The triangular image was sometimes presented as one face of a pyramid. I found this easier to accept. Here the tip of the triangle was the capstone. Being the highest point, the capstone had a greater overview of the landscape. Yet its very position was dependent upon all the many stones that made up the body and faces of the pyramid. In other words, the capstone was nothing without the others. I relented. OK, so I'm at the tip of the arrow.

When I was young I had a recurring daydream that I would of a moment change from a human face to that of a hawk. This was so familiar that it never occurred to me to question it. Waiting at bus stops, I would lean up against a post and imagine rolling around the post and coming out the other side with the hawk's head. One day a friend reported that she had seen me at the British Museum, not in person but on a wall painting. Amused, I set off for the British Museum and found not that face, but the one of my daydream: Horus.

In time, I was to become familiar with the hawk's eye view. The more I recognised that I had been born with it, the stronger it grew. My inner voice was encouraging. Higher, it would suggest, as I practised soaring in consciousness. Set no limits, see more and more.

So I did, and this is what I saw. The head of the arrow lies across southern Britain, pointing north-west. The tail, and its metaphorical tail feathers, lies across Australia. There is a bow, arcing roughly east-west across the planet, and the point of intersection, where the arrow lies in the bow, is the plain of Giza. I saw that either end of the arrow was in the custody of female energy, each end of the bow guarded by the masculine. I became familiar with my counterpart in Australia, a wonderfully wise aboriginal woman with vast and beautiful feet, broad and wrinkly. I could not say whether my Australian friend is alive or dead, an image or a reality, only that the beauty of her being and her knowingness is very real to me, and causes my heart to leap with praise.

At that time of seeing, the arrow was not engaged with the bow. I was, it seemed, to play some part in laying the arrow in the bow. This would involve a trip to the Great Pyramid. I had no experience of Egypt in this life and had assiduously avoided learning about its culture. I wanted to come to its landscape fresh and informed only by the knowledge within me. This didn't seem to have very much to do with contemporary tourist culture nor the current treasure-hunting pyramid-mania. So I arranged to hire the Great Pyramid for an evening and asked some people to join me.

Egypt

On that first journey to Egypt we were 42 in number. We began our journey up the Nile in Luxor. On a visit to the temple at Denderah I descended into one of the ancient tanks, thought to have been a pool for healing, which being now dry, is something of a wild garden. I leant against one of the palm trees, enjoying the quiet beauty. In the tree above me, there came a hawk and a crow, beak to beak, say observers.

After that, the hawk became a frequent presence, even in the dense conurbation of old Cairo. On the first morning on the plain of Giza, a hawk hovered above the centre point of the Great Pyramid. That afternoon, I entered the pyramid as a tourist. Inside, an Arab man whom I did not know told me in broken English to follow him over the barrier to the out-of-bounds lower chamber. Bent double, we raced down the shallow descending passage at great speed. Inside the chamber, he signalled to me not to speak. I could barely breathe in that space, least of all speak. I sat on a rough piece of rock and endeavoured to still my racing heart and mind. The strange man came and arranged my hands so that forefinger and thumb met. I dropped into stillness. With the massive presence of the Great Pyramid above, the air was thunderous with energy, yet totally silent. I closed my eyes. Suddenly the air was rent with the sounds of wild sobbing. My companion stood gazing at me, apparently wracked with grief. So I held him, unspeaking, until his pain was soothed. Presently, he led me, still at enormous speed, back up the passage, over the barrier, and into the throng of visitors making their way towards the Queens or the Kings Chamber.

'Out of the way,' he shouted, pushing people aside as we raced up into the Kings Chamber. Inside he showed me where to stand and shooed other visitors out of the chamber so that I might lie in the sarcophagus, placing my hands and feet according to his direction. Later we stood opposite each other, our backs against the granite slabs that mark the entrance to the chamber, and joined hands. Visitors passed in and out beneath the human arch. Some swooned a little. Then we were off, speeding back down the grand gallery.

I emerged, blinking and unsteady into daylight, exactly 33 minutes after entering. I cannot say why my strange guide took me around at such phenomenal speed, nor why a friend had chosen to wait at the entrance and precisely time my visit. I was grateful for the companionship, for I could barely walk. The weight of the air around me seemed so great that I felt my body would cave in under its force. Almost two hours passed before my relationship with the atmosphere returned to something with which I was familiar.

Later that day my fellow travellers and I met to prepare for our private visit to the Pyramid that evening. There was a strange, ever-present sound in the air, a sound that seemed to emanate from the pyramid itself.

In general, I have very little understanding of what occurs to me, around me or through me. I like it that way, for I prefer not to run the risk of believing that I know what's happening and then as a consequence make some totally inaccurate mental connection. So I cannot say what happened in the King's Chamber that evening, save that I and others sang, that in the darkness I saw light and that I heard a strange rhythmical beat. Absurdly, I thought at the time that some boy was kicking a football up against the outer wall. If you consider how many tons of stone lie between the outside of the pyramid and the so-called King's Chamber, you will realise how illogical I had become. Perhaps that rhythmical beat was the sound of my own heartbeat somehow amplified by the pyramid. Perhaps it was the pyramid's heartbeat. I do not know.

Whilst I have little understanding, I am nonetheless clear about requirements. I knew that for this trip to the Great Pyramid it would be necessary to have with me some emeralds. I mentioned this to a friend who knew a gem dealer. Back came the message: there were some emeralds I could borrow, but I would have to collect them from an obscure part of London. The address was within ten minutes' walk of my home.

Bethlehem

The emeralds were returned and within weeks I was travelling with a handful of friends in Israel. One of the spin-offs of the hawk's eye view is the ability to 'read' the earth from a map. What, you might ask, am I reading? It's definitely something to do with how that part of the earth is significant to me. I tend to 'see' a route to follow, an energetic track or pathway that draws me to it. We were staying in Ein Gedi beside the Dead Sea and heading for Jerusalem that evening. I wanted to go via Bethlehem. The map revealed a narrow road over the Judaean hills. We headed our Hertz rental van over rough terrain. Soon the road ran out, leaving us facing a rough gulley. The desert had plenty of boulders and stones, so we built sufficient track for the wheels and proceeded onto something little more than a rough grit track. Presently we emerged onto the summit and into an Israeli army camp. Cheerfully, if bemusedly, they waved us through.

In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Bethlehem Square there is a small underground chamber that is reputedly the site of Christ's birth. Pilgrims have built over the years an extraordinarily powerful field of prayer and praise in that place. Once again I cannot say what happened to me in that underground chamber but whilst maybe a hundred tourists and pilgrims filed continuously through that space I was perched on a stone step beside the shrine, my body shuddering with an energy which to me seemed to rise out of the earth.

Unbeknownst to me, but observed by my companions, my strange experiences in that chamber had been closely watched by a man who seemed very much at home in the church. When I ascended to ground level, he followed. He watched and waited while I paused to buy some candles, and then approached me. He spoke in a language I did not understand, but motioned me to follow him. I and my companions were led into another part of the church and down another flight of steps until we were standing in a crypt. Our guide spoke rapidly, gesturing at niches cut in the rock. None of us understood him. He became urgent. "Katerina, Katerina," he repeated, several times, looking at me with intensity.

St Katherine, so the story goes, received a vision of Christ in the 3rd century AD. So affected was she by this experience that she became a Christian and resisted all attempts to wrest her of her new-found faith. Her wisdom, love and compassion seemed to have touched many, including those who were sent to convert her. Finally, she was tortured. The story goes that the wheel upon which her body was stretched burst into flames. Hence the katherine wheel in our battery of fireworks. The monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai, or the mountain of Moses as it is known to Arabs, is dedicated to St Katherine. Next to Mount Sinai, and higher still, being the loftiest in all Egypt, is Jabal Katerina, or Mount Katherine. Here, so the story continues, monks found the fragrant body of Katherine on the very top of this mountain. They built a chapel on the summit and dedicated the mountain to her.

Knowing that the Sinai peninsula represented the first curve of the bow eastwards, I had already arranged to visit the Sinai. So we would be climbing Mount Katherine.

The Mountains of Sinai

It was March when we set out into the desert in a convoy of 4-wheel drive vehicles. The closer we got to Mount Sinai and Mount Katherine, the colder the nights became. Eventually we pitched camp just beyond the mountain, in the shelter of a pass. This is where the Bedouin camp, said our guides, some of whom were Bedouin. We were sleeping out under the stars, blessed by the luxury of high-tech bags, fleeces and downy jackets. It was the time of the Hale-Bopp comet, which hung above our shrouded forms like a silver dagger heralding the dawn. By dawn, it was clear we were better-equipped than our hosts. Most of the Bedouin drivers had fled to the shelter of a nearby inn. Night-time temperatures, someone reported, were around -10 centigrade.

We climbed Mount Sinai in time for the sunset. Night had fallen by the time we had descended the 734 rock-cut steps to the plateau which overlooks a broad hollow in the body of the mountain. I stood on the edge of the hollow, gazed up at the bright stars, and sang. Light seemed to be pouring earthwards from one of the stars in my gaze. Others joined me. We stood in silence and watched. I sang and again the light flowed down, truly like a stream. When I was silent, the light was still, when I sang, it flowed. " I am a practising Muslim, " said our guide, " but I cannot deny what I have just seen."

Such experiences are always humbling. For those with strong beliefs they are often disturbing. The young man who kept the tea kiosk at the mountain top was, I later learnt, too scared to come down and spent the night up there.

Climbing Mount Katherine requires organisation. You have to get a permit and be accompanied by official guides. Because it is a long and steep ascent, it had been arranged that we would have camels to carry us for the first hour's gentle climb. The night before our party of twelve were to break camp early to begin the ascent, we heard the news: our camel man, despite the loss of a not inconsiderable sum of money, was withdrawing the use of his camels. I could see how you wouldn't want to risk your valuable animals on a woman who apparently sang down starlight.

The first part of the climb to Mount Katherine's summit winds gently through a valley which once sheltered extensive monastery gardens. In the last of these lived the camel owners' family. We stopped for tea. Our young guides were fit, friendly and shod in frayed plimsolls, in sharp contrast to our smooth boots. When we finally reached the snowline and then the summit, it was clear there wasn't much room for 16 people on the highest crag. The chapel occupied by far the greater space, but it was locked. I perched on a ledge, gazing out across a sea of rocky peaks. From here you can see north to the Mediterranean and southwards over the great African continent. Something strange was going on in my body. Squatting on this ledge, I felt rather birdlike. Something seemed to be moving down through my vagina. Was I laying an egg? Just at that moment, someone drew my attention to the sky above. Silently flying over us was a great flock of storks.

If I am living a substantial and frequent hallucination, then an awful lot of nature seems to be in on the act.

I must have passed the camel owner's assessment test. When we reached the head of the valley that evening, there were the camels ready to take us back to the village. It was not quite what we had in mind, but there was something strangely soothing about the camels' gait after so much footwork. Unhappily, most of the men in our party had had no uphill opportunity to acquire the genital-protection riding technique. That night the valley rang with the cries of those whose most tender parts lurched heavily into the saddle with each downward lunge of the camels' gait.

We had entered Sinai from Israel, having first visited Timna, an ancient site reputedly used by King Solomon to copper mine. Here, standing in a cleft beneath a rock-cut temple, I had sung a little. A strange sound had come out of the rocks beside me. Looking back, I realise this had constituted the hors d'ouvre.

Some people believe that Moses' mountain-top appointment with God was not on Mount Sinai, but further west on the great sweep of cliffs that ends in Sarabit-al-Khadim. Here there is an ancient temple occupying the plateau on the high point. As we journeyed west towards Cairo we veered off the highway and north into the desert again to climb Sarabit -al-Khadim in time to view the sun set from the summit. After we had stood in silence together in that lovely place, 24 of us plus our delightful Egyptian guide, I lingered a while. It seemed such an old friend that mountain. I sang, quietly, a little hymn of praise and began the descent. Then it began, the sounds coming out of the rock. At first close to the high point. Several of my companions were with me, including our guide. All could hear the mountain's sounds. As I began the descent, varying tones issued from different rocks as I passed by.

The Bow

I knew that the bow could not be strung until the rivalry between the two male camps at either end of the bow was quietened. Each camp, it seemed to me, was hidden, possibly secretive. Each was quite certain that it held a truth. This seemed to me to be so. The difficulties lay in any further beliefs that other ways were not true. Praise and celebration of difference seemed to me to be the only healing gesture. Having as yet not clue as to where and what the ends of the bow were, I remained attentive to the bow's other metaphor - that of the human body.

When the arms are outstretched and the breath deep, truly engaged from beneath the lungs so that the power of the solar plexus informs the expansion of the chest, then the bow is drawn in the individual form. Left informs right, neither one side dominant, whether that be the left or right hemisphere of the brain or the active, masculine principle in relation to the feminine, receptive principle. The arrow lies along the line of the spine, the point of interception that beautiful V shape where both collarbones call to each other beneath the throat. The arrow is an expression of perfect intent, the alignment of the highest intelligence within physical form. On that model, the tip of the arrow is the crystal clear energy of the mind informed by the wisdom of the heart.

It was soon clear that my own mind was woefully lacking in clarity. I scored quite well on not needing to know, but I was also operating from a pathetically prejudicial place. There was a part of the world which was repeatedly, over several years, drawn to my attention. I read about it, met people who were obsessed with it, and repeatedly I put it aside. I had looked it up on the atlas, seen its isolation, imagined and read of the difficulties of getting there, and said "I don't think so". The Taklamakan Desert lies north of the Tibetan plateau, ringed on three sides by mountains. The northern and southern Silk Routes trace an east/west course either side of its great expanse, meeting to the west in Kashgar. Taklamakan means 'desert of no return'. Get lost there and you're a gonner.

After a while, I started getting visions about the energy field of the desert and how ancient, truly ancient wisdom, lay in the land like some great blueprint. In time, I began to see how the roots of yoga as we now know it might once have taken form in that place, diverging eventually into the Hindu tradition on the one hand and the ancient Egyptian practices on the other. Whilst we still have access to the Hindu tradition, our only link with the Egyptian is through the stylised postures inscribed in stone or expressed through paintings. I saw the shape of a chalice in the land and knew this related to a latent energy field in the human form.

Intellectual connection was clearly not enough. One day I was at dinner in Hong Kong. To my left was the manager of an expensive hotel. We were discussing his interest in showing the work of local artists, when the conversation suddenly veered desertwards. He told me how he had been approached for sponsorship by a British army officer who wanted to mount a private expedition to cross the Taklamakan Desert. The hotel manager desisted, but the officer asked if he could at least show him his vision. "He spread across my desk", said the manager, " a piece of silk on which he had painted the proposed journey. It was so beautifully done I said yes."

I contacted my travel agents, who were by now well used to my strange journeys. I bought detailed maps, laid the vision over the land and announced my point of interest. The shortest journey time, unless I hired a private plane, would be just under one month, twelve hours of which would be the flight from London to Islamabad in northern Pakistan. I had anticipated eventually inviting others to join me in this adventure. Such a long period away from home or workplace was untenable for many who had shown an interest. Something didn't quite fit.

The project was set aside. I was happy to wait until such time that either it or I was clearer. It took about a month. One day, whilst gazing absentmindedly at a map of the desert, I realised how prejudiced I had been. I had read the map as if my feet were firmly planted to the south. Swinging the map round so that I was facing east, rather than north, image and topography became one. It looked like I was heading into the desert from a place called Khotan.

Later I discovered that the Mayans viewed the earth from a west/east axis.

The Taklamakan Desert

Travelling on the Karakoram Highway up over the Kunjerab Pass and down into what is now China, I began to get a sense of how vast spaces at high altitude invite an expanded consciousness. I had brought with me some of the writings of Nicholas Roerich, a Russian artist, ambassador and adventurer who had wandered extensively in this region in the 1920s. It seems he had become intimate with many of the shamanic traditions of the region, practices rooted in Bon, the oldest known organised religion. Was this what was drawing me here?

I had no time to read. The roads were rough, the views stupendous and my senses reeled from the myriad changing faces around me - young Chinese soldiers, their features pinched with cold, guarding the high-altitude pass, the berry-brown mountain horsemen and a thousand versions of the mix of Asian, Altaic, Middle Eastern and some say European genes that appear in the local Uigar people.

Descending into Kashgar at the western end of the desert we took the southern silk route. It's much less travelled than its northern counterpart. After many hours on an empty, pot-holed road I saw a signpost pointing to a track on the right. 'Lhasa' it said. Only the northern flank of the Himalayas to traverse.

Even the most generous and seasoned travellers would call Khotan a dump. It has the towering might of the Hindu Kush mountains to one side, the encroaching desert on the other. Lines of poplars are planted to try to halt the desert's march, but you can't do much about all that sand - when the wind whips it up it settles everywhere. With the annual snowmelt, pieces of otherwise inaccessible jade formed high up in the mountains flow down into the rivers. Historically, Khotan was a major centre of trade in jade. People still search the river beds.

I was taken to meet the man in charge of tourism. Since tourists were only allowed to stay in one hotel in Khotan, I can confidently say that I was his only tourist. He removed the towel from a chair so that I might sit. All other surfaces in his office were covered with a dusty layer of desert sand. On the wall was a map. Enquiring at Stanfords, the map people in London, I had learnt that there were no detailed maps of this area. Could I buy a copy of his map? No, he regretted, they were not yet printed. My eyes were drawn to a place a few miles into the sea of sand. What was this? I enquired. Historical site must pay. I paid.

I set off into the desert in a 4-wheel drive with a Chinese driver and Angela, my young Chinese guide and interpreter, who spoke both English and the local Uigar language. We arranged to collect a Uigar guide from a nearby village. He would be able to lead me through the desert to the historical site. The Khotan hotel was hideous, the historical site compelling, although as yet I had no idea why, and I had three days to go before flying over the desert to Aksu on the northern Silk Route. I proposed, therefore, to spend two nights in the desert.

Bhuddist stupa

There was an unseasonal wind blowing. We ate a lunch of tea, noodles and pears and settled in our separate ways to spend the rest of the day in indolence. It was too hot to take the hour's walk to the site. We had progressed into the desert as far as a vehicle could go. Further exploration could be achieved only on foot or by camel. The little expedition to the site would take place in the cool of the morning.

I retreated to the shade of a dune, threw my giant muslin scarf over my head and thus sufficiently protected from the onslaught of windswept sand, opened my first Roerich volume. Khotan, wrote Roerich, is the most sacred site for Buddhists, for it is said that the coming Maitreya will be heralded by a great light above the stupa. It was a random page, a random moment. My vision had apparently brought me to an ancient Buddhist shrine that two and a half thousands years ago would have been on the very edge of the desert.

My companions were not happy. Huddled in the jeep, they complained that with this wind it would be impossible even to eat supper. Could we return to town as soon as I had been to the stupa? Certainly not, I replied. I was having the most delightful time. I offered to stop the wind. They looked bewildered. The wind being my friend, we had a conversation. The wind dropped, and out came the stove. I discovered that having eaten the pears, our remaining supplies were noodles and tea. I had overseen the water supplies but left the food buying to Angela.

In the morning, having shared out my emergency supply of pecan nuts and all the spare warm clothes in my bag (desert nights are cold and my friends were poorly equipped), we discovered the prints of a wolf that had apparently encircled my sleeping form.

The trek to the stupa took about an hour. The place was peculiarly atmospheric, despite its totally ruined state. Once a large wall had embraced the enclosure in which the shrine stood. Now you could step across its remains, save on one side where the stones still afforded some shade from the relentless sun. On this side lay a small gulley and in it bloomed a desert bush. Perhaps 2500 years ago there had been a surface spring that supported a small community.

We climbed to the summit of the ruined stupa, the Uigar man, Angela and I, whilst Angela translated our Uigar friend's story. It was he who had discovered this Buddhist site now enveloped in a shifting sea of sand. Being a Muslim, for whom graven images are forbidden, he had smashed the statues of Buddha and destroyed all decorations. Ironically our friend was now the custodian of the very treasure which he had destroyed.

I asked to be left alone on the high point of the ruin. The place still hummed with a sweetness familiar to all who know the gift of true stillness. I sang a little prayer for peace and offered an apology for the desecration. Descending, I reached for my water bottle. It was about half full, for I had been taking swigs along the journey. What passed my lips in that place was sweet and aromatic, as if it had been infused with the scent of flowers. Weird, yet wonderful.

Flaming Mountain

To the north-east of the Taklamakan Desert lies Turfan, an ancient oasis where a maze of underground water channels supports extensive vineyards. The grapes are dried and sold as raisins. Turfan lies some 154 metres below sea level, which makes it the second lowest place on earth, after the Dead Sea. In the summer it gets very hot. At the nearby Flaming Mountain it is said that you can cook bread on the rock surface - assuming that you can actually place your feet on the earth.

Angela took me to visit the extraordinary ruins of a 2,000-year-old city that was built of mud. The wind had sculpted hauntingly beautiful shapes from the shattered walls, but the neighbouring Flaming Mountain continually drew my attention. What is there? I asked. "Oh, it's not very nice, full of tourists. Lots of Chinese people go there."

She was right. Cut into the flank of Flaming Mountain were a series of caves, their interior walls richly decorated with a thousand beautiful images of Buddha, all save those on the most inaccessible parts of the roof faceless. Muslim visitors had destroyed all the faces they could reach. Coachloads of chattering, picture-snapping Chinese visitors clambered up and down steps, jostling to get in and out of caves, waving and shouting to each other. The din was dreadful. For just one moment I had one cave to myself. I knew its sound, and sang it. The whole earth seemed to come alive with the sound. I moved to the next and waited for the visitors to leave. A different pitch, that one. Then I knew. These were sound chambers. I imagined how the sound of Buddhist monks singing each different note in each cave would make the whole valley ring and the mountain vibrant.

I arranged to hire the site and returned the following spring yet again in a company of 24. We would sleep out on the mountain and sing in the caves at dawn. It was only May, but still too hot to set up camp until sunset. In the fading light the mountain loomed large over the narrow gorge beneath the caves. I stood on the edge of the gorge in the stillness of the evening and quietly sang. Presently there came the sound of wind along the valley. So in much the same way as starlight appeared to dance with song on Mount Sinai, here came the wind, rising and falling with my voice, the air thickening with dust driven by the wind.

In the morning we moved from cave to cave, voices rising and falling, the sound growing until it almost seemed as if the mountain side was singing. I reflected upon the landscape around the Dead Sea. Neither the Israeli nor Jordanian side of the great depression had caves as intact as these. Were there once sound chambers in that region ? Impossible to know for certain. But with Turfan the second lowest region on earth, we must have sung in the deepest place on the earth's surface where chambered sound flows out into the air.
I had always vaguely imagined that the eastern end of the bow would lie somewhere in the Himalayas. It was only after my second visit to Flaming Mountain that the realisation came. Could this be the place of the bow?

And what of the Bhuddist shrine at Khotan? I returned there too. We must have made a strange spectacle, a bunch of foreigners camped on the edge of the desert, accompanied as we were by a mixed bag of mostly surly drivers, and a delightful cook who insisted on wearing his whites, towering hat and all, in his open air, dune-side kitchen. We were late setting out for the stupa on the appointed morning. Stirring 24 people to action, especially those recovering from the shock of just how many unidentified creepy crawlies had made it into their sleeping bags overnight, was a slow business. Moreover, we had with us someone who had been crippled by polio in childhood. Gently, I explained that this part of the journey would be untenable. His disappointment was palpable throughout the camp.

The able-bodied men in our group got together and decided that they would carry him. So it was that we set out in a strange cavalcade, our late departure meaning that we would inevitably return to camp under the heat of the mid-day sun, each man taking it in turns to bear the burden of their companion. There was a great beauty about the process, some noble quality that moved many to tears. As the women proffered water to the sweating bearers, and the pace adjusted to that of the tiring men, it was clear that we had without design begun some kind of pilgrimage where moving as one was paramount.

Perhaps that was the gift of the Khotan stupa. After such an extraordinary journey arriving anywhere would probably seem significant. There were, however, those among us who had strange visions, saw golden light or quite simply had the sense of arriving somewhere that was deeply holy. For myself, I curled up in the scant shade of the one remaining stretch of wall, and slept. For one who had led a bunch of people thousands of miles to this isolated spot that previously none of us had heard of, surrender of wakefulness seemed like the ultimate act of faith.

The Chalice

We crossed the desert on a new road built for the oil prospectors. As we sped past evidence of the Taklamakan about to meet the 21st century, my inner cinema screen showed me something timeless. The stupa at Khotan was on the rim of a chalice that opened the full width of the desert and closed at its base where the two silk routes met in Kashgar. Facing east, the open end of the chalice received the burgeoning sun. At dusk the sun dropped down through the stem, its root and on to fill its counterpart on the other side of the earth, as night followed day and day followed night. A perpetual filling and empyting of first one chalice and then the other.

My first response was rejection. An absurd and simplistic image, I thought. Then came the kite, a vast black bird that swept life-threateningly straight in front of the windscreen of the jeep in which I was travelling. All right, I agreed, I'll run with it.

In all the hundreds of human bodies with which I have worked as yoga teacher and healer, there is one part that is almost consistently inflexible and that is the pelvis. This is partly because we wear shoes and lose the natural lilt of the hips that subtly rise and fall in response to the earth's surface. Undoubtedly sitting on chairs rather than on the ground or squatting also helps to 'set' the joints, so that little by little the natural flexibility with which we are all born diminishes. By far the biggest cause, I would suggest, is thought. This, it seems to me, is how it works.

The solar plexus lies immediately beneath the sternum or breast-bone. It is the place where, in esoteric terms, the emotional body interweaves with the physical body. Anyone who has experienced 'butterflies in the tummy' will know that this is true. In some eastern traditions the solar plexus is known as the second brain. The ganglia of nerve endings here are similar in layout to those of the brain.

The physical body carries the imprint of emotions that are not expressed, and ultimately of the thought patterns we create and repeatedly run so that we neither express an emotion nor, ultimately, feel it. Here is a simple example: imagine you are around two or three years old and a younger brother or sister is born. You are usurped. This newcomer has more of your mother's attention. You want to be rid of the newcomer. If you are honest, and express your emotion you will not be presenting a pretty picture to the adults. Usually that kind of emotional honesty produces thoroughly distressing consequences. You learn, therefore, that it's safer not to express yourself directly. In time, the system becomes more sophisticated. You may end up in adulthood with very little direct connection with your emotions and whole heap of interpretations of emotionally charged experiences that are thought-based. Rather like directing all emotional feedback through some mental filter.

In addition to this, the solar plexus can become the centre point of a perpetually recycled melodrama based upon the individual's perception of the tragedies, failures or misfortunes of this life. This helps to give a sense of colour and liveliness to existence, but it's only sustainable so long as the individual is prepared to exact blame upon someone else, fate, God or life itself. Only when the individual is willing to embrace the concept that each of us creates our realities, and that we constantly have choices about how we respond to every moment, each encounter, all that touches us, only then does that self-perpetuated cycle change.

In the meantime, the solar plexus, instead of being the radiant seat of the sun in the human body, richly alive with information from sensory and extra-sensory perception, becomes an increasingly heavy bog of constantly recycled emotional melodrama. Imagine how it might be for the pelvis to have that heaviness constantly sitting above it. There is an energetic heavy load bearing down upon joints. In time, they begin to show the strain, eventually down to the knees and ankles.

This may, I agree, sound like total nonsense. How could something immaterial place pressure upon physical joints? I have no answer save this: when you alter the thought patterns, breathe expansion into the solar plexus area of the body, the posture alters and the way in which the joints relate to each other is immediately different. In time, through exercise and yoga postures you can dramatically increase flexibility. Often I have seen the soft tissue around a joint relax and lengthen just in response to a change of thought.

The human pelvis in its upright state makes the shape of a chalice. To be exact, it makes two rather differently shaped chalices, one in male form the other female. If the model of the sun maturing daily in the great chalice of the Taklamakan were to be relayed to the human form then the fire of creativity would be drawn down into the belly of each individual. Daily. The series of movements known as Salutation to the Sun in yoga embraces precisely this invitation. Significantly, in this Salutation the head plays no particular role. The points of energy change are either in the solar plexus or the pelvis.

Central and South America

My east-west view of the bow as it lay across the earth inclined me to believe that the western end lay somewhere in South America. Over the years I had received various random images that seemed to relate to that part of the world: a lake high up in the mountains, salt-water underground rivers, a strange-shaped promontory jutting out into water like a single tooth in an empty mouth and for a long time some strange connection with a young man with long black hair. His energy was so strong that it was quietly adjusted by an older man and woman who were its guardians. Nonetheless the only way that kind of energy could physically manifest was in a young, vigorous male body. Strangely, he and I would communicate through the mingling of our hair. When that communication had run its course, I had my own hair cut short. I wouldn't be needing to swing it around any more.

I am aware of how strange that sounds. All I offer by way of explanation is this: you can live energetically bound by all kinds of self-limiting thoughts that tie you to one identity, living a start-to-finish life. Alternatively, you can invite infinite realms of consciousness to continuously broaden your experiences without in any way compromising the sense of being an individual. That is what I have chosen.

I had expected the South American connection to mature slowly. It is, after all, a continent seething with differences, some of them very aggressively expressed by very many different groups of men.

In the meantime, my attention turned to the human skull. If the arrow of the bow is along the line of the spine, and its very alignment an expression of the willingness of the individual to align with cosmic will, or that of the higher self, then the arrowhead must surely relate to brow, crown or mind. Setting no limit upon what you experience in consciousness is one thing. Intentional alignment requires something to focus on. To what was my individual will, my intent, aligned? Love, joy, expansion of consciousness, the opening up of undreamed of possibilities in the human potential…. These were clearly stated aims or alignments for me.

We do not have language for that which we have not yet experienced. But if you move away from a particular starting point in time and space, which usually involves having some kind of identity, then you have no idea whether you have moved forwards or backwards in time, simply because you've lost your illusory starting point. In other words, it is possible to be in places on earth where the energetic imprint with which you might connect could be an expression of experience past or future. The only way you're going to be able to give a verbal account of a connection is to return to the individual identity and its language store. So you tie the connection into this point in time and space.

Our bodies, I suggest, can store experience and communicate it in ways that are not linguistic. Our ability to receive or perceive that communication is, I suggest, centred in the solar plexus. A solar plexus that is heavy with emotional baggage has limited access to those perceptions. Possibly too, we diminished those capabilities when we developed greater capacity in the forebrain. If the sum total of all our experiences as individuals could be communicated wordlessly by the solar plexus, and we did not mind being known for ALL our experiences, imagine how richly informative human life on earth could be. Add to that a solar plexus charged daily with the power and experience of the star that is the sun, and you begin to approach something like cosmic consciousness. Not just for your own self, but broadcast freely for all who cared to know it.

Did we/ shall we ever live that openly? Certainly I have 'seen' it in visions as some kind of intelligence or communication passing between individual forms as light. If the brain was not so active in storing or retrieving data what kind of energy field would radiate out from the skull?

The Crystal Skull

Around 85 years ago a young English girl was accompanying her adoptive father on an archaeological dig in what was then British Honduras. She had been forbidden to climb the Mayan ruins, but at the mid-day break she disobeyed. Anna Mitchell-Hedges saw the light of the overhead sun reflected back through a crack in the masonry. What emerged was a remarkable quartz crystal skull. The Mayan priests, to whom her father had returned the skull, in turn returned it to him. The skull has been in the custody of Anna Mitchell-Hedges for most of her adult life.

One day I was invited to join two others in visiting the Mitchell-Hedges skull. The kettle was on, someone was preparing tea, and we sat like ordinary visitors whilst there on the coffee table sat this extraordinarily powerful presence. Every time I connected with the skull, I had the feeling that I could crawl up the walls of the room. The feelings got stronger. I closed my eyes and attempted to simply be with the skull. Please, I begged, no drama. I did not want to intrude upon my fellow guests.

Anna, who as the skull's perpetual companion has probably met more shamans, psychics and mystics than most people on earth, was not fooled. She wanted to show me the skull in the sunlight. The English skies were unobliging. Nonetheless, she carried the skull to the window. There we gazed into the constantly shifting energy fields of the crystal cranium. "Can you see what it's showing you?" she asked. I admitted that yes, I could see another skull within the skull. " I think, " said Anna, " you have something to do with finding the other skulls.

The story goes that this crystal skull, unique among all those as yet known on earth in that it is anatomically precise, with a hinged lower jaw, is the centre piece of a circle of twelve crystal skulls. The circle was broken up, and the skulls hidden, in order to prevent them from falling into disrespectful hands. Now, it is suggested, humanity could very much do with the reassembling of something which might help us to save ourselves or save us from ourselves.

I was not very enthusiastic. Anna gave me a couple of contacts in case I should come by some information and advised me that the National Geographic map of historical sites in Meso-America was particularly useful. By coincidence, my sons had just given me a subscription to National Geographic magazine. With the first issue had come precisely that map.

My companions and I stayed overnight at a local guest house. I awoke some time during the night feeling very peculiar. It took me a while to recognise the symptoms. I was going to be sick. Would it be better to run naked down the corridor to the bathroom or should I search around for a covering? I began to rise gingerly from the bed. Only then did I realise that the contents of the stomach that threatened to rise upwards was light. I was about to vomit light. The presence of the crystal skull was overpowering. We need you to locate some of the circle, said an inner voice. I spent a long time after that with my body convulsed by energy. I could not say what it was, but my limbs and torso jerked uncontrollably. I was glad of the double bed. In a single I would have gone crashing to the floor.

I returned home. The following night came the real message. I awoke with the name of a place. It was in a language with which I was unfamiliar. The chances of my remembering it in the morning were nil. I translated it into something that sounded Italian. If it was really significant, I would remember it when I awoke. But before I returned to sleep, I was shown something that touched me with its beauty. The hidden skulls would be located by sound. Each crystal skull resonated at a certain pitch. When a voice of the same frequency rang out, there would be a sympathetic note from the skull. In that way, only those whose tone was an expression of perfect intent would locate the skulls.

In the morning I had no difficulty in recalling my Italian mnemonic. Idly, I reached for the map. There it was, the name of a cave close to the vast temple complex of Chichen Itza on the Yucatan peninsula.

I was appalled. I didn't want anything to do with a skull physically. Let me be just an energetic participant, I asked. I would pass on information to Anna's contact. On the other hand, maybe this is all just too silly…

So I set off for my morning walk across the heath. The dogs and I had rambled for about an hour when I came up a rise and saw approaching to my left an astonishing figure. Male, very tall and trailing a long cape made of military-style camouflage material, he had in one hand a long, silvery-coloured staff. In all my travels around the world I had never seen anyone walk on the earth with such a combination of joy and grace. I was entranced and stood still watching him cross my path about twenty metres ahead of me. We exchanged greetings. I was struck by how strange his voice sounded, rather like someone speaking underwater. People who walk with that much power, I thought, usually have a powerful voice. Presently he stopped and turned, facing my direction. And then, long staff aloft, he raised up his arms like a great bird about to ascend, and just as mysteriously swooped down towards the earth in one smooth movement. Amazing, I thought. How beautifully he salutes the earth. We each of us moved off in separate directions.

As my reeling senses began to re-balance, logic set in. Earlier it had rained. I too had a waterproof tied loosely around my waist, but if you were going to wear camouflage surely you wouldn't advertise yourself with a long, billowing cape? And that staff. It was absurdly tall. The metal had the same colour and resonance as titanium, an expensive metal for a walking stick. This was not the first time that I had met someone seemingly from another reality on my daily walk. After a while another consideration pushed in: maybe he hadn't been swooping down in praise of the earth but in praise of me.

Time to do the honourable thing. I emailed the person Anna Mitchell-Hedges had told me was in regular contact with Mayan shamans. Back came the reply. What exactly would I do with the skull if I found it? If these people really didn't know that under no circumstances did I want a skull, then I could see no point in further communication.

Of course the skulls had other ideas. A couple of years later, globe-trotting members of my family were all about to pass through, or close by central America. I suggested a rendezvous. We could all do with some sun, sea and a spot of hedonism. It was rather early in the holiday season. The only possibility was Cancun on the Yucatan peninsula. This was of course the nearest international airport to Chichen Itza.

I went to the cave and took with me some quartz crystals. I invited the skull, if indeed it existed, to transfer whatever it might carry as intelligence or encoding into my much more discreet and portable crystals. It was a nice place, full of bats and with an underground river curving mysteriously out of sight at its furthermost point. I cannot say what occurred, but it is the case that those crystals have a very strong affect on a good many people.

What next?

The Mayan Calendar shows the end of a great cycle of earthly time completing in December 2012. Some say that this will be the end of the earth as we know it. Others that this gives us just a few years to mend our ways and reverse the trend of ecological disaster. Certainly we are continuing to plunder the earth's surface and destroy vital forests at an ever-increasing rate, despite the widespread understanding that the consequences, in terms of the exquisite inter-relationship between all aspects of nature, including ourselves, are irreversible. Why? Have we just evolved into myopic and thoroughly stupid creatures? Are we collectively so conceited that we believe we can pull a fine trick at the last minute?

It seems to me that we hurtle towards the widespread destruction of earthly life-forms because we have perfected the art of isolation. It is easy to feel no responsibility for the effect of one's actions. You and I, to take a very simple example, can buy our food at supermarkets, and with it huge quantities of non-biodegradable packaging which is then removed weekly from our homes and dumped somewhere usually far away. If we had to live in close proximity to mountains of plastic waste, then maybe we would make more informed choices. The informed bit is important. Plenty of people in so-called undeveloped countries are fast accumulating their own tracts of plastic litter - and think nothing of it.

Across the globe are millions of people who are alive to cause and effect. Either by living in harmony with each other and other forms of earthly life, or by working towards a greater awareness in the collective consciousness, or both, they contribute towards a potentially different reality. Furthermore, a good many massively increase the effect simply by linking with each other.

Is this enough? Does it really matter? I have yet to meet someone living in isolated consciousness who is happy. And when you are fundamentally unhappy you have to keep on creating external diversions so as not to feel the unhappiness. You most certainly cannot allow yourself to feel too much in terms of cause and effect, otherwise you would feel the cause of your unhappiness. If that seemed to you to be unalterable, such as the pain of isolation, the inevitable consequence of individualisation, then why feel?

It has long seemed to me that something gloriously reassuring, something that is present in all human beings but dormant in most, needs reawakening. I went to India. I wanted to be quite alone in a land where the bliss of cosmic consciousness might still be energetically present. There had, after all, been a few thousand years' worth of honouring the contemplative life here. Most importantly, I wanted to be somewhere where no-one knew me and where no-one that did know me, knew were I was. In other words, I wanted to exist in a way where language and thought were the least binding. It's true, people thought about me during that time, but they couldn't place me. I was exquisitely unbound by relationship.

For a few days I lived like a dog, lying down quite a lot, going for a walk, eating perhaps once a day, and sitting, watching. My weakened connection with fellow human beings gave space for uninterrupted contact with other beings. They are my friends, but I do not experience them as individuals. Maybe they are "masters"; certainly they have knowledge of mastery over matter. We were exploring how human beings can create realities by thought alone. I wanted to pinpoint why we have become so disabled in this respect.

This is how it is: a mind that is full of certainty is taking a position. Most of us mentally take positions continuously. We are sure that such and such is a "good" thing and it's opposite "bad". We are certain that this is the "right" way to go about things, another "wrong". Experience has shown us that this "works" and we expect it to work again. Unless the mind is completely free of the prejudice of a position, any intent will contain the bias inherent in the individual's mind. In other words, only minds that are empty, totally in the moment, knowing nothing, can be the instrument of creation. They are dead centre, like the arrow in the bow.

Actually, being content that you know nothing means that in your emptiness and willingness to align with the highest, the most free, the totally loving that is also you (the divine), then all things, all knowledge is free to come to you as it desires.

I am about to explore parts of Bolivia and Peru in order to connect with the western end of the bow. As usual, there have been visions, coincidences and perfectly placed prompts from other people. The collective journey is planned for next spring, or autumn in the southern hemisphere. Let me know if you're interested in coming along.