When artists create a work, they first get the
inspiration, an d then they bring it down to the physical
plane. That process is exactly what happened to me that
night alone in my van. The inspiration for the entire
paper c ame all at once, and then my mind digested it and
gave it form. Instead of a sculpture, a painting, or a
symphony, my  work of art was an economic treatise. It
came from where art comes  from, but the medium of
expression wa s logical thinking instead of marble or
paint. I had no idea where that spark of inspiration came
from. I only kn ew that in the flash of a moment, I had all
the material I needed to write a doctoral-level paper.I to ok the nex t few days to clean up the rough draft,
type it, and tu rn it in. The final typed paper was over
thirty pages long. Not only did I receive an A for that
course, but when my professor returned my paper, he
asked me if I would consider doing my dissertation
under him. I was humbled. As evidenced from this
recounting forty years later, the experience that night
had a profound effect on me. I had clearly seen the
difference between creative inspiration and logical
thought. I knew where thoughts came from, but where
did inspiration  come from? It came from a much deeper
place t han where I witnessed the thoughts. It came
spontaneously, in total silence, with no effort or
commotion. N o matter how hard I might have tried, I
could n ever have written that paper based solely on the
efforts of my lo gical mind. I w ondered if there was a way
to tap into the  brilliance of t hat inspiration on a regular
basis. It would be years, but e ventually I would learn that
one can constantly live in that state of creative
inspiration.9 . T h e  P r o m i s e d  L a n d
I t had been months since my deep meditation experience
in the Ocala National Forest. The remnants of that
experience wer e a constant flow of energy to the point
between my eyebrows and a burning in my heart to go
even deeper within. Neither of these forces subsided over
time. In  fact, the yearning to go deeper kept increasing
on a  daily basis. It was like having fallen madly in love
and not being able to see your beloved. I began to
contemplate co mpletely drop ping out and entering a life
of solitude. My coursework was done, and nothing was
forcing me to take my qualifying exams right away. Plus,
by that time I was pretty cert ain that I would never take
those exams. I determined that I needed a place away from
everything and everyone in order to become totally
focused on my practices. I knew I couldn’t just keep
camping by the lime pit for ever, but I wasn’t ready to
start loo king fo r a secluded p lace of my own. I decided to
just kee p my eyes open to see if something would show
up by itself. Something did. I wa s fi lling up  my van one day, when out of the blue
the gas  station attendant asked me where I lived. I told
him that I had  been living in my van for a while but was
hoping to find a piece of land  in the country. He said he
had come across a beautiful place northwest of
Gainesville that had five-acre lots for sale. I got
directions and went on my way.A few days later, I drove ou t to the place and found
April Gift Estates. It was in a heavily wooded area about
ten miles north of town, and  it consisted of twenty-one
five-acre lots and a couple of dirt roads. Very few lots had
been sold, and I didn’t see a single person the entire time
I toured . The place was so peaceful and natural that I
drove around almost in a trance. It was just perfect. I soon came upon a couple of adjoining lots that were
part woods and part field. T his was exactly what I had
wanted. I parked my car and  walked through the woods
onto the interior field. The feeling of going from the
woods to sudden openness was unbelievable. There was
a rush of light and a feeling of expansiveness. I wa lked up a rolling hill to th e fence on the north side
of the proper ty. The property bordered a beautiful
pasture that sloped down to a woods-lined stream. The
entire north side of the lot overlooked that breathtaking
view. It reminded me of how Homer described the
Elysian Fields. I meandered back into the woods and
found a  spot under a tree where I could see the interior
field op en in front of me and the beautiful pastureland to
my righ t. The woods were quiet and felt protecting. It
was like  being in a womb. Th e moment I sat down, I was
drawn i nto deep meditation. The moment I came back, I
knew I was home. I ha d never bought a piece of land before, but I did
have some funds. When I graduated from college, my
father had given me what remained in my college
account. He wanted me to ta ke full responsibility for my
postgraduate education. Since I did both my master’s
degree and my doctorate work under full fellowship, I
had been able to save almos t all of the $15,000 he had
given me. It was now time to spend it. I d ecide d to try to buy both of the lots that included
the inte rior fiel d. That would give me plenty of seclusion. Before contac ting the owner, I picked a maximum
number that I was willing to  pay for the ten acres. Thenumber was significantly less  than the asking price, but I
told myself that if the seller wouldn’t come down to my
price, it  wasn’t meant to be. I was completely at peace
with either outcome. As it tu rned out, that sense of
detachment gave me the edge I needed to successfully
negotiate for the lots. I succe eded in the purchase, but I
didn’t feel a s ense of joy. W hat I felt was a sense of
resolute determination. What lay ahead of me was not
going t o be easy. I had already committed so much of
myself to exploring what was beyond me—now I was
going to commit everything.1 0 . B u i l d i n g  a  S a c r e d  H u t
B ob G ould and I had been friends since my first days of
high school. We had both moved to Florida from up
north a nd wer e the new kid s entering tenth grade. We
bonded immediately and remained good friends all the
way through college. Bob was  the handy type, the kind of
kid who always excelled in sh op class. When it came time
to build a meditation hut on my land, he jumped at the
opportunity. Neither Bob nor I had ever built anything like a hut to
actually live in. I was good with my hands and had been a
sports c ar mechanic while in high school. But to build a
small house, Bob and I were way out of our league. We
reached out to a college friend, Bobby Altman. Bobby’s
credentials we re not that he  had actually built a house
before, but that he had just f inished his master’s degree
in arch itecture. At least he had the theory of how to
design and build something . How hard could it be to
build a  small hut where I could go into solitude for a
while? Apparently, Bobby Altman didn’t think it would be
hard at  all. He quickly design ed plans for the hut, which
included a balsa wood model . I remember the first time I
saw his design. I literally thought he was crazy. This was
not just a small, simple, one-person hut for meditation. It was a wedged-shaped hou se with a stunning front of
glass that spanned sixteen fee t wide and rose twenty feet
high. To be perfectly honest, I had been envisioning
more of a box with a door and a few windows. How werethree college grads, who had never built anything before,
going to build this? Bobby Altman insisted the ho use was going to be easy
to build. I wasn ’t so sure, but Bob Gould was all for it. He
thought it would be a fun cha llenge for the three of us to
live on the land in tents and build it. I remember that I
didn’t see it th at way. I already had a full-time challenge
—getting back to my beloved place of absolute stillness
and peace. But if I had to build this architecturally
designed masterpiece of a meditation hut to get there—
so be it. We jumped right in with the abandonment of reason
that belongs only to young h ippies and crazy people. It
was an amazing experience. I had very little money left to
build Bobby Altman’s chalet. To keep costs to a
minimum, both Bobs agreed that we could use rough-
sawn lumber instead of the finished lumber you buy at a
lumberyard. A s fate would have it, there was a sawmill
just a few mile s down the hig hway from my land: Griffis
Lumber & Sawmill. James G riffis and his wife were real
southern country folk, not longhairs like the three of us. We got sideways looks from pretty much everyone
whenever we went to pick up lumber. Aside from our
hair, we stood out because of what we were ordering. We
started with the eleven cypress columns that would form
the support structure of the house—at twenty-nine feet,
you mig ht as well call them trees. James Griffis allowed
us to hand s elect the straightest trees right off the
logging truck when it arrived. We got to watch workers
strap ea ch of the trees to the giant mill and cut them
down to  six inches per side, give or take half an inch. It
was a real bac k-to-the-earth feeling watching the actual
trees being turned into the backbone of your house. In ti me, Mr. Gr iffis began to o pen up to us. One day he
invited the three of us to din ner at his house, which was
adjacent to the mill. This was a big deal since we had
been living in tents and cook ing what we could over anopen fir e. It was particularly s pecial for me because I had
been living out of my van or  in a tent for almost half a
year. It wasn’t just a matter of a home-cooked meal; just
going into a real house was going to be a novelty for me. The Griffises’ house was a warm country home. The
walls were pecky cypress, milled long ago on-site. Mrs.
Griffis had cooked up a southern meal with plenty of
vegetables, sin ce she had heard that I was a vegetarian. The conversations were warm and friendly, and it really
felt as though we were all family. At one point, Mr.
Griffis said something I will never forget. He said,
“Before we met you three, w e used to think that hippies
were the dirtiest, filthiest things on Earth. You know,
we’ve really come to love you boys.” It was another one of
those b eautiful moments th at started me thinking—
where were all these unbelievable experiences coming
from? Someh ow, deeply touching experiences kept
coming from the most unexpected places. It was really
starting to blow me away. As days  turned into weeks, the house began to take
shape. Once the outside sidin g was up, you could really
begin to feel the inside space . Bobby Altman then posed
a q uesti on I had never though t of—which of us was going
to do the electrical wiring? Though I had never done
such a thing, I volunteered. Bobby handed me a small
book on electrical wiring from  one of his courses and left
me on my own . His confidence in my ability to do the
entire electrical system for the house rather astounded
me. Bu t if he t hought I could do it, then I could—and I
did. A great spiritual teacher once said, “Every day bite
off more than you can chew, and chew it.” Life was
teaching me some very important lessons. We laid  pinewood floors throughout the house, put
cedar d ecks in both the fro nt and back, and hired a
plumber to install exposed, c ast-iron plumbing pipes for
the bath room area. By then, the house had taken on a life
of it s own. We had put our he arts and souls into buildingthat house, and we were ve ry proud of what we had
accomplished. To me, it had started out as a project to
build a quick, s imple meditation hut, and it turned into a
one-of-a-kind life experience. But it wasn’t the one I
longed for. All I really wanted was to go into solitude and
work on  my heart’s only desir e—absolute peace, stillness,
and freedom. With the house finished, the time for that
work had finally arrived.November 1971: All I wanted was a ti ny meditation hut—just look
at what life gave us to build!House finished—time for solitude.1 1 . G e t  T h e e  t o  a  M o n a s t e r y
I  moved  into my new house in November 1971. I
remember it was November because just before I moved
in, my sister, Kerry, and he r husband came up from
Miami to visit me for Thanksgiving. This was very brave
of them, considering they were regular folk. Harvey was
a successful accountant, and he and Kerry were used to a
nice ho use and comfortable living conditions. When they
showed up, I was busy finishi ng the final checklist before
moving out of my van and int o the house. Harvey helped
me inst all the last two windows and then insisted on
having Thanks giving dinner with me. That meant they
joined m e sitting outside on rocks and cooking what we
could o n an open fire. Person ally, I think they had come
up to check on me to see if I w as still halfway sane. I had
been w ithout a phone number for a long time, and I’m
sure my family must have been concerned about me. Once Kerry and Harvey left , I was glad to be alone
again with my beautiful new house. All I had wanted was
a simple place to fully focus on my meditations. What I
got was a gift from the invisible hand that had taken over
my life. That’s  what I called  it back then—the invisible
hand. From the beginning of my awakening, I had
inwardly begge d for help in knowing who I was, the one
who wa s watching the voice o f the mind. From that point
forward, it was as though something had reached down
and grabbed me by the ponyt ail and begun to pull me up. My who le outer life had been ripped away from me in the
blink of an eye. In its place I had been shown the beauty
and peace of an inner state that was beyond anything I
had eve r imagined. That touch of the beyond had lit myheart aflame. I had a fire bur ning in the pit of my being
that never left me alone—eve n for a moment. It was like
a b ecko ning, a calling to come home. At that stage of my
awakening, the only way I knew how to get back was to
willfully push my way through myself with the intense
discipline of Zen meditation. As I sat at the threshold of
the door that o pened into the beautiful place that life had
given m e to do this work, I reverently bowed my head. This wa s my temple, my monastery, and I vowed to use it
well. I wa s ve ry surp rised to find t hat the monastic lifestyle
came q uite naturally to me. I awoke every morning at
3:00 a.m. and sat for a few h ours of meditation. I would
then do contemplative walkin g out on the fields. In those
early days, I w as still holding on to the concept that it
was all about concentration a nd focus. When I walked, I
would become  acutely aware of every step I took and
every movement of my body. This helped to prolong the
peace I  felt from my morning meditations. I would then
do y oga postures outside un til it was time for my noon
meditation. I held the rope of self-discipline very tightly,
every day. It was an extremely strict lifestyle, very
different from anything I had ever experienced. But just
as a n athlete is  willing to give everything, every day and
night, t o train for the Olympics, so I was willing to give
everything, eve ry moment, to drop the part of me that
was holding me back from wh ere I so desperately wanted
to go. It d idn’t take long before I noticed that food had a
major effect on my practices. The less I ate, the easier it
was to fall into a meditative s tate. So I tested the limits of
how far I could go without eating. The balance I reached
was to eat a small dinner salad every other day and fast
in between. My intention was to give up everything
possible that pulled my attention outward. This would
allow me to more fully focus on the deeper inner states.My nighttime routine began  at sunset. Somehow the
setting sun strongly affected the force that pulled me into
meditation. I was always on my meditation pillow before
the sun started setting. After a few hours of meditation, I
would m ake my way upstairs to go to sleep. I had no
alarm clock; I awoke naturally at 3:00 a.m. every
morning to start the regimen again. I d on’t know where I got the i dea that if I held the rope
tight enough, my lower self w ould go away and leave me
alone. But that is how I lived for about a year and a half. The par t of me that had dominated my entire previous
way of life had no place in my new life. There were no
perks fo r him, and every day he fought back less and less. The noisy, demanding personal part of me didn’t go away
—he just began to resign himself to the intense
discipline. I thought it was working, but I would soon
come to see that I was very wrong.1 2 . W h e n  t h e  D i s c i p l e  I s  R e a d y ,  t h e  M a s t e r
A p p e a r s
O ther than for schoolwork, r eading books had never
played a  major role in my life. But just as Three Pillars of
Zen  had shown u p exactly when I was ready for it, so
another book had found its  way to me just before I
moved into my house. It was given to me by Bob Merrill,
a friend  of mine who, like me, was very much into yoga
and meditation. One day while I was still living in my van, Bob gave me
the book called Autobiography of a Yog i  by
Paramahansa Yogananda, a holy man from India. I
remember tryi ng to start this book the evening Bob had
given it  to me, but after a few  pages I had to put it down. Not because I didn’t like it, but because each word I read
kept drawing me into such a deep meditative state that I
couldn’t continue reading. I tried again the next night. The same thing happened. I didn’t understand what was
going on, but I was certainly intrigued by the experience. I de cided to pack the book away until I moved into my
new house. Now that I had moved into the house and
started my intense meditative lifestyle, it was time to
read this mysterious book. Chapter after chapter transported me into a world that
should have been very foreign to me. But because of the
transformative events that had been happening to me, I
could at least relate to the Indian saint’s life story. It
became very clear to me—I h ad merely stuck my toe into
the ocea n Yoga nanda was swimming in. He was a master
of t he entire f ield of knowledge and experience I wasseeking. I could feel it to  the core of my being. Yogananda had gone far beyond my beyond and had
never fully come back. He h ad learned to exist in that
state, yet still b e present interacting with the world. I had
found my teacher. Even though I felt an immed iate sense of relief that I
was no longer alone on my inner journey, some areas of
tension had to be worked ou t. To begin with, the word
God  was not part of my everyday vocabulary. Yogananda
not only  used the word as fre ely as his breath flowed, but
he used  it with a sense of intense devotion that took your
breath away. Yogananda’s passion showed most in the
songs that he wrote:
My hea rt’s afla me and my soul’s afire—Just for
You, You, You, Just You. Interestingly, I could relate to that. Since I had
touched that beauteous place deep inside of me, my
heart w as aflame too. In f act, I had lost interest in
everything else. I only wanted to meditate my way back
beyond myself. I could relate to God as associated with
that place hidden deep inside of me. My study of Zen
taught me that Buddha passe d through absolute stillness
and peace on his way into nirvana. I had heard that
Christ said that the Kingdom is within you,  a nd I was
aware that the Bible talked about a p eace beyond all
understanding. I knew  about such a place i nside of me
where the peace was so de ep that it had completely
transformed my entire life. Another word that I couldn’t relate to at first was
Spirit. I thought this was a Christian word, yet
Yogananda use d it all the time. He spoke of invoking the
Spirit and feeling it pulsate through him. He related
times w hen he  held up his hands and felt the Spirit move
into and out of them. Cou ld he be referring to that
powerful flow of energy I had been experiencing since
my very deep m editation? I often felt that field of energyflow from the point between my eyebrows, down my
arms, and out the center of my palms. Could Spirit be
another word for this inner energy flow, and could that
focal po int between my eyebrows be the location of what
Yogananda kept calling the Third Eye  or Spiritual Eye ? More and more I began to re alize that I could personally
relate to Yogananda’s teachings. Autobiography of a Yogi  changed my view about
everything that had been happening to me. Once I
finished reading that book, God was no longer just a
word to me. It  represented where I wanted to go. I had
begun t his journey by wanting to know who I was who
was wa tching the mental voice. I now realized that the
great saints and masters of all the religious traditions
had gone beyond their person al self to find their spiritual
self. Yogananda called it self-realization. Wh at a  perfec t
term for all I was about at that point of my life. I wanted
to realize the nature of the one who watches—my true,
innermost self. Bob Merrill had told me that  he received lessons from
Self-Realization Fellowship,  t he  org anization Yogananda
had fou nded in America. Yogananda had left the body in
1952, but he had been kind enough to leave his teachings
behind in the form of weekly lessons. I had heard of a
mail-order bride but never a mail-order guru. I signed up
for the lessons immediately and integrated them into my
regular practices. I remember that around that time I
decided to read the Bible. I had never read the New
Testament before. I found it very inspiring, and so much
of th e teachings were completely aligned with what I had
been experienc ing in meditation. For example, there was
the notion that you have to die to be reborn. That is
exactly what I had been tryin g to do, die of the personal
to be reborn in  the spiritual. I put pictures of Christ and
Yogananda on the altar where I meditated. Some very
great beings had walked this path before me. I wanted tolearn from them. I was just starting to realize that I
couldn’t walk the path alone—I needed some help.S e c t i o n  I I
The Great Experiment
Begins1 3 . T h e  E x p e r i m e n t  o f  a  L i f e t i m e
T hus far my entire path to inner freedom was focused
around my meditations. That was where I went to
become filled with a deep se nse of peace and serenity. And it was working, to a degr ee. I could sit for hours with
a b eautiful flow of energy lifting me upward, but I
couldn’t break through to where I longed to go. Furthermore, the personal mind always returned once I
got up and bec ame active. I n eeded help, and it came one
day in a flash  of realization. It dawned on me that
perhaps I’d been going about this in the wrong way. Instead of trying to free myself by constantly quieting the
mind, p erhaps I should be asking why the mind is so
active. What is the motivation behind all the mental
chatter? If that motivation were to be removed, the
struggle would be over. This realization opened the door for an entirely new
and exciting dimension to m y practices. As I explored it
inwardly, the first thing I no ticed was that most of the
mental activity revolved around my likes and dislikes. If
my mind had a preference toward or against something,
it actively talked about it. I could see that it was these
mental prefer ences that were creating much of the
ongoing dialogue about how to control everything in my
life. In a bold  attempt to free myself from all that, I
decided to just stop listening to all the chatter about my
personal preferences, and instead, start the willful
practice of accepting what th e flow of life was presenting
me. Perhaps this change in focus would quiet things
down inside.I started this new practice with something very simple,
the wea ther. C ould it really b e so hard to just let it rain
when it rains and be sunn y when it’s sunny without
complaining about it? Apparently the mind can’t do it:
Why did it have to rain today? It always rains
when I don’t want it to. It ha d all week to rain;
it’s just not fair. I simply replaced all that meaningless noise with:
Look how beautiful; it’s raining. I found these practices of acceptance very powerful,
and the y definitely served to q uiet the mind. So I decided
to push  the envelope and bro aden the range of events I
would learn to accept. I clearly remember deciding that
from no w on if life was unfolding in a certain way, and
the only reason I was resisting it was because of a
personal preference, I would let go of my preference and
let life be in charge. Clearly, these were uncharted waters for me. Where
would I end up? If my preferences were not leading me,
what would happen to me? Th ese questions did not scare
me; the y fascinated me. I didn’t want to be in charge of
my life; I wanted to be free to soar far beyond myself. I
began to see this as a grea t experiment. What would
happen to me if I just inwardly surrendered my
resistance and let the flow of life be in charge? The rules
of the experiment were very simple: If life brought events
in front  of me, I would treat t hem as if they came to take
me beyond myself. If my personal self complained, I
would use each opportunity  to simply let him go and
surrender to what life was presenting me. This was the
birth of what I  came to call “the surrender experiment,”
and I was totally prepared to see where it would take me. You may think that only a ma dman would make such a
decision. But, in truth, I had already experienced someamazing things that the flow of life had done. I had
witnessed firsthand what happened when I let go and
followed the subtle events that led me to the hills of
Mexico and then to those wonderful experiences with the
Mexican villagers. When I got back to the States, I had
been le d to my beautiful new property, and look what
happened with  the house. I just wanted to build a simple
hut, and that turned into an unexpectedly rich
experience. It was clear to me that I had not done these
things— they had happened to me. I n fact,  if I had not let
go o f my initial mental resis tance, none of them could
have happene d. I had gone through most of my life
thinking I knew what was g ood for me, but life itself
seemed to know better. I w as now going to test that
presumption of nonrandomness to the max. I was willing
to roll the dice and let the flow of life be in charge.1 4 . L i f e  T a k e s  C h a r g e
S urrendering to  the flow of life may have seemed like a
bold move, but the truth is, I wasn’t all that exposed to
life’s challenges. After all, I was spending most of my
days alone on my land in quietude. There was one
exception, how ever. I was officially still in graduate
school until I completed my qualifying exams and
dissertation. That meant I remained on a fellowship at
the university and was responsible for teaching one
course a semester in either micro- or macroeconomics. My clas ses gen erally met three days a week for an hour. I
would d o my morning and noon yoga practices, run into
town to  teach, and then run right back out to the land. I
doubt I  was a real joy to be a round in those days—I was
completely unsociable. Unless a student had a question
after class, I would do my best not to get into
conversations. I always wore the same clothes: jeans and
a long-sleeved denim shirt. My hair was pulled back in a
ponytail, and I was either in sandals or barefoot. This
might not seem extreme for the philosophy department,
but these were junior-level courses in a southern
business scho ol. The department tolerated me only
because I was a very popular teacher, and my students
did really well on the departmental exams. I w ill recount one specific class session that was over
the top . My challenge to m yself was to see whether I
could drive into town, teach the class, and return home
while keeping my mind reaso nably still. To do that I had
to practice maintaining a meditative state at many points
throughout the  day. I would do yoga on the field before I
left and do some controlled breathing exercises in myvan before going to class. I would even pause to quiet my
mind while standing in front of the class before I started
and completed a lecture. On this particular day, I drove
in, did some b reathing, and walked into a large lecture
hall full of students. For some reason they started
whistling catcalls when I walked in. It took me a moment
to come down to earth enough to realize that when I had
gotten off the yoga mat out at my place, I had slipped
into my  jeans but had forgotten to put on a shirt. I was
standing there barefooted and half naked. It didn’t
disturb me—I just asked the class whether they wanted
to cancel today’s session or have me go ahead and teach
it. The respons e was unanimous, so I gave the lecture on
macroeconomics without regard to my attire, or lack
thereof. Month after month went by while I was adhering to
my stric t medi tation lifestyle. I was supposed to be using
my time to prepare for my doctoral qualifying exams. Needless to say, I had not opened a single book, and I
had no intentio n of doing so. I was done with that part of
my life. Or so I thought. One day, after I finished teaching my economics class,
Dr. Goffman met me in the h allway and said he wanted
to talk to me. T he voice in my head immediately told me
that now I was in trouble. He was still chairman of the
department, and for sure he had heard about the no-shirt
incident. As usual, that voice was wrong. Dr. Goffman proceeded to tel l me that he had received
a call from the governor ’s office in Tallahassee. Apparently, th e powers that be had decided to build one
of F lorida’s leading community colleges in Gainesville. To do so they would need a powerful leader who could
not only handle the educational responsibilities, but also
be in charge o f fund-raising and financial management. With th at in mind, the comm ittee had selected one of the
state’s leading bankers to be the president of the newly
expanded San ta Fe Community College. During theentire time Dr. Goffman was talking, my mind kept
saying, Why is he telling me this? W hat has it got to do
with me? I should be getting back out to my land. I soon got my  answers. It seemed that Florida law
required the president of a community college to have a
doctoral degre e. The banker the committee had chosen,
Alan Robertson, did not have his Ph.D. So what did they
decide to do? H elp him earn his doctorate by partnering
him with a to p doctoral student who had a similar
academic back ground. As amazing as it seems, the
doctoral student they chose was me. The voice in my head wen t nuclear. I watched it
screaming inside, No! I can’t do that. I’ve dropped out of
all this. I need to devote my time to my practices. There
is no way I’m going to star t pulling down all my old
economics textbooks — I’m done with that. In the midst of
all that protest, I remembered my recent commitment to
surrender to what life brought before me. That voice I
was watching was not my spiritual adviser; it was my
spiritual burden. This was the perfect opportunity to get
it out of the driver’s seat. Meanwhile, Dr . Goffman was waiting for a response. But the  words of acceptance I  was trying to utter refused
to leave  my lips. Finally, I heard myself say out loud,
“Yes, I would be glad to help out. I will tutor him.”
In that one moment, the die had been cast. This great
experiment in surrender had truly begun. I was no longer in charge of my life.1 5 . T h e  P r i n c e  a n d  t h e  P a u p e r
T utoring Alan Robertson r eally didn’t change my
lifestyle all that much. We arranged our schedules such
that wh enever I went into tow n to teach, I would spend a
few hours with Alan after class. We met in the
president’s office at the old Santa Fe campus downtown
near the university. We were  quite the pair. Alan was a
very successfu l, three-piece- suit banker, and I was a
ponytailed yogi in denim jeans and sandals. I had no idea
what t o expect, but Alan turned out to be an
exceptionally warm and open-minded person. He was
also very grateful for my help. This is not to say that there weren’t some awkward
moments. The  first culture clash was regarding payment
for my services. I told him that I didn’t want to be paid
for tuto ring him. He insisted, but I refused. He went on
to reason with me that he was a successful banker who
was now president of a colleg e, and I was a student living
off a $250-a-m onth fellowship. That was true enough,
and it was als o true that I had spent everything I had
buying the land and building my house. Nonetheless, I
was tutoring him as an act of surrender to the flow of life,
and I didn’t want to be paid. In time, Alan accepted our relationship on
nonbusiness terms, and w e became good friends. Sometimes he would come out to my land to study, and
we would take long walks together. He enjoyed learning
about my unique way of life,  and I enjoyed meeting the
very special man behind the banker’s suit. A few times I
even accepted his wife’s invitation to have dinner at theirhome. I began to see my entire relationship with Alan as
another one of life’s magical gifts, despite my initial
resistance. Alan had progressed enough  toward his doctorate to
sit f or his qualifying exams. He surprised me when he
proposed that I go ahead and take mine also. I had no
interest in doing so, especially since we had only
prepared for two of my three  major areas of study. But I
surrendered to his wishes. I signed up to take the two
exams we had studied for an d planned to put the third
off to another t ime—if at all. W hen I received notice back
from th e unive rsity, the administration had mistakenly
signed me up for all three  exams. Now what was I
supposed to do, surrender to that? I starte d observing myself to see why taking the third
exam t hreatened me so much. I had no intention of
actually finishing my degree, so why did it matter? What
I d iscov ered was that it was simply the fear of failing in
the eyes of oth ers. I knew t hat if I sat for my written
exam in public finance, a field I was completely
unprepared for, I would fail miserably. That prospect of
failure d isturbed me and set t he inner voice on a nonstop
dialogue about how to avoid the exam. What an
opportunity to get rid of that part of me. I no longer saw
the adm inistration’s mistake as a problem. I saw it as a
challenge to further let go of myself. So I decided to take
all three exams and willingly accept the experience of
failing the third one. The first two exams went very smoothly. I had done a
lot of work w ith Alan in these areas, so I knew the
material reasonably well. As the day for the third exam
approached, I strengthened my heart for the inevitable. I
would march into that exam and willingly let a part of my
ego die a painful death. What ended up happening ch anged me for the rest of
my life. The da y before the ex am, I allowed myself to pull
down the public finance textbook for the first time. I tookthe larg e book  outside and s at it beside me as I did my
yoga. W hen I finished my postures, I felt quiet, peaceful,
and tota lly pre pared to face th e next day’s ordeal. As if to
examine the sword I was abo ut to fall upon, I opened the
book to  an arbitrary place . I read both pages that
appeared before me. I performed this ritu al thre e times
before h olding the book up to  the heavens as a sign of my
willingness to surrender. The nex t day, I watched clos ely to see what that voice
would have to say. I was su rprised to be feeling very
peaceful about the upcoming event. After my morning
meditation, I pulled down the book one more time and
opened to an a rbitrary page. It turned out to be one of
the three places I had opened to the day before. I
reviewed the complex chart on that page and put the
book back on the shelf for the last time. Later t hat morning, I parked outside the business
school and meditated for a while before going in. I still
felt very quiet inside. There w as just a sense of peaceful
resignation. I remember feeli ng I had passed the real test
—I had proven that I was cap able of deeply surrendering
if life presented me with something I really did not want
to do. I went upstairs to the economics department, and the
administrative assistant handed me the exam. As I took
it from her han ds, I glanced over the six essay questions
of whic h I had to answer three. I immediately froze, and
tears began to well up in my eyes. Three of the questions
were exactly about the three places where I had
arbitrarily opened the book the day before. I was
stunned. I stood there for a lo ng time unable to even take
a breath. How could this be? It had happened again. In the
name of transcending myself, I had surrendered and
willingly faced my personal fears. Then at the last
moment, instead of certain hell, I was lifted up to
heaven.I w ent into the  designated room and wrote and wrote. The seeds of inspiration were very fresh in my mind. I
was eve n able to reproduce and embellish upon the chart
I had opened to twice. I tu rned in the notebooks and
headed home in a very different state of mind than I had
expected. Driving to the exam, I had felt as though life
was ask ing me  to willingly le t a part of me die that day. But now  I realized that life w as asking me to get out of
the way and let  her do her thing. I was so glad I had been
willing to take that risk. Days later I was called in  by Dr. Goffman and
complimented on the excell ence of my public finance
exam. This recognition from the chairman of the
department should have p leased me, but instead it
actually made me feel guilty. I recounted the whole story
and asked if I had somehow done something wrong. Dr.
Goffman got up, placed his hand on my shoulder, and
told me  to stop trying to be so humble. He then directed
me out of his office.1 6 . F o l l o w i n g  t h e  I n v i s i b l e  i n t o  t h e
U n k n o w n
B y th e spring of  1972, through no intention of my own, I
had completed both the course work and the qualifying
exams f or my doctorate. All that was left was writing a
dissertation. I knew that wou ld never happen, so I didn’t
give it a secon d thought. My meditations and yoga were
my entire life. Though I had advanced considerably in my practices, I
still fel t something was holding me back. I began to
believe that the answer was t he practice of Kriya yoga, a
special meditation technique taught by Yogananda. The
problem was that you had to receive the lessons for a
year before becoming eligible. I decided to ask Self-
Realization Fe llowship for early initiation into the
practice of Kriya yoga. In those days, I hardly ev er got mail. So I was
surprised some weeks later when I received two letters
on the same d ay: one from S elf-Realization Fellowship,
and the other from some orga nization I’d never heard of. I w as very exci ted to learn th e fellowship’s response, so I
opened that letter first. My h eart dropped to my feet. I’d
have to wait a nother six months to receive the Kriya
technique. There was not much I could do about it but let
go of my react ion. I took a deep breath and opened the
other letter. With one glan ce, all my disappointment
faded into emptiness. Inside was a flyer that said in big,
bold letters:Receive Kriya This Summer from a
Direct Disciple of Paramahansa
Yogananda
I w as stunned once again. I had never heard of these
people. They appeared to  be an established yoga
community in California, but there was no way that they
could k now me or have go tten my address. I was a
hermit living in the woods of Florida. How could these
two perfectly intertwined lett ers end up in my mailbox at
the same time? Regardless of the answer to that intriguing question, I
knew where I was supposed  to go that summer—to a
spiritual community in North ern California. It’s not hard
to f ollow the g uidance when  it’s that obvious. But my
commitment to letting life be in charge from now on
would f ace a few more chal lenges before I left for my
adventure out west. A sh ort time after the incident with the letters, Dr.
Goffman contacted me to let me know that Alan
Robertson was  trying to reach me. I hadn’t talked to Alan
since we had b oth passed our exams. I got in touch with
him and learned that they had completed construction of
the new Santa Fe Community College campus. Alan was
staffing up for the opening classes and wanted me to
teach there, even if only on a part-time basis. I became
very quiet. I h ad absolutely  no interest in teaching at
Santa Fe Community College or any other institution. My
only intention was to just keep increasing my spiritual
practices until I could remain merged in the beautiful
places I had d iscovered within. I tried to tell Alan this,
but he didn’t w ant to listen. Finally, he said, “I am not
asking you, I’m telling you.” My mouth became dry as I
uttered the words my heart did not want to say: “Yes, sir. I wi ll te ach the re on a part-tim e basis. What do I need to
do?”Surrender —what an amazingly powerful word. It often
engenders the thought of weakness and cowardice. In my
case, it required all the streng th I had to be brave enough
to follow the invisible into the unknown. And that is
exactly what I was doing. It’s  not that surrender gave me
clarity a bout where I was go ing—I had no idea where it
would lead me. But surrende r did give me clarity in one
essential area : my personal preferences of like and
dislike were not going to guide my life. By surrendering
the hold those powerful forces had on me, I was allowing
my life to be guided by a mu ch more powerful force, life
itself. By that  stage of my growt h, I could see that the
practice of surrender was actually done in two, very
distinct steps: first, you let go  of the personal reactions of
like and  dislik e that form in side your mind and heart;
and second, with the resultant sense of clarity, you
simply look to see what is being asked of you by the
situation unfol ding in front of you. What would you be
doing if  you weren’t being influenced by the reactions of
like or dislike? Following that deeper guidance will take
your life in a very different direction from where your
preferences would have led you. That is the clearest I can
explain my surrender experiment, and it became the
foundation of both my spiritual and worldly life.1 7 . M y  F i r s t  J o b  I n t e r v i e w
I  had  be en in school most of my life, and except for my
stint as a sports car mechanic after classes in high school,
I had only worked summer jobs. I had never been on a
real job  interv iew before. Alan arranged for me to meet
with a program director to discuss my position at the
college. On the day of  the interview, I arrived in my normal
attire: jeans, a denim shirt, and sandals. The downtown
campus of Santa Fe had been pretty liberal, but I had no
idea how things were at the  new campus with Alan as
president. The program director began by asking me
what I would like to teach. I  figured I was supposed to
give an honest answer. I tol d her I would like to teach
what I had been learning about that voice inside your
head. I wanted students to understand that they don’t
have to listen to that incess ant chatter; they have the
freedom to come from a much deeper place inside
themselves. I also told her that I would like to teach
students that they are sitting on a tiny planet spinning
through space, and they should be enjoying the journey. To my amazem ent, her response was to say that the only
course available that could allow such a curriculum was
an entry-level  social science class. The course was
required for all freshmen, and a teacher was still needed
for one-third of the classes. She explained that teaching
those classes would amount to a half-time position at the
college. I accepted the positio n, and she scheduled me to
teach my first class in Septem ber when the new campus
officially opened.What a  flow of events! First life tells me to go to
California for the summer; n ow she’s telling me what to
do w hen I com e back. It was all unfoldi ng by itself. I was
just along for the ride. I really had no idea what I was
going to teach in that class co me September. I had never
taught what I’d been learning to anyone, let alone a
whole class. My personal self began feeling insecure
about the whole thing. To stra ighten him out, I laid down
the gro und rules: there would not be a single thought
about the classes or what would be taught in them until it
was time to enter the classroom. I intended to walk into
the first class w ith a completely empty mind. I wanted it
to b e like the  time I wrote that paper completely by
inspiration. We’ll just go into the class and see what
comes out. With th ese int rusions from the outside world starting
to st eal small c hunks of my time, I all the more cherished
being alone on my land. Nev ertheless, people had a way
of findi ng me, despite my best efforts to protect my
solitude. So it was with Sand y Boone, a woman who was
into Buddhist meditation and  spending time outdoors. I
don’t recall where she cam e from, but one day she
showed up and started taking  walks on my property. She
was car eful to respect my pri vacy; she just wanted to be
in nature and m editate outdoors. That was okay until she
asked i f she could pitch her tent at the far end of the
property to do some meditation. I didn’t want to allow
that, but who was I to stop someone from meditating? Eventually she got bold enough to ask if she could join
me for meditation on Sunday mornings, just for an hour. I clearl y remem ber granting her request solely because
the voice in my head was so resistant to it. In time , Sandy began to brin g a few friends with her
for the Sunday morning meditations. At first it was three,
then six , then ten. I didn’t like that at all, but I had no
right to stop it . I often just stayed in meditation upstairs
while my guests met downstairs. Thus the notion ofSunday morni ng services at Mickey’s started in the
spring of 1972—a tradition that has continued every
Sunday for over forty years. Meanwhile, su mmer was approaching, and it was time
to begin  preparing for my tr ip to California. I figured I
would camp in my van at the spiritual community for
three or  four weeks and then come back home in time for
classes. The drive out there  took me about ten days
because I continued all my meditation sessions along the
way. W hen I arrived at the community, I found a very
rural setting with a large expanse of land and many
small, rustic cabins. The peop le seemed like back-to-the-
earth-type folk s, and I fit right in. During registration, I
noticed special name tags for guests who wanted to
practice silence. I had no interest in meeting people or
making new friends—that would just be a distraction to
my inner work. So I decided t o use the trip to step up my
practices to an even stricter le vel: I would remain in total
silence during my visit. There were no available c ampgrounds near their
temple area, so I simply par ked my van in the nearest
dirt parking lot. That is wh ere I would live for a few
weeks. After getting situated, I began doing my afternoon
yoga and meditation session in their temple. Though I
was accustomed to being alone, I immediately realized
that I would be fine here for a while. These people
understood what I was into and would leave me to my
practices. I continued fasting three times a week, and
when I ate my salad, I always  sat alone. I was not exactly
the soci al type, but I did attend evening meditation and
chanting progr ams in the tem ple. In fact, that was where
I w as first expo sed to Eastern chanting. Because I was in
silence I didn’t chant, but I c ould feel the upliftment of
the energy in the room. I wo uld have g one on like that during my entire stay—
if it were not f or a dream I had. I hardly ever dreamed,
and wh en I did, the dreams d idn’t seem to have any deepsignificance. One night I had a phenomenal, lucid dream
that had a pro found effect on me. I dreamed that I was
doing intense ly focused Zen walking. I was very
consciously placing one foot  in front of the other as I
slowly h eaded toward the mouth of a cave. I entered the
cave without incident and proceeded into the darkness
that stretched before me. When it became very dark, I
picked up a wooden torch m ounted on the side of the
cave. I lit it and continued as before. I noticed that the air
was get ting thinner and thinner the deeper I went into
the cave. There was an almost frighteningly strong sense
of purp ose: I was going to explore deep into this
unknown cave  until I found what I was looking for. Nothing was going to stop me. I be gan to see a faint light far  off in the distance. Not a
single thought passed through my mind, yet I intuitively
knew that was where I was  going. As I approached, I
could see that the light was coming from above and
shining down into the cave. The closer I got to the source
of the light, th e thinner the air became. I could hardly
breathe. But I kept on going. The experience was similar
to what had been happening in my practices. In my
meditations, the deeper I went, the more my breath
would slow down—until, eventually, it would naturally
stop flo wing. I  don’t know ho w long I would stay in that
breathless state, but I would come back and gasp for air. At som e point, my walk thro ugh this cave felt just like
that stage of my meditations. I w as almost t here. I could s ee the streaming rays of
light pouring onto the cave floor just in front of me. I felt
as though I wo uld collapse from the lack of oxygen, but I
found t he will to take that fin al step into the light. In an
instant, I was completely bathed in a flood of blinding
light. I turned  upward to cl imb into the light, but my
hands h it a metal grate on the  roof of the cave. There was
no way out from here.Not a thought entered my m ind. Not a sigh left my
lips. Wi th the same steely se nse of purpose that had led
me into  this cave, I turned and began to walk back out. There was simply the knowing—I would have to find
another way.1 8 . L e t t i n g  G o  o f  t h e  R o p e
I  aw oke from t hat dream a changed person. My way of
thinking had been transformed at a very profound level. For the  first time, I questioned whether more and more
discipline was going to take me where I so desperately
wanted to go. Sitting alone in my van that morning, I
knew th e answer was no. My  path to true freedom was
subtler than simply requiring a tighter grip. Something much wiser than me had reached into my
psyche that night and rearranged my entire relationship
with myself. I no longer saw the lower aspect of myself,
with all his personal issues and melodramas, as the
enemy that had to be destro yed. I looked at him now
with a new understanding. I needed to use all these
disturbed personal energies for my ascent. It was
perfectly clear to me that sin ce he was the problem, he
was also the solution. I actually felt a tinge of compassion
toward that struggling person within me. I would later
come to learn that the Bhagavad Gita  says that one
should raise the self with Self , not trample down the self. I h ad been tram pling down my personal self in the name
of getti ng free from his humanness. I now needed to
learn how to r aise those energies up to assist me on the
journey. I l eft my van and walked in th e direction of the temple
building. I was feeling much l ighter and more open. I felt
like I wanted to  unbind myself and spread my wings. But
there was something that I n eeded to do first. Since the
beginning of my mental disciplines, I had imagined a
room inside my mind where  I would take my personalself to meditate. It was a roo m with giant wooden doors
for entr y and solid glass for walls. What made this room
so special was that the glass walls looked out upon the
entire universe. Sitting in the lone meditation seat, one
could s ee Eart h suspended in the darkness of space. In
the distance were stars and galaxies floating in the
infinite. Whenever Mickey had a problem, I took him
there to chill out. I even used to play with leaving him
there. I wanted him always to be quiet, and I wanted him
always to remember that all his experiences were
happening on a tiny speck of dirt floating through
infinite space. That morning when I stopped on my way to the
temple, I closed my eyes and opened the giant wooden
doors t o that very special ro om. The person I had left
sitting on the meditation seat immediately straightened
himself up. As I approached him, he became more
disciplined and focused. In drastic contrast to how strict
I had been in t he past, I reached my hand out to him in a
kind and caring manner and  said, “You can come out
now.” What followed that utterance makes me ashamed
to this day for thinking this p ractice was some sort of an
innocent mind game. The moment I said those words, I
experienced an emotional release the intensity of which I
had never imagined possibl e. Tears poured from my
eyes, and my legs completely buckled beneath me. My
heart broke open as though some major event had taken
place that allowed for a lifetime’s worth of relief. Once this cathartic release had run its course, I
realized some thing I will never forget: that scared,
troubled person in there whom I had been watching and
judging was indeed a person. The psyche is a person with
feelings and thoughts, hopes, fears, and dreams. He is
not to be locked in a room and constantly told to shut up. There are much more constructive ways to deal with
these disturbed , self-centered energies. Unfortunately, I
had to learn this the hard way—through experience.Feeling more whole than I had been feeling for a long
while, I remembered my statement in the dream, I’ll
have to find another way. There was no question as to
what “the other way” wou ld be. I had to learn to
surrender more, instead of struggling so much. I had
already determined to surrender to life’s flow, even if I
couldn’t under stand where it was taking me. I had to do
the sam e thing inwardly. I n eeded to learn to just relax
inside instead of fighting with my mind so much. Just
because the voice talks doesn ’t mean I have to listen to it
or let it affect the direction o f my life. It has nothing to
do with me—I can just relax regardless of what it’s
saying. I was b ack to the basic s: I am the one who notices
the voice talking. I ca me out of  silence for th e rest of my stay at the
community. I don’t mean I ta lked a lot, because I didn’t. I wa s ju st socia l enough to wh ere people felt comfortable
talking to me. I met some of the longtime residents and
listened to stories of their own journeys. Despite the
changes I was going through, I didn’t change my
meditation an d yoga sessions. They were not the
problem; I was the problem. I  had built a mental concept
of absolute discipline that was actually holding me back. In my meditations, I had been achieving heights by
pushing down on the lower e nergies. But that was just a
form of suppression. I had to learn to channel those
energies upward instead of pushing them away from me. It took some time, but I eventually began to realize the
true purpose of yoga. Done p roperly, yoga is the science
of channeling  all energies upward until they merge
together at the highest point—Oneness. After a  few weeks at the community, I started my
journey home. It was a wiser, clearer person who drove
back to  Florida . Though the s eeds had been planted and
some very deep lessons had been learned, it was going to
take some time for me to le arn how to come to peace
with myself. Meanwhile, I was looking forward toreturning hom e to my land and to the solitude of my
beautiful house in the woods.1 9 . A c c e p t a n c e ,  A c c e p t a n c e ,  a n d  M o r e
A c c e p t a n c e
M y mind remained very peaceful during my drive across
the country. But I faced a ser ious challenge to my vow of
acceptance the moment I arrived home. As I drove
through the woods onto the interior field, instead of the
characteristic silence, I heard  the buzz of a circular saw. I
then saw Sandy and my friend Bob Gould donned in
carpentry aprons and climbing on a structure they were
building on my land. It was o ne of those rub-your-eyes-
in-disbelief moments. I asked what was going on. Sandy cheerfully informed
me tha t she was building a house, and Bob Gould had
agreed to help her. I don’t recall the demeanor of my
voice, b ut I reminded her that this was my land on which
she was building her house. Again, very cheerfully, Sandy
replied that she was laying no claims to the house, and it
would b e mine when she decided to leave. She obviously
had worked it all out in her  head and had no problem
with it. I decid ed I’d better g o home and meditate a bit
before responding. Imagine what that voice in my head was saying: Oh my
God! How dare she make a  decision like that without
even asking me? I don’t want another house on my land. I d on’t want an yone else staying out here, so why would
I wa nt another house? How in the world does someone
make a decision to build a house on someone else’s
property without ever asking them? On  and on it w ent,
but by then I w as well trained to just calmly observe all
these thoughts  being created by the preference-drivenmind. A fter all, if I had wanted another house on the
property that voice would be saying, What a miracle! God stepped in and started b uilding me a second house
without my having to do a s ingle thing. To me, it didn’t
matter what that voice was s aying. I knew to the core of
my being that I was not going to give him the time of day,
not to mention the run of my life. If I had a choice
between using this real-life si tuation to get my way or to
free my self from being bound to my way, I would choose
freedom every time. That was the essence of my
experiment with life: if it’s down to a matter of
preference—life wins. So I went back up the hill,
strapped on an apron, and helped them build Sandy’s
house. It fe lt good to  be building again. This time around I
was not  a greenhorn—I was a carpenter. The difference is
amazing between the first time you do something and
the next. I felt like I knew what I was doing, and that
gave m e a sense of confidence and inner strength. I
wasn’t w orking on the house for Sandy, or for myself; the
flow of life had  placed me in this situation. It was during
the building of Sandy’s cabin that I first started the ritual
of o ffering my work up to t he invisible force that was
guiding me. I was not in charge, yet life continued to
unfold as if it knew just what it was doing. I would serve
that force. Call it what you want—God, Christ, Spirit. These were no longer just na mes of something to believe
in. The events that were pu lling me through life were
tangible and real to me. I nwardly, I began to offer
everything I did up to the Universal Force. All I wanted
was to return h ome to that be autiful place deep inside of
me. If following the invisible hand of life would take me
there, so be it. Sandy’s house was very simple. It was similar to what I
had thought we were going to build for my place. Her
twelve-by-sixteen-foot cabin  had no electricity, no
plumbing, no inside siding, and the window openingswere covered with only scree ns and some plastic. It only
took about six weeks to build and cost almost nothing,
but she loved it. I smile no w when I look back at my
initial resistance. I could never have imagined how many
important life experiences of mine would end up being
tied to that cabin. Meanwhile, summer was ove r and the time to start my
classes at Santa Fe was rapidly approaching. I had been
true to my commitment of no t allowing a single thought
to e nter my mind about wha t I was going to teach. How
would I ever know what life was capable of doing if I was
always in control? I walked in to my first class at Santa Fe
completely op en to whatever would unfold. As the
students filed in, I simply q uieted my mind and asked
myself, Do you have something worthwhile to teach
these students? I n my h eart I knew that I had a wealth of
knowledge that would be both interesting and beneficial
to t heir lives. So I took a breath, stood up, and just
started speaking. I couldn’t have known it at the time,
but that exact moment was laying the groundwork for
the next phase of my spiritual journey: becoming a
teacher. The words just flowed out. There was no prior thinking
involved. The first session lai d out the road map of what
we wer e going to do in the class, just as though a
curriculum had  been decided beforehand. It was similar
to when  I was writing that ec onomics paper in my van in
the woods. Except this time, I  was watching a continuous
stream of inspiration turning into a powerful lecture. I
was not doing any of this—I was just aware of it. As t he semester progressed, this kept happening class
after cl ass. I was amazed by  what was being taught in
these classes. It was as thou gh all the knowledge from
my schooling, plus all that I had learned through
introspective m editation and  the relentless watching of
the voice, was being woven together into a cohesive
whole. The premise of the c ourse was centered on thepossibility tha t one underlying truth exists in the
universe, and all of man’s knowledge was just looking at
this tru th from  different perspectives. The exploration of
that pre mise w ould involve physics, biology, psychology,
and religion. What was the p ossibility that they were all
saying the same thing? I had never thought about things
in th is way before. In fact, I had spent my time learning
to not make th oughts a pastime. How could each class
come out so perfectly without my doing it? Nonetheless,
the presentation was unfolding on a class-by-class basis
before my eyes. The success of the classes was overwhelming. I would
start the semester with twent y students in the room, and
by t he end the  count had doubled. I remember one class
where I literally had troub le entering the classroom. Twenty students were registered and another forty or so
were either sitting in class or  listening from the hallway. People would just keep bringing their friends. I was still
into be ing quiet and didn’t want all this to become a
distraction to my practices. So I tried to isolate myself by
coming to school just before class, leaving right
afterward, and not attending any faculty meetings or
school f unctions. It didn’t matter. This was the ’70s, and
I was teaching Universal Th ought in the midst of the
consciousness revolution. Over time, students and their
friends began to show up for the Sunday meditations at
my place. As if that were  not enough, those classes at Santa Fe
laid the groundwork for another very spiritual flow of
events. This time it was regarding, of all things, my
doctoral dissertation. I had been telling Dr. Goffman that
my life had tak en me far from the field of economics, and
I had no intention of writing a dissertation. Nonetheless,
one day  he made me promise, as a personal favor to him,
that I would t urn in something, anything, for him to
read. I had gre at love and respect for Dr. Goffman, and I
saw it as an ac t of surrender to acquiesce to his wishes.That ve ry nigh t, I sat down on the floor of my house, lit
my kerosene lamp, and asked  myself if I had something
to write that was worth such an enormous undertaking. It o nly took a moment to  realize that I did have
something very  important to write, and I would love for
Dr. Goffman to read it. It se ems that life had just given
me the perfect opportunity to write about that voice in
your head and the oneness  behind all of science and
religion—just a s I had been teaching in my classes at
Santa Fe. With th at as the topic, I was filled with inspiration. Though I knew it wouldn’t b e accepted as an economics
dissertation, I put my heart a nd soul into my writing. As
it turned out, the finished document had an unexpected
destiny of its o wn. A professor on my doctoral committee
had a publisher contact m e, and within a year, my
dissertation wa s published under the title The Search for
Truth. Thirty-five years later, that book still sells copies
every month on Amazon—a fitting tribute to the acts of
surrender that brought it into this world. What is important from all this is that if I had listened
to m y own min d, none of this would have happened. By
following the flow of life, instead of my own preferences,
I wa s now a carpenter, a teacher, and a published author. Inwardly, I had grown as w ell. The sharp line I had
drawn between  spiritual and nonspiritual had begun to
fade. The energy I experienced while teaching my classes
at Santa Fe was the same energy I was dealing with in my
yoga and meditations. In meditation, that energy would
flow upward and lift me aw ay from my everyday self. When I  stood in front of a class, the very same energy
would explode into a passionate, heartfelt lecture. Not
only di d I begin to see all this as the flow of spiritual
energy, but I also began t o see that there was no
difference between coming to class to teach and driving
home to do my  meditative practices. I was teaching those
classes because an amazing flow of events had put methere. I was d riving home because an amazing flow of
events had put me there. Neither of these destinations
was decided by me. They were the result of my letting go
of m yself. Little by little, the fabric of my life was
composed of the results of my  surrender. I was becoming
surrounded by a life that ha d been built for me, not by
me. In my wild est dreams, however, I could never have
imagined where this was going to lead me.2 0 .
The-Surrender-Experiment-by-Michael-a-Singer.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        When artists create a work, they first get the
inspiration, an d then they bring it down to the physical
plane. That process is exactly what happened to me that
night alone in my van. The inspiration for the entire
paper c ame all at once, and then my mind digested it and
gave it form. Instead of a sculpture, a painting, or a
symphony, my  work of art was an economic treatise. It
came from where art comes  from, but the medium of
expression wa s logical thinking instead of marble or
paint. I had no idea where that spark of inspiration came
from. I only kn ew that in the flash of a moment, I had all
the material I needed to write a doctoral-level paper. I to ok the nex t few days to clean up the rough draft,
type it, and tu rn it in. The final typed paper was over
thirty pages long. Not only did I receive an A for that
course, but when my professor returned my paper, he
asked me if I would consider doing my dissertation
under him. I was humbled. As evidenced from this
recounting forty years later, the experience that night
had a profound effect on me. I had clearly seen the
difference between creative inspiration and logical
thought. I knew where thoughts came from, but where
did inspiration  come from. It came from a much deeper
place t han where I witnessed the thoughts. It came
spontaneously, in total silence, with no effort or
commotion. N o matter how hard I might have tried, I
could n ever have written that paper based solely on the
efforts of my lo gical mind. I w ondered if there was a way
to tap into the  brilliance of t hat inspiration on a regular
basis. It would be years, but e ventually I would learn that
one can constantly live in that state of creative
inspiration. 9. T h e  P r o m i s e d  L a n d
I t had been months since my deep meditation experience
in the Ocala National Forest. The remnants of that
experience wer e a constant flow of energy to the point
between my eyebrows and a burning in my heart to go
even deeper within. Neither of these forces subsided over
time. In  fact, the yearning to go deeper kept increasing
on a  daily basis. It was like having fallen madly in love
and not being able to see your beloved. I began to
contemplate co mpletely drop ping out and entering a life
of solitude. My coursework was done, and nothing was
forcing me to take my qualifying exams right away. Plus,
by that time I was pretty cert ain that I would never take
those exams. I determined that I needed a place away from
everything and everyone in order to become totally
focused on my practices. I knew I couldn’t just keep
camping by the lime pit for ever, but I wasn’t ready to
start loo king fo r a secluded p lace of my own. I decided to
just kee p my eyes open to see if something would show
up by itself. Something did. I wa s fi lling up  my van one day, when out of the blue
the gas  station attendant asked me where I lived. I told
him that I had  been living in my van for a while but was
hoping to find a piece of land  in the country. He said he
had come across a beautiful place northwest of
Gainesville that had five-acre lots for sale. I got
directions and went on my way. A few days later, I drove ou t to the place and found
April Gift Estates. It was in a heavily wooded area about
ten miles north of town, and  it consisted of twenty-one
five-acre lots and a couple of dirt roads. Very few lots had
been sold, and I didn’t see a single person the entire time
I toured. The place was so peaceful and natural that I
drove around almost in a trance. It was just perfect. I soon came upon a couple of adjoining lots that were
part woods and part field. T his was exactly what I had
wanted. I parked my car and  walked through the woods
onto the interior field. The feeling of going from the
woods to sudden openness was unbelievable. There was
a rush of light and a feeling of expansiveness. I wa lked up a rolling hill to th e fence on the north side
of the proper ty. The property bordered a beautiful
pasture that sloped down to a woods-lined stream. The
entire north side of the lot overlooked that breathtaking
view. It reminded me of how Homer described the
Elysian Fields. I meandered back into the woods and
found a  spot under a tree where I could see the interior
field op en in front of me and the beautiful pastureland to
my righ t. The woods were quiet and felt protecting. It
was like  being in a womb. Th e moment I sat down, I was
drawn i nto deep meditation. The moment I came back, I
knew I was home. I ha d never bought a piece of land before, but I did
have some funds. When I graduated from college, my
father had given me what remained in my college
account. He wanted me to ta ke full responsibility for my
postgraduate education. Since I did both my master’s
degree and my doctorate work under full fellowship, I
had been able to save almos t all of the $15,000 he had
given me. It was now time to spend it. I d ecide d to try to buy both of the lots that included
the inte rior fiel d. That would give me plenty of seclusion. Before contac ting the owner, I picked a maximum
number that I was willing to  pay for the ten acres. Thenumber was significantly less  than the asking price, but I
told myself that if the seller wouldn’t come down to my
price, it  wasn’t meant to be. I was completely at peace
with either outcome. As it tu rned out, that sense of
detachment gave me the edge I needed to successfully
negotiate for the lots. I succe eded in the purchase, but I
didn’t feel a s ense of joy. W hat I felt was a sense of
resolute determination. What lay ahead of me was not
going t o be easy. I had already committed so much of
myself to exploring what was beyond me—now I was
going to commit everything. 1 0. B u i l d i n g  a  S a c r e d  H u t
B ob G ould and I had been friends since my first days of
high school. We had both moved to Florida from up
north a nd wer e the new kid s entering tenth grade. We
bonded immediately and remained good friends all the
way through college. Bob was  the handy type, the kind of
kid who always excelled in sh op class. When it came time
to build a meditation hut on my land, he jumped at the
opportunity. Neither Bob nor I had ever built anything like a hut to
actually live in. I was good with my hands and had been a
sports c ar mechanic while in high school. But to build a
small house, Bob and I were way out of our league. We
reached out to a college friend, Bobby Altman. Bobby’s
credentials we re not that he  had actually built a house
before, but that he had just f inished his master’s degree
in arch itecture. At least he had the theory of how to
design and build something. How hard could it be to
build a  small hut where I could go into solitude for a
while. Apparently, Bobby Altman didn’t think it would be
hard at  all. He quickly design ed plans for the hut, which
included a balsa wood model. I remember the first time I
saw his design. I literally thought he was crazy. This was
not just a small, simple, one-person hut for meditation. It was a wedged-shaped hou se with a stunning front of
glass that spanned sixteen fee t wide and rose twenty feet
high. To be perfectly honest, I had been envisioning
more of a box with a door and a few windows. How werethree college grads, who had never built anything before,
going to build this. Bobby Altman insisted the ho use was going to be easy
to build. I wasn ’t so sure, but Bob Gould was all for it. He
thought it would be a fun cha llenge for the three of us to
live on the land in tents and build it. I remember that I
didn’t see it th at way. I already had a full-time challenge
—getting back to my beloved place of absolute stillness
and peace. But if I had to build this architecturally
designed masterpiece of a meditation hut to get there—
so be it. We jumped right in with the abandonment of reason
that belongs only to young h ippies and crazy people. It
was an amazing experience. I had very little money left to
build Bobby Altman’s chalet. To keep costs to a
minimum, both Bobs agreed that we could use rough-
sawn lumber instead of the finished lumber you buy at a
lumberyard. A s fate would have it, there was a sawmill
just a few mile s down the hig hway from my land: Griffis
Lumber & Sawmill. James G riffis and his wife were real
southern country folk, not longhairs like the three of us. We got sideways looks from pretty much everyone
whenever we went to pick up lumber. Aside from our
hair, we stood out because of what we were ordering. We
started with the eleven cypress columns that would form
the support structure of the house—at twenty-nine feet,
you mig ht as well call them trees. James Griffis allowed
us to hand s elect the straightest trees right off the
logging truck when it arrived. We got to watch workers
strap ea ch of the trees to the giant mill and cut them
down to  six inches per side, give or take half an inch. It
was a real bac k-to-the-earth feeling watching the actual
trees being turned into the backbone of your house. In ti me, Mr. Gr iffis began to o pen up to us. One day he
invited the three of us to din ner at his house, which was
adjacent to the mill. This was a big deal since we had
been living in tents and cook ing what we could over anopen fir e. It was particularly s pecial for me because I had
been living out of my van or  in a tent for almost half a
year. It wasn’t just a matter of a home-cooked meal; just
going into a real house was going to be a novelty for me. The Griffises’ house was a warm country home. The
walls were pecky cypress, milled long ago on-site. Mrs. Griffis had cooked up a southern meal with plenty of
vegetables, sin ce she had heard that I was a vegetarian. The conversations were warm and friendly, and it really
felt as though we were all family. At one point, Mr. Griffis said something I will never forget. He said,
“Before we met you three, w e used to think that hippies
were the dirtiest, filthiest things on Earth. You know,
we’ve really come to love you boys. ” It was another one of
those b eautiful moments th at started me thinking—
where were all these unbelievable experiences coming
from. Someh ow, deeply touching experiences kept
coming from the most unexpected places. It was really
starting to blow me away. As days  turned into weeks, the house began to take
shape. Once the outside sidin g was up, you could really
begin to feel the inside space. Bobby Altman then posed
a q uesti on I had never though t of—which of us was going
to do the electrical wiring. Though I had never done
such a thing, I volunteered. Bobby handed me a small
book on electrical wiring from  one of his courses and left
me on my own. His confidence in my ability to do the
entire electrical system for the house rather astounded
me. Bu t if he t hought I could do it, then I could—and I
did. A great spiritual teacher once said, “Every day bite
off more than you can chew, and chew it. ” Life was
teaching me some very important lessons. We laid  pinewood floors throughout the house, put
cedar d ecks in both the fro nt and back, and hired a
plumber to install exposed, c ast-iron plumbing pipes for
the bath room area. By then, the house had taken on a life
of it s own. We had put our he arts and souls into buildingthat house, and we were ve ry proud of what we had
accomplished. To me, it had started out as a project to
build a quick, s imple meditation hut, and it turned into a
one-of-a-kind life experience. But it wasn’t the one I
longed for. All I really wanted was to go into solitude and
work on  my heart’s only desir e—absolute peace, stillness,
and freedom. With the house finished, the time for that
work had finally arrived. November 1971: All I wanted was a ti ny meditation hut—just look
at what life gave us to build. House finished—time for solitude. 1 1. G e t  T h e e  t o  a  M o n a s t e r y
I  moved  into my new house in November 1971. I
remember it was November because just before I moved
in, my sister, Kerry, and he r husband came up from
Miami to visit me for Thanksgiving. This was very brave
of them, considering they were regular folk. Harvey was
a successful accountant, and he and Kerry were used to a
nice ho use and comfortable living conditions. When they
showed up, I was busy finishi ng the final checklist before
moving out of my van and int o the house. Harvey helped
me inst all the last two windows and then insisted on
having Thanks giving dinner with me. That meant they
joined m e sitting outside on rocks and cooking what we
could o n an open fire. Person ally, I think they had come
up to check on me to see if I w as still halfway sane. I had
been w ithout a phone number for a long time, and I’m
sure my family must have been concerned about me. Once Kerry and Harvey left, I was glad to be alone
again with my beautiful new house. All I had wanted was
a simple place to fully focus on my meditations. What I
got was a gift from the invisible hand that had taken over
my life. That’s  what I called  it back then—the invisible
hand. From the beginning of my awakening, I had
inwardly begge d for help in knowing who I was, the one
who wa s watching the voice o f the mind. From that point
forward, it was as though something had reached down
and grabbed me by the ponyt ail and begun to pull me up. My who le outer life had been ripped away from me in the
blink of an eye. In its place I had been shown the beauty
and peace of an inner state that was beyond anything I
had eve r imagined. That touch of the beyond had lit myheart aflame. I had a fire bur ning in the pit of my being
that never left me alone—eve n for a moment. It was like
a b ecko ning, a calling to come home. At that stage of my
awakening, the only way I knew how to get back was to
willfully push my way through myself with the intense
discipline of Zen meditation. As I sat at the threshold of
the door that o pened into the beautiful place that life had
given m e to do this work, I reverently bowed my head. This wa s my temple, my monastery, and I vowed to use it
well. I wa s ve ry surp rised to find t hat the monastic lifestyle
came q uite naturally to me. I awoke every morning at
3:00 a. m. and sat for a few h ours of meditation. I would
then do contemplative walkin g out on the fields. In those
early days, I w as still holding on to the concept that it
was all about concentration a nd focus. When I walked, I
would become  acutely aware of every step I took and
every movement of my body. This helped to prolong the
peace I  felt from my morning meditations. I would then
do y oga postures outside un til it was time for my noon
meditation. I held the rope of self-discipline very tightly,
every day. It was an extremely strict lifestyle, very
different from anything I had ever experienced. But just
as a n athlete is  willing to give everything, every day and
night, t o train for the Olympics, so I was willing to give
everything, eve ry moment, to drop the part of me that
was holding me back from wh ere I so desperately wanted
to go. It d idn’t take long before I noticed that food had a
major effect on my practices. The less I ate, the easier it
was to fall into a meditative s tate. So I tested the limits of
how far I could go without eating. The balance I reached
was to eat a small dinner salad every other day and fast
in between. My intention was to give up everything
possible that pulled my attention outward. This would
allow me to more fully focus on the deeper inner states. My nighttime routine began  at sunset. Somehow the
setting sun strongly affected the force that pulled me into
meditation. I was always on my meditation pillow before
the sun started setting. After a few hours of meditation, I
would m ake my way upstairs to go to sleep. I had no
alarm clock; I awoke naturally at 3:00 a.
The author claims that the inspiration came suddenly and without effort, and he was unable to have written it solely based on his logical mind.
What inspired the author to write an economics paper?
He accepted the invitation, despite initial reservations, and it led to a warm and friendly conversation.
What did the author decide to do when he was invited to dinner by the Griffis family?
They decided to build a meditation hut, but it became a much larger and more complex project than they initially intended.
What did the author and his friends decide to build on his newly purchased land?
He realized that he had been shown the beauty and peace of an inner state, and that he had been given a gift from the "invisible hand" that had taken over his life.
What did the author realize after his realization in the Ocala National Forest?
He agreed, despite initial reluctance, and was surprised to find that the classes unfolded effortlessly, as if the universe was guiding him.
What was the author's response when Dr. Goffman asked him to take on a teaching position at Santa Fe Community College?