1972: A Journey Within

 A Journey Within

1972: Even before my trip to India, which in a way was unintentional, I was on a search.

I was 22 at the time. I had been studying chemistry at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. I had started the course in 1968, thinking that if I could understand the chemistry and physics of the Universe around us, I would reach an understanding of the meaning of it all, including myself.

By the time I graduated, I had realised that I was wrong. Although science consists of achieving the same results from the same observations or reactions, so much of it was and still is based on theory and belief.

Before I had left the UK in 1972, I had read books that greatly influenced me such as The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra, in which he draws parallels between modern science and ancient religion, Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception and John Lilly’s The Center of the Cyclone, which discussed states of consciousness especially on hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD.

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 in 1972, an English girl I had met in Delhi and travelled to Kabul with.

Months later, after 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.

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.

Another 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 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.
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 my 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”.

So I attended some Satsang meetings and then went to London a few times to listen to the Mahatmas. I did not get to see the Guru himself as he was not in the country. It still did not seem to make much sense; there was a lot of praise for “Maharaji” but not really any explanation of what this “Knowledge” was. I realised that it had to be experienced and for that one had to ask a Mahatma. Despite my University education and travels, I was still quite shy, and even though I was sometimes gently pushed towards a Mahatma, I just couldn’t ask.

By this time it was approaching Christmas. I remember one day back in Norwich, I shook my fist at the sky and said “If you are real God, I want Knowledge on Christmas Day.” Of course, I didn’t believe that was going to happen, but …

A few days before Christmas I was staying with a “Premie”, a “devotee” of Maharaji, in London. Premies are named after Maharaji’s given name, Prem, which means love. I was staying with this guy in Earls Court. In those days some Premies volunteered to accommodate “aspirants” (people that wanted the Knowledge) and I was sleeping on his floor.

I also started going to an Ashram in Muswell Hill, where a Mahatma spoke. That one was a lady from India called Prakash Bhai. I didn’t like her, she seemed rather stern and I did not want to ask her for Knowledge.

After one session, a guy came into the room and said “All those who Mahatma Bhai has said can have Knowledge, go into the other room and write your name on the list.” Well, I had not even asked but I went and wrote down my name anyway. That little bit of dishonesty did not bother me as I still though it was all a con and probably at some stage, I thought, we’d be asked for money.

Actually, that never happened.

It was December 24th that we went to a hall for Satsang in the Swiss Cottage area. Several Mahatmas spoke and at the end one of them announced that there was to be a “Knowledge Session” the next day, Christmas Day, for fifteen people. He had a list of the names of the people that could go along to the house in Muswell Hill. Maybe my demand would be met, I thought.

As he read out the fifteen names he asked the people to shout out if they were there. By the time he reached number fifteen, only thirteen of them were there and I was not one of them. So he told the people that if they knew the other two, tell them to come tomorrow, but if not then numbers sixteen and seventeen could go.

But only fifteen could get the Knowledge as Guru Maharaji had stipulated a maximum of fifteen.

I was number sixteen! Would I get Knowledge on Christmas Day after all?

I was very embarrassed when almost everyone in the hall started shouted, “let him have Knowledge” but the Mahatma said only if the others did not turn up.

The following morning, Christmas Day, I got up at about 5 o’clock and walked all he way to Muswell Hill. When I got there all fifteen of the others were there. They and I sat in a room waiting for the Mahatma Prakash Bhai to arrive. She spoke for a while and asked me to read a few lines from The Bible. I was thick with a cold, nose running and sneezing, but I read the lines which I remember to this day.

“For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.

“For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.

“What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”

That was heavy stuff. Although written about the knowledge of Jesus Christ, the Mahatma said it was the same Knowledge. It was a warning!

After that she said that the fifteen named people would receive Knowledge that day but the other two would have to wait! In other words, I would not be one of the ones to be shown anything that day!

I did argue. I told her “but Guru Maharaji said not to put off til tomorrow what one can do today!”

“That’s right,” she said, “but I cannot give you Knowledge today because Guru Maharaj Ji says maximum fifteen, and if I give to you one of the others will have to wait. You must come back in three days!”

I was not at all pleased. I was quite angry. Some sort of divine joke? That God I had made my demand to had let me down.
I stormed out of the house and found my way to the start of the A11 road, intent on hitch-hiking back to Norwich, however hard it was going to be on Christmas Day.

I stuck out my thumb as the first car approached. It stopped. “Where you going mate?” asked the driver. “Norwich,” I said. “Oh I’m going there. I can take you all the way!”

The journey took about three hours and by the time we reached the outskirts of Norwich it was starting to get dark. Moreover, I was starting to feel very silly to have reacted like that. I asked the driver to stop at the ring-road roundabout, which he did. I got of the car, crossed the road, stuck out my thumb to go back to London and the first car stopped!

“Where you heading?” asked the driver. “London,” I said. “Oh I can take you there! What part of London?” “Earl’s Court,” I said “near the tube station.” “Oh that’s exactly where I’m going! I can take you all the way!”
Some hours later, I was back in my mate’s bedsit in Earl’s Court, sleeping on his floor, telling him about my day, listening to his Satsang, and waiting three days to head back to Muswell Hill where I hoped to receive the Knowledge..

Being sceptical though, I was determined not to be drugged or hypnotized, so I refused to eat or drink anything and pinched myself all though the “Knowledge Session”. There were fourteen other aspirants.

She told us we had to make some promises to Maharaji and to ourselves. First was not to reveal the techniques. Second was to practice the techniques twice daily and “give yourself a chance” and third was to “leave no doubt in your mind.”

One thing I want to say is that from the first time I ever read anything he said, Prem always said that he is not a god, that he is a human being, and that he is here to show us how to find the Knowledge of God and self within. It is not his knowledge, he does not give it to us, he just shows the way to find it.

Now , in 2024, I feel fulfilled and grateful for the Knowledge that peace and love and joy are within inside of me and for the techniques for finding that place.

Taken from: My Piece of Peace
ISBN 9781838440121

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.

Taken from My Piece of Peace : Introduction

 Taken from My Piece of Peace ISBN ‎ 978-1838440121 

Even before my trip to India, which in a way was unintentional, I was on a search.

I was 22 at the time. I had been studying chemistry at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. I had started the course in 1968, thinking that if I could understand the chemistry and physics of the Universe around us, I would reach an understanding of the meaning of it all, including myself.

By the time I graduated, I had realised that I was wrong. Although science consists of achieving the same results from the same observations or reactions, so much of it was and still is based on theory and belief.

Whether it’s subatomic particles or black holes, the best we have is theory – one theory for the smallest and one theory for the largest. We have quantum mechanics and we have gravity waves. Science is still searching for a unified theory that will explain it all.

Most people cannot see either atoms or black holes – and strangely we are told that atoms are not solid yet black holes are not holes. We are told that mathematical calculations on the supposed mass and energy of the universe that that enables it to exist are only satisfied by accepting the existence of a mysterious dark matter and dark energy that we cannot otherwise detect. We don’t really know where the universe “came from”, we don’t really know how big it is or even if it is just one of many universes – that is multiverses.

Although I had (kind of) rejected religion when I was 13 and considered myself an agnostic or atheist, my very first experiment in chemistry in our garden shed, when I mixed calcium carbonate with dilute hydrochloric acid and observed the effervescent reaction, made me think that those chemicals were somehow aware of each other. They were conscious even if only on a chemical level. In school I was told that fire was a chemical reaction too. I was told that our brains function on electric impulses and signals and our digestive systems were chemical. Our Sun was a huge chemical reaction. Chemistry seemed to be everywhere.

Yet most of that we accept as true even if we cannot actually see it. Just like people’s beliefs in God or gods, science consists of a large amount of religious beliefs.

Before I had left the UK in 1972, I had read books that greatly influenced me such as The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra, in which he draws parallels between modern science and ancient religion, Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception and John Lilly’s The Center of the Cyclone, which discussed states of consciousness especially on hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD.

Those books and others, together with discussions with fellow students at UEA, led me to the belief in levels of consciousness, both higher and lower that “the norm”, and the part that drugs and meditation may play in that.

Then of course there were the items on the news about groups such as The Beatles and teachers such as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and the music that went along with it, including the likes of Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix. The whole hippie movement with the flowery clothes, drugs and long hair appealed to me.

By the time I left UEA I had tried cannabis and had long hair myself. I considered myself to be a sort of atheist anarchist pacifist vegetarian.

 

 

My Piece of Peace

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