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We
were all playing with the conch shell. The sadhus
used to blow this shell like a horn when they
went into town to beg for alms.
One
after the other, we attempted to blow the conch
shell. No one prevented us from doing this, and
I noticed an encouraging smile from the Maharshi.
This was my first visit.
Some
eight years later, I came to Tiruvannamalai to
visit my sister, who was married there. One evening,
two companions and I went to visit Kavyakanta
Ganapati Muni up on the hill where he had his
ashram. What can I say about that great seer of
Mantra Sastra?
I
was just then out of college after finishing my
masters degree in physics. I presented to Kavyakanta
the latest views of Einstein, Planck and others
in regard to the constitution of matter and the
universe. He gave a patient hearing, and then
said, "Can you put it in a brief way?" Answering
in the affirmative, I went on explaining that
there is a continuum in which time and space are
involved, wherein particles change into waves
and waves change into particles and all can dissolve
into a single unitary medium. That is the prospect
of the future.
He
listened patiently to all this and said, "The
world picture is in that frame," and after a pause
he exclaimed, "chitram, chitram!" These words
mean ‘picture’ — you may call it a movie-picture.
Those words sent a thrill through my body, through
my whole frame. I suddenly felt disembodied. I
was myself the whole space in which the pictures
were placed — this body being one of the
pictures. This experience lasted for a brief eternity.
When I came round to myself we took leave of Kavyakanta.
The
next day we had a meeting with Bhagavan. This
was about the time he arrived at the present site
of Sri Ramanasramam (1922). There were no buildings
at all, except for a small shed covering the samadhi
of the Mother. Bhagavan was seated on a bench
under the shade of a tree, and with him, lying
on the same bench, was the dog named Rose. Bhagavan
was simply stroking the dog.
I
wondered, among us Brahmins the dog was such an
animal that it would defile all purity. A good
part of my respect for the Maharshi left me when
I saw him touching that unclean animal —
for all its apparent cleanliness and neatness
it was unclean from the Brahmin point of view.
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Reprinted
with permission from
The Maharshi |
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| Ganapati
Muni was a devotee of Ramana Maharshi and
a famous religious figure in his own right. |
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