Charles Henry Allan Bennett (8 December 1872 – 9 March 1923) was an English Buddhist monk 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 first 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, who raised him as a strict Roman Catholic, struggled to support the family. During his youth he was plagued with bouts of acute asthma, which were debilitating sometimes for weeks at a time.
According to Crowley, he had early experiences 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. Bennett went into the back garden to perform the invocation and something happened which frightened him. At sixteen he was disgusted at a discussion of childbirth; 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." At this moment he lost his belief in God and relinquished his faith, announcing himself 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, but 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 London-based public analyst and consulting chemist with an international reputation. 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 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 with 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 searching for a way to fill the void that had formed from this parting and also 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 The Light of Asia (1879), 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 Bennett's life, and made a revolutionary impression that lasted his lifetime. He was deeply moved by the pure and rational faith experienced through Arnold's poetry. This religious experience led 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, sought 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, 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 join 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: 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 was rather difficult and detailed, drawing on antiquity, involved things like the Egyptian symbol of immortality, and harmonising the forces of Mercury with Mercury's 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 replied: "then Goetia has been meddling with you." Bennett 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!"