Guru Ramana - Memories & Notes, S.S. Cohen, #10

[Guest guest]

When I returned to my ashram in July 1940,

the Second World War had already broken out,

and darkness had fallen on the hearts and

minds of men. Bombs had dropped on Warsaw

like rain. Poland and Czechoslovakia had

been subdued. Many millions of innocent men,

women, and children, had been driven to

concentration camps for a dread purpose.

The Maginot Line had cracked and crumbled,

and Paris had fallen to the mighty army of

the invader.

 

I had expected to see some marks of this

widespread devastation on the life of

Ramanashram, but on arrival I found none

whatever, except, to my surprise, a doubled

rate of flow of devotees. The only other

physical change I observed was in the Master's

body, which started showing signs of age, which

had compelled the management to curtail the

attendance hours at night.

 

At midday the doors of the hall were closed

for two hours for his siesta -

the first time in the history of the Ashram.

At first Bhagavan demurred but soon he grew

resigned to the situation, seeing that it had

some justification.The stream of visitors

continued to increase, so that soon afterwards

sitting accommodation and easy access to the

Master on personal matters became difficult.

 

In fact under the new rules, letters and articles

written by devotees were made first to pass the

censorship of the office before they could be shown

to him, which was not without reasons. One or two

devotees, taking advantage of the Master;s compassionate

nature, took to write to him letters running to several

pages in very small hand on petty, often imaginary,

difficulties in their spiritual practice, on which

he strained his eyes for one or two hours. He was

too scrupulous to let a single word go unread,

which encouraged them to write still longer letters

and daily too, imagining their epistles to be of great

interest to Bhagavan till the management found it

imperative to clamp down a ban on all correspondence

to be shown or written to him.

 

A year or two later a colony of devotees, with families

for the most parts, sprang up round the Ashram. As Bhagavan's

body grew weaker, his power to influence and attract increased,

so that the tide of settlers and visitors continued steadily

to rise and included world-famed philosophers, scholars,

politicians,ministers, provincial governors, generals, foreign

diplomats, members of foreign missions. They all came, whether

in war or peace, in rain or shine. The tide swelled and swelled

andreached it's zenith in 1950, the last year of his earthly life.

 

Till the last the Master continued to instruct. In the whole

history of the Ashram there has never been a bar to the seeking of

spiritual guidance orally from him, except in the very last year

when he was seriously laid up and the visitors of their own accord

desisted from troubling him.

 

As time passed and the Master's state of mind and ideas took firm

root in me, I ceased to ask questions, or to intercept him in his

walks outside the Ashram grounds, as I used to do in the first six

months of what I call my Vanaprastha life; for by then all my

spiritual questions - call them problems, ifyou like -

had resolved themselves in various ways. The final conclusion to

which I came in the end of these six months I reported it one day to

Bhagavan. He showed his gracious approval by a gesture of finality

with his hand and said:

" So much lies in your power, the rest must

be left entirely to the Guru, who is the ocean of Grace and Mercy

seated in the Heart, as the seeker " s own Self. "

 

..........

 

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