Resurrection Initiation: The Process and the Joy

Chapter 1

The Twenty Third of April, 2001

I recognised the feeling of leaving my body, the buzzing whoosh of energy shooting up through me. There is a final surge and I know there is nothing I can do but surrender as I leave my body behind. Suddenly all is quiet and black. I know that I’m dead, surrounded by darkness, utter, complete black. There is no sound, not even breathing. I’m dead, I hear myself think, the thought surprising in contrast to the silence.

I remember the night before, the strange happenings in the woods. I wondered if there was a connection between what happened last night and this, my death. Was I being warned or prepared for this? Does everyone have such a strange day the day before they die?

Relax, calm down, let go. The female voice spoke gently from the darkness, unexpected and confirming my conclusion, I am dead; it is time to move on from me, from my thoughts, my memories. I think of my mother, how upset she will be to hear I am dead, I think of my friends finding my body on the sand tomorrow morning, the trouble everyone will be put to. Yet, even as I think these thoughts, at the edge of panic and sorrow, there is another feeling, of release. Actually, I cannot do anything about my body or how anyone feels. It is no longer my problem; it doesn’t matter because I’m dead.

Relax, calm down, let go. Once more the female voice interrupts my thoughts. I know there is no point in fighting. I have to accept that I am dead. I have had such a wonderful life that I cannot complain. In fact I can only say thank you for all the joy I have experienced. So many times I talked about spirituality while travelling, so many times conversations reached the same point; we cannot know the truth until we die. We can listen to the stories of others, we can study the world’s religions and the writings of mystics but ultimately we cannot know anything for certain until it is our time. I had a glorious life and I am truly grateful. Now it is time to experience death. I had always wanted to know for sure, where do we come from and where do we go? Now this is it. I am ready, let’s go.

Suddenly there is the sensation of movement, as if I am being blasted across the universe at the speed of light. O.k., so there is something after the darkness, but what?

I find myself travelling through a tunnel of light. The walls of the tunnel show the story of my life. The tunnel seems huge but size has no meaning as I don’t have a body. Yet there is something of me moving through this space, watching the story of me as if it were projected on the inside wall of a gigantic space tunnel. The projection itself seems to form the wall of the tunnel, there is nothing solid here.

I see my life as a series of choices. These choices led me inexorably to this point in space and time, my own death, the ultimate coincidence of my life. All I had to do was say yes to the right choices at the right time and everything quite naturally played itself through. I knew that in some way I had created this story before incarnating on earth just to live the story I had written.

I see how my choices affected other people. Everything I did affected other people. At times the images of my life seemed to slow down as I saw myself affecting others in a negative way, as I hurt another through my own selfishness and lack of understanding. As these scenes slowed down I became more aware of the entire universe watching with me.

It was understandable that at times I was lost, concerned only with myself, my needs, my wants. Life can be unfair and painful. We all do things we are not proud of in order to take care of number one; we can all be selfish, looking after our own needs first, we can all strike out when it is unnecessary, out of fear for no more than our own self image. And we can change.

I felt lucky not to have done anything completely unwatchable in the movie house of the gods. In fact most of my life was quite positive and became more so as the years of happy travelling passed by. From this viewpoint it was easy to see the positive effects rippling out across all life. The smile really is passed on to many people, the kind word and helping hand really do make a difference, and that speaking ones own truth in the right way, really can open doors. Everyone’s love, the relating, affects everyone else, all connected, each helping each other, ever onward and upward.

I saw so much travelling through that tunnel that I could never explain. I saw and understood. For each question there was an answer and complete understanding. There was no internal dialogue as I chewed over possibilities and maybes; there was just pure knowledge and knowing. I saw that I really did have my own mind when I was young. I knew that adults did not understand the things they tried to talk about. A simple sharing of information and ideas always became an argument. They argued over the opinions they had been taught to hold, refusing to see other points of view. I always saw that in some ways both sides of the argument were right and in some ways both sides were wrong, always acutely aware of duality. I could see this but was unable to express myself. I could see that people acted unconsciously, justifying their actions after the event yet their true motivations seemed obvious to me.

In my teens I had become lost. I had been immersed in human concerns, angry at those with power inflicting their will, saddened by poverty of money and culture, changed by the vanity of needing friends, disguised in the art of hiding to allow others to like me. All this and more had to be taken apart on the road, my judgements needed to be challenged, my mind needed to open and I had to learn to express my truth gently, from compassion. I had to learn to share.

I was right not to give my life to a career and a family, working until sixty-five for a house and a pension. My life of travelling is the life I was supposed to have lived; full of joy, learning and growing.

The many coincidences that I had experienced over the years really were confirmations that I was on the right track, signs letting me know that there was another intelligence at work, I was looked after, all is as it is meant to be. Every soul had been in the perfect place at the perfect time, saying what needed to be said, hearing what needed to be heard. Each soul danced through the story of existence, weaving a web of beauty, simplicity and infinite complexity. Everyone danced to their own beat but together they formed an orchestra conducted from a higher source. Each soul story forms a book and many billions of books form the Great Book of Existence. Each life contains stories within stories and each story is able to reach out and affect the pattern around it.

I realised that there is free will and there is destiny.

All the travelling I had done, the many relationships I’d had and lost, were all necessary for me to reach this point now; the ultimate in learning to let go; my death.

Chapter 2

The Godhead Coincidence

In 1987 I was nineteen years old, sharing a flat with my girlfriend, Ann. We often talked of religion and the worlds mysteries. Lying in bed, listening to myself think, I wondered how it was that I could ever have new or original thoughts. How could I surprise myself or make myself laugh out loud with an unexpected punch line in my meandering mind?

Jokingly I told Ann of my latest idea; my brain is just an aerial, an antenna, and the universe is made of thoughts. Perhaps god himself is continually creating thoughts and it’s just a matter of being in a particular mood to hear particular thoughts.

The next day I was sat on a bus leaving the city centre when I found a book on the seat next to me. It was a book about Krishna consciousness. I opened the book and started reading about the Godhead, the one great mind to which we are all connected, to which we all listen. What a strange coincidence, I thought.

In our conversations about religion I realised that all of the world’s religions had fought and killed in the name of God. Christianity had been responsible for large scale murder, even genocide and the complete destruction of a number of cultures around the world, the complete antithesis of my own understanding of Jesus who seemed to be encouraging us to be compassionate and kind, like him. Islam, Judaism and Sikhism seemed as war loving as the Christians so I found it difficult to place any trust in any of them. All of them were obviously interested in their own power, they had their own agenda.

God was not something I wanted to believe in. The word was steeped in terrible connotations; rules, punishment, killing in the name of. I liked the fact that Buddhism is a no-God religion. It was about people being the best they could be, not attached to material possessions or ideas of the self. Reincarnation interested me. I wondered, since the point of life is to not be incarnated again on this earth, as Buddhists maintain, then is this earth, the place we are trying to escape from, Hell?

However, I decided that Buddhism seemed a selfish religion as it was all about ‘my’ enlightenment and ‘my’ search. What’s more both Buddhism and Hinduism relied philosophically on a hierarchy of souls, like a caste or class system, some are more advanced than others and so justifying inequality. I didn’t like these ideas, but I enjoyed the new philosophical vistas that these conversations with Ann brought me.

It seemed that life itself was magical. If you get a bucket of chemicals, give it a stir and leave it, will it become life? What is this life thing that energises matter? How does dead matter become life, conscious, aware of itself and its surroundings? I realised I had always thought of myself as being trapped within this body not that my body is me. Equally, I could ask, am I my brain or do I just listen to it? From where do thoughts arise? What am I? What is consciousness?

I read Lyle Watson’s ‘Supernature’ at this time and it confirmed the mysterious nature of existence. He describes unicellular organisms coming together to act as a single organism, individual cells taking on specific roles as if specialised body cells. He describes plants that seem to know (according to their recorded reaction on a polygraph) that they are about to be burnt or that a live shrimp is about to be dropped into boiling water. He describes the effect of the sun and the moon and other lesser know cosmic forces that rain down upon us continuously and how these forces, although seemingly unperceived, affect all life on earth. Supernature covers many varied scientific mysteries and it was with science that I placed my trust and faith but I couldn’t help feel that there is some mysterious ‘life force’ around us, animating us, something that science hadn’t yet learnt to measure.

I was never that interested in material possessions but I really wanted to know the truth; where do we come from, where do we go to? For the rest of my life this would remain true. Given the choice between knowing the truth or having wealth and fame my decision would always be the same. The desire to know the truth burnt within me until the day I died and beyond.

Ann was good for me, an intellectual challenge who educated me in many areas such as politics, music, history, environmental issues and yoga. Her mom taught Iyengar Yoga and I enjoyed the exercise and stretching aspects but tried to ignore the spiritual bits about chakras and nadirs. Deep inside I was interested but embarrassment made me shy away from the mystic stuff.

In 1987 I started studying at part time college to take exams that I had failed at school. I didn’t fail because I was stupid but because I was fed up. By the third year at secondary school I was so depressed I had to make a change. I started socialising with people whom I knew to be wild and reckless. I started drinking alcohol and smoking. Heavy rock became the soundtrack to a live fast die young mentality. By the time I was fourteen my shy little sheep was safely disguised in wolf’s clothing. Ann provided a lifeline for my intellectual side and encouraged my return to education which as an adult I found fairly easy and enjoyable.

During my time in this attic flat with Ann I realised that many of the choices we have just aren’t real. I realised that if I just juggled all of my options for long enough most of them would expose themselves as fake and would fall by the wayside, leaving me with one choice; the only choice I ever really had. However, some options don’t need to be juggled. Sometimes when an option comes up the ‘yes’ is so powerful it electrifies you. One such option was moving out of where we lived. I didn’t want to stay in inner city Birmingham all my life, going to the same pubs, seeing the same people and then one day finding that I’m old and that was it, my whole life had been spent doing the same old things in the same place. So when Ann asked if I wanted to move to Manchester the ‘yes’ was an exhilarating relief.

In 1988 we moved to Manchester, where I continued to take exams at part time college. I was lucky to meet a group of friends who were all into comic books; a lifelong guilty pleasure of mine. These friends became housemates in 1989 when Ann and I split up.

I started working in Holland in the summer of ‘90, packing flower bulbs in a warehouse. It was a spur of the moment decision to go, made with a few old friends from Birmingham, Pete B. and Ritchie, and it changed our lives.

When I returned to Manchester it was to start studying at university. I loved it. I already knew Manchester and had friends so the whole experience was easier for me than the new arrivals. I was a little bit older as well so I was careful not to get caught up in any particular clique. I juggled people and my social life as I juggled options so that I had many different groups of friends of all types.

During my second year at university I lived in my little ford escort van. It was freezing during the winter but I had lots of blankets and slept in my clothes. I parked near to the university and used its facilities for toilets and washing. At weekends I would park outside a friend’s house. As I never wanted to be in my van at pub closing time I would be out clubbing till late from Monday to Thursday. My social life was hectic.

Working in Holland each summer made me realise that I could travel, so, I had a year out from university between my second and third year. In the spring of ‘93 I travelled to India for three months. I was with a new girlfriend but found myself wishing I wasn’t. I couldn’t finish with her while we were travelling, so I gritted my teeth and waited. India was wonderful and awful, magical and confusing. Did I love it or hate it? I couldn’t quite make up my mind.

After working again in the summer of ‘93 I returned to Manchester. My van needed repairs that I could not afford so I turned up at university on the first day of term with just a change of clothes and a sleeping bag. I had nowhere to live but I met a friend of my old friend Kristy and later that day I was living in a house rent free due to her help. I knew something would turn up. I had already experienced the strange help of the universe, such as when I first went to Holland, and I had started to play with this concept. I had also started to play with giving things away to see if I would receive. As I started giving away my old t-shirts, I found random people giving me t-shirts as if there really was a universal flow of energy.

My final year of university bored me. I couldn’t wait for it to end as I wanted to travel again. Finally, in the summer of ‘94, my degree was finished and I went straight back to Holland for work. I was in another relationship but one of those weird ones in which you both deny you’re in a relationship despite the fact that we so obviously were. Part of me wanted to stay in England to be with her but I knew that being true to myself meant going, so I went. From Holland I flew to the United States for a few months before returning to England. My ‘sort of’ girlfriend and I had a holiday in Spain and then I returned to Holland for a cold, depressing winter season on my own.

By mid January 1995 I was back in England living with Pete B. My girlfriend had finished our relationship. This was hardly surprising as I had been away for half of the previous year but it still left me unhappy. Worse was to come in April; my dad died.

I worked a small sad season in Holland in the summer and then returned to England. I couldn’t decide what to do with myself and then somebody suggested going back to India. So it was that at the start of ‘96 I returned to India but this time was different. I had made a conscious decision to be less in control, to say yes and go with the flow. It was time to move on. I was young, free and single, ready for a new start, to throw myself into the hands of fate.

Chapter 3

A Celestine Experiment

In 1993, during my three months in India I was sending postcards back to my friend Kristy as she sat her final exams. In 1994 the positions were reversed. I received postcards from her as I sat my finals. So it was by happy coincidence that at the start of ‘96 we both returned for our second visit.

Kristy flew out the day before me, meeting me at Bombay airport. She took me to a hotel room she was sharing with five men whom she had met on the plane: an unimportant American, three English lads and an Australian who had failed to meet his friend at the airport. He had no money and was waiting in Bombay to receive some by wire.

Kristy, the three English lads and I travelled by bus to Helinda’s Guesthouse, Chapora in the north of Goa. Anjuna, the party capitol of the world (at that time) is not far south, a few minutes by motorbike. During the next few weeks, Kristy flirted around trying to be a face on the Anjuna scene as she had been, very successfully, in Manchester. I read a lot, played games, got drunk and noticed unusual footwear activity. No sooner did I break a sandal or loose a shoe another pair would miraculously appear from an unexpected source. At one point I was given a pair of white pumps that were too small for me, so I cut the toes out and wore them anyway.

One of the English lads borrowed me a copy of ‘The Celestine Prophecy.’ I devoured the whole book in a single day. Much of it seemed daft but equally, much of it had the ring of truth. The book deals with nine ancient prophecies charting mans spiritual development into fully conscious spiritual beings. The first prophecy is about throwing yourself into the hands of fate, trusting in ‘what will be, will be’, trusting in coincidence. If you keep seeing the same person there must be a reason. Talk to them; find out what that reason is. Just like the main character in the book I had already learnt this lesson from life before this first prophecy was revealed and I had already decided that this is how I would travel. I was determined to have no plans of my own but to be open to whatever was happening. Having said that I did have a vague plan, to travel south to Kerala and back but when, how and with whom was all part of the mystery waiting to be unravelled.

A few days after reading this book I visited the famous Anjuna flea market. Before I could go I needed to find some footwear as I had lost my white pumps, washed away on the tide as I played on the beach late at night. Looking around Helinda’s guesthouse I noticed a pair of sandals on a rubbish tip. Although a size too small they would do the job.

I’m not much of a shopper so most of the day was spent hiding in the shade of bars. By the evening I was quite drunk, sat on the beach in front of the ‘Shore Bar’. That’s when Helen asked me for a light and gave me a big smile. She was an Australian tripper and we had a great night together, playing on the beach, talking about life, the universe and the Simpsons. Inevitably the evening ended in bed.

As I departed in the morning I pondered cruel twists of fate. I had enjoyed Helens company more than any I had shared in the previous few weeks, probably ever actually but I knew if I told her she would freak out on me and I didn’t want to mess up a perfect one night stand. So, as much as I didn’t want to, I departed, trusting to fate, what will be, will be.

I suddenly remembered my sandals. They had been forgotten outside the shore bar. I never saw them again but I did see Helen.

Three days later I walked out of my room at Helinda’s for breakfast only to find Helen sat with the big hairy Aussie who had stayed with us in Bombay. Helen was the friend he had failed to meet.

Helen and I became inseparable, so much so that I couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed a few days later to say goodbye to Kristy as she departed to the south. She stood outside my door at Helinda’s calling me to get up and give her a hug goodbye. Yeah, in a sec, I shouted back as I snuggled up to Helen and fell back to sleep.

Within the week, Helen and I were heading to a beach in the south of Goa, Palolem. We didn’t make it. After a horrendous bus journey we stopped short of our goal at a beach named Benaulim. After a great week together I had to go. I had a mission to travel south. Coincidental travel partners had turned up to take me on my way. Helen was waiting for friends to turn up, so despite an aching heart I went without her. I knew that I might never see Helen again. However, I felt sure that if we were meant to be together, the universe would find a way.

The train journey south through Kerala was amazing. I sat in the open doorway of the train, smoking, drinking chai, chatting with Indians and soaking up the spectacular scenery. Billions of palm trees filled the land, trees and bushes of every type of green surrounded small houses where children stood, waving as the train passed by. I felt so full of love I thought I would burst.

I had a wonderful time in Kerala for a month. Again I met great people and life rocked along with very little effort. I learnt to slow down, do one thing at a time, to even enjoy doing nothing.

Slowly I started heading back up the coast. I spent one day travelling by boat through Kerala’s backwaters. Dense foliage crammed the banks, picturesquely spaced fishing nets draped down to the water, little houses sat on spits of land and children ran along side the boat, asking for school pen. Other children splashed about in the water and fishermen, skin black from the sun, paddled their boats around ours. I built myself a shade made of lungis (sheets of cloth like a sarong, worn by most men in Kerala as a wrap around skirt) on the boat, which insured a steady flow of visitors seeking shade from the sun.

I travelled on to a beach named Bekal in the north of Kerala. I had to change trains a few times, walk a few miles through tobacco plantations and along the beach to a fishing village just south of Bekal fort. I stayed for a few days in a spare room with the fishermen and their families. The beach stretched on for as far as the eye could see, lined with palms and plantations. There were no other tourists. I realised that this was my first time alone, that I could breathe a sigh of relief. For a while I could stop being me.

It was good to rest but I also felt slightly out of my comfort zone. A few times groups of men gathered outside my room, staring at me, curious about my possessions; my radio, torch, etc. I knew they were only curious but I also felt my own complete isolation. If I disappeared here, no one would ever know.

On my second day a neighbour cooked me fish curry rice. I sat in his small room, his wife sat opposite me with a small child. Unexpectedly, she took out her left breast and started feeding her child. My eyes flailed around the room, trying not to look at the boob.

The food was placed in front of me, fish heads bobbing out of curry, eyes looking up at me. I tried to explain that I was a vegetarian and didn’t eat fish. Nobody spoke English but eventually I made myself understood. They were so apologetic; acting as if I were some kind of holy man they may have offended. The fisherman ran off only to return a few minutes later with a vegetable curry, which he had obviously scrounged from a neighbour.

I felt like a fraud. What a privilege it is to be able to choose to be a vegetarian. These people were truly beautiful, trusting, giving and lived a life in harmony with nature. They shone with natural goodness and generosity. My vegetarian diet felt like a sickness or at least the symptom of an over complicated, over politicised, extremely controlled, carefully labelled and overly intellectualised western life. This was mirrored in my reaction to the mother feeding her baby. They were not uncomfortable yet I was. The west is full of breasts on display, surely I should be immune? Yet the breast in the west is sexualised, branded and sold, our attitudes are moulded, reactions set by media and all those around us as we grow, leaving us divorced from the simple beauty of a mother feeding her child.

Suddenly the local priest turned up. He spoke English and invited me for a meal at his church the next evening and I accepted. The priest looked after a number of orphan boys. These boys took me in to the church as the priest cooked for us. We all sat and the boys began to sing. The energy of their voices was overwhelming. No fear held them back; each gave of his very soul. The boys rocked back and forth as the energy of their song increased to crescendo, peaked and then fell. Again the energy was built and again and again. I felt filled with love, almost choked with tears by the beauty and power of their singing. An hour later I was exhausted, lying on the church floor letting the singing soak through me. By the time the priest called us for dinner I felt totally uplifted.

Slowly my hard, inner city, working class edges were being softened. I no longer felt defensive and under threat. Finally I was starting to relax into a lighter, softer and gentler me.

I continued on my journey north. On a bus in Mangalore I met two Danish brothers. One was a priest who hardly spoke, the other was an injured ballet dancer who had dreamt of Sai Baba before seeing him in his ashram, and who talked of religion endlessly. When he had his dream he had no idea who Sai Baba was and had never seen his picture. In the dream he asked Sai Baba, What is the shape of God? Sai Baba made a circle with his thumb and finger. At the ashram, Sai Baba appeared on a balcony, raised his hand, made the same circle with thumb and finger and looked directly at my Danish friend.

Despite dismissing all religions in my youth I still found a fascination for the subject and was sure there were deep truths hidden within all religions as well as in myth and legend.

I was quite happy to chat with my Danish friend all night on the bus north. For the first time in my life I felt a bit cosmic. Whatever my friend said I could sum up in some clever way that led us on to the next point. For some reason I felt that, I know all this. My Danish friend seemed amazed at my breadth of understanding and ability to add to his understanding. I felt quite possessed and extremely happy. Nothing could worry me, it mattered not one jot what time this bus arrived.

I should have got off the bus at a town called Kerwar, just south of the Goa border. As we drove through the border checkpoint I realised I had missed my stop. I spoke to the driver who wobbled his head at me. The next stop would be further north, Palolem, where the Danes were getting off. As I had been on my way to Palolem a month earlier and hadn’t made it, I figured I might as well go there now.

We arrived at four in the morning and slept on the sand. In the morning we awoke to the most beautiful beach in India, over one kilometre of beautifully curved beach facing south-west, the sea smooth and inviting. A deep palm grove lined the length of the beach and lush green vegetation sparkled on the rocky headlands at either end. On the recommendation of other travellers I ate at the ‘Sun and Moon’ (S’n’M) restaurant that evening. I had been sat on their wicker chairs only a few minutes when I saw Helen. We spent the next few weeks together in Palolem, blissfully happy, without footwear.

Eventually I had to return to England. Luckily a friend had a house to rent for a few months where I watched England reach the semi finals of Euro 96. Helen joined me there and together we went to Holland for the summer, packing flower bulbs for export.

When I first did this with a few friends, Ritchie and Pete B., in 1990, it was a spur of the moment decision for all of us, none of us really had a clue what we were doing but by luck and coincidence I was able to borrow money from Pete B. and buy a van from my grandfather, which allowed us to go for it. We met a drunken Scots man on the Ferry and he knew where to go, a campsite in Hillegom. However the site was full and we were directed down the coast to Noordwijkerhout where we eventually found a campsite. My friends put up tents and we chatted to the English chaps in the tent next to us. They were working and more workers were needed to start on Monday morning. Ritchie and I went along and I worked at the same place for twelve summers. By the summer of ‘96 I knew I could do a lot of travelling on the money I could earn in three months.

Helen saved enough to return to Australia for the first time in two and a half years. I joined her in October and we stayed in Oz for the next six months. Helen wanted to stay and work in Australia; I had to return to Europe via a stopover in India. We had an agonising seven months apart before meeting again in Bombay in November 1997.

Chapter 4

Fingerprints of the Gods

Helen and I returned to Palolem in November 1997. We met many travellers who stayed there for long periods of time; Stu, the phantom, very aloof and had travelled most of his life, surviving in any way he could; Terry had an amazing cockney accent and reminded me of Parker from Thunderbirds, though Terry is funnier with a story for any occasion; Christine, amusing in her cynical hatred of people; Mary, a middle-class hippy, giggly happy and supportive, concerned with Reiki and healing. There were many more, all unique and strong personalities. We had a marvellous time there for two months before heading off to travel around more of the country.

We travelled down the west coast, through Kerala to the southern tip, to the incredible temples at Madurai and on to the hill station called Kodikanal. In previous visits I had often shaken my head at the way Indians go about doing things. Without realising it we always compare other cultures with our own and usually judge them as inferior. Now I felt far beyond that way of thinking. No longer did I consider a pile of rubbish by the side of the road as a sign of laziness or lack of hygiene. I understood; that is the way Indians have been dealing with waste for thousands of years, it feeds the animals. Only recently has the introduction of plastic and packaging created a new problem in India.

I found myself more annoyed by other westerners I met, those who constantly compare and judge, those who have yet to realise their own programming, looking down on others as inferior, or talking to someone as a nationality not an individual. I realised that every man, wherever he is from, tends to think that his land and culture is the best. This attitude stops the process of learning and understanding. Mentally I was stepping to the other side of a line; I was starting to love India while understanding more fully my despair at the west. I realised that India may be covered with dirt on the outside but if you scratch under the surface you find genuine beauty whereas in the west all looks fine but beneath the modern exterior is a pile of problems. The way we dispose of our waste is indicative of this, flushed into the sea or buried beneath the earth, conveniently out of sight out of mind.

We travelled on, up through Mahalabarapuram and on up the east coast. In March 1998 we were in Bubeneshwar, Orrissa, booking train tickets to the holy city of Varanassi. In the booking office we met Sally, a South African girl. She had been in the country for a few weeks and was having a nightmare. We took control, telling her to hang out with us for a while, a few days in Puri on the coast, then on to Varanassi. She eagerly agreed. We found out a few days later that the day before she met us she had prayed to God for help, prayed for a guardian angel. At that time I had no idea how the tables would become turned, how she would be responsible for changing my life.

One of THE things to do in Varanassi is the dawn boat ride on the Ganges. However, unless it’s for something major such as catching a flight, I cannot get up early. Normally, the only time I see dawn is when I stay up all night. So, I decided to sit up in the 24-hour rooftop restaurant at my hotel. Irish Gerry was last to leave that night. As he said goodnight I realised I had nothing to read. I didn’t want to wake Helen so Gerry gave me a book, explaining that it was not his and he must have it back by 10am. No worries, I told him. The book was ‘Fingerprints of the Gods’ by Graham Hancock.

In my youth I had been interested in the strange mysteries of the world. I enjoyed the wonder of pyramids, ghosts, aliens and magic. At some point my obsessions turned to females, drinking and smoking. Old pyramids were not so cool to a mid-teeny. What was so mysterious anyway? Big pyramids, big deal; they used millions of slaves didn’t they?

Fingerprints of the Gods reopened my eyes and reawakened my interest in the mysteries of the world. It gave me a new framework, a whole new way of looking at the world and evidence that would not stop jangling my brain.

This book suggests that an ancient civilisation travelled and mapped our planet before the end of the last ice age. Maps from the 1500’s show Antarctica, with an ice-free spit of land stretching toward South America. Other maps show Antarctica partially glaciated, some less glaciated, some show the continent completely ice free. All these maps were drawn hundreds of years before Antarctica was discovered in