The Maharshi

LEAVES FROM A DIARY

SRI MAHARSHI’s path and the path of Sri Aurobindo differ in this way. In the former, apparently, it is you who are to work out your sadhana. In the latter, you count for little, as it were; you cannot do anything much; it is they⁷⁸ to whom you have to surrender yourself completely who can and will work out the sadhana.

But we must also note that when the Maharshi says, “It is you who have to look within yourself and work out your sadhana,’ he puts in the needed influence, anugraha, to help you proceed and do the sadhana.

Similarly, here, when Sri Aurobindo and the Mother say, “Surrender everything of you to the Divine and be free", they put in you the necessary force which enables you to carry out your indispensable individual effort for surrendering all that you have and are.

In the Maharshi’s teaching, as indeed in all yogas of ancient India, the problem to be solved is the problem of the individual. In Sri Aurobindo’s teaching, it is the problem of man in his total being and the meaning of his existence on the earth that is sought to be discovered and worked out. The problems are different and so are the solutions.
17-11-1948.

The Maharshi’s position is simply this: the Divine is, indeed, everywhere. But, you must first find your own self, your own centre in the Divine who is everywhere. Once you find it, you are no longer yourself in the usual sense; you are in His hands. What you call yourself is nothing, does not count; it is that, the Self, the Real ’l’that matters. There is no longer any problem for you; your problems are His ‘problems’. If He wants any transformation to be effected in your body, it is His will that will effect it. Manifestation, non-manifestation etc. are all His look-out, not yours.
28-12-1948.

The Maharshi used to say that only a Jnanin can be a true Bhakta. For he knows the Ishwara, His real glory.
28-12-1948

People complain of imperfections, defects and other undesirable tendencies among the inmates of this Ashram and that. Let us take it for granted that the persons complained against are imperfect, bad. But why do people go all the way to the Ashrams to spot out and concentrate on defects in others ?

The Maharshi used to say: "Where are these defects not found ? They are everywhere. If we look to our own object, our own aim in life, these things will not detract us.”

Not to take too much notice of the failings in others but to have, on the other hand, our sole attention directed to the main object in view is an excellent rule. If that is done, all these disturbances fall into their just proportions. They are mere pinpricks of our own making.

Obstructions and rough elements in the environs of great and saintly personalities are to be treated more as tests of one’s sincerity and will to brave the roughest impediments in order to reach the Ideal. (In light vein he added,) in the Puranas, we hear of Vasudeva with a huge serpent for his bedstead. Shiva has Nandi before him obstructing the passage of the devotee. No rose beautiful is found without a cluster of thorns around it.
2-1-1949.

Buddha has been the greatest in history as a spiritual personality. Whenever I think of this tall, noble figure striding majestically forward with his disciples trailing his footsteps I somehow come to remember the stature, the dynamic personality of Sri Rama. It is silly to compare Buddha or Christ with any political leader. Jesus was actually the Son of God. When he spoke of the “Kingdom of Heaven within” he spoke of a direct personal experience. Christ had that consciousness. As the Maharshi used to say, Christ moved and acted as he did because of his direct realisation, saksat anubhuti.
19-1-1949

Nrinam nidarsanamayam Ramano Maharshih, that is how Nayana⁷⁹ hails the Maharshi. Sri Maharshi is an example of ideal human conduct. The highest perfection of noble human conduct is there in him eternally shining. Whatever good in human conduct is to be found in me, however insignificant it be, is entirely due to his grace. His movement can almost always be predicted with certainty. One can always be sure of what his reactions would be. No doubt, occasionally, even his movements cannot be predicted. That is when, as he himself explained, a Divine Will makes him do this or that.

11-2-1949

It is remarkable how the Maharshi has been able to live all these seventy years. Sri Shankara lived only for 32 years while Jnana Sambandha passed away in his sixteenth year. To have lived so long after the Realisation and that after allowing unrestricted access to all people at all hours is a unique phenomenon. Sri Maharshi is a dynamo. Some twenty years back a devotee wrote of him that rays of light emanate from him and do their work on the devotee. Sri Maharshi corrected it to say, “He emanates and directs the rays.” That is a correct statement of the truth; for he meant to say that he was not passive in cases which required his intervention, but active and directed the rays of Grace.

A single look from him breaks through many coverings of one’s ego, however thick, and reaches and feels the core of the being. For spiritual seekers his is the rarest type of realisation of the kind.
16-2-1949

As a man Sri Ramakrishna was simple and childlike. But, he could at will go into Mother-consciousness and commune with Her; or he was thrown into that consciousness in spite of himself. It was during such states of Mother-consciousness that he spoke words of spiritual authenticity and acted as one God-inspired. When these states were not there, he was again his usual (normal) childlike self.

In the case of the Maharshi, this state of God-identity, the realised state of consciousness, is continuous; it knows no interruptions. Ever since he realised the Self when he was sixteen, he has lived in that state of identity with the Self i.e. the One Infinite.

He once described to me this state of consciousness, saying, “Even if the Trimurtis appear before me and give me darshan and ask me to choose a boon, I would tell them: ’Be pleased, let me have no more darshan." That is to say, even the clear distinction between the seer and the seen which is implied in the darshan of the Lord can find no place in that state of Self-realisation.
26-2-1949.

Some say that Siddhas of old are still alive. In the days when the Maharshi was on the hill, he used to take a few of us with him for the Giri Pradakshina (going round the hill). This used to last from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. Once while I was going with him he pointed his face towards the sky and said: “Look, there perhaps are the Siddhas. They (people) say they are nakshatras (stars) and pass them by!” As we walked on, he observed that the very stars were beneath his feet.

It was during one such round in May 1922 that we got word that Supervisor Ramaswami Iyer was taken ill suddenly and was dying. The Maharshi went down to the place on the hill itself where Ramaswami Iyer was lying. The latter had violent palpitations of the heart. Sri Maharshi sat near him, placing his hand on his head. Within five minutes, Ramaswami Iyer got up and looked quite normal. But the Maharshi sat on; he did not get up even after an hour. We were perplexed. I had some almond oil brought with me from Madras for Nayana and it was rubbed on Sri Maharshi’s head. Soon after, he got up and we returned to the ashram. Later when I asked him what had happened, he said: “Well, Ramaswami Iyer got up and I sat down. I was conscious when the oil was rubbed; it was pleasant and I sat on.”

The Maharshi is certainly not a pashana vedantin (poltroon philosopher). He it was who said: “There is an eternal ’I’ which moves the all, itself unmoved and it is that we have to reach within ourselves and not the external ego-self which dissolves at the initiation of ceaseless quest that lapses in the ’I’."

Vasishtha Ganapati Muni–Nayana as we called him—was of course my Guru. In fact, I looked upon him as my God. I looked to him for help and he always responded. But when it came to giving me the needed turn for delving into the depths of the spirit, he directed me to the Maharshi. I hesitated because I feared advice of renunciation etc. But after repeated hints from Nayana for four years, I approached the Maharshi (1911-1912) and what a meeting it was! The very first day wrought a remarkable change in my being and no amount of tapas or japa would have given me the indubitable knowledge of spiritual consciousness and correct appreciation of the truth of spiritual life that the Maharshi gave me. In fact, I could not have come to Sri Aurobindo if I had not got the faith awakened in me in the spiritual life which I got from seeing Sri Maharshi.
26-4-1949

The idea behind the Samadhi of Sri Maharshi’s mother and the construction of the temple of Matrbhuteshwara later on, is that it is to be a centre of spiritual Force. The Maharshi said as much and would not have come down the hill and stayed where he has been staying, if he did not intend it to be so. That is why he took such keen interest in the construction of the temple and in the Sri Chakra, which he specially asked me to see when I had been there in 1941 in connection with my writing of the commentary on the Ramana Gita
26-4-1949

When, in 1930, I had been to Tiruvannamalai with Sunder⁸⁰ Sri Maharshi asked me to see and correct the Sanskrit rendering of a Tamil work of his by X. The Sanskrit rendering was very imperfect. After hours of argument and struggle, I finished only a couple of verses. How to correct the remaining 38 verses or so within the limited time was a problem. In the evening as soon as Sri Maharshi came to his seat, he asked me to take up the work. I took it and it was amazing that within two to three hours I finished almost all the verses.

Later, Sunder told me what a magnificent and inspiring sight it was to see the Maharshi sitting with his blazing eyes transfixed on me all the while. He added that the Maharshi’s face and head looked inordinately big during the time. But I was not aware that the Maharshi had focussed his attention on me so outwardly. So when I came to the last portion, I looked up and the Maharshi asked me, with an exclamation of joy, “So, it is finished ?" I answered in surprise, “Yes, but the last verse does not come off in this particular metre.” “Does not come in that metre?" queried the sage and sank into silence. Within a moment a strong upward movement gushed up from beneath the navel, somewhere from the root of the spine, and involuntarily a verse came out like a cry from my mouth. It was a verse in the required metre!
26-4-1949

The Maharshi did not attain realisation after so many years of tapasya in Tiruvannamalai as is stated in some books. The fact is, his realisation started, indeed, took place suddenly, in his house itself and the eleven years of solitude and silence he observed later were the years required to normalise and stabilise the realisation under all conditions.
27-4-1949.

The Maharshi was very particular that visitors to the Ashram should take food there. In fact, on the Jayanti day, he did not take his meal till the last man had had his food. When I asked him about this, he said in effect, that when, in his early boyhood, he set out from his house to Tiruvannamalai, he had actually to starve for days together.

In those days, one Muslim family refused to give him food as he was a “kafir’. Then when he was in the Patala Lingam cave, he subsisted mainly on plantains and pancamrta that were thrust down into the cave. He lived on these things for years and his body suffered for want of food. Things took an opposite turn thereafter and it had been his experience that wherever he went some one or other greeted him with food. At one time when he was in the deeps of the forest, some ten people were waiting for him each with separate food! And so he has been very particular that nobody should suffer the pangs of hunger as he did.

It is also a fact that food in Sri Maharshi’s ashram is not merely food. It is definitely something more; people get better appetite there and the food does not lie heavy.

Once, when the Maharshi was living on the hills, a hunter was about to kill a peacock. Sri Maharshi asked him not to kill it; but the hunter brushed aside his words, saying “Go, Swami, who is asking you?” and went on with his game. The next day, it would appear, the man had an accident and the very hand (arm?) with which he did the fell deed had to be cut off. "I felt sorry for him," said the Maharshi speaking of it, “but what is to be done? People have to go through these things before they would learn.”
3-5-1949

After the Buddha, the Maharshi. This phenomenon of living in the physical body for more than fifty years after Realisation has no parallel in history. Buddha lived for fifty years (from his 36th to his 86th year) after the liberation and worked. Sri Maharshi has so far lived for more than fifty-four years. It is a great wonder.

We do not precisely know the Realisation that is his. His body houses an effulgence that can be certainly relied upon to do what is necessary in his present bodily ailment. Nothing can happen which is not God’s will.
9-7-1949.

Sri Maharshi has always shown a remarkable capacity for enduring physical pain and suffering. Years ago when roaming in the depths of the forest in search of the seat of the Siddha Arunagiri, reputed to reside in the heart of the hill according to the Purana, wild bees attacked his thigh; he quietly resigned himself to them until they themselves left him of their own accord. “Did it not pain you?" I asked him. “Why not?" he replied. "It was like the bite of ants.” If one’s consciousness is turned differently, things are not the same as they appear. The same capacity was seen when he was reported to have stretched forth his arm to be operated upon without anaesthetic.

Sri Ramakrishna’s explanation of his fatal disease, cancer, as the result of the accumulated sins of his visitors which they "put upon him” is not to be dismissed lightly. It is a matter of experience that sickness and disease of one can be taken over by another and either worked out or thrown off. The Guru has been known to do this for his disciples and devotees. When he takes these things upon himself, he consciously throws them away; retirement for a few minutes on such occasions is helpful. But this depends upon the spiritual stature of the Yogi or Guru. If it (retirement) cannot be availed of for any reason, there is always the danger of the body of the Guru having to undergo certain physical suffering.
28-12-1949.

The Maharshi is unique in the history of the world’s saints. To have lived for full fifty-four years after Realisation, to have influenced so many from his seat in one place, to have been accessible to all at all hours, to have stemmed the tide of scepticism as he did, is something truly unprecedented.
2-4-1950.

The Maharshi told me-over forty years ago — that whenever he wanted and attempted to go on the paths of the Siddhas, the siddha-marga, he was pulled back, something telling: "That is asat, here alone (pointing to the heart) is the Thing. Who is it that goes up and down the siddha-marga, find him.”
18-4-1950.

The Consciousness that was Maharshi’s was something unique. That he lived in that Consciousness for so many years is something that has no parallel. And that Consciousness was not dumb. Once or twice words escaped his lips to the effect: “What does it matter, if it is a hundred miles or a thousand miles ? It acts."
26-9-1950

The Maharshi was scrupulous about neatness and order. When anybody kept a book upsidedown or turned inside out, he would closely note it, (and in those days) walk up to the spot and put it in proper position. "He was not mindful”, he would remark in his usual indulgent way.
21-1-1951

I seriously took to mantra japa when I was eight. By the time I was twenty, I had completed many courses of various mantras. When there was no palpable result, I cried my heart out to the Divine. Sri Nayana then came on the scene and he gave me the eye.

Next I met the Maharshi. The personal attraction was irresistible. But I found his teaching too direct, immediate, seemingly simple, having no steps in between i.e. the starting point and the goal, at any rate not practicable to people circumstanced like myself. It was only after I started reading the Arya⁸¹ I found what I wanted. I was convinced that Sri Aurobindo would not have written those words without experience. I saw Sri Aurobindo in 1917. Thereafter, a series of far reaching experiences in my inner life commenced and they took me to Sri Aurobindo once again in 1923. That trip decided my future.

It was an ordeal to come away to Pondicherry cutting through my loyalty to Sri Nayana and attachment to Sri Maharshi. But I was compelled from within.
4-2-1951

I have observed that great spiritual figures do not usually discourage devotees announcing their (Guru’s) avatarhood. They may not, themselves, proclaim it; but they defend the action of the believers. The Maharshi, for instance, never objected when it was said of him that he was the avatar of Skanda. He always allowed it to be said. Recently, some ten years ago, it is reported a visitor to the Ashram complained that devotees described him as Skanda’s avatar. The Maharshi replied: "Who am I to object or assent to what people may say?" And after he left, the Maharshi commented that the visitor was at great pains to save him (M) from danger!