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The following text is from an unpublished manuscript on Sri Ramana Gita that has recently surfaced in Sri Ramanasramam.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.

Who were you Ramana?

In one of the recent comments it was stated that Bhagavan was an avatar of Subrahmanya, the second son of Siva. This was a widely-held view in Bhagavan’s time, primarily because Ganapati Muni had confidently made this assertion in the eighteenth chapter of Sri Ramana Gita. Krishna Bhikshu, Bhagavan’s Telugu biographer, accepted this claim and devoted several pages of his book (Sri Ramana Leela, chapter 49) to a series of examples and arguments which he said demonstrated that the claim was a genuine one.

Ganapati Muni’s conviction that Bhagavan was an avatar of Subrahmanya arose from an incident that occurred in March 1908 when he was with Bhagavan at Pachiamman Koil, a temple of the outskirts of Tiruvannamalai. Early one morning he saw a bright light appear and touch Bhagavan’s forehead. The light enveloped Bhagavan, and within that glowing effulgence Ganapati Muni discerned six stars of different colours which eventually merged into a single light.

Subrahmanya was created from light that came out of Siva’s third eye. Siva gathered this light in his hands and passed it on to Vayu, the god of wind. The power of the light was too much for Vayu, so he gave it to Agni, the god of fire, who deposited it in the Ganges. Ganga, the goddess of the Ganges, was also unable to bear the power so she carried it to a small pond and left it there. In this pond the light transformed itself into six babies. Parvati subsequently joined the babies together in a form that had one trunk, twelve arms and six faces. This is Lord Shanmukha, ‘The Lord with Six Faces’. His name Skanda means ‘the joined one’, a reference to the way Parvati amalgamated his bodies. The six visible stars of the Pleiades are known as ‘Karthika’ in India; Karthikeyan is another of Subrahmanya’s names. When Ganapati Muni saw six stars merge into one in Ramana Maharshi’s form, he naturally came to the conclusion that Bhagavan was a manifestation or avatar of the God.

A few years before Seshadri Swami had also come to the conclusion that Bhagavan was Subrahmanya, although there appears to be no record of how he came to that conclusion. Seshadri Swami identified himself with Parvati, Siva’s consort and decided that Bhagavan was ‘her’ son, Subrahmanya.

Proponents of the avatar theory have drawn up long lists of facts and coincidences to demonstrate the validity of their belief. For example, Bhagavan’s occasional references to Arunachala as his ‘father’ are taken to be proof that he must be one of Siva’s sons. For those who are interested, there is a list in chapter 49 of Sri Ramana Leela, and an even more exhaustive compilation in an article by Ra Ganapati that appeared in a 1984 edition of The Mountain Path.

Since the original claim can be traced back to Ganapati Muni’s vision, I should like to make a few comments about the nature of jnanis and visions. Bhagavan appeared on several occasions to devotees in forms that they desired. He had the power both to grant visions (see, for example ‘Bhagavan gives Rama darshan’ by T. K. Sundaresa Iyer) and to manifest in a different form. The following story is narrated by K. Vithoba Kamath:

I used to sit in the hall in the last row. One day an idea flashed that I should see Lord Krishna. I intently looked at Bhagavan and saw a dark cloud engulfing him and within that emerged the Lord. I was at my wit’s end. I thought it was a hallucination and a projection of my own mind. I wanted to try again. This time I thought of Gandhiji. Ramana was nowhere, but in his place there was Gandhiji. Being bewildered, I looked at Bhagavan. There! He was looking straight at me with a benign smile on his face. I felt highly blessed. (Arunachala’s Ramana, Vol. V, pp. 114-123)

The desire for a vision does not need to be expressed. If there is a hidden desire for one, then that may be enough for Bhagavan to appear in a different form. I think the following comments by Papaji explain this quite well:

The enlightened man, the jnani, does not do anything. He just sits quietly, like a mountain. He does not respond to your requests by doing anything, but if you go near him with a desire in your mind, there will be an automatic response. If you throw a rubber ball at a wall, it will bounce back. The angle and speed of the ball off the wall will depend on the angle and speed at which you throw it. The wall does not have to decide how to respond to the incoming ball. When you go into the presence of a jnani with desires in your mind, the appropriate response comes back automatically. You don’t even have to talk about them. If your mind is in the presence of a jnani, it will be flinging its desires at the wall of his enlightenment, and that wall will give you back what you desire or need. But if you go into the presence of a jnani without any thoughts or desires, what will be reflected back will be the state of thoughtlessness and desirelessness. In his presence you will be established in that state. This is the sannidhi, the presence of the jnani, at work. You don’t need to ask for anything. Just go near him. (Nothing Ever Happened, volume three, pp. 335-6)

My feeling is that the vision which appeared to Ganapati Muni in 1908 was triggered by his latent desire to see Bhagavan in the form of a God. It was not in itself an indication that Bhagavan was an avatar of Subrahmanya.

What did Bhagavan himself make of these claims? To some extent he encouraged their persistence by neither denying nor confirming them. He seemed happy to have some of his devotees believe that he was Subrahmanya, if that was good for their level of devotion, but he never actually endorsed their belief. When he was living at Virupaksha Cave, he even composed a verse saying that he was Subrahmanya for the benefit of a devotee, Perumal Swami, who wanted to have a poem that expressed these sentiments. This incident resurfaced in the mid-1930s when Perumal Swami was suing the Ramanasramam management over the ownership of its properties. The following exchange was recorded:

Lawyer: People say that you are the incarnation of Lord Subramania.

Bhagavan: That and all gods are only me. [laughter]

Lawyer: Perumal Swami has written in his diary that you are an avatara of Lord Subramania. [The lawyer then showed Bhagavan a verse in Perumal Swami’s diary.] This verse says that you are Subramania. Is the handwriting yours?

Bhagavan: The handwriting is mine but the idea was Perumal Swami’s. (Living by the Words of Bhagavan, p. 138)

In the verse Bhagavan composed he clearly identifies himself with Subrahmanya, but one should remember that he wrote this poem to please Perumal Swami, not to confirm this particular identity. The verse says:

The six-faced Lord who came on earth borne by Mother Azhagu and Sundaram in Tiruchuzhi in order to remove the defects of his devotees by saying ‘Fear not!’, who bears the twelve hands in order to bestow his own state by destroying the karmas of those seeking refuge at his feet, who, having subdued the five senses rides upon the peacock of the elevated mind-lotus, and who plays the game of throwing the spear which is the glance of jnana, he is indeed the Lord who blissfully abides as Arunamalai-Ramana.

The translation is taken from The Mountain Path, 1984, page 94. The six-faced Lord is Subrahmanya; Azhagu and Sundaram are Bhagavan’s parents; Tiruchuzhi is Bhagavan’s birth place; the twelve hands, the spear and the peacock are iconographical features of Subrahmanya.

With Bhagavan showing a willingness to help devotees in this way, it is not surprising that the ‘Subrahmanya-avatar’ theory persists to this day.

Ganapati Muni did not stop at claiming that Bhagavan was Subrahmanya. He also maintained that Bhagavan was an incarnation of Jnanasambandhar, the Tamil poet saint who lived around the sixth century AD. In Sri Ramana Gita, chapter eighteen, verse nineteen, he wrote:

Again, this boundless genius [Bhagavan] is another advent of the Master-poet, the twice born Tamil child [Jnanasambandhar] who, drinking in the breast-milk of the Mother of the Universe, sang in dancing tunes the praises of Siva.

Bhagavan narrated the story of Jnanasambandhar ‘drinking in the breast-milk of the Mother of the Universe’ in Letters from Sri Ramanasramam, Letter 85, 30th January, 1947. The translation of the interpolated verse is by T. V. Venkatasubramanian, Robert Butler and myself:

Sambandha was born in an orthodox Brahmin family in the town of Sirkali, to Sivapada Hridayar and his wife Bhagawatiyar The parents named him Aludaya Pillayar. One day, when the boy was three years old, the father took him to Thiruttoni Appar Koil. While immersed in the tank for a bath, he began repeating the aghamarshana mantram. When the child could not see the father in the tank, it looked around with fear and grief. There was no trace of the father. It could not contain its grief and so wept aloud looking at the temple chariot saying, ‘Father! Mother!’ Parvati and Lord Siva appeared in the sky, seated on the sacred Bull and gave darshan to that little child. Siva directed Parvati to give the boy a golden cupful of her breast milk, the milk containing Siva Jnana [Knowledge of Siva]. She did accordingly. The boy drank the milk and became free from sorrow, and the divine couple disappeared.

Having drunk the milk of jnana, and feeling quite satisfied and happy, Sambandha sat on the tank bund with milk dribbling from the corners of his mouth. When the father came out from his bath, he saw the boy’s condition and angrily asked, flourishing a cane, ‘Who gave you milk? Can you drink milk given by strangers? Tell me who that person is or I will beat you.’ Sambandha immediately replied by singing ten Tamil verses beginning with:

He has an ear-jewel in one ear.
He rides upon the bull.
The crescent moon, pure and white,
upon His crown He wears,
and His body with ashes
from the burning ground He smears.
He is the thief who stole my heart!
He dwells in Biramapuram,
whose glory is that He did here
once deign to grant His grace,
when lotus-dwelling Brahma
bowed down to Him in praise.
Verily, He it is that is our Lord!
(Tevaram 1.1.1)

It was clear from the verses, that the people who gave milk to the child were no other than Parvathi and Lord Siva. People gathered round. From that day onwards, the boy’s poetic flow began to run unimpeded.

There are interesting parallels between Bhagavan’s life and the life of Jnanasambandhar. They were both born on Ardha Darsanam; both attained jnana early in their lives; both came to Arunachala and saw it for the first time at the Arayanainallur temple; more remarkable still, both had a vision of light there.

Jnanasambandhar passed away at the age of sixteen, the age at which Bhagavan realised the Self. This led some devotees to conclude that ‘The sceptre of jnana that Jnanasambandhar wielded till his sixteenth year was taken over by Bhagavan, also in his sixteenth year’. (The Power of the Presence, part one, pp. 89-90)

Bhagavan had a very high regard for Jnanasambandhar, as the following remarks by Devaraja Mudaliar indicate:

Bhagavan used sometimes to refer to Tevarams also as occasion arose in the course of conversation. He had reverence for all the three Tevaram saints and admiration for their songs. And yet I have observed that Bhagavan considered Tirujnanasambandhar the most powerful manifestation of God’s grace amongst these three famous saints. He pointed out that Sambandhar frequently referred to Tiruvannamalai. He has also remarked more than once about Sambandhar, ‘See with what confidence and authority he says that those who sing his songs will be saved. Is he not God’s son?’ (My Recollections of Bhagavan Sri Ramana, pp. 53-4)

However, despite having a deep appreciation of his life and poetry, Bhagavan never gave the slightest hint that he had a past life connection with him. Jnanasambandhar himself never claimed that he was an avatar of Subrahmanya. That particular connection was made centuries later when Arunagirinathar, a Tamil Murugan bhakta who lived in Tiruvannamalai, mentioned in one of his poems that Jnanasambandhar was an incarnation of Subrahmanya. The idea has persisted among Subrahmanya devotees, but one should remember that it was not made by Jnanasambandhar or any of his contemporaries: the first mention of it is in a poem written about 800 years after he died.

There is one other life that Ganapati Muni attributes to Bhagavan: that of Kumarila Bhatta, a scholar who was a contemporary of Adi-Sankaracharya. The claim is recorded in Sri Ramana Gita, chapter eighteen, verse sixteen. Here is the verse followed by Kapali Sastri’s commentary on it:

He [Bhagavan] is a reincarnation of [Kumarila] Bhatta, praised by assemblies of scholars, the author of Tantra Vartika, elixir of the Vedas, brilliant with various ingenious ideas; in this birth, however, he elucidates the teachings of Vedanta alone.

Bhatta was the one who wrote the work famous as Tantra Vartika which served as the life breath of the Veda, making it resplendent with a variety of wonderful rational cogent arguments. By composing such a mature work serving as a crown to the science of Dharma Mimamsa, he disarmed and vanquished the Buddhists who were practising a religion founded outside the pale of the Veda. That is why the attribute ‘the life-breath of the Veda’ is employed to describe the work…

His [Kumarila Bhatta’s] work became virtually the life breath, the sustenance of the vedic religion. And so he has been applauded by the world of learned men. Ramana is He in another guise. Kumarila, a staunch believer in karma, was a Mimamsaka who broke to pieces other religions. On the other hand, the Maharshi is a jnanin, a person of knowledge getting the same relish in all religions. That is why it is said that his guise is one enquiring into the words of Vedanta. The purport is that Bhagavan Ramana is another form of Kumarila, now enquiring into the meaning of Vedanta. (Ramana Gita, tr. Sankaranarayanan, Sri Ramanasramam 1998 ed. p. 225)

Kumarila Bhatta was a scholar from Allahabad. Being a contemporary of Adi-sankaracharya, he lived somewhere around the eighth century. He composed Mimamsaslokavarttika, a major text of the Purva Mimamsa school; he was also an expert on sacrificial rites and laid great stress on the theory of karma. During his lifetime the vedic teachings on sacrifices and rituals were coming under increasing attack from Buddhist scholars. With a desire to refute their arguments, he pretended to be a Buddhist and enrolled at Nalanda University in order to equip himself to debate Buddhist scholars on the subject of rituals and ritual sacrifices. At the conclusion of his studies he challenged his Buddhist teacher to a debate on the vedic teachings. When his teacher ridiculed certain Hindu beliefs and expressed his opinion that the Vedas were not authoritative scriptures, Kumarila Bhatta burst into tears because he was unable to maintain his equanimity and his disguise while his beloved Vedas were being attacked. The teacher suspended the debate and demanded to know who he really was. When Kumarila Bhatta confessed, he was sentenced to death and an order was given to have him thrown off a cliff.

As he was about to be hurled to his death he called out, ‘If the Vedas are true, let me be saved!’

He survived the fall without sustaining any serious injury except that he was blinded in one eye by a stone. This was attributed to his doubting that the Vedas were true. Instead of saying ‘If the Vedas are true…’ he should have said ‘As the Vedas are true…’.

He escaped from the Buddhists, settled down in Allahabad and continued with his studies.

However, some time later, overcome with guilt that he had both deceived his Buddhist guru and expressed a slight doubt about the truthfulness of the Vedas, he decided to commit suicide as an act of atonement. His chosen method was self-immolation. He placed himself on top of a pile of paddy husk and was on the point of igniting it when Adi-sankaracharya appeared and asked him to debate his ideas. Kumarila Bhatta refused, saying that he had already taken the decision to give up his life to atone for his sins. Instead of debating with Adi-sankaracharya, Kumarila Bhatta recommended that he visit one of his own students, Mandana Mishra, and have the desired debate with him instead. Adi-sankaracharya took the advice, debated the student and defeated him, but before he went there he accepted Kumarila Bhatta’s final request that he chant the Taraka mantra as the flames consumed his body.

I have to confess that I find Kumarila Bhatta to be a very odd candidate for a previous life of Ramana Maharshi. I can understand how Ganapati Muni took Bhagavan to be an avatar of Subrahmanya after his 1908 vision. I can also understand why he also identified him with Jnanasambandhar because of the similarities in their lives and the belief, started by Arunagirinathar, that Jnanasambandhar was an incarnation of Subrahmanya. However, the assertion that he was also Kumarila Bhatta seems to have no published facts or evidence to support it. There is also a chronology problem. This is how Krishna Bhikshu explained the various births of Bhagavan:

As Kumarila he established the supremacy of the karma marga, as Jnanasambandhar, he brought bhakti marga close to the people, and as Ramana he showed that the purpose of life was to abide in the Self and to stay in the sahaja state by the jnana marga. Truly wonderful! (Sri Ramana Leela, p. 314)

The problem with this sequence is that Jnanasambandhar lived about two hundred years before Kumarila Bhatta, who was supposedly the first of the three human incarnations of Subrahmanya. Modern scholars have concluded that Adi-Sankaracharya lived around the eighth century. Some traditional scholars who base their conclusions on genealogies of the Sankaracharyas that have been preserved by the Sankaracharya maths have claimed that Adi-sankaracharya lived over a thousand years earlier, but this contention brings up some glaring anachronisms such as Adi-Sankaracharya commenting on texts that had not even been written when he was alive.

What did Bhagavan make of all this? This is what he had to say on the subject when he was asked in 1946:

Mr G. Subba Rao read from Ramana Lila that Sankaracharya had told one of his disciples that Bhagavan was the third avatar of Subrahmanya, the first one having been Kumarila Bhatta and the second Jnana Sambandhar, and asked Bhagavan to whom it was Sankaracharya said so. Bhagavan did not know. But he said that Sankaracharya must be the one before the last, i.e., the third back from the present one. Bhagavan also added, ‘That Sankaracharya came and met me at Skandasramam. He must have been repeating what he heard. It is only Naina [Ganapati Muni] that started it. None said so before.’ (Day by Day with Bhagavan, 1st February, 1946, afternoon)

The problem of the chronology of the various incarnations was also raised in a discussion that Suri Nagamma recorded:

On the 7th of this month [January 1947] Dr T. N. Krishnaswamy, a devotee of Bhagavan, celebrated the Jayanthi of Sri Ramana in Madras. It seems a Pandit mentioned in the course of his lecture on the occasion that there was a reference somewhere that Bhattapada [Kumarila Bhatta] would be born in Thiruchuli as Ramana.

While the devotees in the Asramam were searching for these references, Bhagavan himself said, ‘Nayana [Ganapati Muni] said that Skanda (Lord Subramanya) was born first as Bhattapada, then as Sambandha (Thirujnanasambandhar), and in the third birth as Ramana. The appellation, “dravida sisuhu” used by Sri Sankara in Soundarya Lahari refers to Sambandha, doesn’t it? Therefore Sambandha must have existed prior to Bhattapada who was a contemporary of Sankara. Nayana said that Sambandha was of a later date than Bhattapada. One is not consistent with the other; which of the above versions is the authority for the aforesaid lecturer’s statement is not yet known.’

Surprised at these words which were meant to throw everyone off his guard, I said, ‘Why so much discussion about it? We may ask Bhagavan himself. Doesn’t Bhagavan know who He is? Even if He does not tell us now, there is His own reply to the song asking, “Who is Ramana?” written by Amritanatha Yatindra while Bhagavan was dwelling on the Hill.’

Bhagavan replied, ‘Yes-yes!’ with the smile of approval on His face.’ He waited for a while, and then said, ‘Amritanatha is a peculiar person. He is very interested in all matters. When I was on the Hill he used to come now and then, and stay with me. One day I went somewhere. By the time I returned, he had composed a verse in Malayalam, asking “Who is Ramana?” left it there and went out. I wondered what was written on the paper, so I looked at it and found out. By the time he returned I [had] composed another verse in reply, in Malayalam, wrote it down below his verse and put the paper back. He liked to attribute supernatural powers to me. He did so when he wrote my biography in Malayalam. Nayana had it read out to him, and after hearing it, tore it off, saying, “Enough! Enough!” That was the reason for his posing this question also. He wanted to attribute some supernatural powers to me, as “Hari” or “Yathi” or “Vararuchi” or “Isa Guru”. I replied in the manner stated in the verse. What could they do? They could not answer. A Telugu translation of those verses is available, isn’t there?’

‘Yes, there is. Isn’t Bhagavan’s own version enough for us to establish that Bhagavan is Paramatma himself?’ I said.

Bhagavan smiled, and lapsed into mouna. (Letters from Sri Ramanasramam, 29th January 1947)

Amritanatha Yati posed the following question in a verse: ‘Who is this Ramana in the Arunachala cave, who is renowned as the treasure of compassion? Is he Hari [Vishnu] Sivaguru [Subrahmanya], Yativara [Siva] or Vararuchi [the principal scholar at the court of King Vikramaditya]? I am desirous of knowing the Guru’s mahima [greatness].’ This is Bhagavan’s reply, taken from Collected Works, page 142:

In the recesses of the lotus-shaped hearts of all, beginning with Vishnu, there shines as absolute consciousness the Paramatman, who is the same as Arunachala Ramana. When the mind melts with love of him and reaches the inmost recess of the Heart wherein he dwells as the beloved, the subtle eye of pure intellect opens and he reveals himself as pure consciousness.

It is clear from this reply and all the other recorded responses on the same topic that Bhagavan was not interested in endorsing any of the past-life suggestions that were made to him, nor was he willing to offer any alternatives. I am sure he knew who he was last time around, but he kept this knowledge to himself and never gave the slightest hint of who he might have been.

I once asked Papaji if he could recollect having any association with Bhagavan in an earlier life. I asked because Papaji sometimes spoke about a remarkable incident in which he saw all his past lives while he was sitting on the banks of the Ganga.

With all this past-life knowledge he surprised me by saying, ‘I must have had some connection with him. How else could I have gone to him and taken him as my Master? But I have no idea where and when that connection was.’

I also asked Saradamma once if Lakshmana Swamy had ever told her who Ramana Maharshi had been in his previous lives. She responded by giving a mischievous smile and putting her index finger to her lips. I took this to mean that it was a secret that neither she nor Lakshmana Swamy was willing to divulge. Lakshmana Swamy had had recollections of previous lives – one as a yogi, one as a raja and one as a Christian priest – but I never heard him speak of any incident that revealed a connection with Bhagavan.

I don’t find Ganapati Muni’s claims to be very plausible, and I have not an iota of reliable evidence to support any alternative claims. However, I won’t let that stop me from playing my own guessing game about whom Bhagavan might have been last time around. As I mentioned earlier, I believe that visions indicate the state of mind of the person who is seeing them and as such are not reliable indicators of who Bhagavan might have been. I would take a different approach and look at the samskaras that Bhagavan manifested and extrapolate them backwards to see what kind of person he was in his past life, and what interests he had.

The strongest and most obvious samskara was his love of Arunachala. In the first verse of Arunachala Ashtakam he wrote, ‘From knowledgeless early childhood Arunachala was shining in my mind as that which is most great’. That is to say, before he had the capacity even to think rationally, he instinctively knew that Arunachala represented or constituted the Supreme. Next, since he realised the Self with the minimum amount of effort and practice, that would indicate that he was a highly mature soul who had almost reached the goal of liberation in his previous birth. One other talent or interest is worth noting. He had an aptitude for Tamil literature while he was still a young boy. Though he never did much work at school, he was apparently correcting his Tamil literature teacher when he was only thirteen. These three characteristics – an immense love for Arunachala, spiritual maturity and a talent for Tamil poetry – would seem to me to indicate that Bhagavan had a recent life as an Arunachala saint who either appreciated Tamil poetry or who had a talent for composing it. And, it goes without saying, it has to be someone who died before Bhagavan was born.

Before I review the limited options on this I want to relate an interesting incident that took place a few years ago at Virupaksha Cave. A visitor who was meditating there went into a kind of trance and passed out for some time. When he came round, he said that he had had some kind of vision in which he had been taken back in time to the days when Virupaksha Devar was there, and he found himself sitting with the saint. He said that Ramana Maharshi was also there, and in that previous life both the man who had had the trance and Bhagavan seemed to be disciples of Virupaksha Devar. Now, as I have already mentioned, I don’t set much store by visions, but this is just the kind of life I would expect Bhagavan to have had. Virupaksha Devar and Guhai Namasivaya came from Karnataka together about 450 years ago on the instructions of their Guru. Little is known about Virupaksha Devar, but Guhai Namasivaya wrote thousands of Tamil venba verses that praised Arunachala. The venba metre was the one that Bhagavan most commonly used when he wrote Tamil verse. I would certainly list Guhai Namasivaya as a possible last-life candidate for Bhagavan, and I would not exclude Virupaksha Devar, even though he does not appear to have left any poetic record. The fact that Bhagavan was drawn to live in both Virupaksha Cave and Guhai Namasivaya Temple (which is where he composed Who am I?) might indicate that he had samskaras associated with both places. There is also the possibility that Bhagavan, as reported by the man who had the vision in the cave, was an unknown disciple of Virupaksha Devar.

There is one other candidate I would add to my list: Isanya Jnana Desikar. He was also a Tiruvannamalai saint who fell in love with Arunachala and wrote verses in praise of it. He was born in 1750 and passed away in 1829 in Tiruvannamalai. For those who are interested, the following two links are to articles on my site that give a lot more information about this saint’s life and poetry.

http://www.davidgodman.org/asaints/garland1.shtml

http://www.davidgodman.org/asaints/isdesikar.shtml

I think I would put him slightly ahead of all the other candidates I have offered so far because his poems contain not just praise of Arunachala but also teachings that are highly reminiscent of Bhagavan’s own. The references in his Garland of Hymns to Arunachala to ‘being still’ to ‘Who am I?’, and to ‘finding the source of the “I”’ are highly unusual in Saiva saints who normally focus on devotional pleas and sentiments.

As I have said before, I have not the slightest shred of evidence to back up my views on this subject, so please take what I have said as just a little entertaining speculation. I will conclude with a few of Isanya Jnana Desikar’s verses. All of them are addressing Arunachala. As you read them, ask yourself, ‘Who does this remind me of?’

11

O Supreme Bliss! Eternal Plenitude! Teacher of Nama Sivaya! You who cannot be approached by the Agamas, the Puranas, the Itihasas and the Vedas! Father! Eternal One! [Arunachaleswara!] the husband of Mother Unnamulai who resides in Arunai! Please instruct me about the supreme state: the single, infinite state that is full of silence, in which the flood of the unified taste of peace prevails, where the body and all enjoyments are blissfully forgotten, where true knowledge shines like the sun. This is the yogic state that is called ‘Being still’.

[Unnamulai is the local name for the consort of Siva in Tiruvannamalai. Arunai is an ancient name for Tiruvannamalai.]

12

Eternal One! Consort of Unnamulai residing in Arunai! Without knowing the Self, I played with the body through the senses, the breath and the mind. I thought that I was born and that I will die. I considered my parents, women, the world and all its enjoyments to be real. But then you possessed me and made me join the select band of your devotees. You made me realise the complete knowledge that has neither birth nor death and let me enjoy the simple essence of remaining as the Self. O Father, thank you so much!

16

Like the scent in a flower, like the taste in honey, blissfully you have entered into me. Self of all souls! Lord of the Red Hill! Immanently you pervade the whole world, manifesting as the sky, the wind, fire, water, earth, the moon, the sun and the individual soul. You are the soul, the ‘you’ and the ‘I’. Up till now I have considered the world, which is only a mirage-like appearance, to be real. Who am I? What is this body? What is it that speaks ‘I’? What are all these relationships that appear as ‘father’, ‘mother’, ‘women’? Tell me!

20

Self of all souls on earth, existing beyond the mind, you are the plenitude of bliss! Lord of the Red Hill! You have entered me! Standing as the light through which the eye sees, you show me your form. From you arise, in the ear, songs, melodies, poetry and other sounds. The taste of earth on the tongue, the scent of a flower in the nose, the wind in the ear, the bite of a mosquito on the skin – all proclaim and announce you. Since you make me feel everything, from where, then, arises the sense or feeling of ‘I’?

22

Lord of the Red Hill! As complete bliss you have become the Self of all souls and entered me. Will you please tell me how the following pairs came into existence: the beginning and the end, men and gods, the arts and the Vedas, mother and father? What is this strong, binding karma? What pleasures and pains does the body undergo in heaven and hell? And what is it that remains beyond all this as ‘I’? Is it fair for you, the omnipresent one, to fail me? You are the first, the head of all others, so please show me your grace.

82-85

It is sheer delight to speak of Lord Aruna, the Light who is both beginningless and endless, unbroken, infinite space. It is sheer delight to say that Lord Aruna, the Light, is the source giving light to the sun, the moon, and fire. At the moment when one realises the Self by diving within, you become the face on the mirror. O personification of grace! What else needs to be known other than You who are omnipresent and who possess all?

The authenticity of Bhagavans writings and dialogues

Several years ago a friend of mine in California asked the following question by email:

‘Which books do you feel are the most genuine documentations of Ramana’s words and teachings? Even the Talks was published several years after his death, though it reads consistently throughout. I have only seen the original translation of Who am I?, the small green booklet, and was unaware that there are other translations. How do these all compare for authenticity and clarity?’

Through circumstances that I can’t quite remember, the reply I sent ended up being posted online. I then found myself defending and clarifying some of the points I had made. I have just dusted off that particular series of correspondence and amalgamated all the points into one presentation. These are my thoughts on this topic, along with the reasoning behind them. It is a bit of a touchy subject and I suspect that some devotees will disagree with me.

Question: I have only seen the original translation of Who am I?, the small green booklet, and was unaware that there are other translations. How do these all compare for authenticity and clarity?’

Answer: There have been several translations of Who Am I?, some better than others. There are also several versions of the original text, which complicates matters. It has appeared as a question-and-answer version with the number of questions varying from thirteen to thirty. The essay version composed by Bhagavan himself is the most authentic because the original question-and-answer version that appeared in 1923 was composed and edited by Sivaprakasam Pillai and was not shown to Bhagavan prior to its publication.

Sivaprakasam Pillai questioned Bhagavan in 1901 and Bhagavan wrote down his replies either in the sand or on a slate, After each new question had been asked, the preceding reply was wiped out to make space for the new answer. Only the last one was not erased. Sivaprakasam Pillai then went home and wrote down what he could remember of this conversation. Given the circumstances of the questioning, it is possible that some errors crept in since the recording was dependent on Sivaprakasam Pillai’s memory of the replies.

Who am I? was first printed in Tamil in 1923 as an appendix to Sri Ramana Charita Ahaval, a verse biography of Bhagavan by Sivaprakasam Pillai. It was an immediate success with devotees. In 1926 Bhagavan rewrote the whole work in the form of an essay. This should be regarded as the standard and authentic text. During Bhagavan’s lifetime Bhagavan insisted that this book be subsidised so that new visitors to the ashram could have a short and accurate summary of his teachings. Many translations were brought out, and these too were subsidised so that non-Tamil speakers could have access to these key teachings. When new visitors asked what his teachings were, he would sometimes ask them to read Who am I? and then ask questions afterwards.

Although the essay version should have superseded the question-and-answer version, the question-and-answer version continued to be printed in various formats. However, over the next few years its text was back-edited to make it conform more closely to the essay version. Nowadays, there is very little difference between the two texts.

Question: Which books do you feel are the most genuine documentations of Ramana’s words and teachings?

Answer: At the top of this list has to be Bhagavan’s own writings, the works that appear in The Collected Works of Sri Ramana Maharshi. These would include Who am I?, Ulladu Narpadu, (Forty Verses) Upadesa Undiyar (Upadesa Saram), the five hymns to Arunachala and a few other smaller works. These were all composed by Bhagavan and checked by him during his lifetime. However, I should make it clear that Bhagavan only checked the Tamil, Telugu, Sanskrit and Malayalam versions of his writings that appeared during his lifetime. The later European-language translations of these works are only as good as the understanding and the linguistic ability of the person doing the translating. The first English edition of Collected Works was not published until the 1950s, after Bhagavan had passed away. I do not know of any English translations of these works that were checked and revised by Bhagavan except for some that were done by Major Chadwick. These were rather free, rhyming translations, rather than accurate renditions of the original philosophical ideas.

I would also include the portion of Ramana Puranam that was composed by Bhagavan on this list of works that have the highest authority and authenticity. In the 1930s Muruganar began a long Tamil poem in praise of Bhagavan, but stopped when he had written about 200 lines. He went out for a walk, and when he returned he discovered that Bhagavan had completed the poem by adding another 300 or so lines. Although much of this poem is a hymn in praise of Bhagavan, it also includes many teaching statements that summarise or elaborate on ideas that had already appeared in some of Bhagavan’s earlier philosophical poems.

Of the texts that appear in Collected Works and which are attributed to Bhagavan, Vichara Sangraham (Self Enquiry) occupies a bit of a grey area for me. Like Who am I?, this work arose from replies that Bhagavan wrote out in the period, around the start of the twentieth century, when he was not speaking. However, the content has one important difference. Sivaprakasam Pillai was asking questions on the nature of reality and the means of discovering it; Gambhiram Seshayya, the devotee who recorded the Vichara Sangraham answers, was more interested in getting an understanding of passages in Tamil spiritual books that he couldn’t understand because either the language or the philosophy was too difficult for him. He showed Tamil spiritual books to Bhagavan and asked him to summarise key passages from them in a simplified form. Bhagavan then wrote out paraphrases of these texts. Some of the teachings in Self Enquiry are clearly Bhagavan’s own, and were probably written in response to questions put by Gambhiram Seshayya, but they are mixed with material that is simply Bhagavan’s presentation of ideas taken from other books that he didn’t necessarily agree with.

All this would not matter so much if Bhagavan had, as he did with Who am I?, produced his own authoritative version of the text at a later date. Unfortunately, he did not write either the question-and-answer version that first appeared in Tamil around 1930 or the Tamil essay version that was first printed in 1939. Both of them were written and edited by Sadhu Natanananda. I am sure that Bhagavan checked and approved the versions that ended up in Collected Works, but one cannot really say that either was his own work.

The original source of Self Enquiry is the notebook that Gambhiram Seshayya’s relatives sent to the ashram in 1930. Since this notebook no longer exists, it is no longer possible to determine exactly how this work evolved from the original notes to the final published version.

While the works that appear in Collected Works have the highest provenance and the greatest authority, I believe that the version of Guru Vachaka Kovai that came out in Tamil in 1939 has an almost equal authority. Throughout the 1920s and 30s Muruganar sat in the hall and listened to Bhagavan give out his verbal teachings. Whenever Bhagavan said something that Muruganar thought was worth recording, Muruganar would write it down in the form of a four-line Tamil verse. These short and pithy recordings were shown to Bhagavan on the day that they were written, allowing Bhagavan to check their veracity. Sometimes Bhagavan would make corrections to the verse and return it. In 1939 all these verses were assembled and arranged by subject by Sadhu Natanananda, the man who wrote and edited the Tamil versions of Self Enquiry. Bhagavan went through a proof copy of Guru Vachaka Kovai and made major revisions to many of the verses. He also added a few verses of his own. After he had completed his editing work, Bhagavan turned his attention to the introduction that had been written by Sadhu Natanananda. There he found this statement:

In summary it can be said that this is a work that has come into existence to explain in great detail and in a pristine form Sri Ramana’s philosophy and its essential nature.

Bhagavan added one word to this sentence that makes an enormous difference to the meaning of this sentence. After he had edited it, the sentence read, ‘… this work alone has come into existence to explain in great detail and in a pristine form Sri Ramana’s philosophy and its essential nature.’

This interpolation by Bhagavan himself gives the highest imprimatur to this work. Editions of Guru Vachaka Kovai that came out after Bhagavan had passed away included verses that Bhagavan had not personally edited in this way, so their authority is slightly less, but even so, I would regard Guru Vachaka Kovai as the most authoritative collection of Bhagavan’s verbal teachings. It is also worth noting that it is recorded in Tamil, the language in which Bhagavan generally gave out his teachings. Other compilations of his verbal teachings were recorded in English (Talks, Day by Day) or Telugu (Letters from Sri Ramanasramam). The versions of them that now appear in Tamil are translations, not original texts.

If anyone is interested in tracking down the verses that appeared in the 1939 Tamil edition of Guru Vachaka Kovai, there are some appendices in the new translation of Guru Vachaka Kovai that will facilitate this search. This new edition, by Venkatasubramanian, Robert Butler and myself, will be out in a few months’ time.

Next, in order of authenticity and reliability, are the records of conversations that appeared during Bhagavan’s lifetime which were checked and edited by him prior to publication. This list would include Maharshi’s Gospel, Spiritual Instruction, and the talks that precede Sat Darshana Bhashya.

There is a proof copy of the first edition of Maharshi’s Gospel in the Ramanasramam archives which shows that Bhagavan made minor handwritten revisions to the text prior to its publication.

Spiritual Instruction has always appeared in The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi, even though it is a record of answers Bhagavan gave out, rather than a written work. All the items that appeared in the Tamil edition of Collected Works have been thoroughly checked by Bhagavan himself.

The dialogues that precede Sat Darshana Bhashya were read to Bhagavan by Kapali Sastri prior to their publication. As he was listening to them, Bhagavan made suggestions that were all incorporated. K. Natesan, who was present in the hall on the day of the reading, told me that Bhagavan asked Kapali Sastri to change one phrase to ‘import of I’ – a nice English phrase – but he couldn’t remember what words it replaced.

Sri Ramana Gita, which was also published during Bhagavan’s lifetime, is more problematic. It was not shown to Bhagavan prior to its publication, and G. V. Subbaramayya has recorded an incident in which Bhagavan wanted to change the original Sanskrit of one verse because a particular term was inappropriate. The first edition was not published by Sri Ramanasramam, but when the ashram took over the book, subsequent editions were checked by Bhagavan before they were printed. Bhagavan also took care to ensure that the editions of Sri Ramana Gita that were published in other languages were accurate. I visited K. K. Nambiar in Chennai in the early 1980s and he showed me the Malayalam edition of Sri Ramana Gita that he and Bhagavan had worked on together. Bhagavan had eventually written out all eighteen chapters in Malayalam, and this handwritten copy was sitting on Nambiar’s altar when I visited. He told me that he recited the whole work in Malayalam every day as parayana.

Ganapati Muni, the devotee who recorded Sri Ramana Gita, had a photographic memory, and Bhagavan has gone on record as saying that the teachings recorded there are an accurate presentation of the conversations that took place. However, he was not so happy with the questions themselves or with the motives that lay behind them.

Around 1980 Sadhu Om interviewed Sadhu Natanananda about various events that had taken place during Bhagavan’s lifetime and the conversation was recorded on an audio tape. Sadhu Om and Michael James made an English translation of this conversation shortly afterwards, and Michael was kind enough to give me a copy.

Sadhu Natanananda said during the interview that shortly after he had arrived at Ramanasramam he had asked Bhagavan about the contents of Sri Ramana Gita because he didn’t read Sanskrit himself. Bhagavan told him that he didn’t need to read the text.

Then Bhagavan told him, ‘They came to me, not to get knowledge of my teachings, but to convert me to their own. They tried to get me to agree with them, but I refused. Even though I wouldn’t say what they wanted me to say, they went ahead and published the book. This is a bit like a high-wire circus artist who falls off the wire, does a somersault on the way down to the safety net, and then pretends that falling off was all part of the act.’

This is harsh criticism indeed, but it didn’t stop Bhagavan from doing his usual thorough job of editing and translating the editions of this book that came out in the last few decades of his life. The book was popular with many devotees and Bhagavan took great care to ensure that all editions of it were accurate and well translated.

Next, I must mention a little-known book that Bhagavan was actively involved in. In the late 1920s he asked Lakshmana Sarma if he had read Ulladu Narpadu. Lakshmana Sarma replied that he hadn’t, adding that the Tamil in the verses was too complicated for him. Lakshmana Sarma knew Sanskrit and had a good grounding in Vedanta, but he hadn’t studied the literary Tamil format in which Bhagavan had composed Ulladu Narpadu. Bhagavan invited Lakshmana Sarma to come every day and have lessons on the meaning of each verse. After each verse was completed, Lakshmana Sarma would compose a Sanskrit rendering of that verse to prove that he had fully understood the meaning. Bhagavan checked these Sanskrit verses and usually made him change them several times until he was satisfied that the meaning had been accurately conveyed. Lakshmana Sarma’s Sanskrit rendering of Ulladu Narpadu was eventually published under the title Revelation, and an English translation of it, by Lakshmana Sarma himself, is also available from Sri Ramanasramam. Other than Muruganar, Lakshmana Sarma was the only devotee to have private lessons from Bhagavan on the meanings of his written works.

In the early 1930s Lakshmana Sarma used the knowledge he had gained from these lessons with Bhagavan to write a Tamil commentary on Ulladu Narpadu. This commentary was serialised in a Tamil magazine. Bhagavan cut them all out of the magazine and pasted them in a scrapbook that was kept near his sofa. If people approached him and asked him for the meaning of any particular verse, he would often hand over the scrapbook and ask them to read the relevant entry. Chinnaswami, the manager of Ramanasramam, refused to publish this work as an ashram book because he had had some other dispute with Lakshmana Sarma, so Lakshmana Sarma published it himself. Bhagavan was not happy with this arrangement. Usually, he never interfered with the administration of the ashram, but in this case he decided to make an exception. He went to the ashram office and told Chinnaswami, ‘Everyone is saying that this is the best book on Ulladu Narpadu. Why don’t you print it?’

Chinnaswami took the hint and subsequent editions were printed by the ashram. Lakshmana Sarma’s commentary has never appeared as a book in English, but over the last year or so a translation has been serialised in The Mountain Path. Presumably, when this serialisation is over, it will come out in book form.

I should like to put the spotlight now on Talks With Sri Ramana Maharshi, the biggest published collection of dialogues with Bhagavan. The first thing to note is that Bhagavan never checked and revised this book in the way that he did with Guru Vachaka Kovai or the other books of conversations that appeared during his lifetime. A portion of the original manuscript, recorded by Munagala Venkataramiah in the 1930s, still exists. There are various editing and correction marks in it done by devotees of that era, but none of the marks is by Bhagavan. Annamalai Swami and Sadhu Om both told me that they saw Bhagavan reading parts of the manuscript in the hall, but at no point did he make any attempt to edit or change what was there.

There are several factors that need to be weighed when one is assessing the reliability of what appears in this book:

(a) No one ever recorded Bhagavan’s voice. All the dialogues that appear were written down from memory.

(b) Munagala Venkataramiah was not always allowed to write down what Bhagavan said at the time he said it. For some time Chinnaswami enforced a rule that no one was allowed to take any notes in the hall. During these periods Munagala Venkataramiah had to wait till he got back to his room, often several hours later, before he could commit his memories of conversations to paper.

(c) Munagala Venkataramiah had a reputation for adding comments of his own when he acted as Bhagavan’s translator in the hall. Some of these additional comments found their way into his manuscript.

(d) Munagala Venkataramiah was not the sole recorder. Visitors who had had conversations with Bhagavan when Munagala Venkataramiah was absent sometimes wrote up their own versions of these conversations and passed them on to Munagala Venkataramiah. These contributions can only be as reliable as the people who made them. Munagala Venkataramiah sometimes edited these contributions, and sometimes incorporated them without changes. Talk numbers 530-47, for example, were recorded by Annamalai Swami in his own diary. Munagala Venkataramiah heavily edited many of these entries.

(e) Other people such as S. S. Cohen, who were also recording dialogues during this period, sometimes have quite different versions of the same conversation.

When my comments about the provenance of Talks were first posted online, I received an email from Ajay Kumar that pointed out that Major Chadwick had given its accuracy a much higher rating in his introduction to the book:

The completed notes were often shown to questioners for verification, but the whole had the seal of approval of Sri Bhagavan himself, as the records were always shown him for his approval or the necessary alteration after they had been entered in the notebook. Thus we may be sure that here we have the exact teaching of the Master.

Most of what follows, in bold, is the reply that I sent him:

When one is attempting to evaluate the accuracy of a particular text that was in existence in Bhagavan’s lifetime, it is important to recognise a distinction between something Bhagavan read and something Bhagavan actually corrected and revised. I am sure that huge portions of the Talks manuscript would have been quite acceptable to Bhagavan had he taken the trouble to edit it for publication, but the fact remains that he didn’t.

Parts of the Talks manuscript did appear in Maharshi’s Gospel, which came out in 1939. The second half of Maharshi’s Gospel contains dialogues that do not appear anywhere else. I strongly believe that they were dialogues that Maurice Frydman, the editor of the book, had with Bhagavan but I can’t prove this conclusively because he covered his tracks very well. The first half of Maharshi’s Gospel, though, comprises conversations that were lifted verbatim from the Talks manuscript. Judging by the small number of alterations that were made to the Maharshi’s Gospel proof copy by Bhagavan, one can infer that he was reasonably happy with the text in the manuscript.

Chadwick stresses that ‘we may be sure that here [in Talks] we have the exact teaching of the Master’. I am not so convinced, and the reason I say this is that there is one excellent bench mark against which the accuracy of Talks can be measured. In 1936 Bhagavan gave a deposition in a court case. This took place in the hall, and devotees were allowed to attend. The court stenographer made a verbatim transcript of everything Bhagavan said, while Munagala Venkataramiah made notes that he later included in Talks. The full dialogue can be found on my website in the article entitled Bhagavan the Atiasrami. I will just give a couple of extracts from it to illustrate the point I am trying to make. They are from 5th December, 1936:

Munagala Venkataramiah’s version

Question: Who is your Guru?

Bhagavan: The Self.

Question: For whom?

Bhagavan: For myself. The Guru may be internal or external. He may reveal himself internally or externally.

The only reply recorded by the court stenographer on this topic was:

Bhagavan: For me Atma itself is the Guru. My Atma is Guru for my Atma.

Munagala Venkataramiah again:

Question: You spoke of atiasrama the other day. Is there authority for it? Is it mentioned anywhere?

Bhagavan: Yes, in the Upanishads, the Suta Samhita [Skanda Purana], Bhagavata, Bharata and other works.

Court record of Bhagavan’s reply to this question:

Bhagavan: Details about atiasrama are contained in the Suta Samhita.

If you compare the two sets of questions and answers, you will see that some of Munagala Venkataramiah’s transcriptions are decidedly off the mark. Not only does he fail to record the answer to the key question ‘Who is your Guru?’ correctly, he also pads it out with additional comments that Bhagavan did not make. The additional comments are remarks that Bhagavan did make on this subject on other occasions, but on this particular day he restricted himself to what the stenographer recorded. This habit of padding out the answers can also be seen when Bhagavan gives a scriptural citation for atiasrama (the Suta Samhita). Munagala Venkataramiah added the Upanishads, the Bhagavata and the Mahabharata to the list. These works may contain material on this subject, but they were not cited by Bhagavan during this deposition.

These two examples should be enough to demonstrate the point I am trying to make. I have spoken to many devotees who were present in the hall in the 1930s when Munagala Venkataramiah was the principal translator. Most of them told me that he regularly added his own comments to what Bhagavan said. When he wrote down the conversations later, many of these additional comments found their way into his record. The additional comments were usually remarks that Bhagavan had made on the same subject on different occasions, so they were not entirely inappropriate, but I feel there was no justification for padding out Bhagavan’s comments in this way. Bhagavan, who had a good grasp of English, must have known what was going on, but he didn’t interfere unless his own words had been mistranslated in some way. I have been told that when Devaraja Mudaliar translated for the first time in the early 1940s, Bhagavan beamed with pleasure and said words to the effect, ‘Finally, someone who translates exactly what I say’. I have heard three different versions of this comment from devotees who were with Bhagavan in the 1940s, and this is a summary of the gist of all three of them.

Having said all this, I have to say that Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi is one of my favourite books of Bhagavan’s teaching. One can feel the power of Bhagavan’s words and teachings on every page. It may not be exactly what Bhagavan said, but his teachings are simple and clear enough to withstand the occasional embellishment.

I will revert now to my discussion of which collections of his verbal teachings Bhagavan read and checked.

Most of the text of Day by Day with Bhagavan was not checked by Bhagavan. Devaraja Mudaliar showed the first few pages to Bhagavan when he started compiling his record, but dropped the habit soon afterwards, except when he was unsure of what he had recorded. Devaraja Mudaliar operated under the same constraints that the compiler of Talks did, so the same qualifications must also apply. One plus in favour of this work is that Bhagavan publicly pronounced himself to be highly satisfied with Devaraja Mudaliar’s skill and accuracy as an interpreter.

The letters that comprise Letters from Sri Ramanasramam were published in a Telugu journal during Bhagavan’s lifetime, but there is no evidence that Bhagavan ever checked the material before it went to the press. Balaram Reddy told me in the 1980s that there was a rivalry between the various 1940s recorders (Krishna Bhikshu, Devaraja Mudaliar and Suri Nagamma) with each accusing the other of transcribing irrelevant or inaccurate material. Bhagavan, following his usual habit of non-interference, refused to take sides or intervene in this. Balaram Reddy also told me that these devotees would give the writings of the other two to Bhagavan to be checked in the hope that he would publicly announce that there was some mistake in them. It was all a bit petty, but it did have the serendipitous result of Bhagavan going through a lot of material that he might not otherwise have checked.

This leads me onto another factor that has to be considered. Bhagavan would often read material that devotees had submitted and return it without making any corrections, even if the material was wildly inaccurate. The most famous instance of this was a Malayalam biography that was written while Bhagavan was still at Skandashram. It was a complete fantasy, compiled by a railway clerk who had had several children. In the book Bhagavan was portrayed as an ex-railway clerk with several children who had miraculous powers that he frequently exhibited. Bhagavan patiently went through the manuscript, correcting a few spelling and grammatical mistakes along the way and then handed it back to the author. None of the devotees in the ashram at that time knew Malayalam. Kunju Swami, a Malayali, was off on a trip, so no one knew what had been written in the manuscript.

When Kunju Swami returned the other devotees told him about the manuscript and asked him to translate it for them. Kunju Swami read it and was horrified to discover how badly Bhagavan had been misrepresented.

He approached Bhagavan and enquired, ‘Is any of this true?’

Bhagavan apparently replied, ‘It’s as true as all this,’ waving at the world around him.

So, knowing that Bhagavan read something and returned it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is accurate. However, I should also point out that if Bhagavan did take an interest in something that was shown to him, he could be a fiercely uncompromising editor. Lakshmana Sarma had to recast his Sanskrit translations of Bhagavan’s Tamil verses many, many times before Bhagavan pronounced himself satisfied. Muruganar’s first draft of Guru Vachaka Kovai was extensively reworked by Bhagavan before it went to the press. Translations or presentations of his teachings by close devotees always received special attention. G. V. Subbaramayya’s book, Sri Ramana Reminiscences, records many incidents that show just how seriously Bhagavan took his editing responsibilities.

There is one other category of Bhagavan literature that I must discuss: biographies.

The first major biography of Bhagavan, Self Realization, was written by B. V. Narasimha Swami and published in 1929. Narasimha Swami did extensive research on Bhagavan’s life and we all owe him a great debt of gratitude for all the work he put in. He wrote to all the devotees he could find the addresses of, asking for information about Bhagavan and for stories about the devotee’s connection with Bhagavan. He interviewed many people in the ashram, including Bhagavan himself, and travelled extensively all over Tamil Nadu, looking for information and collecting photographs. Somewhat surprisingly, he did not show his manuscript to Bhagavan before it was published. I referred earlier to a court deposition that Bhagavan gave in the hall. A former devotee was suing the ashram, claiming to be its true owner. This man’s lawyer produced a copy of Self Realization and asked Bhagavan if he had read it prior to its publication, and whether the incidents depicted in it were true. Bhagavan replied that he had not been shown it in advance, and that there were some mistakes in it. He did not, unfortunately, elaborate on what they were.

However, having read the book, I believe that the mistakes were only minor. B. V. Narasimha Swami left Ramanasramam shortly afterwards and never updated his book. The portion that deals with Bhagavan’s life after 1930 was added by S. S. Cohen many years later.

The material in Self Realization was extensively used by the early Tamil and Telugu biographers: Suddhananda Bharati used it to write Sri Ramana Vijayam in Tamil, while Krishna Bhikshu brought out Ramana Leela in Telugu. Initially, Ramana Leela was just a translation of Self Realization, but in the years that followed it was updated several times. Sri Ramana Vijayam remained the same. By the 1940s some devotees were noticing that stories were being told differently in these three books, and one of them asked Bhagavan why this was so. Bhagavan replied that the authors of Self-Realization and Sri Ramana Vijayam had left shortly after completing their works, whereas Krishna Bhikshu had stayed and updated his book from time to time. I would take this to imply that Bhagavan thought that Ramana Leela was more accurate than the others because the author had taken the trouble to check the revisions with Bhagavan himself.

For several decades Ramana Leela was only available in Telugu, but a few years Ramanasramam brought out the first English edition of this key work.

I should now like to distil everything I have said into a few key, and possibly oversimplified, statements:

(a) The material composed by Bhagavan himself that contains his own teachings and experiences, rather than summaries or translations of other people's, are the most reliable and authentic.

(b) The works that Bhagavan took the trouble to edit, correct or supervise himself can all be regarded as highly reliable sources. These include Maharshi’s Gospel, Spiritual Instruction, Revelation, Guru Vachaka Kovai in Tamil, Sri Ramana Leela, and the conversations in Sat Darshan Bhashya. This category would also include translations of ashram texts, such as Sri Ramana Gita, which Bhagavan supervised and edited.

(c) The remaining sources of the teachings may be reliable, but they were not checked and personally revised by Bhagavan. They may also contain errors that resulted from the transcribing conditions prevailing in the ashram.

I have only dealt with titles that were published during Bhagavan’s lifetime, or which were based on material that was recorded by devotees prior to Bhagavan’s passing away. In subsequent years many devotees wrote their own accounts, many of which contained their experiences with Bhagavan, the stories he told and the teachings he gave out. These can only be as reliable as the memories of the people concerned. However, some of these books contain records that were written down on the day that the events were witnessed or the talks heard. S. S. Cohen (Guru Ramana), G. V. Subbaramayya (Sri Ramana Reminiscences), and Annamalai Swami (Living By The Words Of Bhagavan) all kept diaries that recorded Bhagavan’s teachings and the events that were going on in his presence. I think it is fair to assume that the material which was written down on the day it happened is intrinsically more accurate than memories transcribed several decades later.