Ramana Maharshi, as he is known to the world, was
born in 1879 as Venkataraman. He had a death experience with no apparent cause
when he was 16.
His own account of the event is as follows:
“One day I was alone in the first floor of my uncle’s
house. I was in my usual state of health. But a sudden and unmistakable fear of
death seized me. I felt I was going to die. Why I should have so felt cannot
now be explained by anything else in the body. I did not however trouble myself
to discover if the fear was well grounded. I did not care to consult doctors or
elders or even friends. I felt I had to solve the problem myself then and
there. … ‘Dying means, the legs become stiff; lips become taut; eyes get
closed. Breath stops. So it came into experience due to intensity of the
strength of feeling. To me too, the legs became stiff, lips became taut, eyes
got closed and breath stopped. But with consciousness not lost, everything was
breaking forth clearly. (The activity of the outer sense-organs having
gone, the in-turned perception became available.)’
‘Even if this body dies, the I-consciousness will not go.
The individuality-consciousness was clear. When the body is burnt and turned to
ashes in the cremation ground, I will not become extinct. Because I am not the
body.’
‘Now the body is inert. Insentient; I, on the other hand,
am sentient. Therefore, death is to the inert body, ‘I’ am [the] indestructible
conscious entity.'
‘When the body gives up its activities, and the activities of the senses are
not there, the knowledge that obtains is not senses-born. That ‘flashing forth
of I’ is aparoksha. [It is] self-effulgent. Not a matter of imagination.’
‘The thing that is there after death is the eternal, real
entity.’
In this way, in one moment, new knowledge accrued to
Venkataraman. Although these ideas were expressed sequentially, this
experience was obtained by Venkataraman spontaneously as in a flash. Here is
more on his death experience.
He later said that his separate identity as Venkataraman had
been lost after his discovery of his true identity as the Self, thus he never
called himself by any name. He received his full name Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi in
1907 from Ganapati Sastri. From this time on he saw only the Self and knew that
there is only in reality only the Self and all else is just appearance. The
young boy left his home and made his way to the sacred mountain Arunachala, Tiruvannamalai. He lived at the mountain
for the rest of his life, from 1896 until 1950, first in temples and caves and
later in Ramanasramam, the ashram which
grew around him at the foothill of Arunchala Here is a link to the complete
story.
After his arrival on Arunachala he remained silent for the
next 11 years and then began to answer questions put to him by his devotees,
who had accompanied him in growing numbers over the years. The well-known ”Forty
Verses on Reality” were written at the request of one
devotee, who wanted a concise synopsis of Ramana’s teaching.
I present here Verse One:
"1. From our perception of the world there follows
acceptance of a unique First Principle possessing various powers. Pictures of
name and form, the person who sees, the screen on which he sees, and the light
by which he sees: he himself is all of these."
This Verse One puts me in the driver's seat. I no longer can
look around and ask whose fault it is or what this all means.
"Pictures of Name and Form" is a term that in the
Hindu philosophy encompasses everything that we can in any way perceive,
think of, intuit, sense or dream of. In other words, it encompasses everything
in our field of perception, internally and externally; whether sleeping,
dreaming or waking. The word “Pictures” points me to the role that images, and
thus imagination has as an aspect of this power. This statement says
that all this coming into appearance is a power of this First
Principle.
The next power of this First Principle that is mentioned is
the person who sees all this. Each of us is this particular power of the unique
First Principle. We are the seeing power of the First Principle.
Then this unique First Principle possesses a power called
the screen on which the person, as the seeing power, sees all of this. So
beyond the first two basic elements of the world, which are all that is seen
and the power that sees (powers one and two), we have now the third element, or
power: the screen. The screen is a power of the unique First Principle.
We grow up believing that we see something because outside
of us there exists an object that we perceive. Ramana tells us that from his
point of perception he doesn't see any external objects at all, rather he
perceives various powers of the one First Principle working together and
complementing each other, and thus conjure up the world that we see. It is as
if you take baking soda and vinegar and mix them together and observe the foam
that is created. You will say: "There is foam." Another will say:
"Yes, there is foam, but I recognize it as the reaction caused by the
mixture of the two elements." Ramana is showing us what actually is
happening when we say: "There is the world." We are seeing the
interplay of various powers of the First Principle. They complement and
potentiate each other.
The fourth power is the light by which the seeing power sees.
So the seeing power, the person who sees, cannot see alone, but only in
conjunction with the fourth power, the light by which he sees.
In this Verse One, Ramana brings our attention to the world
first off (“pictures of name and form”), and leads us step by step onward. Look
at the world, he says. See if you can perceive a unique First Principe at work.
Here are the elements of Its powers that you can perceive: one, two, three and
four. He is actually inviting us to ponder if there is anything he didn't
consider in his description of that which we can directly perceive when
we look at the world.
Finally, he gives the unique First Principle an identity:
It is all the "names and forms" - It is everything
that we conventionally think of as "the world".
It is the person who sees, which is you and me.
It is that by which we see - Ramana calls
it "the screen" and he gives me the sense of a plasma-like substance
that forms itself into every shape that this First Principle conjures up.
Another word for "screen" here might be "vehicle" or
“carrier substance”.
It is the Light that is the energy that makes anything
visible, It powers the projection of images (power one), It enlivens the person
who sees (power two), It lets the screen shine and shape itself into the world
(power three). And It is Its own validation as Inner Effulgence (power four).
I like to start at the Inner Effulgence, that I began to get
a visceral sense of when I was at Arunachala mountain in India. I spent some
time on the mountain in the first little ashram that sprang up around Ramana as
a young man when he was hanging out in bliss in different caves on
the mountain in silence. This little ashram is Skandashram up on
Arunachala looking down on the large Siva Temple in the town of Tiruvannamalai.
I went up there first thing every day to do yoga and then sit and enjoy. I even
had the blessing to spend a night there when one time I reached the ashram too
late in the evening to return down to town in the dark and
the Hindu priest custodian let me stay on the floor inside. A very
fine glow started to be noticeable inside me. I was smiling 24/7 - despite
whatever things were uncomfortable (which for westerners in India is pretty often).
Putting my attention on the Inner Effulgence, I notice how
It spreads into the "screen" - through Its essence everything shines
out, glows and we can see the world. From there it spreads to the person, me in
that case, or whomever is with me, and moves us like pneumatic machinery is
moved by the gas that is pumped through it - only so very subtly, enlivening
our DNA, molecular structure, etc. all the way up to our brain, nervous system,
arms, legs, and speech. Then, in conjunction with our nervous systems (and
finer, subtle energy centers and auras) the world of images, names and forms
appears. I see this as the expression of the Love to Be that is the basic
motive of the Inner Effulgence - once It leaves Its own Inner Sanctuary of just
Being Bliss and becomes Consciousness - (dynamic manifest consciousness,
as Nisargadatta calls it).
This short passage by Nisargadatta also sheds some light on
this dynamic:
"The totality of the perceived is what you call
matter. The totality of all perceivers is what you call the universal mind. The
identity of the two, manifesting itself as perceptibility and perceiving,
harmony and intelligence, loveliness and loving, reasserts itself eternally."
“He himself is all of these” are the last words
of Verse One.
When I begin to enter into this quality of seeing the world
around me, all others and also myself as integral parts of One Being, Peace is
near.
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