At first glance Ramana Maharshi would appear to be the quentissential stock figure of Indian mythos - a saint who realized his vocation early, achieved enlightment soon after and passed quietly away after living a peaceful and gentle life that transformed a bunch of devoted followers. What this potrait misses is the iron will that drove him, a tenacity of purpose that paid huge rewards when it was turned inwards to the unfoldment of the spirit.Ramana Maharshi had no patience with self-delusion, and he had an extremely gentle manner of putting it across that was far more devastating than excitable scenes. Not that he did not have his share of melodrama in his early life at Madurai in Tamil Nadu! Ramana wanted to go one way; his family had other, more conventional ideas. Theresultant conflict is piously passed over by biographers who feel that strife does not become a saint's family. Religious feeling and the urge to be a renunciate is not the easy business it seems to be in India. It is a deadly struggle in family politics and the norms of convention fight hard and dirty to hold on to the potential renouncer. The Sannyasi is officially respected - so long as he is somebody else's son! By 1896, when he was sixteen, the young Venkata Ramana was determined to proceed to Arunachala, the holy mountain in Tiruvennamalai, regarded as an abode of the mountain loving Shiva. On August 16 of that year he finally made his break. After paying his railway fare the lad threw away the rest of the money his kind brother had sneaked to him. From now on he was going to rely only on God, and the chips could fall as they pleased. (Years later, when he had achieved a fame of sorts his family sought to reclaim him and bask in reflected glory, but Ramana did not hesitate in puncturing these delusions, even when it was his mother who was holding them!) This dramatic break was reinforced by a vision he had at the temple of Arayaninattur. Light emerged from the murthi, and engulfed the entire Holy Mountain. So deeply imprinting was this experience that he felt anything else after that would be a poor substitute and he never budged from Arunachala mountain after that! There is a popular belief that Arunachala is always host to a Realized Being, though sometimes this worthy is invisible. Ramana however was very visible indeed and does much to credit the theory that out of such Realized souls emnates a peculiar attractive power, for Arunachala was to become world famous by the time he died. He is also regarded as one of the Ten, great spirtual souls that came in to existence in the 19th century to provide some succour for an India that was exhausted and rapidly losing its soul. Ramana's system is used all over the world today - and without any acknowledgemnt too. It is simplicity itself and that is what makes it so difficult. His core belief was that if you knew your self, then you will know everything worth knowing and will not need to know any more. He was telling people to go for enlightenment, not the accretion of knowledge; to choose wisdom, not the availabilty of mountains of data. And the means to achieve this was even more simpler....... Two words. NJYAN AARU? Which means "Who am I"? (See our glossary for a detailed viewpoint on this) Ramana was in a sense advocating the interrogation of the inner self, not of your normal bodily consciouness. By keeping this insistent question always with you, the Atman stands revealed, independent of names and forms and attached attributes. The questioner reaches the place from where thoughts emerge, where the artificial divisions between you and the universe melts away. As such therefore , your formal religion did not matter very much, anybody could follow this path. Ramana's ideas on God were more in line with the conventional panantheism of the Hindu outlook. God is not a person up in the sky, or even in Arunachala, but God is. God is everything and vice versa. The Maharshi's teaching became extremely popular, and as I said it is used all over the world even today. Paul Brunton, of the many Searches in Secret Places, came, saw and made the Maharshi known to the world. Others wrote haigiographic accounts of his life and teaching too, so that by the time of his death in 1948, he was one of the spiritual beacons of the land. His death was painful, as cancer took hold of his left elbow and reappeared after an attempt to excise it had failed. The attendent doctors were suprised by his total indifference to pain, he simply did not acknowledge its existence. He was firm in the answer he had received when he had asked himself,"Who am I?' and pain was just a ripple on that vast surface. For weepy and sentimental followers was reserved one last flash of steel, in a sentence reminiscent of Buddha's rebuke of his followers too. "When the meal is over, the leaf plate is thrown away". To the end, the saint never wavered in his fierce committment to the truth at all costs. (Click here to read more about Ramana Maharshi's Asharam.) - Rohit Arya Archive