July is a month of freedom for many things, including Harry Palmer

The obvious one is the month of independence of the pioneers from the English.

But also Harry Palmer evidently started his quest for freedom in July of 1986 because in Chapter 6 of "Living Deliberately" (The Rapture) he states:

September, 1986.  I drained and dismantled the sensory-deprivation tank. In many ways it was a useful tool, but I now realized it was unnecessary to spend any further time in the tank.  I saw clearly that there were easier ways to achieve the long-sought, high ground of awareness from which any existence is a profound, deliberate experience.

This is a juicy chapter, loaded with plenty of things to tantalize one into a maha sadhana:

I now saw the mind as a universal tool that could be adjusted, aligned, and changed. It was no longer a prison or a trap.

as easily as I could shift attention from one sound to another or from one sight to another, the form and content of the consciousness I defined myself as. I could experience any state of existence I could imagine, any state I wished to create. So, naturally, I chose to be euphoric. And when I created it, the whole universe reflected my expectations back to me. I choreographed a symphony of spiritual ecstasy. I looked from my eyes, but I saw from a heart beyond the edges of space. What was happening and who I was were one and the same.

the prize so long sought, the elusive extraordinary moment of consciousness deliberately created.

I was in whatever place and time I created. In full view was the ever-changing expression of the universal consciousness. I saw the end of the path that every spiritual practice, in its purest moment of conception, has attempted to bring to humankind

Beneath the definition, beneath the illusion of difference, I felt a universal self, and though it still slumbered, it was unified and whole. Beyond the dream theaters of consciousness,  beyond  the  creations  of  time,  space, form, and event, I experienced a total compassion and  unconditional  love  for  life.  I  could  stay  or return. The choice of the bodhisattva!