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This is a very comprehensive biography of one of the great sages of modern India. It gives a detailed exposition of the chronological sequence of the important incidents of the life of Ramana Maharshi, his extraordinary spiritual journey and his spiritual message. The author is Birks Professor of Comparative Religion in the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University in Canada. Ramana Maharshi is known for his realisation of basic principles of Advaita Vedanta. He was born on December 30, 1879 and given the name Venkataraman. When he was just a teenager, Venkataraman experienced what is called (in contemporary idiom) a ‘conversion experience’ which completely changed his life. He was sitting alone in his uncle’s home when a sudden and unmistakable fear of death seized him. He says: I felt I was going to die why I should have so felt cannot now be explained by anything felt in my body. The shock of fear of death made me at once introspective or ‘introverted’. what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies’ But with the death of this body, am ‘I’ dead? Is the body "I"?... I am a spirit, a thing transcending the body. The material body dies, but the spirit transcending it cannot be touched by death. I am therefore the deathless spirit. This realisation stayed with Venkataraman all his life. It changed his whole attitude towards life. It also made him renounce the mundane world and live the life of a sanyasi. Because of this profound experience he started neglecting academic studies. He performed poorly in English grammar. He was instructed to copy a lesson from Bain’s grammar three times. He copied the lesson twice and in the third attempt his meditational predisposition asserted itself. His brother noticed this and said to him: "Why should one, who behaves thus retain all this?" This implied that what relevance does living at home have for a person living the life of a houseless mendicant." He decided to leave his house. It took him three days to reach Truvannamalai, he went to the temple at Arunachala. The author has delineated the different stages of Ramana Maharshi’s life, in Arunachala and his dialogues with several devotees like Paul Brunton, Aruthur Osborme, Sundaresa Iyer, Ganapati Shastri, F.H. Humphreys. There are several books written on Ramana Maharishi by these thinkers. Arvind Sharma has done research into these writings and presented the multifaceted personality of Ramana Maharishi in the light of different experiences of his life and his relationship with his family as well as his devotees. Ramana Maharshi spontaneously brought out in his life the different techniques of Vedantic sadhana, his teachings are very helpful in making one realise one’s true Self. He inspired all those who visited him to go deeper into one’s real nature by constantly asking oneself the question; "Who am I". This is immensely helpful in getting rid of the illusory and amorphous aspects of one’s self and realizing one’s Real self. Ramana Maharshi passed
away in 1950. The death was brought about by cancer. Despite the
excruciating pain he never felt perturbed by it because he believed that
his body is suffering and not he. He never lost the awareness of his
real Self. He had great healing powers but he never felt the need of
curing his body, because he stated that "when you have finished
your meal you do not keep the leaf-plate" Reading this book one
gets an idea of Ramana Maharshi’s teachings and his spiritual journey
that led him to realisation. The book is valuable for all the readers
interested in the spiritual quest.
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