Know yourself; for if you know yourself
You will also know the difference between good and evil.
First become intimate with your own inner being,
Then become the commander of the whole company.
When you know yourself, you know everything;
“The Self alone is permanent. Renunciation is the non-identification of the Self with the not-Self. When the ignorance which identifies the Self with the not-Self is removed, the latter ceases to exist and that is true renunciation.”
Many questions troubled me. What is God? What is life? What is it all about? Scriptures did not satisfy me for they demanded faith to begin with, which I did not have. I studied psychology but there was nothing beyond the unconscious mind. I turned to dialectical materialism but then again I found that its adherents were at loggerheads on trivialities.Turning to existentialism, I found it too morbid and depressing. Finally I turned to metaphysics and mysticism and that is where luck favoured me.
Towards the end of his bodily manifestation, he said, “They say that I am going, but where can I go? I am here”.
This encounter with a total stranger was for me a blessing and a welcome to this home by Bhagavan Himself. Since the first trip in 1976, Sri Bhagavan made it possible for me to come to his feet no less than six times. Not only that, he made it possible for me to go to Madurai and spend some time in the spot where he had his realisation. What I was at the time of my first trip and what I am now, only I know and he knows. At present I am far, far away, physically, but again and again he makes his presence felt in innumerable ways. HE IS EVERYWHERE.
The light from those luminous eyes of Sri Bhagavan, was for ever engraved on my memory when leaving the Ashram. And now the account of his death lies before me. Does it mean that those eyes cannot any more radiate their silent initiation? That the light of eternity has been really extinguished? That would be ridiculous, I know this light is not a material one, though it was conveyed through a material body.
A visitor remarked to me lately, “One does not miss the presence of Bhagavan in the Ashram, he is there just as he was before.” And this is true.
The pulse disappeared and breathing became slow and easy, a very unusual feature at such a time and stage. The breathing became slower and slower till it completely stopped at thirteen to nine. The last breath was as easy and slow as any other previous breath. We were able to decide the last breath only from the fact that there were no breaths after. The jerk, the struggle and the gasps that usually announce the last breath in the case of ordinary people were not there in the case of Sri Bhagavan.
One night when there was heavy bleeding from the tumour as it was being dressed, two or three bhaktas couldn’t conceal their emotion. He looked at them and said, “Where will l go? And where can I go?” And whenever he said ‘I’, with emphasis, he always meant the Atman.
An inevitable consequence of Bhagavan’s state as a jivan mukta, permanently established in the egoless State, was that he could not claim any rights, even the right to choose what shall be done or not done to his body, because from his point of view, that body was not his. Also, he was so full of compassion, that he could not bear to hurt anyone’s feelings. Anyone that came to him offering edibles or medicine, was sure of its being accepted, though he did not want it. Once he said, “Nature cure is right. But….”