BHAGAVAN SRI RAMANA MAHARISHI

History

RAMANA MAHARSHI 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 question about identity, such as the question “who am I?’’.He was always seeking to find the answer to 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 world ”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 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 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 resolves to leave home and lead the life of a religious seeker. Naturally, he planned to go to Arunachala, the place which was the focal points of all his religious ideals. When he was 17 years old, Ramana left for Arunachala, arriving after four days of mostly train travel. He went directly to the central shine at 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 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 sacked books. He becomes conversant with the religious traditions of south India written in different regional languages.

Ramana continued to practise 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 practise repetition of a mantra rather than the “who am I? Method of self enquiry, he recommended repeating the pronoun “I” or the phases “I am” rather than repeating sacred Sanskrit words or the names of gods. This focused the person’s mind on “being itself” of the mystery of their awareness rather than an external object or word. However, Ramana did informal initiation 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 as inward 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 centre of one’s awareness) and its vibrant current of primal awareness. Those experience 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.”

(Lex Hixon, Jeremy P.Tarcher; 1989 Coming Home, The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions. New York: Martin’s Press.- p.46)

Ramana also initiated people in dreams by gazing intently into their eyes, and he would sometimes travel in the subtle body 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 “dream2”. 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 pleasure as ameans 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 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 realize 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 counselled 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 develop 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.” 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 follow the following astronomical event which appeared in the night sky over the scared 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 the 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 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 place. These eyewitnesses had been struck by its peculiar look and behaviour. Ramana who often circumambulator the scared mountain as act of worship seemed to be making his final arc around the mountain as an act of worship seemed to be making his final arc around the mountain as a blazing light in the night sky.