(I dedicated my life to the principles and practice of Raj Yoga as taught by the Brahma Kumaris in 1975. After two years of spiritual euphoria, two of spiritual struggle and two of planning my escape, I left the institution. This was written in 1982.)

August 1975, Barra, Outer Hebrides

Lying on my back, I began to examine the clouds. They had taken on a ceiling toy mobile aspect, whirling, changing and picture-postering themselves around the cheerful blue sky like bouncy lambs. My gaze turned to Chris, far down the beach, long hair and loon pants flapping in the wind, lamb-like clouds leering behind him. Filled with love for him, I jumped up and ran towards him, not quite understanding how long it seemed to be taking me to get to him or why my legs seemed so soft. He came towards me, leering like one of the clouds, and stopped short. His face and features were swimming, breathing, wheeling in amongst each other with the easy liquid motion of paint on glass. Chris seemed solid enough … I gave him a hug and ran off to leer into the rock pools.

November 1975, Peshawar, Pakistan

The smoky air of the Peshawar evening was nightmare hard, red-rimmed all round. I moved vaguely, stomach churning, from high hotel lobby to separately undistinguishable high hotel lobby, pale green and grey grimed paintwork surrounding grubby tables of smoking men, smoking cigarettes, smoke in the air, TVs blaring Hollywood films, Urdu subtitles. . . was that really Roy Kinnear?

In search of a cheap room, climb to the flat roofs. Different worlds, floating villages of mud shacks ranged round the dark edges, bare bulbs harshly lighting bone thin faces, deep eyes, lank locks; Steppenwolf (the band)’s line – tombstones in their eyes. A community of dead spirits above and below, hanging on to smoke.

December 1975, Mount Abu, Rajsathan

‘Shex lusht is absolutely the worsht thing, you musht undershtand that. You musht give it up.’ It killed the soul, apparently. Shword of shex lusht. The old man was a powerful charmer. Bright-eyed, curious pale grey-blue rings round the irises, depthless brown gaze, ultrabrite smile, creased copper skin, sarn’t major’s grizzled grey haircut, ramrod upright, creaseless, crisp white Ghandi shirt, Nehru waistcoat. Was that really light playing round his head, or was I … seeing things?  ‘This is the state of the Kaliyugi world, you see, end of Iron Age. Where we are now. This is mankind, tied down by the five vices. Shex lusht, anger, greed, attachment, ego.’

He had me stood in front of the first in a series of glass-encased, half-scale tableaux, doll models three feet high, bedecked like local bridegrooms, some with black faces, mustaches – the fierce Dacoit, the bandit, the comicstrip Thuggee. Hindi script on the figures and furniture, telling you what everything was. Mankind in trouble. Pulled in all directions by the 5 Vices. End of world, all in garish fairground style, roll up roll up. I thought of Indian popular art teatowels in quirky giftshops, Aesop’s Fables – The Fox and The Goose. This World Renewal Spiritual Museum had the same look about it. Naïf.

What can you expect when you see a sign nailed to a tree: ‘World Renewal Raja Yoga Spiritual Museum’. Raja Yoga? That’s the highest rung on the ladder isn’t it? The tops? Isn’t that why I’m here? No super-hard ascetic stuff at this World Renewal Spiritual Museum. Cool verandah, quiet clean (sweetsmelling, even) people, the women in white saris swishing, welcoming. And a biblebashing message, punched home by these shopwindow scenes showing the Five Vices, the Soul, the Eternal 5000-year cycle (5000 years??), the Three Worlds, the Human Tree, the Supreme Soul. All the secrets of life and the Universe, served on a child’s overpainted plate. Hardly convincing.

You are the soul, you see. No, not your soul. You the soul. You say My Soul, but who is talking? Is body talking? Who is saying my body then? Soul is driver, body is car. Soul does actions through body.

The smells. . . the smells of evening cooking over the smoky lakeside town, the darkening air, the warm walk over the municipal playing field, patch of poor bare brown land. Dark figures and faces bent over occasional stoves, women wiping saris over their grim faces against the smoke. Shock of cheap neon lighting buzzing, bad wiring, flies, you are passing a prosperous restaurant. Onions sizzling. Cooling tarmac. Squashed fruit underfoot. Hair oil in the barber’s, a loose head on top of a sheet pummelled back and forth, glistening, bony violent fingers massage a thin scalp into life.

Soul is tiny pinpoint of light, right in the middle of forehead. See? Try. Try this soulconscious. Practise. As you walk in the bazaar, practise. Saying to yourself I am a soul, making my body walk. Make yourself become detached. I am riding in the middle of my body’s forehead, this great ugly big big body. Dirty, ironaged, kaliyugi body. For this is Iron Age, you see, end of the world. Everything is distaste. I am a  tiny pinpoint of light, right here. This is where pituitary gland is, no, this is point of control of your body. (Pituitary? A whiff of reliable science? Must check out the position of the pituitary.)

Say to yourself, I am a soul, I am a soul, I am a soul.

But isn’t that just self-hypnosis?

But you are body-conscious, from many lives. How are you to regain soul-conscious? You must try.

Rural Herefordshire, May 1977

My father’s yellow face, thin skin stretched over a skull. Not long now. Happy healthy man this had been, for a year or two at the end of his life, after he had left the Church and cruelly dumped my mother his wife. Ruddy colour, warm, laughing, never had I seen him like that. Black was always his colour; cassock, chin, hair, his look – man of darkness. Priests were supposed to bring light and relief. Couldn’t imagine him cheering up a deathbed scene; now his own is playing, and I stand fascinated, watching the soul try and tug away from this bit of nasty flesh. Still tied down, but not long now before it would fly. Free. Why hang on Dad? Isn’t there some need for relief? Release? Soul flies in its own due time, its own due time. No hurrying that; when the accounts are paid up you can go,  not until.

What do you know about Karma Dad? Never paid much mind to it in that church of yours did you? Plumped for the notion that one individual could take away your sin… wash you clean… absolve, by virtue of his own suffering. Standard Christian stuff; God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son so that all who believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Trouble is, they never cottoned on to exactly what it was that was going to live everlastingly. . . certainly not your body Dad, that’s for sure. Your soul? But then who is talking? Soul is ‘I’, body is ‘mine’. Get it?