Introduction

[Guest guest]

Chuck Hillig wrote:

 

Although I've read eastern philosophy since 1967, Ramana Maharshi has

> been the life-blood of my Heart since 1970. There's nothing more to say.

 

Thanks for the nice introduction Chuck-Ji! We have heard so much about you.

Reading your two lines of the great Sage of Arunachala gives great joy and

inspires me to send the following story from the Newsletters. Note the last

paragraph. It beautiful

indicates that Realization must be natural and cannot be forced. I will forward

this to as well since comments about Ramana Maharshi were made

there also.

 

Love to all

Harsha

 

As I Saw Him - 8

Extracts from 'My Recollections' by Devaraja Mudaliar

>

> This seems an appropriate place for referring to another well known

characteristic

> of Bhagavan. To those who have only a very superficial knowledge of him or

his

> works, it might seem that he was a cold, relentlessly logical, unemotional

Jnani, far

> removed from the Bhakta who melts into tears in contemplation of God's grace

and

> love. But to those who had any real experience of Bhagavan and his ways, and

> works, it was clear that he was as much a Bhakta as a Jnani. Often he has

told us

> that only a true Bhakta can be a true Jnani and that only a true Jnani can be

a true

> Bhakta. The complete extinction of the ego is the end attained either in

jnana or

> bhakti.

>

> When touching songs were recited or read out before him, or when he himself

was

> reading out to us poems or passages from the lives or works of famous saints,

he

> would be moved to tears and would find it impossible to restrain them. He

would be

> reading out and explaining some passage and when he came to a very moving

part

> he would get so choked with emotion that he could not continue but would lay

aside

> the book.

>

> Before taking leave of this topic, I must remark that it was not only any

moving

> song about God that had this effect on him but anything grand, magnanimous,

noble

> or generous moved him as few people could be moved. I was often reminded of

the

> sentence, "The finest minds, like the finest metals, dissolve the easiest."

>

> Many times I complained to Bhagavan that I was not making any appreciable

> progress, bemoaning the persistence of desires. Bhagavan replied making light

of

> my trouble: "It will all go, all in time. You need not worry. The more dhyana

> (meditation) one performs the more will these desires fall off."

>

> On other occasions when I complained that I was not improving, Bhagavan

simply

> replied, "How do you know ?"

>

> Bhagavan, from what little I know of him, was not one who believed in forcing

the

> pace. On the contrary, he gave me the impression that he felt it was not

proper and

> was not for our real good, that he should interfere and do violence to our

nature or

> Prakriti by hurrying us at a faster pace than we are built for, even towards

> realisation.

>