Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
shops, homes, and temples all over India. Like them, also, he is
dead.
We prefer religious figures this way, of course. It guarantees they
won't shatter our illusions. They can't eat messily, or fart, or get ill,
or look bored when they're dead. And, as I'd found with Sathya Sai
Baba, living masters are also confusing - how can you reconcile their
form with the Formless? Even the photographs most commonly seen
of dead holy men are the most idealised ones available. Almost the
only living holy man in India to enjoy a similarly universal respect
as these dead ones is the Dalai Lama of Tibet. He doesn't seem to
have offended anyone yet, except the Chinese government.
Even the most commonly seen pictures of Sathya Sai - who
dramatically divides opinion - portray him with all the somewhat
repugnant and ritualised formality of a temple idol. Most
photographs of Ramana Maharshi, however, reveal him as all too
human - although the best known ones show wisdom and deep
compassion glowing behind the veil of flesh. Teachers are more
revered than worshipped; only gods make it as calendar pin-ups.
Maharshi's story is conventional by the standards of Indian
mysticism: a difficult childhood, inner struggles, long periods of
self-imposed isolation, austerities, meditation. Then the final
realisation, followed by a lifetime of living and teaching it.
A
jnani
is an exponent of the path of knowledge. Ramana
Maharshi's nondualistic philosophy is termed
advaita
, yet it is less
forbidding and more human than most advaita teachings, because
it contains many elements of
bhakti
or devotional yoga.
Yoga
,
bhakti
and
jnana
and
karma
(selfless work) varieties included - means
union
with God. Like many
muni
, or silent teachers, Ramana Maharshi
seemed to operate more through the effect of his very presence on
his devotees than through his words. Sathya Sai seemed to work in
a similar way at times on me, but everyone saw him differently.
Indeed, he falls into no category. Maharshi wrote almost nothing.
He may not even have known how to write. The topics 'by' him or
about him tend to be notes and transcriptions of talks and dialogues
with disciples.
He taught
advaita
by his own example, as well as through a sort of
inner supervision of those meditation techniques he gave to his
