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Sri Ramana Maharishi
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Ramana
Maharhshi was a guru of international renown from southern India who taught
during the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in 1879 near
Madurai, Tamilnadu. His father was a farmer. He was the second of three sons.
The family was religious, giving ritual offerings to the family deity and
visiting temples. One unusual aspect of his family history was a curse that
was put on the family by a wandering monk who was refused food by a family
member. The monk decreed that in every generation, one child in the family
would renounce the world to lead a religious life.
Ramana
was largely disinterested in school and absent-minded during work. He had a
marked inclination towards introspection and self-analysis. He used to ask
fundamental questions about identity, such as the question "who am
I?". He was always seeking to find the answer to the mystery of his own
identity and origins.
One
peculiar aspect of Ramana's personality was his ability to sleep soundly. He
could be beaten or carried from one place to another while asleep, and would
not wake up. He was sometimes jokingly called "Kumbhakarna" after a
figure in the Ramayana who slept soundly for months.
In
the summer of 1896, Ramana went into an altered state of consciousness which
had a profound effect on him. He experienced what he understood to be his own
death, and later returned to life.
He
also had spontaneous flashes of insight where he perceived himself as an
essence independent of the body. During these events, he felt himself to be
an eternal entity, existing without reliance on the physical body or material
world.
Along
with these intuitions came a fascination with the word "Arunachala"
which carried associations of deep reverence and a sense that his destiny was
closely intertwined with this unique sound. At the age of sixteen, Ramana
heard that a place called Arunachala actually existed (the modern town's name
is Tiruvannamalai) and this brought him great happiness.
Ramana
was nearing the end of high school when a careless criticism describing him
as a person not fit to be a student jarred him into making a final decision
to leave school. He had been reading a book on famous Tamil saints and
resolved to leave home and lead the life of a religious seeker. Naturally, he
planned to go to Arunachala, the place which was the focal point of all his
religious ideals.
When
he was seventeen years old, Ramama left for Arunachala, arriving after four
days of mostly train travel. He went directly to the central shrine at the
temple and addressed the Shiva symbol (linga) stating he had given up
everything and come to Arunachala in response to the god's call.
Ramana
spent ten years living in temples and caves meditating, and pursuing
spiritual purification, keeping the disciplines of silence and non-attachment.
At this point, his reputation as a serious teacher (he was called Brahma
Swami) began to grow and other seekers began to visit him. His disciples,
some of whom were learned individuals, began to bring him sacred books. He
became conversant with the religious traditions of South India written in the
different regional languages.
Early
disciples had a difficult time learning about Ramana's background and even
his native language because he was silent and refused to speak. As time
passed he ceased his ascetic phase and began to live a more normal life in an
ashram setting. Many people came to visit him with a variety of problems,
from both India and abroad.
Ramana's
disciples constructed an ashram and temple, and space the accommodate the
many visitors. All ate the same food and Ramana sat with the rest of the
people during meals and did not expect special treatment. The ashram was a
sanctuary for animals and Ramana had great fondness for the cows, monkeys,
birds, and squirrels that inhabited the grounds.
Ramana
continued to practice the method of inquiry into the nature of the self best
expressed by the question "who am I?".
Ramana
was not a guru in the classic sense of a teacher who gives instruction on a
regular basis or gives mantras during initiation. In fact, if the seeker
wanted to practice repetition of a mantra rather than the "who am
I?" method of self inquiry, he recommended repeating the pronoun
"I" or the phrase "I am" rather than repeating sacred
Sanskrit words or the names of gods. This focused the person's mind on
"being itself" or the mystery of their own awareness rather than an
external object or word.
However,
Ramana did give informal initiations using a special glance, or touch, or in
dreams. Lex Hixon writes:
...
although the Guru , or teacher is within everyone as primal awareness, an
illuminated sage can push us in the direction he described asinward in the
sense of being more primary, or primal. Ramana could give this initiatory
push by touch or by glance. Seated in silence, he would suddenly turn, fix
one with an intense gaze, and the person would become directly aware of the
right-hand Heart (the spiritual center of one's awareness) and its vibrant
current of primal awareness. Those who experienced the power of Ramana's gaze
have reported that the initiation was so clear and vivid that they could
never again seriously doubt that the Guru was none other than their own
primal conscious being.
(Coming
Home, The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions by Lex Hixon, Jeremy
P. Tarcher - Martin's Press, New York, 1989, p. 46)
Some
years ago, the author met a saint who called himself Sunyata. He was Danish
but had been invited to come to India by Rabindranath Tagore, the poet and
artist who received the 1916 Nobel Prize for literature. Tagore, while
visiting Europe, recognized Sunyata's extraordinary stillness and meditative
frame of mind and thought he would find India a welcoming place. Once in
India, Sunyata lived as a hermit in silence for almost five decades in the
Himalayas with neighbors like Lama Govinda and Dr. Evans-Wentz. Those who
knew him in that area would sometimes send seekers from the West to meet with
him and experience his presence.
Late
in life, Sunyata was invited by some visitors to move to the United States.
He began traveling around visiting seekers and giving informal talks on
meditation. He had gone several times to visit Ramana over the years while in
India. Describing his first meeting in 1936, he wrote about his experience of
Ramana:
Never
before had I awared [become aware of] such integral Self-Radiance in any
human form, such light of Silence. One was being fed just awaring him. At the
first sight of him, I felt no excitement or even awe, no solemnity or
ecstasy, simply a calm recognition, a glad contentment, and gratitude in his
darshan.
During
his brief talk, Sunyata described Ramana's special communication to him that
occurred during a later visit in 1940. Sunyata was sitting quietly in
meditation when he became aware of a powerful message from Ramana seemingly
directed especially at him. Suddenly out of the silence came a burst of light
and the following telepathic message in English:
We
are always aware of Sunyata
The
experience had such a profound effect on him that he adopted the name Sunyata
and used it for the rest of his life. Curiously, Ramana used the Buddhist
term sunyata which is sometimes translated as the Buddhist Void or emptiness
rather than a Hindu term closer to his own cultural tradition. Sunyata also
denotes the illusory or insubstantial nature of phenomena.
The
idea that we are always aware with some portion of our being of the ultimate
reality is a common view in many yogic traditions. It takes silence, focused
awareness, and a process of sifting through and in the language of the
phenomenologist bracketing out one's myriad thoughts and impressions to
become aware of this underlying reality. Ramama was simply emphasizing this
fact to Sunyata by creating a powerful mental impression that would affect
him for decades.
Such
was the power of Ramana's presence that he could have a profound impact on
visitors and change the course of their lives in an instant.
Ramana
also initiated people in dreams by gazing intently into their eyes, and he
would sometimes travel in the subtle body to visit people. He would appear to
a disciple hundreds of miles away as a luminous figure, and the person would
recognize his appearance in that form. He noted that one's waking life and
one's dream life were both a kind of dream each with different qualities of
awareness. He referred to them as "dream 1" and "dream
2". He therefore did not make a big distinction between appearing to a
waking disciple and a dreaming disciple since he considered both spheres of
existence to be dreams.
Ramana
recommended renunciation of enjoyment of physical and mental pleasures as a
means of entering into a state where the oneness of the self and cosmos could
be perceived. He also felt that a person who is not attached to the results
of his actions can live in the world like an actor that plays his or her part
but is immune to emotional disturbance, because he realizes he is only
play-acting on the stage of life.
Ramana
was able to demonstrate his own non-attachment when thieves broke into the
ashram and he counseled the disciples and visitors to let them have anything
they wanted. He remained calm during the incident even when struck by one of
the thieves. He also displayed no loss of equanimity at the death of his
mother, who had come to live at the ashram after selling the family home.
Ramana
developed cancer and when his devotees voiced concern about losing him, he
responded with the statement "I am not going anywhere, where shall I go?
I shall be there where I am always." This is the statement of an
enlightened sage - a person where the conflict between life and death is felt
no more.
He
died in April, 1950, sitting in lotus position. The final word that passed
from his lips was the sacred syllable OM.
The
French photographer Cartier-Bresson was visiting Ramana's ashram as Ramana
neared death. He noted the following astronomical event which appeared in the
night sky over the sacred mountain Arunachala as Ramana died:
I
saw a shooting star with a luminous tail unlike any I had ever seen before
moving slowly across the sky and reaching the top of Arunachala, the
mountain, disappearing behind it. We immediately looked at our watches. It
was 8:47. We raced to the ashram only to find that the master had passed in
to Mahanirvana at that exact minute. Nor was this experience only documented
by a select few … All the English and Tamil papers which arrived this morning
from Madras referred to the meteor which had been seen in the sky over the
entire state of Madras at 8:47 on the night of April 14 by a large number of
people in different places. These eyewitnesses had been struck by its
peculiar look and behavior.
Ramana
who often circumambulated the sacred mountain as an act of worship seemed to
be making his final arc around the mountain as a blazing light in the night
sky.
Many
Westerners who practice the devotional traditions of Judaism and Christianity
may see this focus on being itself in yoga as alien or unrelated to their
traditions. However when Moses asked God to identify himself in Exodos 3:15
when he encountered him as a burning bush, God replied, "I am that I
am". In the Hebrew, this is YHVH (Yod Hey Vav Hey, the Tetragrammaton,
or the "4 letters"), and its variations later became the
"names" Yahweh, Jehovah, and G-d.
These
are not proper names but instead refer to the highest quality of God which is
being. Being is primary and all other qualities and attributes of God depend
on this attribute which is so holy that Jews do not mention it directly.
Words like Adonai (my Lord) and Hashem (the Name) are used to refer to God's
name which is transcendent, ineffable, and is too holy to ever be spoken.
So
it is appropriate that the devotion in these Western traditions be directed
towards the most sacred aspect of God which is his existence as expressed by
the phrase "I am". This phrase was used twice by God in answering
Moses' question when God was asked to identify himself.
When
these Western religions evolved into traditions of devotion and the ritual
worship of God as creator, judge, and savior with new prophets, revelations,
texts, and incarnations, the emphasis on divine being became less important.
However many Eastern Yoga traditions such as Jnana Yoga continued to focus on
this divine attribute of being as a divine quality present in all life. Being
is something that human beings share with the creator or ultimate reality.
This effort to directly perceive the pure attribute of divine awareness and
discover the essence of being independent of matter, thought, and other
qualities is something Ramana encouraged. In spite of changes to Western
religion, this method of seeking to encounter Being (or God's essence)
directly as Moses did in the desert is arguably something Westerners can
relate to and respect as a religious practice because of their Judaic and
Christian roots.
Encountering
being in its pure form whether it is symbolized as the deeper Self or as
God's essence is the goal of yoga, and is not so different from the goals of
these Western religious traditions.
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When Bhagavan left Virupaksha Cave to avoid the harassment from
the sadhus, he first decided to go to the forest near Pachaiamman Temple and
undertake a dietary fast so that he could enter a state of ethereal existence
known as “pranava body”. However, the appearance of Vasudeva Sastri and another
Swami on the scene foiled Bhagavan’s plan. After a few similar unsuccessful
attempt to retreat into seclusion, Bhagavan finally accepted the presence of
visitors as unavoidable.
Skandasramam was the first to be known as an Asramam. He stayed
there for seven years with his mother, his younger brother Niranjanananda
Swami, who was to be the future sarvadhikari (manager), and a few sadhus. It
was here that Asramam cooking first started. This was due to the presence of
his mother. It was her presence that made it into an Asramam. After her nirvana
Bhagavan went to live beside her shrine at the foot of the Hill, where the
present Ramanasramam has grown up. This shows her to have had greater
importance than commonly supposed.
For some days after Alagamma’s samadhi people stayed close by.
They had to fetch water from Paliteertham with great difficulty. Observing
this, Bhagavan dug into the soil at a moist place and a spring emerged at the
very spot. A larger pit was dug and enough water was obtained. This came to be
known as Ramanateertham or aghasamanam.
Daily pooja had to be performed for the Matrubhuteswara linga.
Niranjanananda Swami would come down from Skandasramam every day to perform
pooja. In course of time he also found this to be difficult. A few days later
he erected a thatched roof over the samadhi and began staying there. Meanwhile,
the jayanti of Bhagavan neared. Dandapani wished to celebrate the jayanti at
the samadhi. A week before the jayanti, Bhagavan visited the samadhi and stayed
back. Nobody knew the reason for it, though a few speculated that it was for
the convenience of the visitors who found it difficult to visit him and serve
him atop the hill. But the real reason was quite different. Bhagavan himself
said that one morning when he came out of Skandasramam some irresistible power
dragged him down and that he came down even forgetting for the moment that back
at Skandasramam the ashramites would be waiting for him at meal time. “Did I
come here of my own volition? Not at all, it was due to the will of something
else,” said Bhagavan. Earlier, the power of Arunachala drew him to this place,
now the power of Amba residing in Matrubhuteswara must have done similarly.
Quite surprisingly, from that day on, the influence of that
sakti became manifest in all activities. It was as if in the presence of
Bhagavan that power acted just as prakriti would in the presence of purusha!
Its first job was to transform the face of the Ashram itself.
To start with, there was only one hut at the samadhi but in 1924
two huts, one opposite the samadhi and the other to the north of that got
erected. For bathing, the waters of Paliteertham and for pooja the waters of
Ramanateertham were used. As for food, several devotees from the town came with
offerings; in addition, some vessels were also donated to enable the Ashram to
have a kitchen. People also donated money. Books like Ramana Geeta were sold at
a book shop called Ramaneeya Granthalaya and the proceeds were given to the
Ashram. Dandapani and others utilized that money for buying vessels and food
articles. No money could be saved.
With all this, the Ashram did face difficulties. On any given
day at least ten persons dined there. This practice gave ideas to a group of
robbers. They thought that the Ashram was affluent; so on the night of June 26,
1924 they came for a robbery. Earlier also some robbers had entered the pooja
room and decamped with whatever they could lay their hands on. But the present
gang was made of sterner stuff. They threatened to burn the place down and
struck Bhagavan on his thigh with a stick. Bhagavan’s conduct during that
robbery will for all time remain a teaching for those who wish to walk the
Lord’s way. Bhagavan firmly negotiated with them to refrain from hurting the
dog but asked them to hit him again if they so wished. The objective of the
robbers was to terrify them. The Maharshi was unmoved and unperturbed.
By 1926, a few more constructions took place. Along with this
expansion squabbles arose among the disciples as to who should manage the
affairs of the Ashram. How true it is to say that the desire to exercise power
is as strong as the desire to earn money and have possessions. After
Niranjanananda Swami became the sarvadhikari in 1930, the construction activity
in the Ashram was spectacular. Several buildings like the office, the book
depot, the store room, the dining hall, the guest room, the Veda pathasala, and
the goshala were constructed the last named, largely because of Lakshmi the cow
who became a sort of an adopted daughter of the Ashram.
As time passed, facilities for visitors and inmates of the
Ashram were added. Notable among these was the guest house built by the Raja of
Morvi across the road opposite the Ashram.
Both Chadwick an Englishman and Devaraja Mudaliar who were
disciples of Bhagavan built rooms for themselves in the Ashram compound itself.
Adjacent to their rooms Yogi Ramaiah and Subbarama Reddy constructed their
rooms. All these four were close to the flower garden lying to the west of the
hall where Bhagavan stayed.
A dispensary also had come up to the north east of the flower
garden to cater to the medical needs of visitors and Ashram inmates. Ashramites
also spent substantial amounts in renovating Paliteertham and built steps to
approach the waters. A library housing numerous volumes in various languages
was also established.
Huge sums were needed to build all these. The ashramites never
sought any donations. They also had no capital to start with. The amounts given
unasked by visitors, and the amounts received by the sales of Ashram
publications constituted the main sources.
There were a number of devotees who served in the Ashram expecting no
return. Actually, Ashram employees were few; the devotees got nothing in return
but Bhagavan’s grace. Work would always go on from four in the morning to about
eleven in the night. With the passage of time, providing food for unexpected
guests ceased to be a problem.
Guruji. A. Sivaguru Swamy
Whatsapp Skype IMO 9963334337 Facetime 9346346956
Skype – sivaguruswamy29
45/2, Opp.Railway Station, Sirkali Tq, Vaitheeswaran Koil,
Naagai Dist, Tamilnadu–609 117
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