A Sadhu's Reminiscenses of Ramana Maharshi, #5

October 28, 2005

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I had always wondered how it was that St. Paul, who was a most orthodox Jew, hated Christ and persecuted the Christians, interpreted his great experience on the Damascus road in terms of Christ and afterwards became an ardent Christian himself. So one day I asked Bhagavan. He said that St. Paul was always thinking about Christ and the Christians, they were never out of his mind, so when he returned to self-consciousness after his experience he identified his realization with this predominant thought. And he referred to Ravana as an example. Ravana hated Rama, never ceased to think of him and, dying, Rama was the uppermost thought in his mind and so he realized God. It is not a question of love or hate, it is just the question of what is in the mind at the time.

People judge the deeds of others as good or bad, but it is the doing itself that matters and not the complexionof the deed. The whole secret lies in whether we are attached to our actions or not. A person who spends his time in good deeds can be much more attached to them than the so-called bad man is to his. And it is the one who drops off all attachments first who will be Self-realized soonest. Good and bad are found eventually to be only relative terms. Self-enquiry is found to be no more than the discarding of Vasanas. So long as one single Vasana remains, good or bad, so long must weremain unrealized.

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Bhagavan was a very beautiful person; he shone with a visible light or aura. He had the most delicate hands I have ever seen with which alone he could express himself, one might almost say talk. His features were regular and the wonder of his eyes was famous. His forehead was high and the dome of his head the highest I have ever seen. As this in India is known as the dome of Wisdom it was only natural that it should be so. His body was well formed and of only medium height, but this was not apparent as his personality was so dominant that one looked upon him as tall. He had a great sense of humour and when talking a smile was never far from his face. He had many jokes in his repertoire and was a magnificent actor, he would always dramatise the protagonists of any story he related. When the recital was very pathetic he would be filled with emotion and unable to proceed. When people came to him with their family stories he would laugh with the happy and at times shed tears with the bereaved. In this way he seemed to reciprocate the emotions of others.

He never raised his voice and if he did occasionally seem angry there was no sign of it on the surface of his Peace. Talk to him immediately afterwards and he would answer calmly and quite undisturbed. With others some effect of the anger will still remain for a while even after the cause is gone. Internally we all take time to regain our composure, but with him there was no reaction. He would never touch money, not because he hated it, he knew that for the purposes of daily life it was necessary, but he had never had need of it and was not interested in it. Money and presents came to the Ashram; well, that was all right, the management needed them to be able to carry on, but there was no need for them to worry about it or ask people to give. God would provide.

People said that he would not talk but this was untrue, as were many of the other foolish legends about him. He did not speak unnecessarily and his apparent silence only showed how much foolish chatter usually goes on amongst ourselves.

He preferred every sort of simplicity and liked to sit on the floor, but a couch had been forced upon him and this became his home for most of the twenty-four hours of the day. He would never, if he could help it, allow any preference to be shown to him. And in the dining-hall he was adamant on this point. Even if some special medicine or tonic were given to him he wanted to share it with everybody. “If it is good for me then it must be good for the rest,” he would argue and make them distribute it round the dining-hall.

He would wander out on to the Hill a few times a day, and if any attachment to anything on earth could be said of him, it was surely an attachment to the Hill. He loved it and said it was God Himself. He used to say that it was the top of the spiritual axis of the earth; there must, he said, be another mountain corresponding to Arunachala at exactly the opposite side of the globe, the corresponding pole of the axis. So certain was he of this that one evening he made me fetch an atlas and see if this was not correct. I found, according to the atlas, the exact opposite point came in the sea about an hundred miles off the coast of Peru. He seemed doubtful about this. I pointed out that there might be some island at this spot or a mountain under the sea. It was not until some years after Bhagavan’s passing that a visiting Englishman had a tale of a spot, supposed to be a great secret power centre, in the Andes somewhere in this latitude. Later I found that though a centre had certainly been started it had failed. Since then I have been told of another person who is practising meditation in solitude in the region of the Andes in Ecuador. So it does appear as though there were some strange attraction about that part of the globe. The earth is not an exact sphere and maps are not so accurate as all that, so we are unable to pin it down to any definite point. It is quite possible that more is going on in that part of the world than we know and this would fit in well with what Bhagavan said. However I could never discuss the matter with Bhagavan as it was not until many years after his passing that I had any indication that anything of this sort was happening in those parts. I had many years ago travelled extensively in that country but had never seen anything which would lead me to think that there might be important spiritual-centres there.

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taken from

A SADHU'S REMINISCENCES OF RAMANA MAHARSHI By SADHU ARUNACHALA (A. W. Chadwick)