My Mother My Mirror Read online

  At the Bickershaw festival I had spotted a couple of blokes I thought were the epitome of beautiful hippydom: both had hair almost down to their waists, and wore Afghan coats and lovely coloured clothes with bells and beads. They were sitting behind us in the crowd, so I bravely introduced myself, and later went to visit them in Morecombe. The one I was after was the black-haired one, because he had the cutest face, but he turned out to be a bit dim. The blond one was more interested in me, and he was the one I kept in touch with. His name was Mick and he lived most of the time in Leeds.

  Mick’s hippyness was more than skin-deep: he believed in freedom, living in the moment, being spontaneous.... Every so often, quite unexpectedly, he would turn up on the doorstep in Codicote, having hitch-hiked down the motorway. He came once for one of the excellent parties I had in that house. I remember cuddling up with him in Kharis’s bed: the twins must have gone to stay the night elsewhere. But the biggest reason I am remembering him is that he played an important role in my life, because he introduced me to LSD. He took it quite seriously and it was a while before he thought I was ready to give it a go. When the time came, we travelled from his shared flat in Leeds in a van up to a friend’s house in Selby, Yorkshire – another obscure place for a life initiation. I had never been there before and have never been there since.

  This was my first glimpse of another reality. I was astounded that the world could be so different while I was still looking out of the same eyes and registering things with the same brain. I felt completely at home. Now I really was Alice, and I explored Wonderland with wide-eyed fascination. How had I missed all this, when it was just under my nose? Even the lines on my hand were amazing: the complexity, the endless possibilities of pattern. Everything had meaning. It didn’t matter what meaning: it was just meaningful, wonderful, full of potential, of beautiful detail. I could stare at the weave of the rug for hours – or was it minutes? – and be totally absorbed. Time was different; there was no time, only now. I lifted my face and smiled at Mick and he smiled back and I knew that we shared the joke: we both understood the brilliant, hilarious joke behind everything, and we started to laugh. I felt so sensitive: his face kept moving, changing... Sometimes I could see an old man, then a young boy; then he was back again, and we gazed at each other and we knew...

  I picked up a pen and watched it move across a piece of paper, guiding it gently into swirls and loops, funny little corners and great big arcs. It was a journey of discovery and adventure; I didn’t know what was going to emerge, but what emerged was deeply pleasing and I was completely one with it while it was happening.

  Ten minutes or ten days later, I felt a little hungry and drifted over to the larder where I put a piece of strong, salty cheese in my mouth. As it reached my throat I felt the saltiness creep up the back of my nose and gave me a panicky feeling as I gasped for air; then I realized it was reminding me of seawater and made me feel I may be drowning, so I calmed down and swallowed the cheese.

  I had heard some people say that vegetables screamed when you bit them. Being a vegetarian and therefore having a lot to do with vegetables, I thought I’d put this to the test. I went out into the small back garden. It was dark, but an outside light illuminated the cabbage patch. Kneeling on the grass, I leant over and took a small bite out of a cabbage leaf, leant back and watched. On this occasion at least, I could see no sign of distress.

  The night went on for years, and then at last it was morning and Mick was driving us back down the motorway to Leeds. As he drove we talked about the experience. I told him what had happened to me, and he explained to me about paradox: how on another level of reality, two opposite things could both be true at the same time, such as the two of us being separate but in some essential way the same.

  By this time Cathy had dumped Clive for a smaller, more controllable model. Clive was 6’3’’, almost African-looking with his fuzzy hair, big lips and eyes and slightly squashy nose. One evening in the Codicote kitchen we decided to get to know each other a little more closely. I can remember how interestingly different his face looked from a few inches away than from a few feet. And then we kissed, and he was my boyfriend for the next year or two.

  Clive had a good job in a cardboard box factory, which meant he could afford his Sunbeam Rapier car and a Norton 500 motorbike. I loved the feeling of riding pillion, my arms wrapped around his waist. Corners were scary, and once we came off when it was icy, but we didn’t come to any harm. He lived in a bungalow in the village of Ickleford just outside Hitchin, with two friends: Martin and Alan.

  Martin was a student at Sussex University and was there during the holidays and at weekends; I’m not sure what Alan did. I remember him chiefly for having an exceptionally small penis, which I discovered one evening when we were experimenting with an orgy. Three of Clive’s friends practiced troilism: that is, the man shared a bed with two women. Inspired by this break from convention, when they came to visit we all piled onto our mattress on the floor and generally fumbled and stroked for an hour or so. It was rather unsatisfying, but worth a try. Anyway, at the age of eighteen I began to stay with Clive on weekdays, returning home for a day or two at the weekend.

  The bungalow had been built in the corner of a large field between two railway lines, and it was here that all my other acid trips took place. There were only five more; by then I had tasted enough of an alternative reality to set me out on a search that was to last for more years than I then imagined. Sometimes friends of Clive from London would come down and join us in our LSD adventures; sometimes it was just the people in the house and one or two girlfriends. It was a good, safe place to explore: there in the middle of a ploughed field that undulated like the sea once the substance had taken effect.

  The first sign was usually the palms of the hands: uh-oh, they’re crawling: I’m tripping! There was a wonderful sense of telepathy between us. Often you only had to think of someone and they would appear, as if you had called them; and we only had to glance at each other to know what the other was thinking, or what they were going to say. Sometimes we made cups of tea; one time someone spread lots of tomato ketchup on French bread and it was a little frightening, like bloody limbs. We became incredibly sensitive to every tiny facial expression or body language. I tried once to talk to a parent on the phone but it was all too ridiculous and the words didn’t want to come out, and the words didn’t matter anyway...

  I favoured high places; I liked to sit on the top shelf in the airing cupboard, watching people come and go, or just being. We played ‘White Rabbit’ and ‘Crown of Creation’ by Jefferson Airplane and soared with the glory of the words and the music. Outside the trains were amazing, and the gas works on the other side of the railway line glowed with the colours of the rainbow.

  It was important, that glimpse of fairyland. I talked about it for years afterwards. It showed me that life could be so much better, just because of the way I perceived it. It gave me confidence. I loved my self when I was tripping; I had a glimpse of a me that was free, a glimpse perhaps of the child I had been too scared to be, or that I had been but had forgotten. And now not only was I remembering, but I was here consciously, and I could take what I had learned forward into the rest of my life.

  At last I had something to talk about. I was a zealot, newly converted, convinced that this was the answer for everyone! My father conceded that it sounded good and suggested that it might benefit his art students; my mother did eventually try some years later, but then she tried almost everything on offer at one time or another. My sisters just listened and were as impressed as ever.

  But most of all I thought deeply about it myself. If life could be that different, that much better, then I was determined to set out to make it so in a permanent, real, everyday way. Maybe it wasn’t practical for everyone to be in such a drastically altered state all the time, but I recognized that the essence of what I experienced was precious and was lacking in humdrum, mundane life. It was possible for life to be deep and magical. I
was a long way from discovering the depth and magic of relationships and the emotional aspect of life; for now it was the subject of perception that grabbed me, and I was determined to learn more.

  Looking back, I suppose I was riding a wave of consciousness that was emerging in many different places at that time, but for me it felt like a very personal search, in fact quite a lonely one. There were books like ‘Be Here Now’ by Richard Alpert and ‘This is it’ by Alan Watts, but really what I was looking for was some sort of meditation manual, and in the local libraries and bookshops this was hard to find.

  In the end I found something by Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, and another book by Paul Brunton. Armed with these and some soul-searching LPs I left the bungalow and found lodgings at Fairfield Mental Hospital, a few miles away. I was not there as an inmate! I got a job as a ward orderly, and was allowed a room in the nurses’ home. I wanted to be alone, to think – perhaps to meditate, if the books were to give me any clues. To me what I did on the outside was irrelevant. I needed to become happy: I needed to plan my inner future. If possible I needed a few signposts and maps.

  The mad old ladies were fascinating: the way they repeated nonsense over and over again, their total disregard for convention, their wild eyes and glimpses of hilarity. I helped dish out egg custard and rice pudding, and enjoyed sharing some of their meals and wandering in the extensive grounds; but most of all I enjoyed being by myself in my little room, listening to the band ‘America’ singing, “There’s a little girl out lying on her own, she’s got a broken heart..... Don’t cross the river if you can’t swim the tide, don’t try denying living on the other side.... ” The Paul Brunton book did have some suggestions for stilling the mind and being in an altered state, so I tried them, but soon became frustrated. It was not as easy as it seemed.

  10

  Meditation

  Back in the pub in Ickleford one evening with the old crowd from the bungalow, something happened that changed my life. I was sitting on the bench seat, feeling bored as everyone prattled on about trivia. Once again I felt like an outsider. There was the fact that conversation didn’t come easily to me, but there was also the fact that so much of what people talked about seemed so meaningless. ’Though I may not have been able to put it into words at the time, nothing nourished my soul.

  Then a stranger came and sat with us: a man of about twenty, a little more smartly dressed than my friends with a small moustache. He started telling us about his guru. The others soon lost interest, but I kept listening. This sounded hopeful: it could be the next step along the way. Guru Maharaj-ji taught a meditation that showed people how to go within themselves and experience an inner light, sound, taste and feeling that gave rise to a sense of peace, harmony and contentment such as was sorely lacking this world.

  We left the pub, and the more I thought about it the more I wanted to know more. It wasn’t so easy to find this man again, but eventually it turned out that his name was Adrian and he was a friend of my friend Sarah’s older brother; she got his address for me, and a week later I went to visit him at a caravan site I hadn’t known existed on the other side of Ickleford.

  He invited me in and happily answered my questions for an hour or so. Who was this guru? What did he want in return? How did you learn to meditate? What else was involved? He had a photo of the guru, who was surprisingly young; and an inexhaustible number of positive words poured from his mouth about the whole subject. He called this ‘satsang’ – literally, ‘company of truth’ – explaining that just speaking about something so true and enlightening created a certain atmosphere, and that the words, like the gift that Maharaj-ji gave, flowed so easily because they came from an inner source of wisdom. If I wanted to learn the meditation myself I had to receive something called ‘Knowledge’. It cost nothing, but it was necessary for me to fully understand what it was all about and be prepared to commit myself, which would involve listening to more satsang, from other people as well, until I was ready.

  I was a little suspicious of the guru, but I liked the sound of the meditation; and I did sense something refreshing in the way he spoke. Here at last was someone who was focused on getting to the heart of the matter, who was concerned with what life was really about. He spoke of the love inside.

  Love had become very confusing for me. There was the whole business of fancying people who didn’t fancy me and vice versa... and what was it all about anyway? Surely there was some bigger purpose, some greater love, some way of changing my perception, some way above all of being happy within myself so that I felt more in control of my life, some sense of direction?

  As he spoke I found my horizons expanding, my hope returning. It all made sense: that the answer was in me. I imagined it wouldn’t take too long to learn these techniques, sort myself out and then carry on with my life. I imagined that I could easily avoid getting attached to the guru, as he seemed to be. I don’t regret any of it, but I certainly didn’t know at that time just how long it would take or how involved I would become!

  Adrian took me to the Divine Light Mission ‘ashram’ in Luton, about ten miles away. Here eight people lived who had dedicated their whole lives to the guru: all they ever did was satsang, service and meditation. Satsang meant both the words they shared with each other or anyone else they met, and the meetings they had every evening in which they took it in turns to speak from their heart about their experiences with the Knowledge. Service meant actions dedicated to Maharaj-ji’s mission to spread love and peace in the world – anything from cooking the supper in the ashram to distributing leaflets about their next public event. And the techniques of meditation were what would be revealed to me in a Knowledge session, when I was ready. Then, like them, I would be called a ‘premie’, which means lover of God.

  I sat quietly on a cushion on the floor, in the front room of the Victorian house above a steep and busy road on the far side of Luton. The atmosphere was hushed, almost holy, despite the distant sound of traffic. The focus of the room was an enormous altar created with tables and cloths around the fireplace: swathes of white satin with a great framed picture of the guru in the middle, a round silver tray in front of him and big vases of flowers on either side.

  One of the residents seemed to be in charge; she introduced the evening, then one by one the others were invited to sit on a particular cushion in the corner and speak. They all seemed happy; they had something I didn’t have, and I wanted it. Sometimes when they described their experience in meditation it sounded a little bit like my experience on LSD, and that interested me even more; though one man admitted to me years later that he had been enhancing his story with memories of drug-taking.

  I began visiting Adrian regularly, and often he would take me to Luton in his car. After a few months he decided to move in to the ashram himself, and offered to hand the caravan over to me. This suited me well. I was no longer working at the mental hospital, and though I was still going out with Clive in a half-hearted manner, as I became more interested in my inner life I needed somewhere to live on my own.

  Sometimes I made my own investigations further afield: I went up to Cambridge and visited the ashram there, and attended a public program where they showed a video of Maharaji in which premies were kissing his feet. I put up my hand afterwards and asked why they were doing this. The speaker told me that nobody had to do it, but that these people wanted to because they loved him. It seemed fair enough. I also drove the 25 miles down to London on my moped and listened to satsang in an ashram in Swiss Cottage. I felt thirsty for the words and the sense of peace and joy that accompanied them. The more I heard, the more I wanted to hear.

  It was 1973 and the country was plastered with posters of Maharaji, now fifteen years old, with a rainbow round his head, advertising the festival at Alexandra Palace that summer. When the time came I spent one day there; I saw what he was like for myself, and any residual doubts were swept away. He was just a young boy, and his message was so simple: he could show me how to go within myself and
find happiness. Nothing he said was threatening in any way. I didn’t sense a manipulative ego or a superior tone. I remember picking up a ‘Divine Times’ from a stall at the back of the hall and reading it from cover to cover, right down to the tiny little advertisements for meditation blankets or accommodation. This was definitely what I had been looking for.

  The premies had recently purchased an old cinema in East Dulwich, and renamed it the ‘Palace of Peace’. They removed all the seats and covered the floor in one big carpet, and hung pictures of saints on the walls. This was a large satsang venue holding several hundred people, and often more illustrious speakers would be there, such as the ‘mahatmas’ who were empowered to impart the Knowledge, and premies who had been involved for a long time and had had personal contact with the guru, and sometimes members of Maharaji’s family.

  At last the day came and I received Knowledge, in a small back room at the Palace of Peace, from a little Indian man with sticky-out ears wearing a saffron-coloured robe. As an offering I gave some bread that I had baked the night before; then I was shown how to turn each of my senses inside and experience God.

  I admit, I was a little disappointed. After the whole build-up, all the questioning as to whether I was ready or not, all the soul-searching... not very much happened. But I was still determined to find out what it was all about. I took the train back up to Hitchin, made my way to my caravan, sat down cross-legged on my bed and began to investigate. I followed my breath, and looked and listened and tasted within as I had been shown. There was a moment when there was white light all around me, not in my imagination but for real. It had an expansive, soothing quality. It was only a glimpse, but it was something.

  Slowly, slowly, over the weeks and months that followed, I made friends with my inner world. Everyone comes to things in their own way and for their own reasons, and though there was a part of me that wanted peace and yet another part that wanted amazing out-of-this-world experiences, I think what I most wanted and needed was to get back in touch with my heart, to feel a sense of who I was: not in terms of what I looked like, what I did or what my opinions were, but who I really was inside. It wasn’t even as if it was something I could remember having or losing. I couldn’t remember ever being anything but my mother’s shadow. I had put so much energy into trying not to become what I felt she wanted me to be, which was someone a bit like her, that I had no idea who I was... and the lostness went deep.