Banning Richardson - East & West meet in The Maharshi #2

[Guest guest]

.....

 

 

The angels and spiritual guides who help us to fulfill

our destinies must often chortle with a delight at the ironies

they are instrumental in bringing about in human affairs.

What could be more ironic than a Roman Catholic

godmother of a devout Protestant, going out to teach in a

Cambridge Mission college in India, giving him a book

which effected the first big step in turning him, first, from

orthodox Christianity to an heretical form, and, finally, to

the “Religion of Self-Realization”, if it can be so called

without doing it violence?

 

During the subsequent two years, up to the time of my

marriage, I was soaked in Christian atmosphere. I lived in a

chummery at St. Stephen’s College with four other

Englishmen, of whom one was a parson, two had been

theological students, and the fourth was a convert to

Quakerism, and so a student of Christian mysticism. I

mention this fact only to show that when, twenty months

after arriving in India, I paid my first visit to Sri

Ramanasramam, I had been virtually a theological student

for the previous year and a half. However, though this tended

to make me see Sri Ramana Maharshi through Christian eyes,

it also helped greatly towards my theoretical and practical

knowledge of religion, and made me more sensitive to and

appreciative of mystical experience.

 

The India of fakirs, rope tricks and tigers had appealed

to me in childhood, but as I grew up it was mystic India that

made an appeal. Through my mother I had come into touch

with spiritualism of the finest type, and the teaching that I

received from spiritual Masters pointed eastwards, and

specially towards India. Books like the Life and Teaching of

the Masters of the Far East, by Baird T. Spalding, were

recommended to me, and these developed in me the longing

to sit at the feet of a great Indian sage. Therefore, when I

read A Search In Secret India on the ship, I was ravished by

Brunton’s description of the Sage of Tiruvannamalai; and

in spite of my orthodox Christian religion I determined to

seek out this great teacher at the earliest possible date.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

The opportunity came in May, 1937. I had been invited

to attend an inter-religious students conference at Alwaye, in

Travancore, and I travelled south from Delhi during the Easter

vacation, my head bursting with questions to ask Sri Maharshi.

But the questions were never asked; though they have been

answered, one by one, during the intervening years, by “my”

Real Self. The reason the questions were never asked was that

when I was in the presence of the Master I was so filled with joy

and peace that the desire to ask questions disappeared. This

happened throughout the brief three days I stayed at Sri

Ramanasramam, though admittedly a violent reaction took

place immediately after I left.

 

 

.................to be continued

 

taken from Golden Jubilee Souvenir 1896-1946