Ramana also initiated people in dreams by gazing intently into their eyes, and he would sometimes travel in the subtle body to visit people. He would appear to a disciple hundreds of miles away as a luminous figure, and the person would recognize his apparence in that form. He noted that one’s waking life and one’s dream life were both a kind of dream each with different qualities of awareness. He referred to them as “dream 1” and “dream 2”. He therefore did not make a big distinction between appearing to a waking disciple and a dreaming disciple since he considered both spheres of existence to be dreams.[2]
He shared in the communal work and for many years he rose at 3 AM in order to prepare food for the residents of the ashram. His sense of equality was legendary. When visitors came to see him— it made no difference whether they were VIPs, peasants or animals— they would all be treated with equal respect and consideration. [4]
The spirit of harmlessness that permeated the sage and his environs made even animals and birds make friends with him. He showed them the same consideration that he did to the humans that went to him. When he referred to any of them, he used the form ‘he’ or ‘she’ and not ‘it’. Birds and squirrels built their nests around him. Cows, dogs and monkeys found asylum in the Asrama. [5]
Throughout the period between I925-50 the center of ashram life was the small hall where Sri Ramana lived, slept and held court. He spent most of his day sitting in one corner radiating his silent power and simultaneously fielding questions from the constant flow of visitors who descended on him from every corner of the globe. He rarely committed his ideas to paper and so the verbal replies given out during this period (by far the most well-documented of his life) represent the largest surviving source of his teachings. These verbal teachings flowed authoritatively from his direct knowledge that consciousness was the only existing reality. Consequently, all his explanations and instructions were geared to convincing his followers that this was their true and natural state. [4]
Said Ramana Maharshi: “Know who you are, and all else will be known. Happiness is your real nature. You identify yourself with the body and mind. Feel its limitations and suffer. Realize your true Self in order to open the store of unalloyed happiness. That true Self is the reality, the supreme truth which is the Self of all the world you now see, the Self of all the selves, the one real, the supreme, eternal Self as distinct from the ego, or the bodily idea of the Self.” [6]
For the last 2 years of his life the Maharshi suffered from cancer and experienced great physical pain, but even towards the end he maintained the same tranquil poise and self-same radiant smile. When he was suffering from cancer in the arm a disciple ran away crying because he could not bear to see his master in pain. Ramana only smiled and spoke to a disciple nearby. “Duraswami is crying because he thinks I am suffering agonies! My body is suffering but I am not suffering. When will he realise that I am not this body?” [3]
The French photographer Cartier-Bresson was visiting Ramana’s ashram as Ramana neared death. He noted the following astronomical event which appeared in the night sky over the sacred mountain Arunachala as Ramana died:
“I saw a shooting star with a luminous tail unlike any I had ever seen before moving slowly across the sky and reaching the top of Arunachala, the mountain, disappearing behind it. We immediately looked at our watches. It was 8:47. We raced to the ashram only to find that the master had passed in to Mahanirvana at that exact minute. Nor was this experience only documented by a select few … All the English and Tamil papers which arrived this morning from Madras referred to the meteor which had been seen in the sky over the entire state of Madras at 8:47 on the night of April 14 by a large number of people in different places. These eyewitnesses had been struck by its peculiar look and behavior.”
Ramana who often circumambulated the sacred mountain as an act of worship seemed to be making his final arc around the mountain as a blazing light in the night sky. [2]
Video: Ramana Maharshi— The Sage of Arunachula
The video above is Part 1 of 7