Ramana Maharshi
Original name VENKATARAMAN AIYER
(b. Dec. 30, 1879, Madurai, Madras states, India-d. April 14, 1950, Tiruvannamalai), Hindu philosopher and yogi called ‘Great
Master,’ ‘Bhagavan’ (the Lord), and ‘the Sage of Arunachala,’ whose position on monism (the identity of the individual
soul and the creator of souls) and maya (illusion) parallels that of Shankara (c. AD 700-750). His original contribution to yogic
philosophy is the technique of vicara (self-‘pondering’ inquiry).
Born to a middle-class, southern Indian, Brahman family, Venkataraman
read mystical and devotional literature, particularly the lives of South Indian Shaiva saints and the life of Kabir, the medieval
mystical poet. He was captivated by legends of the local pilgrimage place, Mt. Arunachala, from which the god Shiva was supposed
to have arisen in a spiral of fire at the creation of the world.
At the age of 17 Venkataraman had a spiritual experience from which he
derived his vicara technique: he suddenly felt a great fear of death, and, lying very still, imagined his body becoming a stiff,
cold corpse. Following a traditional ‘not this, not that’ (neti-neti) practice, he began self-inquiry, asking ‘Who am I?’
and answering, ‘Not the body, because it is decaying; not the mind, because the brain will decay with the body; not the
personality, nor the emotions, for these also will vanish with death.’ His intense desire to know the answer brought him into a
state of consciousness beyond the mind, a state of bliss that Hindu philosophy calls samadhi. He immediately renounced his
possessions, shaved his head, and fled from his village to Mt. Arunachala to become a hermit and one of India’s youngest gurus.
The publication of Paul Brunton’s My Search in Secret India drew
Western attention to the thought of Ramana Maharshi (the title used by Venkataraman’s disciples) and attracted a number of
notable students. Ramana Maharshi believed that death and evil were maya, or illusion, which could be dissipated by the practice
of vicara, by which the true self and the unity of all things would be discovered. For liberation from rebirth it is sufficient,
he believed, to practice only vicara and bhakti (devotional surrender) either to Shiva Arunachala or to Ramana Maharshi. Encyclopaedia Britannica
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