Diary of a Mad Yogi

By Simon Hollington

On the day the Beatles Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club, is released in June 1967 - Raphael falls off his motorbike and momentarily dies. In a vision, he sees Shiva, the father of Yoga, and is altered in a way he cannot understand.

Diary of a Mad Yogi is a wild ride of spiritual adventuring, through wisdom traditions stretching from the Druids in the north to the Dreamtime in the south.

Raf is thrown into the vortex of one overwhelming question: what does it take to know who you are?

Simon Hollington’s ecstatic, voluptuous and witty prose takes us through a holographic universe as Raf finds his centre, in the place beyond all his imaginings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Nov 24, 2022

Book preview

Chapter One

The Triumph Bonneville rockets through the shadows of a Devon night. Slightly drunk, the rider is at one with machine, road, and invincibility. It is June of 1967.

As he rounds the final corner before entering the grounds of Hunterswood, Raphael opens the throttle and then nothing, total silence.

A pinpoint of light is growing brighter and there is a humming, a deep monotone; it is the most beautiful sound Raf has ever heard. The light takes the form of a huge man in a high hat. Shiva, says the giant, and then the image fades. The nothingness becomes noise and confusion.

As Raf edges back into the world of form, there is a part of him that is somewhere else, and reluctant to return. After several moments of disorientation, Raf is aware of the concerned face of an Asiatic man in a white coat. Breathing, he says. The family are gathered in a huddle by the hospital bed, displaying various forms of emotional confusion.

He’s back, Jimmy, his twin brother says, with mixture of joy and a touch of sarcasm; perhaps to mask his fear.

Three weeks later Raf is walking with the aid of a stick. A fractured leg, a stitched-up cut in his left cheek, and a bashed up bruised face—these are the results of the bike sliding on the thick mush of leaves of the eternal forest of the Dart Peninsular. Thank God, his brother remarks, you were as drunk as a skunk. If you’d been sober, you wouldn’t have bounced.

There is a secret that is Raf’s now. It is this—I am not here exactly, I am changed in a way I cannot define. He feels that he is in a dream, and the dream is like a game—magical, illusional, but vivid with potential, as if he could disappear or fulfil any desire. He has to hide this because it is overwhelming; tears or laughter catch him out at unexpected moments, and all he did was fall off a motorbike.

The magic of the Dart estuary has come home to Raf. He’d never noticed anything with this intensity. Before it was just home, trees were trees, and birds were birds—now they appear as electrically vivid rainbows of light, communicating joyously with sprays of energy. It is as if Raf is seeing into the hidden dimensions beyond the normal human spectrum.

Hunterswood is a series of buildings cobbled together around a fifteenth century hall. It is set within a forest on the banks of the River Dart and was once part of the Walter Raleigh estates. The garden is a series of terraces down to the river. The view from the highest terrace is upstream towards Totnes. All that can be seen from Raf’s room is the broad sweep of the estuary and the forest itself. It is like a lost kingdom—no visible structures, no neighbours, except for Phillipa Nicholson, the famous novelist in the grand Regency house, one mile distant on the high shoulder of the river. Raf becomes aware, for the first time, of the aroma of leaves—a sweet woody perfume. Such is the beauty and sensuality of the light, along with the caress of the wind, that he is in constant sensual overwhelm.

Is it imagination or are the birds interacting with him? A starling lands on the bedroom window ledge, singing and fluffing itself up. Did that happen before? The trees appear to be, well, alive in a way he hadn’t even considered. There are also colourful lights at the corner of his vision, and there is a knowledge and understanding that has arisen—that somehow he has a purpose, whereas before he accepted life without question as it randomly rolled out. Although somewhere deeper inside him, he believes that maybe all this was inevitable, given his heritage.

His Mother Gloria, also known as Glor to the family, has always had heightened intuition; and on that night, she knew something was going to happen. Apparently, she’d been pacing up and down the corridors, chain-smoking her roll-ups.

Glor kept looking at Raf in a new way, as if trying to work him out. Father, Joseph, Joey, whose eccentricities are legendary, is as enigmatic and cryptic as ever; although there is something that Raf can see in his father he hadn’t seen before—a certain power if you like—an aura of blue-violet light, causing Raf to blink and rub his eyes continuously as the world reforms itself into a matrix that he cannot quite grasp.

The doctor had been impressed by Raf’s couple of minutes of not breathing. The blow on the head must have been much harder than they realised. The crash helmet had flown off, as Raf had not secured it properly when leaving the pub; however, the brain scans had not revealed internal damage.

Died huh? Raf muttered.

The doctor, who had a black platted beard and unusually long hair, nodded. You may find that things are somewhat different for a while, or maybe for longer and … he paused and then added, The brain deprived of oxygen, it can, evolve, if you like to think of it that way.

The conversation with the Indian doctor at Torbay hospital puzzled Raf, although he was not able to react or question him. It was just the way things were now. Evolve, what had he meant? How do you fall off a motorbike and evolve?

Walking into the forest past his father’s tower, the old church where Joey restores antiques, Raf is drawn into the mulchy oxygenated forest. He makes for the Mother Tree, a tree he once climbed in a gale. Leaning against the trunk, he falls into a reverie. Raf has no memory of his death vision other than the sound—the beatific hum—which comes back whenever he closes his eyes. He can hear it again when he presses his ear to the tree. The tree has a message, which reverberates like a mantra through the branches—

Shiva Om, it whistles, blending into the breeze.

Chapter Two

The atmosphere is of a time that cannot be recaptured—the taste of air, the photonic quality of light itself, this sixties thing. The energetic shift made real or surreal through the vibrant music of ‘Sergeant Pepper’ playing on the teak Stereo system, reverberating around the great hall of Hunterswood, is a tangible evocative force. Raf has just bought the record, the first day of its availability, from Wright’s Records in Brixham. The Beatles’ music is speaking to him directly, and genetically. There is a vague sense of uncurling lost parts of the great story, the lost magic; it is a kind of code.

The large hall has a series of circular gilt framed paintings of angels, after Sabino Raphael, set in niches high in the arched ceiling; this is how Raf got his name. These paintings, purchased by his father in Lostwithiel from a vicarage sale, were catalogued as copies, which is true except for one that was an original—a seventeenth century minor Venetian master—representing at least two years’ worth of groceries.

Replaying this multi-dimensional music, Raf is dancing, mesmerised by one particular song, ‘A Day in the Life.’ It is appropriate, as the lyrics describe an accident, conveying to Raf the lost reality of his life prior to his accident, in contrast to what he is now experiencing. The atmosphere of this music is unbearably surreal, suggesting to Raf that he might actually be dead and somehow living on in a dream continuum. The song eventually winds up and crashes down with the final piano chord. He is playing it over and over. He blew his mind out in a car …

The family are out, Raf is alone with the spirits. It is only since the accident that the ghosts have shown interest in him, rather than his brother Jimmy. They are, though, merely colours moving through the sunbeams, and there are sparkles of energy, or hints in the form of thoughts he has never had before like—eat no meat, seek the teacher, sit in meditation, serve Shiva, find the centre. What is all this? He is speaking to the image of Archangel Michael, gowned in electric blue, framed in baroque gilt. Michael appears to shift his smile from indifference to compassion. Raf covers his eyes, overwhelm sets in again.

Raf slides off the Chesterfield onto the eighteenth century Feraghan Sarouk carpet. His father Joey, a dealer of art and antiques, had the ability to find things in unlikely places—like the old master Tintoretto he discovered in a farm sale near Bideford, which paid for a big chunk of Hunterswood, followed by the imperial yellow Ming vase he found in the lavatory in a house sale in Cornwall, which paid for the rest. It wasn’t always like that; there were months, maybe years, when nothing much happened in terms of discovery. However, when it did happen, it really happened.

Joey doesn’t own a tangible business, a shop, or warehouse, but works closely with other outlets in London who understand something about the mystery that is Joey. It is Glor who spotted Joey’s skill. She saw the Diviner’s aura knowing what it was—a gift of an ancient lineage to which she was connected; the Welsh relatives, druids and the like. It was she who showed Joey how to apply his skills, after he had been through a series of initiations.

They were two halves of the same peach, their enigmatic uncle Maurice, the ‘Bard’, had remarked once, adding, Twin flames, as rare as imperial Ming.

Raf and his twin brother Jimmy are subliminally aware of all this but are still mystified by their father and mother. Of course, they accept them just as they are; however, it is when they meet their friends’ families, they realize that their parents have no correlation to your regular mum and dad, circa 1967.

Then there is the Welsh connection, Gloria’s aunts and uncles, and an unlimited supply of cousins who appear from time to time, sitting for hours in the great hall while Raf and Jimmy are excluded.

There are the holidays in Wales with Uncle Maurice, who some refer to as the Master Bard. Uncle Maurice’s and Aunt Marge’s farm has a central tower, the only habitable remnant from a castle that was destroyed in one of the countless battles with the English. The rooms are filled with Jacobean furniture, books, antlers, huge amethyst geodes, paintings of bearded warriors or poetic types. The farm is a small holding, growing herbs, chickens, and goats; there are cats, dogs, and odd helpers. Uncle Maurice and Aunt Marge have an aura of power both intangible and magical and, to Raf at least, somewhat confronting. Unlike Jimmy, his brother, Raf hasn’t fully acknowledged the weirdness of the family heritage in his quest for some sort of normality. Uncle Maurice is a touring druid bard, producing plays and poems on all things Celtic. Aunt Marge is a passionate author, and lecturer of Celtic culture and its relationship to the pan-shamanic world cultures—which she believes, and demonstrates, were in contact with one another through the ages.

Do you know who they are? Don’t you get it? Jimmy, who today would register on the autistic scale, had often remarked. Jimmy knew things, strange things about herbs and plants, nature spirits, fairies, elves, and potions designed to alter consciousness. He worked closely with his mother, and also at Deedas Gardens, across the road from Hunterswood on the estate of Phillipa Nicholson. When he wasn’t working, he would visit his girlfriend, a Martial arts instructor in Torquay, or sit in the garden writing in his journal. Joey used to call him the Poet Warrior Gardener. Raf and Jimmy also hold, deep within them, a secret—which is their variable ability to know what the other is doing, thinking, feeling; wherever they might be. Although this may be common enough with twins, with Raf and Jimmy it was uncanny—to the degree that it was rarely spoken about openly.

What a family, was Raf’s vague internal refrain. For sure he was curious about the Celtic and druid heritage but, at the same time, intent upon his youthful life of pubs and rolling in the hay with the girls from Churston riding stables.

In a world which has abandoned mystery in favour of materialism, their mother’s alternative medicines, homeopathic remedies, and father’s dealings in the arts, are something that the two brothers are discouraged from talking about in wider circles, let alone with their extended family. The world isn’t ready, Gloria would say.

Joey had worked at Hunterswood as a boy, with his father, a gardener on the Raleigh estates, when they were still owned by minor aristocracy. I knew then that somehow, someway, I would live here in this place, Joey had told the boys one Christmas.

The ground is so fertile that the green fingers of Gloria produce endless vegetables, herbs, and flowers, not normally associated with the moist and cool climate of Southern England. Both Father and Mother love this place as if it were a living part of them.

Hunterswood is inextricably linked to who they are—the garden, the forest, the river, the outhouses, the remoteness. Joey had, Glor explained, been alerted by a relative that Hunterswood was available, and he had driven directly here twenty-five years ago only to find that the place was for sale. The offer he made was accepted, even though he didn’t have the money to pay for it. Somehow or other he cobbled together a deposit, borrowing from a wealthy cousin. Six months later he’d found the Tintoretto.

Gloria was proud of her Celtic lineage; she also had access to memories of a past life as a healer priestess in Egypt. When the twins were young, she jokingly referred to herself as a dragon—and in that moment Raf saw something in her eyes that caused him, as a young child, to believe her. In this life she was a gardener of such earthy connections that if she stood still long enough, you’d suppose she was a tree. She and her family, the druids and magicians from the Welsh hills, were apart from the world of middle England which they awkwardly occupied.

At the top of Joey’s tower, the old chapel, is a pyramid constructed by a shaman from Hawaii who had turned up one day, out of the blue, and put together a copper framed pyramid filled with crystals which apparently connected to a world ‘grid.’ Raf had never quite understood what a shaman was exactly, some sort of wizard, or drum beating ethnic tribal elder. These sorts of events were not unusual in the family and as a child he had innocently accepted this. As he’d grown up and met other children’s families, he’d realized—yep, they were different alright.

Glor also placed her homeopathic remedies under the pyramid, which had the effect of doubling their potency. The pyramid, Raf had recently learned, created a vortex energy for health, connection to the sacred geometry of the area and beyond, as well as particular information that worked with Joey’s divining skills. And so, Joey would sit under the apex—when guided—until he got the call. Then he’d appear wearing his peaked cap with a certain fixated look, and get into the turquoise Volvo estate, with its silver Unicorn mascot, and disappear for a week or so doing the rounds; returning with objects gleaned from auctions, dealers, and markets.

Devon, Cornwall, and Somerset were a repository of retired colonials who had sacked the world and then some. These estates were coming up for sale as their owners died, and the world was awakening to the potential monetary value of art and antiques. However, Joey’s role was also altruistic, in that he had a mission to return certain sacred objects to very specific sacred places in the world.

There is a face on the cover of Sergeant Pepper, it stands out as if illuminated. Raf didn’t know it then, but it is of Sri Yukeswar, the enlightened lineage holder of Kriya Yoga in nineteenth century India. The Lion of Bengal, as he was referred to by his famous pupil Yogananda, who wrote the great classic ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ and who also features on Sergeant Pepper’s cover. However, there is Shiva himself, not on the album cover but in the rhododendron bushes behind the kitchen, in the gloom of the dining room, just at the corner of Raf’s vision.

Raf is sitting in the hall surrounded by the Angelic paintings, he asks, have I completely lost the plot? Archangel Michael appears to laugh at this, and to Raf’s surprise, there is an answer to the question, NOO. Raff jumps up, spins around; it is twilight and at this time the old house and ancient forest combine to play tricks. The NO reverberates into the continuous hum of the monotone Ommm. He looks down at the carpet and it appears to be in motion; the pattern transfixes him and yet he is as sober and un-stoned as a newborn baby.

Chapter Three

The Bedford transit van is purple. Joey had picked it up from a dealer friend—Raf’s twentieth birthday present. No more motorbikes.

Having happily left school at sixteen, Raf had been doing odd jobs around the area, and had helped Joey collect items from the auctions. This had led to a job offer from a Totnes auction house. Like his father, Raf had a ‘sense’ for the divination of objects, which had greatly increased since the accident. Raf had the weird sense that he could find things by lying on the Feraghan carpet and then falling into a dream like state. It was an unsettling sensation because along with it, other senses had arisen—like being able to see through people’s masks and deceptions. Listening to the news on the radio, now seemed like listening to fiction or lies. He knew something wasn’t quite right with the world, as if a filter had been smashed in the accident and he was seeing things the way they are, rather than the way he had been told they were.

The auction room was run by a friend of Joey’s, an eccentric fellow Brian Merton, who had profound knowledge of art and a photographic memory for artists. He was always in a rush, a man with huge energy and a kind heart.

On his first morning, Raf has been sent on a mission to Dartington Hall, the five hundred-year-old manor, which had been purchased in the 1920s by a wealthy philanthropist, after the Indian mystic Poet Ranganathan Tagore had urged him to do so. Since then, it has flourished as a centre of the arts of all disciplines.

Raf is taken to an out-house attached to great Saxon hall to look at items that have been in storage for a number of years. We need the space. These have been here donkeys’ years, the caretaker explained, as Raf rifled through piles of old prints and boxes of china. There is, however, one object that catches his attention—it is a china figure of an oriental man, which was in a box of tea ware. Having loaded the van with the prints and china, Raf returns with a box and some paper to secure the heavy porcelain figure. The glaze is soapy, and there are patch marks on the base. To his eyes, it looks as if it could be eighteenth century, possibly Chelsea or Bow. Remarkably, it is undamaged.

Walking back through the grounds Raf passes an outhouse covered in ivy, facing the magnificent gardens. The sound emanating from the building is of a man singing, or rather chanting. It is similar to the sound that has reverberated around Raf’s head since the accident. Unable to stop himself, Raf looks in through the open door.

A man is standing at an altar, his hands in prayer. On the altar is a picture of Lord Shiva, around his neck a snake, above his head a crescent moon. The man begins to move in what appears to be a form of calisthenics. Raf is mesmerized by the movements which have sensual beauty and grace, and even a familiarity. Sensing Raf’s presence, the man turns.

You are coming in, he says. The accent is Indian, the beard is white and extensive.

Raf walks in, puts the box down. Sorry, I was just curious …

Like the cat, the man smiles, and that is what killed the poor thing. He starts to laugh, his whole body reverberating. I am Sananda.

Raf, short for Raphael.

Like the artist who painted angels?

That’s me, named after him.

An angel and a curious cat, obviously this is my fortunate day. You have recently had an experience that may be connected to your being here and, of course, Shiva has shown you the unlimited beingness, the union of all—yoga.

Raf is held by these words, then thrown off centre in a way that has never happened before. A few moments later he finds himself sitting on the floor, on a flat orange cushion, being served tea in a yellow cup.

In this material paradigm, Sananda is saying, our senses have been deliberately reduced so that, although it is natural and innate, we no longer have clairaudience, clairsentience, the ability to hear our higher self, to see inter-dimensionally, to peer through timelines and see the future potentials, to maintain the locus of consciousness in the heart and collectively dream as one, to live between the magical and the material with ease and respect of all differences. Are you following my drift young man?

Yes, what you are saying explains certain feelings I have been having.

That is because feelings are our only true guide to the truth. The logical rational disconnected us from the eternal, the no-thing. Seeing Raf’s face, Sananda chuckles. I am not a small talker, the weather is unseasonal, rain is expected from the west. The obsession with avoidance, the English are masters at this; they have colonized the world with polite conversations about the weather.

Raf gestures with the cup, I don’t think I could have understood what you were saying today, six weeks ago, before the accident.

Such a twisty-turny language English, the language of magic and confusion. I am speaking to you of these things because, Sananda closes his eyes looks at the floor, because … He opens his arms wide looking up into the eves. You have had what some people refer to as an awakening of the senses. Someone, cracked your walnut.

All Raf can do is stare at the man whose dark green eyes are back lit, designed to look beyond the ordinary. He is dressed in white, with a bright purple and gold scarf hanging loosely around his neck, along with several necklaces. His hair is tied in a ponytail extending to his waist.

Sananda continues, The colonial system overthrew the natural shamanic tribal world. We are controlled now by education, money, fear, and the inbuilt rationalist policeman—just like Orwell said. The policeman is in us, so we spout programmed responses taken from the newspapers, radio, television, while we commit war on our mother, running here and there in a panic of delusion. Capitalism, any ism, is a definition of sleep walking and ironically it is a time of awakening as we are approaching the galactic alignment, the change of the age in the 2020s. Humanity has a choice—continue sleeping or awaken and ascend to a higher frequency. Sorry to say, you have no choice, Shiva has pushed you through the door and it has closed behind you.

Raf becomes aware that he is holding his teacup in mid-air in front of him, he is trying to stabilize his mental equilibrium after receiving what feels like an energetic punch in the head.

Shiva has slapped you with the back of his hand, Sananda indicates the image on the altar. He starts to laugh, his chest and torso bouncing, expanding and contracting like a concertina. You have been woken up and here you are. At last, you have let go enough for the synchronicity of a higher intelligence to work with you.

Shiva, that is Shiva?

Sananda is holding up his hand. Listen to me please. I am here to teach a Yoga course; it begins this Saturday. It is for ten days, and you must come. Obvious, isn’t it?

Raf at this moment, feels like he has lost his grip on the safe comfortable world of beer, tv, and toast with marmite that he has tried so hard to be a part of. I can’t, I’ve just started a job, he says, slight panic creeping into his voice.

You show your boss what is in that box and explain you need ten days, and he will understand, Sananda says. You think you have a choice. Shiva is laughing, I can hear him. He cups his ear with his hand. The yogi’s eyes are projecting light; his whole body emanates light. His aura is alive with tinges of white and blue. There is nothing Raf can say, and nothing that can stop this man’s intent.

An hour later Raf finds himself sitting at a desk in the auction house overlooking the River Dart. He is gazing at the cover of a book which Sananda has given him, it is called Autobiography of A Yogi, by Pramahansa Yogananda. Raf is frowning, the image of Yogananda seems familiar. Then he remembers that he has seen it on the cover of Sergeant Pepper. He thumbs through the pages and there is another image, Sri Yukteswar, it was also on Sergeant Pepper. He reads the footnote, it says ‘The Lion of Bengal’.

Chapter Four

Brian Merton is fast walking across the warehouse; Brian tends to move fast on all occasions. When he reaches Raf’s desk, he stops and starts low-key gesticulations. A Chelsea figure of a Chinaman, it’s an unknown model. Remarkable on your very first foray. It’s going be the centrepiece of our next sale. Extremely well spotted.

Raf nods looking onto the desk at the image of Yogananda. I need to do a course; can I have ten days grace?

What kind of course? Brian is adjusting his tie, which has fled to one side.

Yoga.

Yogurt?

No Yoga. Nobody has heard of yoga in the UK in 1967. Raf had assumed yoga meant physical exercise; however, since reading a chapter or two of Autobiography of a Yogi, he is aware that it is the ultimate human quest for unity with God. I have no choice.

Yogi, like Yogi Bear? No choice? Brian is adjusting his trousers which also seem to have swivelled on his legs, causing his shirt to become untucked at the belly.

Well, if you must yoga, I suppose, maybe we will all gain in some way from your experience.

Chapter Five

Each day of the course was divided into physical Hatha Yoga for an hour and a half, then a silent break, followed by pranayama (controlled breath techniques) and a guided meditation of self-love and connection into the heart. Lunch was based on Ayuveda (the ancient Indian system of health and well-being), using dosha principles, and prepared by an elderly Indian woman and her granddaughter. It turned out that Sananda was the great nephew of the mystic Ranganathan Tagore, India’s most exulted poet, who had helped found Dartington through a divining meditation technique, recognizing it as an ancient site of a Temple of the Moon.

Sananda has come to Dartington as part of the celebration of the Tagore connection which had grown into a festival of all aspects of Indian culture.

The afternoon was dedicated to singing overtone Bija Mantras to establish the chakras in the correct harmonic resonance, followed by a discourse on the Sutras of Patanjali. Sananda explained that the text had come out of the ancient and mystic Indus Valley culture and expounded a succinct explanation of the ideals of reclaiming the sovereignty of higher consciousness, as opposed to the materialist scientific nihilism of the modern era, with its separation, individuality, and duality games of war and peace.

When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature, which is unbound consciousness. This is the third Patanjali Sutra, which Sananda repeats each morning. For Raf these words have a visceral effect—like being buffeted by a strong breeze. ‘Unbound consciousness,’ that phrase alone brings forward both fear and excitement. To be unlimited, reconnected to the eternal aspect of one’s self, which some people call variously Source/God/one pointed, this is what he has been glimpsing since the accident.