Kiki, I want my books! In the sixties Yesj began ~

TO
KEEP A DAILY RECORD
OF HIS PERCEPTIONS AND STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS:
apart from about a fortnight he kept up this record for about seven months.

He wrote clearly, in pencil, and with virtually no erasures. The first 77 pages of the manuscript are written in a small notebook; from then until the end (page 323) a larger, loose-leaf book was used. The record starts abruptly and end abruptly.

He himself couldn't say what prompted him to begin it: he had never kept such a record before, nor has he kept one since. The manuscript has received the minimum amount of editing: Yesj's spelling has been corrected; a few punctuation marks have been put in for the sake of clarity; some abbreviations such as the ~&~ he invariably used, have been spelt out in full; some footnotes and a few interpolations in square brackets have been added. In all other respects the manuscript is presented here as it was written. A word is needed to explain one of the terms used in it ~ "the process"! At the age of 28 Yesj also underwent a spiritual experience that changed his life and which was followed by years of acute and almost continuous pain in his head & spine. The manuscript shows that "the process", as he called this mysterious pain, was still going on nearly forty years later, though in a much milder form. "The process" was a physical phenomenon, not to be confused with the state of consciousness that he variously refers to in the notebooks as the "benediction", the "otherness", "immensity"!

At no time did he take any pain-killing drugs for "the process". He has never take alcohol or any kind of drug. He has never smoked, and for the last 30 years or so he has not so much as drunk tea or coffee.

Although a life-long vegetarian, he has always been at great pains to ensure a plentiful and well-balanced diet. Ascetism is, to his way of thinking, as destructive of a religious life as over-indulgence. Indeed he looks after "the body (he has always differentiated between the body and the ego) as a cavalry officer could have looked after his horse. He has never suffered from epilepsy or any of the other physical conditions said to give rise to visions and other spiritual phenomena; nor did he practise any "system" of meditation. [All Mor ever got from Kiki was 'The color purple' years ago]