XV
N. N. Rajan

BHAGAVAN SRI RAMANA is a guru to all those who have
faith in him. He is a rare combination of bhakti ^[?] and jnana ^[?].

Some devotees feel that they are led through jnana towards
Self-knowledge. Each individual is helped or taught by him
either through silence or sometimes by words according to the
needs of that person. Therefore, one is not aware what another
gets by way of help from the guru and that becomes clear when
the devotees compare notes of their experience.

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Often Sri Bhagavan clears the doubts in the minds of the
devotees even before they put questions to him. Devotees having
some problems which they themselves could not solve come
there with an ardent desire of asking Sri Bhagavan for a solution,
but often, and to their amazement, they themselves find the
solutions of the problems when they sit in his presence.

Such a method of teaching is nothing short of a miracle in
its subtlest form. Miracles, as generally understood, are
something spectacular and many persons are under the
impression that the greatness of a saint or sage is directly
proportionate to the number of miracles he performs. That
way of thinking is not correct. Sri Bhagavan says that the greatest
miracle is attainment of Self-knowledge and all other spectacular
performances are of the world, hence illusory! He does not admit
that he performs any miracles, but things do happen which we
interpret in such a way.

In this connection, it would be interesting to narrate my
experience. Once I met an old friend Mr. K. A. in Poona. In
the course of our conversation, he told me that in 1919, he was
informed by some devotees that a peacock and a cobra played
with each other in Skandasram when Sri Bhagavan was residing
there. To see this, he and a friend of his, decided to go there and
verify what they had heard.

They arrived at Skandasram in the afternoon and sat there
for a couple of hours hoping to see the bird and the snake, but
they did not appear. They felt disappointed and returned home
the same day with the belief that people circulate stories that are
not correct. I too had heard about the story of the peacock and
the snake at Skandasram, and I believed it because I had no cause
to doubt the intention of those that told me about it. I tried to
convince Mr. K.A., that miracles have no value to gauge the
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greatness of a saint, which according to him have a value, and he
put forward very strong arguments to support his own case.

Mr. K. A. is a well-read old man, and the conversation
initiated a struggle in my mind whether to believe or discard as
untrue what I had heard. My mind was very uneasy for a couple
of days and it calmed down when it occurred to me that the
peacock and the snake could not have obliged Mr. K.A. and his
friend during the very short stay they made at Skandasram.

Sri Bhagavan's talks are very instructive and can be easily
understood by those who listen to him. He talks about his own
experience in very simple language. He generally speaks in Tamil,
Telugu or in Malayalam. He knows English but seldom speaks
in that language. People who do not know the Dravidian
languages ask questions in English and his replies are given in
Tamil which are then translated into English by an interpreter
for the benefit of the questioners. When he finds that the
translation is not correct he suggests appropriate English words
to the interpreter. He writes and composes in the three Indian
languages mentioned above and in Sanskrit too. Most of his
works have been translated into English and other languages.

From the study of such spiritual literature much benefit can be
derived, but one who is earnest in the quest of the Self, gets
abiding inspiration by personal contact with Sri Bhagavan. Since
he knows many languages, it is possible to converse with him
and get more benefit than from reading books alone.

I have had opportunities to talk to Sri Bhagavan and one
of them is mentioned here. One day I went to see Gurumurtham
and the garden near it. These two places are well known to
those who have read his biography. It is in this garden that
Bhagavan's uncle recognised him as his nephew Venkataraman,
who had left his home some three years earlier. After visiting
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the two places I returned to the Ashram and told Sri Bhagavan
that the place now is more or less an open ground and is not a
garden as described by Sri Narasimhaswamy in his book Self
Realization. Sri Bhagavan immediately began to describe how
the garden was then and proceeded further to describe his life
during his sojourn there. He said that he was taking shelter in a
lamb pen which was hardly high enough for him to sit erect. If
he wanted to stretch his body on the floor, most of it was out in
the open. He wore only a kaupina and had no covering over
the rest of his body. If it rained he remained on the wet and
sodden ground where sometimes water stood a couple of inches
deep! He did not feel any inconvenience because he had no
`body sense' to worry him. He felt that sunrise and sunset came
in quick succession. Time and space did not exist for him! He
then tried to describe the state of his awareness of the Self and
his awareness of the body and things material. To him the sun
of absolute Reality made the phenomenal world disappear and
he was immersed in that light which dissolves diversity into the
One without a second!

It is not possible to express exactly the thrill felt by all of
us who were listening to him. We all did feel as if we were
transported into that condition to attain that which we are
striving for. There was a deep silence in the hall for some time
during which everyone present felt peace and happiness. It
occurred to me then that Bhagavan, while narrating any incident
of his life, takes the opportunity to teach us, and I told him that
when he spoke we felt as if it was easy to experience the Self and
even as if we had glimpses of it. We asked him exactly how one
has to proceed to be in that state of continuous awareness which
he had described. Sri Bhagavan, with his sparkling eyes, looked
at me benevolently, raised his hands and said,
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"It is the easiest thing to obtain. The Self is always in you,
around you and everywhere. It is the substratum and the support
of everything. You are experiencing the Self and enjoying it
every moment of your life. You are not aware of it because your
mind is on things material and thus gets externalised through
your senses. Hence you are unable to know it. Turn your mind
away from material things which are the cause of desires, and
the moment you withdraw your mind from them you become
aware of the Self. Once you experience the Self, you are held
by it, and you become `That which is the One without a
second.'"

When he finished his words I again felt in the same way as
I felt on the first day I met him in 1923 -- that Sri Bhagavan is
a big power house and his power or grace overwhelms us,
whatever our ideas may be and leads us into the channel flowing
into the Self. It became clear to me that we can have the
knowledge of the Self if only we take the path into which a
realised person or guru directs us.

In conclusion I wish to say that one should constantly
meditate that one is not the body or the mind. Unless the mind
is in contact with the senses, we cannot get any report from our
ears, eyes etc. We must therefore still the mind by disconnecting
it from the senses and thus get beyond them to experience the
Self. What we learn from sense perception is only relative
knowledge. Knowledge of the Self can be learnt only by sitting
at the feet of one who has realised it; what others tell you is
mere talk. Bhagavan Sri Ramana is one of those Masters who
has realised the Self and like all other Masters who preceded
him, he helps us proceed rapidly to attain Self-knowledge.

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