A BRITISH JOURNALIST WHO COMMUNED WITH SRI RAMANA

[Guest guest]

A BRITISH JOURNALIST WHO COMMUNED WITH SRI RAMANA

 

 

Paul Brunton stayed for weeks together very close to Sri

Ramanasramam in 1930.He had many opportunities of being with Sri

Ramana till 1939. He is the author of the celebrated A Search in

Secret India. Brunton used to refer Sri Ramana as his " Beloved

Master " , as mentioned by his son in Brunton's biography -- Paul

Brunton – A Personal View. He states as follows in volume no. 8 of

the 16-volume The Notebooks of Paul Brunton.

 

 

" There were times when Ramana Maharshi actually appeared before me,

advised or discussed. Death had not ended our relationship or barred

our communions. He still existed in my mind, life, as a veritable

force, an entity bereft of the flesh but clearly present at such

times. And then one evening, which I shall never forget, about a

year and a quarter after his physical passing away, he said that he

needed to part and that he would vanish from my field of awareness.

He did. I never saw him again. If this was his spirit, as I

believed, it was either no longer able to maintain communication

with this world, which I did not believe, or had withdrawn because

the `next step' in my own development imperatively called for this

freedom, which subsequently proved to the case. "

 

Editors of The Notebook have added that in 1981(the year Brunton

died), he said more about this `next step'. " That while the inner

contact had never in fact been broken, I had lacked the ability to

recognize that at the time. I had to stop looking for the contact

through any sort of imagery, and learn to recognize its presence as

pure essence rather than personalized image. " (Pp. 228-9)

 

In an article written for a souvenir on Sri Ramana, published in

London in 1970 and reproduced in The Mountain Path of January 1971,

Brunton wrote about Bhagavan's impact on him:

 

Forty years have passed since I walked into his abode. After such a

long period most memories of the past become somewhat faded, if they

do not lose their existence altogether. But I can truthfully declare

that, in this case nothing of the kind has happened. On the

contrary, his face, expression, figure and surroundings are as vivid

now as they were then. What is even more important to me is that –

at least during my daily periods of meditation – the feeling of his

radiant presence is as actual and as immediate today as it was on

that first day.

 

prof laxmi narain (prof_narain)

 

Source and courtesy: Sri Ramana Kendram, Hyderabad

This article was published in Sri Ramana Jyothi,

monthly magazine of the Kendram.