I was brought up in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. I had a fairly normal upbringing in a suburb near Port Phillip Bay and remember, at times, not feeling very connected to other people, almost as if I didn’t belong here. My sister and I were sent off to the Anglican Sunday school nearby. I could never really relate to what was being said and remember that usually I would start to fall asleep when we had to sing a hymn.

I was a fairly good student at central and high school, but again couldn’t relate well to team sports and was allowed to go to the gym in the city on sports days. One delight for me was being part of the stage staff and participating in some of the talent quests. I was part of a quartet which was beaten in the finals by another quartet who had Keith Potger as a member. He was later one of the four singers in the group “The Seekers”.

I remember my father, who later studied with the Rosicrucians, had some spiritual books on the shelf including “The Third Eye” by Lobsang Ramtha. I think reading these books was the first thing that began to open me up to the possibility that there was more to myself than the body and the mind that I was used to.

When I was at university studying engineering, one of my friends had a 1932 Hudson Teraplane and three of us set off with the car on the Princess of Tasmania to cross the very rough Bass Strait from Victoria to Tasmania. We drove initially to the West Coast of Tasmania, putting the car on a train at one stage. I remember very distinctly the three of us sitting on the top of a high cliff overlooking the Southern Ocean crashing in on the rocks and the sand far below us for over an hour without speaking. I think this was the first experience in my life of total immersion in what was happening. I remember coming back to normal awareness and the incredible sense of peace that I felt.

In 1963 I moved to Sydney to study computing before there were any undergraduate courses. Sometime after that I borrowed a book on meditation from the library and started to do some of the exercises. This led to another very important experience for me. It didn’t occur during a formal meditation, but instead while I was laying down feeling totally relaxed. Any of these experiences are so difficult to put into words but I will do my best.

I experienced myself as a point of consciousness in space. There was no sensation of body or anything physical or identity and the space was not what we are used to in the normal physical sense. I would describe it now as experiencing myself as pure consciousness.

These initial solitary experiences were a precursor to further development.

At around this time, I found the book “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramahansa Yogananda (or it found me). Yogananda moved from India to America in the early part of the twentieth century and is credited with introducing Eastern philosophy to many people. His book describes what he experienced as he travelled through India, meeting many regarded as advanced souls who shared their wisdom with him. He also witnessed many things that would be regarded as miraculous phenomena. One chapter describes meeting the Perfume Saint who would manifest any fragrance you asked for in the air. Another describes seeing the Butterfly Saint attracting swarms of butterflys. There were also other experiences of a much subtler nature.

This book was important to me because it opened my thinking to the world beyond the physical that we can perceive with our normal senses. Even if you do not as yet have expanded experiences, it is very important to be exposed to the possibilities and to accept that they could exist. With this openess in place, you are then in a much better position to have further growth and development experiences brought to you. Yogananda taught practices to enable you to move forward and also taught on many aspects of spirituality and religion.

I will relate various events in my life that I regard as having significance. The earliest of these that I can relate in the normal way was as a teenager and I have had many more since then.

Quite late in life, after there had been a lot of development, I had some experiences which are like a recall from the time before I was able to think, that sets the process of growth in context and gives meaning to what happened after that.

The first occurred about 10 years ago while I was meditating by myself. I must have been quite deep because I had no consciousness of my body. I became aware of a curved milky subtly glistening surface which I cannot adequately describe. The surface seemed to extend in all directions without limit. As I looked, a portion of that surface started to swell. This continued and it formed into a globule which sat above the surface with a thin thread back into the surface itself.

I was given to understand that what I was witnessing was the creation of my own soul. At that stage, I was receiving information in the form of words as well as thoughts.

Reflecting on this, the surface represented what I could call Source, Creator, All-That-Is, God. I was created from that as a distinct entity, but with a thread connecting myself to my Source which could never be broken.

The second experience occurred about 6 years ago. I think I was at a workshop but in a quiet space by myself. This was remarkable. It was much more than being shown something or having a memory; even a clear memory. It was as if I was actually reliving the event. I was a toddler, barely able to sit up, seeing myself, but also was myself at the same time. I could feel exactly how I felt; to try to put this into words is very very difficult. I felt vibrant, alive, aware, at peace, taking in all around me, feeling absolutely clear within, almost like what you could describe as a divine child. For quite some moments I just sat there looking around feeling like this.

Then something came at me from outside. Perhaps an energy. Perhaps some adults around me critical, judgemental of something I was doing. Whatever it was I don’t know, but it was of a vibration much much lower than myself. All of a sudden I began to feel that pristine clarity that I was and was experiencing drop and fade. I became ordinary, mundane, trying to discern what had happened to me. And that was the end of that experience.

I start the story of my journey with these two experiences because they set the whole thing in context.

I was initially shown myself as being created from the substance of creator or God. One of the few things I can remember from my early church days is: “Being of one substance with the Father, from whom all things are made.” Being made as a distinct individual, but with a connection to that from which I was made, which can never be broken.

Then I was shown myself as that pristine child which is how I was created and how everybody else was created. That child has within it all the everlasting qualities of Creator without needing to know or describe them. At the vibrational level and energy that being is very very able to feel its connection as a natural part of its being. What happens to everybody at some stage, often before birth, is that they start to be impinged by energies, vibrations of a much lower level. Those arising from the distortions, the ordinariness and the disconnection that is so prevalent on this plane. The adults around us have inherited this and carried and project it to some extent even if they are relatively pure people.

If we are fortunate, we are given the opportunity to sense ourselves as more than that being we feel we are. We get to expand our awareness and our senses and start to realise that there is more to us than this body and this behaviour and this personality that we are used to.

If it is our desire to progress, to grow, then we are given assistance and material and people to help us along the way to let this development of our sensing and awareness expand and develop. As time goes on, with our aspirations, will come the possibility of starting to really sense ourselves again as we were originally created. We will do this as more spiritually mature, expressive individuals.

You might see this growth as the aspiration to mature in every way; to become an individual who has a strong sense of their true nature, of their connection to the beings around them and their connection and oneness with their Creator.

For the past twenty years my passion for exploring the spiritual aspect of myself has become much stronger. This growth has involved a combination of learning and experiencing. After a few months of being kept very quiet, I am now being encouraged to share what I understand. This website is one of the vehicles for that. Because development goes on continuously, I will add elements as they arise – as posts or as a component of an article about some topic.

I will also describe the key elements of my life journey and the understanding that has come along the way. These posts are named “My Journey part 1 – <title>” , part 2 etc and it will make more sense to read them in order.

All of this has given me a clearer core understanding of the true nature of myself and reality as we experience it. The expression of this will continue to evolve as I do, but the source of this understanding has a permanence about it which can be sensed but never accurately expressed.

But I can have a go!