My name original name is Phil, recently it has become Dharma. I’m 44 years old from Manchester in the UK.
My journey into spirit started when I was about 8 years old, and had what I now realise was a minor kind of mystical experience. I was playing outside when I suddenly had an experience of overwhelming certainty of death. Not just my death, but the fact that everybody, and everything that lives…dies. It wasn’t scary, but it was deep and profound, and it was accompanied by the absolute certainty that death is not the end of existence.
I later, at about 10, found a book called ‘The Encyclopaedia of the Unexplained’, which as well as such things as the Loch Ness Monster and UFO’s, also spoke about Kabbalah, Wicca and Aleister Crowley. It also gave a method of reading fortunes using playing cards, at which I had some success.
When I hit 13, I found the Dhammapada and ‘Teach Yourself Zen’ in the school library, and began to practice zazen. At 15, when I discovered the big bookshops in the city, I found ‘Techniques of High Magic’ by King and Skinner. This began my 10 year career as a practitioner of Qabalistic/Hermetic magic, seeing me joining The Golden Dawn and Ordo Templi Orientis. During this period I read voraciously, and practised assiduously at the techniques of the traditions. I developed quite a few siddhis to one degree or another, but was not really getting anywhere in terms of making sense out of life.
I had a very good friend who accompanied me on this journey for much of the way. Indeed, our Golden Daw temple was in his house. At some point, he got a job that involved him visiting peoples houses. He visited the house of one woman, who said she only had so much time, because she had to go out to teach yoga. They spent the whole time talking about yoga and Western Mysticism. She invited him back to talk further.
At the second visit, she gave him a copy of a tape called ‘Sacred in the Every Day’, a lecture by Ram Dass. The same evening, he and I were traveling to a cabin in the woods so we could perform some ritual or other that required isolation and immersion for a couple of days. We never did it, because he played me the tape, and we spent the whole weekend listening to it and discussing it.
I’m now married to Pat, who gave him the tape, and she is now called Poornamurti, as I am called Dharma.
Poornamurti is a yoga teacher, her teacher, and her teacher training teacher (if you follow), was Swami Paramatmananda. Swami P (to save some typing), was originally Dorothy Charnley from Middleton. She had met Swami Satyananda when he visited the UK, and had followed him back to India, where she lived for many years, eventually taking initiation and becoming Swami P. She eventually returned to the UK to teach Satyananda Yoga.
After listening to the tape, I went to Pats yoga class and was amazed. I’d been to yoga classes before. I was very much into martial arts, and had practiced yoga for flexibility and strength. But this was different. The stuff I’d heard on the Ram Dass tape was being given out as part of the class, and the class included meditation and discussion.
As part of my insatiable appetite for reading, and because the Golden Dawn and Crowley ‘borrow’ from yoga quite a lot, I had read some stuff before, such as Shankaracharyas Brahma Sutra commentary, and the Bhagavad Gita. Suddenly this stuff was being brought to life.
Pat and I got married. I, who had been quite happily dropping in and out of temporary theatre work, mostly out, got a job so we could get a house.
I ended up spending 12-16 hours a day, 6-7 days a week working at my job, and went from 180 pounds to 320 pounds in a couple of years.
I stopped everything to do with the western tradition I had been practicing, but never quite got round to replacing it with anything substantial from the yoga tradition. Except for meditation, japa and karma/bhakti.
14 years ago, when I was about half way up my weight gain curve, Pat and and I and one other friend travelled to Aix-le-Baines to see Swami Niranjanananda (Niranjan). Whilst there, he gave us mantra diksha, and our spiritual names.
In 200, we travelled to Wales to see him again, and this time he was graceful enough to give us Karma Sannyas diksha.
We saw him again in Brittany in (I think?) 2002? 2003?
We were due to see him again in Harrogate in 2009, but at the last minute, we received news he could not travel out of India. We went to the convention anyway, and were so glad we did, as it was attended by Swami Satyasangananda (Satsangi), who informed us that Swami Satyanananda had told Nirajan that he will no longer travel the world, as he had done for 30 years, but would now remain in India. Swami Satsangi has now taken over the travelling role.
This was a bit of a blow. It meant we might never see our Guru again!
However, when Swami-ji had given us mantra diksha, he had asked that we visit him in India some time. We decided now was that time.
So In October this year we travelled to the two main ashrams of our tradition during he festival of Ashwin Navaratri. It was the most amazing experience. Swami-ji, who has now teken the place of Satyananda-ji as head of the tradition (Satyananda-ji passed away in 2009), spoke to us privately for much longer than we could have hoped for, and was so beautiful and full of light and joy, I cannot describe.
So now I’m here. Swami Niranjanandas’ fattest and most recalcitrant disciple. Practicing my japa daily, attempting daily pratyahara and dharana exercises, but mostly just trying to keep God and Guru in mind as I go about my daily business, performing my duties for their behalf.
