2

First Intimation

IN DECEMBER 1963, I was one of three passengers on a cargo ship to South America. I’d packed a lot into my 26 years - particularly since leaving school. I served in the army as a cavalry officer, and had an eventful year sailing round the world to Australia, where I realised my dream to be a cowboy. Then I entered university to study agriculture, but left in rebellion against science and economics. During my travels, I’d become interested in soil erosion, and many other spoiling aspects of civilisation upon both man and nature. I loved horses, handwork and the traditions of good farming, and tried to resist the tide of modernisation, which swept them all away. I started my own farm but injured my back, and had to have a few years’ taste of business. Full of poetry, philosophy and romantic ideals, I longed to have something to work at that I could believe in. Life pressured me to settle, start a family, and be “responsible”, but I felt at odds with the world. I’d tasted the sweet fruits of freedom, and could find no place, no way …

I was tempted by virgin land for settlement in Bolivia, and someone offered me work shepherding in Patagonia. I abandoned a promising career. I remember a meeting when someone said, “We’re in business to make money.” “Oh, no,” I thought, “I’m not.” I wanted to be free to make the deserts bloom … to heal the wounded earth. But what was I searching for? To myself I answered, “God,” but it didn’t sound very convincing to others. “Why can’t you find God at home?” they replied. I thought rather vaguely of “doing good”, but felt more sure of what I didn’t want, and that seemed to be almost everything that other people did. Father tried to dissuade me. The only encouragement I had was from a motherly Frenchwoman: “You must follow your heart,” she said, “and be true to yourself,” but I didn’t know what that meant. I thought it was selfish, and didn’t understand. There wasn’t much heart about that winter evening, nor direction to follow. My departure for Australia six years before had been exciting and carefree. Now I carried a world on my shoulders. After the long emotional struggle to get away, I felt as empty as the cold, grey sea.

It was a stormy passage across the Atlantic. We stopped for two days at Santo Domingo, where it didn’t take me long to fall in love:

In an indefinable way I knew that what I sought (and I could not say what that was) existed, as she’d shown me so simply and sweetly by her being. As the mountains of Hispaniola merged into the evening, for the first time in many months I was happy, and knew I was happy.

I had some fairly miserable times too - of loneliness, uncertainty and, as someone said, “Searching for a hook to hang my hat.” God was more theoretical than real, and my occasional prayers - a desperate plea. I thought more of outward giving than the inner soul, but it was all interspersed by glimpses of the pure, the good and beautiful. Having arrived in Peru, I found a job in the Andes, where I worked with sheep and read my way through the Bible. But this was the “socialist” period of my life, when I really wanted to restore eroded soils, and feed the poor and hungry. I applied and became an agricultural volunteer. I lived high up in a remote and impoverished village, in a barren valley, long since deforested. I longed to make it green and productive again, as old Inca ruins indicated it had been. Once, wanting a break to see Amazonia, I left the thin, cold mountain air and took a long winding road down through clouds to the steamy heat below. With a companion and an Indian guide:

We went by boat some way up the river, disembarked at a muddy bank and, suddenly - were there. The bustling settlement was gone - eternal jungle was. For four unforgettable days we moved in another world - a profusion paradise of life and greenery, with creepers, palms and mighty buttressed tree trunks soaring up to lose themselves above. The floor of the forest is nearly all shady and covered with dead leaves. There’s no grass. You have to look to see the light, far up beyond the broken canopy.

The Indian slipped ahead on his bare feet, but we found it difficult to move quietly. Vision is very limited in all that growth. We heard tapirs crashing about, but only saw their tracks. Flying foxes - large squirrel-like creatures with huge bushy tails, were not at all afraid. And then we found some monkeys. First you notice a shaking of branches and you strain to see … there’s a movement … and it’s a monkey! The difference between seeing them in a zoo and in the wild is so great that it defies description. They are so free and beautiful, exciting - so radiantly alive. But even using words like these I feel I debase them, bringing them captive within my own conceptions. They are in their domain, their home - not mine, and I know that the very act of seeing them is an honour.

I remember those days in the jungle as some of the most significant of my life, indicative of what in later years I was to discover through meditation. As the canopy of leaves closed over us, so it seemed our normal egocentric lives faded away. Gone was the pioneering farmer, the young man agonising over what to do, the constant flow of personal reactions to an attractive or repulsive world. We were absorbed into another life where we existed just as the snakes and monkeys and giant centipedes going their way over the fallen leaves - neither smaller nor greater than they, and having no dominant function, but just being there as coparticipants, held and controlled as they were by the same natural forces round about us.

We came to a little beach bordering a stream, where it looked as if a barrel had been dragged this way and that, gouging out deep grooves in the soft sand. My mind flashed back to the illustrated cover of a boyhood book, which showed a great snake, its body thick as a barrel, rearing out of a river to threaten a canoe full of men. Anaconda! For years that word had sent a shudder of excitement through me. And now we looked at the Indian, the word on our lips. He nodded. I wanted to follow the trail where it disappeared into bushes on the far side, but he refused to go, describing how it would be lying up somewhere, and likely to spring out and seize a curious intruder, drawing him in to crush him in its coils. We stood for a while undecided what to do, before reluctantly turning away.

It started to rain soon after this and we made a cold, tired camp, lighting a fire with difficulty to drive off the mosquitoes. It grew dark, and the familiar hubbub of night cries, squeaks and whirrs joined the dripping trees. The jungle became sinister, hostile - even terrifying. I lay down, thinking of the snake nearby. If I stretched out my hand, I might just touch it. What if the Indian deserted us? How would we ever find our way out? Everything was wet, and I was cold. I sat up, blew the fire to life, took off my wet shirt and hung it over a twig to dry, settled more comfortably and looked out upon the dark trees. And then a marvellous thing happened. The rain had eased, and a few night birds squawked and called in the surrounding blackness. Suddenly I was at peace. I stopped fighting my fears. I couldn’t beat the jungle so I accepted it, surrendered to the dripping darkness, the sleeping Indian - the snakes. Surrendered, and put my trust in forces that were greater than I. And so came peace such as I had never known - an overwhelming sense of almighty and comforting presence. I must have sat a long time, completely at peace, completely happy, for my shirt was warm and more or less dry when I moved to put it on again. I didn’t use such words then - I didn’t even think that way, but I look back on this as my first great spiritual experience, when I knew and took refuge in a dimension that was not of ordinary, everyday living.

I learnt a lot in Peru, but I don’t know that I did much good for others. A few trees were planted, a few small things achieved … some public interest was stirred. Helped by experience, and many quiet hours among the mountains, I came to feel more deeply, the transience of things. What’s it all for anyway, if it comes to an end? My own ideas seemed immature, intrusive. The valley was not mine to change, and life could so obviously go on without me. As I thought less of myself, I found much more to admire about the Indians. Who was I, to advise them what to do? Understanding them better, I came to realise that I was one of the least, not most, capable of living. I returned home, maybe, a slightly humbler man - more aware of my own faults - with the thought that, if I couldn’t change the world, at least I could try to be a good shepherd, and hopefully, make a better job of my own life.

* * *

These next notes were written when I was about 30 - freshly back from South America, starting to farm again, learning to meditate, and reading every sort of spiritual book I found. They remind me of how I then thought - of things I’d learnt from others, and some first moments of genuine realisation:

Sometimes I feel an infinite strength and love flowing through me, and it seems that by passing a wand over this troubled world, I could bring about the holy mountain (Is.11,9). Only to love, is enough - and in the face of real love my whole intellectual effort seems vain, and I know that without love, I am nothing.

Yes, the strength and love were infinite, but the mortal man was...