Selected Correspondence: Mr. Ventkataraman Ramana

Richard’s Selected Correspondence

On Mr. Venkataraman Ramana

RICHARD: All genuinely enlightened beings point to a single edifying moment of awakening (with a variety of descriptions).

RESPONDENT: Who would you recognise as enlightened?

RICHARD: To give but three persons from the last 100 or so years as an example:

• Mr. Venkataraman Aiyer, in mid-1896 at age 17, had his spiritual awakening when he suddenly felt a great fear of death; lying very still he imagined his body becoming a stiff, cold corpse. Following a traditional ‘neti-neti’ (not this, not that)’ practice, he began self-inquiry by 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 an altered state of consciousness beyond the mind, a state of bliss called ‘Samadhi’ by the Hindus. He said: ‘But with the death of this body am I dead? Is the body I? It is silent and inert but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of the I within me, apart from it. So I am Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. That means I am the deathless spirit. All this was not dull thought. It flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly, almost without thought-process. I was something very real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with my body was centred on that I. From that moment onwards the I or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death had vanished once and for all. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time on’. Mr. Venkataraman Aiyer consequently taught the traditional Vedic philosophy that death and evil were maya (illusion) and that liberation from rebirth could be dissipated by the practice of ‘vicara’ (self-pondering inquiry) and ‘bhakti’ (devotional surrender) either to Shiva Arunachala or to Ramana Maharshi (as he was known by his disciples) by which the true Self and the unity of all things would be discovered. (Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica).

RESPONDENT: Patanjali, Ramana ... this is so similar.

RICHARD: If I may ask ... how is it similar? I cannot see any correspondence whatsoever. Vis.:

• [The Patanjali Yoga-Sutras]; ‘The fifth stage (5) pratyahara (‘withdrawal’) involves control of the senses, or the ability to withdraw the attention of the senses from outward objects to the mind. These first five stages are called external aids to Yoga; the remaining three are purely mental or internal aids. (7) dhyana (‘concentrated meditation’) is the uninterrupted contemplation of the object of meditation, beyond any memory of ego and (8) Samadhi (‘self-collectedness’) is the final stage and is a precondition of attaining release from the cycle of rebirth. In this stage the meditator perceives or experiences the object of his meditation and himself as one.
• [Mr. Venkataraman Ramana]: ‘The mind can find rest only when it has found the answer to the question ‘Who am I? By incessantly pursuing within yourself the enquiry ‘Who am I?’ you will know your true Self, and thereby attain perfection. The real ‘I’ or the Self is not any of the five senses, nor the sense-objects, nor the organs of action, nor the breath and vital forces, nor the mind. That which remains after excluding all of these is the real ‘I’. If one realises within the heart what one’s true nature is, one will find that it is infinite Wisdom, Truth, and Bliss, without beginning or end’. [endquote].
• [Richard]: ‘With the end of both ‘I’ and ‘me’, the distance or separation between both ‘I’ and ‘me’ and these sense organs – and thus the external world – disappears. To be living as the senses is to live a clear and clean awareness – apperception – a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. Because there is no ‘I’ as a thinker (a little person inside one’s head) or a ‘me’ as a feeler (a little person in one’s heart) – to have sensations happen to them, I am the sensations. The entire affective faculty vanishes ... blind nature’s software package of instinctual passions is deleted. There is nothing except the series of sensations which happen ... not happening to an ‘I’ or a ‘me’ but just happening ... moment by moment ... one after another. To live life as these sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and magic. Consequently, I am living in peace and tranquillity; a meaningful peace and tranquillity. Life is intrinsically purposeful, the reason for existence lies openly all around. Being in this very air I live in, I am constantly aware of it; I breathe it in and out; I see it, I hear it, I taste it, I smell it, I touch it, all of the time. It never goes away – nor has it ever been away – it was just that ‘I’/‘me’ was standing in the way of the meaning of life being apparent’ [endquote].

RESPONDENT: Sounds like Ramana ... it even sound like No. 3.

RICHARD: If I may ask ... how does it ‘sounds like Ramana’? I cannot see any correspondence whatsoever between what I experience and describe and what Mr. Venkataraman Ramana experienced and talked about. Vis.:

• [Mr. Venkataraman Ramana]: ‘By incessantly pursuing within yourself the enquiry ‘Who am I?’ you will know your true Self, and thereby attain perfection. The real ‘I’ or the Self is not any of the five senses, nor the sense-objects, nor the organs of action, nor the breath and vital forces, nor the mind’. [endquote].
• [Richard]: ‘To be living as the senses is to live a clear and clean awareness – apperception – a pure consciousness experience of the world as-it-is. Because there is no ‘I’ as a thinker (a little person inside one’s head) or a ‘me’ as a feeler (a little person in one’s heart) – to have sensations happen to them, I am the sensations. There is nothing except the series of sensations which happen ... not happening to an ‘I’ or a ‘me’ but just happening ... moment by moment ... one after another. To live life as these sensations, as distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of freedom and magic’. [endquote].

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