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Ramana my Master (preview)
Chapter I - Ramana my Master

Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi was the Master who re-vealed in a clear and definitive form the purest essence of being. His teachings, simple and uncontestable, show the ancient wis-dom of the Masters of the East. However, Ramana cannot be labelled as just another of the Masters of the East, limited by a certain time and space: the end of the XIX century until the middle of the XX century, India. His teachings are beyond time and words.

Sri Ramana, from a young age, was recognized as a Great Avatar by all the sages and people who visited him. In India, by the characteristics of the people, there is a greater facility to rec-ognize a Master, an illuminated being. In the West, due to the great interest for material goods, the Masters were only seen as singular figures, interesting to know on a tourist trip and belong-ing to a forgotten photograph album. However, with Sri Ramana the opposite happened: his presence profoundly impressed who-ever came near to hear his teachings, and all felt a force in him, or a peace, or a light, in other words, something marvellous that transcended words. His gaze and his smile changed the history of men forever.

Sri Ramana taught that there are no mysteries to be un-covered, there are no enigmas to be deciphered, there are no grades to be reached. All is simple and natural. We are what we are. We are simply the Self. The complex explanations, the mys-terious studies, the almost unsurpassable difficulties to self-con-sciousness can be definitively abandoned due to the teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana. The path of self-knowledge brought by him is not new, since it is the revelation of that which we have always been. His clarity and simplicity are surprising. If all is so simple and clear, how could there have been so many misunder-standings, for such a long time, in the knowledge of Truth?

Bhagavan Sri Ramana, the sage of sages, lived in constant union with the Supreme Self. When he administered his teach-ings, he did so affirming with great simplicity. There was no doubt about the direct path of the self-consciousness taught by him. There was no problem about the revelation of Truth, for who revealed what to whom, in a state far beyond form? All the teach-ings of Master Ramana are a divine manifestation. I remember, one time, that one of us asked if he knew everything about mani-festation, and Bhagavan Sri Ramana answered smiling: "I don't know anything, I only feel".

Bhagavan Sri Ramana became widely known in the West in the last decades, as the interest in the Orient arose, when the Western values began to be contested. From the decade of the sixties, this interest intensified, and the millenary wisdom of the Masters began to be studied by people of different categories. This knowledge came, however, dressed in extravagant and mysterious garb, inaccessible to the majority of people. Many who adhered to oriental thought tried to create around them an environment that imitated the customs, food, dress of the East. In the majority of cases, these people ended up abandoning their search, judging it impossible or illusory. What happened, how-ever, was that the East was imitated in its external appearance. The essence of the sacred knowledge, the wisdom of the Great Masters, was only lightly touched upon, superficially learned, and even still in an imperfect form filled with errors. How can the absolute knowledge be limited to certain environments, to exter-nal conditions, to specific customs of some peoples? The Abso-lute, by its very nature, is omnipresent, hovering above customs. It is only necessary to become conscious of it, to feel it.

With the advent of this new interest, many presented them-selves as Masters. It is all a question of supply and demand, always existing the intermediaries, those who take advantage of the opportunity to offer exotic merchandise, generally false. Many leaders founded new religions, sects, and proposed an infinity of philosophical paths. They established new standards of behaviour, new paths for those who desired to follow the teachings of the Great Masters. However, these created paths only increasingly distanced people from the true spiritual objective, because they are covered in symbols and strange parables that have only ex-ternal meaning and not helping at all in the process of self-con-sciousness. The Supreme Truth was omitted exactly because those leaders do not know it, on the level of life. They dressed the simple teachings in confused forms, promoting more and more the confusion in this area.

The constant affirmation that we are the Self and the pleni-tude of the teachings of all the Great Masters allow us no chance to err. To be with the sage Bhagavan Sri Ramana is to be in the Self. With his guidance, we can perceive that which we are. This is the great force of the direct path that this Great Avatar brought us. He showed us everything that we are and that we are not. In no other path can one note such clarity and coherence of what one is and what one is not. The direct path taught by Sri Ramana is supreme. He came to end this cycle and start another. For anyone whom wants to liberate himself from all ignorance of non-being and become conscious of the Absolute Self, this is a com-plete path. There is none other more direct, simpler. This is how Bhagavan Sri Ramana and all the other Great Masters indi-cate, opening this door so that men can return to the natural state of being.

When someone calls us and asks for us, we all have the tendency to say "I" and, in saying "I", we automatically point to our chest. This is a spontaneous, natural form to point to where the consciousness of being is reflected. Because of this, Sri Ramana advises to feel the right side of the chest, but without definitions, without thinking, without analyzing. The whole tech-nique of self-knowledge indicated by him consists of this. As always happens, the most important things are the most simple. The difficult thing is to put the teachings to practice. And it is difficult because man is complicated. It is not that Truth is com-plicated, too confused or abstract to be perceived, but it is be-cause the thinking mind, in each man, is what induces him to imagine so and to be enslaved by temporary manifestation. For many it may appear strange that only through this technique, in a certain way simple, can it be possible to find a solution for the fundamental problems existent on the planet.

Bhagavan Sri Ramana teaches that we must be concerned in only seeking our real identity, the divine, for we are divine in essence. Man ignores himself as the Supreme Self and confuses his divine nature with the profane ego, with the thinking mind. When someone says "I", what is meant by this? Who is really this "I"? From where does it come? If man wants to know the Absolute Truth, he first must acquire the basic knowledge of himself, that is, this "I" to which he constantly refers to.

For the knowledge of oneself it is sufficient that man pro-poses to become identified with, in an incessant way, the Su-preme Truth and that, in doing so, feel the right side of the chest, for it is in this region that the Absolute Self is reflected. This simple technique is the first step towards self-consciousness, al-though this possibility depends totally on the grace of finding a Master and receiving from him the sacred initiation. I was fortu-nate in having this experience. I lived with my Master, Bhagavan Sri Ramana, from whom I assimilated the whole technique of self-consciousness.

Bhagavan Sri Ramana

Bhagavan Sri Ramana was born in the south of India, in the year 1879, in a village called Tiruchuzhi, and received the name Venkataraman. At the age of fourteen he prepared to en-ter the university in Madras. Until then, no one could suspect that there was the one who later would become the very sage of sages. He was a young man full of health, who loved sports and physical exercises. The only characteristic that set him apart, in reference to his studies, was a surprising memory that he used to great advantage, repeating by rote a lesson heard only once. However, Ramana felt that those studies had no usefulness for him. He wanted another type of wisdom, for the wisdom of the material world could not make him conscious of the truth of be-ing nor give him the power to vanquish spiritual ignorance.

The only spiritual work that impressed Ramana was the narration of the life of the great Master Kabir and his descriptions of the lives of the sixty three saints of the cult of Shiva. With this book the full joy of perceiving that the divine can manifest itself on Earth was established in Ramana. He was permeated with a self-confidence and divine fever so intense, that he felt inspire in him the search for the Supreme Self. The word "Arunachala", which is the name of a sacred mountain in a place called Tiruvannamalai, resounded within him. He felt that this could be an appropriate place to dedicate himself exclusively to meditation, to become conscious of the Supreme Truth.

Sometime later, he had an extraordinary experience. He was in his room when, suddenly, he felt integrated with the uni-verse. His reaction was totally indifferent before this feeling. He didn't ask anyone's help, but only laid down on the floor ob-serving himself: the body became static and, in a certain way, rigid. He asked: "Who am I? My consciousness is not at all touched. "Then he understood that he was completely apart from the physical body, the thinking mind and the senses. He only felt the cosmic beat and concluded: "I am Consciousness". Ramana also had the sensation that his body was burning. He remem-bered the teachings of Krishna: "The flames of fire can burn my body, but they cannot burn my existence". At this very moment, he felt the presence of Sri Krishna in his entire splendour saying to him: "You are not the body, nor the thinking mind. You were not born nor will you die. You are eternal and present. You are im-mortal. The destruction of the body is not your destruction. Weapons cannot cut you, the flames of fire cannot burn you, the wind cannot dry you up, the water cannot soak you and death cannot kill you".

After this, Ramana abandoned his home without revealing his destination. He only left a note to his family asking that they not concern themselves with seeking him out, for his aim was true. He carried with him only enough money for the passage to Tiruvannamalai.

He remained in this region for his whole life. First he in-stalled himself in various caves and temples. For some years he stayed in a grotto, in Arunachala, called Virupaksha, where he remained unconscious of his body, in deep meditation. Even af-ter annihilating the thinking mind, the ego and the senses and being in the fullness of knowledge and conscious of the Supreme Self, Sri Ramana continued to live in the grotto. Since many dis-ciples arrived, he moved definitively to an Ashram that was con-structed at the foot of Arunachala. Many people from all parts of the world came to this place to learn from him.

Even though Arunachala is seen materially as a mass of stone, its name reflects the force of the Supreme Self and helps those who dedicate themselves to spiritual consciousness. This is because the simple repetition of the word Arunachala neutral-izes the thinking mind, giving peace to those who direct them-selves to it.

At the time that Bhagavan Sri Ramana lived in Tiruvannamalai, the mountain Arunachala was considered as one of the most sacred places in India. Its terrain is dry and wild recalling the vegetation of the Brazilian central-western region. All around one sees great stones, separated from the main body of the mountain, thorns and hedges of cactus, fields parched by the Sun. At the same time, there are shady trees along the roads, and around the wells of water there grow very vivid green fields. Even though it is not a very high mountain, it dominates the whole landscape.

Sri Ramana did not have a Master, for he was Master of himself. He lived in the most absolute identification with every-thing and with all existent beings. The people adored him as some-one inspired by the divine and acclaimed him as Bhagavan Bhagavan (the illumined one is among us), but he repelled any manifestation of this type. A group of disciples began to form around him. They regarded the Master with a very simple faith and turned to him when great difficulties arose or when their requests were attended to. Great difficulties and diseases disap-peared. And he always said: "As soon as one devotes to the Supreme Self, the divine activity automatically begins to act". Bhagavan Sri Ramana never gave demonstrations of powers, nor did he have interest in them. He always taught that such pow-ers are nothing more than futile and noxious distractions on the direct path of self-consciousness.

One day a great sage came to him, Ganapati Mouni, who made questions to the young Ramana and received answers of such wisdom that he was immensely impressed. He continued to ask questions referring to philosophical and religious problems and about the consciousness of the Supreme Truth. He kneeled before the young Master, asking to be accepted as a disciple.

Another sage called Seshadri Swami lived in the vicinity of the Ashram and was held in high regard and respected by all. He was considered to be a profound knower of the scriptures, a speaker of various languages and was constantly sought out by those who desired clarification of the more intricate questions referring to the teachings left by the Great Masters. Hearing about Ramana, he desired to know him. In the meeting of these two acclaimed beings, all expected to hear long discussions about the content of the scriptures, long explanations about the sacred spiritual teachings. However, Seshadri Swami came to Sri Ramana and, bowing down, asked if he could serve the Master by taking care of the doorway to the Ashram.

Bhagavan Sri Ramana opened to humanity the eternal path of Supreme Truth in a new form, accessible to the conditions of our era. The essential objective of this direct path is to help all those who want to overcome the powerful illusion of the profane ego and the thinking mind, resulting in the permanent and natural state of the Divine Self. In codifying the path of self-conscious-ness, Sri Ramana created, effectively, the solution for all who seek self-knowledge. Until then, access to the wisdom of the Masters was held exclusively by recluses of silence. Ramana showed a path which could be followed freely, according to the conditions of modern life.