Jon Chapple
In my recently completed biography of Sri Krishna Prem (1898–1965), the fascinating, brilliantly unorthodox British-born convert to Vaishnava Hinduism who was born Ronald Nixon, I included an appendix outlining what I consider to have been his core beliefs. These points of philosophy, based on three years’ study of both Krishna Prem’s lived example and his writings and correspondence, serve both as a concise introduction to his mature ideas regarding the nature of life and the Absolute and a lens through which we may analyse individual elements of the overarchingtheory, if such a thing can be said to have existed, associated with the teachings of this most unconventional sadhu.
Initiated as a vairagi (ascetic) in the Bengali Chaitanya Vaishnava tradition, Krishna Prem’s was nevertheless a deeply personal spiritual odyssey that incorporated influences from Buddhism, Hindu Vedanta, classical yoga, analytical psychology, and the Western mystery tradition alongside Krishna bhakti (devotion). In his personality and manners, he was variously described as being both ‘more Indian than the Indians’ and giving the impression of an English gentleman in saffron robes. A former Cambridge academic and professor, he nevertheless swore to the reality of ghosts, magic, and psychic powers. On his death in 1965 he was succeeded as head of the Uttar Brindaban ashram at Mirtola, near Almora, north India, by his disciple, Sri Madhava Ashish, who, continuing a process begun in the 1950s, further simplified daily life at the ashram, opening the temple and kitchen to all and instructing the growing circle of disciples in an increasingly direct, less religious mode.
It should be noted before continuing that students of Krishna Prem were largely encouraged to find their own way, particularly following what Madhava Ashish called the “great clear-out” of the 1950s and early 1960s. The travel writer, Bill Aitken, a disciple of Krishna Prem, has explained that by the 1960s there was “no Mirtola teaching as such.” Instead, the two gurus, who described themselves as “pupil–teachers”, adapted their guidance to the individual needs of each ashramite or visitor. It is important to recognise that most of the published accounts we have of Krishna Prem’s life, particularly those by authors with an affiliation to a particular tradition or sect, tend to emphasise one aspect of his belief system at the expense of others.
For many Gaudiya Vaishnavas (‘Hare Krishnas’), he is notable as the first Western guru in their tradition; Steven Rosen, a disciple of Prabhupada, founder of the Hare Krishna movement, connects Krishna Prem’s final words with his guru’s journey to America, writing: “[I]n November of 1965, on his deathbed, Śrī Krishna Prem had been documented as saying, ‘My ship is sailing.’ What he didn’t know, of course, was that the sublime ‘ship of Śrī Krishna Prem’ had, indeed, already set sail, just a few months earlier, headed for Western shores.”[1]Similarly, followers of H.P. Blavatsky speak proudly of Mirtola as a “Himalayan ashram with Theosophical roots”,[2]while the psychologist-turned-LSD evangelist, Timothy Leary, who visited Uttar Brindaban in 1965, writes that his “interest in healing as well as enlightenment defines Sri Krishna Prem as a precursor of the humanist psychology movement that was to sweep America and Western Europe in the 1970s.”[3]
While bearing all this in mind, the following aphorisms, collectively titled ‘The teachings of Sri Krishna Prem’ in my book[4], represent my humble attempt to distil four decades’ worth of spiritual theory into what may be called Krishna Prem’s guide to life on ‘the path.’
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1. The spiritual life is not easy and there are no
shortcuts to the Goal. Without “stickability” – perseverance – there can be no
chance of success.
It was with two conditions that Krishna Prem’s guru, the Bengali mystic, Sri Yashoda Mai (Monica Chakravarti), accepted his request to become her formal disciple. After first agreeing to adopt a vegetarian diet, Nixon then made a lasting commitment to dedicate his life to the service of his new spiritual master. Whatever happened, he would, he assured her, stick to the ‘path’ laid out by her before them, “and not, like so many would-be Sādhakas [seekers], change his loyalties at each passing whim.”[5]
For the next 40-plus years, true to his word, Krishna Prem clung doggedly to his vow of vairagya (renunciation), rarely stepping outside the ashram the pair had founded in the Himalayas and minimising contact with those who had known him as ‘Professor Nixon’ in order to dedicate himself wholeheartedly to a life of the spirit. As he once advised a fellow traveller on the path: “Clench your teeth and stick it out. We have no past.”[6]
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2. Seek out a living master.Yoga is the art of the soul and can only be taught by a qualified guru. When
the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
The method by which one realises the nature of God and the soul, what Krishna Prem called the ‘Thing’, may only be learnt from a qualified teacher. Those who would set out on the path alone, armed only with book learning, are doomed to failure, as Krishna Prem explains:
It is characteristic of this age of popular education that many people suppose that anything can be learnt by a patient study of books. But there are some things which can never be learnt in this manner and yoga (in any form) is one of them. Yoga is the art of the soul and it can never be learnt without the living contact with a master. All attempts to practise yoga without a guru, and a real guruat that, end either in disappointed failure, trivial psychism, ill-health or madness. The present writer has seen cases of all of the above occurring to uninstructed or ill-instructed would-be yogis.[7]
Krishna Prem’s fidelity to his own guru, Yashoda Mai, whom he considered a “jibanmukta”[8](a liberated, perfected sage), was total. His friend, the celebrated musician and yogi, Dilip Kumar Roy, remembers the pair’s “beautiful mother-and-son-cum-guru-and-disciple relationship”: Krishna Prem, he writes, followed his guru “everywhere like a shadow” and “was at her beck and call at all hours”, including at night-time, when he “slept on the floor, like a servant, on a bare blanket.”[9]Krishna Prem’s disciple, Narendra Nath Kaul, who visited Mirtola in April 1944, around seven months before Yashoda Mai's death, writes that Krishna Prem’s devotion “had to be seen to be believed. Ma was frail and not too well. … He carried her in his arms to the small chabutra [dais] in the ashram compound in the morning. Whenever she called him he would leave everything and rush to her.”[10]
While his love for Yashoda Mai the person was genuine, he was also, in these extraordinary acts of devotion, serving Krishna as the paramatma – the “guru within.”[11]
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3. Ego is the enemy. There are no
separate selves; apart from the All, there is nothing. As light is one,
consciousness is one, and pervades all beings.
Yashoda Mai, Krishna Prem’s teacher, writes that the “essence of the whole Path” is contained in the ability to suppress one’s “senses and ego”. “As long as there is consciousness of ‘I’, the separate self, there can be no consciousness of the Divine Self,” she explains. “Where the latter is, all self entirely dies.”[12]
At Mirtola, the term sannyasa, referring the final of the traditional four stages of life (ashramas) in Hinduism, was used as a synonym for vairagya, the vow of renunciation undertaken by Sri Yashoda Mai, Sri Krishna Prem, and Sri Madhava Ashish, Krishna Prem’s successor. Madhu Tandan, a disciple of Madhava Ashish, explains that the gurus further redefined sannyasa – which, she writes, she formerly associated with “wandering mendicants with matted hair and ash-smeared bodies, bound by a religious tradition which had little regard for the progress being made by mankind”[13]– as the all-important period when the:
ego is slowly withdrawn from activity as the individual ponders over the purpose of experience and accepts a phase of quiet withdrawal. Built around actualizing its capacity, the ego must at this stage be sieved and distilled as the individuality pursues a more in-turned principle. For that is what life is about – the development of the ego and then offering it to a principle larger than itself. When that is done then sanyas, or the ochre cloth, is donned. … “Initiation, the disciple asks for, but sanyas (the robe) the guru has to offer you,” [Madhava Ashish] had said.[14]
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4. Man is the measure. Human beings are
unique as the vehicle through which the Divine Consciousness, the source of all
existence, perceives Itself.
Part One of Krishna Prem’s unfinished masterwork, his commentary on H.P. Blavatsky’s monumental The Secret Doctrine, was given the title Man, the Measure of All Things – a reference to the teaching, expressed in Protagorean terms (homo mensura), of humans’ inherent divinity. As he once explained to Roy, “all men are incarnate Gods – only they know it not”.
This view bears the influence of Meister Eckhart, “perhaps the greatest of the Christian mystics”, who wrote, according to Krishna Prem, that God “sees His own image in Man — and nowhere else.”[15]This position may also have been inspired in part by his own Vaishnavism, which holds that the ultimate reality—Krishna—feels the greatest ananda (bliss) when he experiences himself through his devotees, but finds its greatest exponent in the personage of Blavatsky. In Man, the Measure of All Things, Krishna Prem and Madhava Ashish elucidate:
It is only through him who is ‘one with his Father’, him whose personal self is but a vehicle for his Father’s will, that the Father’s divine power can manifest freely with all its wondrous freedom. When that occurs, as it has now and then occurred, we gasp and idly prate of Gods, not knowing that beyond all Gods is Man, the heart of each of us, Ruler of all that is. [16]
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5. As within, so without. Events in the
outer world, like the wake from a ship far ahead, originate in those which
have already played out within. As is one’s thought, so one becomes.
Krishna Prem compares the state of the world to the troubled wake of a ship that has gone on out of sight, the trail of slime behind a snail, the pathway of dead ash left by a forest fire, “or – as He [Krishna] says in the [Bhagavad] Gita– ‘By Me already have these men been slain.’” All events playing out in our material creation have already occurred in the inner realms, if only we have the eyes to see.
“It is not that ‘coming events cast their shadows before’,” Krishna Prem explains, “but that inner realities throw their shadows behind and beneath and we – who live in those shadows – take them for realities.”[17]
- 6. Pay attention to your dreams. As the royal road to the unconscious, dreams contain important signals from our subconscious to our conscious minds.
Bill Aitken remembers that following the “great clear-out” of the mid-1950s, in which Krishna Prem and Madhava Ashish gradually de-emphasised Vaishnava ritual and theism in favour of a universalist, non-sectarian doctrine often categorised as “secular spirituality”, dream analysis, inspired by the ideas of C.G. Jung, seemed almost to supersede temple worship.
Madhava Ashish writes of he and his guru engaging in what he called “a long-term psycho-analytical adventure, with a vivid dream life which led us from one point to the next.”[18]In his book An Open Window: Dream as Everyman's Guide to the Spirit, he recalls that he and Krishna Prem:
went through a high period when a night without a dream was a wasted opportunity, a forgotten dream was a breach of trust. We hurried through our many chores to be free to pace up and down in the morning light, seeking meanings and their ramifications.[19]
For the Mirtola gurus, modern psychological and psychoanalytic techniques were useful tools to “clear the ground and bring the mind under control” before entering a meditative state,[20]and Krishna Prem warned his students against “abandoning the psychological inquiry” in favour of meditation-only sadhana.[21]
However, not everyone appreciated the introduction of psychotherapeutic methods into the de-Hinduised Mirtola, which by the 1960s was beginning more to resemble a psychoanalytical retreat than a conventional ashram. One woman with “spiritual inclinations” left disappointed after Krishna Prem and Madhava Ashish analysed her dreams of Shiva lingams, an unavoidably phallic representation of the god of destruction, “along ‘Freudian lines’”. “She felt terribly let down and did not care to have anything to do with such uncharacteristic sadhus,” recalls Satish Datt Pandey, a disciple of Sri Madhava Ashish.[22]
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7. Psychic phenomena are real, but beware of superstition:
belief in the occult, like any belief, should come only as a result of first-hand
experience.
Both Krishna Prem and Yashoda Mai, and the latter’s daughter, Moti Rani (c. 1917–1951), were reported to have possessed psychic abilities. In Krishna Prem, these first emerged as a result of the trauma he suffered after seeing his fellow airmen killed en masse in the First World War. According to his disciples, these occult powers, known in Hinduism as siddhis, included telepathy (thought transference) and telekinesis (the ability to interact with physical objects, such as temple bells, using his mind), as well as the ability to access his subtle ‘astral’ body.
While some visitors were put off by what they saw as the importance the “‘Mirtola teaching’ seemed to give to ghosts and psychic phenomena”[23], the capacity to see ghosts was one of the “rather strange and unorthodox attributes” which Krishna Prem considered to be helpful to a spiritual seeker, according to Satish Datt Pandey.[24]Other desirable qualities included acceptance of the “androgynous nature of one’s psyche” and a strong attachment to one parent.[25]
However, despite his self-identification with India and Hinduism, he was also highly critical of aspects of Hindu culture he believed to be overly superstitious and unquestioningly accepting of untested beliefs: for example, he was disparaging of those high-caste (Brahmin) Hindu priests who made their living by exploiting local peasants’ cultural superstitions. For example, by organising “yajnas [fire sacrifices] etc. to allay the planetary malice”[26]supposedly caused by certain alignments of the stars, and drew a distinction between the “magnificently rational doctrine” taught by the Buddha and the baseless superstition[s]” of many “Brahmanical beliefs.”[27]
8. Ignore one’s sacroids. The integrated man knows that earthly love, including the physical, is a shadow of the heavenly. The battle of life must be won and not run away from.
Krishna Prem was dismissive of what he called “sacroids” in those seekers whose holier-than-thou piety impedes their spiritual growth by rendering them unable or unwilling to “face the whole of oneself”.[28]He once chastised Dilip Kumar Roy for referring to him as “His Holiness”, explaining: “My Thakur [Krishna] isn’t holy and my Guru isn’t holyand I am certainly not holy myself nor intend to be.”[29]Another time, he told a student known to be afflicted with many “sacroids”: “We should do everything for the Lord. We should even piddle for the Lord.”[30]
Krishna Prem taught that love for or from God (prema) is of the same substance as the romantic or erotic love felt by humans for each other (kama). Taking aim at those who reject the physical aspect of such love, as well as praising the esoteric Vaishnava-sahajiya [the tantric, heterodox tradition of Vaishnavism that emphasises the erotic aspects of the Radha–Krishna legend] love poetry scorned by many conservative Gaudiya Vaishnavas, he explains: “[L]ove is one – there is no love but love, of course the thing that worries our ‘spirituals’ is that love has a physical component which, like all physical things is apt to claim more than its share of the attention. But ‘so what?’ as they say. So has meditation.”[31]
9. Books are useful – to a point. The Eternal is beyond words, which in any case mean different things to different people. The finger that points to the moon should not be mistaken for the moon itself.
If books can serve, in Krishna Prem’s words, as a useful reminder of the reality of the “path laid down by those who have gone before … and reached the goal”,[32]the real truth is within, beyond teachers and ancient scriptures, and accessible to all. As Krishna Prem and Madhava Ashish remind us in Man, the Measure of All Things (1966):
We have got so used to accepting it on external ‘authority’ of some sort, that it is not easy for us to adjust ourselves to the idea that no authority whatever, whether of sacred scripture or whether of men, can guarantee truth, but that it reveals itself in all its infallibility within the pure consciousness. Hence, if we would learn wisdom, we must seek it not primarily in books or teachers but in our hearts.[33]
Regarding this “hidden Knowledge”, while it is “true that attempts have been made to express it in writing”, these attempts must not be mistaken for “the Knowledge, cannot in themselves impart the Knowledge, and, in a sense, do not even contain it; they can only help to lead us to the Knowledge,” Krishna Prem explains.[34]The Knowledge, he adds, “exists in the only place where knowledge can exist, namely, in that which is the knower. Within the unsounded deeps of man’s being is all knowledge, for within him is hidden that Power which has brought all this universe into manifestation.”[35]
10. Doubt is the doorway to knowledge, and he who knows Reality fears no scrutiny of the grounds of his beliefs.
In contrast to what might be called orthodox Gaudiya Vaishnavism, which emphasises the total reliance on the words of guru, sadhu, and shastra—the spiritual master, saintly persons, and scripture, Krishna Prem placed great importance on personal revelation, or ‘listening to the heart.’ There is, he writes, “a Light within us which knows the Truth, a Voice which commands the right with absolute certainty.” However, it is because “we usually do not listen … that an outer Guru is a help upon the Path.”[36]In The Yoga of the Kaṭhopanishad (1940), he further reveals the existence of those extraordinary sadhakas who “appear sometimes to have scaled the Peaks with the aid of the inner Guru alone”[37](emphasis mine).
Because the sincere spiritual seeker is being constantly guided by this inner, or chaitya, guru, which “dwell[s] in the heart of every living being … and speaks … with the voice of conscience”,[38]they have no need to fear judgment or disapproval from others, self-doubt, or the possibility that they are making the ‘wrong’ decision. This philosophy brings to mind a piece of advice given to young Ronald Nixon by Gyanendra Nath Chakravarti: “Whenever I have to make a major decision in my life, I try to follow what I think to be highest in myself. I have not always succeeded. When I have, I never had occasion to regret it. When I have not, I have always regretted it.”[39]
11. Love is the guide. There is no why, no wherefore – love is its own law, and nothing is greater.
In his letters to his famous student, the philosopher-poet and one-time prince regent of Jammu and Kashmir, Karan Singh (1931–), Krishna Prem consistently stresses the importance of seeing beyond religious symbols, including Radha, Krishna, and Singh’s ishtadeva [favourite deity], Shiva – to the truth beyond: that “there is nothing greater than Love in this or any world”.[40]“[H]owever much the symbols glow for us, we have to pass through them to that which they symbolise,” he explains, “and speaking for myself, I find nothing more full and nothing which gives more meaning to an otherwise meaningless universe than the state of actual love.”[41]
Love of the Eternal – “the aspiration towards that white radiance which, dimly sensed through the many-coloured symbols of the Gods, is yet ‘the fountain light of all our day’” – is, Krishna Prem opines quoting Wordsworth, the “only satisfactory” motive for one’s setting out on the spiritual path: “Fear may cause us to shrink back, turtlelike, from the contacts of life; curiosity may expand our selves into the remotest corners of the manifested universe; but only with the wings of an ardent love can we soar upon the Swan’s Path to the Sun beyond the Darkness.”[42]
12. Embody the bodhisattva. Having crossed over to the other shore, one is obliged, following the example of the Buddha, to help others across.
According to Bill Aitken, who lived with and cared for Krishna Prem in his final year, the “bedrock” of Krishna Prem’s mature philosophy was his adherence to “the Way of the Bodhisattva – a commitment to compassion: ‘having crossed over to the other shore he helps others to cross.’”[43]Pervin Mahoney, a disciple of Madhava Ashish and another former resident of Mirtola, confirms: “This is an essential aspect of the mature final guide he evolved into: that the man of attainment ‘remains available’ to help others.”[44]
Such was Krishna Prem’s belief in the reality of the Bodhisattva Path that he devotes an appendix of his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, a fundamental text of Vaishnavism, to a novel, highly unorthodox theory that effectively makes Krishna, along with other avatars, of whom Rama, the Buddha and, for “the more liberal-minded, Christ”, are listed[45], into a Bodhisattva: a perfected man who has chosen to stay in the material creation in order to assist others on their journey towards enlightenment. This is a striking repudiation of what he calls the ‘orthodox view: “that Vishṇu [or Krishna], conceived as a personal God, from time to time takes birth among men”.[46]
While acknowledging that this theory is likely to “repel … the emotions of the devotee”[47] (bhakta), Krishna Prem holds that “the real Krishna, Buddha, or Christ is not the outer form which, like all other forms, is illusory, but the birthless and invisible Átman within, known to Buddhist tradition as the Dharmakāya.”[48]
He had earlier been warned, apparently to no avail, by his param guru (guru’s guru), Bal Krishna Goswami, against trying to syncretise Buddhist and Vaishnava beliefs.[49]
13. Religions are man-made; the Truth is eternal. Though it has many names, the Path that leads from death to Deathlessness is one, and all who tread it will ultimately reach the same Goal.
The idea of the essential unity of all spiritual paths was at the core of Krishna Prem’s teachings and worldview, and he returned to it frequently. This concept resembles the theosophical teaching that all religious traditions contain a common inner ‘great Truth’ and is central to his influential essay, ‘Initiation into Yoga’ (1939), which holds “there does actually exist a Path the treading of which leads to full knowledge of the Truth. It is a Path that has existed in all ages and in all countries, though the names by which it was known have differed widely. The Quest of the Holy Grail, the Search for the Elixir of Life or the Philosopher's Stone, the Devayāna or Pathway of the Gods are all terms for the same Path, the knowledge of which has always existed…”[50]
Krishna Prem’s teachings offer a unique synthesis of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions that reflect the idiosyncrasies of his own spiritual adventure. No Hindu leader before or since has so comprehensively melded Eastern thought with ideas adapted from Western psychology and esotericism. Still, he would argue he did not invent anything new. The path followed at Mirtola is claimed is the same as that trod previously by the Buddha, Christ, the Theosophical Masters, and the incarnated Krishna: ubiquitous, indivisible and eternal.
It is precisely because of these, and other, apparently contradictory aspects of Krishna Prem’s personality and identity – he was simultaneously a Briton and Indian, a Hindu and a universalist, and an intellectual and believer – that Krishna Prem’s life continues to hold such fascination for spiritual seekers, religious scholars, and students of history alike. While his ever-evolving, syncretic philosophy could at times be hard to pin down, Krishna Prem was consistent in his belief that there exists a universal religious truth on which all paths eventually converge. As he explains in The Yoga of the Kaṭhopanishad:
There are not half a dozen of these mystical absolutes floating about in the universe. There is not even one true and several false ones. There is just one Reality which has been symbolized in various ways, each symbol expressing more or less inadequately some one particular aspect of it. 'The Real is one; men describe it in many ways' (Rig Veda).[51]
[1]Rosen, S.J. 2017. Śrī Chaitanya's Life and Teachings: The Golden Avatāra of Divine Love, Lanham: Lexington Books. 203.
[2] Ginsburg, S.B. (ed.) & Madhava Ashish, Sri. 2012. Mirtola: A Himalayan Ashram with Theosophical Roots. Quest 100 (3) 98–105.
[3] Leary, T. 1990. Flashbacks – A Personal and Cultural History of an Era: An Autobiography. New York: GP Putnam’s Sons. 217.
[4] Appendix I: The teachings of Sri Krishna Prem. 2024. In Chapple, J.Sri Krishna Prem: A Wing and a Prayer. Kirksville: Blazing Sapphire Press, 315-316.
[5] Madhava Ashish, Sri. Sri Sri Krishnaprem Vairagi. In Singh, J. (ed.). 2004. Letters from Mirtola (Written by Sri Krishnaprem and Sri Madhava Ashish to Karan Singh). Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. 88.
[6] Madhava Ashish, Sri. 2007. An Open Window: Dream as Everyman's Guide to the Spirit. New Delhi: Penguin Books.XI.
[7] Krishna Prem, Sri. A Modern Yoga (review of The Riddle of the World). In Roy, D.K. 1992. Yogi Sri Krishnaprem (3rd edition). Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. 300.
[8] Bandyopadhyay, S. (ed.). 2011. Sri Aurobindo to Dilip, vol. 4 (1938–1950). Pondicherry: The Mother & Sri Aurobindo. 148..
[9] Roy. Yogi Sri Krishnaprem. 65.
[10] Kaul, N.N. 1980. Writings of Sri Krishna Prem: An Introduction. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. VIII.
[11] Chambers, J. 2009. The Secret Life of Genius: How 24 Great Men and Women Were Touched by Spiritual Worlds. Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books. 196.
[12] Tandan, R. 2019. Metaphors and Quotes of Yashoda Mai’ (summary of Krishna Prem, Sri [trans.]. The Homeward Journey [unpublished]). Mirtola: Thakurji Sri Sri Krishna Trust. 4..
[13] Tandan, M. 1997. Faith & Fire: A Way Within. Gurgaon: Harper Collins. 254.
[14] Tandan. Faith & Fire. 255.
[15] Singh. Letters from Mirtola. 56.
[16] Krishna Prem, Sri & Madhava Ashish, Sri. 1969. Man, the Measure of All Things (1st US edition). Wheaton: Quest Books. 404.
[17] Roy. Yogi Sri Krishnaprem. 227.
[18] Madhava Ashish, Sri. 2015. Where’er Love’s Camels Lead: Sri Krishna Prem Remembered (unpublished). Mirtola: Sri Dev Ashish. 240.
[19] Madhava Ashish. An Open Window. XVIII.
[20] Madhava Ashish. An Open Window. 5.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Pandey, S.D. 2003. Guru by Your Bedside: The Teachings of a Modern Seer. Gurgaon: Penguin Books. 192.
[23] Pandey. Guru by Your Bedside. 99.
[24] Pandey. Guru by Your Bedside. 98.
[25] Pandey. Guru by Your Bedside. 98–99.
[26] Singh. Letters from Mirtola. 33.
[27] Nixon, R. 1923. The Knowledge of the Buddha. The Maha-Bodhi and the United Buddhist World 32 (8). 290.
[28] Pandey. Guru by Your Bedside. 193.
[29] Roy. Yogi Sri Krishnaprem. 281.
[30] Pandey. Guru by Your Bedside. 193–194.
[31] Singh. Letters from Mirtola 50–51.
[32] Sen, G.E. Sri Krishnaprem (introduction). In Roy. Yogi Sri Krishnaprem. XV.
[33] Krishna Prem & Madhava Ashish. Man, the Measure of All Things. 203.
[34] Krishna Prem, Sri. Initiation into Yoga: An Introduction to the Spiritual Life. Wheaton: Quest Books. 57.
[35] Krishna Prem. Initiation into Yoga. 58.
[36] Krishna Prem, Sri. 1938. The Search for Truth. Calcutta: Ganesh Chandra Bose. 8.
[37] Krishna Prem, Sri. 1940. The Yoga of the Kaṭhopanishad. Allahabad: Ananda Publishing House. 72.
[38] Krishna Prem.The Search for Truth. p7.
[39] Madhava Ashish, Sri. 1976. Sri Krishna Prem through the eyes of a disciple (foreword). In Krishna Prem. Initiation into Yoga. 22.
[40] Singh. Letters from Mirtola. 67.
[41] Singh. Letters from Mirtola. 60.
[42] Krishna Prem. Initiation into Yoga. 43.
[43] 2018. Teachings. https://www.mirtolareflections.com/the-teachings.html– accessed 23 January 2023.
[44] Mahoney, P. Email to the author. 23 June 2023.
[45] Krishna Prem, Sri. 1948. The Yoga of the Bhagavat Gita. London: John M. Watkins. 199.
[46] Ibid.
[47] Krishna Prem. The Yoga of the Bhagavat Gita. 199–200.
[48] Krishna Prem. The Yoga of the Bhagavat Gita. 200.
[49] Niroop, email to the author, 9 July 2021.
[50] Krishna Prem. Initiation into Yoga. 40.
[51] Krishna Prem. Initiation into Yoga. 66.