Once some very learned Sanskrit scholars were sitting in the old hall discussing portions of the Upanishads and other scriptural texts with Bhagavan.
Bhagavan was giving them proper explanations and it was a sight to remember and adore! At the same time, I felt genuinely in my heart, ‘Oh, how great these people are and how fortunate they are to be so learned and to have such deep understanding and be able to discuss with our Bhagavan. Compared with them, what am I, a zero in scriptural learning?’ I felt miserable.
After the pundits had taken leave Bhagavan turned to me and said, “What?”, looking into my eyes and studying my thoughts. Then, without even giving me an opportunity to explain, He continued, “This is only the husk! All this book learning and capacity to repeat the scriptures by memory is absolutely no use. To know the Truth, you need not undergo all this torture of learning. Not by reading do you get the Truth. BE QUIET, that is Truth, BE STILL, that is God”.
Then very graciously He turned to me again and there was an immediate change in his tone and attitude. He asked me, “Do you shave yourself?” Bewildered by this sudden change, I answered, trembling, that I did.
“Ah, for shaving you use a mirror, don’t you? You look into the mirror and then shave your face; you don’t shave the image in the mirror. Similarly all the scriptures are meant only to show you the way to realization. They are meant for practise and attainment. Mere book learning and discussions are comparable to a man shaving the image in the mirror”. From that day onwards the sense of inferiority that I had been feeling vanished once and for all.
Sadhu Ekarasa (Dr. G.H. Mees, M.A., LL.D.) was a Dutch scholar who came to the Maharshi in 1936. For him it was a case of deep devotion from the very first meeting. He talks about Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi as follows.
When Kon-Fu-Tse met Wen-Poh-Hsuche-Tse, he did not speak a word. Then his companion, Tse-Lu, said, “Master, for a long time you have wished to see Wen-Poh-Hsuche-Tse. Why is it that you don’t speak, now that you see him?” Kon-Fu-Tse answered, “One only needs to look at someone like him. There is no need for speaking. One must see a sage in order to experience him.”
In the presence of the Maharshi, the same thing happened to me when I saw him for the first time, and during the many years that I visited him again and again, especially during the three years that I stayed near him almost without interruption. It is for this same reason I find it ever difficult to speak or write about the Maharshi, as I am often asked to do. For a sage who always lives in the realisation, St Dionysius’s words hold good: “All that you may say about God is untrue, for God is beyond speech and therefore what you say about God relates to something else.” Therefore, if in India someone asks me to speak or to write about the Maharshi, I am inclined to answer that the questioner ought to visit the Maharshi and see for himself.
Westerners have often asked me, “What exactly does the Maharshi do?” One should in fact answer, “The daily occupation of the Sage is to be himself.” Because he really succeeds in doing so, the Maharshi makes such a great impression on many of his visitors.The Maharshi effects drastic changes in the lives of many like me. That’s what he does, and he does so by doing nothing at all. Often ‘the great of this earth’ feel like small schoolboys while standing before him. The late Maharaja of Mysore kneeled humbly before him and stood motionless for a long time with tears in his eyes. He kneeled once more and departed without a word.
If a man were to do the greatest deed in the world and come and sit in the presence of Ramana Maharshi he would realise that his deed was nothing compared to the perpetual deed of Self-realisation of the Sage. If a man were to write the greatest book in the world and come and lay it as an offering before the Sage he would realise that the Sage was a greater Book, which is written from day to day, not with the medium of pen, ink and paper, without intermediation, and even without any conscious effort, in the inner being of all who care to come and read it.
In the case of other personalities it is always possible to make a distinction between theory and practice, or between spirituality and intellect on the one hand and action on the other hand. With the Maharshi no such distinction exists.
The Maharshi is above the spirit of time. His immortality stands out from his every word and look. It lives in the inner heart of all who have had the great privilege to come and sit in his presence. It is reflected only poorly in the books and articles that have been written about him. How could it be otherwise? No one can truly describe God or Truth. Even so, no one can truly describe a Son of God and an embodiment of Truth.
After having studied the lives and ways of teachings of saints and sages of the world, it strikes one that Sri Ramana falls into a class of his own. No one has achieved God-Realisation merely by hearing a name of God. Sri Ramana received ‘initiation’ by merely hearing the name of Arunachala, pronounced only for the purpose of conveying information about a journey.
Sri Ramana claimed his spiritual heritage without even having been told there was a heritage to claim. He is a Guru in the true sense of the word – the word means ‘dispeller of darkness’. The Maharshi’s way is as direct as it is simple. But it is so profound that it fails to reach the consciousness of many. Many come to him for something definite, or, in other words, finite. They do not understand that they stand in between the true Initiation into the Mystery of Being and themselves.
Many times it has happened that visitors and resident disciples have asked the Maharshi to vouchsafe them initiation, grace, blessings or spiritual experience, and that he replied, “I am always giving it. If you cannot comprehend it, what am I to do?”
In contradiction to gurus of a less exalted level, who are inclined to be aware of their spiritual superiority, Ramana Maharshi considers all beings to be potential jnanis with God-Reality shining within them, even if they are not aware of it. Some of his utterances run parallel to that of the eighth century mystic Hui Neng who said: “The only difference between a Buddha and the average man is that one realises what the other discards.”
Sri Ramana proclaims that the Divine Heritage is ever there, waiting to be received; God-Reality is ever present within the Heart of all.
The average man is inclined to pity the Sage, whom he regards as having foregone the pleasure of life.The Sage, however, pities his sympathizing fellow human beings, because the latter do not know what real happiness is.
From the point of view of the restless worldly mind, which delights in movement and change, an unbroken stay of fifty years in one place seems to be a tremendous achievement. It is indeed unique. But surely Sri Ramana has never looked upon it as being in any way remarkable. He has attained the Great Magnet of the world, the centre of the Heart, and became as immovable as his Father, Lord Arunachala.
Extracts from Sadhu Ekarasa’s poem:
Heart’s Homage to Sri Ramana
To that incomparable Maharshi, the father and mother of all, In whom Siva and the Goddess are ever united in Bliss, To that Sage, whose presence delights the heart,
And whose leela is the wonder of all –
To him be offered mind, heart, body, – all creation!
If future generations will ask what was
The special note of Ramana the Sage,
I shall reply: If any, it is certainty;
The certain safety of a Rock, unmoved, Unchallenged in a storm-swept sea,
The immovable solidity of a mountain
In an ever-wavering world of doctrines and philosophies, Yea, truly art thou the Sage of ‘Arunachala’!
Swami Chinmayananda (Balakrishna Menon) was the founder of the Chinmaya Mission.He describes his experiences in the presence of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.
I was just emerging from high school,exams were over. On a package railway ticket I was roaming through South India. As the train steamed through the countryside at a halting speed, most of the passengers in my compartment suddenly peered through the windows in great excitement and bowed reverently to an elaborate temple beyond. Inquiring about it, I was told that it was the Tiruvannamalai Temple.
Thereafter, the talk of my fellow travellers turned to Ramana Maharshi. The word ‘Maharshi’ conjured up in my mind ancient forest retreats and superhuman beings of divine glow. Though I was at that time a convinced atheist, I was deeply drawn to visit the Maharshi’s Ashram. I chose to take the next available train to Tiruvannamalai.
At the Ashram I was told that the Maharshi was in the hall and anybody was free to walk in and see him. As I entered, I saw on the couch an elderly man, wearing but a loincloth, reclining against a round bolster. I sat down at the very foot of the couch. The Maharshi suddenly opened his eyes and looked straight into mine: I looked into his. A mere look, that was all. I felt that the Maharshi was, in that split moment, looking deep into me – and I was sure that he saw all my shallowness, confusions, faithlessness, imperfections, and fears.
I cannot explain what happened in that one split moment. I felt opened, cleaned, healed, and emptied! A whirl of confusions: my atheism dropping away, but scepticism flooding into question, wonder, and search. My reason gave me strength and I said to myself, ‘It is all mesmerism, my own foolishness.’ Thus assuring myself, I got up and walked away.
But the boy who left the hall was not the boy who had gone in some ten minutes before. After my college days, my political work, and after my years of stay at Uttarkashi at the feet of my master, Tapovanam, I knew that what I gained on the Ganges banks was that which had been given to me years before by the Saint of Tiruvannamalai on that hot summer day – by a mere look.
During the course of a talk in 1982 the Swami said:
Sri Ramana is not a theme for discussion; he is an experience; he is a state of consciousness. Sri Ramana was the highest reality and the cream of all scriptures in the world. He was there for all to see how a Master can live in perfect detachment. Though in the mortal form, he lived as the beauty and purity of the Infinite.
I enter the hall and straight away assume my regular meditation posture. An intense interiorization of consciousness comes with the closing of eyes. The Maharshi’s seated form floats in a vivid manner before my mind’s eye. Then the picture disappears leaving me with nothing more than a strongly felt sense of his intimate presence.
Tonight I flash swiftly to a pin-point of concentration. Some new and powerful force comes into dynamic action within my inner world and bears me inwards with resistless speed. In the next stage, I stand apart from the intellect, conscious that it is thinking, and watch thoughts with a weird detachment. The power to think, which has hitherto been a matter for merely ordinary pride, now becomes a thing from which to escape, for I perceive with startling clarity that I have been its unconscious captive.
It is strange enough to be able to stand aside and watch the very action of the brain as though it were someone else’s and to see how thoughts take their rise and then die, but it is stranger still to realise intuitively that one is about to penetrate into the mysteries which hide in the innermost recesses of man’s soul. I feel like some Columbus about to land on an uncharted continent.
Finally it happens. Thought is extinguished like a snuffed candle. The mind takes its rise in a transcendental source. I remain perfectly calm and fully aware of who I am and what is occurring. Yet my sense of awareness has been drawn out of the narrow confines of the separate personality; it has turned into something sublimely all embracing. Self still exists, but it is a changed, radiant self. With it arrives an amazing new sense of absolute freedom, for thought is like a loom-shuttle which always is going to and fro, and to be freed from its tyrannical motion is to step out of prison into the open air.
I find myself outside the rim of world consciousness. The planet, which has so far harboured me, disappears. I am in the midst of an ocean of blazing light. The latter, I feel rather than think, is the primeval stuff out of which worlds are created, the first state of matter. It stretches away into untellable infinite space, incredibly alive.
I, the new I, rest in the lap of holy bliss. I have drunk the Platonic Cup of Lethe, so that yesterday’s bitter memories and tomorrow’s anxious cares have disappeared completely. I have attained a divine liberty and an almost indescribable felicity. My arms embrace all creation with profound sympathy, for I understand in the deepest possible way that to know all is not merely to pardon all, but to love all. My heart is remoulded in rapture.
With the fall of dusk I take my farewells of everyone except the Maharshi. I feel quietly content because my battle for spiritual certitude has been won, and because I have won it without sacrificing my dearly held rationalism for a blind credulity. Yet when the Maharshi comes to the courtyard with me a little later, my contentment suddenly deserts me.
This man has strangely conquered me and it deeply affects my feelings to leave him. He has grappled me to his own soul with unseen hooks that are harder than steel, although he has sought only to restore a man to himself, to set him free and not to enslave him.
He has taken me into the benign presence of my spiritual self and helped me, dull Westerner that I am, to translate a meaningless term into a living and blissful experience. My adventure in self-metamorphosis is now over.
I study him intently and gradually come to see in him the child of a remote past when the discovery of spiritual truth was reckoned of no less value than is the discovery of a gold mine today. It dawns upon me with increasing force that, in this quiet and obscure corner of South India, I have been led to one of the last of India’s spiritual supermen.
The serene figure of this living Sage brings the legendary figure of this country’s ancient rishis nearer to me. One senses that the most wonderful part of this man is withheld. His deepest soul, which one instinctively recognises as being loaded with rich wisdom, eludes one. At times he still remains curiously aloof, and at other times the kindly benediction of his interior grace binds me to him with hoops of steel. I learn to submit to the enigma of his personality, and to accept him as I find him.
I like him greatly because he is so simple and modest, when an atmosphere of authentic greatness lies so palpably around him; because he makes no claim to occult powers and hierophantic knowledge to impress the mystery-loving nature of his countrymen, and also because he is so totally without any traces of pretension and he strongly resists every effort to canonize him during his lifetime.
It seems to me that the presence of men like the Maharshi ensures the continuity down history of a divine message from regions not easily accessible to us all. It seems to me, further, that one must accept the fact that such a sage comes to reveal something to us, not to argue anything with us. At any rate, his teachings make a strong appeal to me.
He brings no supernatural power and demands no blind faith. He avoids the dark and debatable waters of wizardry, in which so many promising voyages have ended in shipwreck. He simply puts forward a way of self-analysis which can be practised irrespective of any ancient or modern theories and beliefs which one may hold, a way that will finally lead man to true self-understanding.
H. Ghosh, M.A., was Principal of Holkar College, Indore, Madhya Pradesh.
He describes:
When I first had the good fortune of being introduced to the Great Sage of Arunachala, my imagination was struck by the austerity and simplicity of his sublime countenance. This austerity is indelibly marked on his face and cannot escape the attention of even a casual observer. One great outcome of this austere simplicity is humbleness of the mind.
We are enjoined by the Maharshi to forsake, once and forever, our petty selves and to approach our divine self. The noblest pursuit, according to the Maharshi, is the pursuit of our Overself. The joys are perennial and the pursuit eternal.
Sri Bhagavan is not a mere mystic. He does not look into some future world, but gazes intently on what is real and eternal in him. Heaven to him is not a far-off place: here in your heart and nowhere, the soul of all things is to be found. Only those who have put away all selfish longings may see clearly the radiance of happiness. Something of this happiness the worst sinners among us will feel in the presence of this exalted and self- illumined Sage of Arunachala.
Many devotees go to Sri Bhagavan for a miraculous cure of their physical ailments or for a wondrous change in their worldly destiny. Sri Bhagavan rightly warns us against the allurements of miracles or clairvoyance or prophetic powers. But if anyone invokes Him in a spirit of absolute trust, his prayers will be answered.
In all humility I confess that I am the least competent to write about Sri Bhagavan. The finite can never know the Infinite and the Illimitable. A silent look or an encouraging word from Him will do much more good than all the sermonic literature of the world.
During daily meditation in the potent neighbourhood of the Sage, I have learnt how to carry my thoughts inwards to an ever-deepening point. Again and again, I become conscious that he is drawing my mind into his own atmosphere during these periods of quiet repose. And it is at such times that one begins to understand why the silences of this man are more significant than his utterances.
There are moments when I feel this power of his so greatly that I know that he has only to issue the most disturbing command and I will readily obey it. But the Maharshi is the last person in the world to place his followers in the chain of servile obedience, and allows everyone the utmost freedom of action. In this respect he is quite refreshingly different from most of the teachers and yogis I have met in India.
The gist of his message is: “Pursue the enquiry, ‘Who am I?’ relentlessly. Analyse your entire personality. Try to find out where the ‘I’ thought begins. Go on with your meditations. Keep turning your attention within. One day the wheel of thought will slow down and an intuition will mysteriously arise. Follow that intuition, let your thinking stop and it will eventually lead you to the goal.”
I struggle daily with my thoughts and cut away slowly into the inner recesses of the mind. In the helpful proximity of the Maharshi, my meditations and self-soliloquies become increasingly less tiring and more effective. A strong expectancy and a sense of being guided inspire my constantly repeated efforts.There are strange hours when I am clearly conscious of the unseen power of the Sage being powerfully impacted on my mentality, with the result that I penetrate a little deeper still into the shrouded border land of being, which surrounds the human mind….
Again and again, I am aware that the Maharshi’s mind is imparting something to my own, though no words may be passing between us.
Dr. Paul Brunton’s Second Visit to Sri Ramana Maharshi
The following relates to Paul Brunton’s second visit and stay near Sri Ramana, a few months later.
Whatever I am doing I never fail to become gradually aware of the mysterious atmosphere of the place, of the benign radiation which steadily percolates into my brain. I enjoy an ineffable tranquility merely by sitting for a while in the neighbourhood of the Maharshi. By careful observation and frequent analysis, I arrive in time at the complete certitude that reciprocal inter-influence arises whenever our presences neighbour each other. The thing is most suitable. But it is quite unmistakable. A force greater than my rationalistic mind awes me until it ends by overwhelming me.
The realisation forces itself through my wonderment that all my questions are moves in an endless game, the play of thoughts which possess no limit to their extent; that somewhere within me there is a well of certitude which can provide me all waters of truth I require; and that it will be better to cease my questioning and attempt to realise the tremendous potencies of my own spiritual nature. So I remain silent and wait.
I am perfectly aware that the sublime realisation which has suddenly fallen upon me is nothing else than a spreading ripple of telepathic radiation from this mysterious and imperturbable man.
The Maharshi once told me,“The greatest error of a man is to think that he is weak by nature, evil by nature. Every man is divine and strong in his real nature. What are weak and evil are his habits, his desires and thoughts, but not himself.” His words came as an invigorating tonic. They refresh and inspire me. From another man’s lips, from some lesser and feeble soul, I would refuse to accept them at such worth and would persist in refuting them. But an inward monitor assures me that the Sage speaks out of the depth of a great and authentic spiritual experience and not as some theorizing philosopher on the thin stilts of speculation.
Not a few Western minds will inevitably consider that the life of the Maharshi is a wasted one. But perhaps it may be good for us to have a few men who are apart from our world of unending activity, and survey it for us from afar. It may also be that a jungle Sage, with self lying conquered at his feet, is not inferior to a worldly fool who is blown hither and thither by every circumstance.
Day after day brings fresh indications of the greatness of this man. His silence and reserve are habitual. One can easily count up the number of words he uses in a single day.
I am learning to see that the Maharshi’s way of helping others is through unobstrusive, silent and steady outpouring of healing vibrations into troubled souls. Science will one day be required to account for this mysterious telepathic process.
It is clear that his mere presence provides many with spiritual assurance, emotional felicity and, most paradoxical of all, renewed faith in their creed. For the Sage treats all creeds alike, and honours Jesus no less than Krishna.
Dr. Paul Brunton (1898-1981), a British journalist, attracted by Indian mysticism first visited India in 1930.
Author of eleven books, he has emphasized the value and importance of the Self within us. He is generally considered as having introduced meditation to the West. He once wrote: “Sri Ramana was a spiritual torch carried to the waiting souls in the West. I was only the unimportant ‘link-boy’, the humble carrier.”
During his first visit, among many saints and yogis, Brunton also met Sri Ramana. He stayed for a few weeks in an improvised shelter very close to Sri Ramana’s Ashram.The number of full-time devotees being limited at that time, Brunton had ample opportunity of observing the Maharshi at close quarters and interacting with him. He provides a dispassionate, illuminating and intimate account of the Maharshi’s divinity and its impact in his A Search in Secret India published from London in 1934. (The experiences with Sri Ramana Maharshi alone have been published as the “The Maharshi and his Message”.)
Paul Brunton says:
There is something in this man which holds my attention as steel filings are held by a magnet. I cannot turn my gaze away from him. I become aware of a silent, resistless change, which is taking place within my mind. One by one, the questions which I prepared with such meticulous accuracy drop away. I know only that a steady river of quietness seems to be flowing near me; that a great peace is penetrating the inner reaches of my being, and that my thought-tortured brain is beginning to arrive at some rest. I perceive with sudden clarity that intellect creates its own problems and then makes itself miserable trying to solve them. This is indeed a novel concept to enter the mind of one who has hitherto placed such high value upon intellect.
I surrender myself to the steadily deepening sense of restfulness. The passage of time now provokes no irritation, because the chains of mind-made problems are being broken and thrown away. And then, little by little, a question takes the field of consciousness. Does this man, the Maharshi, emanate the perfume of spiritual peace as the flower emanates fragrance from its petals? I begin to wonder whether by some radioactivity of the soul, some unknown telepathic process, the stillness which invades the troubled water of my soul really comes from him.The peace overwhelms me.
The Maharshi turns and looks down into my face; I, in turn, gaze expectantly up at him. I become aware of a mysterious change taking place with great rapidity in my heart and mind. The old motives which have lured me on begin to desert me. The urgent desires which have sent my feet hither and thither vanish with incredible swiftness. The dislikes, misunderstandings, coldness and selfishness which have marked my dealings with many of my fellows collapse into the abyss of nothingness. An untellable peace falls upon me and I know that there is nothing further that I shall ask from life.
The Sage seems to carry something of great moment to me, yet I cannot easily determine its precise nature. It is intangible, imponderable, perhaps spiritual. Each time I think of him a peculiar sensation pierces me and causes my heart to throb with vague but lofty expectations.
I look at the Sage. He sits there on Olympian heights and watches the panorama of life as one apart. There is a mysterious property in this man which differentiates him from all others I have met.
He remains mysteriously aloof even when surrounded by his own devotees, men who have loved him and lived near him for years. Sometimes I catch myself wishing that he would be a little more human, a little more susceptible to what seems so normal to us.
Why is it that under his strange glance I invariably experience a peculiar expectancy, as though some stupendous revelation will soon be made to me? This man has freed himself from all problems, and no woe can touch him.
The Sage seems to speak not as a philosopher, not as a pandit trying to explain his own doctrine, but rather out of the depth of his own heart.
I am not religious but I can no more resist the feeling of increasing awe which begins to grip my mind than a bee can resist a flower in all its luscious bloom. The [Maharshi’s] hall is becoming pervaded with a subtle, intangible and indefinable power which affects me deeply. I feel, without doubt and without hesitation, that the centre of this mysterious power is no other than the Maharshi himself.
His eyes shine with astonishing brilliance. Strange sensation begins to arise in me. Those lustrous orbs seem to be peering into the inmost recesses of my soul. In a peculiar way, I feel aware of everything he can see in my heart. His mysterious glance penetrates my thoughts, my emotions and my desires; I am helpless before it.
At first, his disconcerting gaze troubles me; I become vaguely uneasy. I feel he has perceived pages that belong to a past, which I have forgotten. He knows it all, I am certain. I am powerless to escape; somehow, I do not want to, either.
I become aware that he is definitely linking my own mind with his, that he is provoking my heart into that state of starry calm, which he seems perpetually to enjoy. In this extraordinary peace, I find a sense of exaltation and lightness. Time seems to stand still. My heart is released from its burden of care. Never again, I feel, shall the bitterness of anger and the melancholy of unsatisfied desire afflict me. My mind is submerged in that of the Maharshi and wisdom is now at its perihelion. What is this man’s gaze but a thaumaturgic wand, which evokes a hidden world of unexpected splendour before my profane eyes?
I have sometimes asked myself why these disciples have been staying around the Sage for years with few conversations, fewer comforts and no external activities to attract them. Now I begin to understand – not by thought but by lightning like illuminations – that through all those years they have been receiving a deep and silent reward.
Hitherto, everyone in the hall has been hushed to a death-like stillness. At length, someone quietly rises and passes out. He is followed by another, and then another, until all have gone. I am alone with the Maharshi! Never before has this happened. His eyes begin to change; they narrow down to pinpoints. The effect is curiously like the ‘stopping down’ in the focus of a camera lens.
There comes a tremendous increase in the intense gleam which shines between the lids, now almost closed. Suddenly, my body seems to disappear, and we are both out in space! It is a crucial moment. I hesitate – and decide to break the enchanter’s spell. Decision brings power and once again I am back in the flesh, back in the hall. No word passes from him to me. I collect my faculties, look at the clock, and rise quietly. The hour of departure has arrived. I bow my head in farewell and depart.
Arthur Osborne was an English writer on spirituality and mysticism, and a disciple and biographer of Sri Ramana Maharshi. From 1964, Osborne served as the founding editor of Mountain Path, a journal published by Ramanasramam. His wife, Lucia Osborne, lived there too. She was a warm-hearted lady whom devotees loved.
Their daughter, Katya Osbourne, recalls:
My own unforgettable memory happened when I was still about ten years old. A lady from Delhi came to the Asramam. In those days, all foreigners were sent to our house as my parents spoke several languages, and could understand a number of travelers. Also in those days, whether a person came from New York, New Zealand, or New Delhi, they were foreigners.
This particular lady told us her story which I thought was unutterably tragic. She had married against her parents’ wishes, but she married for love and the first days of her marriage were blissfully happy. They went to the seaside for their honeymoon and she sat on he sand while her husband went for a swim. She actually saw him being caught by a shark and killed in front of her. Since then she was a nervous wreck.
She then started a trek around all the Asramams and the holy men of India. Why? She wanted to know. How had they harmed anyone and why should they be visited by such a terrible punishment? The point came when she could not listen to any more ambiguous anodyne answers, so she had written her questions down and her list went with her whenever she came to a new holy man. No man was going to fob her off anymore. If there was an explanation she wanted to hear it, and if not why not.
What I recollect most about this lady was that she was so tense and nervous that it was a strain to be in her company. I was not an especially sensitive child, but sitting in the same room as her was excruciatingly uncomfortable. I started to escape but my mother got me.
“Take her to the Hall’, she instructed to me. I had things to do I told her, but my mother said, ‘Go’. I went.
When we got to the Asramam I pointed to the Hall where Sri Bhagavan was sitting and then took myself off, to read my book in a mango tree.
I heard the bell for lunch and dragging my feet I went to fetch the lady home for food. Never in my life, neither, before nor in all the years, have I noticed such a change in anyone, and in such a short time. The lady was relaxed and at peace.
I trailed behind her on the way back, too shy to ask her what Sri Bhagavan had said but aching to know. What oh why hadn’t I stayed in the Hall with her. Whatever words were that Bhagavan had spoken, they must surely be the most important in the world. I wanted to know them for posterity. The rest of my life could be transformed by the words I had not heard. However, I knew that my mother would ask her so I stuck around like glue in order to hear the magic formula.
My mother, of course, noticed the difference immediately. One could not miss it. She asked the all important question. What had Sri Bhagavan told her?
‘Nothing’, the lady replied. She had sat there all prepared, with her list at the ready, then Sri Bhagavan looked at her. He just looked at her, full of understanding and compassion, and she suddenly lost interest in her crusade. It did not matter any more.
She had found the peace she craved.
Nothing could be more miraculous than what happened to that lady, and nothing more typical of Sri Bhagavan. He did not say a word.
Sri Bhagavan’s touch was always exquisitely light but sure. He would hint but never be obvious, whether He was performing a ‘miracle’ or letting a person know what was best for them to do. And yet a hint from Him should never be ignored,. If He takes the trouble to make us aware, well then, we disregard it at our peril.
