name attached to it, a gravestone or physical descendants.

Virtually all people live the whole of their ‘rational’ lives in a state of amnesia, under mistaken identities, either never knowing who they really are or having forgotten their essential identity. Even their gravestones, if they have one, does its best to immortalize the mistaken identity. 

Everything learned about ourselves after being born takes us away from that original self we entered as. We are taught we have a head and body, a gender, a specific name and that we belong to a particular family, culture, race and country. We accept and construct a personality which we attach to our mind-body and believe that to be our sole identity. We believe that who we are is time-bound in a material world. . . . Despite all this mental, physical and worldly worldl y identification, who we originally original ly came in as has been forgotten, but remains with us, as our inner, essential self – nameless, faceless, genderless and unbound by time or other laws of the material dimension. 

It is stressful to be just in the personality’s personali ty’s mind. By itself, the mind works spontaneously spont aneously – the conscious personality part in a constant dialogue with the subconscious part -, making decisions for doing things


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which is meant to create a better and more lasting future in the relative world, and yet the end result of such effort is hopeless, because the whole of the relative world is impermanent. There is such a relief when shifting back to the reality of consciousness before the mind, where it is timeless and there is no need for thinking, doing or any kind of striving – and where one has let go and surrendered. There is a wholistic wholist ic constancy including beingness in that state stat e and, when based there, one does what is required to maintain the relative and, for anything above that, what one is inspired to do.   

When on the retreat with Ram Dass back in 1989, I found the few days of silence and no eye contact painful. Later, when on the Anadi retreats, it became a pleasure – there was a deep respect for others who were similarly honouring the silence and no eye contact – and the meditations in the group were profound energetically. I missed it immediately when I came away afterwards and there seemed

something of an unwelcome disturbance in having to communicate verbally with others. I find when in everyday life, when possible and acceptable, my preference is not to meet others’ eyes when out in the streets and shops and to keep as much silence as possible. An interesting aspect of this is that before I

cared what others thought of me – even seeking approval from strangers -, now it does not matter to me when I am out what others who are around me think of me. The shift is in me and in how less important

my worldly self-image is. Communications are best limited to practical matters. Other communications are simply, as Gurdjieff put it, pouring from the empty into the void.   

For some time, I have had a nagging feeling that there is still an immense revelation pending in Anadi’s Anadi’s teaching which will show more clearly that we are really principally in another dimension, while our presence in the physical reality of this world is both temporary and ephemeral, as is the whole of our personality. This would make clear that this world is a dream we can wake up from once we have established our soul, the inner knower, at its deepest level, but this waking requires a conscious soul. Such a revelation will not discount the importance of our individual self which will be/is the one who is

conscious in that higher reality (brings our intelligent awareness to it), consciousness of our true self as not of this world.

This insight seems to have been confirmed by Ramana Maharshi’s comment to a disciple worried about his death who said, ‘Don’t leave us.’ Ramana replied, ‘Where can I go?’ suggesting he was already established somewhere more permanent than this world.

Just after writing the above, Anadi gave talks on 1 and 2 February 2019 (Talks 69-70 and 72-73) which spoke of living as the primordial I am/primordial knower with supreme person/supreme knower, in which one is conscious as the source and out of the relative dimension of the known universe. “Realization of the primordial I am is the final act of self-remembering. The primordial I am r emembers himself through the supreme person.” He went on to describe this as the ‘great return’, the person coming home to

the primordial I am. This talk clarified that the person is the main centre of intelligence and the internal

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knower (awareness) a secondary centre to it. It also clarified that ‘beyond is just beyond the person – meaning that pure me centres not part of the inner knower continue to be secondary and the universal

I am continues to be a relative state beyond the person, but part of the wholer soul while we are in the waking reality of this universe.

In Talk 110 on February 14, 2019, Becoming Universal Consciousness, it is made clear that pure consciousness, established in universal I am and resting vertically is from where we look through the transparent seer and are active in the world through the person. In other words, our real home is not in this dimension.

This made me wonder if what is really ‘beyond’ is that which is removed from our true ultimate home as the supreme person and primordial I am (though the journey into deeper immanency continues). Thus, secondary centres of pure me would be one removed from our ‘core’, the conscious person would be removed further and the unconscious person (and subconscious me) would be the farthest out – in an exile of suffering away from the source and home . . . until they become the transparent windows through which the realized soul lives in creation. These words echo my sense of the above: NOTHING IS EXCLUDED As long as you remember that the body does not exist by itself, but it’s like a projection on the screen, then you can say whatever you want. The whole secret is to know who you are and you are the immortal Self. You were never born, you can never die. You have always existed. You are sat-chit-ananda. That’s who you really are just the way you are right now. Just the way you are. No changes have to be made. Just the way you are right now. You are God. You are consciousness. But do not mistake this with the body. I am not saying that the body is God. I’m saying that you are God. But I see you as consciousness. I see you as absolute reality, as pure awareness. That is God. If you identify your body with God you’re making a big mistake. Therefore when I tell you, “You are God” I am referring to your Self. Not your ego, not your mind and not your body. And when I refer to the term God, or consciousness, or absolute reality, I am referring to omnipresence. So when I say, “I am consciousness” I am not referring to Robert. I am referring to I-am omni presence, which includes the whole universe, un iverse, do you follow that? Everything is consciousness, nothing is left out. This is why we have reverence for all things, for all of life. For the mineral kingdom, for the vegetable kingdom, for the animal kingdom, and for the human kingdom. For everything is God. Nothing is excluded. - Robert Adams, Collected Works, Ts Ts 12

APPENDICES APPENDIX 1 - PRIMORDIAL EXPERIENCE - LA L ATER COMMENTS AND EXCERPTS FROM OTHERS Below are some later comments and some seemingly se emingly similar or parallel experiences related by some others (Sent to friend RK subsequently) 2010 Feb 2 Do you remember this map which we corresponded about and which I had on my wall above my desk

in Ogo? Have a look at it again to follow the below.

I just came across it again, as wanted to relate rel ate my experience to it. Examining Exami ning it more closely, knew I had previously been unable to relate experientially (from conscious memory) to anything above the OBJECT circle - Self Awareness/Beingness/Individual Witness.

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However, this new experience had no witness wi tness and nothing to witness. w itness. As in the 2nd from top AWARENESS AWARENESS circle, it was fairly like what is called ‘THE SUPREME” SUPREM E” and described as ‘No time and space, no size and shape, no movement, peace’. However, my experience was not of no movement, but alive, and seems to better fit the state above called ABSENCE/AVYAKTA/UNMANIFESTED and NONBEING, because it is described as ‘UNKNOWN, PURE BEING, PURE AWARENESS’. There was nothing except this alive being and awareness in a totally unknown state, which included no time or space or anything else of an


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objective nature. The alive being/awareness was totally alone, but simultaneously extended beyond any sense of a limited ‘here’. Moreover, it was a place of immense fascination and pleasure, MANY times more so than dealing with the world in our everyday minds, or even in usual silence and even what is experienced as normal meditation.

The weird thing is that, when it happened, I recognised it and knew it as a familiar extremely profound experience I could remember having had consciously at different times during my life - but I had repressed or forgotten them. I am sure this state is actually one we all have experienced, but do not bring back from that deep state to normal memory. Perhaps just as well, as I cannot at present connect how it might be of any use in surviving in the physical world.

However, I am also sure that such a profound state is always present and underlying our lives, both waking and sleeping. We are just not in touch with it because of our focus on egos/minds/identification with who we think we are/fear of surrendering/need for control. There is nothing I would like more than

to return to that state to enjoy and explore it further, yet I am aware of no way to do so in normal life, except to further cultivate conscious waking sleep transition experiences, which is difficult even in my daily relatively laid-back life with M and her complex and ever-changing family situation. The other best options seem to me to be the Michael Langford approach or what is recommended in the website we recently spoke of: http://itisnotreal.com/Overview%20of%20Self-Inquiry.htm This experience suggested to me that the intensive Zen practices, especially on the retreats, which allow relatively few hours sleep, and rigidly defined postures and attention for many hours, actually force one to be on the edge of exhaustion and readiness to nod off – into the unconscious Samadhi of sleep. However, the exhausted and sleepy Zen practitioner, seated in the half or full lotus posture cannot do this with eyes kept partially open, but lowered, through the long hours of required practice, meaning that they are in this way invited to approach the state of sleep, but not enter into it. Staying at the edge of sleep in this way, which could not be possible if one is well rested and not sleepy, may allow one to enter that in-between conscious deep theta, and even conscious delta experience ... and with practice become more at home with it, allowing more regular access and, eventually, to retain a foothold there and be in the world. 2010 Feb 21 Ramana Maharshi Becoming aware of the deep de ep sleep state while in the waking state is Samadhi. P.95 P.95 The present is only the ‘I’ -thought, whereas the sleeping ‘I’ is the real ‘I’. That subsists throughout. That is Consciousness. If that is known you will see that it is beyond thoughts. P.100 P.100 At the time of waking up from sleep and before becoming aware of o f the world, there is that pure ‘I-I’. p. 100

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Deep sleep is always present even in the waking state. What we have to do is to bring deep sleep into the waking state to get ‘conscious sleep’. Realization can only take place in the waking state. Deep sleep is relative to the waking state. P. P. 104

Above quotes quotes from: Conscious Immortality , Sri Ramanasramam, 1998. Ramana Maharshi says for someone to achieve samadhi it must be conscious, and that we all enter it

when we sleep, swoon and have other deep emotions, when the mind goes back to the Heart, however we are unconscious of it at a t these times.

My extremely brief experience, if a taste of Samadhi, was not new, but the first time I consciously was aware of it. I have been consciously aware of something very magic available for some years

now - perhaps the last 20 or so, but also had this sense in childhood - however I had never been aware of how transformative it is of reality and the material world of subject and object where we normally ‘live’. Message to friend RK - Feb 18

It is becoming increasingly clear that consciously cultivating very deep slow levels of brainwaves, traditionally achieved through meditation, medita tion, may well be the key to further waking up and consciously re-joining reality, which we are most certainly already unconsciously in – and which we also probably re-join every time we are deeply asleep). However, this does not discount the reality of so-called worldly experiences in awareness.

Here are a few interesting quotes from a website by Suzanne Lie PhD (which I do not know enough about to recommend – but I resonate with much of what is said in the quotes): http://www.suzanneliephd. com/solarpl/whatiscon2.html Theta brainwaves are conducive to profound inner peace, “knowing,” feelings of oneness, mystical truths, transformation of unconsciously held, limiting beliefs, creating a better quality of life, physical and emotional healing, and finding our purpose. Theta Consciousness provides the “peak” in the peak experience. Delta brainwaves are conducive to miracle healing, divine knowledge, inner being and personal growth, rebirth, trauma recovery, oneness with the universe, samadhi, and near-death experiences. Delta brainwaves provide profound intuition, empathic attunement, and instinctual insight.

TRAVELING IN OUR CONSCIOUSNESS We travel in our consciousness via our different brainwaves. When we calibrate our consciousness to the different brainwaves, we set our expectation to filter in the perceptions within the frequency range of that filter/expectation. We then experience the reality that vibrates at that wavelength/brainwave.


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When we dial the Beta Brainwave Channel, we calibrate our consciousness to filter out the perceptions that do not pertain to our external third dimensional world. On this channel, our Multidimensional SELF gives us information regarding our conscious ego self in our physical world. Our “beta reality,” which is our individual consciousness, is filled with myriad stimuli. It is directed towards survival, thoughts, decisions, and actions. Our individual consciousness directs our attention, and hence our perceptions, toward our individual assessment of reality. When we dial the Alpha Brainwave Channel, we calibrate our consciousness to filter-out any extraneous, third-dimensional perceptions that do not pertain to creative activity. activity. On this channel, our Multidimensional SELF gives us information about our physical world from the perspective of our superconscious, fourthdimensional self, as well as forgotten memories and stimuli regarding our true potential, which we have formerly filtered out. Our “alpha reality,” reality,” which is our collective consciousness, is one of creativity, artistic artistic focus, relaxation, and imagination. Our collective consciousness directs our attention, and hence our perceptions, to an assessment of reality based on the the consciousness of all humanity. humanity. When we dial the Theta Brainwave Channel, we calibrate our consciousness to filter-out all third-dimensional frequencies except maintenance of our physical body. On this channel, our Multidimensional SELF relays information from our superconscious self regarding our fifth-dimensional world, our fourthand fifth-dimensional extra-sensory perceptions, moments of illumination from the past, and new ideas regarding attaining our present goals. We can also experience euphoric feelings and moments of illumination on this channel. Our “theta reality,” which is our planetary consciousness, is deeply spiritual and introspective. Our planetary consciousness directs our attention, and hence our perceptions, to an assessment of reality based on the multidimensional consciousness of all planetary life forms. When we dial the Delta Brainwave Channel, we calibrate our consciousness to filter-out all external, third-dimensional frequencies. On this channel, our Multidimensional SELF gives us information from our superconscious mind regarding our fifth-dimensional self and beyond, as well as information from our unconscious mind regarding our first- and second-dimensional earth vessel. Our “delta reality,” which is our galactic consciousness, is focused on our cellular and subatomic reality and our inter-dimensional self. Our galactic consciousness directs our attention, and hence our perceptions, to an assessment of reality based on the multidimensional consciousness of our planet, our solar system, and ou r galaxy. galaxy. When we dial the Gamma Brainwave Channel, we calibrate our consciousness to filter-out individual stimuli and move beyond all time, space, and dimension to integrate the information we have received on the other channels so that we may be conscious of our process. Our “gamma reality” is truly multidimensional, as it is ALL in ALL. This cosmic consciousness directs our attention, and hence our perceptions, to an assessment of reality based o n the multidimensional consciousness of our universe. Added later to RK: Some quotes found later which seem parallel or similar in describing the above experience, these by Edward Salim Michael

In the description of his own awakening experience, it says he moved on to more later, but what he writes here seems a remarkably close match to the brief deep experience I had in January. Edward

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Salim Michael also wrote about the value of Nada Yoga, the inner sound of silence (Ajahn Sumedo has noted Michael’s teaching on this as being a great influence on, and aid to, him).

Edward Salim Michael, composer and spiritual teacher (1921 – 2006)

This extra-ordinary state can only be experienced from deep within, and is perceived as a vast and transparent Self without form, spreading out in all directions beyond the physical frame into infinity, a mysterious and formless ‘Spectator’ plunged in silent self-c ontemplation. Like a limit- less ocean of consciousness without beginning or end, this invisible Self, although formless, has a reality about it which is immeasurably greater than one’s tangible earthly body. Indeed, compared to this unusual state of being, the physical form loses all reality. In this sacred state, the contemplator, the contemplated, and the contemplation are all three united in one. It is a very mysterious and inexplicable act where paradoxically there is contemplation of the Self at the same time as being the Self which is contemplated. While merged in it, one has the strange feeling of going back into eternity to one’s Supreme Source. One is per- vaded with a sensation of indescribable purity as well as a blissful feeling of vast ‘cosmic alone- ness’ and profound inner peace surpassing anything one can know of in one’s habitual outer existence.

From: http://testimoniesawakening.free.fr/index.htm

From another author:


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MYSTICAL LEVEL I have entered this level on only o nly a few rare occasions, always from within a deep meditative state. I do not know how to initiate this intentionally. This is almost indescribable. This is a beautiful, warm, abstract level, filled with infinite peace and love. Soul-deep patience and understanding permeate the atmosphere. This is totally different from any other level. It has the visual appearance of a beautifully textured fluffy-white cloud. There are no sights or sounds here – only the all-pervading all-per vading white-fluffy cloud, and an almost inaudible soft humming. H ere, you quickly relinquish conscious thoughts of individuality and begin melting into non-dual oneness. An irresistible urge draws you deeper into the bliss of silence and in finite love. Being Being here is like like returning to the womb. You are immersed in something like warm and cuddly cotton-wool. Just before you lose track of this experience, you will realize your higher self, but you will not be able to put this into words afterwards. Time has n o meaning here. If you enter this world you will never want to leave. But your body will call you back when it awakes. Astral Dynamics Dynamics - Revised Edition, Robert Bruce, Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2009, pp. 309-310 Deepak Chopra

My sense and experience tell me that these are important comments from Deepak Chopra, whom I met in the early 90s. He either went deeper to say these things or was holding back in his earlier writings. Adapted from Power, Power, Freedom, and Grace, Grace, by Deepak Chopra (Amber Allen, 2006). Every day we normally experience three states of consciousness: Waking, dreaming and sleeping. But only by spending time in silence, stillness, or meditation do we experience a fourth state of consciousness where we start to glimpse our soul. When we glimpse our soul, we become a little more intuitive. We start to feel that things are not just what they seem to be; there is something more behind the scenes. The physical world we normally experience is a shadow of the real world. The real world, the world of spirit, exists behind a veil, and the veil is our own conditioning. In truth, we are not bound by the world of space, time, matter, and causation, but the veil prevents us from seeing this truth. It also prevents us from living in power, freedom, and grace. In the fourth state of consciousness, we begin to sense the deeper reality that is orchestrating the physical world, and there is a tearing in the veil that separates the physical and spiritual realms. Just as we have to wake up from the dream state to experience waking consciousness, we have to wake up from what we call waking consciousness to glimpse our spirit, our inner self. This is called glimpsing the soul, and it’s the fourth state of consciousness. It’s simply to be in touch with our soul. This leads to the fifth state of consciousness, or cosmic consciousness, when our soul fully wakes up in waking, dreaming, and sleeping. Our body can be fast asleep, but our soul, the silent witness, is

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watching the body in deep sleep. Our body can be walking, and the silent witness is watching the body walk. Our awareness is localized in space time, and it’s non-local, or transcendent, at the same time. If we don’t interfere with nature’s intelligence, then we start to awaken into the sixth state of consciousness, divine consciousness. In divine consciousness, we see and feel the presence of spirit in everything. When we wake up in divine consciousness, we don’t just see a leaf, or a table, or a cloud, or a rainbow; we see the whole universe being all these things. Next, we waken to the seventh state of consciousness, which is unity consciousness. This is when the spirit inside us, which is now fully awake, merges w ith the spirit inside objects, which are also now fully awake. The universe is conscious, and because it is conscious, it is conscious of itself. So the eighth state of consciousness, infinite consciousness, is its own observer. The observer is the discontinuity, the gap, the off. From: https://www https://www.care2.com/greenliving/the-8-states-of-cons .care2.com/greenliving/the-8-states-of-consciousness.html?x=36&y=1 ciousness.html?x=36&y=11 1 Note from RK: Deepak RK: Deepak was a student of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi until he decided to leave him. What he is writing here is what Maharishi called cosmic, God and Unity consciousness which was taught to all teachers of TM. Please check out Maharishi’s teachings on states of consciousness which you should be able to find online. 2010 December 2 Added

My sense is that there may well be many levels of the fourth state, the shallowest perhaps being the egoless aware space which contains everything in its experience (hence no separation or advaita), but also much deeper levels like the oneness alternate reality experience I remember which must have been a memory of a several times previously experienced conscious delta. The deeper state(s) would be more of the nirvana/bliss or sat chit ananda experience.

I feel Douglas Harding, Richard Lang and many of the so called neo-advaita folk have unquestionably achieved the shallower state, but not the latter. Ramana, Nisargadatta and possibly Langford seem to me to be coming from much deeper states.

I am more able to be in the shallower states described above, though there are still matters to look after in worldly terms, terms , in which the ego and worry come more to the front fro nt . . . though this seems to be less and less, and that there are simply things to deal with. Am staying staying in awarenes awareness s as much as as possible, possible, which which I feel may may bear fruit. Conscious Conscious awarenes awareness s at any time is effort well invested.   


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MUSINGS ON MEMORY LEVELS memory is at a different level in each of the states (waking, dreaming, deep sleep and turiya) except for when there is a brief – almost instantaneous – interface between one state and another, such as when waking from the dream state, the waking state memory will not retain (with rare exceptions) the dream state memory, but the dream state memory will remember previous dreams, as when one has recurring ones or finds oneself in familiar dream settings. It is extremely exceptional that the normal waking state ever gives credence to or remembers memory

level of deep sleep or of turiya. My own experience of this is of alternate reality experience – but a very familiar one, meaning meani ng that the deep sleep memory remembers itself. itsel f. My own sense of this is that it could resemble some drug inspired altered state – but more of being, rather than of experience (as experience would suggest separation of experiencer from the experience).

Waking mind and memory are not reality if turiya state is reality, as all waking memory (from books, teachings and experiences) is not long term and (usually) does not survive death.

The above point raises the question of how an impermanent waking self (ego/personality/mind) can take us to reality? Do we use learning/mind/memory to evolve to reality or is pure awareness the only door/means? A further most important im portant point on memory has to do with the kind of memory mem ory which w hich accompanies us into our present life from prior ones. This is not a conscious memory having having to do with mundane things

having to do with mental knowledge from before, like name, occupation, families, but something of a ‘resonance memory’. When we first encounter something critically important for our soul’s journey in our new life, we will feel a strong resonance and draw to it. It could be a particular teaching, such as Buddhism. It can also be to a person, such as a teacher or someone we had a very close relationship with before. Often, such individuals we are drawn to will find they have a resonance with us, too, but neither of us will have a conscious memory of the past relationship. This kind of soul, or resonance, memory is what is used in Tibet to identify infants who are reincarnations of previously highly evolved

teachers, including finding the next Dalai Lama. The infants are offered a selection selecti on of toys and sacred objects. Being drawn to the sacred objects is an indication of having been associated with them in a previous life.

APPENDIX 2 - POV’S TRIANGLE JOURNEY MODEL AND BUDDHISM’S FIVE SKANDHAS AND WHEEL OF LIFE

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PSYCHOLOGY OF VISION’S TRIANGLE JOURNEY MODEL* AND BUDDHISM’S FIVE SKANDHAS AND WHEEL OF LIFE October 2001 The views in this article are the author ’s. They are not endorsed by and may not represent either those of the Psychology of Vision or those of traditional Buddhist teachings.

PSYCHOLOGY OF VISION’S TRIANGLE JOURNEY MODEL Students of Psychology of Vision (POV) are well aware of the seemingly torturous psychological journey mapped out through the dependent and independent stages of the triangle’s journey model. Some of the more fortunate feeling among us may think we have graduated to the interdependent side, but the fact of the matter is that, with the many reactive mood changes and personalities each of us have, we are continually changing from one side and position on this model to another, often to parts of it which may be shockingly different to where we think we deserve to be.

As an example of this, let’s say you start your day out reading your post and one of the letters you received praises you for some brilliant bri lliant piece of work you did. You You feel really good, confident and have a sense that you are acting in interdependence with others who appreciate your contribution, as you appreciate theirs. You next open the newspaper and find your major stock investments have tumbled. You are immediately put in touch with feelings of fear and of having been victimised. You You go to work and a colleague you are very attracted to greets you warmly and you feel good about your natural charisma.

You next learn your company has lost a contract that you were a key member for servicing and, as a result, have a meeting with your boss who criticises your performance. You You shift to an independent defensive feeling, justifying your work actions to yourself, and react by criticising and attacking the boss back, or blaming other people and circumstances. Later in the day, your partner calls and says they want to split up with you. You are instantly put in touch with your emotional needs and devastated by how much you realise you depend on them. In a matter of a few hours you have been through a roller coaster moving up and down from the lofty peace and power ful feeling of interdependence interdependen ce to the murky

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swamp of needy dependence. We find that where we are on the triangle tr iangle is MORE changeable than the th e weather!

Gurdjieff spoke about this long ago: “Man such as we know him, the ‘man-machine,’ …cannot have a permanent and single I. His I changes as quickly as his thoughts, feelings and moods, and he makes a profound mistake in considering himself always one and the same person… Every thought, every mood, every desire, every sensation, says ‘I.’ …There is nothing in man able to control this change of I’s, chiefly because man does not notice, or know of it; he lives always in his last I.” ( In Search of the Miraculous , P.D. Ouspensky, pp. 59-60, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1950.) So long as we identify with the myriad of personalities (identities feeling separate from their world, and whom of which each want something, resist something or are less than fully receptive to their experiences), we will find ourselves at different places on the triangle with each person we relate to differently in our lives – our partners, parents, siblings, children, bosses, colleagues, bank managers and even strangers. (As a simple check on this, is how you are – your feelings and state of being - the same when you are with a stranger you are physically attracted to as when you are with one you aren’t? If it isn’t, you are on a different place on the triangle with each.) Being lost in the neurosis and fantasy of thinking we exist as separate individuals and egos means we

are not yet free from being a moveable pawn on the triangle’s chessboard. The POV model moves from the beginning of neediness in dependence towards a point on the edge of enlightenment where we are reduced to having just one personality …and then, with enlightenment, even that disappears. (Or, as Trungpa Rinpoche commented, ‘Enlightenment is the ego’s ultimate disappointment.’)

BUDDHISM’S 5 SKANDHAS Like the Triangle, Buddhist experience and teachings tell us how to evolve. However, in contrast, they also talk about how we moved the other way way – from a pre-personality ‘ being ’ into this seemingly separate ‘becoming ’ ego, packaged with whatever past karma needs we must still deal with in order to free ourselves to step back into the state of ‘ being ’ again. These teachings tell us that, in the beginning, there is no relationship, just self-contained open space. If we have doubts that we exist, our uncertainty causes us to project a reference ref erence point outside ourselves ourselve s to be separate from and to relate to. This reassures us of our existence, and we identify with what is ‘here.’ Then we create more and more outside reference points to reinforce our feeling of a ‘me’ existing from our particular ‘here’ foundation point. Buddhist psychology uses the concepts of the 5 skandhas to speak about how we set our ‘me’ up, form form and and our territory and use our projections to affirm our individual existence. The first step is that of form


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comes from a discovery of selflessness and an ignorance and fear that there is no self, or solid ‘me,’ here in the open space. So we create a solidity and a separation barrier between ‘here/self’ and ‘there/ other.’ The next step is that of feeling, as a means of further confirming our existing ‘here,’ through feeling ‘here’ as separate to what we project as ‘out there.’ The third step is perception, or more awareness ‘here’ of, and how we relate to and manipulate, what is ‘out there.’ The three styles of this relating are passion/desire (wanting something we perceive as pleasurable), aggression/hatred (resisting (resisting or running way from something we see as threatening) and indifference/ stupidity (where become numb and stop letting ourselves (where we decide something either doesn’t matter or become feel anything about it). (These styles correspond to descriptions of traps on the first two sides of the triangle…)

These first three skandhas are instinctive. The fourth one is about intellect, or conceptual discrimination, which allows us to categorise and name the many things now happening around and to us (shades of Adam in the Garden!), and to decide how threatening they might be, including a new level of reasoning about others’ motives. The last skandha is consciousness, where we combine the use of emotions and thought patterns to

construct the dream worlds we live in and from which we defend ourselves against the ‘out there.’ As Chogyam Trungpa put it, “…whole fantasy worlds are created to shield and entertain the ego. Emotions are the highlights of the fantasies while discursive discursi ve thoughts, images and memories sustain the story line. A story of the the ego’s ego’s hopes and fears, victories and defeats, virtues and vices is developed developed.. In highly neurotic people, elaborate subplots or ‘problems’ then develop from the initial drama. In psychotic people, the subplots completely overshadow the main drama.” (‘ Space Therapy’ , The Middle Way , London, Nov. 1975)

The irony and tragedy of all of this separation and ‘projection creation’ is that we totally forget we have created these and believe they are real and have always been there.

BUDDHISM’S 6 REALMS Buddhists call the different dream, or fantasy, worlds, formed by a combination of our thoughts and emotions, the six realms. These realms are illustrated on depictions of their Wheel of Life. They are the hell realm, the realm of the hungry ghosts, the animal realm, the human realm, the realm of the jealous gods and and the the realm of the happy, or peaceful, gods. Most understand these realms to represent planes of existence existe nce we are born into according to the karma we are born with. In fact , we are continually moving up and down through the different realms in the same life.

The triangle model speaks of a journey through similar emotional and psychological territories. Those familiar with it will see the parallels and can draw their own conclusions.

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Wheel of Life – Found in monastery murals. The hub shows the “three poisons”: greed, hate and delusion (pig, snake, cock). The six big sections show the realms of existence: that of the happy, or peaceful, gods (top); the jealous gods (upper right); humans (upper left); hell (bottom); the hungry ghosts with big bellies but tiny necks (lower left); and animals (lower right). The demon of impermanence holds the whole wheel.

Being in the hell realm is feeling anger, a victim and intense fear and paranoia. Both the hot and cold

hells are here. In this realm real m we feel attacked by the outside world and we lash out back at it, not realising real ising we are creating the situation in the first place. Our viewing the world as hostile is what makes it become hostile. As usual, the world reflects ourselves back at us. The realm of the hungry ghost comes out of being in a cold hell. We freeze ourselves into a cold hell to

stop the vicious circle of hot hells becoming increasingly hotter. Staying frozen seems safe. In this state, in addition to the continual hell realm threats thr eats that we are aware of, there are also opportunities opportunit ies of moving


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forward which flash through to us. When we taste these, we become hungry for more of them. This is a place of obsessive greed and hoarding. Hungry ghosts are depicted with big mouths and stomachs, but very thin long necks. This means that, even though they are ar e starving, hungry ghosts can never consume consum e enough to sate the hunger required to fill their big stomachs. This is a state of compassionless and selfobsessed needing to devour, but never getting enough. There comes a point when we feel exhausted from trying to stuff ourselves and realise it’s never going to work. This is the point of stopping struggling and relaxing, which allows us to enter the animal realm. This is the best of the three lower realms, but it is a place of suffering, dullness, stupidity and ignorance. To be in the animal realm is like being an animal, subject to being killed and eaten by other animals, fed or not fed if owned by people. This realm is a state of dependency on what comes from outside and fear of it, too. To placate this fear, it becomes a place of keeping busy, workaholism, rituals and persistence. However, it is here that we gradually are able to learn that we can make some choices; that there are some things we can choose that we prefer over other things. Deciding to make a choice for the better is the step that allows us to move up to the human realm.

This realm is a place of something of a balance of enjoyment and suffering. So it still can be a place where we continue to search for pleasure, for something out there that will bring a lasting happiness and sense of well-being. When we use it this way, we keep trying to make life work better and better for ourselves, making more and more sophisticated constructs constructs which are meant gradually to achieve an ideal and pleasurable life for ourselves. However, However, this is impossible, since we are continually manipulating the ‘out there’ in an attempt to make our life perfect. This becomes exhausting work, even when we are ‘successful’. We can see that, somehow, at least some other people have ‘made it’ and become ‘gods’, and that life can somehow be effortless, but we are not at that place. Buddhists experience the human realm as the place to practice Dharma and make true evolution to-

wards achieving the non-dual state. The pleasures of the human realm can be enjoyed without identification with them, and the sufferings similarly used for growth but, likewise, without identification. The realm of the jealous gods is a place of both distrust and lust. We still want things, but are plagued

by doubt. However, it is a place where we can take charge and work as a ‘leader’, but as a leader who is always eyeing the competition and ready to do battle. The realm of the gods is a place of blissful self-absorption and intoxication with the senses. There is

a feeling of being on the verge of breaking through to a full awakening and enlightenment. However, it is not quite there and the state is still one of impermanence. The wonderfulness we are feeling is just a reflection back of the wonderfulness we are projecting. We need and depend on this reflection for our intoxicated feeling. There is still the neurosis of an, ‘Aren’t I wonderful! wonderful! Aren’t I deserving of being worshipped by everyone!’ Whenever that diminishes in any degree, doubt creeps in and we are vulnerable to falling back down to a lower realm.   

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The Wheel of Life picture actually usually has three other illustrated concentric circles on it besides the

six realms it mainly depicts. These other circles describe the never-ending cycles we go through when we are caught on this wheel, just as we might go around and around the POV triangle for an eternity without ever breaking free into the centre. In all of these realms we are still caught in the trap of our own

projection …the trap of the addiction to becoming, or being, a god.

BEYOND THE WHEEL AND THE TRIANGLE Some Wheel of Life depictions also have a picture of a saffron-robed Buddha in a top corner outside of the wheel pointing with the fingers of his right hand. This pointing is indicating the Way or the Path forward. The cyclical wheel reflects the reactive mind, just like the words and journey around the outside of the triangle speak of our mechanical psychological reactions.

The Path, on the other hand, is un-directional and speaks of the creative mind, the mind that is not lost in reacting. In order to have any chance of getting onto the Path, we have to become aware of how unconscious, or asleep, we have been to the way we have created ourselves, our world and the repeating patterns that dominate our life. Buddhism puts a lot of emphasis on remembering ourselves, usually through meditation and growing awareness. We gradually become aware of our physical body; our sensations, feelings and more complex emotions; and our thoughts. Once this is achieved, there is the potential for a leap up to the awareness aw areness of how our life has been and the potential we have to change it. This includes changing the limited beliefs we have had about who we are. In the triangle this creative path is largely reflected in the words on the journey inside around the triangle, starting with the perspective we have on our earliest condition through thr ough understanding . Each of these words on the inside of the triangle become conscious choices we can make to move our lives towards

qualitative change, in a movement towards an eventual goal of ultimate liberation. These choices can only come about through awareness of the mechanical reactive traps on the outside of the triangle that

would, otherwise, continue driving us in an endless evermore vicious circle. This is why, in POV, choice is sometimes referred to as the highest power we have on earth.

Ultimate liberation, however, takes us into the realm of pure being-consciousness which, as the saffronrobed Buddha points out to us, is a stepping beyond the triangle, beyond the wheel of life, and beyond any personal mind and its ego and psychology. Note:

* Psychology of Vision (POV) is a visionary visi onary healing model developed by Chuck and Lency Spezzano. Its I ts triangle journey model is copyrighted. Psychology of Vision is a registered trademark owned by Charles Lee Spezzano (AKA Chuck Spezzano).

APPENDIX 3 – A LIGHT ON THE SAYINGS SAYINGS OF JESUS? “All sacred writings contain an inner and an outer meaning. . . . The idea behind a ll sacred writing is to convey a higher meaning than the literal words contain, the truth of which must be seen by Man internally .” .” Maurice Maurice Nicoll, The New Man “The collective mind can be aggressive. It will crucify someone who challenges it too much or too openly.” - Paraphrased from a talk given by Anadi, January 28, 2019. Any attempt to understand under stand the words attributed attrib uted to Jesus can only on ly be done don e based on what survives of

what he said and stories about his life and actions. The versions available of these are almost exclusively ones written well after his death and so based on oral tradition, rewritings, probable reinterpretations of earlier compositions and even out-and-out fabrications. This means that accuracy will have suffered and, more importantly, that the writings may have been misinterpreted or purposely enhanced (turned into propaganda for the early church) by those writing them. Based on the assumption that

Jesus had awoken to – and was firmly established in – a higher subjectivity, such writers are almost certainly only have been able to see his life and words from an unawakened and lower perspective than his own.

However, the internal evidence of what is available can be checked against what is known from the experience of pure subjectivity and inferences can be drawn.   

‘CREATED BY THE DIVINE’ It was noted earlier that in Origins of Man and the Universe that the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis

was not about the creation of the first physical humans, which had taken place much earlier in evolution, but about a higher level of consciousness entering humanity. humanity. Humanity had then experienced a fall with the consumption of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

In a similar way, being conceived by god through a virgin birth, may also have been a parable speaking of the higher consciousness once more being bestowed by true grace on humanity through a single

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individual who was to help others achieve awakening to their own subjectivity. Such an individual would indeed be a true teacher who, although being in this world would not be of it.   

THE LIVING LIGHT I am the Way, Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except e xcept through me.

What else but our I am – subjectively within – could be the way back to our source and divinity? Follow me and leave the dead to bury their dead. [response to a disciple who wanted leave to bury his father.] (Matthew ii:20, The Original New Testament , Schonfield)

The implication of this is that burying dead bodies is best left to those who are also ‘dead’, or unconscious, in the sense of not having awakened to their own living light of subjectivity.   

HEAVEN Jesus says, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you” Luke 17:20–21 , (NKJV) If those who lead you say, ‘See, the Kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.’ (Gospel (Gospel of Thomas, 3)

Observation is always of the objective, be it of what is outside of us or even of our thoughts, emotions and feelings. It is only within wi thin where one finds one’s subjectivity, subjecti vity, one’s soul, that which is part of the divine . . . that which is heaven.

From the Lord’s Prayer: . . . may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Matthew 6:10 (Good News Bible)

When we are centred in our subjectivity, which is our soul and not based in the world of creation, and


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live and act from there, it is the will of the divine, the will of heaven, which is being done through us on earth.   

THE LESSONS “The Kingdom of God is near! Repent of your sins and believe the Good News!” (Mark 1:15, New Living Translation)

The word ‘near’ could refer to near in time or near in distance. What could be nearer than our own sub jectivity,, instantly available? The meaning of ‘repent’ is literally to turn around. To jectivity To find our subjectivity we turn our attention from the outer 190 degrees around to the inner – from external attention to pure attention. ‘Sin’ was a term used in archery meaning to miss the mark. We sin, or miss the mark, when we focus on and identify with the external. ext ernal. The ‘good news’ when we turn back is then no longer just one to believe, but one to experience. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. (Matthew 13:12, NIV)

Just having desire and sincerity for spiritual evolution is not enough, one must already have access to subjectivity and, only then, more and more is available and can be attained. One already has the key to the kingdom of heaven once one has opened one’s own pure subjectivity. …do not be concerned in advance with what you are going to say (when brought for examination by the governors). Say what comes to you at the time; for it will not be you who speak but the Holy Spirit. (Mark 13:10-14, The Original New Testament , Schonfield)

When our identity is with our light, our soul, our person becomes as if transparent, and a vehicle for that light to express itself in the world. Be watchful! Be vigilant! For you do not know when the time will be. . . . What I say to you, I say to you all. Be alert! (Mark 13: 30-37, The Original New Testament , Schonfield)

We are here warned not to fall into the waking sleep of the common human life on earth, but to stay awake to our inner subjectivity, keeping our base of identity there. In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Stay here and keep watch.’ . . . When he came back he found them sleeping, and said to Peter, ‘Are you asleep, Simon? Could you not manage to stay awake a single hour? Be vigilant and prayerful, or you may find yourself tempted.’ (Mark 39:30-39, The Original New Testament ,

Schonfield)

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Here, again sleep can be heard to be the waking sleep of normal life, forgetting to remember and stay in our subjectivity, being tempted back into our habitual personality. When asked which is the greatest commandment, Jesus answered, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and the most important commandment. The second most important commandment is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself.’ The whole Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37)

If our subjectivity is our soul and connection with our divine source, then putting our attention and love towards that must be our highest priority, coming before all other objective distractions, including thoughts, perceptions and worldly desires. It follows that one would then respect the divine in others as being similarly precious. The parable of the prodigal son. (Luke 15:16)

Returning to the father can be seen to be analogous to returning to our source, returning from the lure and distractions of external attention (and worship) to focusing back inwardly to our own subjectivity. “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” Mathew 7:13-14 (KJV)

How very few cross that portal of threshold personality, personali ty, transiting from the unconscious unconsci ous to the conscious. There are many who achieve the empty success of the material world and others who strive for spiritual success through mental effort or belief and through the worship and following of teachers who have not gone through that narrow gate themselves. It is only by dint of absolute dedication coupled with grace that the narrow gate can be found and passed through. “ . . . when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.” (Matthew 6:6)

Here, the reference to ‘your room’ can be seen to be one’s inner temple of subjectivity, with the closed door meaning to have closed one’s door to one’s everyday personality and mind. Although, the Father is unseen (or ‘in secret’ in other versions), it is felt as one’s true light. “

. . . unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” . . . “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:3,5-8 (KJV)


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Nothing could describe the awakening experience better than likening it to a new birth, but one which is of spirit rather than of flesh. One awakens to realize one’s real self as no longer identified as being limited to a mind and body. One has stepped outside of time, even. Comparing it to an invisible wind must have been the closest physical analogy one o ne could have found in Biblical times. For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?

The world is a relative reality, dominated by impermanence and suffering, whereas the soul, once awakened and established, is a realm of peace and timelessness. No wonder Jesus was able to resist the temptations offered him during his time in the wilderness. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them. under their feet and turn again and rend you. Matthew 7:6 (KJV)

Connecting consciously with one’s subjectivity, one’s inner awareness and light of the soul, is indeed a treasure beyond value. It is so wonderful one wishes to share it with others, especially loved ones, so they, too, can wake to it. However, those whose existence is restricted to the mind will only be able to see it with the mind and can therefore never understand un derstand it. The collective mind will feel threatened. Often

resentment and judgements about one who claims to be experiencing this other ‘dimension’ will follow. Which of you by mental effort can add a span to his height? (Matthew 6:25-29, The Original New Testament , Schonfield)

Thinking on its own, effort on the level of the mind, can take us no further in our spiritual evolution. Lay up for yourselves no store on earth, where locust-grub and moth destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. Rather lay up for yourselves store in heaven, where neither locust-grub nor moth destroys, and where no thieves break in and steal. For ‘where your hoard is your heart is’. (Matthew 6:20-24, The Original New Testament , Schonfield) So make God’s Kingdom and your duty to him your first concern, and all these things will be added onto you. (Matthew 6:30-34, The Original New Testament , Schonfield)

Our highest priority on earth is focusing on our divine source, our inner subjectivity and light.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY (Books and audio material listed here are a combination of key ones which feature in the narrative and

have influenced the author’s own journey as well as those rare ones which the author has personally found to have the most helpful practice pointers.)

A Course Course in Miracles Miracles (The Text, Workbook Workbook for for Students, Students, and Manual Manual for Teachers), Teachers), 1976 1976 Adams, Robert, Silence of the Heart (1997) (selected from Collected Works – available online) Aitken, Roshi Robert, The Gateless Barrier: The Wu-Men Kuan (Mumonkan), 1996 Anadi, Awakening of Pure Awakening Pure Me, 2015 2015 Beyond Traditions, 2016 Book of Wholeness, 2015 Book of Being, 2016 Book of Enlightenment, 2014 Book of Heart (pending publication 2020)

Critical Inquiries into Truth, Vols 1 and 2, 2016 Embodying Universal Consciousness, 2015 Secrets of the Inner Universe

The Divine Path of Me The Knower, Vols. 1, 2 and 3 Towards Immanent I Am, the Great Return of Essence Me to Its Source Anadi (as Aziz Kristof), Enlightenment Beyond Tradition (with Houmam Emami), 1999 Transmission of Awakening, 1999 The Human Buddha, 2000 Ardagh, Arjuna, Relaxing into Clear Seeing: Interactive Tools in the Service of Self-Awakening, 1998 Brijendra (Robert Eaton) Genesis Dawn – I Meet Myself, 2006 197

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Bruce, Robert, Astral Dynamics Dynamics – The The Complete Complete Book of of Out-of-Body Out-of-Body Experiences, Experiences, 2009 Chopra, Deepak, Ageless Body Body,, Timeless Timeless Mind Mind – A Practical Practical Alternative to Growing Old, 1993 1993 Power, Freedom and Grace: Living from the Source of Lasting Happiness, 2006 Dogen, From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment: Refining Your Life, 1983 Fremantle, Christopher, On Attention: Talks, Essays and Letters to His Pupils, 1993 Godman, David (Editor and part translator), Padamalai: Teachings of Ramana Maharshi Recorded by Muruganar, 2004 Gurdjieff, G. I., Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson Meetings with Remarkable Men Life is Real Only Then, When ‘I Am’ Views from the Real World Harding, D. E., On Having No Head The Little Book of Life and Death

Kaplan, Robert-Michael, Seeing Beyond 20/20, 1987 Conscious Seeing: Transforming Your Life with Integrated Vision Therapy, 2008 Kapleau, Roshi Philip, The Three Pillars of Zen – Teaching, Practice and Enlightenment, 1989 Langford, Michael, The Most Direct and Rapid Means to Eternal Bliss, 2007 The Seven Steps to Awakening, 2015 Long, Barry, My Life of Love and Truth: A Spiritual Autobiography, 2013 Origins of Man and the Universe – The Myth that Came to Life (with Clive Tempest), 1997 Longaker, Christine, Facing Death and Finding Hope: A Guide to the Emotional and Spiritual Care of the Dying, 1998


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Mead, G. R. S., Apollonius Apolloniu s of Tyana Tyana – The Philosopher-Reforme Philosopher-Reformerr of the First First Century A.D., 1901 1901 Merzel, Dennis Genpo, The Eye Never Sleeps: Striking to the Heart of Zen, 1991 Big Mind Big Heart – Finding Your Way, 2007 Michael, Edward Salim, The Law of Attention: Nada Yoga and the Way of Inner Vigilance, 2010 Monroe Institute, Gateway Experience - 6 Waves (Audio) Going Home Series (Audio) Monroe, Robert, Journeys Out of the Body, 1972 Far Journeys, 1996 Ultimate Journey, 1996 Muruganar, Shri The Garland of Guru’s Sayings - Guru Vachaka Kovai, 2007 Nicoll, Maurice, Living Time and the Integration of Life, 1988 Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, 6 volumes, 1976 The Mark, 1981 The New Man – An Interpretation of Some Parables and Miracles of Christ, 1972 Nisargadatta, Maharaj, I Am That - Conversations with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, 1981 Ouspensky, P. D., In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, 1949 Ram Dass, Be Here Now, 1971 Miracle of Love – Stories About Neem Karoli Baba, 1979 Ramaji, 1000: The Levels of Consciousness and a Map of the Stages of Awakening for Spiritual Seekers and Teachers, 2014

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Ramana Maharshi, The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi (Self-Inquiry, Who Am I, Spiritual Instruction and Poetry), 2006 Ranjit Maharaj, Shri Illusion Vs Reality, 2010 Reynolds, John Myrdhyn (translator and editor), Self Liberation Through Seeing with Naked Awareness, 1989 Sadhu Om, The Path of Sri Ramana Maharshi – Part 1, 2002 Siddharameshwar Maharaj, Master of Self-Realization – An Ultimate Understanding (including Master Key to SelfRealization), 2006 Silva, Jose, The Silva Mind Control Method, 1977 Snow, Chet, Dreams of the Future, A Preview of the Futures that Lie Before Us, 1991 Spezzano, Chuck, Awaken the Gods, Gods, Aphorisms Aphorisms to Remember the the Way Way Home, 1991 Spira, Rupert, The Transparency of Things – Contemplating the Nature of Experience, 2008 Sumedho, Ajahn, The Mind and the Way: Buddhist Reflections on Life, 1995 Suzuki, Shunryu Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, 1970 The Vedas (selected, including the Upanishads) Warren, Shaun de, You Are the Key – A Guide to Self-Discovery, 1988 The Mirror of Life – Your Adventure in Self-Discovery, 1991 Walker, Kenneth, A Study of Gurdjieff’ Gurdjieff’s s teaching, teaching, 1965


Walter, William W., The Sickle, 1918 The Sharp Sickle, 1938 Wilson, Colin, The Occult, 1971 The War Against Sleep – The Philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff, 1980

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