Shankara - I Am Shiva

Om. I am neither the mind,
Intelligence, ego nor ‘chitta’
Neither the ears, nor the tongue,
Nor the senses of smell and sight,
Neither ether, nor air,
I am Eternal Bliss and Awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

I am neither the ‘prana’,
Nor the five vital breaths,
Neither the seven elements of the body,
Nor its five sheaths,
Nor the hands, nor the feet, nor tongue,
Nor other organs of action.
I am Eternal Bliss and awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

Neither fear, greed, nor delusion,
Loathing, nor liking have I,
Nothing of pride, of ego,
Of ‘dharma’ or Liberation,
Neither desire of the mind,
Nor the object for its desiring.
I am Eternal Bliss and Awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

Nothing of pleasure and pain,
Of virtue and vice, do I know,
Of mantra, of sacred place,
Of Vedas or Sacrifice,
Neither I am the eater,
The food or the act of eating.
I am Eternal Bliss and Awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

Death or fear, I have none,
Nor any distinction of ‘caste’,
Neither father, nor Mother,
Nor even a birth, have I,
Neither friend, nor comrade,
Neither disciple, nor Guru.
I am Eternal Bliss and Awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

I have no form or fancy,
The All-pervading am I,
Everywhere I exist,
And yet I am beyond the senses,
Neither salvation am I,
Nor anything to be known.
I am Eternal Bliss and Awareness.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

Spring Coming Early in the Country

A fine old wisteria struggling with the evening chill on the terrace of Danesfield House, Marlow

The City

My office stands in the shadow of the Gherkin (Swiss Re) but our building is being redeveloped and is being let to run down. Millers will move about 100 yards to their new office in 2008.

The top photo shows current rebuilding in the area.



Waiting for friends in The Sterling, the pub under the Gherkin, my 'local' in the City.

The Stanzas of Dzyan

The Eternal Parent [the great Matrix], wrapped in her ever-invisible Robes, had slumbered once again for seven eternities.

Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration.

Universal Mind was not, for there were no Ah-Hi [the serpents of limitation] to contain it.

The seven ways to bliss were not. The great causes of misery were not, for there was no one to produce or get ensnared in them.

Darkness alone filled the boundless all, for Father, Mother and Son were once more one, and the Son had not yet awakened for the new wheel and his pilgrimage theron.

The seven sublime Lords [levels of consciousness] and the seven Truths [the structure of the universe] had ceased to be, and the universe, the son of Necessity, was immersed in Paranish-panna [the highest truth], to be outbreathed by that which is and yet is not. Naught was.

The causes of existence had been done away with, and the invisible that was, and the invisible that is rested in eternal non-being - the one being.

Alone, the one form of existence stretched boundless, infinite, causeless in a dreamless sleep; and life pulsated unconscious in universal space, throughout that All-Presence which is sensed by the opened eye of Dangma [the perfected seer].

But where was the Dangma when the Alaya [the eternal parent - the matrix] of the Universe was in Paramartha [state of supreme reality] and the great wheel was Anupagaka [without parents]?

The Stanzas of Dzyan - the first of seven

See also The Scientist and the Universe

See also Hilma af Klint

St Peter's Eaton Square

View of St Peter's across Eaton Square gardens. My parents were married here in 1944

Drapers' Company Dinner

A dinner at Drapers' Hall with guests

The View from Old Winchester Hill

The view from the hill over Stocks south towards the coast, in summer after harvest

Aspects of this view appear several times in this Journal, as I grew up here. Click the links for some of them.

Stocks History from the Archive

View from Old Winchester Hill (Country Life)
Views from Old Winchester Hill (Flickr)
Kei running up Old Winchester Hill

Old Winchester Hill

The iron-age earthworks on Old Winchester Hill are clearly visible on this hazy spring morning.

The view of the hill from the south shows Fauld's new house built where the cottages once stood

1 Corinthians 13

Though I speak with tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing.


Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself; is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly; seeketh not her own; is not easily provoked; thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.


Love never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part and we prophecy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.


When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then, face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13

Click on the heading to hear the Winchester cathedral organ

Drapers' Almshouse Teaparty 2007

Tea for the residents of the Drapers' Almshouses at Drapers Hall. Click on the heading to hear us singing 'Daisy Daisy'