When I first moved to San Antonio in the mid-seventies (1970’s) it was to join up with the City of Love and Light, an association formed in the aftermath of the sixties, the Age of Aquarius and all that. The founding principle was that peace was possible in our world if people found inner peace within themselves. It was a sound idea, that I believed in and still believe in, mixed with alot of youthful aspirations and idyllic inclinations.

It was not a hippie trip - we all worked but we also shared our resources, shared our meals, cohabitated with one another in the Gunter Hotel downtown, shared the expressions of our soul in nightly gatherings called satsang (after the old Hindi word that means ‘company of truth’) and lived merrily together searching for that elusive inner peace. I say elusive because it seems like you can never quite capture it, like a lightning bug in a bottle, but you could feel it from time to time flitting thru your mind or your heart more precisely. Enough to remind you that it was real.

As it turns out, or as I would realize later, that simple experience of inner peace is a big deal. That’s what everyone is actually searching for. Actually I did know that then but I know it even more now. We entertain ourselves and distract ourselves and watch sports on TV and buy things and carry them home to adorn our domiciles all for that one effervescent feeling of inner peace, happiness, elation, contentment - call it whatever you like it’s ‘the thing’. Just call it ‘the thing’. We all recognize it but it doesn’t have a name, or has too many names.

Anyways back to the City of Love and Light. I worked in ‘Autopia’ a make ready car wash and detailing business set up in a nearby abandoned bus barn. I was the steam cleaner - turning old greasy engines into shiny clean motors for the used car lots along Broadway.

One evening I was sitting in satsang when my entire visual field suddenly folded up and transformed into pure light. White light was all I could see with my eyes wide open. It was startling to say the least and I struggled to regain my normal vision. The lovely white light disappeared after a moment, something I now regret. I consider it to have been a gift that I couldn’t appreciate or accept at the time. What the heck it was I have no idea. Light. I was in the City of Love and Light. I guess that was it.

We practiced meditation, Self Knowledge, as taught by Prem Rawat. I still do. And here I’d like to say something that’s not easy to articulate. The practice of Self Knowledge is a subtle and easily disturbed experience that requires some trust on the part of the practitioner, trust that the instructor knows what they’re doing and is providing some facilitation for an individual’s effort (in this case me). I have found this to be true which is why I still practice it.

Peace is possible and the world, which has basically gone insane looking for it in all the wrong places, could benefit from people who feel ‘peace’. And what is peace exactly? I don’t know how to answer that but I know it when I feel it. We all do. It’s a commonality. Don’t know about the birds and the bees and the whales and the elephants but humans carry this special feeling within themselves. We search for it everywhere (like I just mentioned) and forget that it’s already within us. Hilarious, right?

So the City of Love and Light lasted for a couple of years as I recall. Everybody went thru their evolution and finally it found its dissolution. Lost it’s purpose. Everybody moved on. Of the 150 people who once lived there only two remain in San Antonio: me and my buddy Steve. The city is still here, the love and light is still here but no more communal living, no more satsang in the evening. I kinda miss that but it’s a different era now.

There was no internet back then, barely even computers. Apple and Microsoft were only born in 1976. Now we have live streaming of Prem Rawat’s events from wherever he’s at in the world. We can watch it in our living room. And the opportunity to sit down and find the inner peace feeling is even more attractive. Keeps the ridiculous and the absurd at bay.

How do you discern what’s ‘real’ and what’s not? It’s a function of discrimination isn’t it? The ability to discriminate, to understand is never taught to us in school or anywhere else. Self knowledge is not on the curriculum, not since Socrates’ time, the ‘Know Thyself’ guy from ancient Greece. How do you determine what’s real and what’s not amidst the torrent of information we are deluged with every day? This is a very good question it seems to me.

Fake news? Alternative truth? Rigged elections? What’s really going on behind the headlines? We are lost in a sea of ambiguity. Nothing to brace ourselves with except our random and arbitrary opinions which we cling onto desperately in hopes of finding some stability. (My father used to be a preacher, did I mention that? I slip into it too easily. Oh well.)

So that’s why to me a knowledge of myself, that which doesn’t change and is not affected by all the changes is refreshing and essential. It’s essential to me anyways. Like the breeze flowing thru the trees, the leaves dancing, dangling, waving like banners (is this the origin of banners and flags?). I can feel something delightful inside, unconditional. It’s essential to me. Otherwise the leaves dancing in the breeze are nothing but a mechanical phenomenon. I don’t feel the resonance in myself, that I belong, that we are all connected somehow and that there is love, there is love and light and the world is alright.

So that’s it. I told a friend about my early days in San Antonio as a member of the City of Love and Light and he said you should write about that. So I did. I hope it’s interesting. Everybody has their story. I hope yours is interesting. I think the world would benefit if people shared their stories. Like the inner peace our stories are unique and fascinating or atleast curious which is almost fascinating. We live and we die and in between we have our story. No one knows where we come from and no one knows where we go (sorry re-incarnators and near death experinators) but in between we get to tell a story. Our story. No one else can tell it like that.

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