In the autumn of 1971, on the shingle beach of Hastings on the south coast of England, I made a life-changing pact with a complete stranger in a few minutes and not hours. That agreement was to travel overland to Australia for a new life. En route, I experienced an epiphany in Southeast Asia. I realized I was a spirit soul, not a material body, and attempts to satisfy the body were illusory. Material happiness was, in effect, insubstantial. After that, my search for personal happiness was replaced by a quest for truth, in which the Lord within revealed Himself in many ways: through visions, signs, symbols, poetry, and synchronistic events. Progressively, I thought of myself as a child of destiny. All these happenings brought immense happiness and the conviction that material happiness was a lost cause.

However, that quixotic decision to flee to Australia did not guarantee my success. For that, I must fast-forward to the spring of 1978, when I landed again in Hastings. This time to make a stand.

I had been traveling between England and Kathmandu for five years as an overland tour company driver. This choice of occupation was not entirely arbitrary. The epiphany in Southeast Asia left me with a taste of freedom and a vision of eternity that did not facilitate domestication. A nine-to-five job would have been intolerable. However, the constant movement as a tour driver initially served a purpose but did no more. After so many years, it was only delaying judgment day when I had to make a profound decision. So I decided to make a stand.

A third-floor, one-room flatlet on the seafront in Hastings at five pounds a week was ideal, and a view of the English Channel a small consolation. I began searching the classified ads for a job. Over the years, I must have spent miserable days scanning classifieds and considered many occupations until my stretched imagination cried for relief from the ordeal. This time was no different, but I had criteria carved in stone. The work could not compromise my search for truth.

Is there an occupation more down-to-earth than making pottery? Who desperately searching for work would refuse to engage in a profession considered one of mankind’s oldest inventions?

In a town just east of Hastings, a potter needed help, so I hitchhiked to Rye and found his pottery. There were kilns requiring firing and filling and bric-a-brac to be painted before selling in the local stores. My uncertainty registered with the potter, who suggested we go outside and discuss the matter, which we did on a nearby bench.

With emotional instability peaking, I would not be worth the trouble of employing. The potter did not say as much, but he did not refuse me the job either. It was a matter of my determination, and we left it without clarification. I walked to the church in the center of the town, attracted like iron filings to a magnet as I was by old churches.

Slumping uncharacteristically in the front pew with both hands in my pockets, I stared at the altar floor with unblinking eyes. A church dignitary hitherto moving about on the far side of the nave passed by. Looking in my direction, he hesitated. “I have come to a very narrow tunnel,” I said. He half-smiled and looked for a moment like he was going to flee the scene. But then he turned back, hooked by the pathos in my voice and the gravity of my confession, as he should have been. After hearing my reason for being in Rye, he vouched for the potters, and that was that.

Why not just accept the job and grin and bear it? Rye met all my residential needs. It was picturesque and medieval, with elements of old-world charm in spades; a twelfth-century church, Augustinian Friary, castle, tower, town wall, Georgian and Tudor architecture, old inns, and narrow cobbled streets.

The real issue involved more than a job and somewhere to live. It concerned the quality of life, the whole package, every living and waking moment, and what you wanted to make of your existence. I felt an emotional undertone of resistance so strong that common sense and rational thinking could play no part. The walking tragedy was attracting commiseration. Both the potter and the priest had acknowledged my infirmity.

The following day I considered if there was any place in the United Kingdom I had overlooked in my protracted search? There was the Orkneys, an archipelago off the coast of Scotland in the far north. Looking listlessly out at the English Channel from my bed, I toyed with the name while the radio played in the background. Then a man’s voice said, “Go to the Orkneys.” The voice came from the receiver. Leaping from the bed, I whispered, “Now I know I have one master. Now I know I have one master.”

Next was informing the landlady of my imminent departure with a plausible excuse for leaving that did not include hearing a disembodied voice. It was another landmark event. Was another flight of fancy begun by a hallucination? It did not matter whether it came from the radio or a delusion; I was motivated and on full alert. No doubts were going to undermine my determination.

Within two hours of getting the call, I walked up the long hill north of Hastings, ready to travel the kingdom’s length from the bottom to the top. It would not be a joyride with London to get through, and dusk not far off. The six hundred square miles of London and its sprawling suburban wasteland were thirty-five miles wide, and there was no going around.

Where the hill climbed out of the suburbs of Hastings, there was a small wooden church on the left. On the right, there was a school. I entered the empty church in a mood of supplication, but what transpired was of a nobler, more spontaneous nature. Kneeling before the altar, illuminated by rays of sunlight streaming through the transparent panes of a stained-glass window, I said my piece. I had come at last to God, and it was to Him that I confirmed fidelity to whatever He would desire of me now and forever. That was it, short and sweet. No more a tacit arrangement; my surrender was now formalized. It was not planned, but it was meant.

I chose God over personal satisfaction, and that was the crucial decision that put me firmly on the path to fulfillment and success. Not an easy decision to come to. It is said that one moment of truth is better than untold lifetimes of illusion. By that, we may be corrected and proceed on the high road to human fulfillment and success instead of crashing headlong into the ditch.

After that, I restricted my sense gratification to a minimum. That endeavor culminated in Copenhagen. By destiny’s arrangement, I arrived there in July 1978, a few months after making my stand. With funds dipping into the red, I landed a job that perfectly suited my desire for work that did not interfere with my quest for truth. I worked as a dishwasher in one of the city’s most prestigious hotels and set about finding suitable accommodation.

A third-floor room in a backstreet residential hotel satisfied my needs for quiet and solitude. Clean sheets, a shower, a table, a chair, and heat were comforts in excess. The owner was a sober, undemonstrative gentleman, and the girl who serviced the rooms was polite and respectful. I neither saw nor heard the other residents. Rescued from the brink of impoverishment, I was as happy as a lark. I began experiencing so many synchronistic events that I started recording them. Against this backdrop, my life proceeded at full speed, with improvements on all fronts. Settling into a simple regulated life with no pressing concerns, I could now concentrate on self-improvement.

While walking near the Tivoli Gardens, I experienced a fundamental problem. “What will I do with the rest of my life?” I exclaimed out loud. Finding no place in the modern scheme of things, where or how would I continue? I had rejected Western civilization, and my career, friends, family, society, and country were either gone or in decline. The danger I perceived now was inertia. Having rejected material happiness and the status quo of modern society, I risked succumbing to sleep to fill the vacuum. It was convenient to dismiss all those others, but with them went the opportunities society considered sources of happiness. A material education, a career, marriage, children, and retirement with a pension are valued pursuits. Although I considered these goals illusory, they determined most people’s success or tragic failure.

In pursuit of lofty aspirations, I set myself an updated regimen to overcome sloth. Those included morning walks, no sitting to put on boots and tie laces, no slouching or putting hands unnecessarily in pockets, no leaning, and no hesitating. I stretched and practiced deep breathing. Twice I fasted from solid food for three days and, despite winter temperatures, kept my window slightly open. I practiced all these things without affectation. They were the disciplines of rebirth and not subject matter for discussion or vain boasting; to have made them so would have meant a fall from grace and the abandonment of my quest.

I was well rewarded. A particular synchronicity caused the penny to drop; my mentor and guide within, the Supreme Lord, was the cause of all causes and the source of everything that exists.

To feel that I had done my best, there was one desire I should exorcise. In January 1979, I caught the ferry to England. I then flew to New York en route to Central and South America. On May 4, by my Lord’s arrangement, after traveling around South America, I arrived at a Krishna temple in Guyana, and there achieved the goal of my quest. I found the Absolute Truth in a Canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam. The truth was finally at hand, contained in the Vedic scriptures. My Lord was Krishna, and all living entities were His eternal servants. One year later, I surrendered and became an initiated Vaishnava.

It is a mistake to think that Krishna desires that we all become beggars and renunciants. His request in the Bhagavad Gita is that we should do for Him whatever we do. You do not need to change your position or learn anything new. If you are a sannyasi, married, an engineer, a doctor, or a road sweeper, it does not matter. Just carry on, give aural reception of Krishna’s message, and be Krishna-conscious. You do not need an island, a personal jet, a mansion, a huge bank balance, or servants to be happy. Despite his incredible wealth, Elon Musk can only eat so many chapatis daily. Sleep is the same for every living entity, whether a king that sleeps on an ivory bedstead with Mike Lindell’s pillows and sheets or a dog that lies on the bare ground.

I have presented my road map to the truth, from attaining spiritual focus to realizing the nature of all that is and our absolute position. Living in ignorance of that truth, we all live in vain, subject to the repetition of birth and death, the wheel of samsara.

I have explained how you can please the Lord by doing your regular job. All that is required is that you do it for Krishna and give Him the results. Living a life with the bare necessities is an unencumbered life of simple living and high thinking. But if you are rich, live according to your status but do not forget to surrender. The poor should not envy the rich, and the rich should not envy the poor. That way, everyone will be free from the reactions of sinful activities and live in peace and joyfulness under Krishna’s protection with everything provided by Him.

Sounds too demanding? Give it a whirl; what do you have to lose: birth, death, old age, disease, and your foul bag of mucus, bile, and stool. What do you have to gain: unlimited spiritual bliss and certainty, free from doubt, speculation, loneliness, politicians, and everything that makes for a bad day? All your hopes and dreams thus far may be sacrificed without regret. In this surrender, the goal of human life is fulfilled: reinstatement in our eternal loving relationship with the Supreme Lord.

I have given you reasons to shoot for the Rhino and request that you make no compromises. Try for what is in your real self-interest; serve Krishna, and hear about him in the association of devotees. Please know there is an alternative to living under corrupt politicians in a civilization that has lost its way.

Kindly consider these things. My path to fulfillment and success is narrated in great detail in my memoir, “Escape to Paradise and Beyond,” available on Amazon as an ebook, audiobook, and paperback. If you have any questions, please email me at [email protected].