My autobiography Myngath is, as the subtitle of the work indicates, some recollections of my life; although it is perhaps more memoir of an experiential life than conventional autobiography. More of a recollection of some of the deeds, the experiences, the feelings, that over a period of some forty years led me to develope my philosophy of The Numinous Way, and thus changed me from a violence-loving neo-nazi activist and criminal – via involvement with Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, and a period as a Christian monk – to someone who values and appreciates empathy and compassion, and for whom a personal love, loyally shared, is the most numinous expression of our humanity.

A strange ending, perhaps, for someone once variously described in the following terms:

” A neo-nazi whose ideas were said to be the inspiration for the man who let off a nail bomb in Central London in 1999 has converted to an extremist form of Islam…  Myatt is reportedly the author of a fascist terrorist handbook and a former leader of the violent far-right group Combat 18…” [1]

” This is the man who shaped mind of a bomber; Cycling the lanes around Malvern, the mentor who drove David Copeland to kill [...] Riding a bicycle around his Worcestershire home town sporting a wizard-like beard and quirky dress-sense, the former monk could easily pass as a country eccentric or off-beat intellectual. But behind David Myatt’s studious exterior lies a more sinister character that has been at the forefront of extreme right-wing ideology in Britain since the mid-1960s.” [2]

” A staunch advocate of Jihad, suicide missions and killing Jews [...] and an ardent defender of bin Laden.” [3]

” Beneath [his] seemingly innocuous exterior is a man of extreme and calculated hatred…” [4]

” An example of the axis between right-wing extremists and Islamists…” [5]

” A ferocious Jihadi…” [6]

Perhaps the weirdest part of my story, as recounted in Myngath, is (at least to me) that I did not, and have not – and despite acknowledging my many errors and mistakes and admitting to the suffering I have caused – ended what Professor Kaplan called [7] my Siddhartha-like quest for truth by embracing or returning to the answers of some conventional religion and thus becoming some sort of penitent trusting in God or Allah. As mentioned in Myngath:

” To live with such self-knowledge would surely be – and should be – hard [...] I felt it would have been just too easy for me to depend upon, to turn to, to rely on, Allah, on God – to have one’s remorse removed by some belief in some possible redemption, to have one’s mistakes, errors – “sins” – voided by some supra-personal means. To escape into prayer, Namaz. Can there be, I began to wonder, hope, redemption – some meaning in personal tragedy – without a Saviour’s grace? Without God, Allah, prayer, Namaz, submission, sin, and faith? “

For several years I struggled, painfully slowly and perhaps still somewhat pridefully, to find some personal answers, sans a supreme deity, sans any deity, and sans the ideation of mechanisms such as karma and the bhavacakra.

As I wrote last year (2010) in the essay A Change of Perspective,

” The Numinous Way – as now developed, and as explicated by me in the past two years or so – represents [the] result[s] of my diverse experiences, my learning from my mistakes, and my empathic awareness of the suffering I have caused to others.

Hence, I have been, for many decades, wrong; misguided. Or, rather, I misguided myself, allowing idealism and a perceived duty to triumph over, to veil, my humanity. My good intentions were no excuse, even though, for nearly four decades, I made them an excuse, as idealists always do.  For, during all the decades of my various involvements – of my arrogant interference based on some abstraction – I sincerely believed I was doing what was ‘right’, or ‘honourable’, and that such suffering as I caused, or aided, or incited, was ‘necessary’ for some ideal to be born in some “future”.

But now my inescapable reality is that of a personal empathy, a personal compassion, a simple, quiet, letting-be; a knowing that such answers as I have, now, are just my answers, and that I have no duty other than to be human, to gently strive to be a better human being through reforming myself by quietly cultivating empathy and compassion. Of course, I do not expect to be understood, and probably will continue to be judged, by others, according to some, or all, of my former beliefs, involvements. “

For those few who might be interested in this wyrdful journey, this Siddhartha-like quest, the link below is to a pdf file of the eleventh (and latest) edition of my apologia, Myngath, issued in November 2011 CE [8].

David Myatt
2011 CE