Evolution of Love 2

SWAMI RAMANAGIRI

There is a samadhi of one European devotee of Bhagavan near Vadippatti village, which is about 25 km from Madurai. His name is Ramana Giri. There is a Shiva Lingam installed over his samadhi and a small temple built around it. I used to visit this place on my way to Madurai, which is located in a quiet spot, at the foot of a small mountain range. The manager of the place gave the following information about Sri Ramana Giri:

His original name was Per Westin. He belonged to the royal family in his native Sweden. He came to India to study Sanskrit at Banaras Hindu University. He met Bhagavan and did not return to his native place.

Bhagavan gave him a small begging bowl made by himself, out of coconut shell. In the following days, he could not get sufficient quantity of food as bhiksha, and complained to Bhagavan about it. Bhagavan told him that thereafter he need not go in search of food as it would come to him. From that time he did not have to bother about his food. He then moved to different places and settled at this place, which is near a jungle stream. The coconut shell begging bowl, made by Bhagavan, is kept safely in a jewel box, along with other belongings of Sri Ramana Giri. They gave it to me to see it. It has been made by cutting the coconut vertically. Though small in size, it is in a perfect oval shape, and nicely polished. Holding it in my hands, I was overwhelmed by emotion. As a souvenir, I was given an old visiting card of Sri Ramana Giri with his original name. The card has his old name and address as ‘Djursholm’.

Swami Ramanagiri was born into an aristocratic Swedish family in June 1921. Though he was related to the king of Sweden, it was the ‘royal’ yoga of Patanjali that finally claimed him. In his youth, he came across Swami Vivekananda’s Raja Yoga and found he had an immediate affinity with the subject matter, so much so that he began to develop yogic siddhis soon after beginning the practices.

He came to India in 1945 on a two-year scholarship to study philosophy at Banaras Hindu University, but the principal aim of his journey was to find a competent teacher who could help him to make progress with his yogic practices.

The Danish devotee Sunyata recalls meeting him soon after his arrival:
“It was on a sunny, winter day in holy Benares, in the 1940s, that I met Peer A. Wertin. He came gliding along by the shore where the washermen were busy splashing the dirty linen of respectable egojis [Sunyata’s affectionate name for all embodied jivas]. I was sharing my leftover food with donkey friends, as human friends would always give me too much to eat. Peer seemed touched by my donkey friendship. Birds of a feather and kindred asses flock together! Peer was in a body of some twenty-five summers – tall, dark and slim. He was studious looking, civilized, respectable and balanced. His upper lip had been slightly damaged by some explosion [he had received] during military duty. I detected a slight stoop… We went together to see some sadhus, gurus and learned pandits in the holy Benares. …”

The two soon became friends. When summer came Sunyata invited Peer to stay with him in Almora:

“Peer came to my Himalayan retreat in the spring when the heat came upon the plains. He stayed in my upper Sunya cave on the hill’s crest. It had vast scenic views and a vaster expanse of silence. He imbibed the gracious solitude in the pure, Krishna-blue azure realm, while Paramahamsa wings grew and unfurled. He had the psychological urge towards stark openness and nudeness. It was the need of being natural, without the rags of ego deceit, artificial respectability or artistic hiding. In this purity, the mental fig leaves become positively indecent or a kind of vulgar prudery.

Peer Wertin had been awarded a two-year scholarship in India to study religious and philosophical lore, but he renounced it all when he took to yoga and intensive self-enquiry. I later introduced him to Maharshi Ramana in Tiruvannamalai. In and through Maharshi, he eventually came to full ‘awakening’, conscious ‘Self-awareness’, or ‘advaita experiencing’. Hanuman, the name given to him in Varanasi dropped off and ‘Ramanagiri’, conferred on him by Ramana Maharshi, emerged. Comparisons are odious, yet Maharshi Ramana is Himalayan to many current molehills and tinpot, claptrap gurus.

Peer was blessed in Maharshi’s grace and sahaja recognition. When I met him first I asserted nothing. Himalaya and Sunyata have no need to assert. I could sense in him a certain Swedish occultism and an intense longing to realise the truth. Ramanagiri later came through an ancient road, a homeward way, frequented by the wholly awakened ones. Here all mental concepts and ideals vanish. Only awareness remains, bereft of all theories and ideal abstractions. It is the serene state of exalted calm in absolute Silence. It has been called nirvana, or turiya or sunya.

Ramanagiri was in this state of ‘advaita experiencing’. I did pranam to Ramanagiri in glad homage, in karuna love and in Himalayan ananda gratitude. Upon leaving my place he went on a pilgrimage. His Jiva Yatra [soul’s pilgrimage] was lived mostly in South India, by seashores, in jungles and at the grail-glowing holy mountain, Arunachala.“

In early 1949 he came to Tiruvannamalai to meet Bhagavan for the first time. Though he had a natural inclination for raja yoga, having practised it for years, Swami Ramanagiri felt an immediate attraction to atma vichara, the path of Sri Ramana. Since this was a departure from the practical teachings he had been taught by his diksha guru, Swami Ramanagiri felt that he should consult him about this change of direction. The diksha guru let him know that Bhagavan was his true Guru, and he encouraged him to follow the teachings he was being given at Ramanasramam.

Swami Ramanagiri did self-enquiry intensively for forty days in Bhagavan’s presence and was rewarded, on Sivaratri day 1949, with a direct experience of the Self. When asked later about what had happened on that momentous day, he would usually say, ‘On that day I became a fool’. For the rest of his life he referred to himself in the third person as ‘this fool’.

Speaking of the effect this experience had had on him, he wrote in one of his notebooks:

I don’t know anything, and that ‘I’ which knows is nothing but an ignorant fool. I think, when I don’t think, that I have no end and no beginning.
That which thinks has to take thousands of births.
When there is ‘I’ He is not; when He is, I am not.

How did he practice atma vichara? Certainly not in the way prescribed by Bhagavan. It was his own idiosyncratic method, combining classical vichara, pranayama, a little neti-neti, and some imaginative visualisations.

"In the course of sadhana, maya first comes to the sincere soul in the form of worldly troubles; second in the form of desires, and third in the form of dear friends who keep him away from the quest.

He had had his own experiences of ‘dear friends’ who kept him away from the quest. In one of his notebooks he wrote: ‘Three years ago I found that letters from my previous family became an obstacle on the spiritual quest, so whenever any letter came, I never opened it or read it. I experienced that the divine was on my side in spite of my improper action.’

He continued with his spiritual advice with the following words:
“Our own mind is the greatest cheater in the world. It will make thousands of different reasons to go its own way. There are three ways of handling this cheat, who is nothing but a bundle of thoughts creeping into the conscious mind.
First, to treat him as a friend and give him full satisfaction. This is a very long and tiresome way because he is never satisfied.
Second, to treat him as an enemy and with all force try to get rid of him. This is only possible by the grace of the divine because the mind has got two very powerful weapons – the discriminating intellect and the imaginative faculty. These two fellows can convince even God himself that black is white.
The third way is the way taught by Sri Ramana in the days of silence at the foot of sacred Arunachala. This way, which has been adopted by this fool, is to treat the mind as a patient, or rather several patients who are coming to a doctor to complain about their various ailments.
Just as a doctor sits in his room receiving different kinds of patients, this fool imagines himself sitting in the sacred cave of the Heart and receiving the different thought-patients. You know that a sick person likes to babble for hours about his complaint. In the same way a thought likes to multiply itself, but the doctor always cuts it short, saying, ‘Very good. Take this medicine. Thank you very much.’ And then he calls for another patient. This is how this fool decided to meditate.
First, the fool slows down his breath as much as possible, but only to the point where there is no discomfort. To this fool, two breaths per minute is the proper speed, but that may not be possible for you because this fool has practised for a long time. You may be able to decrease your breathing to 8-10 per minute in the beginning. Don’t get to a level where you are uncomfortable, because that discomfort will give rise to thoughts.“

After the Mahasamadhi of Bhagavan he [Swami Ramanagiri] wanted to go back to the Himalayas. En route, he was persuaded by a friend to spend a few days at Madras with him.

One day, as he was walking along the beach, he had a vision of Bhagavan who, signalling with his hand, directed him to proceed further south and stay there. This led him to Tiruvanmiyur, then a fishing village, but nowadays [this was written in 1977] a part of the fast-growing city of Madras.

Here he sat on the beach immersed in samadhi. His host, not knowing where his revered guest had gone, grew anxious. A search was organised and Swamiji was at last located sitting on the beach under the scorching sun, deep in samadhi.
When he came back to the physical plane, he was requested to return to his host’s residence. However, Swamiji said that Bhagavan had directed him to stay there at the seaside, and so stay there he would. So, his host decided to put up a hut of coconut palm leaves for him on the beach. Arrangements were made by his host for food to be sent to him daily.

Often, when the fishermen would swarm around Swamiji, he would give the food meant for himself to them. On other occasions he would be in samadhi, totally unaware of the needs of his body. It was this continued neglect which brought on the tuberculosis which ultimately consumed his body. At first, he refused treatment but was persuaded by his host, whom he treated as his father, to go back to the city for treatment.

At the beginning of his account A. Chela described how Bhagavan had somehow commanded Swami Ramanagiri to stay on the beach. This ‘command’ followed a major experience that took place in the Theosophical Society in southern Madras. Swami Ramanagiri described the experience and its aftermath in a letter he wrote to Sunyata:

Dearest Sunya,
In this letter I must tell you that I have sailed away. I have sailed to a far-off place, a place which cannot be described by words. To describe it is to pollute it. The steamer on which I sailed is a very powerful one, but it rolls hard in the sea if the weather is stormy. The place is called by many names, but still no name can cover its reality.

Some used to call the place nirvikalpa, others satchitananda or nirguna Brahman – some call it God or Self, others call it pure consciousness or the egoless state. To describe it, I have to put up a big wall before it.

The name of the steamer is ‘mind’. With the help of prana one reaches the place that for the jiva seems so far away; but really speaking, is nearer than one’s own breath. If the sense-weather is stormy, the steamer will roll badly on the samsaric ocean. By now, you must understand the art of my sailing, and why I have been so silent. Let me tell you what happened and why I have been so silent.

The same day as I was going back to North India I visited the Theosophical Library at Adyar. And while walking in the garden, Sri Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi appeared before me. He asked me to follow him. I went along the seacoast to a little place where I sat down for meditation. There Sri Bhagavan’s voice told me that my only duty (dharma) from now onwards was the Self. Further, he gave me some upadesa which I followed for some days.

One night, between 12 and 2, kundalini was aroused to sahasrara and the jiva merged into the Self. On account on the sound Om from the waves of the sea, I was brought back to body awareness; otherwise I would have left my body because in that state there is no one to come back, and no one to make any effort. After having regained body-consciousness, I discovered that I had lost all my memory. All events before the time of Sri Bhagavan’s appearance in the garden had gone out of my mind. Friends who had been very close to me looked like strangers. People whom I thought I had never met before came and told me that we had met in Madras only a few days before. Everyone and everything looked so new and strange and unreal.

Now I am getting back my memory, but mostly recollections connected with spiritual experiences and deep love. That is why I am writing to you, because those who are near my heart turn up again in this mind, which is so different from the previous one.

The village people have built a little hut for me, but there is no post office in this little fishing village, the name of which I do not even know, so I cannot give you any address yet. I don’t think any postman will take the trouble to come down to the sandy beach, but I shall let you know later.

With all my love
Ramanagiri in Him

He frequently became absorbed in ecstatic or blissful states, so much so that he had little awareness of his body or its needs. Of one experience he wrote:

"The whole night nothing but fire, light, bliss and pranava.
O Father! O Father! What happiness!
No thought, only the enjoyment and the enjoyer.
O Father! How near I was to losing myself completely in your embrace.
O Father, why do you turn me back to the state of the mind where I suffer from thoughts and where I am tormented by an ego?

In a more sober and reflective mood he made the following assessment of the blissful states he was experiencing through his pranayama and atma vichara:

"Bliss is not a product of fantasy, but the most convincing experience we are capable of. If this experience would be a product of the imagination, the hair would not stand on end, nor would tears of happiness come in streams from the eyes, nor would the nose start flowing, nor would there be any shivering of the body, the skin would not turn red-hot, and there would be no levitation of the body. How many times have I found the body at another place in the room after having enjoyed Mother’s bliss. In padmasana the body is not capable of moving."

Swami Ramanagiri eventually contracted tuberculosis, a disease which claimed him at the young age of thirty-four, in 1955. He spent his final days in the Perunderai Sanitorium.

Though his body was lean and emaciated, his spirits were high.
‘It is the body which suffers,’ he told his visitors. ‘I am all right. Sakti is now stronger than ever before, and it is here [indicating a spot between the eyebrows].

It was summer and mangoes were just beginning to appear. Accepting some as an offering, he alluded to his forthcoming death by saying, ‘I will eat a nice mango now, but it will become garbage tomorrow morning’.

For more than an hour before his death, he was completely withdrawn in a deep meditative state, with his hair standing on end. At his last moment he whispered ‘Let us go,’ and he left his body in true yogic fashion, through the fontanelle in the top of his head. Blood was seen to ooze out of a hole there.

His body was interred at the foot of the Sirumulai Hills, at a place he had named ‘Ramana Padam’, and a Siva lingam was installed over his samadhi. Twice a year there are gatherings at the shrine to commemorate the day of his great experience with Bhagavan, and the date of his final passing away. A poor feeding is conducted and crowds of over 2,000 assemble to pay homage to this foreign son of India.

His Name, taken once with wholehearted love and a one-pointed mind, is worth more than the knowledge collected from every book all over the world.
Learning is learned ignorance. Unlearning is learning.
What you speak about others doesn’t reveal anything about them, but about you.
The power of listening attracts more than the power of speaking.
Swami Ramanagiri

Jnana and bhakti are not separate from each other. One cannot know Him without loving Him, and one cannot love Him without knowing Him.
Non-attachment does not mean indifference; love does not mean attachment; attachment is that which takes; love is that which gives.
Shut the doors and the door will be opened.

Religion is experience. It should be practised, not studied or discussed, and at the very least not preached. Those who preach don’t know; those who know don’t preach.

About your worldly troubles: you must do as you think best yourself, but it is good policy to keep away from other’s plates, however sweet and inviting they look. Both sugar and arsenic are white.