Sadhus Reminiscences of Raman Maharshi

Author(s): Arunachal Sadhu
Publisher: Ramanasramam Tiruvannamalai

Page 41

A Sadhu's Reminiscences of Ramana Maharshi 35 Hall. I told him to go back into the room and sit down as Bhagavan had come to him there instead. Bhagavan and Somerset Maugham sat opposite to each other for about half-an-hour without uttering a word. At the end of which Somerset Maugham looked nervously across in my direction and said, “Is there any need to say anything?” "No," replied Bhagavan, “Silence is best. Silence is itself conversation.” After some further period Bhagavan turned to me and in his child-like way said, “I think I had better be going, they will be looking for me.” As no one in the Ashram knew where he had gone except the attendant who always accompanied him, this was correct. After Bhagavan had returned to the Hall the rest of the party remained in my room for tea. After tea Somerset Maugham, who was wearing a large pair of boots, wanted to go to the Hall and see where Bhagavan usually lived. I took him to the western window through which he looked for some time with interest, making mental notes. He says in his indifferent and quite uninspired article ‘The Saint’, published in a series of essays twenty years after the event, that he sat in the Hall in Bhagavan's presence, but this is untrue, because he could not enter with his boots, he only gazed into the Hall from the outside. He has also tacked a certain amount of philosophy onto Bhagavan which Bhagavan could never have uttered in his life. But such is the habit of famous authors, to put their own opinions into the mouths of others.
In his recent article Somerset Maugham says that because of his fainting fit, which some Indians regarded