In the early Seventies I became involved in a small peer group whose aim was to explore what happened if you stopped editing or controlling what you expressed physically or psychologically. This involved allowing, as far as we were able, any movement our body made without conscious direction, and any sounds, emotions and fantasies that arose unwilled.The theory behind the practice was that the body tries to rid itself of irritants or poisons through such mechanisms as eyes watering, sneezing, coughing or vomiting. So this self-regulatory process would discharge trauma or stress if we did not constantly control or direct body and mind. We didn’t feel this was a new technique, as there are many historical references to it in different cultures. We also felt, because of its historical mentions, that it might open previously unrealised potential or spiritual experience. See Life’s Little Secrets

The First Meeting

Our group met weekly, and it was in this environment I experienced my first powerful meeting with something wonderful. I had been allowing the process for two years, with very satisfying results. A great many childhood events had surfaced leading to insight and integration of previously unconscious experiences or body tensions. For instance, one of the first was that I relived the experience of my tonsil operation as a six year old. The process often took weeks to work through a particular theme or event. So it was not a surprise when one evening a new theme started that led me to feel I had blood on my hands. However, it was puzzling and slightly disorientating to have such a strong feeling that I had killed someone. The feelings were just as strong and real as any I had met in connection with verifiable events such as that mentioned regarding my tonsils operation as a six-year-old.

So I was very curious to see what surfaced at the next meeting. This started quietly, and at first seemed to have no connection with blood on my hands. Our group-room was quite large, and I stood with plenty of space around me. Unlike most of my previous sessions, I experienced a powerful subjective imagery of standing before large heavy curtains. It was like dreaming while awake. I moved to the curtains and pulled them apart. This revealed the immensity of a clear night sky, filled with brilliant stars. As I looked at this natural splendour, a star fell to earth, leaving me with a sense that something wonderful had happened that I must go in search of. As occurs in dreams, there was a sudden shift, and I was a herder of flocks, a shepherd, looking for the star that had come to earth. Others were searching too, and when we found what we were looking for, I was astonished to discover it was a baby.

A Baby

The flowing emotions and the opened intuitive sense informed me that what I knelt before in tears was not a particular child. It was every baby ever born. For the first time I had been allowed to experience the enormity of birth, the holiness of every baby.

Suddenly the scene changed again, and I was standing with others by the side of a dusty unpaved road. People were excitedly waiting for someone, and I was curious to see who it was. It was a man, and as he walked the road he saw me and came toward me. This part is difficult to describe, as I feel incapable of communicating the power of the event. The man was ordinary in appearance, but as he got near to me it seemed as if a great force surrounded him that penetrated me completely. The force was love, buffeting me like waves I could barely tolerate. The man stood before me and took my hands and said, ‘You are my disciple.’ At this, love so immense touched me that I fell backwards, the contact too painful for me to bear, and the man walked on. I knew who he was. I also knew, because it was welling up from within me as sure knowledge that he was the man I had killed. It was his blood I had on my hands. It was his death I felt guilty of. But he, in some strange paradoxical way, was myself. He was the cosmic mystery I have been born as. He was the very best of myself I had killed, murdered. He was my youthful sexuality I had suffocated to death, helped by the tenets of a religion that was supposed to be teaching his way, the way of life, the way of recognising one’s cosmic link. The impact of that meeting was extraordinary. Unable to stop the emotions surfacing, I felt impelled to move to each person in the group rubbing my hands on them. It seemed to me that a magical influence had touched my hands and I wanted everyone around me to receive some of that magic. Even years afterwards, when describing the event, the wonder of it can penetrate me again, and I am overcome by emotion.