Allan Bennett

Charles Henry Allan Bennett (8 December 1872 – 9 March 1923) was an English Buddhist and former member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He was an early friend and influential teacher of occultist Aleister Crowley.

Bennett received the name Bhikkhu Ananda Metteyya at his ordination as a Buddhist monk and spent years studying and practising Buddhism in the East. He was the second Englishman to be ordained as a Buddhist monk (Bhikkhu) of the Theravāda tradition and was instrumental in introducing Buddhism in England. He established the first Buddhist Mission in the United Kingdom and sought to spread the light of Dhamma to the West. Co-founder of international Buddhist organisations and publications, he was an influential Buddhist advocate of the early 20th century.

Early life

Allan Bennett was born in London on 8 December 1872, his full name at birth was Charles Henry Allan Bennett. His only sister, Charlotte Louise was born in Brighton about a year before. His childhood was difficult and filled with suffering. His father died when he was still a boy, and his mother struggled to support the family, who nevertheless raised him as a strict Roman Catholic. During his youth he was plagued with bouts of acute asthma, which were debilitating even for weeks at a time.

He had, however, already some experience of an unseen world. As a young boy, about the age of 8, he overheard some gossip among superstitious servants, that if you recite the "Lord's Prayer" backwards, the Devil would appear. He set himself to the task of learning the prayer letter perfect and went into the back garden to performed the invocation. Something, the Devil, Mara or one of his army appeared that day and in terror he ran screaming back into the house. When he was sixteen he was disgusted at the boys discussion of child birth, becoming furious he stated "children were brought to earth by angels". After being confronted with a manual of obstetrics, accepting the facts he said: "Did the Omnipotent God whom he had been taught to worship devise so revolting and degrading a method of perpetuating the species? Then this God must be a devil, delighting in loathsomeness." This was the very moment that he disproved in the notion of an Eternal Creator God and relinquished his faith announcing himself as an 'agnostic'. In his personal biographical notes on Bennett, Crowley once stated "Allan never knew joy; he disdained and distrusted pleasure from the womb."

Bennett's father had been a civil and electrical engineer, following in his footsteps Bennett was a keen natural scientist. Bennett was educated at The Colonial College at Hollesey Bay, Suffolk, and later at Bath, England, with keen interest in Chemistry and Physics. Upon leaving school, he trained as an analytical chemist and achieved some success in that field. Bennett also conducted his own experiments, while no inventions or patents were fruitful at the time. Possibly true, in a fictional work Crowley depicts Bennett as working on one process "trying to make rubies from ruby dust" also stating a precisely similar process was in commercial use by others only years later. Bennett was eventually employed by Bernard Dyer, a public analyst and consulting chemist with an international reputation based in London. Dyer was also an official analyst to the London Corn Trade and invited Bennett to participate in an expedition to Africa. Bennett in the end turned down the offer to go, and stated to an occultist colleague and friend Frederick Leigh Gardner that he was rather glad for this because he could focus on furthering his esoteric practices. It is said that Bennett was Bernard Dyer's most promising student, though his shocking health prevented him from holding a job. Bennett also inquired of Gardner, if he could obtain a teaching position in chemistry or electrical science at local day schools. His electrical knowledge was profound, extending into the "higher branches of Electricity, Hertz waves, Röntgen rays, etc": this and his talent for experimental science, mathematics and physics would stay with him throughout his life. Cassius Pereira mentions that Bennett had "done much electrical work, which was just coming to fruition, when his health broke down...".

Bennett's constant sickness created a heavy lens of suffering towards life. He was disenchanted towards the illusions of pleasure and love and saw these as the hidden enemy of mankind binding each being to the curse of existence.

Search for spiritual truth

Having left Catholicism in his teens, Bennett was still in search to fill the void that had formed from this parting as he ever wished to find his place in the spiritual spectrum. Having a heart and intellect that sought cause and effect, analytical knowledge and wisdom, he wanted to apply scientific analysis to religion and uncover true spiritual gnosis. When Bennett was eighteen he fell in love with Sir Edwin Arnolds' book (1879) The Light of Asia, which at the time was said to cause "an enormous upsurge in awareness of, and interest in, Buddhism". This was a real turning point in Bennetts life, and made a revolutionary impression that lasted his lifetime. He was so deeply moved by the pure and rational Faith experienced through Arnold's poetry. This religious experience lead the way for Bennett to develop a closer association with the existing English translations of Buddhist Scriptures. Thus at this tender age of eighteen, having been inspired by 'The Light of Asia', Bennett announced himself a Buddhist by Faith.

Biographer Elizabeth J. Harris states Bennett "was a man of his time, born when the British Empire was at the height of its power and the wish to probe new religious pathways was gripping many young minds." Bennett searching for the height of Ultimate Truth, sort to find spiritual realization through the doors of religious and mystical practices and teachings available to him. One notable experience that occurred, also at the age of eighteen, where all at once Bennett spontaneously attained to the cosmic yogic state of annihilation ''Shivadarshana'', literally meaning "to have sight of Siva." Even though he was immediately thrown out, Crowley comments it was "a marvel that Allan survived". Even after years of hard practice the effect on him was transformative, he said to himself referring to that lofty state: "This is the only thing worthwhile, I will do nothing else in all my life but find out how to get back to it." Crowley further noted "It is a marvel that Allan survived and kept his reason," as this extraordinarily high state of yogic attainment can be dangerous, a potential cause for madness. Crowley further explained the cross reference that ''Shivadarshana'' is the same experience as one of the formless arupa jhana's in Buddhism.

On 24 March 1893, Bennett applied to joining the notable organisation the Theosophical Society. This society was a known path to spiritual exploration covering mystical traditions from east to west; yoga, religion and the esoteric and exoteric were all seen as things to be studied and practised. Notable also that the founders both had declared themselves as Buddhist in Ceylon in 1880.

Shortly before his 21st birthday in November 1893, Bennett wrote a letter to F. L. Gardner stating "I have been ill - had an attack of apoplexy, which laid the body up..." going on to request a set of astrological Ephemerides so he could track back a horoscope of his exact time of birth. During his time Bennett also gave a lecture to the Lodge on Egyptian mythology. By 1895 Bennett had lost interest in the Theosophical Society and turned his full attention to the esoteric gnosis.

Golden Dawn

Dawn of the esoteric

Bennett was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1894, taking the Latin motto "Voco", ("I Invoke"). He quickly progressed through the grades, entering the Second Order as a 5=6 on 22 March 1895 and taking the Hebrew motto "Iehi Aour", ("let there be light"). He was always very poor and tormented by illness, but still made a strong impression on other occultists of the time. Bennett was one of the most luminous minds in the order and favoured mysticism and white magic rather than the occult. Bennett was almost wholly concerned with divine knowledge and enlightenment rather than siddhis (magical powers) seeing them as mundane and divorced from the unrealised but glimpsed heights of spiritual attainment.

After initiation into the Second Order of the Golden Dawn on 22 March 1895, Bennett was considered the most proficient second only to S. L. Mathers and attained extraordinary success. Bennett had high regard for Golden Dawn leader Mathers, so much so it is said that he was adopted by Mathers and took his last name on until Mathers death. Notably he also helped Mathers put together an extended work the ''Book of Correspondences'', a systematic grouping of esoteric symbols and numbers from around the world which Crowley later expanded into a book of Hermetic Qabalah the ''Liber 777''.

Bennett at the age of twenty-three was already working on his own occult formula, which was seen as quite astonishing, one such popularised account was the esoteric ceremony he wrote for Golden Dawn associate and actress Florence Farr. The ceremony rather difficult and detailed, drawing on antiquity, involved things like the Egyptian symbol of immortality, and harmonising the forces of Mercury with Mercuries intelligence Tiriel, while working in the hour of Tafrac under the domain of the Great Angel of Mercury. Its purpose is stated to learn the hidden mysteries of art and science. With the second order of the Golden Dawn having over thirty members, in a period that was exceedingly orthodox, it is no wonder that his association with the occult haunted Bennett in later life. During this period Bennett was fascinated with the arithmetical subtleties of the literal Qabalah, and via his essay ''Liber Israfel'' we can note his poetic musing incorporating Egyptian symbology specifically on the 20th Major Arcana of Tarot, Judgement. Crowley recounts a humorous magical tale before their first encounter, where Bennett had created a consecrated talisman of the Moon to cause rain. To make it work it needed to be immersed in water. Bennett had somehow dropped it and "it worked its way into the sewer, London proceeded to have the wettest summer in the memory of man!"

Crowley had been in the same order as Bennett for over a year, however their first encounter was in early 1899 on the initiation of a new member into the order. During the ceremony Crowley became aware of a "tremendous spiritual and magical force" coming from the east; he knew it must be Frater Iehi Aour. After the ceremony Crowley was "led trembling before the great man" though he could not bring himself to say a word. In the anteroom an hour after the ceremony, Bennett came directly to Crowley startling him by announcing "Little brother, you have been meddling with the Goetia!" Crowley withholding the truth in shock denied this, Bennett recounted: then "Goetia has been meddling with you." Crowley said later "I protested myself unworthy even to pronounce the word!". Honoured Iehi Aour it seems could sense that Crowley had been "dabbling in malignant forces beyond his control". Crowley went home somewhat reprimanded and determined to call on Bennett the next day. Crowley later recounted "He had spotted me as a promising colt, and when, using my opportunity, I made myself even as his familiar spirit, he consented to take me as a pupil. Before long we were working together day and night, and a devil of a time we had!"

George Cecil Jones and Bennett were known to be Crowley's primary teachers during his days in the Golden Dawn. Bennett, four years older than Crowley, was the more experienced of the two and continued on to be one of greatest influences and inspirations in Crowley's life. The only other person that Crowley places on such an upper tier with Bennett is Oscar Eckenstein stating his " moral code was higher and nobler than that of any other man I have met." Crowley found in Bennett a Teacher of spiritual gnosis and a friend in spiritual seeking, and found him to be an "inspiration to work in white magic", further imparting "he bequeathed to me a beautiful Garden, the like of which hath rarely been seen upon Earth."

Poverty, chronic sickness, and accessing mysteries

Soon after the meeting, Crowley was shocked to find that the Very Honoured Frater Iehi Aour was living in a dilapidated apartment in the slums south of the Thames with another Brother of the Order. Crowley, deeply impressed with the man also pitying his situation, invited Bennett to come stay with him, now enabling the two light seekers to work together more fluently. Crowley organised a room for him in his Chancery Lane flat, "and settled down to pick his brains", for he knew his reputation "as the one Magician who could really do big-time stuff". For days, weeks and months, Bennett trained Crowley in the basics of magic and tried to instill a devotion to white magic. Bennett was generally ascetic and reputedly sexually chaste, a marked contrast to Crowley's libertine attitude. In a fictional work Crowley depicts Bennett's disposition towards chastity stating "He had an aversion to all such matters amounting to horror." Even though all early sources point to Bennetts chastity, unfounded rumours seem to of circulated in later years in an attempt to smear Crowley. Israel Regardie, who was a personal secretary of Crowley's for a time, agrees the rumours seem to be baseless, that he never heard anything from Crowley or any substantiated claim to suggest otherwise. Crowley had said of him "We called him the White Knight", that there "never walked a whiter man on earth" that he was a harmless, lovable "terribly frustrated genius".

In the preface introduction to ''Iehi Aour's'' work "A Note on Genesis" Crowley states "Its venerable author was an adept" with the esoteric system of symbols, accomplished in harmonising them in himself (here referring to what would later be known as Liber 777). "In the year 1899 he was graciously pleased to receive me as his pupil, and, living in his house, I studied daily under his guidance the Holy Qabalah." Crowley goes on to praise the " ratiocinative methods employed", and that the methods utilised were indeed "so fine and subtle that they readily sublime into the Intuitive." As to some darker occult experiments that Crowley dabbled in at Chancery Lane he made the clear and specific point that Bennett "never had anything to do with this".

Crowley's described Allan as tall, though "his sickness had already produced a stoop. His head, crowned with a shock of wild black hair, was intensely noble; the brows, both wide and lofty, overhung indomitable piercing eyes. The face would have been handsome had it not been for the haggardness and pallour due to his almost continuous suffering." He went on to describe how in spite of Bennett's ill-health "he was a tremendous worker". That he has a vast, precise and profound understanding of science and electricity. Crowley noted "He showed me how to get knowledge, how to criticise it and how to apply it." Also highlighting how Bennett had immersed himself in Buddhist and Hindu teachings for the purpose of spiritual insight. Crowley continued to relate that he "did not fully realize the colossal stature of that sacred spirit" and yet he was at once aware that "this man could teach me more in a month than anyone else in five years."

At a time when there was no legal prohibition against drugs, Bennett was an experimental user of available drugs (with which he also treated recurrent asthma) and introduced Crowley to this aspect of his occult and alchemical researches. Furthermore, as a part of his experiments into accessing the mysteries of the "subconscious and super-normal mind" and "the World behind the Veil of Matter" it is alleged he even experimented with poisons once taking an overdose that would have otherwise killed another man, though he remained unharmed. While Bennett was soon to abandon the practice of such experimentation and uses, Crowley went on to a life of hedonistic addiction though always held Bennett in the highest regard.

Crowley also painted the grim picture of how Bennett suffered acutely from spasmodic asthma at that early time. Bennett would take one drug at a time (up to a month) until it was no longer helping then cycled through the other drugs available to him until he was reduced to using chloroform. Crowley recalled how even for a week he would see him "only recovering consciousness sufficiently to reach for the bottle and sponge". After a brief period of being well the asthma would return again, and Bennett would be once again forced back into this grim cycle of existence. Crowley stated "But through it all the calm undaunted spirit walked the empyrean, and the radiant angelic temper ripened the wheat of friendship."

Impact, influence, and change of view

In a hallowing scene Bennett is described as "calm, majestic, clearly master of it all", Crowley paints in detail the aura of the man, that thunders forth; "instantly a ray of divine brilliance cleaves the black clouds above his head, and, his noble countenance flashing in that ecstasy of brightness." Crowley stating how this picture of Bennett was the literal truth. That Bennett was one of the very few people that he had met "who really could get ... the results they wished for" in this esoteric field, for it is easy for most to get unwished for results "madness, death, marriage".

Biographer Kaczynski states that Crowley took on the Adeptus Minor Grade motto, "let there be light" in an Enochian angelic language. While he guarded this closely throughout his life, it shows a clear reference to the influence of his teacher and friend. Crowley once remarked concerning Bennett's powers: Bennett had constructed a magical wand out of glass, a lustre from a chandelier which he carried with him. He preferred this to the wands recommended by the G.D. and would keep it "charged with his considerable psychic force and ready for use". As it so happened, Crowley and Bennett were at a party and a group of theosophists present were ridiculing in disbelief the power of the wands. It was alleged by Crowley that "Allan promptly produced his and blasted one of them. It took fourteen hours to restore the incredulous individual to the use of his mind and his muscles."

Crowley states how he had hoped Bennett would establish the Order in Asia "The Dawn was Golden when you met the guide, ... You took the boat that floated with the tide, To leave behind no track... I hoped that you would raise my magic Sword, Upon another strand." One of the differences they faced was that Crowley seemed to think that virtuous conduct could be bypassed, where Bennett went as far to insist it was the first founding factor an aspirant required, seeing the deficiencies in the West, namely the blamelessness of keeping the precepts. Crowley's Autobiography is dedicated to three "Immortal Memories", including "Allan Bennett, who did what he could". Sutin states that Crowley tried to rekindle the connection, Bennett was the reluctant one and eventually the two of them did start to drift apart.

Crowley notes years later "Allan, strangely enough it seems to me, lost interest rather than gained it as we acquired proficiency in the White Art... He didn't really care for Magic at all; he thought that it led nowhere. He only cared for yoga." Also while Bennett was a strong influence on Crowley's early life and later thought, Bennett one day responded to Crowley "No Buddhist would consider it worthwhile to pass from the crystalline clearness of his own religion to this involved obscurity." Years later Crowley's reprinted Bennetts essay "On the Culture of Mind", likely without his knowledge, with the new name "Training of the Mind" in the Equinox series. Here it can be seen that their understanding of ultimate reality had taken separate roads, Crowley seemed to think the two paths compatible, while Bennett was unwavering in his religious zeal. On a sombre note, Kaczynski quotes what Crowley wrote down upon his friends departure, now aware of Bennetts change in path: "O Man of Sorrows: brother unto Grief!"... "In the white shrine of thy white spirit's reign, Thou man of Sorrows: O, beyond belief!".

Travel to Southeast Asia

Ceylon, yoga and Buddhism

At some time between 1889 and 1900, in his late twenties, Bennett travelled to Asia to relieve his chronic asthma, after submersing himself in the study Buddhism. He travelled to Ceylon as a self-converted Buddhist, staying at Kamburugamuwa in the Matara district for four months, Bennett studied the Pali language and the root Theravadan Teachings under an elder Sinhala monk Venerable Revata Thera. Cassius Pereira later recalled that "such was the brilliance of his intellect" that he had mastered that ancient tongue in six months and could fluently converse." Further that Bennett "made many close friends amongst the Buddhists of Ceylon, who gave him much assistance in every way." Bennett also spent time visiting monasteries, monks and sacred sites, familiarising and immersing himself with the Buddhist culture and practice of Ceylon.

In Colombo he studied Hatha Yoga under the yogi Ponnambalam Ramanathan (Shri Parananda) who was said to be a man of "profound religious knowledge". As Bennetts' health improved, he served as tutor to the younger sons of the Shri Parananda, who was a high-caste Tamil and the Solicitor General of Ceylon. Florence Farr a prior Golden Dawn associate, was also to move over to Ceylon years later, and became the principal lady of Shri Parananda's College for Girls. Bennett joined the Sangha under the yogi and took the name Swami Maitrananda, which was already of Buddhist significance. The psychic potency of the man become more pronounced as he mastered the breathing techniques, mantras, asana postures and concentration practices in an amazingly short time period. Crowley visited Bennett in Kandy, and personally attended on him during a yogic meditation retreat. Crowley supported his retreat by quietly bringing food into the room next door to where Bennett was practising. Having missed two meals in a row, Crowley out of concern checked on Bennett finding him not seated on the central mat, but at the end of the room still in the Padmasana yoga posture "in his knotted position, resting on his head and right shoulder, exactly like an image overturned." Crowley set him aright, and he came out of the trance quite unaware that anything unusual had happened.

With his health improving in the warm weather, now free from the chronic cycle of drugs he had needed in England. Also, he had relinquished his experimentation into psychic and esoteric power. Bennetts quest for spiritual meaning had finally been quenched as he began to commit to the practice and Teachings of Theravada Buddhism. Crowley noted Bennett was "the noblest and gentlest soul I have ever known", and in spite of his teacher & friend's prior experimentation that "Allan was already at heart a Buddhist". Egil Asprem states "Following Bennett's example Crowley also engaged in a more intimate relation with Buddhism during his visit, and would subsequently consider himself a Buddhist for many years". Bennett later recounts "The native, and correct, designation of the pure form of Buddhism now prevalent in Burma, Ceylon, and Siam is Theravādha, 'The Tradition of the Elders' or, as we might justly render it, the Traditional, Original, or Orthodox School." His intellect, spiritual endeavour and faith sees this school as the "pure and simple" ... "practically unchanged after twenty-five centuries", that its inheritance is not mythical but rather "the actual words" the Buddha employed on his "religious mission" that are still rolling down to the present.

In July 1901, Bennett gave a talk at the Theosophical Society in Colombo named the "Four Noble Truths