Notes from the ashram

Each vignette has one of the 108 names of Lord Subramanyam.

I finally broke into the prison /

I found my place in the chain /

Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows

 – Leonard Cohen, The Old Revolution.

88. Om sam saum mahā-dambhāya namah – Glory to the Great concealment

Acteon’s own hounds tore him apart once he saw the Virgin Goddess bathing. The mysteries are veiled for a reason; we cannot bear too much Reality. When I try to record my conversation with Brother Andy, that which was so immediate in the moment is concealed.

22. Om sam saum bhakta-vatsalāya namah – Glory to the One who is tender towards His devotees

Brother Andy had known Guru since the 1960s, when the latter was a householder advocating for yoga and meditation in countercultural London, but he became a devotee later. Sister Luciana said that the community had changed a lot since she arrived in 2006 and Brother Andy shot back “Yes, it has gone downhill.” I asked if there was any correlation, and we began to talk in good humour.

When Brother Andy became a devotee, the brothers weren’t allowed to talk to women. “This conversation would have been forbidden.” He almost winked. Guru had a real problem with the feminine as a young man. He wouldn’t even light a candle to Maa Shakti, which didn’t please his mother. His refusal persisted until Guru was chased up the eastern hill above the Vale by a tiger over and over again – the feminine demanding integration. Once Guru acknowledged his feminine aspect, a temple to Maa Shakti was built and women could visit as pilgrims alone and join as monastics.

Andy implied that Guru’s integration of the feminine had made him feel more comfortable in the order. Brother Andy is a monk who likes women, and I like that; my soft spot for male renunciants who like women is long-established.

“You would have loved Guru,” he told me. “Everybody fell in love with him.” Andy is very much in love. Devoting oneself to a guru requires relinquishing individual autonomy to be wholly directed by a spiritual leader. It provides an example on earth of our ideal relationship to divinity, one in which we consent to being led by a higher will than our own. Guru departed in 2008, but his darshan remains in the land. “Guru could make you suffer. He put me through hell.” He wouldn’t have done that to you – he would have flirted with you and made you feel like the most special person in the room. But once you became a devotee, he would make you suffer. Once, on a festival day, Guru made a noise that had Andy in agony for weeks. “Am I really such a dog, Guru? Do I really deserve to feel like this?” But alongside strife, Andy also experienced love like we rarely encounter on earth, unless graced by the Goddess in trance. “In the Shakti temple, he gave me such overwhelming love. I’d never felt anything like it.” 

Guru was a mirror for Andy. One time, in conversation, Andy saw his face where Guru’s should have been. I asked if Andy had considered whether this was because everyone is our mirror, but the truth of that insight is heightened as our awareness expands in the presence of spiritually advanced and Self-actualised people. I explained that I had felt triggered by adepts, as I intuitively recognise that those with an expanded consciousness have honed their awareness to the point where they are essentially clairvoyant, or telepathic. I cannot remember how Andy replied; these conversations are more susceptible to illusion than those on the mundane, now. 

12. Om sam saum piśitāśa-prabhañjanāya namah – Glory to the destroyer of demons

Going through hell to reach heaven is an aspect of alchemical transformation. Before enlightenment and wholeness is the descent into difficulty and shadow, nigredo. Descent has a purifying function and is a feature of all initiations. 

51. Om sam saum pra-jrmbhāya namah – Glory to the One who continues to expand [lit. 'expands forth']

The ashram swirled with activity from before dawn until after nightfall. Mandatory pujas three times a day – 05:00, 13:30, 21:00. Other elective pujas at 06:30, 09:30 and 18:00. Meals at 08:00, 14:00, 20:00. Between the services, seva (selfless service) for the pilgrims and labour for the monastics. The business offended my sensibility at first. Patanjali cautions that the intense activity which characterises rajas contributes to suffering, which is why this tendency must be overcome on the path to liberation. The environment was not what I know as sattvic, but the monastics were both happy and virtuous. Only busy.

18. Om sam saum sura-sainya-suraksakāya namah – Glory to the great protector of the Divine armies

Sister Luciana told me that Guru had said meditation wasn’t for the sannyasis here. “Guru told us not to meditate. For us, work and prayer.” Worship in the temple and work hard. I initially found this jarring, as meditation seems critical to cultivate a personal relationship with God. But I don’t know more than a Self-actualised person.  

The ashram has a vital function in the spiritual lives of the British South Indian and Sri Lankan communities. Multiple people told me they preferred services here to those at temples in their home countries, which had become too commercial and had lost authentic devotion. These monks are not seeking but serving. 

21. Om sam saum krpā-lave namah - Glory to the One who harvests compassion

Sister Francesca was working as an assistant at a photography studio in London in the 1990s. “We were mostly photographing packaging. It was such a waste.” A friend recommended she take a meditation course with Alan Perry, which gave us common ground as I will take it this month, on a friend’s recommendation. “A whole new world opens within you.” Three weeks after completing the Dhyana Centre course, Francesca visited the ashram for the first time. She visited twice more before she knew to join as a monastic and has lived here every since. “Whatever decision you make, make sure that it resonates, that it is alignment and is right with you.” I assured her I would. 

I asked Sister Francesca if she still meditates and she responded firmly, “There is more than one way to meditate.” Three weeks later, on a hill walk with a good friend and revered mystic, I tell her about the lifestyle of the monks in the ashram and before I get to Sister Francesca, she says the same thing.

36. O sam saum a-ksobhyāya namah – Glory to the unflinching (imperturbable)

“Philosophising wisely is the work of multiple lifetimes.” Once this knowledge is recollected, the relation to every instant changes. 

67. Om sam saum kaivalyāya namah – Glory to absolute isolation (emancipation)

A friend told me that spiritually advanced people receive their karma faster. The same friend doesn’t listen to music to preserve the clarity of his vision. I suspect time also slows for spiritually advanced people as their awareness of their condition and environment expands. However, the first will be last and the last will be first; we all have a place in the great chain. The idea of spiritual advancement is an aspect of māyā, while relevant in the context of the current play. 

I hear people everywhere, in the ashram and at work and leisure, say they “don’t have the time” but the truth is in the opposite. We fill our time with action because the certainty of eternity which sets in in the silence is too challenging for many of us to acknowledge.  

I had a dream wherein the same friend was younger and looked happier than today. We are together in a large hall; sunlight shines through the bay windows to cast shadows of leaves on the pine floor. We must be third or fourth floor up, in a grand house in the country. Many people are sat with us – I am somewhat removed from him – all on yoga mats. He is wearing a purple jumper and jeans, clothes he has never worn with me. On his head is a shining silver helmet and at his side a pointed spear, like he is the God of War with the spear of Shakti, sat in cobbler’s pose. My Mars dominant friend looks like St George about to slay the dragon. 

I hope we shall fly the starry course together, before one soars before the other.  

84. Or sam saur ānandāya namah - Glory to the One who is Bliss

In being true to you, I’m true to me too.

79. Om sam saum mahā-sārasvata-vratāya namah – Glory to the One who observes
great eloquence

All the senses are engaged in the daily pujas. Bhajans get faster as each progresses; frankincense thickens the air; prasads deliver divine grace honey-sweet, which binds to the teeth and tongue; and holy water hits the palm cold but is warm and lovely the mouth. Pujas are a total synthesis of the five senses, going beyond even the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk. Much of art aims to turn those who lack faith toward transcendentals, while services provide the faithful with an earthly insight into divine bliss. 

The first puja I experienced was in the Kali temple. My typical sensibility inclines toward the sobriety and alienation of High Church ritual, the echo of a choir subtly reverberating from vaulted arches and into the chest. Pagan ecstasy (in the context of worship) is new to me. Each line of a bhajan delivered by a sannyasi was sung back by the rest of the congregation. Even in the darkness, I saw brief glimmers of the bright paint on the walls, as the candlelight reflected off the golden body of each deity's shrine and refracted light. The central curtain was suddenly drawn back by the Swami to reveal Kali in her fearsome but playful form, black and comely with red tongue out (16. Glory to the playful one (has indifference to one’s surroundings)). The Swami cuts lime and after lime open, smearing each in turn with red paste and alighting it in a sacrifice to the goddess. He was a tall and firm German, with dark eyes and a strong but contained romantic fury, repeating mantra deliberately and determinedly while the congregation sang bhajan and rang bells. The breaks in lines exposed glints of the Swami’s mantra, unintelligible to us but delivered to the goddess. He waves the flame in front of the goddess in a clockwise circle again and again, and then toward us, the congregation. And then I feel like the flame move within me and like everyone else I place my hands to my brow in prayer and bow in reverence. The pace increases and we all feel the divine within us, together, and we know it. 

Outdoor in the Vishnu temple the god is covered in layers of turmeric, rosewater, yogurt, milk and honey. Vishnu is asleep inside the World Snake, at the centre of a pond formed by a natural waterfall running off the hillside into the Vale. Lakshmi sits at his feet, awake to massage him as he sleeps, ensuring the comfort and rest of the divine husband she is devoted to. Above the waterfall the monastics have hung a bell which is rung continuously by a sannyasi throughout the service. After Vishnu is covered in each layer of turmeric, rosewater, yogurt, milk or honey, he is washed with water. The Swami bathes Vishnu with the firmness and tenderness of a father bathing a child. At Vishnu’s feet, Swami runs his hands over Lakshmi’s breasts as he covers her in yogurt. Earlier he had placed a rose petal on her yoni, between her crossed legs. 

In Platonism, eros is the power that gives the soul wings on her flight home toward divinity. Plotinus said that the pleasures we commonly experience in ecstasy on earth resemble the bliss that will come, that he experienced on his flight. I remember Adam and Eve in Paradise by Rubens, with the largest view of the Garden of Eden framed in a yoni shaped valley between the legs of the lovers, the treetops marking the crown of an arch that originates on both sides in the garland of leaves concealing their sex.

20. Om sam saum prājāya namah – Glory to the learned One

Many of the westerners who visit the ashram multiple times extend their stay longer and longer with each trip, and only connect with their practice here. At home, their devotion melts away. 

I was scolded for letting holy water pour from my right palm onto the floor at the ritual; I didn’t know I was supposed to drink it. I had fluttered a little above the earth, and was jolted back down. After the service, I sat by a stream and wept as the water babbled over pebbles below me and I thought, “This is holy water.” Later, I peed in a toilet cubicle beside one occupied by the Sister who scolded me and I thought, “This too is holy water.”

James, a Briton who has been staying in the ashram as a pilgrim for nine months, relayed that a Swami at another ashram had told him, “This is the real world, and out there isn’t.” I tell him that both are – but I mean neither. 

41. Om sam saum ā-hutāya namah – Glory to whom offering is made

A woman was twitching and shaking uncontrollably during the lunchtime pujas; I know kundalini disturbance when I see it. Afterward, at lunch, I asked her if she was ‘full of devotion’ at the minute and she said yes, but that she couldn’t talk about it. The conversation moved on; Kate is a regular member of the congregation here and lives nearby. An insecurity came up; I relayed something a sage once told me – “It’s spiritual practice, not spiritual perfect” – and she laughed and said, “I love you” and I said, “Thank you, universal love is a blessing.” I have both been her and am her. Everyone is our mirror, and so much more. 

Kate asked to help me in my seva, to ground her while she was high as a kite. And I felt in that instant I understood entirely why toil was God’s punishment for Adam and why we all work so hard, whether in physical frenzy or ascetic denial. Without selfless service, the shakti has no outlet. It just bounces around and pulls you apart. Self-denial in labour now prepares us for further mortifications of the flesh later, as we reorient our psyche to turn away from matter and to make the long journey upward toward spirit. 

We have imperfect ideas for the form of our lives. When we are plucked out, burning, like Augustine or Eliot, we must surrender our ego and deliver the work that God wills us to complete. 

I would rather be devoured / than be broken.  

83. Om sam saum an-anta-mürtaye namah – Glory to the One of unending form

I backtalked Swami Ishvara because he could take it. When I first arrived, I thought, why is this priest running around? The pace of the ashram reminded me of my life of commercial work, in the city. 

But over the week it clicked in. I listened attentively in the dining hall where blessed food was served as a Sister explained that God provides the energy a team of twenty sannyasis and some lay volunteers need to run a hopsice, farm and ashram that attracts over 90,000 pilgrims a year. She said, “I said to God, ‘I don’t know how I can do this, please help me.’ And I feel the spirit work through me and I can achieve more than I myself could ever get done.” Service is but Magic / moving through the world / and Mind itself is Magic / coursing through the flesh. I believe all work that is in service to the life of spirit can be achieved this way. Time is not a requirement to complete work in honour of Being beyond the temporal order.

Swami Ishvara had been a Church organist and a Kabbalist before he came here to lead a minimum of three pujas a day; feed the goats; cook curries; lay cables; to nurture the Swami with Alzheimer’s (a Sri Lankan refugee, displaced by the war); and to welcome pilgrims like myself as they arrive, to show us our rooms and ask questions about the outside world I deflected, which I regretted with the benefit of hindsight. He probably hasn’t left the ashram since the 1990s. He seemed too hurried at first, for me, someone who has come to consider slowness, calm and conscious control as high virtues. I also liked him very much, despite his baffling pace, as he was cheeky and intellectual.

By the time I left, I understood more of him. He came to live a life of service after all the paths for him became one.

“Yogis and gurus visit here, and they tell me this place is like a spiritual reservoir.”
“What do you mean?”
“Or it’s like a spiritual battery, it’s charged with energy from all the chanting.”

During my hours of seva, the Bhajans sung in pujas revolved in my head, replacing my own thought impressions with devotional songs sung for love of God. 

“It’s all the love,” I said. “My friend says,” (St George) “That all paths are secretly Bhakti.” 

We giggled together, like kids who had an inside joke that was a good one. But then he said to me, “Karma is for those who don’t even have Bhakti.” 

I finally broke into the prison / I found my place in the chain.

Before I left, we bumped into each other. I’d come round and he knew it. “It’s a good place you’ve got here. Really fab.”

“Come again,” he said smiling, and I could tell he was shy, like his non-attachment practice had slightly failed him, but for the better. If you’d have asked my secret wish for a visit to a monastic community and I had known myself well enough to answer, I’d have said that a monk warmed to me. 

91. Om sam saum kāranātïta-vigrahaya namah – Glory to the cause of transcending
embodiment

The erotics of the dance overwhelm the sinner and the saint; we are all enthralled by the divine play. I remember a poem I channelled during my divorce:

I love it here, I don’t want to go 
and I won’t. 
one day, your son will see a bird 
and sing my name — 
the dawn chorus.  

90. Om sam saum kāranopātta-dehaya namah – Glory to the cause of embodiment

Even God loves this plane – that’s built on tombstones and reeks of death – so much that He incarnates here again and again.