Somerset Maughan & Ramana Maharshi

Today I thought I would tell you about a book which arrived here recently. It is called Points of View, a collection of five essays by W. Somerset Maughan. A first edition published by Heineman in 1958. The reason I ordered it was because I was particularly keen to read one of the essays which is called The Saint. It didn’t take me long to read the essay because it is only 39 pages long. In 1938 during a trip to India Somerset Maughan had a meeting with the Hindu sage Ramana Maharshi. The essay is an account of that meeting, together with a biographical portrayal of Ramana Maharshi’s life and teachings. In one of Maughan’s novels The Razor’s Edge in 1944 he had used a fictionalised version of Ramana as one of the books characters. I first became curious to learn about Ramana Maharshi because Eckhart Tolle has often mentioned him in glowing terms in his talks. 

This led me to reading a 22-page pamphlet called Who Am I? which was first published in 1923 and consisted of 28 questions put to Ramana by Sri Pillau. Then I read a 1985 paperback Be As You Are, The Teachings Of Sri Ramana Maharshi. This book which I recommend is edited by David Godman who has followed Ramana’s teachings since 1976 and became the librarian at his ashram.  I wanted to find out about Maughan’s meeting. It was in Madras that Maughan’s hosts told him that he should visit Ramana who was the most revered swami in India. It was a hot dusty drive of several hours to reach Ramana’s hermitage at Tiruvannamalai at the foot of the holy mountain of Arunachala. On arrival Maughan promptly fainted. He was carried unconscious to a hut and laid down on a pallet bed. When he regained his senses, he found Ramana sitting on the floor by his bed. He barely said a word except, “Silence is also conversation”, and remained sitting in silence for half an hour before finally leaving. Maughan immediately felt recovered. He was well enough to visit the hall where Ramana sat in silence on a dais and welcomed visitors.

I’ll just give you a quick little history of Ramana and his teachings which Maughan covers in the second part of his essay. He was born in Tiruchuli, Tamil Nadu, India in 1879. In 1895, an attraction to the sacred hill Arunachala was aroused in him and in 1896, at the age of 16, he had a "death-experience" or sudden liberation where he became aware of a "current" or "force" which he recognized as his true "I" or "self" that is Iswara.  Six weeks later he left his uncle's home after discovering that Arunachala was a real place and journeyed by train to the holy mountain where he remained for the rest of his life. For several weeks he stayed in the vaults of a temple, so deep in meditation he was unaware of being eaten alive by vermin and insects, and local children throwing stones at him. He was finally rescued by a local sage Seshadri Swamigal who cleaned him up and fed him. He moved to another temple called Gurumurtan where a sadhu called Palaniswami became his first attendant and provided food and cooked for him. His family who had been searching finally tracked him down, but he refused to return home even when his mother begged him to. Eventually his brother and mother became followers and moved to live near him at Virupakasha Cave where he stayed for 17 years. 

Arunachala

In later years, an ashram grew up around him, where visitors received spiritual instruction by sitting silently in his company or by asking questions. Ramana Maharshi recommended self-enquiry as the principal means to remove ignorance and abide in self-awareness. In 1902, a government official named Sivaprakasam Pillai, with writing slate in hand, visited the Ramana in the hope of obtaining answers to questions about "How to know one's true identity". The questions he asked formed Ramana Maharshi's first teachings on Self-enquiry, the method for which he became widely known, and were eventually published as Nan Yar?, or in English, Who am I?. (That’s the pamphlet I first read)

His mother died in 1922, so from 1922 until his death in 1950, Ramana Maharshi lived in Sri Ramanasramam, the ashram that developed around his mother's tomb. The ashram grew to include a library, hospital, post-office and many other facilities. Ramana Maharshi displayed a natural talent for planning building projects. The popular image of him as a person who spent most of his time doing nothing except sitting silently in samadhi is highly inaccurate. From the period when an Ashram began to rise around him after his mother arrived, until his later years when his health failed, Ramana Maharshi was actually quite active in Ashram activities such as cooking and stitching leaf plates.  

Ramana Maharshi then became well known in and out of India after 1934 when Paul Brunton, having first visited Ramana Maharshi in January 1931, published the book A Search in Secret India. Brunton calls Ramana Maharshi "one of the last of India's spiritual supermen” and describes his affection toward Ramana Maharshi: “I like him greatly because he is so simple and modest, when an atmosphere of authentic greatness lies so palpably around him; he is so totally without any traces of pretension that he strongly resists every effort to canonize him during his lifetime”. While staying at Sri Ramanasramam, Paul Brunton had an experience of a "sublimely all-embracing" awareness, a "Moment of Illumination". The book was a best-seller and introduced Ramana Maharshi to a wider audience in the west. 

In November 1948, a tiny cancerous lump was found on Ramana's arm and was removed in February 1949 by the ashram's doctor. Soon, another growth appeared, and another operation was performed by an eminent surgeon in March 1949 with radium applied. The doctor told Ramana that a complete amputation of the arm to the shoulder was required to save his life, but he refused. To devotees who begged him to cure himself for the sake of his followers, Ramana is said to have replied, "Why are you so attached to this body? Let it go", and "Where can I go? I am here." By April 1950, he was too weak to go to the hall and visiting hours were limited. Visitors would file past the small room where he spent his last days to get one final glimpse. He died on 14 April 1950 at 8:47 p.m aged 71. At the same time a comet was seen which disappeared beyond Arunachala which his devotees saw as the passing of a great soul.. Although he passed away in 1950 I think that with the spread in popularity of  such things as Mindfulness and Meditation in the modern world the teachings of Ramana Maharshi are more relevant than ever. So, thank you very much Eckhart Tolle for first introducing me to Ramana Maharshi.