Buddhadasa recalls the atmosphere in the early days:

‘These were also heady and exciting times: times for individual questioning and exploration, times for experimenting with drugs, and times for reassessing prevailing social values. There was even an infectious whiff of revolution in the air.’

On the First Rung, p.17

‘According to this chart I had most of my planets below the horizon, which apparently meant that the influences that these planets represented were operating not in the field of consciousness but below it. Though I have never taken astrology very seriously, or indeed had any real interest in the subject, reflecting on this fact I nonetheless came to the conclusion that the course of my life had been determined by impulse and intuition rather than by reason and logic and that, for me, there could be no question of first clarifying an idea or concept and then acting upon it, i.e. acting upon it in its clarified form. An idea or concept was clarified in the process of its being acted upon.’

Sangharakshita, The History of My Going Refuge, (CW23), p.405