'''Charles Henry Allan Bennett''' (1872-1923), was member of the [[Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn]]. He was a friend and associate of [[Aleister Crowley]].

Bennett received the name '''Bikkhu Ananda Metteyya''' at his ordination as a Buddhist monk and spent years studying and practicing Buddhism in the East. He was the first Englishman to be ordained as a Buddhist monk (Bhikkhu) of the [[Theravada]] tradition and was instrumental in introducing [[Buddhism]] in England. He established the first Buddhist Mission in the United Kingdom.

Bennett was, along with George Cecil Jones, Crowley’s primary teacher during his days in the Golden Dawn. Bennett was educated at Hollesly College, and scraped by as an analytical chemist. Bennett was initiated into the G.D. in 1894, taking the 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. He was one of the more brilliant minds in the order, and favored mysticism and white magic; he was almost wholly concerned with enlightenment rather than supernatural powers. Bennett had high regard for Mathers, and with him began working on a book of correspondences that Crowley would later expand upon as Liber 777.

Soon after meeting, Crowley invited Bennett to come stay with him, as Bennett was living in a dilapidated shared apartment. Bennett trained Crowley in the basics of magick and tried to instill a devotion to white magick. Bennett was very ascetic and sexually chaste, a marked contrast to Crowley’s libertine attitude. Crowley once remarked concerning Bennett’s powers: Bennett had constructed a magical wand out of glass, which he carried with him. As it so happened, Crowley and Bennett were walking along one day and came across a group of theosophists who were ridiculing the use of wands. “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."

In 1900, at the age of 28, Bennett traveled to Asia to relieve his asthma, and to dedicate himself to Buddhism. First he traveled to Ceylon where he studied Hatha Yoga under the yogi [[P. Ramanathan|Shri Parananda]]. In 1902 Crowley came to visit him there, and Bennett instructed him in Hatha Yoga. During this time both men agreed as to the truth of Buddhism. Later, in Burma, Bennett took the vows of a Buddhist monk, under the name Bhikku Ananda Metteya, “bliss of loving kindness.” In 1903 he founded the International Buddhist Society. He later began a periodical called The Buddhist Review.

Back in England in 1908, Bennett attempted to spread the study of Buddhism on his native soil. He published “The Training of the Mind” in The Equinox. Crowley tried to rekindle the friendship that the two had known, but to no avail. By this time Crowley had rejected Buddhism and embraced magick; Bennett had done the exact opposite. He remarked, “No Buddhist would consider it worth while to pass from the crystalline clearness of his own religion to this involved obscurity” (Sutin 193). It is hard to say what really caused the break between them. Perhaps their visions of the divine really had grown too far apart. It would not be the only dear friend that Crowley would lose.

Some sources say that Bennett intended to travel on to California due to health reasons. But with the outbreak of World War I he found himself stranded, and forced to live in poverty and illness. He died on his native English soil at the age of 51. He wrote two books during his life: The Wisdom of the Aryes and The Religion of Burma.

==References==
* Adapted from: Wikipedia. (2005). ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Henry_Allan_Bennett Charles Henry Allan Bennett]''. Retrieved on July 9, 2005

P. Ramanathan

2005-10-01T18:51:08Z

Solarmyth: new page

'''Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan, K.C.''' (1851-1930), was Solicitor-General of Sri Lanka, and became the Shaivite guru '''Sri Parananda''' after his retirement. He taught [[Yoga]] to his employee [[Allan Bennett]], who then taught it to his friend [[Aleister Crowley]].

Ramanathan was a cousin of '''[[Ananda K. Coomaraswamy]]''', with whose wife, [[Ratan Devi]], Crowley had an affair.

==References to P. Ramanathan in Crowley's Writings==

From ''[[The Equinox of the Gods]]'':

::''In Ceylon Frater Perdurabo found Frater I.A. (Allan Bennett), with whom he went to Kandy, where they took a bungalow named Marlborough, overlooking the lake.

::''I.A. had himself been developing on similar lines under '''P. Ramanathan''', the Solicitor-General of Ceylon, known to occultists under the name of Shri Parananda. (He is the author of commentaries on the Gospels of Matthew and John, which he explains as containing many of the aphorisms of Yoga.)''

From ''[[The Confessions of Aleister Crowley]]'':
::''The Solicitor-General of Ceylon, the '''Hon. P. Ramanathan''', engaged Allan as private tutor to his younger sons. This gentleman was a man of charming personality, wide culture and profound religious knowledge. He was eminent as a yogi of the Shaivite sect of Hindus (he was a Tamil of high caste) and had written commentaries on the gospels of Matthew and John, interpreting the sayings of Christ as instructions in Yoga. It is indeed a fact that one of the characters who have been pieced together to compose the figure of "Jesus" was a yogi. His injunctions to abandon family ties, to make no provision for the future, and so on, are typical.''

::''From this man, Allan learnt a great deal of the theory and practice of Yoga. When he was about eighteen, Allan had accidentally stumbled into the trance called Shivadarshana, in which the universe, having been perceived in its totality as a single phenomenon, independent of space and time, is then annihilated. This experience had determined the whole course of his life. His one object was to get back into that state. Shri Parananda showed him a rational practical method of achieving this. Yet Allan was not wholly in sympathy with his teacher, who, despite his great spiritual experience, had not succeeded in snapping the shackles of dogma, and whose practice seem in some respects at variance with his principles.

From ''[[The Gospel According to Saint Bernard Shaw]]'':
::''The Bible itself testifies to the universality of the wandering `holy man', and his aptitude for the founding of sects and communities. (Acts XXI, 38, and elsewhere) The evidence that Jesus was such a `holy man' or `yogi' has been worked out in the utmost detail by another of the same guild, known to the initiated as '''Shri Parananda''', and to the profane as the '''Hon. P. Ramanathan''' C.M.G. Solicitor General of Ceylon, in two commentaries, one on Matthew and one on John. These books are unquestionably the most illuminating ever written on the life of Jesus, being written, as it were, from inside information. Any doubt of the truth of the theory put forward in this essay that may remain in the mind of any unprejudiced thinker must immediately be dispelled forever by a study of these two books.''

==Books in Print by P. Ramanathan==
*[http://www.kessinger.net/searchresults_orderthebook.lasso?Author=Parananda,%20Sri&Submit=Query#0 ''Eastern Exposition of the Gospel of Jesus According to St. John, Being an interpretation Thereof'']
*[http://www.abintrabooks.com/cgi-bin/abb455/3996.html ''The Culture of the Soul Among Western Nations'']
*[http://www.indus-intl.com/bookdetails.cfm?bookid=IN-11620 ''THE RAMAYANA: The Wanderings of Shri Raman, From Ayothya to Langka in the Early Part of Thretha Yugam'']

==External Links==
* [http://www.tamilnation.org/hundredtamils/ramanathan.htm P. Ramanathan biography at Tamilnation.org]