We sought a tribal society, to be close to each other, not to sit behind a television with our families and not see our families, not just to watch the evening news and the inane comedies designed to pacify the multitudes, but rather to explore ourselves.
We experimented and we experienced many altered states of awareness. We used the power plants. I did that for a year or two.
With the use of psychedelics, it was all based around the Tibetan Book of the Dead, using them to experience enlightenment.
I learned about the benefits and the vast limitations of such types of exploration, as did all my generation.
I started to meditate formally at about 18. I would sit on a mountaintop in Southern California around twilight and focus on my third eye. Everything would become still and rings of light would appear, and I’d go through them. I would be beyond time and space.
Originally, I was interested in athletic pursuits like snowboarding, martial arts and surfing. When I went to the Himalayas and met a number of Buddhist monks I was introduced to a new way of looking at life.
I was initiated as a Buddhist monk at the age of 19, but I think that initiation is simply a starting point.
I first went into samadhi when I was 19. I was meditating in the mountains and had been meditating on a daily basis for several years. Suddenly there was no time or space or life or death or myself or the Universe. I was absorbed in light.
I meditated on my own for some time, read spiritual books, became a vegetarian and had incredible experiences every day, every meditation, where I was just thrown into the infinite – never realizing that other people didn’t necessarily have those experiences in meditation that quickly.
I never considered myself to be special. If anything, I considered myself to be awkward, and still do sometimes.
I entered a spiritual community when I was 20, which I was in for 11 year, with very strict meditative practices, with an Eastern teacher. It was very much like a religious order.
The training was rigorous, hundreds and thousands of hours of meditation, self-giving. But it was easy. I loved it. I would merge again and again with the superconscious in meditation.
I was drawn to the arts because I sensed that I was by nature Bohemian, and yet very conservative.
I did well in school. I had lots of honors, so I thought I was quite smart.
I was drawn to be very solitary as a scholar. I lived a very quiet life, aloof, with my books, with my walks in nature, meditating, and of course with my teacher.
I was very dawn to people I loved, to my family, to my father, to my sister, to my brothers.
I was very immersed in the world. I’m very worldly. I love world. I was immersed in my career, in school, in teaching.
My teacher knew that I always had a girlfriend. For some reason, he never said anything to me about it.
Some of the most exalted states of consciousness I experienced were in bed with someone, alone, or with my spiritual teacher. There was never a difference for me.
I found the experiences that I had with sexuality were wonderful, they were very uplifting – we had a good time – and they didn’t seem to affect the level of my mediation.