• P.M. Would you talk a little about the experience you had as a child aged nine when you were consumed with the fear of death.

   

  It was my ninth birthday and that evening when I went to bed, I realised that I was getting old and it hit me in a profound way. 

  
  

  A story ran in my mind about my life to come and, of course, the final part was death. I was seized with a huge fear and wanted to go downstairs to my mother but knew that she would not understand and would just send me back to bed. I also felt that she did not have the capability to help me with it so there was no choice but to stay with the feeling of one day coming to an end. I woke in the morning and it was forgotten about. That evening, as soon as I laid down to sleep the story came again, more rapidly arriving at the end, death, and again the feeling. 

  
  

  This continued to occur for about ten months. Each morning it was forgotten about and each evening as my head hit the pillow and I began to feel sleepy, the intense feeling of becoming nothing would arrive. It just simply stopped one day. 

  
  

  Many years later when the fear of death arose a short while before realisation I knew it was OK and that I could be present to it; it was already familiar ground.

  
  

  I guess it was a preparation for what was to come.    

• PM.

  You lived in a Christian community for a while during your twenties. What was it about Christ’s teachings that you were drawn to?

   

  I knew nothing really about Christ's teaching except the usual stuff thrown at children in school. I was no lover of religion.

  
  

  I was about to commit suicide one evening when all of a sudden, I was watching my body as if from a globality of seeing; it lasted for about ten minutes and as it went away, I knew that everything was going to be OK.

  
  

  The next day, my landlord, who was a good friend of mine, kicked me out of the house I rented from him, asking me not to ask him why he was doing it but that he had a dream that night that it must be done.

  
  

  I just picked up the few belongings that I had and let Life take me wherever it wanted. Within about four days, I found myself in a Christian community in a place named Blockley, knowing that I had been brought there.

  
  

  I began to feel good about my life again for the first time in years, and in about a month I was feeling a very strong devotion for Jesus. Two months later, after a strange three-day period where I was unable to eat anything and was running a high temperature, I felt a great awakening happened. I knew something very important in my life was about to happen but had no idea what it could be.

  
  

  Then one night I awoke and went through the fear of death, realising that what I am is that which cannot die. It was a big suprise when in the morning the body was still alive and the world was still present. It was also clear that the 'I' that Jesus spoke of as being One was true of all beings; it was the same 'I'. There was no one in the bodies, the 'I' referred to was nothing, an aware nothingness.

  
  

  For some reason I assumed that most of the lovely people there had realised this as they kept telling me that they had found Christ; so when I went down for assembly in the chapel that morning and shared what I had realised during the night, I was met with a very hostile silence. That was the end of my Christian period, three months. I was asked to leave.  

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