Ramana Maharshi Figures It Out

Ramana Maharshi was born in Tiruchuli, Tamil Nadu, in 1879. He impressed no one. He was a mediocre student and something of a bully on the playground. He felt no draw to spiritual life at all.Then at the age of 17, Ramana Maharshi woke up. " I was sitting alone in a room on the first floor of my uncle's house", Ramana later related. " There was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden violent fear of death overtook me. I felt, 'I am going to die' and began thinking what to do about it. I felt I had to solve the problem myself. there and then".

Ramana lay down on the floor and acted out the process of death. He stiffened his body as if rigor mortis had set in and held his breath as if his heart and lungs had stopped." Okay, the body is dead. But am I dead?" he inquired.

At that moment, he experienced an overwhelmingly powerful sense of the deathless spirit within himself. " This was not a dull thought but flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly, almost without thinking. ' I' was something real".

From then on, Ramana was obsessed with his Inner Self. He left home and hid in a small storage cell in the Shiva temple near Mount Arunachala. There he did intense spiritual practice, learning to maintain his focus continually on the deathless reality he felt himself. Eventually he experienced the conscious root of his being constantly even while talking or reading. Ramana had become enlightened sage, living in the unflikering light of spirit.

Remember how I said earlier that Hindus call their tradition " the eternal religion" because anyone who explores the laws of consciousness will rediscover Hinduism's fundamental truths? Ramana was an average 17-year-old boy with no formal religious training whatever. Yet by lying down and focusing intently inward, he had rediscovered the ancient truths of the Upansihadic seers. " That thou art. You are that undying inner awareness".

Ramana had traveled beyond the physical body, beyond the astral body, and through even the causal body. Underlying them all he had discovered the true Self.