Ramana Maharshi About Hiranyagarbha And Begging

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Bhagavan says, “Hiranyagarbha is only another name for the sukshma sarira or Ishwara. The books use the following illustration to help explain creation. The Self is like the canvas for a painting. First a paste is smeared over it to close up the small holes that are in any cloth. This paste can be compared to the antaryami in all creation. Then the artist makes an outline on the canvas, and this can be compared to the sukshma sarira of all creation, for instance the light and sound, nada, bindu, out of which all things arise. Then the artist paints his picture with colours etc., in this outline, and this can be compared to the gross forms that constitute the world.”

In connection with this, G.V.S. asked Bhagavan about his early days and whether he ever went about accepting alms. Then Bhagavan related how it was T.P. Ramachandra Aiyar’s father who first took him by mere force to his house and fed him, and how the first time he begged for food was from Chinna Gurukal’s wife. He went on to tell how after that he freely begged in almost all the streets of Tiruvannamalai. He said:“You cannot conceive of the majesty and dignity I felt while so begging. The first day, when I begged from Gurukal’s wife, I felt bashful about it as a result of habits of upbringing, but after that there was absolutely no feeling of abasement. I felt like a king and more than a king. I have sometimes received stale gruel at some house and taken it without salt or any other flavouring, in the open street, before great pandits and other important men who used to come and prostrate themselves before me at my Asramam, then wiped my hands on my head and passed on supremely happy and in a state of mind in which even emperors were mere straw in my sight. You can’t imagine it. It is because there is such a path that we find tales in history of kings giving up their thrones and taking to this path.”

In illustration of this, Bhagavan told us a story of a king who renounced his throne and went begging, first outside the limits of his State, then in his own State, then in its capital city, and finally in the royal palace itself, and thus at last got rid of his ego-sense. After some time, when he was wandering as an ascetic in another State, he was chosen to be its king and accepted because now that he had completely lost the sense of ‘I’ he could act any part in life as a mere witness and the cares of kingship no longer worried him. When his own former State heard of it, they also asked him to resume his kingship, and he did so, because however many kingdoms he might rule over, he realized now that he was not the doer but simply an instrument in God’s hands.

Source: DAY BY DAY WITH BHAGAVAN RAMANA MAHARSHI

-- Om namo Bhagavate Sri Ramanaya

Prasanth Jalasutram