A JOURNALIST REMEMBERS SRI RAMANA

[Guest guest]

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

 

A JOURNALIST REMEMBERS SRI RAMANA

 

 

Santha Rangachary was a journalist. She served on the editorial

board of The Mountain Path during 1980-88.

 

I desperately needed a confidante, an adviser, somebody preferably

outside the family, and out of the blue the name of Ramana Maharshi

came to me. His was the only name I had ever heard my father – a

stubborn, intolerant sceptic – mention without any adverse suffixes.

I decided, therefore, to write to the sage asking him

directly: " Please, I beg of you, help me with my temper problem. "

Within a week I received a reply signed by the sarvadhikari,

containing the Maharshi's message that if I myself made a constant

and earnest effort to overcome my temper I would rid myself of it,

and that he sends me his blessings.

My first reaction to that letter was one of astonishment at being

treated like a grown up, since I had always been told what to do,

guided, instructed, warned but never challenged except on a Sports

Day. And here was this great Guru telling me: " It is your temper,

isn't it? So, you yourself deal with it. " He had simply batted the

ball back to my court in the nicest possible way by treating me as an

individual in my own right. I rather liked that.

Ramana Maharshi entered my life again a year or so later when my

sister took our family on a pilgrimage.We were to stay at Sri

Ramanasramam only for two days. But as it turned out, we stayed

for the whole week and I wept like a lost child when we had to leave.

The visit was a shattering experience for me. I do believe I

literally fell in love with Ramana Maharshi. I was in a daze, a

trance, my tongue was gone, my mind was gone, I was in a state of

dumbfounded ecstasy. This love, which had been awakened, was the kind

which totally bypasses the physical plane and creates an awareness of

a different kind of consciousness which can only be described as a

mindless rapture, pure joy. It is an unlocated, pervasive state of

being sparked off by some kind of recognition and it stays with you,

and you are never the same again.

When we went to Sri Ramana's hall, my mother, brother and sister went

ahead and quickly disappeared into the hall. I hung back,

unaccountably apprehensive. Then, as I at last composed myself and

got to the door and looked in, I saw reclining on a sofa, a golden-

brown figure with the most radiant countenance I had ever seen before

or since and, as I stood there riveted to the spot, the Maharshi

looked at me. When I remember it even now, more than forty years

later, tears come to my eyes as they did then. I stood there, God

knows how long, just looking at that face. Then, as in a trance, I

moved forward deliberately towards him and touched his feet. Fighting

my way through the disapproving glance that followed, as devotees

were not allowed to touch Bhagavan, I made my way to a place near the

window.

Once seated, I let my tears flow. I remember I spent a good part of

that morning wiping my eyes. They were not tears of grief nor

werethey tears of joy. Maybe they were for something which I saw in

the Maharshi fleetingly and which I also want and shall forever seek.

Yes, I cried for myself then and I still do it now.

Never before had I seen in a human countenance a more intense, inward

life and yet one which remained so transparent and childlike. There

was about him an irresistible and indefinable spiritual power, which

simply overwhelmed me. I was conscious of people sitting all around

me but was totally incurious about them. After an hour or so of

silence I suddenly felt like singing. Without hesitation or

embarrassment, I lifted my 12 year-old voice in a rendition of

Tyagaraja's Ninne kori Yunnanura, keeping time softly with my fingers

on my knee. After a few minutes, I threw myself with another gush of

abandon into Thelisi Rama Chintana. As I began the anupallavi which

exhorts the mind to stay still for a moment and realise the true

essence of the name of Rama, I saw the Maharashi turn his eyes upon

me with that impersonal yet arresting look of his, my heart soared

and I thought: `I want to be here for ever and ever'.

For three hours every morning and every evening my vigil in the hall

continued for seven days. I sat in my seat near the window, still and

thought-free, just gazing at the Maharshi. Occasionally somebody

would ask a question and the Maharshi would turn and look at him,

and you got the feeling that the question had been answered. Or,

somebody would ask for the meaning of a particular phrase in a

Sanskrit or Tamil stanza and the Maharshi would answer softly,

briefly.

The Maharshi was not a man of many words. His long years of practised

detachment from people made him absolutely brief in speech. His

knowledge of classical Tamil religious literature was considerable;

he could himself compose verses and he did. His enlightenment had

not been directed by a Guru but had come from his Self-

consciousness. His most effective form of communication was intra-

personal through the sense of sight and the medium of silence. He was

very much a human being, who laughed and joked occasionally, but he

could suddenly plunge deep into himself while sitting in a hall full

of people and rest in that stillness of spirit, which as he himself

said, was being in God.

One afternoon, somebody showed the Maharshi some verses. The Maharshi

read them and made a brief comment. In those eloquent silences that

punctuated his brief remarks, one seemed to feel unspoken thought

flowing around the room touching and drawing everybody into its

illuminating course. That was a strange experience to me. In the

presence of the Maharshi, speech seemed redundant. I was totally

and blissfully satisfied just being in his presence.

That whole week I practically did nothing else but sit in the hall.

I had never before spent so many days talking so little, just sitting

around so much, or so lost in a single-minded pursuit of the

Maharshi.

I shall not claim that my whole life was transformed after this

meeting. No. I went back to school and then to college, got married,

set up a house, had children, started a journalistic career of my

own. My grihastasram became my main preoccupation. But my visit to

Sri Ramanasramam had done something to me. It left a mark on my

mind and heart. The picture of the Ashram and of the Maharshi was

always in my mind like the background curtain of a stage. Whenever I

was tired or dispirited or perplexed, the wish to go to Sri

Ramanasramam would possess me like hunger. Even when I was so busy

that I did not know whether I was coming or going, a sudden look at

a picture of the Maharshi hanging on the wall would momentarily root

me to the spot and my mind would suddenly go blank. Whenever I feel I

want to go away somewhere, away from home, family, friends, books,

mistakes, fears, sorrows, my mind automatically turns to Sri

Ramanasramam. And my body follows. I make the journey to

Tiruvannmalai, walk into the Ashram, enter the hall, and I am `home'

and totally at peace.

Every human being has really only one guru like one mother. Some

are fortunate enough to meet their gurus; some pass them by, like

ships in the night. I stumbled upon mine when I was twelve; I now

stand alone in myself. In a sense I am twelve-going-on thirteen all

over again, standing on another threshold, remembering, waiting. .

(Source: Face to Face with Sri Ramana Maharshi – forthcoming

publication of Sri Ramana Kendram, Hyderabad.)