Taken from My Piece of Peace ISBN
978-1838440121
SETTING OUT
So it was during the
third year, the 1971 sit-in at UEA over double punishment of a
student for possession of LSD, that a group of us chemistry students
discussed the idea of travelling across the Sahara Desert and touring
Africa. Unfortunately though, many countries required a Carnet that
allowed import and export of some goods and vehicles but that was
quite costly and we could not afford it.
Late in the third term
of my final year, we decided instead to buy a van and travel as far
as we could eastwards. That was to be Turkey. I had no intention,
not even an idea, of going beyond Turkey. I had no idea that this
was just part of my search.
As a cannabis smoker I began
meeting many more like-minded people including “Australian Paul”
who introduced me to the chillum.
I
got very high from smoking
chillums of a hash-tobacco
mix.. Paul, who was actually
English but had lived and
married in Australia, had
studied theology and been to India. On
the surface Paul was a great guy, generous and full of inspiration
and energy. He used to visit the small room in a house close to his
own, where John and I were staying whilst trying to raise money for
our trip. I was working with a fencing company at the time, called
Defiant Fencing with the aim
of raising money to travel. I did not manage to save much though.
I earned about £20 for five
days labouring.
I found it very difficult
saving money. We clubbed together to buy a cheap van. I put in ten
ponds. The day we left the UK I had just £80, some in cash and some
in American Express travellers cheques. At that time each person was
allowed to take just £50 out of the country.
In March 1972, five of
us, myself, John, Keith, Marion and Mike, set out in our van heading
for Istanbul.
As it happened,
despite having almost no money, I did travel beyond Turkey,
travelling with Keith across Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and
Pakistan, to India, where I became very sick with hepatitis and
dysentery.
I
lost my good friend John Sullivan in a crash in Antakya the evening
after Keith and I left him and Mike. Mike was seriously injured in
that crash. I did not even know until
several months later when I
met another man from Norwich, Pete Roscoe, who was travelling east,
in Sigi’s restaurant in Kabul, where
all the hippie travellers went to eat Western food, smoke joints and
listen to Western music.
That
story is told in my book “All About My Hat The Hippy
Trail 1972” so I take up my
present tale where that ends and I return to the UK after my illness,
weighing about six and a half stone. My normal weight had been just
over nine
stone.
By this time I was convinced that there existed a
means of heightening my consciousness to some sort of
“transcendental” level. I
had no guide, no teacher or Guru. I had just my own thoughts and
experiences.
One
other thing I did have was a copy of the I Ching, a
book of ancient Chinese oracles, that I had been given by Diane, an
English girl I had met in Delhi and travelled to Kabul with. I spent
about 8 weeks with her but when I decided I just had to get back to
the UK as quickly as possible and left Kabul, she decided to stay. I
never heard from or of Diane since then, but the book proved to be an
essential part of my journey.
To consult with it, one
had to hold a general or specific question in the mind and throw
sticks or coins which would be translated into numbers that gave
moving or unmoving lines, which in turn led to chapters in the book
to read. Those readings had to be understood in terms of the
question. It is not really a predictive work, more one of
clarification. It talks in terms of the “wise man”, of “crossing
the ocean” or “marrying the maiden” and somehow, for me, it
worked.
Upon
returning to the UK, at first I
went to my parents in Barry
and spent a week or so in hospital, recovering.
Whilst
in hospital, one day my
mother came to visit and brought me a newspaper and a few
letters. Neither she nor I
knew what a profound effect they
would have on me.
One
of the letters was from John’s mother, saying how, of course, sad
they were to have lost their son, whom, she said had “died amongst
the people he loved”.
In the newspaper there was a short
article with picture about a “Boy Guru” from India. He was born
in Haridwar, the place where I had become ill, in an Ashram that I
had intended to visit.
In
1972, he was just 15 years old. His name was Guru Maharaji, or Prem
Pal Singh Rawat,
and he was visiting the UK for the second time, the first visit
having been a year earlier when he had spoken at Glastonbury
festival.
Guru Maharaji was saying that he wanted to bring
peace to the world, as he had promised his late father who,
coincidentally, had been his own Guru, called Hans Ji Maharaj. The
term Guru, generally understood to mean teacher, more specifically
meant “One who takes us from darkness to light”. I thought
the world certainly needed that.
The second letter that I
opened was from a couple of friends in Norwich, Pam and Steve, who
were also good friends of John Sullivan. They were, naturally, very
upset by John’s death which by now was months ago. They offered me
a room to stay in if and when I returned to Norwich.
They also gave been a
stern warning about Australian Paul and his wife Lorraine, saying
that they had become “Guru Freaks” and I should avoid them.
The
third letter was from Australian Paul!
He told me that he and
Lorraine had given up smoking cannabis and were now meditating on
something called “The Knowledge” and were followers of Guru
Maharaji.
What a weird set of coincidences.
I thought the Guru must be
some sort of con, being just a boy. Maybe, I thought, he was some
sort of prodigy for the Beatles’ guru, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
I had visited his ashram just outside Rishikesh and had been put off
by the apparent austerity that the paying guests had to live in
amidst the luxurious lecture hall and gardens.
I
began thinking about levels
of consciousness. Elemental reactive, instinctive, reasoning and
transcendental. I began to read scripture – the Bible, the
Bhagavad Gita, Buddhist works and the Koran which I admit I struggled
with. I can’t say they
made much sense and seemed in may ways to contradict each other, as
if there may have been a secret key to understanding them.
Whilst
it seemed
that Christianity was about Love and Faith and a loving God, the Old
Testament was about Faith and Trust for a jealous and vengeful God
(Jehovah). Buddhism seemed to be about acceptance and karma whilst
Islam meant Peace.
I pondered on which path I should
take. Transcendental mediation, Hare Krishna, Christianity,
Buddhism, drugs
like LSD? Islam did not
appeal to me and I could not become a Jew as that was by birth.
For now I had to focus on
regaining my health and strength.
It
was a few weeks later that I
returned to Norwich and went to stay with Pam and Steve. I wanted to
visit Paul and Lorraine but they were
very much against them,
so I didn’t, at least for a few days.
But Paul and Lorraine
had also been friends before I had headed East and Paul was one of
the few people that had helped me by sending me ten pounds (about
half a week’s wage in those days) when I was sick and broke in
Delhi.
So I found myself knocking on
their door, intending to reveal their Guru’s con and getting them
back on the right path, so to speak, even though I had no idea what
the right path was.
They
greeted me fondly asked me to stay for curry and told me about this
“Knowledge” and what had led them to it. In fact Paul would not
stop talking about it. I sort of half-listened
when he talked about “seeing the light.” Sure
enough they had stopped smoking dope, which was, I admit, somewhat of
a disappointment
to me.
I
spent many hours at Paul and Lorraine’s small flat, listening to
him talking. The Knowledge was not appealing to me.
I
started using the I Ching
to guide me. I went to a
Hare Krishna evening with great food, chanting and dancing. It was a
great evening but that route did not appeal to me.
I went
to a lecture on Buddhism that seemed quite complicated and a talk by
“Jesus Freaks” that did not appeal to me at all. The I Ching
also seemed to steer me away from those routes.
Then one day whilst I was
sitting in Pam and Steve's front room alone, I decided simply to ask
the book to give me some guidance – a more general question. I
threw the three coins six times and noted down the results which
would lead me to the correct “Hexagram” to read.
I was very keen to read the
advice but just then there was a knock on the door. It was Paul and
Lorraine and a man they introduced as Alastair. That man was beaming
and greeted me with hands as if in prayer. He sat on the floor
cross-legged.
I was a bit annoyed that they
had turned up just then as I knew Paul would do a lot of talking. So
I asked them if they could just stay silent and drink some tea whilst
I read the Hexagram.
The Hexagram was number 5:
WAITING There were a few lines that maybe changed my life more than
any other. They read:
‘Entering
into the cave
There are uninvited guests,
Three people
come.
Honouring them, in the end good fortune.’
I wondered did it mean
“father, Son and Holy Ghost” or maybe “Brahma, Vishnu and
Shiva” before realising it may well have referred to that very
moment and those very three people in the room, Paul, Lorraine and
Alistair, who were surely uninvited guests.
So I put down the book and
started to listen.
Paul immediately started
talking about “The Light”.
Now, as I understood it,
“seeing the light” meant understanding and was not to be taken
literally. Of course I knew about light and the speed of light in a
scientific sense and I knew that scriptures said that “God is
Light” but “God” was not so much in my realm of belief. I had
also read that God was omnipresent and therefore God was “in me”
although I had never see him, her or it. The only light I had seen
was through my eyes. But I listened to Paul for a while and then
asked him.
“When you talk about seeing
the light, do you mean understanding something, like when you
suddenly get the answer to a question or riddle?”
Paul explained that he did not
mean that, he meant looking inside, meditating, through the “THIRD
EYE”.
Paul said “If thine eye be
single the whole body will be full of light.”
He explained that his Guru
Maharaj Ji had shown him four techniques of meditation, ways to look
inside to see the light, hear the “music”, taste the “nectar”
and feel “peace”.
I had heard this before but
had skimmed over it.
Meanwhile Lorraine was sitting
quietly and Alistair was grinning.
I half expected them to burst
out laughing and tell me it was a joke.
After that, over the next few
weeks, I started re-reading some of the scriptures which still did
not really make sense. I learned from Paul that one had to go to
meetings called “Satsang”, which he said meant “The company of
Truth” and eventually go to London and ask a “Mahatma” for
“Knowledge”.
Mahatmas were “Great Souls”,
literally, and people appointed by the Guru to “Give Knowledge”
the four techniques and an experience. I had met a Mahatma in
Haridwar in India after smoking chillums there with some of the
Sadhus or Holy Men, by the side of the Ganges. The Mahatma, dressed
in robes, had come along with a group of followers and taken me for
tea, inviting me to join their procession called “Arti” that
evening and go back to their Ashram. But I had become sick with
diarrhoea and was vomiting so did not go and slept on the railway
station on a bench (having almost no money) before returning to Delhi
the next day. I thought that Mahatma was the son of the local bigwig
lord or something similar. Then I thought he may have been one of
the Guru’s appointees. Maybe I could have gotten that Knowledge
there if things had been different.
Paul told me that his Guru
said “Do not put off til tomorrow what you can do today.” That
made sense. He also said that although the Knowledge was free, the
guru asked people to do “Satsang, Service and Meditation”. I had
heard that mentioned in the Sheik religion in Amritsar. It required
daily meditation.
