By now I was getting accustomed to seeing Annie at my breakfast table on Sunday mornings. She was always polite to me, and no trouble in that way, and Michael and my Dad were starting to get used to her. We’d all got into the habit of it – she’d come on the last train...

This is a mostly sombre post that starts with memories of my vanished childhood in Laos, and how my Dad came to take me to Paris as a teenage refugee. Today though, I talk with him on the telephone about the reality of evil and the strange idea of privatio boni. I try out Patanjali’s...

Onion teases me by talking about her past entanglements with  powerful men and her time as a hooker in Canada. She says that after last night she’s finished with sex for good, and now she’s going to let anyone have her. On the way she applies her occult astrology to the sexual predicament of the...

Free-will, karma, Maharishi at Lake Louise, the bereitschaftspotential, the true meaning of astrology - it's all in this episode!

Onion finaly tells me about her time at Porcupine Lake At the beginning Onion and me shared a flat in a tower block in London, south of the river. I was an A&E nurse at St Thomas’ and she was working at the Banyan Tree restaurant in Soho, and we were happy together. But one...

In the last of three episodes where I experiment with the levitation sutra of Patanjali, I’m blissed out but it’s too much for me. We all go to the seaside, but Michael is naughty. Of course I had a very very very long way to go before I’d qualify as a proper sidha; and commonsense...

I attempt the levitation sutra of Patanjali. Onion reminds me of her First Way to experience cosmic happiness. We talk more babout the force of gravity and walk to watch a cricket match on the village green. Onion explains the concept of ‘no-doing’ as the ultimate way to fulfil my desires. The second of three...

The Alexander Technique and the possibility of levitation are the subjects of this lighthearted conversation. Sidney remembers the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali. We decide on an experiment in which I will be the subject. This is the first of three episodes that deal with my encounter with Patanjali, levitation and the force of gravity: see...

episode 3: akasha

This conversation introduces the idea of akasha, the alchemist’s fifth element, and hints that it may be linked to memory. It’s the basis of several later conversations , including my attempts at Patanjali’s levitation sutra, but today the subject comes up quite naturally as Onion tells the tragic story of a young man who had come to England to escape from a tyrannical father in Wisconsin. The episode features the holistic method of Biodynamic Agriculture that was introduced by Rudolf Steiner in 1924.

Sidney explains how quintessence extends the old idea of the four elements of fire, air, water and earth. Onion gets emotional.Notes:Location – Golden Green,  in the Summer of 1984. With me round my table in the garden were Onion, my lover; Sidney, my father; and Bobby, a horticulture student in love with Sidney.Sustainable (organic) agriculture: The practice of rotating crops from field to field and raising varied animal species, along with cover crops and green manures, encourages healthy soil, reduces parasites and controls weeds and insect pests without the need for dangerous and potentially harmful chemicals

  Biodynamic farming uses special procedures to eniven the soil that were introduced by Rudolf Steiner.(1861-1925). His 1924 series of lectures to farmers opened a new way to integrate scientific understanding with a recognition of spirit in nature.Click here to download a critical review:   Beyond Organic: An Overview of Biodynamic Agriculture with Case Examples. Phillips and Rodrigues; 1962.

This conversation introduces the idea of akasha, the alchemist’s fifth element, and hints that it may be linked to memory. It’s the basis of several later conversations that you can find here and here, but today the subject comes up quite naturally as Onion tells the tragic story of a young man who had come...