HOW I CAME TO THE MAHARSHI francis allan

[Guest guest]

THE MOUNTAIN PATH

Oktober 1965

 

 

How I came to the Maharshi

By Francis Allen

This is the story of how Bhagavan, whom I never met, came, I believe, into my life.

During World War II, I was posted from England to Ceylon, where I became so interested in Theravada Buddhism that I determined to enter the Sangha. I was informed by monks there that they could not give me ordination without first obtaining my parents' consent.

After being demobilised in England I joined a small London group studying Theravada, another member of which was a lady who, it transpired, had been to Tiruvannamalai.

I discovered this one day when I heard her telling a mutual friend how she had gone to Sri Ramanasramam with a personal problem. For the first time in my life I then heard the name Sri Ramana

"Bhagavan," she explained, had merely smiled and indicated that she settle herself upon a mat in His hall. Whereupon, without words passing between them, the solution to her trouble had soon presented itself to her mind. This, she informed her London friend, was nothing unusual where Bhagavan was concerned.

I made up my mind there and then to break my return journey to Ceylon at Tiruvannamalai. Unfortunately, although my father had agreed to my ordination as a Buddhist monk, my mother withheld her permission, fearing it was merely a passing impulse on my part. I had returned to a good job in London, and she was reluctant see me disappear, perhaps for ever, into a far away monastic life.

Months passed, until one evening I returned home from a particularly trying day at the office feeling tired and looking, I dare say, dejected. My mother greeted me with the words: "I can see you are as keen as ever to go back to Ceylon. You have my permission, if you think it will make you happy."

That day was April 14th, 1950. The very day that, miles and miles away from London, Bhagavan left the body. It was not until I arrived in Bombay that I discovered this; and imagining that Bhagavan was no more, I went on to Colombo ...

It was another few years before I met Ethel Merston who suggested I should read Arthur Osborne's book Ramana Maharshi. After that, with the assistance of Ronald Rosa, I arrived at Sri Ramanasramam.

What, I wonder, would Bhagavan have advised me if I had visited Him en route to the Buddhist monastery? Had He warned me of what was going to come of it, I should have found it impossible to believe.

At that time I had set my heart on embracing the monastic life, and any dissuasion would not have deterred me, yet would have filled me with foreboding uneasiness. No; I imagine that, simply smiling, Bhagavan would have left me to go ahead and work out in my own way what was a particularly complicated part of my destiny.