‘We find ourselves in this wonderful universe, full of living things that grow and decay – sensitive plants, intelligent animals, singing birds, roaring tigers, and caterpillars that metamorphose into butterflies. And then there are men: wonderful men and horrible men, crude and refined men, dull and brilliant men, the only living beings capable of formulating the question of where everything comes from and what it is all about . . .

‘Might not one arrive at the conclusion that the answer must lie in the greatest mystery of all, namely, what is the nature of the awareness that allows one not only to observe this mysterious universe, but also to know that one observes it . . . this unseeable source of awareness.’

– From the Preface to An Open Window by Sri Madhava Ashish

Sri Krishna Prem and Sri Madhava Ashish taught a path of spiritual inquiry that involved every facet of what makes human beings human.
Sri Krishna Prem wrote: ‘Although this Path is the hidden basis of all religions it has but little connection with any religion as such . . . The path of ‘‘yoga’’ – the method by which man can unite his finite self with Infinite Being – is an inner path . . . When it comes to real practice we must drop the books, useful as they have been in giving a general direction to our aim, and adventure for ourselves along the pathway whose gate is in our hearts.’

Meditation thus forms the core of this journey inwards, whose aim is to see what lies beyond our brief lives: their beginnings and their ends. Madhava Ashish clarifies: ‘Our body forms the walls of our laboratory; our feelings, the power by which we operate; our dreams and visions, the data of the process; our thoughts, the regulators and channels of power; and that which is beyond thought, the awareness of being aware, becomes both subject and object of the investigation.

‘We are adventurers, setting out on a journey of discovery. We hope to discover the truth of our own being, its origin, and its destiny… We must search in the one place where we have first-hand knowledge of anything at all, and that is in the roots of our own consciousness.

Getting past the thinking mind is the first bottleneck. In a letter to a pupil, one image Madhava Ashish used was ‘leaning back against the inner door, the mind stilled – almost, but not quite, going to sleep. When the door opens, one falls in – backwards. But if one faces the door, expecting to see it and walk in of one’s own volition, the out-turned attitude of the waking personality prevents it from ever opening.’

Most people who attempt to meditate seriously encounter barriers to going in deeper. Sometimes we come to realize that fear of self-loss is the root cause behind such barriers – the ego digging its heels in, sensing its own annihilation in true dhyan. But since each ego composes its own variations on this theme, based on our own individual blend of desires and fears, we are therefore urged to take a step back, as it were, all through our waking hours, and try not to ‘identify’: to use psychological self-examination on our own desires and fears – radically different from your average meditation rulebook.

In a letter to a friend who lamented about how difficult it was truly to meditate, Krishna Prem wrote: ‘Fundamentally, the answer must be that the meditation is not interesting you. If it interested you as much as a novel or newspaper does, your mind would not wander. The answer is blunt but I fear it is true that we are not as interested in Him as we are in the things of this world . . . If all our interest is spent on worldly things we have none left for the main things for Him. We must withdraw energy from the outer in order that there may be more for the inner . . . See where our mental energy is running away to waste, and stop up that channel.’

Trying to be a disciple means that the insights of Freud and Jung do not merely remain interesting concepts in books. Whether it’s the Oedipus complex, animus / anima projections, the hidden Shadow, or the influence of archetypes, these ideas become tools with which to excavate our own subconscious compulsions: our conditioned responses, our assumptions, our reactions in stressful situations, self-assertive demands and opinions, possible over-attachment to a parent or child, how one spends one’s day, all the inventive ‘games people play’.

One-on-one discussions with Krishna Prem and Madhava Ashish could be both inspiring and unsettling, especially during those embarrassing, burning-cheek moments when one saw the urgency of uncovering one’s own particular brand of immaturity. The goal: to ‘free ourselves from the desires, fears and insecurities which well up from below the threshold of the waking mind and give our thoughts their seemingly uncontrollable drive – turbulent thoughts which obstruct our efforts to quieten the mind in meditation.’

An unusual aspect of this teaching is the importance Krishna Prem and Madhava Ashish give to dream analysis. During their own sadhana they themselves found it an invaluable tool in identifying the sub-conscious forces which block us: ‘cleaning the windows’. But, they believed, the value of dream goes far beyond psychology, offering ‘an open window into the kingdom of the soul’. ‘The power that shapes the symbols, the artist of our dreams’ leads us to ‘the inner world of non-physical reality’: pre-cognitive dreams, dreams indicative of reincarnation, out-of-body dreams, death dreams, and numinous teaching dreams – experiences that indicate that ‘life’s purpose is beyond life’.

Putting forward this metaphysic – the physical world’s spiritual roots – is the driving force behind two complex books by Krishna Prem and Madhava Ashish, Man The Measure Of All Things and Man Son Of Man. A modern ‘take’ on H.P. Blavatsky’s magnum opus The Secret Doctrine, they attempt to show that Mind, or consciousness, is not a byproduct of the brain, that scientific materialism is an inadequate outlook on life, and that, if scientists do not make metaphysical pronouncements which are beyond their remit, there is no split between mystical perception, psychic phenomena, and material forms. The goal, stated simply, thus becomes: ‘We seek to discover our place in the cosmic order…and whether there is any cosmic order to have a place in.’

Krishna Prem and Madhava Ashish called themselves ‘pupil-teachers’, in true humility. They explored, and urged pupils to explore, diverse spiritual teachings: Advaita, Buddhism, the Sufi masters, and mystics of all traditions, but the bedrock was the Way of the Bodhisattva – a commitment to compassion: ‘having crossed over to the other shore he helps others to cross.’