Jonathan
Jonathan is a meditator, a painter, a sculptor, an intuitive writer, and a qualified teacher. Of late he has become a passionate eco-gardener, He was initiated into Yoga by his first guru, Sri Nandi, at the age of twenty-one and now has more than forty years experience of the path behind him. His greatest happiness is in the Divine and in loving his fellow human beings. Although he teaches Hindu Dharma, he adores all religions and is equally at home in the Mosque, the Temple and the Church.
He is now tutor at Mahalakshmi Yoga Centre Ikaria.
Sri Yogacharya B. C. Nandi
Sri Nandi was a Himalayan Naga Sadhu, who upon attaining to Self-Realisation, was requested by Paramhansa Yogananda to come to teach in London.
His Eminence Sokkche Rinpoche
His Eminence Sokkche Rinpoche is an enlightened Lama in the Ningmapa Sect of Vajrayana Buddhism.
Sri Shivacharya Subramaniam Gurukhal
Sri Shivacharya Subramaniam is a master of Shiva Yoga and temple ritual. He is hereditary chief-priest at Sri Brahmapurishvara Temple in Tamil Nadu.
Honouring my Beloved Gurus
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Otets Mixail
Otets Mixail was an Orthodox Christian Monk who served at Bachkovo Monastery in Bulgaria. Otets Mixail was a person of very high consciousness who was authentically visited by Lord Jesus, the Holy Mother of God and Archangel Michael. He once said 'the Virgin Mary is the most beautiful woman in all the universe.'
The Artist
Head of Radha
Conte crayon on paper
The Tree of Knowledge
Coreldraw image
Portrait of Sangeeta
Conte crayon on paper
Reflection in High Pirin
Coreldraw image
The Sculptor
Supramental Being
Bronze
Cosmos
Stone
Portrait of Sangeeta
Bronze and walnut
The Poet
The Lotus Avatar
The white temple, in the Ionic mode
And before it, the pink-tipped white lotus flower She in the mode of surrender
Suspended o'er the tranquil waters
She bows, the lotus flower
A head that is full blown with sweetness
The temple is magnificent, both in its proportions and in its mystic essence
A locus of the powers of 'how to' and 'the will to do so'
'I recognise the Lord within you
I offer my pollen to you
I offer you my persuasive qualities
My ability to soften the hardest hearts'
Again and yet again she bowed her head
'I offer you my in-born capacity for self-sacrifice'
'Take thee then, my pure one, thy foundation in the mud and mire
Flower upon the lake's of the planet which is so green and fertile
But which labours under such heavy sorrows
That those souls who dwell upon it may have a symbol of what love is
That they may feel what they cannot yet understand'
'O Master, as thou sayest, so shall I do'
As these words were promised, a breath
Passed across the celestial meadow
And a seed of heaven was carried far below
It was cast upon the surface of a receiving pond
It was wakened by the rising sun and urged to life by the waxing moon
'Whoever shall gaze upon my golden pollen
Shall see in her own Heart the same
The million, trillion points of light
That we the souls are in our secret collective essence'
The Writer
An excerpt from Jonathan's 'Krishna and Sangeeta', where Sangeeta relates how Krishna, disguised as an ordinary boy, visits her.
O Ma, my precious Mother, - now to my awakened sensibility, every atom of the sky is that strange boy and every rustle in the leaves of the tall trees above us is the sound of His flute calling to me in tones of lullaby and mystery of love's secret essence. The night-stars that invisibly fill the bright sky of day are His secret bejewelled palaces and hidden gardens of caresses bestowed upon the virgin that I am and surely ever shall be.
When I came to you this early morning the identity of that boy was still a complete mystery and the events and experiences of which I am now to tell bore no clear significance to me, nor could I even recall them well. Wonders happened yesterday which whilst under Maya's spell I could not even bring to clear awareness and far less interpret. Now by your grace the spell of Maya has vanished into the non-existence which is proper to it and the Light of Pure Reason shines upon those happenings. Now alone can I tell you of them.
Ma, yesterday there arose in me a desire to conceal myself from the sight of others and to exclude the outer world from my own view. I sought out a secluded corner and compressed my body deep into a dusty niche of plastered brickwork; there I sat and dreamed of Him alone. Half ashamed and half excited, I lifted a corner of the sari He that had soiled (with cow dung) to my nostrils. I dared to inhale its mysterious scent and in doing so my mind was drawn into remembrance of these mantras:
Om Namo Brahmanyaye
Devaye
Go Brahmanyaye
Krishnaye
Namo Namaha
I bow to the Brahman
To the gods
To the Cows of the Brahmins
O Krishna
I bow to Your Name
Upon the very instant when I breathed that fragrance into myself, an immortal fire arose in response to greet its presence. A sacred flame, which had ever been, but which had been confined within a lotus-shrine whose petals were tightly closed upon it and which, so immured, had thus been long forgotten, appeared in the very centre of my being as the petals of that lotus opened and the texture of its petals became transparent. The heat and brightness of this flame so liberated from its confinement transformed the earthy scent of the inhaled particles of earthly cow-dung into that of transcendentally perfumed vibhuti ashes - the materialised essence of the all-illuminating Light of the Cows of the Vedas. It was again at that precise moment of illumination and transubstantiation that His enigmatic figure, nude of pretty foot and adorned with raven blue-black locks which were themselves flower decorated, and as if treading upon the undulating waters of a lotus lake and not upon cement, rounded the corner that led round to my alcove retreat. He turned the magnificence of His face towards me and cast the Light of His gaze directly upon the awakening light of my soul. Never, ever, had my tender soul been invaded by such Beauty, nor had I believed such Beauty to be possible, neither on Earth nor even in the highest of the seven Heavens in which the light of my religion had taught me to believe so deeply. The impact of the darshan of the Beloved shattered the single flame of my fragile heart into a million brilliantly shining lights and I, cosmically entranced into awareness of the vast firmament which is the lights of all the souls in existence, was lost to all sense and reason. For a single instant, far briefer than a second of the clock's turning, I, no longer perceiving material appearances through the eyes of my material body, knew the boy differently. His skin was of an infinitesimally fine texture and of the powdery blue colour sported by peacocks in their plumage. Finer still was a minute and living golden Light interspersed between the molecules of His skin. The light of my consciousness was instantaneously withdrawn from its entrancement into the vastness of cosmic space and inducted within one of these microscopic golden particles and my soul entered His inner world by that minute golden gateway.
Therein were uncovered wide pastures of Heaven in a twilight setting. Gentle animals, whose eyes were softened in love and purity and which were as beautiful and as mystically laden as His own, trod blissfully amongst the grasses. They, the sacred innocents, imbibed from rivers that ran with intoxicating amrita which maintained their bodies as living temples of ananda. The air around them was cool and sweet and in the distance rose the snowy peaks of the Highest Conscious States. 'My paradise,' cried out my Heart, 'my home long-lost. How ever had I come to be entranced into that remote dream-world planet; how ever had I fallen into that hard and unforgiving sphere of matter with its insensate misery and its unforgivable lack of Love’s graces?' - but then, as swiftly and as suddenly as I had been drawn out of that incomprehensible and evolving material world, I was precipitously sucked back into it.
I awoke into the illusion that was the concreted courtyard of the ashram and the illusory sensing of how painfully my shoulder blades were pressed up against the roughness of the bricks that formed the niche. In the swift regaining of my senses my darting glances sought out the beautiful boy, but they discovered He was gone. I had been absorbed for less than an instant by the measurements of earth time but during that fraction of a moment His image had entirely escaped my field of vision. A rush of panic and despair descended upon me and rising swiftly I hurried to the corner pillar where He had just been; my eyes, opened wide, but as if in hallucination, only registered empty vistas. In search of his presence my senses only registed his absence in whichsoever direction they turned and whether in the bright wide open spaces or in the shadows of the neem-trees and the doorways. Now sightless with the very extremity of grief in the face of this physical impossibility, and with heaven but remembered barely, I inadvertently tore my clothing at the knees whilst tripping over tree roots and unconsciously bruised my flesh by colliding it full-force into walls of stone. My dear sisters, quickly becoming aware of my strange condition, gathered round me. Coaxing me back towards my room, and leading me by both hands, they endeavoured, having returned me to the dormitory, to lay me safely upon my cot - but I found my state of agitation prevented me from lying as they insisted, but then again I discovered that I could not stand up properly as I wished, for my senses were uncoordinated and I was unable to keep my balance. I could not sit still and neither could I safely walk and pace the corridors and verandas. I could scarcely stay conscious for my soul beckoned me, as if urgently, into the depths of its inner spaces, but I also could not sleep, for the intensity of my longing for my Lord fully prevented it; I could not concentrate my thoughts but neither could I detach them from the object of my holy passion. I could not see this world clearly but nor could I behold the other, not even in my memory for this had become clouded over in a mist of great confusion where intellect, thought and sense impressions had been violently hurled out of their norms and standards and were whirling in a vacuum.
Guru Ma
The guru of Sangeeta