Bede Griffiths

I started going to church and I was confirmed in the Church of South India at the age of 34.

I then discovered the perfect teacher for me, Father Bede Griffiths, who had a Christian ashram in Tamil Nadu.

And he was deeply imbued in Christian mysticism, Hindu philosophy, spiritual practices.

We started the mass in that ashram every day with the Gayatri Mantra.

British.

He was born Alan Richard Griffiths, and by the end of his n- life he was known as Swami Dayananda.

Swami Dayananda.

He was a British Catholic priest and Benedic- Benedictine monk who lived in ashrams in South India and became a noted missionary.

It sounds like he went there to convert-

I think you were him in your previous life.

[laughs] Maybe I was Betty Griffith.

Swami Dayananda over here.

But anyway, I don't need to go into that now.

And then I traveled to actually a Christian ashram run by this Benedictine monk from England called Bede Griffiths, who was an amazing, amazing man.

It was amazing meeting him.

And there, there were some German yoga teachers teaching.

Well, what I was just saying, really, that for me, the personal relationship is the key thing.

Because, you know, if I... through being in the presence of this person.

And I mentioned that I also had the luck of meeting Bede Griffiths, who was this Benedictine monk at this Shantibanam, this ashram.

I met him just once.

It made much more sense to me having come there via India, as it were.

I then found a very wonderful spiritual teacher, Father Bede Griffiths, who was an English Benedictine monk who'd lived in an ashram in South India for 25 years by the time I met him.

And that was, uh, I lived for two years in his ashram while I wrote my first book, A New Science of Life, a book about morphic resonance.

And for me, Per- Father Bede was a perfect bridge because he was very deeply learned and steeped in Hindu mystical traditions and Indian philosophy, but also, um, introduced me to the Christian mystical tradition that no one had told me about before, which made, uh, much more sense of the path I felt I was on.