OM NAMO BHAGAVATE SRI RAMANAYA

Muruganar is well known as one of the leading disciples of Ramana Maharshi

I have known Maharshigal since 1923. I had heard of him as a daring person who left home in his youth and lived a hermit's life at Tiruvannamalai with severe penances. Manager Aiyasami Pillai came with my father-in-law to Madras and saw my nationalistic Tamil poems and said they were good and should be taken to the notice of Sri Ramana Maharshigal at Tiruvannamalai as he was interested in such literature, and his blessings would develop my muse and ease the further flow of such poetry. I read Maharshi's "Aksharamanamalai", but read it with a mere literary eye. Aiyasami Pillai invited me to visit the Maharshi. After persuading my mother with some difficulty, I got her permission and came here (Tiruvannamalai) in Michaelmas of 1923. On my way to Tiruvannamalai, I composed ten Tamil stanzas on the Maharshi. One of these was a query to the Maharshi asking him what he had done for national uplift, a thought which was uppermost in my mind then. The verse ran, "Don't you know how many spiritual leaders with one voice summon us to patriotic service? What have you done to help this cause?"

Two or three days after my arrival I was given some medicine. I do not know what it was, but it excited me and overpowered me. I sat in front of the Maharshi and concentrated my mind on his person. After a few minutes I had a vision of brightness. It was a suffused brightness all over his body and around it. The body was, however, distinct from the surrounding light. How long it lasted, I personally do not know, so wholly lost was I in contemplating the vision. Kunju Swami, Dandapani Swami and Arunachala Swami were present while this was going on. Maharshi then appeared to me as Christ, for what reason I cannot say, and again as Mohammad and other great souls for similarly inexplicable reasons. I lost my former personality during this period for it was submerged and lost in a huge ocean wave of a new state of spirituality. I was feeling that all my experience was dream-like vague and insubstantial, mysterious in spite of the feeling that I was still in a waking condition. I was obsessed by this fear that my former worldly waking state was being smothered my former self plundered of its sense of reality and individuality. I felt as a consequence I might be perpetually held down to this strange life in Tiruvannamalai and be forever lost to my mother whose sole support I was. So I bawled out some words to this effect: "Here are a band of robbers called siddhas at whose head is this Ramana Maharshi. They are all intent on capturing souls who approach them in the waking condition and rapidly charming them into this mysterious siddha's sort of life and adding them to their group. As it would not be within the power of my mother or anyone else to see me or take me back from their iron clutch, I must start off from here at once," I also added, looking at this bright dazzling figure of Maharshi and addressing him: "So here I am, unable even for a few moments to endure this light. How wonderful it is that a woman, your mother, should have carried you in her womb for nine long months." In this high-strung state. and in this unique strain, 1 went on haranguing for over an hour, punctuating it by repeated prostrations to Maharshi. After that. I wandered about here and there with Kunju Swami and Arunachala Swami, mostly around Palitheertham and the Chengam Road until 3 a.m. I felt that all attempts to escape from the Ashram were futile, as the whole of Tiruvannamalai was giving me the same oppressive feeling, submerging my persona lity, and that Tiruvannamalai and the Maharshi were co-extensive and synonymous.

A few days later, during the same trip to Tiruvannamalai, when I had no medicine to excite me, I again sat before the Maharshi and had a similar experience. Once again, the figure of the Maharshi became brilliant, and my sense of personality was again submerged. Again my fears were roused that should I continue in his presence longer, I should be lost to my mother. So at midnight, I hurried from the Ashram into the town and spent the night in the house of one of my pupils. This was probably in the Christmas vacation of 1923-24.

I brought my mother in 1924, around the time of Sivaratri, to see the Maharshi and she had a good reception. I had begun the habit of meditation, and my meditation was mostly niramabalam and not personal.

In the succeeding months I came to visit on many occasions. I used to listen to people's queries to the Maharshi and his replies to them. I was gradually influenced by him and my outlook on life was getting altered, After my mother died in 1924, I left my job in July 1926 and I came to Tiruvannamalai, making it my permanent residence in the middle of 1926. I have continued here ever since, coming daily under the Maharshi's influence, and I have now written over a thousand verses about him.