I am now settling into life in Holyhead, still not quite found a local but have found a pub with great kareoke on a Friday night. I'm getting fit, and I have my bike up here, but it can be slow going cycling into the headwinds that come off the sea.

Anglesea is like a living museum, and everywhere you walk or ride there are ancient monuments, standing stones and buriel chambers. It was on Anglesea that the first Christain church was supposedly built, and I have just read a book called the Marion Conspiracy which claims that Mary, mother of Jesus was buried here, but no one is really sure of that.

I've also been meeting plenty of interesting people and having little adventures, with a few photos added to the gallery, but here is an idea of what is coming up in September.

Vivienne, who I am renting a room from, had been given a documentary about Andrew Harvey on video. It seems to be about ten or eleven years old, and I was amazed to watch it with her as so much of what we are both interested in is simply not represented on television, and here was a whole documentary by Andrew Harvey on the subject of mysticism and his experiences with it.

I have transcribed just a small part of this documentary below, since he spent much time with Mother Meera who I am “meeting” next month, and he describes well who she is. There have been quite a few books written about Mother Meera, but here is just a short description, which I hope to complement by writing about my own experiences after I have received “darshan” from her.

Andrew Harvey grew up in India but went to boarding school in England and then Oxford University. He was a brilliant academic and was the youngest Fellow of All Souls, an amazing achievement. But he soon realised that his lifestyle just could not offer him what he desired. He went on to travel the world, and write some best selling and highly regarded spiritual novels.

A friend of his describes how he asked why he went to a certain part of India and he replied that he wanted to learn to levitate so that during some obscure discussion of academic minutiae at All Souls he could levitate six feet above the dining table. His friend replied that in their own polite English way they would not notice and he said this was true.

“In Oxford there are philosophers and empiricists and people who seriously believe that science has the answer to everything. For them the very idea of religion was ridiculous. Religion is for Americans and Continentals. It had nothing to do with the rigidities or austerities or purities of the Oxford mind. So there was absolutely nothing in this world that could sustain or feed or inspire. I realised that if I wanted to discover more I had to leave, and at the age of 25 I gave up a whole world to go to India.”

The documentary has this written introduction to the section on Mother Meera.

“The Divine Mother has always been worshipped. Some of her faces are well known: The Virgin Mary, Kali, Isis. But many of her incarnations choose to work quietly in the world. Mother Meera, A 33 year old Indian woman is such a phenomenon. She receives her devotees with silent blessing in Germany where she now lives.”

In the documentary, Andrew Harvey describes his own experiences with Mother Meera.

“I first met Mother Meera on Christmas Day, 1978 and she was a young and beautiful girl of 18. Mother Meera represents the feminine aspect of God on earth. And she is working in silence above all dogmas, hierarchies, on behalf of humanity to bring humanity to a new peace. At that first meeting she showed me unmistakably that she belonged to an order of being unmistakeably that I had no idea existed. And every evening in a small white room a very small group of people would meet and sit and wait for a girl to come through the beaded curtains. That’s all she did. The first time she came through those curtains I experienced what I can only describe as a heart attack. I didn’t know it could happen to a human being it was frightening, my heart jumped like an animal. Although when I kneeled to her at that time and I had never heard voices before I didn’t believe in such apparitions and I heard a voice say to me “I am the queen of heaven” and these were shocking to me these experiences.”

“An avatar is the divine descended on earth to bring humanity forward into a new era. The avatar always comes at times of extreme danger and the avatar descends to be the sign of the new possibility that man can grow towards now. In the years that followed her all over the world and also ran from her all over the world.”

“Finally when I was 34 I went back to her and in the year that followed she completely transfigured my mind and my life.”

“Mother Meera leads a completely normal domestic life in a small German village.
I asked her why she leads such a quiet domestic life in a small German village and she replied “to show the world that the transformation is normal, anywhere and in daily life.”

“Mother Meera sits in silence and I said to her that silence is the ultimate initiation isn’t it? Why is silence so powerful? Everything comes out of silence. The true experience of bliss is without words.”

“I asked her does you presence and the presence of others on the earth ensure that humanity will make an evolutionary leap and she replied humanity must work for that leap. Humanity must become conscious, man ,must wake up. My help is always given but humanity must work. Can they? If they want.”

“It will take time, everything that can be done to open the mind of humanity is being done.”

“Has the evil of this century happened to make mankind aware of the madness of living without god?”

“Softly she said “Yes. The leap is certain, it will happen, and is happening now.”

“But the old world will fight to keep its power.”

She smiled “It will lose.”

“I went back to her and in a series of appallingly powerful experiences she revealed to me again her divinity. I was sitting with her on the balcony and it was evening and suddenly the whole sky filled with lightning and her body and the lightning became as one. I realised that she was that lightning and the whole universe. It was extremely frightening.”

A comment by another interviewee talked about the relationship of science and religion and mystical experiences. Scientists who have the Nobel prize, and preferably retired Nobel prize winning scientists, usually feel secure enough to say what they thought all along and talk about mystical experiences without worrying about being ridiculed or losing their academic credibility. They are all mystics of one kind or another.

This was also interesting to me, as I have an interest in metaphysics. The spiritual dimensions to some, are to me also subject to laws, but to me the laws of physics seem to change as the energy or vibration, call it what you will, is so much higher. I have a degree in psychology, but left with feeling deeply unsatisfied but not knowing why. Since then I discovered yoga, and the chakra system, and Indian philosophy and psychology. If only there could be a degree teaching both eastern and western teachings, that would be incredible. As there is no degree I can find, I am in the lucky position of searching out the wisest people I can find, and reading the most enlightened books, that I may come to my own understanding of mind, body and spirit.