Although virtually all the Intensives in the UK were run by Eva and I, Satya and Skanda continued to come to the UK each year to give other courses and to support the community forming around the work of Yogeshwar. In 1989 Eva and I were both inducted into Sahaj Yoga (surrender yoga) by Satya and this became my core practice for the next ten years. I used it for an hour each morning, usually after gardening and having a run, and for another hour when I came home from work. Initially I eased off this schedule when I was particularly busy, but quickly discovered that the busier I was the greater the benefit I obtained from the meditation. So the two hours a day schedule became a fixed part of my routine.
As I described earlier the technique sounds deceptively simple; simply surrender to the Divine, or that which you regard as the highest in a spiritual sense. I was able to use the experiences I had had on Intensives as the focus for my surrender – but that didn’t make it any easier. For example I might find myself lying on my back and notice an itch on my nose. Should I scratch it? Is that surrendering? Or is surrendering just observing the itch? This sounds trivial but points to the core issue – what exactly does it mean to surrender? For a while I found it helpful to explicitly give myself instructions at the beginning of the period along the lines of “I surrender my thoughts, I surrender my emotions, I surrender my body and I surrender my will.” In other words I was willing to think, feel, sense or move anything.
One of the benefits of doing this after returning home from work was that I often found myself releasing tensions, emotions and ideas that had been generated at work. So it enabled me to let go whatever I was carrying over from work and be more present at home. Sometimes I fell asleep – yes that is also surrendering.
To my surprise the meditation started to work – in the sense that I found my inner world calming down. I found myself doing all sorts of strange movements during the meditation and I often found myself pondering on my part in the conflicts in my life. For example sometimes I would start thinking about some aspect of my work and whilst my attention was focussed on that my body would start to move and before I realised it I would find myself in a headstand. Quite often I noticed that shouting in a headstand would alleviate the headaches and shoulder tensions that often resulted from a difficult day at work! Other times I would be thinking about some aspect of my relationship with Eva and notice that I would be chanting some phrase repetitively, or humming some weird rhythm.
Delving deeply into Sahaj Yog was a key part of my determination to become ‘more enlightened’ – whatever that meant and entailed. Since meeting his guru Yogeshwar had been using Sahaj Yog 8 hours a day with the clear intention to become fully enlightened. Part of his opposition to Intensives longer than 3 days, opposition I had heard first hand at the opening to the six-week Satya mastered in California, was that he considered people would make more progress using the time to do Sahaj Yog rather than Intensive exercises.
I was certainly not contemplating meditating 8 hours a day, but I did want to purify myself as much as possible so as to be able to serve the participants on Intensives as well as possible. So in addition to 2 hours of Sahaj Yog a day I also fasted one day a week and refrained from having alcohol or drugs for long periods. I rarely had any caffeine, largely because I knew I had to stop taking any during an Intensive and my caffeine withdrawal headaches were punishingly awful. I was also having very regular contact with the Divine by contacting participants who had experiences. I also participated on Eva’s Intensive at Grimstone at the end of 1986 and had an experience of what Life is. Finally I was reading a great deal about enlightenment in all the different traditions, largely to find stories that I could incorporate into my lectures. However this reading also fuelled my desire to become ‘more enlightened’.
I ran another two week Intensive in 1990, my fourth. When I reflected on the Intensive I noticed that I was more relaxed and surrendered – I was more willing to allow participants to find their own way out of difficulties. I also noticed that when a participant did not comply with an instruction or request that I made of them I presumed that they were wilfully disobeying me. When I examined each case I discovered that actually they were doing their best to comply and that I was usually over estimating their ability. I also noticed that I was critical of a particular participant who I judged to be very arrogant: I wonder why!
Shortly after running the two week I met with Satya and Skanda on their regular visit to the UK. I sought guidance from Satya about what was happening to me in the Sahaj Yog meditation. I was troubled by the frequency and intensity of sexual images and ideas that were coming up for me. I had no idea how to handle this in the context of the meditation. To my surprise she did not give me a direct answer but instead suggested that I needed to undertake more emotional work. I had never told her about the years of emotional work that Eva and I had undertaken together and in groups but was nevertheless taken aback by her suggestion. Later I was also rather shocked by her making disparaging comments about Yogeshwar, referring to him as “the great white wonder”. It sounded as if she and Skanda were breaking away from Yogeshwar, but without specifying in what way. I came away from the meeting with them both feeling let down, not understood, not helped and generally depressed. I also felt that a source of support had failed me so I felt very alone in the process of running Intensives – apart from the total support I received from Eva.
This was the beginning of a prolonged period of disillusion – and mild depression. Here is what I wrote in my journal six months later, in January 1991:
The disillusionment goes back to the time with Satya last summer. But it runs a lot deeper. I notice I am questioning everything. What is the value of a direct experience of the Divine? What actually helps people have these experiences? Do I actually know that doing the Intensive process gives people the best chance of having an experience? What do I actually KNOW in all this process?
I did not resist the process of doubting everything, indeed almost the opposite. I enjoy the process of being self critical and putting everything up for grabs. But in this case, I felt it was more serious. I started to doubt the experiences that I had had. By now they were just memories; did they really happen? Were they really in a different state of consciousness? What if I were just kidding myself about all this?
I have an overwhelmingly positive sense of me. Even looking at doubt as a process in my own growth is a positive step. Maybe to get through whatever is going on I just have to allow myself to become immersed in it – enough at least to feel and express the emotions involved.
The thing that stands out, the thing that I cannot deny, is my sharing of other people’s experiences. For this to be a fabrication they would all have to be similarly deceived. This is one of the enormous benefits of being a Master of Intensives – it is a large part of what feeds me. And it is undeniable. I can deny my own experiences, but not the state that all these other people manifest. It is that Divine quality in others that I find irresistible and undeniable.
In the state of doubt I became critical of a lot of what Yogeshwar included in the teaching manuals. For example he claimed that the natural period for the communication exercise was 4 minutes and 35 seconds. As a scientist I can see this is baloney, it is an example of spurious precision. By observing people doing the “Tell me who you are” exercise it would be possible to establish that most people completed their communications in a period between 4 and 5 minutes. But to claim it was 4 minutes and 35 seconds was just nonsense; people and their communications are far too variable to allow such precision.
My doubts and disillusion were compounded by a decrease in both the numbers of people attending Intensives I ran and a decrease in the proportion having experiences. This was not that surprising since a large part of my role as a Master is to inspire people and be certain that they can have an experience. Clearly if I am doubting everything then my ability to inspire others will diminish.
With hindsight I can see that the doubts and questioning were part of separating from Yogeshwar and his students. Satya’s mismanagement of the 6-week Eva attended, her lack of guidance and understanding toward me all contributed to them all crashing off the pedestal on which I, and Eva, had placed them earlier. Inevitably I started to make the Intensive process more “mine” – in the sense of not relying on any other authority. Again with hindsight I can see that this is the time when I started to lose the gift I had gained from participating in the 6-week in California – namely just knowing for certain when anyone around me had an experience. I still knew most of the time, but other times I had to start to figure it out – which was completely new for me, but normal for other Masters.
At about this time I also started to seriously address my criticalness – again! If there were Olympic championships in criticalness I would have been up there with the best of them; I could see more things wrong than most people I knew – and could deliver withering criticisms. For many years I had accepted that I was only critical of things in other people that I was not yet owning about myself, and when an issue became problematic I did not find it difficult to use the process. Well not usually. There was one particular issue that regularly had me being extremely critical and on which I failed to make any progress, namely Eva’s untidiness.
I am a very tidy person. I have found this is an effective way to cope with a busy life. By being tidy I know where to find tools, pens, cellotape and so on. Eva, on the other hand, is an untidy person. It is not unusual for people who live together to polarise on this issue. From time to time her untidiness would really get to me and I would become critical of everything she was doing, or failing to do. Every time her clothes were on the bedroom floor, or the hairbrush moved from its established place, or all the pens disappeared from my desk drawer, I would rant and rave and become extremely intolerant. After a while I would relax and the issue would subside, but only until the next time. So I resolved to use the criticalness exercise to sort this out. The trouble was that I could not find a part of myself that wanted to be untidy. I explored several different aspects and came to the conclusion that if there was indeed a part of myself that wanted to be untidy then it was deeply buried in my unconscious – and that the criticalness exercise must therefore be flawed.
One day I was teaching this exercise to a group of University tutors and after explaining the process I did the exercise with them. That very morning I had blown up about untidiness so I felt obliged to work on this issue once more. As I did so I suddenly saw that what was involved was not the untidiness in itself, but what I took the untidiness to mean. When Eva was untidy I took that as indicating that she did not care about me, that she did not care if I could not find my pen to write with, or a particular tool to work with or if I tripped over her clothes. So what I was critical of was not the untidiness – but my interpretation that she did not care for me. This changed everything. I had no trouble identifying the part of myself that could become uncaring about other people – and my faith in the criticalness exercise was restored. It is now very rare for me to become upset about untidiness – indeed I cannot think of the last time it happened. Which is a sort of miracle considering that it used to happen to me several times a week!
This all took place more than 25 years ago and in the intervening time I have learned to care a lot more for other people. Indeed, one of the ways that I demonstrate my deep care for Eva is by tidying up after her. I understand that her untidiness is in part forgetfulness and in part being more strongly focussed on people than things. More surprisingly I noticed, within a few weeks of my realisation about the source of my criticalness, that Eva was being far tidier. I asked her why this was the case, to which she responded “because I want you to know that I do care for you!”
My criticalness was a topic that Eva and I talked about many times. One of the strong points that she helped me understand was that by being so observant and critical most of what I said to her, or the children, was negative. She made it clear that being the subject of a continuous stream of negative comment did nothing for her self esteem nor our relationship. This made total sense to me and I resolved to make as many positive comments as critical ones from then on. In practice this boiled down to me having to pause and think of something positive to say before I allowed myself to make a critical comment. I found it genuinely helpful to pause and take time to see positive aspects of what I was observing; I had really become fixated on seeing what was wrong. For a while this helped Eva as well because she was able to see that she did some things well and that I liked her! However after a few months the exercise started to backfire on itself because every time I gave Eva a compliment she was waiting for the following criticism! Because of this I ceased using the exercise all the time – fortunately enough had been accomplished for me to be seeing the world more positively and over the ensuing years my criticalness has ceased to be such a big issue between us.
Criticalness was just one strategy that I used to try to change people, particularly Eva! As well as aiming to reduce my criticalness I also started to address my desire to change people. When I was on retreat early in 1992 I found myself going through dozens of reasons why I should change the way that Eva related to Joe. It wasn’t doing him any good; it was making it impossible for me to relate normally to Joe; she was becoming obsessed by him; the other children felt excluded. It went on and on. I meditated on the issue several times without finding any resolution. Finally, I decided that I had had enough and was determined to resolve the issue. I started my surrender meditation and found myself lying on the floor. In that position I prayed earnestly to God. “Dear God, show me the truth, help me to avoid injuring Eva or anyone else. Please help!”
Almost immediately a voice said “Sit up! It was alarming because it was as if there was someone else in the room giving me instructions. Once I had sat up straight the voice continued “You must not try to force anything. Every action and attempt to force will injure others. You must stop it and act only from love.” I wept and said “but what about the times I feel distressed and distraught?” The voice said, “Do nothing; give yourself time. You have all the inner resources and knowledge you need. You just need to give yourself time. Take time to let the love come.” I cried and cried a whole lot more. I kept having thoughts of really difficult situations and I asked for more help, especially when I felt hurt. The voice said, “Know you are loved. Take the time to remember this!” That got me. I knew it was true and I also knew I had not known it or let it in before – ever. I had streams of memories as a child of having it confirmed that I wasn’t loved. I saw that I did too much because I believed I wasn’t loved. Suddenly everything revolved around this issue. I speculated that everyone who is a forcer is stuck in the trap of not really knowing they are loved. I thanked God for the direct answer to my prayer.
Later in the evening I visited my wise man and asked him what or who the voice was that I heard so clearly. All he would say was “Never you mind. Just remember that you are loved!”.
Although I can remember that experience very well it did not impact me as much as the direct experiences I had on Intensives. It was clearly an indirect experience; I was understanding something through the process of hearing. The insight about forcing because I did not feel loved was, and is, obviously correct, but what was lacking was the experience of being loved. Being told I was loved was not enough – but it definitely helped. When I returned home I did not try to change Eva or her relationship with Joe.
A month or so later I decided to explore Brahmacharya or celibacy. It is a central practice of the renunciate yogic path followed by Yogeshwar and I wanted to understand whether I could tolerate it and if so what effect it would have on me. Also despite my disillusion I was still interested in becoming more ‘enlightened’. So I resolved to not have any sexual release for three months. However I did not require or expect Eva to abstain, so I was into giving her as much sexual pleasure as she wanted. As it turned out it was this that had the biggest impact on my life. Eva could not believe that I was willing to give her sexual pleasure without demanding any for myself. It challenged all her beliefs around sex and convinced her that I really loved her and was not simply seeking my own gratification. It made a lasting difference to our sex life together. I did not find any other benefit from the practice – maybe I should have tried it for more than three months. However I do have a strong memory of the first and very explosive orgasm at the end of the period!
In June, a month after the end of the celibacy period, Eva and I had another great holiday together in Cyprus. Eva was very loving toward me and I think this prompted me to remember the extreme hurt I had felt from both my first wife and Laura when they sexually rejected me. I became aware that I never wanted to be ever hurt that much again. I found it scary to open myself to Eva at that level. But at the same time it was what I longed for. So I allowed myself to remember the hurt I felt and allowed Eva to hold me whilst doing so. I cried a lot, felt very vulnerable and held, and healed.
Eva and I enjoyed being stoned together a few times on that holiday. On one stoned occasion Eva apologised very profoundly to me for the time she wanted to go off with Piers. Being more open as a result of being stoned I received her apology at a deep level and was grateful to her. Then as I looked at Eva I saw her as Divine. By that I mean I perceived her being in a state that was the same as the state I observed when interviewing participants just after their direct experience. She was even more beautiful than normal and I adored our contact together.
I think this is the first time that I recorded seeing Eva as Divine. The significance of this will become obvious as this journey unfolds.
On that holiday we started to have a lot more fun together. One day we drove down a remote dirt track to a deserted beach miles from anywhere. There we took our clothes off and loved swimming and being naked. After a while we started to be sexy together and I had just lifted Eva into the tree position when two fishermen drove up in a 4 wheel drive and proceeded down the beach. We hastily collapsed laughing on the sand and crawled to our clothes, giggling hysterically. Yes we were stoned then as well!
In my journal I noted that “The overall effect of the holiday was that we fell in love all over again.”
Prior to the holiday, in fact before the end of the celibacy period, I had run a good three day Intensive. It was good in the sense that there were a lot of participants and a higher than average proportion of experiences. So I felt that I had put aside my disillusion enough to be a real Enlightenment Master again. Then I ran a two week and a few days after that Eva and I together ran a Masters Training course.
I remember the two week in 1992 as a very good Intensive. When I read through the journal entries I made at the time I was struck by several new characteristics. First I was starting to cease planning lectures in great detail. I had a rough idea of a theme, a story and so on. But when I give the lecture I often found myself listening to stuff coming out of my mouth. This was very similar to what used to happen when I freaked out as a public speaker on energy policy. Now I was surrendering into that openness rather than being freaked out into it. The journal entries also make it clear that I am aware of the effect that my love and presence has on participants. I am also a lot more open about myself; in one lecture I recount the experience I had on retreat being told to stop forcing. And it is also clear that there are not only more experiences, there are more profound experiences.
It was only after reading all this in the journal that I was able to see that addressing the issues of criticalness and forcing earlier in the year had actually given me access to a much deeper level of surrender, of openness to the Divine. With hindsight it is obvious, but it is only now, some 25 years later, that I am able to see the connections. It is also clear that this was when I really grew into being a Master. I knew it at the time, without being able to verbalise it. I knew it because I just knew what to do as a Master without having to figure it out. Also I knew I was doing OK because I was regularly witnessing nice ordinary people being transformed into stunningly beautiful angels right in front of me. When people have a direct experience of the Divine their energy state changes profoundly. No matter what they are like in ordinary life, for a short while they look like a radiant teenager who has just met the person with whom they are madly in love. Charles Berner explained this in terms of a small kundalini release. Whatever the mechanism the transformation is unmistakable and always made the person look totally adorable.
Running the Masters Training with Eva was also amazing. There were more enlightenment experiences in the mini-Intensives – providing teaching material as well as inspiration to all the other trainees. However by the end of the Training course I was totally exhausted and weeping at the slightest provocation. Eva went on holiday with her children leaving me alone at home. I was actually looking forward to a period of complete rest and recovery. But it wasn’t to be. I couldn’t stop crying.
I decided I would try to distract myself by watching TV. The first movie I watched was called Jack-knife about three veterans from Vietnam looking after each other years later. This evoked more tears. The next day I tried again – and found myself in the middle of people telling their personal experiences in a movie called Shoah – all about the holocaust! Another amazing movie – more buckets of tears. So I gave up watching TV and just allowed myself to cry a lot.
When Eva returned from holiday she really took care of me. She accepted where I was at and in our conversations we agreed that I was probably having another kundalini episode – because uncontrollable crying is one of the effects it sometimes has on people. (The kundalini has reached the heart chakra and crying is releasing a lot of the heart hurt.) We undertook relating exercises each evening which also helped me ground the whole experience of running the two week Intensive so successfully. I regularly cried recalling experiences from different participants, they were all so stunningly beautiful. The main conclusion I reached at the time was that I had deepened my love for others profoundly. The uncontrolled crying lasted for a period of six weeks. Toward the end of the period I visited my wise man who told me: “Up to now you have been nourished by contacting the Divine internally. Now you have to learn to contact the Divine in others – and breaking your inner connection is a first step in that. Recognising your profound love for others is also part of that process. All the answers to your questions can be found in your love for others. Just allow that to guide you.”
Next.
A Master's Path 