Afterword
When U.G. was having these conversations in Amsterdam, I was living in California in the “spiritual community” of Da Free John. It was three years later, in 1985, that I left that community. I found myself, after 10 years of “practice”, out on my ass, no money, no home, no relationship to family and friends -- and with a lot of unfinished business of my own, such as three children whom I had left in order to go “realize enlightenment”. Although I tried in many ways to fill the spiritual void that my years of participation with Da Free John had filled, I was beginning to sense that all of these attempts to find religious and spiritual meaning in life were somehow false -- an imposition on the very simple fact of nature itself. Yet seeking had become such a habit, I could not stop. In 1987 I went on a three day retreat with Bernadette Roberts (an ex-Carmelite nun, who has realized a state she calls “no self”). As the retreat was nearing its end, an old friend of mine (another Da Free Joh