My school trained boys in classics, science and mathematics, but an enthusiastic history master captured my interest and got the headmaster’s permission to coach me for a historyscholarship. That was before the day of the welfare state, when a country grant came automatically to all who obtained entrance to a university. For me it was a scholarship or nothing.
It is true that by no means all envisage life as a purposeful journey. Happy are those who do and who act on the knowledge; but even those who do not are advancing or regressing according to whether they weaken or strengthen the grip of the ego, cutting some of its tentacles or putting out new ones.
Extrovert or introvert? I do not believe the definitions are anywhere near so widely applicable as commonly supposed: a person of high vitality is often both, a person of low vitality neither. Certainly I was both to a high degree.
Arthur Osborne, one of the most ardent and well known of the devotees of Sri Bhagavan, was the founder-editor of The ountain Path, the spiritual journal published by the Ashram. He is well known as the Editor of Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi and the author of Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self-Knowledge and other works.
One day the schoolboy Venkataraman met an elderly relative whom he had known in Tiruchuzhi and asked him where he was coming from. The old man replied, “From Arunachala.” And the sudden realization that the holy hill was a real, tangible place on earth that men could visit overwhelmed Venkataraman with awe so that he could only stammer out: “What! From Arunachala? Where is that?” The relative, wondering in his turn at the ignorance of callow youth, explained that Arunachala is Tiruvannamalai.