68 Facts About Ramana Maharshi

1.

Ramana Maharshi was an Indian Hindu sage and jivanmukta.

2.

Ramana Maharshi was born Venkataraman Iyer, but is mostly known by the name Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.

3.

Ramana Maharshi attracted devotees that regarded him as an avatar of Shiva and came to him for darshan.

4.

Ramana Maharshi approved a number of paths and practices, but recommended self-enquiry as the principal means to remove ignorance and abide in self-awareness, together with bhakti or surrender to the self.

5.

Ramana Maharshi was born Venkataraman Iyer on 30 December 1879 in the village Tiruchuzhi near Aruppukkottai, Virudhunagar District in Tamil Nadu, South India.

6.

Ramana Maharshi was the second of four children in an orthodox Hindu Brahmin family.

7.

Ramana Maharshi's father was Sundaram Iyer, from the lineage of Parashara, and his mother was Azhagammal.

8.

Ramana Maharshi had two brothers Nagaswami and Nagasundaram, along with a younger sister Alamelu.

9.

Ramana Maharshi had a very good memory, and was able to recall information after hearing it once, an ability he used to memorize Tamil poems.

10.

Ramana Maharshi had known of its existence from an early age, and was overwhelmed by the realisation that it really existed.

11.

Ramana Maharshi was absent-minded at school, "imagining and expecting God would suddenly drop down from Heaven before me".

12.

When Ramana Maharshi arrived in Tiruvannamalai, he went to the temple of Arunachaleswara.

13.

Ramana Maharshi spent the first few weeks in the thousand-pillared hall, then shifted to other spots in the temple, and eventually to the Patala-lingam vault so that he could remain undisturbed.

14.

In February 1897, six months after his arrival at Tiruvannamalai, Ramana Maharshi moved to Gurumurtam, a temple about a mile away.

15.

In May 1898 Ramana Maharshi moved to a mango orchard next to Gurumurtam.

16.

Osborne wrote that during this time Ramana Maharshi completely neglected his body.

17.

Ramana Maharshi sat motionless, and eventually his uncle gave up.

18.

In September 1898 Ramana Maharshi moved to the Shiva-temple at Pavalakkunru, one of the eastern spurs of Arunachala.

19.

Ramana Maharshi refused to return even though his mother begged him to.

20.

Ramana Maharshi stayed briefly in Satguru Cave and Guhu Namasivaya Cave before taking up residence at Virupaksha Cave for the next 17 years, using Mango Tree cave during the summers, except for a six-month period at Pachaiamman Koil during the plague epidemic.

21.

Ramana Maharshi was known by this name from then on.

22.

Nevertheless, he was highly valued by Ramana Maharshi and played an important role in his life.

23.

In 1911 the first westerner, Frank Humphreys, then a police officer stationed in India, discovered Ramana Maharshi and wrote articles about him which were first published in The International Psychic Gazette in 1913.

24.

Ramana Maharshi's mother took up the life of a sannyasin and Ramana Maharshi began to give her intense, personal instruction, while she took charge of the Ashram kitchen.

25.

Ramana Maharshi died on 19 May 1922 while Ramana Maharshi sat beside her.

26.

From 1922 until his death in 1950 Ramana Maharshi lived in Sri Ramanasramam, the ashram that developed around his mother's tomb.

27.

Ramana Maharshi often walked from Skandashram to his mother's tomb.

28.

Ramana Maharshi displayed a natural talent for planning building projects.

29.

Ramana Maharshi then became relatively well known in and out of India after 1934 when Paul Brunton, having first visited Ramana Maharshi in January 1931, published the book A Search in Secret India.

30.

Brunton describes how Ramana Maharshi's fame had spread, "so that pilgrims to the temple were often induced to go up the hill and see him before they returned home".

31.

Ramana Maharshi was, and is, regarded by many as an outstanding enlightened being.

32.

Ramana Maharshi was considered to be a charismatic person, and attracted many devotees, some of whom saw him as an avatar and the embodiment of Shiva.

33.

In later life, the number of devotees and their devotion grew so large that Ramana Maharshi became restricted in his daily routine.

34.

Several times Ramana Maharshi tried to escape from the ashram, to return to a life of solitude.

35.

Ramana Maharshi did return to the ashram, but has reported himself on attempts to leave the ashram:.

36.

Some of Ramana Maharshi's devotees regarded him to be as Dakshinamurti; as an avatar of Skanda, a divine form of Shiva popular in Tamil Nadu; as an incarnation of Jnana Sambandar, one of the sixty-three Nayanars; and as an incarnation of Kumarila Bhatta, the 8th century Mimamsa-philosopher.

37.

Ramana Maharshi provided upadesa by providing darshan and sitting silently together with devotees and visitors, but by answering the questions and concerns raised by those who sought him out.

38.

Ramana Maharshi provided an example by his own devotion to Shiva, which has been extensively described by his devotees, such as walks around the holy hill Arunachala, in which devotees participated, and his hymns to Arunachala.

39.

Ramana Maharshi described his Self as a "force" or "current", which descended on him in his death-experience, and continued throughout his life:.

40.

Ramana Maharshi maintained that the real Self is always present and always experienced but he emphasized that one is only consciously aware of it as it really is when the self-limiting tendencies of the mind have ceased.

41.

Ramana Maharshi considered the Self to be permanent and enduring, surviving physical death.

42.

The truth of it according to Ramana Maharshi is that there are neither jnanis nor ajnanis, there is simply jnana, which is Self:.

43.

Ramana Maharshi's main means of instruction to his devotees in order to remove ignorance and abide in Self-awareness was through silently sitting together with his visitors, using words only sparingly.

44.

One evening, devotees asked Sri Ramana Maharshi to explain the meaning of Shankara's hymn in praise of Dakshinamurti.

45.

Ramana Maharshi frequently recommended it as the most efficient and direct way of realizing Self-awareness, in response to questions on self-liberation and the classic texts on Yoga and Vedanta.

46.

Robert Forman notes that Ramana Maharshi made a distinction between samadhi and sahaja samadhi.

47.

Ramana Maharshi himself stated repeatedly that samadhi only suppresses the vasanas, the karmic impressions, but does not destroy them.

48.

Jung noted that Ramana Maharshi is not to be regarded as an "isolated phenomenon", but as a token of Indian spirituality, "manifest in many forms in everyday Indian life".

49.

Ramana Maharshi himself considered God, Guru and Self to be the manifestations of the same reality.

50.

Ramana Maharshi considered the Self to be his guru, in the form of the sacred mountain Arunachala, which is considered to be the manifestation of Shiva.

51.

Ramana Maharshi composed the Five Hymns to Arunachala as devotional song.

52.

Ramana Maharshi used to smear his forehead with holy ash, as a token of veneration.

53.

In later life, Ramana Maharshi himself came to be regarded as Dakshinamurthy, an aspect of Shiva as a guru of all types of knowledge, and bestower of jnana.

54.

Already in 1896, a few months after his arrival at Arunachala, Ramana Maharshi attracted his first disciple, Uddandi Nayinar, who recognised in him "the living embodiment of the Holy Scriptures".

55.

In 1897 Ramana Maharshi was joined by Palaniswami, who became his attendant.

56.

Ramana Maharshi read the books too, and explained them to Palaniswami.

57.

Ramana Maharshi answered on small scraps of paper, which were collected after his death in the late 1920s in a booklet called Vichara Sangraham, "Self-enquiry".

58.

One of the works that Ramana Maharshi used to explain his insights was the Ribhu Gita, a song at the heart of the Shivarahasya Purana, one of the 'Shaiva Upapuranas' or ancillary Purana regarding Shiva and Shaivite worship.

59.

Ramana Maharshi gave his approval to a variety of paths and practices from various religions, with his own upadesa always pointing to the true Self of the devotees.

60.

In contrast to classical Advaita Vedanta, Ramana Maharshi emphasized the personal experience of self-realization, instead of philosophical argumentation and the study of scripture.

61.

Ramana Maharshi's authority was based on his personal experience, from which he explained classic texts on Yoga and Vedanta, which he came acquainted with via his devotees.

62.

Ramana Maharshi himself did not call his insights advaita, but said that dvaita and advaita are relative terms, based on a sense of duality, while the Self or Being is all there is.

63.

Advaita recommends a negationist neti, neti path, or mental affirmations that the Self is the only reality, such as "I am Brahman" or "I am He", while Ramana Maharshi advocated Self-enquiry Nan Yar.

64.

In contrast with traditional Advaita Vedanta, Ramana Maharshi strongly discouraged devotees from adopting a renunciate lifestyle and renouncing their responsibilities.

65.

The scholar Philip Goldberg has listed Western religious thinkers influenced by Ramana Maharshi as including Francis X Clooney, Georg Feuerstein, Bede Griffiths, Andrew Harvey, Thomas Merton, Henri Le Saux, Eckhart Tolle, and Ken Wilber.

66.

Ramana Maharshi selected, rearranged and translated 42 verses from the Bhagavad Gita into Tamil and Malayalam.

67.

Ramana Maharshi has translated few works such as Dakshinamurti Stotra, Vivekachudamani and Drg-Drsya-Viveka attributed to Shankarachaya.

68.

Several collections of recorded talks, in which Sri Ramana Maharshi used Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, have been published.