Roaming and a Death Experience in 1912

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Roaming and a Death Experience in 1912 By Arthur Osborne

THERE WAS A TIME when Sri Bhagavan used to roam the hill frequently as

well as climbing to the summit and making Pradakshina (circuit), so

that he knew every part of it. And then one day, when he was

wandering alone, he passed an old woman gathering fuel on the

hillside. She looked like a common outcast woman, but she addressed

the young Swami fearlessly, as an equal. Beginning with the rough

cursing common to such people, she said: "May you be put on the

funeral pyre! Why do you wander about in the sun like that? Why don't

you sit quiet?"

"It can have been no ordinary woman," Sri Bhagavan said when he told

the devotees about it; "Who knows who she was?" Certainly, no

ordinary outcast woman would have dared to speak to a Swami like

that. The devotees took it to be a manifestation of Arunagiri Siddha,

the Spirit of Arunachala. From that time Sri Bhagavan gave up roaming

the hillside.

When Sri Bhagavan first went to Tiruvannamalai he sometimes moved

about in a state of trance. This did not completely end until about

1912 when there was a final and complete experience of death. He set

out from Virupaksha Cave one morning for Pachaiamman Koil,

accompanied by Palaniswami, Vasudeva Sastri and others. He had an

oil-bath there and was nearing Tortoise Rock on the way back when a

sudden physical weakness overcame him. He described it fully

afterwards.

"The landscape in front of me disappeared as a bright white curtain

was drawn across my vision and shut it out. I could distinctly see

the gradual process. There was a stage when I could still see a part

of the landscape clearly while the rest was covered by the advancing

curtain. It was just like drawing a slide across one's view in a

stereoscope. On experiencing this I stopped walking lest I should

fall. When it cleared I walked on. When darkness and faintness came

over me a second time I leaned against a rock until it cleared. The

third time it happened I felt it safer to sit, so I sat down near the

rock. Then the bright white curtain completely shut off my vision, my

head was swimming and my circulation and breathing stopped. The skin

turned a livid blue. It was the regular death hue and it got darker

and darker. Vasudeva Sastri, in fact, took me to be dead

and held me in his arms and began to weep aloud and lament my death.

"I could distinctly feel his clasp and his shivering and hear his

words of lamentation and understand their meaning. I also saw the

discoloration of my skin and felt the stoppage of my circulation and

breathing and the increased chilliness of the extremities of my body.

My usual current of awareness still continued in that state also. I

was not in the least afraid and felt no sadness at the condition of

the body. I had sat down near the rock in my usual posture and closed

my eyes and was not leaning against the rock. The body, left without

circulation or respiration, still maintained that position. This

state continued for some ten or fifteen minutes. Then a shock passed

suddenly through the body and circulation revived with enormous

force, and breathing also, and the body perspired from every pore.

The colour of life reappeared on the skin. I then opened my eyes

and got up and said, 'Let's go.' We reached Virupaksha Cave without

further trouble. This was the only fit I had in which both

circulation and respiration stopped."

Later, to correct wrong accounts that began to be spread, he added: "I

did not bring on the fit purposely, nor did I wish to see what this

body would look like after death, nor did I say that I will not leave

this body without warning others. It was one of those fits that I used

to get occasionally, only this time it took a very serious form."

What is, perhaps, most striking about this experience is that it was a

repetition, heightened by actual physical demonstration, of that

certainty of endurance through death which had constituted Sri

Bhagavan's spiritual awakening. It recalls the verse from

Thayumanavar, the Tamil classic which Sri Bhagavan often quoted:

"When overpowered by the wide Expanse which is without beginning, end

or middle, there is the realization of non-dual bliss."

It may be that this marked the final completion of Sri Bhagavan's

return to full outer normality. It is hard to give any impression of

how normal and how human he was in his mode of life and yet it is

necessary, for the description of his previous austerity may leave

the idea of someone grim and forbidding. On the contrary, his manner

was natural and free from all constraint and the newcomer immediately

felt at his ease with him. His conversation was full of humour and his

laughter so infectious, so like that of a child, that even those who

did not understand the language would join in.

- From Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self Knowledge