Did you explore realms you had never explored before?
Yes, myself. Those experiences did more to change me than all the years of therapy and all the experiences of life I had had, more than any other single event. It is what took me to India and to meditation. It was the root of so many things that happened in my life. I cut down my work tremendously after it and began exploring many other things.
It is rare that one event can change who you are. But this was one. I was then fifty years old. MDMA is an incredible drug, if used in such circumstances. I have no idea about using it in parties and so on, it does not make much sense to me. But I did it many times with that therapist. And every time there was something to learn. The last time I did it, about ten years ago, the message was that I did not need to take it anymore.

These days, how do you go about that quest for peace?
It is very much about how I use my time. It is about owning my time and doing whatever feels right to me. It is my choice to use or waste it. And it is very connected to my involvement with India in fact.

How did India come into your life?
I started meditating with a vipassana teacher who had lived in Burma, Alan Clements. I befriended him and asked him to show me the spiritual India he knew. We went on a tour, with Bodh Gaya as our last stop. There, I met two young boys at a chai shop and decided I would educate them. That is how my involvement with India began.
The first day we reached Bodh Gaya, we went to have tea. There at the shop was a young boy chopping away pieces of coal. In some way I felt he represented everything we had experienced in that trip. Somehow, I was transfixed by him. At some point he walked over and I gave him a candy. He was maybe five or six years old. He hung out with me and every day I saw him. On the last day, I gave him all my remaining candies. He took one for him, then found three other kids and gave each one of them a candy. It blew my mind. It felt like one of the most generous acts I had ever seen.

... contd.