The qualifications needed to do self-enquiry

A few days ago I was asked to comment on a dialogue between Bhagavan and a devotee in which he appeared to insist that certain moral qualifications were necessary before one could attempt self-enquiry, or follow it successfully. The conversation originally appeared in The Maharshi, the journal of the Arunachala Ashram, Nova Scotia. (http://www.arunachala.org/newsletters/2010/?pg=jul-aug#article.1) I will give the questions and answers first and comment on their origin afterwards:

K.V. next questioned Maharshi:

Who is the Adhikari, i.e., the person competent to launch on this Atma Vichara, the Self-quest? Can anyone judge for himself if he has the necessary competency?

Maharshi: This is an important preliminary question. Before Atma Vichara is started some antecedent experience, some achievement in the moral field is essential.

People having varied experiences in the world, at one stage develop a disgust or repulsion (vairagya) towards sense attractions or, at any rate, an indifference to such attractions, and feel forcibly the miserable transient nature of this body through which these attractions and enjoyments are had. This may be the result of the practice of devotion or some other upasana in this life, or of such devotion or other good works performed in previous lives. People with minds thus purified and strengthened are the adhikaris, the ones competent to launch on Atma Vichara or enquiry into the Self; and these are the qualifications or signs by which one can determine such competency.

Where does this dialogue come from? In an earlier issue of The Maharshi (http://www.arunachala.org/newsletters/2009/?pg=jul-aug) the following introductory remarks are made:

The following text is from an unpublished manuscript on Sri Ramana Gita that has recently surfaced in Sri Ramanasramam. The manuscript contains typed and handwritten pages by B. V. Narasimha Swami, the author of Self Realization.

While BVN was residing at the Ashram, around the year 1930, he appears to have taken up the project of recasting Sri Ramana Gita in its original conversational form. Some of the answers in this new manuscript appear to be quite lengthy compared to the versified text composed by Ganapati Muni. It is unlikely that BVN had access to any notes taken on the occasion of the questions put to the Maharshi between the years 1913 and 1917, so we can only assume, as he explains in his introduction, that the elucidations further developed by the Maharshi in this new version must have come from subsequent questions for clarification put by BVN himself.

Many years after BVN’s preparation of this manuscript (which includes 36 typed legal-size sheets, reproduced from 25 handwritten pages, and 18 handwritten pages never put into typed format), someone began typing up an edited version of the first and second chapters, five pages in all. For whatever reason, this short-lived project also ceased and the manuscript was stored away. After BVN had typed some of his handwritten chapters, he gave a number of these pages over to Bhagavan to read, correct and fill in the required Sanksrit text, for which he left adequate space.

One such Sanskrit text beautifully written by Bhagavan on these pages is his famous verse describing the means to enter the Heart (reproduced on page 2), which is verse two of Chapter II in Sri Ramana Gita. This verse constitutes the basis for that chapter, titled “The Three Paths”.

We do not know why BVN never completed this project, or how these manuscripts came to be filed away and forgotten, buried in an uncatalogued library cabinet of the Ashram. Perhaps someone knows and will come forward with the information.

A historical digression

I can shed a little light on the questions raised in the final paragraph of this introduction. The story is not merely interesting in itself, it also gives some relevant background information to the topic I will discuss later: Bhagavan’s views on who is qualified to undertake self-enquiry.

I first came across Narasimha Swami’s manuscripts when I began to catalogue the ashram’s archives in the late 1970s.

V. Ganesan gave me the key to a couple of cupboards in the ashram office, saying, ‘We are like the “dog in the manger” with these cupboards. We guard them, we bark protectively if anyone goes anywhere near them, but we never do anything with the material inside. We don’t even know what is in there. It’s just a repository for all the old manuscripts that we have collected over the years.’

I went through the contents and found them to be a veritable Aladdin’s cave of archival treasures. There were little notebooks in Bhagavan’s handwriting, proof copies of ashram books personally corrected by Bhagavan, and much, much more besides. One of the items I discovered was a huge folder full of material accumulated by B. V. Narasimha Swami. He had left it all in the ashram when he departed, around 1930, to pursue his spiritual career with Shirdi Sai Baba. The most valuable part of the collection, in my opinion, was the notes he took when he was interviewing Bhagavan for his biography, Self-Realization. Two of these accounts, which related to Bhagavan’s first and second death experiences, were reproduced in The Mountain Path soon after I discovered them. Next in importance were the stories of devotees. Narasimha Swami had written to all the devotees of Bhagavan he knew about, asking them to write accounts of their experiences with Bhagavan. Many of these stories were published in The Mountain Path and in various ashram books. I am personally indebted to Narasimha Swami for persuading Masthan Swami to give a brief account of his association with Bhagavan. This one-and-a-half-page account, in Tamil, is the only first-hand record we have of Masthan’s life with Bhagavan.

Along with his notes and the personal reminiscences of devotees there were a number of pages that belonged to unfinished book projects. From the introductory comments he made it would seem that his intention was to bring out a book of dialogues between Bhagavan and devotees that would communicate the essence of his teachings. The papers that recently appeared in The Maharshi were part of this collection. In addition to the Sri Ramana Gita reconstruction, there were many pages of dialogues that purported to be between Bhagavan and visitors. I found the style and the presentation of these conversations to be highly untypical. I showed them to Viswanatha Swami, who was then the editor of The Mountain Path, and he agreed.

After going through the talks he told me, ‘Bhagavan didn’t deal with devotees in this way. These dialogues creep forward, establishing points one by one, with each new point depending on the arguments that have been presented and concluded in the previous answer. Bhagavan didn’t beat around the bush like this. He always went to the heart of the question with his first reply.’

He was right. The dialogues were incrementally Socratic in style, and quite alien to the way that Bhagavan taught. We both concluded that Narasimha Swami had used his legal skills (he was a lawyer) to assemble the salient points of Bhagavan’s teachings in the form of highly structured but artificially contrived dialogues. The teachings themselves were fairly accurate, but the form they were presented in (a dialogue between Bhagavan and a questioner) was entirely fictitious.

I then showed him the Sri Ramana Gita reconstruction. He went through it with a frown on his face before making the following comments:

‘There is a lot of extraneous material here, comments and extrapolations that are not in the original text. Bhagavan himself went through the original text many times, both in Sanskrit and in some of its translations. We can trust the original version because we know that Bhagavan has gone through it word by word. We have no idea where this extra material came from, and we can have no reason to believe that this is what happened in the original conversations. I don’t think Narasimha Swami ever had any contact with the people who asked these questions, and some of the things that Bhagavan is saying here don’t sound authentic to me.’

As a result of this conversation, the manuscripts containing the dialogues went back into the archives and remained there for decades, whereas the ones containing reminiscences were published in dribs and drabs over the succeeding years.

This explains why, since 1980, ‘these manuscripts came to be filed away and forgotten, buried in an uncatalogued library cabinet of the Ashram’. What about the years before that? Why did no one think about printing any of them prior to 1980? From 1950 onwards I think the main answer would have been financial. In the twenty years that followed Bhagavan’s passing away the ashram was chronically short of funds. I very much doubt that Narasimha Swami’s papers would have been considered for publication in this era, even if they hadn’t been forgotten and buried in a thoroughly neglected archive. One of the items I found in the cupboard was the typed manuscript of At the Feet of Bhagavan. It had sat there, gathering dust, for more than fifteen years. It had been properly edited and it seemed to me to be ready to be sent to the press. There were even instructions for the printer in the margins. It seemed odd to me that, after so much work had been put into it, it had simply been filed away and forgotten about.

I asked Ganesan, who looked after all ashram publications for decades, why it had never been printed.

He laughed and said, ‘The ashram decided to print it in the 1960s. It was made ready for the press, but Koppikar, who looked after the ashram accounts, told us we didn’t have enough money to print it. He lost the argument but won the battle by hiding the only copy of the manuscript so we couldn’t waste money on it by printing it. We had no idea what he had done with it until you rediscovered it.’

Around the same time I had a conversation with Suri Nagamma about her writings on Bhagavan. She told me that in the 1950s D. S. Sastri had offered on many occasions to translate Letters from Sri Ramanasramam into English if the ashram would agree to print it. His offer was persistently rejected on the grounds that Ramanasramam didn’t have the funds for it. When the then president finally relented and agreed to the publication, she said that D. S. Sastri raced through the job as fast as he could because he felt that the offer might be withdrawn at any moment if the president felt that his limited funds were needed elsewhere.

Here again is the question that was posed at the end of the introduction to the Sri Ramana Gita reconstruction:

We do not know why BVN never completed this project, or how these manuscripts came to be filed away and forgotten, buried in an uncatalogued library cabinet of the Ashram.

And here are my answers, which are partially just my own personal opinions:

Narasimha Swami never completed the project because he seemed to lose interest in writing about Bhagavan. When he went to Shirdi, he left behind all his papers, including his unfinished book of dialogues with Bhagavan. He also left behind a huge collection of notes on Seshadri Swami since he also had a plan to bring out a separate book on him. Since the book of conversations with Bhagavan was far from complete, there would have been no reason, during Bhagavan’s lifetime, for anyone to contemplate publishing it. After Bhagavan’s death, for a period of about twenty-five years, the manuscript was lost, and even if it hadn’t been, a lack of funds would have prevented its publication. In the late 1970s, when the manuscript was rediscovered, the ashram decided not to publish it because Viswanatha Swami (and a few others I showed it to) felt that the conversations recorded in it were not authentic.

Back to the topic of who is qualified to practise enquiry

I hope that the previous meandering section was not too off-putting for those who are waiting for some useful material on self-enquiry. I included it primarily to provide evidence for my belief that (a) the original Sanskrit text of Sri Ramana Gita is the authentic one and (b) Narasimha Swami’s version is not. Therefore, if there is new or contentious material that only appears in Narasimha Swami’s version, in my opinion it can be discarded as unreliable. Bearing this in mind, look at the initial words that are attributed to Bhagavan in Narasimha Swami’s version:

Question: Who is the Adhikari, i.e., the person competent to launch on this Atma Vichara, the Self-quest? Can anyone judge for himself if he has the necessary competency?

Maharshi: This is an important preliminary question. Before Atma Vichara is started some antecedent experience, some achievement in the moral field is essential.

If you compare this with the original text, you can see that the two sentences that Bhagavan begins with are not present. This is how the 1998 Ramanasramam edition of Sri Ramana Gita presents the question and the answer:

Question: Who is considered fit for this enquiry? Can one by oneself know one’s own fitness?

Bhagavan: He whose mind has been purified through upasana [worship] and other means or by merit acquired in past lives, who perceives the imperfections of the body and sense-objects, and feels utter distaste whenever his mind has to function among sense-objects and who realises that the body is impermanent, he is said to be a fit person for self-enquiry.

By these two signs, that is by a sense of the transitoriness of the body and by non-attachment to sense-objects, one’s own fitness for self-enquiry can be known. (Sri Ramana Gita, chapter 7, verses 8, 9, 10, 11)

The notion that ‘some achievement in the moral field is essential’ for those seeking to practise self-enquiry is an interpolation by Narasimha Swami. Some conditions are laid out in Bhagavan’s original reply, but having a strong moral base is not one of them.

I showed the Narasimha Swami version to Venkatasubramanian yesterday, without telling him any of the background information that I laid out in the previous section. Venkatasubramanian and I have been working on translations of Bhagavan’s teachings for about ten years.

He looked at it and said, ‘I can’t believe that Bhagavan ever said anything like this. It is so completely alien to all his other statements on enquiry.’

My sentiments exactly. I told him about the origins of the manuscript, and he agreed with me that the sentence about morality was most likely a spurious interpolation.

Karshni, the devotee who asked the question, subsequently asked whether various religious rituals should be followed by those who were qualified for enquiry (verses twelve and thirteen). Bhagavan said they were aids to make the mind pure, but he didn’t accept that they were necessary for those who were qualified for enquiry. He concluded by saying (verse 19):

The non-performance of prescribed actions by a mature person pursuing self-enquiry is no sin. For self-enquiry is itself the most meritorious and most purifying [of actions].

Bhagavan did not teach that one should, through one’s deeds, bring about a level of good character and dharma that would then equip one to practise enquiry. In fact, he said the opposite was true: that the practice of self-enquiry was the best way to establish good qualities in oneself:

It is, no doubt, said in some books that one should cultivate one quality after another and thus prepare for ultimate moksha, but for those who follow the jnana or vichara marga [the path of self-enquiry], their sadhana is itself quite enough for acquiring all daivic [divine] qualities; they need not do anything else. (Day by Day with Bhagavan, 18th July, 1946)

A similar reply can be found in the dialogues that precede Sat Darshana Bhashya:

Bhagavan: When one is a sufficiently developed soul (pakvi) he becomes naturally convinced [that the real Self awaits inside].

Question: How is this development possible?

Bhagavan: Various answers are given. But whatever the previous development, vichara (earnest quest) quickens the development. (Sat Darshana Bhashya p. viii)

For me, the essential point in both of these dialogues is that one need not waste time and energy attempting to gain a mature state in which one will be better equipped to do self-enquiry since enquiry itself is the most efficient way to attain spiritual maturity.

In Upadesa Manjari, chapter two, question two, the following question and answer can be found:

Question: Can this path of enquiry be followed by all aspirants?

Bhagavan: This is suitable only for ripe souls. The rest should follow different methods according to the state of their minds.

The ‘different methods’ are listed in the subsequent reply. They include singing the praises of the Lord, japa, meditation and yoga.

Since it is clear that Bhagavan does, on this and a few other occasions, indicate that there are some people who are ready to do enquiry and some who are not, it is worth examining some of his other statements on this topic to get a clearer idea of who he thought could benefit from enquiry, and who should take to other practices.

The following dialogue from Day by Day with Bhagavan gives a few hints about this:

This afternoon, a visitor asked Bhagavan, “No doubt the method taught by Bhagavan is direct. But it is so difficult. We do not know how to begin it. If we go on asking, ‘Who am I?’ ‘Who am I?’ like a japa, with ‘Who am I?’ for [a] mantra, it becomes dull. In other methods, there is something preliminary and positive with which one can begin and then go step by step. But in Bhagavan’s method, there is no such thing, and to seek the Self at once, though direct, is difficult.”

[Bhagavan:] “You yourself concede it is the direct method. It is the direct and easy method. When going after other things, alien to us, is so easy, how can it be difficult for one to go to one’s own Self? You talk of ‘Where to begin’. There is no beginning and no end. You are yourself the beginning and the end. If you are here and the Self somewhere else, and you have to reach that Self, you may be told how to start, how to travel and then how to reach. Suppose you who are now in Ramana Asramam ask, ‘I want to go to Ramana Asramam. How shall I start and how to reach it?’, what is one to say? A man’s search for the Self is like that. He is always the Self and nothing else. You say ‘Who am I?’ becomes a japa. It is not meant that you should go on asking ‘Who am I?’ In that case, thought will not so easily die. All japas are intended, by the use of one thought, the mantra, to exclude all other thoughts. This, japa eventually does for a man. All other thoughts, except the thought of the mantra, gradually die and then even that one thought dies. Our Self is of the nature of japa. Japa is always going on there. If we give up all thoughts, we shall find japa is always there without any effort on our part. In the direct method, as you call it, by saying ask yourself ‘Who am I?’ you are told to concentrate within yourself where the I-thought (the root of all other thoughts) arises. As the Self is not outside but inside you, you are asked to dive within, instead of going without, and what can be more easy than going to yourself? But the fact remains that to some this method will seem difficult and will not appeal. That is why so many different methods have been taught. Each of them will appeal to some as the best and easiest. That is according to their pakva or fitness. But to some, nothing except the vichara marga will appeal. They will ask, ‘You want me to know or to see this or that. But who is the knower, the seer?’ Whatever other method may be chosen, there will be always a doer. That cannot be escaped. Who is that doer must be found out. Till that, the sadhana cannot be ended. So eventually, all must come to find out ‘Who am I?’ You complain that there is nothing preliminary or positive to start with. You have the ‘I’ to start with. You know you exist always, whereas the body does not exist always, e.g., in sleep. Sleep reveals that you exist even without a body. We identify the ‘I’ with a body, we regard the Self as having a body, and as having limits, and hence all our trouble. All that we have to do is to give up identifying our Self with the body, with forms and limits, and then we shall know ourselves as the Self that we always are.” (Day by Day with Bhagavan, 8th October, 1946)

In this dialogue Bhagavan was invited to suggest preliminary exercises or practices that would lead up to self-enquiry. He rejected the suggestion, pointing out that the true starting place should be the ‘I’ or the ‘I’-thought. However, though he recommended this method with enthusiasm to a devotee who didn’t seem very keen on it, he also admitted that not everyone has a natural affinity with the technique:

But the fact remains that to some this method will seem difficult and will not appeal. That is why so many different methods have been taught. Each of them will appeal to some as the best and easiest. That is according to their pakva or fitness. But to some, nothing except the vichara marga will appeal. They will ask, ‘You want me to know or to see this or that. But who is the knower, the seer?’

In Sri Ramana Gita verses I have already given, Bhagavan sets the qualification bar for self-enquiry quite high by saying:

He whose mind has been purified through upasana [worship] and other means or by merit acquired in past lives, who perceives the imperfections of the body and sense-objects, and feels utter distaste whenever his mind has to function among sense-objects and who realises that the body is impermanent, he is said to be a fit person for self-enquiry.

In this Day by Day with Bhagavan exposition, though, he doesn’t mention the Sri Ramana Gita qualifications at all. He says that those who are temperamentally inclined towards vichara can and should practise it, whereas those who are not should take to other methods. The bottom line here is: if you want to do enquiry, and feel good about it as a method, then you are qualified to follow this practice.

My own feeling is that this particular response is more typical of Bhagavan than the reply given in Sri Ramana Gita. Here is a similar answer in which Bhagavan also declares that temperament and personal predilection determine who takes to self-enquiry and who does not:

Bhagavan: An examination of the ephemeral nature of external phenomena leads to vairagya. Hence enquiry (vichara) is the first and foremost step to be taken. When vichara continues automatically, it results in a contempt for wealth, fame, ease, pleasure, etc. The ‘I’ thought becomes clearer for inspection. The source of ‘I’ is the Heart – the final goal. If, however, the aspirant is not temperamentally suited to vichara marga (to the introspective analytical method), he must develop bhakti (devotion) to an ideal - may be God, Guru, humanity in general, ethical laws, or even the idea of beauty. When one of these takes possession of the individual, other attachments grow weaker, i.e., dispassion (vairagya) develops. Attachment for the ideal simultaneously grows and finally holds the field. Thus ekagrata (concentration) grows simultaneously and imperceptibly - with or without visions and direct aids.

In the absence of enquiry and devotion, the natural sedative pranayama (breath regulation) may be tried. This is known as yoga marga. If life is imperilled the whole interest centres round the one point, the saving of life. If the breath is held the mind cannot afford to (and does not) jump at its pets - external objects. Thus there is rest for the mind so long as the breath is held. All attention being turned on breath or its regulation, other interests are lost. Again, passions are attended with irregular breathing, whereas calm and happiness are attended with slow and regular breathing. [A] paroxysm of joy is in fact as painful as one of pain, and both are accompanied by ruffled breaths. Real peace is happiness. Pleasures do not form happiness. The mind improves by practice and becomes finer just as the razor’s edge is sharpened by stropping. The mind is then better able to tackle internal or external problems. If an aspirant be unsuited temperamentally for the first two methods and circumstantially (on account of age) for the third method, he must try the karma marga (doing good deeds, for example, social service). His nobler instincts become more evident and he derives impersonal pleasure. His smaller self is less assertive and has a chance of expanding its good side. The man becomes duly equipped for one of the three aforesaid paths. His intuition may also develop directly by this single method. (Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, talk no 27)

In many spiritual traditions beginners are given preliminary exercises and do not move on to the supposedly more advanced ones until they have demonstrated that they are doing the first ones successfully. As the preceding quotation indicates, Bhagavan did not follow this approach. He asked almost everyone to start with self-enquiry, and only recommended other methods if devotees complained they didn’t get the hang of it. It was left to the devotees themselves to decide whether they wanted to start or continue with enquiry. Bhagavan himself never told a single devotee that he or she was unfit to practise this method.

This is best illustrated by a wonderful story that was narrated by Kunju Swami:

Once, when Ganapati Muni was present in the hall, a group of villagers asked, ‘How are we to control the mind?’

In reply Bhagavan asked them to look into the origin of the mind and explained the path of self-enquiry. Soon they left and Bhagavan as usual went out for a walk.

Remarking to the others [Ganapati] Muni said, ‘The path of Self-knowledge which Bhagavan teaches is so difficult even for the learned, and Bhagavan advocated it to the poor villagers. I doubt whether they understood it and still less whether they can practise it. If Bhagavan had advised them to practise some puja or japa, that would have been more practical.’

When this was conveyed to Bhagavan, he commented, ‘What to do? This is what I know. If a teaching is to be imparted according to the traditional way, one must first see whether the recipient is qualified or not. Then puja, japa or dhyana are prescribed step by step. Later the Guru says that this is all only preliminary and one has to transcend all this. Finally, the ultimate truth that “Brahman alone is real” is revealed and to realise this, the direct path of self-enquiry is to be taught. Why this roundabout process? Should we not state the ultimate truth and direct path at the beginning itself rather than advocating many methods and rejecting them at the end?’ (Bhagavan Sri Ramana, a Pictorial Biography, p. 74)

If I may sum up: I accept that the comments on the qualifications needed to undertake self-enquiry that were made by Bhagavan in the original Sanskrit text of Sri Ramana Gita (7:8-11) are undoubtedly authentic, but I also am inclined to believe they are not typical of what he had to say on this topic. It was more usual for him to say that anyone who felt an inclination towards enquiry was qualified to pursue it.

Bhagavan’s conviction that the path of self-enquiry is suitable for everyone finds confirmation in Upadesa Undiyar. In two succinct verses he describes the method:

18 The mind is only thought. Of all [these thoughts] the thought ‘I’ alone is the root. What is called ‘mind’ is ‘I’.

19 When one scrutinises internally in the following way ‘What is the rising place of “I”?, the ‘I’ will die. This is jnana vichara.

And who is qualified to undertake this? The answer is clearly given in the preceding verse:

17 When one scrutinises the form of the mind without forgetfulness [it will be found that] there is no such thing as mind. This is the direct path for all.

More on Bhagavan's death experience

On May 7th I posted an account of Bhagavan’s ‘death-experience’ in Madurai that culminated in his Self-realisation. Today I am providing some additional material on this event. Some of it comes from Sri Ramana Leela, the Telugu biography that was written by Krishna Bhikshu. The first edition of Sri Ramana Leela was just a translation of Narasimha Swami’s Self Realization, but subsequent editions added new material. Bhagavan’s description of his Self-realisation experience is part of this new material.

This Telugu account is surprisingly short, but it does have interesting additions and variations from the English version that was recorded by Narasimha Swami. The translation I am giving here is by Mohan Rao. The original text is in bold, with supplementary words that are not in the original Telugu given in square brackets. Mohan Rao’s linguistic notes are in italics, while my comments and supplementary quotations are in roman.

In 1896, Nagaswami [Bhagavan’s older brother] married Janaki Ammal. The in-laws’ place was Madurai itself. At the post-wedding festivities, Venkataraman was the fellow-bridegroom to his brother. [It was his] seventeenth year. [He] was studying for the Matriculation examination. Though [he was] not that studious a person, there was no fear of failing in the examination. [He was] well-built, [having] good health; half of July had passed.

The Telugu term translated here as ‘post-wedding festivities’ is a phrase that describes the celebrations that go on for three days after traditional weddings.

‘Fellow-bridegroom’ is a term that denotes a young boy who is made to sit by the side of the bridegroom throughout the celebrations to give him some company and to prevent him from getting bored during the long hours of the rituals. The term is sometimes inaccurately translated as ‘best man’.

On the upper storey, Venkataraman was lying down. Nobody [else] was in there. Suddenly, it occurred to Venkataraman, ‘I shall be dead’. There was no reason. ‘Am dying!’

Narasimha Swami’s account has Bhagavan ‘sitting alone’ when the fear of death came. In that account Venkataraman ‘dramatised the scene of death’ by lying down and imitating a corpse. Krishna Bhikshu has him lying down when the fear of death first struck him. This means that he didn’t need to dramatise the scene of death by subsequently lying down and pretending he was dead.

‘There was no reason for feeling like that. It did not occur to me what that state was, and whether fear was proper or not. The thought of asking the elders or the doctors did not come. What is dying? How to escape it? This alone was the problem. There were no other thoughts. That very moment, [I] had to resolve it.’

The word translated as ‘reason’ in this and the previous Bhagavan paragraph can also be translated as ‘cause’.

‘Whether fear was proper or not’ is a literal translation. Idiomatically, it may mean ‘whether it was something to be feared or not’.

The word translated as ‘escape’ can also be translated as ‘avoid’.

The word translated as ‘problem’ may also mean ‘issue’.

The absence of the word ‘I’ is quite significant in this description, and in subsequent paragraphs. Narasimha Swami describes the event as one in which Bhagavan took control, performed a series of actions and came to a solution. Krishna Bhikshu records it as something that happened to Bhagavan, rather than as something he did. I think this is a more correct narration of the events, for Bhagavan himself said in Day by Day with Bhagavan, 4th October 1946, ‘The fact is, I did nothing. Some higher power took hold of me and I was entirely in its hand.’

Narasimha Swami filled his own account with the first-person pronoun ‘I’, but in a note that accompanies the text, he pointed out that this was not what Bhagavan himself said:

The exact words [of the death experience] have not been recorded. The Swami as a rule talks quite impersonally. There is seldom any clear or pronounced reference to ‘I’ and ‘you’ in what he says. The genius of Tamil is specially suited for such impersonal utterances, and he generally talks Tamil. However, one studying his words and ways discovers personal references, mostly veiled. His actual words may be found too colourless and hazy to suit or appeal to many readers, especially of the western type. Hence the use here of the customary phraseology with its distinct personal reference.

My own feeling is that in this particular description the insertion of the personal pronoun ‘I’ into Bhagavan’s description is misleading.

‘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.)’

‘Was breaking forth’: the original is actually in the active voice. An acceptable alternative translation would be 'everything was being cognised clearly'.

Again, it is the ‘intensity of the strength of feeling’ that drove the process, rather than a personal act of volition.

‘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.’

The word translated as ‘consciousness’ may also be translated as ‘awareness’ in both instances.

‘Individuality’ is a translation of vyaktitva. It may also be translated as personality, but 'individuality' is probably a better term here.

‘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.

Aparoksha means 'not indirect', i.e., 'not obtained through the intervention of the senses and the mind'.

The ‘flashing forth of I’ is a reference to the aham-sphurana. Bhagavan elaborated on this part of the experience when he spoke to a visitor in 1945:

Yesterday a Bengali Swami in ochre robes by name Hrishikesanand came here. This morning from 8-30 to 11-00 Bhagavan continuously discussed spiritual matters with him…

… Bhagavan said, ‘In the vision of death, though all the senses were benumbed, the aham sphurana (Self-awareness) was clearly evident, and so I realised that it was that awareness that we call “I”, and not the body. This Self-awareness never decays. It is unrelated to anything. It is Self-luminous. Even if this body is burnt, it will not be affected. Hence, I realised on that very day so clearly that that was “I”.’ (Letters from Sri Ramanasramam, 22nd November, 1945)

Devaraja Mudaliar was also present during this retelling of Bhagavan’s death-experience, but he omitted the aham sphurana reference from his brief record of the dialogue:

Later in the morning, at Rishikesananda’s request, Bhagavan recounted his first experience of the Self in his upstairs room at Madura. ‘When I lay down with limbs outstretched and mentally enacted the death scene and realised that the body would be taken and cremated and yet I would live, some force, call it atmic power or anything else, rose within me and took possession of me. With that, I was reborn and I became a new man. I became indifferent to everything afterwards, having neither likes nor dislikes.’ (Day by Day with Bhagavan, 22nd November 1945)

In ‘“I” and “I-I”, a Reader’s Query’ (http://www.davidgodman.org/rteach/iandii1.shtml) I came to the conclusion that the following explanation from Vichara Sangraham (Self-Enquiry) is also a description by Bhagavan of what happened to him during his own death experience. My arguments in favour of this position can be found in the original article:

Therefore, leaving the corpse-like body as an actual corpse and remaining without even uttering the word ‘I’ by mouth, if one now keenly enquires, ‘What is it that rises as “I”?’ then in the Heart a certain soundless sphurana, ‘I-I’, will shine forth of its own accord. It is an awareness that is single and undivided, the thoughts which are many and divided having disappeared. If one remains still without leaving it, even the sphurana – having completely annihilated the sense of the individuality, the form of the ego, ‘I am the body’ – will itself in the end subside, just like the flame that catches the camphor. This alone is said to be liberation by great ones and scriptures. (The Mountain Path, 1982, p. 98)

‘The thing that is there after death is the eternal, real entity.’ In this way, in one moment, new knowledge accrued to Venkataraman.

'Accrued': The Telugu text uses a verse in the active voice, but there is no good equivalent in English. 'Accrued' is therefore adapted for the purpose, though it is slightly inaccurate. The alternative is to use the passive form 'is obtained'. But then it agrees neither with the voice of the verb, nor with the preposition 'to'.

Although these ideas were expressed sequentially, this experience was obtained by Venkataraman spontaneously only.

‘Expressed’: the literal rendering would be ‘spoken’, but ‘expressed’ is taken to be equally permissible.

‘Sequentially’: the dictionary equivalent is 'by degrees', but 'sequentially' is thought to be equally valid.

This is the end of the Telugu account. The translator noted in an email that the style and idiom of the original Telugu was very archaic. This might indicate that the words were not exactly the ones used by Bhagavan. However, my own conclusion is that this is a more reliable account of the death-experience than the one that appears in Self Realization since it has been shorn of both Narasimha Swami’s embellishments and his gratuitous insertions of the pronoun ‘I’.

I particularly like the final comment that realisation was obtained ‘spontaneously’, rather than as the result of a sequence of thoughts or actions.

How long did this ‘spontaneous’ process take? Most chroniclers have reported that it took a few minutes:

In answer to a question once put by D. S. Sarma, Bhagavan definitely said that in his case, there was no special sadhana, at any rate in this life, leading to Self-realisation, but that in his 17th year, while he was still a student at Madurai, enlightenment, jnana, came to him, suddenly, in the course of a few minutes, not as a result of laboured ratiocination but as a sudden flash of intuition, and that that jnana has remained with him ever since. (My Recollections, p. 135, by Devaraja Mudaliar)

Bhagavan, though, regarded it as an event that took place out of time. The following interesting exchange was recorded by Balaram Reddy in My Reminiscences. p. 75:

‘They say I gained realisation in twenty-eight minutes, or half an hour. How can they say that? It took just a moment. But why even a moment? Where is the question of time at all?’

I then asked Bhagavan if there was ever any change in his realisation after his experience in Madurai. He said ‘No. If there is a change, it is not realisation.’

Though Krishna Bhikshu’s account seems to me to be more reliable for the events it covers, there is a remarkable omission in his narrative: there is no reference to the spontaneous act of self-enquiry that occurred to Bhagavan while he was lying on the floor. This, more than anything else, was the immediate prior cause of the awakening. In the death-experience account that I posted on May 7th Bhagavan is recorded as saying: ‘So the question arose in me, “What was this ‘I’? Is it the body? Who called himself the ‘I’?”’

Here is Bhagavan’s brief account of how he resolved this question:

When I scrutinised within the mind ‘Who is the seer?’ the seer became non-existent and I saw that which remained. The mind does not [now] rise to say ‘I saw’; how [therefore] can the mind rise to say ‘I did not see’. (Arunachala Ashtakam, verse two, tr. Sadhu Om)

In the ‘“I” and “I-I”, a Reader’s Query’ article I referred to earlier, I equated the aham sphurana with the emanation of ‘I-I’ that Bhagavan often spoke about. If this is a justified correlation, then several of Bhagavan’s other verses can also be take to have autobiographical overtones:

Questioning ‘Who am I?’ within one’s mind, when one reaches the Heart the individual ‘I’ sinks crestfallen, and at once reality manifests itself as ‘I-I’. Though it reveals itself thus, it is not the ego ‘I’, but the perfect being, the Self Absolute. (Ulladu Narpadu, verse 30)

‘Whence does this ‘I’ arise? Seek this within. This ‘I’ then vanishes. This is the pursuit of wisdom. Where the ‘I’ vanished, there appears an ‘I-I’ by itself. This is the infinite [poornam]. (Upadesa Undiyar, verses 19 and 20).

Therefore on diving deep upon the quest ‘Who am ‘I’ and from whence?’, thoughts disappear and consciousness of Self then flashes forth as the ‘I-I’ within the cavity of every seeker’s Heart. (Atma Vidya Kirtanam, verse 4)

Bhagavan commented on the finality of his experience when he spoke to G. V. Subbaramayya:

Sri Bhagavan spoke to me and explained how his spontaneous Self-realisation had by-passed all the usual stages that seekers are enjoined to pass through.

‘Some people,’ he said, ‘start off by studying literature in their youth. Then they indulge in the pleasures of the world until they are fed up with them. Next, when they are at an advanced age, they turn to books on Vedanta. They go to a guru and get initiated by him and then start the process of sravana, manana and nididhyasana, which finally culminates in samadhi. This is the normal and standard way of approaching liberation. It is called krama mukti [gradual liberation]. But I was overtaken by akrama mukti [sudden liberation] before I passed through any of the above-mentioned stages.’

Sri Bhagavan laughed and added, ‘So now when thoughts of these things come to me, I don’t know what to do with them’. (The Power of the Presence, part three, p. 132)

Finally, some comments from Bhagavan on how the death experience affected him in the six weeks he stayed at home before he left for Arunachala:

Mr. T. V. Krishnaswami Aiyer asked, ‘Were Bhagavan’s brother and others aware of Bhagavan’s absorption in the Self and indifference to external things?’ Bhagavan said, ‘Yes. They could not but be aware. For though I tried my best to appear as if I was attending to external affairs, I could not succeed fully in the attempt. I would sit down to read like others, open a book, pretend to read it and after some time turn the page. Similarly, after some time I would take up another book. But all knew that my attitude had changed. They used to make fun of me for this abstraction of mine. I never took offence, as I was totally indifferent to their taunts. This encouraged them to go on with their mockery. If I was so minded, I could have silenced them all with one blow. But I did not care at all. After the “death” experience I was living in a different world. How could I turn my attention to books? Before that, I would at least attend to what the other boys repeated and repeat the same myself. But afterwards, I could not do even that. At school, my mind would not dwell on study at all. I would be imagining and expecting God would suddenly drop down from Heaven before me.’

Someone asked Bhagavan whether he deliberately went in for a study of Periya Puranam. Thereupon Bhagavan said, ‘No. No. It was a mere accident. A relation of mine, my uncle, was given the book by a Swami who was living near our house and was advised to read it. Thus the book happened to be in our house and, coming across it, I looked into it first out of curiosity and then, becoming interested, read the whole book. It made a great impression on me. Before that, the sixty-three images of the Nayanars in the temple were mere images and no more. But afterwards, they gained new significance for me. I used to go and weep before those images and before Nataraja that God should give me the same grace He gave to those saints. But this was after the “death” experience. Before that, the bhakti for the sixty-three saints lay dormant, as it were.’ Mr. Somasundaram Pillai asked Bhagavan, ‘With what bhava did Bhagavan cry before those images? Did Bhagavan pray he should have no further birth, or what?’ Bhagavan replied, ‘What bhava? I only wanted the same grace as was shown to those saints. I prayed I should have the same bhakti that they had. I knew nothing of freedom from births or bondage.’ (Day by Day with Bhagavan, 6th October, 1946)

Bhagavan's death experience

In a recent comment on one of the other posts I promised to find the manuscript version of Bhagavan's enlightenment experience that was printed in The Mountain Path. It's from 1981, pp. 67-69. It's a very interesting account, one that sheds a lot of extra light on the events of that day and the weeks that followed. The material in italics is the editor's introduction to the article, while the material in roman is Bhagavan's story, as recorded by B. V. Narasimha Swami.

The most detailed published account of Bhagavan’s realisation is to be found in B. V. Narasimha Swami’s biography Self Realization. It was the first major biography to be written, and all subsequent accounts have relied heavily on his version, either quoting it verbatim or summarising its contents. The account in the book was not a direct transcription of Bhagavan’s words, and the author makes this clear in a footnote which has appeared in most of the editions of the book. He said that he was merely summarising, in his own words, a series of conversations which he had with Bhagavan over a period of six weeks in 1930. The following account gives two of the conversations on which his final account was based. These are the only records of the conversation that are still in existence, but fortunately they cover all the known aspects of the experience, so it is unlikely that much valuable material has been lost. The first conversation took place on 8th January 1930 and the second a few weeks later on 5th February.

There are two important points in this account that are not brought out in the published version. The first is Bhagavan’s repeated use of the word avesam to describe his initial perception of his experience. In Tamil the word means ‘possession’ in the sense of being taken over by a spirit. For the first few weeks Bhagavan felt that he had been taken over by a spirit which had taken up residence in his body. The second related point is that the feeling persisted until shortly before he left home. His discovery that the avesam was the Self, and not some external being residing in his body, may have been a contributory factor in his decision to leave home.

The account is in Bhagavan’s words, and though there are strong traces of the translator’s style and preferred terminology, it is still a more accurate version than the ones that have appeared in all the published biographies.

Bhagavan: My fear of death was some six weeks before I left Madurai for good. That was only on one day and for a short time. At the time there was a flash of excitement; it may roughly be described as ‘heat’, but it was not clear that there was a higher temperature in the body, nor was there perspiration. It appeared to be like some avesam or some spirit possessing me. That changed my mental attitude and habits. I had formerly [had] a preference for some foods and an aversion to others. This tendency dropped off and all foods were swallowed with equal indifference, good or rotten, tasty or tasteless. Studies and duties became matters of utter indifference to me, and I went through my studies turning over pages mechanically just to make others who were looking on think that I was reading. In fact, my attention was never directed towards the books, and consequently I never understood their contents. Similarly, I went through other social duties, possessed all the time by this avesam, i.e., my mind was absent from them, being fascinated and charmed by my own Self. I would put up with every burden imposed on me at home, tolerating every slight with humility and forbearance. Periodically, interest in and introspection on the Self would swallow up all other feelings and interests.

That fear was only on the first day, that is, the day of the awakening. It was a sudden fear of death which developed, not merely indifference to external things. It also started two new habits. First, the habit of introspection, that is, having attention perpetually turned on my Self, and second, the habit of emotional tears when visiting the Madurai Temple. The actual enquiry and discovery of ‘Who I am’ was over on the very first day of the change. That time, instinctively, I held my breath and began to think or dive inward with my enquiry into my own nature.

‘This body is going to die,’ I said to myself, referring to the gross physical body. I had no idea that there was any sukshma sarira [subtle body] in human beings. I did not even think of the mind. I thought of the gross physical body when I used the term body, and I came to the conclusion that when it was dead and rigid (then it seemed to me that my body had actually become rigid as I stretched myself like a corpse with rigor mortis upstairs, thinking this out) I was not dead. I was, on the other hand, conscious of being alive, in existence. So the question arose in me, ‘What was this “I”? Is it the body? Who called himself the “I”?’

So I held my mouth shut, determined not to allow it to pronounce ‘I’ or any other syllable. Still I felt within myself, the ‘I’ was there, and the thing calling or feeling itself to be ‘I’ was there. What was that? I felt that there was a force or current, a centre of energy playing on the body, continuing regardless of the rigidity or activity of the body, though existing in connection with it. It was that current, force or centre that constituted my Self, that kept me acting and moving, but this was the first time I came to know it. I had no idea of my Self before that. From that time on, I was spending my time absorbed in contemplation of that current.

Once I reached that conclusion (as I said, on the first day of the six weeks, the day of my awakening into my new life) the fear of death dropped off. It had no place in my thoughts. ‘I’, being a subtle current, it had no death to fear. So, further development or activity was issuing from the new life and not from any fear. I had no idea at that time of the identity of that current with the personal God, or Iswara as I used to call him. As for Brahman, the impersonal absolute, I had no idea then. I had not even heard the name then. I had not read the Bhagavad Gita or any other religious works except the Periyapuranam and in Bible class the four Gospels and the Psalms from the Bible. I had seen a copy of Vivekananda’s Chicago lecture, but I had not read it. I could not even pronounce his name correctly. I pronounced it ‘Vyvekananda’, giving the ‘i’ the ‘y’ sound. I had no notions of religious philosophy except the current notions of God, that He is an infinitely powerful person, present everywhere, though worshipped in special places in the images representing Him. This I knew in addition to a few other similar ideas which I picked up from the Bible and the Periyapuranam. Later, when I was in the Arunachala Temple, I learned of the identity of myself with Brahman, which I had heard in the Ribhu Gita as underlying all. I was only feeling that everything was being done by the current and not by me, a feeling I had had ever since I wrote my parting note and left home. I had ceased to regard the current as my narrow ‘I’. This current, or avesam, now felt as if it was my Self, not a superimposition.

While, on the one hand, the awakening gave me a continuous idea or feeling that my Self was a current or force in which I was perpetually absorbed whatever I did, on the other hand the possession led me frequently to the Meenakshi Sundaresa Temple [in Madurai]. Formerly I would visit it occasionally with friends, but at that time [it] produced no noticeable emotional effect, much less a change in my habits. But after the awakening I would go there almost every evening, and in that obsession I would go and stand there for a long time alone before Siva, Nataraja, Meenakshi and the sixty-three saints. I would sob and shed tears, and would tremble with emotion. I would not generally pray for anything in particular, although I often wished and prayed that…

The rest of this particular manuscript is missing, but a few weeks later, on 5th February 1930, Narasimha Swami questioned him again on this topic, and Bhagavan gave the following answer:

It was not fear of death that took me to the Madurai Temple during those six weeks in 1896. The fear seized me for a short while when I was upstairs in my uncle’s house, and it gave rise to that avesam or current. That obsession made me introspective and made me look perpetually into my own nature, and took me also to temples, made me sob and weep without pain or joy or other explanation, and also it made me wish that I should become like the sixty-three saints and that I should obtain the blessings or grace of Iswara – general blessings, specifying and expecting nothing in particular. I had no thought or fear of death then, and I did not pray for release from death. I had no idea before those six weeks or during those six weeks that life on earth was full of pain, and I had no longing or prayer to be released from samsara, or human life or lives. All that idea and talk of samsara and bandha [bondage] I learnt only after coming to this place and reading books. I never entertained either the idea that life was full of woe or that life was undesirable.

That avesam continues right up to now. After reading the language of the sacred books, I see it may be termed suddha manas [pure mind], akhandakara vritti [unbroken experience], prajna [true knowledge] etc.; that is, the state of mind of Iswara or the jnani.

Question: How is it that there was a perception of difference and prayer that ‘I should become like the sixty-three saints and get Iswara’s grace?

Bhagavan: The akhandakara [unbroken] current was sporting with these and still remained despite that desire.

[Back to me in 2008... What I like in this account is the clear process of self-enquiry that is mentioned. This seemed a lot more vague in the final published version. I was also pleased to note that the phrase ' ...I feel the full force of my personality...' is absent here. I always found it odd that Bhagavan would say that he felt the full force of his personality after his realisation, so I suspect that this phrase was inserted by Narasimha Swami. Twenty-five years ago I talked to Prof. Swaminathan about this and asked him what Tamil phrase might correspond to this 'full force of his personality', but he couldn't think of anything that it might have been.

The term avesam does appear in the Self-Realisation account, but it is translated there as 'spirit, current or force'. The idea of possession is absent.]