A Short Spiritual Biography
Early days
I was born in 1979 in North Wales. My family moved around quite a lot during my childhood, which gave me a taste for travelling. I lived in France, Germany and Russia for a time at university, as I studied French, German and Russian. While in Europe, I would go hitch-hiking to different places every weekend and holiday, sleeping outside in my sleeping-bag, sometimes in rain, snow, ice or freezing cold.
After university, I went to South America for two years, working in different jobs. I started off teaching English and German in Ecuador. I went to the Peruvian Andes and worked as a porter and guide on mountain treks, then went to Bolivia, where I worked as an interpreter on jungle treks and tours on th
e pampa. I went to Chile to try to get a teaching job, but there were none available, and I ended up hitch-hiking from town to town in Patagonia, living outside for five weeks. I returned to Peru to guide treks and work on mountaineering trips.
After leaving South America, I taught English in Indonesia for a year. By the time I was once more in the UK, I realised that there was nothing left in the world that I could gain anything significant from. I had been to nigh on fifty countries, and lived in around ten, working in professional jobs, labourer jobs, being unemployed, and living surrounded by people and also in solitude. I had lived in the middle of an overcrowded tropical city, and climbed up to 6000 metre high peaks. However, where one has been and what one has done are not relevant, but what is is what one learns from these experiences. One day will come the realisation that there is too little of deep import left to be learnt in the world to continue searching in it, as the deep things in the heart that they can lead one to have already been discovered. That realisation eventually came to me, too. I was as fearless and therefore as free as anyone I had ever met. Because of this, I could do whatever I wanted, and it was difficult to imagine becoming freer still in the context of the world, but in spite of this, I was still deeply unsatisfied, knowing that the most important thing was still missing, though what that was, I could not say, and therefore I was not free.
I could not even consider living in ignorance, for such a life to me is death, so this realisation made me go to India. I went overland, hitch-hiking and sleeping outside across Europe in winter. I had had next to no real contact with any religion, spiritual or yogic path until I arrived there early in 2005. I had the impression from Hindu and Buddhist scriptures that spirituality was not in the world, but beyond it, and I eventually saw that this is correct. We come across many challenges in the world, enter many battlefields, but the last battlefield is not in the world, but in our own minds. This battle is the one that must be won. If all the battles before it are lost, but this won is one, the lost battles before no longer matter, and if all the battles in the world are won, but not the one in our own minds, then victory has eluded us. The battle is won when the mind has been dissolved, and we are in nirvana.
Somewhere hidden in the alleys of Old Benares…
The first ashram I ever went to was the ashram of Bhagavan, the saint that later became my spiritual master. Therein, there were some monks, one of whom spoke English. I had never met a sage before and had no idea what to expect, but it was obvious after just a few minutes that Swami Shankarananda had a kind of knowledge that I had never observed in anyone before that enabled him to answer all questions on life immediately and with an authority that implied far more than just intellectual knowledge. I understood that he had become like that because of his spiritual master, who was to visit in six weeks. He said I was lucky because I could see Bhagavan after such a short time. I did not think at the time that it was particularly lucky, because to me six weeks was a long time, but the swamijis would talk to me about philosophy, and all the devotees that visited the ashram seemed like unusually nice, well-developed people, the like of which I had never come across in fifty countries. Considering they must have become like that somehow, I remained until the coming of Bhagavan.
The Power of Shiva
Bhagavan’s coming was greeted with great enthusiasm and love by the devotees. I did not understand what was happening, especially as everyone talked in languages unknown to me, but it was obvious from the attitude of the devotees that something significant and beyond my experience was underlying what was happening. On the third day of the visit, I began to get an idea.
That evening, Shivaratri was observed. The deity, Shiva, in Hindu mythology, is a personification of Absolute Knowledge, or destruction of ignorance, upon which that Knowledge automatically manifests. Normally, the ritual is performed by pouring milk and putting petals onto a linga, the symbol of Shiva. However, if there is a sage present that is considered to have realised Knowledge, it seems to make more sense to use the live Shiva than a stone. This was all unknown to me at the time, and as there was a tremendous amount of noise, because someone was beating a drum extremely hard, nobody could have explained anything. I was the only foreigner in those days, and everybody else was busy, milling about Bhagavan, who seemed totally impervious to all the commotion around him. I was pretty much left to observe events on my own.
I looked over everyone’s shoulder and saw that they were washing Bhagavan’s feet in milk and petals. There was an extremely thick, heavily-charged atmosphere, which was the presence of a lot of spiritual energy in the surroundings, something I was to get quite used to during the time I spent with Bhagavan. It was all too much for one young lady who swooned, and had to be gently pulled out of the way.
Eventually, everyone started taking turns to bow down to Bhagavan. Swami Shankarananda suggested that I should also do so. I had never done such a thing in my life, but went up anyway. When my head touched Bhagavan’s foot, I felt a stream of energy enter my head from the point of contact. Just as when someone shoves you in the back, you do not see anything, but you certainly feel it, I did not see anything, but a stream of energy was undeniably entering me. Before it happened, I had no idea that such things actually happen. This was a very potent form of spiritual initiation that only a great master can perform, in India known as shaktipat or what was originally meant in Christianity by baptism. A spiritual initiation is not a mere ceremony; it is the passing of spiritual power from master to aspirant. From that day, my life began to change…
On March 1st, Bhagavan officially made me His disciple. He told me to talk to people about spirituality. After a few months, I sometimes felt that, when I was speaking about spirituality, a force had entered me and was speaking with my voice, guiding my words.
Samadhi
On the morning of the 27th of February 2006, I was sat in Bhagavan’s room, and he told me it was time for me to go into samadhi, that superconscious state that is the goal of meditation and other spiritual practices. I would have to develop the desire to go into samadhi, and when he felt I wanted it enough, he would put his mind on mine, and it would happen. Therefore, I spent the rest of the day, trying desperately to want to go into samadhi. By the time all the devotees were chanting Hare Krishna in the evening, I felt absolutely heart-broken that I was not in samadhi. After chanting, I made my way upstairs, lay down on a bed and began repeating mantras with a mala. I remember the last repetition, then my memory suddenly stops. What surprisingly turned out to be three hours later, I woke up to find myself surrounded by the swamjis in a somewhat jovial, and towards me, unexpectedly congratulatory mood. I felt quite alright by this time. They said I had been in samadhi, though I had been quite unaware of that. This experience was fairly normal, as in samadhi there is no mind to project the experience of time onto the consciousness. It is normal for the outer awareness to just disappear like in this case, then to wake up a long time later, surprised that time seems to have disappeared.
The Effects
The following morning, however, the effects began to unfold in a remarkable fashion. All the devotees went to Kashi Vishwanath Temple, considered one of the holiest pilgrimage sites in India, just a few minutes’ walk away from the ashram. Just as I entered the door, a point of energy appeared in my heart. If one practised in meditation focuses the concentration on the heart centre, a ball of energy may well appear, and it slowly grows during the meditation. The energy that appeared on this occasion in my heart appeared to be of a similar nature, but it was extremely concentrated, remained very small, and, most surprisingly of all, I had not put it there; it simply appeared. It remained for about three hours until I got back to the ashram. This energy was the gurushakti, the power of the master entering the disciple.
For the next couple of hours, I was in the ashram, talking to people and eating lunch. During that time, the world looked totally different. My concentration was automatically drawn to the object of my attention, and it seemed that everything else around seemed somewhat two-dimensional and not eye-catching at all. Whenever I turned my head and changed the focus of my concentration, the effect was something like what one would expect when doing the same, looking through binoculars, with a certain distance between the eyes and the outer lens. When I was explaining spirituality to someone, I had a stronger sensation than ever before that I was acting as a channel for another intelligence to speak.
After lunch, I went downstairs and lay down on a bed. My body and mind felt sleepy, but I was very much alert and conscious, easily following conversations around me. What these experiences show is a realisation that the body and mind are separate from the soul, the consciousness. A spiritual realisation that one is not the body or mind is not mere intellectual understanding of something written in a book; it is something that is understood from direct personal experience. Furthermore, the knowledge, when it has been gained is not something that can be simply forgotten; it constantly remanifests in the heart as intuition for the rest of one’s life, as do spiritual bliss and love.
Longer Term
About a month after Bhagavan put me into this samadhi, I noticed that further changes had come over me. Before going to India, I had read various Indian scriptures and the Bible, without understanding, and feeling I was in a sort of intellectual trap. Now, I find I read them and understand almost everything immediately with a flash of intuitive understanding.
Even if we are feeling happy, there is still a certain restlessness, a vibration somewhere deep in the mind which does not permit us to remain still but obliges us to get up again and do something, search for something, we know not what. We are not fulfilled, for if we indeed were, there would not be a vibration making us search for something else to make us more fulfilled. However, at this time, I found that this vibration had simply disappeared, and it has not come back to this day. I have nothing left to achieve in the world for myself. I am content to simply remain still, full of bliss manifesting in my heart. This does not mean that life has become empty; on the contrary, it is fulfilled and has become like a game full of bliss unchained by attachments and fears. A cup already full of nectar cannot become more full, so if there is some more, that is great, but if there is not, the bliss is there anyway, always manifesting in your heart.
There are more detailed autobiographical notes in the letters to the devotees and commentaries on Bhagavan's speeches.