"Self-inquiry is the gift of Ramana. He was overcome by an enormous premonition of death, yet by some mysterious grace, he simply lay down and experienced the fear. As a young man, he truly experienced who dies. In that experience, he awakened to what cannot die, and he realized it to be the truth of who he is."
—Gangaji
Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi
The Gift
The life of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi is a supreme example of a life lived free from the specter of death. It was lived in freedom because at a very young age Ramana became willing to meet this specter directly and completely, long before the body was finished.
As a boy of seventeen, Ramana sat alone in a room in his uncle's house
overcome by a powerful premonition of death. There was nothing wrong with his health. He
just suddenly felt that he was going to die. Instead of trying to escape this primordial
fear, instead of running for help or seeking some distraction, he simply lay down and
experienced the fear in all of its intensity and detail. In his own words, he describes
this experience as follows.
"The shock of death made me at once introspective. I said to myself mentally, 'Now death is come. What does it mean? What is it that dies? This body dies.' As I said so to myself, symptoms of death followed, yet I remained conscious of the inert bodily condition as well as of the 'I' quite apart from it. On stretching the limbs they became rigid, breath had stopped, and there was hardly any symptom of life in the body.
'Well, then,' I said to myself, 'This body is dead. It will be carried off to the burning ground and reduced to ashes. But with the death of the body, am 'I' dead? This body cannot be the 'I', for it now lies silent and inert, while I feel the full force of my personality, of the 'I' existing by itself--apart from the body. So, 'I' am the Spirit, a thing transcending the body.'
All this was not a mere intellectual process. It flashed before me vividly as living truth, a matter of indubitable and direct experience, which has continued from that moment right up to this time."
For some time after his awakening, young Ramana sat perfectly still in the temple at Arunachala. During these early years, he was so deeply absorbed in the bliss of divine union that he was unconcerned by the vermin that gnawed at his legs, or by the stones thrown at him from youngsters who did not understand how a boy their own age could sit so unmoving day after day, month after month.
When he was still quite young, the depth of his silence and the power of his presence began to attract seekers from all parts of the world. For years he did not even notice them, so inwardly absorbed was his attention. For many more years, his guidance was accomplished mostly without words. Silently the transmission of his grace would pass from heart to heart as devotees continued to gather at his feet, thirsty to drink from the nectar of this life that dared not to move.
When Ramana's body grew old and was ravaged by a painful cancer, his disciples were desperate to find some cure, some magic herb, some operation, some doctor who could save him. Ramana would sometimes put up with this attention quietly and sometimes would admonish his devotees for giving too much importance to the body. "There is no need for alarm," he would say. "The body is itself a disease. Let it have its natural end."
The doctors who were attending Ramana during those final months of his illness were constantly amazed at his indifference to pain. Once he quoted to them this verse from the Yoga Vashista: "The Jnani who has found himself as formless, pure Awareness is unaffected though his body be cleft with a sword. Sugar candy does not lose its sweetness though broken or crushed."
In the final days before his physical death, Ramana said in response to a grieving devotee, "They take this body for Bhagavan and attribute suffering to him. What a pity. They are despondent that Bhagavan is going to leave them and go away. Where can he go, and how?"
At an age when most youngsters are preoccupied with school, entertainment, and relationships, Ramana dared to meet--without moving--what most lifetimes are spent desperately trying to avoid. How mysterious that the incident of a young boy, sitting alone in a house in South India in 1896, willing to meet death, willing to simply experience that which is most feared, has reverberated around the globe. What arose from that meeting is revealed in the transmission of silence and shining Truth that poured from his presence. Not just his physical presence, for even now, though his physical body is long finished, the transmission of his presence and grace continues to radiate mysteriously, powerfully, throughout the world, through Papaji and Gangaji and many others who are willing to receive and to simply be still.
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