Taken from My Piece of Peace: SETTING OUT: The I Ching speaks

  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.