Paul Brunton - The Maharshi and His Message #26

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He kept his identity a complete secret, but by a chain of

coincidences, his mother discovered his whereabouts two years

after his disappearance. She set out for the place with her eldest

son and tearfully pleaded with him to return home. The lad

refused to budge. When tears failed to persuade him, she began

to upbraid him for his indifference. Eventually he wrote down a

reply on a piece of paper to the effect that a higher power controls

the fate of men and that whatever she did could not change his

destiny. He concluded by advising her to accept the situation and

to cease moaning about it. And so she had to yield to his decision.

 

When, through this incident, people began to intrude on his

seclusion in order to stare at the youthful yogi, he left the place

and climbed up the Hill of the Holy Beacon and made his residence

 

 

in a large cavern, where he lived for several years. There are quite

a few other caves on this hill and each one shelters holy men or

yogis. But the cave which sheltered young Ramana was noteworthy

because it also contained the tomb of a great yogi of the past.

 

Cremation is the usual custom of the Hindus in disposing of

their dead, but it is prohibited in the case of a yogi who is believed

to have made the highest attainment, because it is also believed

that the vital breath or unseen life-current remains in his body

for thousands of years and renders the flesh exempt from

corruption. In such a case the yogi’s body is bathed and anointed

and then placed in a tomb in a sitting posture with crossed legs,

as though he was still plunged in meditation. The entrance to

the tomb is sealed with a heavy stone and then cemented over.

Usually the mausoleum becomes a place of pilgrimage. There

exists still another reason why great yogis are buried and not

cremated and that is because of the belief that their bodies do

not need to be purified during their lifetimes.

 

It is interesting to consider that caves have always been a

favourite residence of yogis and holy men. The ancients consecrated

them to the gods; Zoroaster, the founder of the Parsi faith, practised

his meditations in a cave, while Muhammad received his religious

experiences in a cave also. The Indian yogis have very good reasons

for preferring caves or subterranean retreats when better places

are not available. For here they can find shelter from the vicissitudes

of weather and from the rapid changes of temperature which divide

days from nights in the tropics. There is less light and noise to

disturb their meditations. And breathing the confined atmosphere

of a cave causes the appetite to diminish markedly, thus conducing

to a minimum of bodily cares.

 

Still another reason which may have attracted Ramana to

this particular cave on the Hill of the Holy Beacon was the beauty

of its outlook. One can stand on a projecting spur adjoining the

cave and see the little township stretched out flat in the distant

 

 

plain, with the giant temple rising as its centrepiece. Far beyond

the plain stands a long line of hills which frontier a charming

panorama of Nature.

 

Anyway, Ramana lived in this somewhat gloomy cavern for

several years, engaged in his mysterious meditations and plunged in

profound trances. He was not a yogi in the orthodox sense, for he

had never practised under any teacher. The inner path which he

followed was simply a track leading to Self-knowledge; it was laid

down by what he conceived to be the divine monitor within him.

 

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