Ramana Maharshi

For a place-name in Azerbaijan see Ramana (settlement).

Ramana Maharshi (December 30, 1879 – April 14, 1950) was a Hindu mystic of the Advaita Vedanta stream, who lived on Arunachala hill near Tiruvannamalai. Dozens of contemporary Satsang teachers in the West claim him to be their Satguru. The core of his teachings was the practice of atma-vichara (self-enquiry).

Life

Ramana Maharshi was born in a village called Tirucculi near Madurai in southern India. He was given the name Venkataraman. After his father had died when Venkataraman was twelve, he went to live with his uncle in Madurai, where he briefly attended the American Mission High School.

At the age of sixteen, as he reported later, he had heard somebody mention the word "Arunachala." Although he didn't know what the word meant, he became greatly excited. Arunachala is a hill that is considered as being "holy" by Hindus, and that is associated with the Hindu deity of Shiva. At about the same time, said Ramana, he had come across a copy of "Sekkilar's Periyapuranam", a book that describes the lives of Shaivite saints, and became fascinated by it.

Not much later, he reported, he had an experience that was to change his life:

It was in 1896, about 6 weeks before I left Madurai for good (to go to Tiruvannamalai - Arunachala) that this great change in my life took place. I was sitting alone in a room on the first floor of my uncle's house. I seldom had any sickness and on that day there was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden violent fear of death overtook me. There was nothing in my state of health to account for it nor was there any urge in me to find out whether there was any account for the fear. I just felt I was going to die and began thinking what to do about it. It did not occur to me to consult a doctor or any elders or friends. I felt I had to solve the problem myself then and there.

The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: "Now death has come; what does it mean? What is that called dying? This body dies." And at once I dramatised the occurrence of death. I lay with my limbs stretched out still as though rigor mortis has set in, and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the enquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, and that neither the word "I" nor any word could be uttered. "Well then," I said to myself, this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burn and reduced to ashes. But with the death of the body, am I dead? Is the body I? It is silent and inert, but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of I within me, apart from it. So I am the Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the spirit transcending it cannot be touched by death. That means I am the deathless Spirit. All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living truths which I perceived directly almost without thought process. "I" was something real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with the body was centered on that "I". From that moment onwards, the "I" or Self focussed attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death vanished once and for all. The ego was lost in the flood of Self awareness. Absorption continued in the Self continued unbroken from that time. Other thought might come and go like the various notes of music, but the "I" continued like the fundamental shruthi which is heard note which underlies and blends with all other notes.

Venkataraman stayed at the family home for two months after his 'death experience', but after his brother remarked on his intense introspection he secretly left the family home and travelled to the sacred mountain of Arunachala, at the town of Tiruvannamalai, Madras Province (now Tamil Nadu). He stayed at Arunachala for the rest of his life.

Teachings

Ramana Maharshi taught a method called "Atma-Vichara" or "self-inquiry" in which the seeker focuses continuous attention on the "I-thought" in order to find its source. In the beginning this would require effort, said Ramana, but eventually something deeper than the "small self" would take over and the mind would dissolve in what he called the "heart center". This was possible Ramana claimed, because the human personality is but a mental idea.

He is an acknowledged Hindu master of the Advaita Vedanta stream, and has followers throughout India and abroad. This system of philosophy endorses the view that the "true being" within each human is the ultimate, "sublime reality", the Brahman, the "one without a second" or simply the Self. What prevents humans from realizing this, so the teachings of Advaita, is the identification with the mind and the body. therefore, these identifications - which make up the "ego" - must be transcended in order to realize the truth. However, from the Vedanta perspective, 'realize the truth' is a bit of a misnomer, because the Self, in Vedanta thought already is the truth, already is free. One need merely remove the false veil of wrong identification with the body and mind to see this.

Ramana recommended his followers to go back to the "source from wherein all thought arises" and for example ask themselves, "to whom is this thought?" or "to whom has this anger arisen?" The answer would be obviously "to me"; after that, they were asked to enquire as to "who am I?". Ramana Maharishi would also suggest the question "whence am I?" which some of his devotees consider to be more important than "who am I?". In this way they would try to trace the "I-thought" back to the "source". The word "source" in this context is used synonymous of the words "God" or "Self". Another often used teaching of Ramana's is: "Stay in silence." Many spiritual western authors, including the American philosopher Ken Wilber, claim to have been influenced by Ramana Maharshi's nondual approach.In fact, Ken Wilber is said to have called Ramana Maharshi "the greatest sage of the 20th Century". Journalist Paul Brunton was one of the first westerners to write about Ramana Maharshi. His book "A Search in Secret India" was written in the 1930's and has made Ramana popular in Europe and America.

Teachers in the tradition

Several followers of Ramana Maharshi became teachers in their own right, and have subsequently spawned their own successors as well, including H. W. L. Poonja, Lakshmana Swamy, and Annamalai Swami. Western followers of Ramana Maharshi include Robert Adams, Paul Brunton, A. Ramana (AHAM), Nome (Society of Abidance in Truth), Neelam (Fire of Truth Satsanga), Gangaji, Eli Jaxon-Bear, Catherine Ingram, and Isaac Shapiro.

External links

References

The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi edited by Arthur Osborne
Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi edited by David Godman
The Path of Sri Ramana (Parts One and Two) by Sri Sadhu Om

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Life

Teachings

Teachers in the tradition

External links

See also

References