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Published by: Sri Ramana Kendram, Hyderabad
SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI-A LIFE SKETCH
Birth and Early Years
Venkataraman (later Sri Ramana Maharshi) was born on December 30, 1879 at Tiruchuzhi, a small village in Tamil Nadu, some thirty miles off Madurai and eighteen miles from Virudhunagar, the nearest railway station. Venkataraman's mother Alagamma was a pious, devoted person and his father Sundaram Ayyar was a pleader, who practised mostly before the local magistrate. Venkataraman had a brother, two years his senior. His other brother and his sister were both younger to him by a few years. It was a happy, well-to-do middle class family.
When Venkataraman was twelve, Sundaram Ayyar died and the family was broken up. He and his elder brother were sent to live with their paternal uncle, Subbier, who had a house in Madurai. Here, Venkataraman first attended the Scott's Middle School and then joined the American Mission High School for his ninth standard. At school, his one asset was an amazingly retentive memory, which enabled him to repeat a lesson after hearing it just once.
Endowed with a stronger constitution than most of his classmates and with a spirit of independence that marked him off from other students, Venkatraman found school games and outdoor life more congenial than studies and reading books.
In his boyhood years Venkataraman was prone to abnormally deep sleep. Speaking about it in later years he said: "The boys didn't dare to touch me when I was awake, but if they had any grudge against me they would come when I was asleep, carry me wherever they liked, beat me, paint my face with charcoal and then put me back, and I would know nothing how it happened until they told me next morning."
The Origin of his Awakening
In November 1895, an elderly relation spoke to Venkataraman about his visit to Arunachala, the sacred hill in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu. The word 'Arunachala' somehow had evoked in him since childhood an inexplicable awe and love. He enquired from the relative the whereabouts of Arunachala and ever afterwards found himself haunted by its thoughts.
A little later, a copy of the Periapuranam fell into Venkataraman's hands. This purana contains stories of sixty-three Tamil saints who could secure Lord Siva's grace by their exemplary devotion. As Venkataraman read the book, he was overwhelmed with ecstatic wonder that such faith, such love and such divine fervour was at all possible. The tales of renunciation leading to Divine union filled him with awe and admiration. Something greater than all dream lands, was proclaimed real and possible in the book.
From that time onwards, the spiritual current of awareness began to waken up in the young boy. This grew ever stronger with the passage of time and after a few months, sometime in the middle of July 1896, when he was just sixteen and a half years old, Venkataraman realised the Self in a miraculous manner. Years later, he described the event himself in the following words:
About six weeks before I left Madurai for good, a great change took place in my life. It was quite sudden. I was sitting alone in a room in my uncle's house, when a sudden fear of death overtook me. There was nothing in my state of health to account for it. I just felt, T am going to die' and began thinking about it. The fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, 'Now that death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? Only this body dies.' And at once I dramatised the occurrence of death. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed and said to myself, 'This body is dead. It will be carried to the cremation ground and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body am I dead? Is this body T? I am the spirit transcending the body. That means I am the deathless atman.'
What happened next is difficult to comprehend, though easy to describe. Venkataraman seemed to fall into a profound conscious trance wherein he became merged into the very source of selfhood, the very essence of Being. He quite clearly perceived and imbibed the truth that the body was a thing apart from the atman that remained untouched by death.
Venkataraman emerged from this amazing experience an utterly changed person. He lost interest in studies, sports, friends and so on. His chief interest now centered in the sublime consciousness of the true Self, which he had found so unexpectedly. He enjoyed an inward serenity and a spiritual strength, which never left him.
The new mode of consciousness transformed Venkataraman's sense of values and his habits. Things he esteemed earlier had now lost their appeal. In his words: "Another change that came over me was that I no longer had any likes or dislikes with regard to food. Whatever was given to me, tasty or insipid, I would swallow with total indifference."
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