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Body,Mind & Spirit:You create a mystique around you. You don't use a last name and you don't discuss your personal history. Why?

Peter: I don't speak about the past because it's not important to me. The only thing that is important is that I am. I just am. What you see is what you get. If you like me, then you like me. If you don't, you don't. I have nothing to claim, I have no credentials. I'm just myself - and I am most comfortable being myself.

Spirit: Were you very unusual from birth or were you like everyone else?

Peter: I have to answer that in two ways. One, I am very ordinary. I am just like everybody else except for one difference - I have a knowing. I know who I am. That knowing comes in much the same way as the blooming of a flower. Up until it blooms the plant has to struggle and deal with the obstacles of the earth - pebbles, or being stepped on - then all of a sudden the flower blossoms.

Spirit: Did this happen to you gradually, or was there a particular event?

Peter: There was a particular event. I had spent an immense amount of time meditating, praying and going through all the rubbish that everybody else does. I say rubbish, but it's not really rubbish because it does lead you to a certain point.

One day I just stopped expecting anything. I love to sit by the fire. One day I was sitting there thinking, "Oh well, it's my time to sit by the fire... for no reason at all ... because if anything was going to happen, it would have happened years ago." I never expected anything, I wasn't even interested in having an experience. And then something consumed me. I had never been so frightened. I was terrified. I was dying. Physically my body felt like it had turned to stone. I did everything I could to stop it, but once it started there was no stopping it and "I" died.

Now here I am, it's the same world - with cars and houses, where you eat food, go to bed, take showers and brush your teeth - but it's not the same.

Spirit: When it was over, what did you think?

Peter: Nothing, but I heard myself, as if I were in a tunnel, saying, "My God, it's real." And then I laughed - and I've been laughing ever since.

Spirit: What do you think of who you are?

Peter: I have absolutely no idea. What I am is just what I am. I simply do what I do. There's nothing to it. Everyone's basic nature is bliss, joy, happiness, compassion, tenderness, caring, love, truth, wisdom - this is what you are. When you are yourself, all these things emerge by themselves. And it's contagious; it's not a matter of teaching it to anybody. I'm not a teacher, but if you come here, it's what's "caught." It's an energy that cannot be spoken.

I'm not deliberately doing anything, but by not doing, I'm doing an immense amount. I ask people, "Why do you come here?" They say, "I don't know." I say, "I don't know either." (laughter).

But really I do. They're hungry, and they can smell something cooking in the kitchen. I don't have to send out advertisements - the bees always know where the honey is.

Spirit: What led up to your experience?

Peter: Self-honesty.

Spirit: A self-examination?

Peter: No. It is being so scrupulously honest with yourself that you could say it hurts. You refuse to lie to yourself any longer, you allow yourself to be just as you are.

Spirit: What kind of lies do we tell ourselves?

Peter: We lie every time we try to gain other people's approval. We lie when we say we're not worthy. We lie when we say we're limited or not loving, or not compassionate, tender or caring. That's your nature! Who told you you weren't that? You believed the lies!

When you can look at your true face in the mirror and say, "Ah, this is!" then all of a sudden, one day, it's different. But it starts with being honest with yourself, with seeing how valuable you are. You are the rarest of the rare. A priceless treasure.

That's not saying you're not one with everything. But the expression of God in your form is so unique, so special - yet, so ordinary! - that when you see it, you have to laugh at your own discovery.

Spirit: Do you remember your past lives?

Peter: At the time of my experience, or rather, as a prelude to it, I saw myself as many, many different people. I saw myself back in many time frames, yet they were like characters on a screen. I saw myself as all of them but, I must say, that was still part of the illusion of life. When the illusion stops it matters little whether you were sinner or saint. Because now you're awake. Until then you can dream anything on this plane that you want to. What I'm doing now is the same thing I did in my last life. I've just picked up on it. Except this time it's different; I have changed because now I know. It's really very simple.

Spirit: So other lifetimes don't really matter?

Peter: No, they do not matter.It's one of the diseases of the mind. The mind always wants to be in the past or in the future because if the mind is totally in the now it has to stop. The mind is made up of pasting and futuring. Every time you think, what are you doing? It's either about something that's already happened or something you're fantasizing about in the future. If you didn't do that, there'd be no thought.

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