My Own Spiritual Journey

My first psychedelic experience (1973, in my mid-twenties) was quite shocking for me, not only because of the vistas it opened up but because of the realization of how poor my previous grasp of reality was. I went into that experience as an atheist but came out understanding that everything in the cosmos is connected and that the cosmos itself was conscious and profoundly loving.

My initial application of that understanding to my everyday life was, to say the least, naive. Starry-eyed, I thought that everyone who had done LSD had come to the same conclusion and that the world could very easily be made a better place by having absolutely everyone ingest LSD. I was brought down to earth by some trip-experienced friends deprecating my experience as hallucinatory.

The veracity of the experience was too convincing for me to abandon it. Continuing to believe that everything in the cosmos is ultimately well intentioned I then proceeded to respond "yes" to every proposal as a matter of principle. That too led to some very poor outcomes.

At that time I was pursuing a career as a cinematic photographer. I had what I thought were great artistic ambitions and overnight they were revealed to be mediocre at best. With my newfound enlargement of vista I began to see other artists making statements of a profundity I could not hope to emulate. My self-confidence was shattered. In an attempt to find a genuine personal expression I cast my fate to the cosmos and hit the road, simply to see where it would lead me. Over some six months I encountered great kindness and sympathy along the way but no clear career or lifestyle direction. I returned home not knowing which way to turn.

It was at this juncture that I remembered having seen the I Ching a few months before my psychedelic initiation. My initial encounter with the I Ching had been ineffectual and I had given it no further thought. The reason I thought of it now was because it is based on a random fall of coins, and if everything in the cosmos is connected then even a random fall of coins would have meaning. Is it possible that the I Ching could decipher the meaning in randomness? I purchased a copy of the Wilhelm translation and soon I was hooked. The I Ching was not able to resolve my need for lifestyle direction but seemed to be amazingly aware of the more immediate conditions of my life.

Some months later I noticed a job advertisement that required a qualification in physics while offering a lifestyle close to nature (which I had come to appreciate greatly since my LSD experience). The indication from the I Ching was favourable. I got the job and the lifestyle was excellent but the work extremely dull. However, I acquired useful computer skills that were later to serve me well. A child came along and with it the responsibility of parenthood. I could no longer fritter my time in indecision but had to support a family. A number of computer jobs followed through the next 23 years allowing me to support my family and find some lifestyle satisfaction, but a meaningful career direction never eventuated.

I believed that the root of my inadequacy was an inability to fully incorporate the cosmic presence into my life. Throughout this time I explored esoteric religious sects such as Zen Buddhism and Sufi Islam, as well as the spiritual speculations of the Theosophists, Gurdjieff and a plethora of Eastern and new-age gurus. Credible psychedelic writers were emerging such as Allan Watts and Ram Dass, while the work of Carl Jung and his ideas of a collective unconscious resonated strongly. Two things were common to all of these: Fully engaging with the cosmic presence could expand one's sensibilities and relieve one's suffering, and it was my own mental baggage preventing such 'enlightenment'. I followed gurus, abandoned gurus, became vegan, gave up veganism, and earnestly did my best to discard my mental baggage. One lasting benefit did arise - I learned to meditate.

Not finding a meaningful career direction after so many years rankled. I was resentful against my work (though I did it well) for it often distracted me from what the I Ching and psychedelics were indicating I should be attending to. I believed I needed to pursue their indications more closely, so when my child and wife were eventually able to look after themselves I retired on my own to the country where I could follow their indications without distraction.

The distractions didn't stop, however, they just changed form. I didn't have to rush to the office every morning but my meditations were regularly interrupted at critical moments or my psychedelic reveries assaulted by a neighbour's lawnmowing for example. Spiritual equanimity remained as unattainable as ever, and yet I was now following the I Ching and my psychedelic understanding as closely as I possibly could - and the I Ching was confirming that I was doing so.

Something was wrong. There was something the I Ching was missing.

At that stage I had been using the I Ching for some 30 years and had become extremely familiar with it. I realized it favoured one aspect of the Yin/Yang interaction more than another. It favoured an aspect of fluidity and flexibility over one of rigidity and structure. Was its disdain for rigidity and structure the source if the discrepancy? Why would an apparently spiritual consciousness be so negligent in its perceptions?

I had also maintained my interest in physics over the years and now noticed how incredibly deep these two aspects of rigidity and fluidity were embedded in our physical reality. Were these two aspects situated deeper in our reality than any spirituality? The ideas of connectivity, architectivity and an emergent spirituality were born.

As my exploration of connectivity and architectivity progressed, things started falling into place. The I Ching was focussed on connectivity and tended to ignore architectivity; and it was the natural architectivity of the world that was impeding my spiritual progress rather than any mental baggage I had remaining. (The personal work I had put in thus far easily outweighed my social conditioning.)

I concluded that the spiritual advice I had been given by my teachers and gurus over the years was wrong. Or rather not wrong, just massively incomplete. I, and all my teachers, had been working on the assumption that the spiritual presence comprised a monistic unity and that absolutely everything, whether material or spiritual, was sourced in this one unified being - which the psychedelic experience of universal connectedness appeared to confirm. Such unity implied that every impediment to my spiritual fulfilment arose from my inability to comprehend this unity. It meant that every time I failed in my spiritual pursuit it was my own fault and had to do better.

Understanding that it was the natural processes of architectivity that were impeding my spiritual progress (and my personal and social relationships) rather than my own inadequacy relieved me of a shitload of guilt - and of resentment against others. What also became clear was that the psychedelic experience of cosmic connectedness could be understood in the context of an emergent connective spirituality while a contrary emergent architective spirituality could account for the overwhelmingly architective difficulties we all experience.

The book "Physical Spirituality" attempts to describe our spiritual endeavours in terms of such a dualistic spirituality rather than a monistic unity. Significantly, it shows that a spiritual unity is not a necessary prerequisite for an experience of universal connectedness, whether psychedelic or otherwise.

The nature of my spiritual journey has thus changed. I am no longer striving to reconcile my psychedelic and everyday experiences nor trying to achieve spiritual perfection. I invest more in my connective sensations and actions (without letting my architective challenges get out of hand). I take life a day at a time, doing what I can to give and find connective pleasure while dealing with architective difficulties as best I can.