About the author
Ajnanda's Life
From Profound Tragedy to Causeless Fulfillment
From the beginning, Ajnanda has had a challenging life. His father verbally abused and inflicted domestic violence on his mother and sister. As a sensitive child, Ajnanda saw this and froze in terror countless times. Then, when Ajnanda was five his mother died and six years later, so did his father. This meant his devoted elder sister had to raise him single-handedly. All this left Ajnanda with deep grief and sorrow within.
The Spiritual Quest
At 13, he learnt his first spiritual lesson by himself when he had a vision of the great spiritual teachers going back millennia in a single line and bowed to them in deep humility. Ajnanda’s quest for inner fulfillment began at 16 when he explored philosophy searching for the meaning of life, but soon realized that whatever truth is, it is beyond the intellect.
At 17, he experienced Charismatic Christianity and from the early 1980's he studied and tried many Western therapies - Cognitive Behavior, Counselling, Hypnotherapy, NLP, Psycho-synthesis and others. Yet Ajnanda did not find freedom from his issues, let alone unconditional fulfillment and spiritual liberation.
So Ajnanda began exploring Eastern approaches and for 25 years, he practiced many forms of meditation and spiritual practice - Buddhism, Ashtanga Yoga, Advaita / Non-duality, Kabbalah and Taoism, receiving guidance from many accomplished teachers. Through these years there were many experiences of spaciousness, transparency, spiritual ecstasy, I am-ness, the Now and various meditative states.
During this period he also witnessed and helped his sister deal with serious illness for over 20 years, before having his own multiple illnesses and symptoms for the last 15 years. These meant he had to cope with several types of pain as well as exhaustion and all the challenges they brought. He is now making a slow, concerted recovery.
Realizing Threefold Enlightening of Boundless Love, Awareness and Being
Then in 2006, a pure and boundless awareness was realized. It was simple and totally clear. Before long, after feeling boundless energy in the heart, this deepened into realization of unconditional bliss and compassion for all things and people. Then Ajnanda entered a vortex of fear before a deeper realization in the body of both limitless emptiness and being at once, revealing an unspeakable sense of meaning and fulfillment in ordinary life. Now the realization of pure awareness also occurs in luminous, dreamless sleep too. This is all holistic realization at the three levels of mind, heart and body as boundless Awareness, Love and Being which settled as the union of boundless Love Awareness Being.
Freedom
This resulted in freedom from Ajnanda’s deep-seated issues. He describes this as:
“Freedom from feeling trapped in thoughts, being swamped by emotions, from the deep grief and sorrow of losing my mother at 5, from childhood traumas that led to panic attacks, from the deep ache of unrequited love, from anxiety over financial hardships, from long term chronic illness, from the fear of going blind or losing my feet, from the fear of death even into oblivion, from the anxiety of no long term security, from chronic long term background anxiety that was there for no reason at all and of course, from the illusion of ego at the root of it all. All that has gone and as destructive emotions such as anger, fear and grief have shrunk to a trace, causeless serenity, bliss, well-being, meaning and purpose have been revealed.”
As his life now proves, causeless peace, contentment and fulfillment are possible, regardless of health, money, status, family, thrilling experiences or hopes for the future in this life or the next and even if life circumstances are harsh, which they are. So he now lives free from unhappiness, as this is unconditional spiritual freedom.
Vocation
For over 25 years, Ajnanda has run or assisted in running dozens of retreats, ongoing groups, seminars and workshops. He has enjoyed helping people from many different social, spiritual and religious backgrounds and from a variety of countries.
Ajnanda has guided people in Threefold Enlightening for six years, providing personal guidance and group instruction to people facing challenging issues or for realizing spiritual liberation. He finds it truly worthwhile as the methods of Threefold Enlightening work deeply. He does not ask people to change their beliefs or to adopt his views. This is because the practices work regardless of whether people believe in them or not. So people of all faiths can and do use them.
He currently lives in England with his beloved partner of 18 years, Sukyananda, who works as a special needs teaching assistant at a primary school.