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A LOVER OF LIGHT AMONG LUMINARIES : Dilip Kumar Roy "Our poor soul is all but suffocated under five robust coats--the annamaya, pranamaya, manomaya, vijnanamaya and
anandamaya. Must you still inflict two more?”102
Ramana Maharshi gave importance to two things in life; to be far away from fear and flattery in their subtlest forms.
Once, a snake passed over his body while he lay in his dark cave at night. His attendant, a doctorwas terrified, so he jumped from his place informing Maharshi about the passing of the snake over his body. Maharshi told him quietly that he knew about it and he felt 'cool' when it passed over his body.
Ramana Maharshi narrated a story to Dilip Roy which showed the disadvantage of love for flattery. Once there was a rich man who wanted God. Hence, he renounced his worldly life and went into the forest. He practised all kinds of austerities for years till he reached to a Golden Gate. But the portals did not open to his knocking only because he was getting very much pleased when others paid homage to him.
The spirit of peace, harmony and harmlessness permeated the sage to such an extent that animals and birds made friends with him. Cows, dogs and monkeys found asylum in his ashram. Birds and squirrels built their nests around him. He would see that they were properly fed. When any of them died, the body would be buried with due ceremony.
Dilip Roy was very much interested in knowing about the sadhana of Maharshi. Maharshi felt that everything in his life happened so spontaneously that it was not necessary for him to practise any asceticism or tapasya. To one of his disciples, he said: "...I simply came and sat down in the temple or elsewhere in Arunachala and then lost all count of time."103 To Roy he confided:
“People call Him by different names, but He came to me with no name or introduction so I know not how to define Him. What happened was that my desires and ego left me how and why I cannot tell--and that I lived thenceforward in a vast and timeless peace. Sometimes ...I stayed with my eyes closed and then, when I opened them, people said that I had come out of my blessed meditation. But I never knew the difference between no-meditation and meditation, blessed or otherwise. I simply lived, a tranquil witness to whatever happened around me, but never felt called upon to actively interfere. I could never feel any urge to do anything -except to be -- just be. I saw that all had always been done by Him and Him alone, though we, poor puppets of maya (illusion], feel ourselves self-important as the doers, authors and reformers of everything! It is the ineradicable
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