Mike Beddard

Scaling the Depths: Love, Fear & Utter Confusion in a Search for Meaning Mike Beddard 1. izdevums

'Like many people I asked what the meaning of life was. Unlike many people I never stopped asking'. This true story starts just after the end of the 'Swinging Sixties' in Britain. A questioning young man marries and leaves home for London, soon to have a strange and life-changing spiritual experience. Hopelessly innocent he joins a group of similarly minded people for what will become a hilarious, sad, and downright bizarre 14 year emotional roller-coaster ride. Starting from allegedly 'Buddhist' ideals the group degenerates into a cult under its charismatic leader, a self-confessed hustler from New York City, who himself slowly implodes under the weight of his own ego. Against this background the community members share love, fear, and their strange adventures as they struggle to create a society of their own; one better than that which they had left. With the two main characters spanning British and American cultures this book is at the same time both an outrageous and engaging story of cult life and machiavellian gurudom; and a study of a time of innocence at the dawn of the modern New Age movement in the West. Delightful and poignant it is a tale of communal life in the hills of 1970's Wales, a wonderful yarn from a vanished age.