What Each Seeker Owes To Ramana Maharshi

The Backdrop

Though I lived in India from 1937 to 1945 I did not, alas, get to see Ramana Maharshi. In fact, I knew almost nothing about him at that time. Since then, however, he has become one of the great influences in my life and I would like to acknowledge, with immense gratitude, what I owe to him.

But first I must set on record, briefly, how things stood with me when, in 1959, in England, I first came across Arthur Osborne"s books about Maharshi. I had already seen Who I was. Back in 1943, when I was still in India, I had noticed the absence here of anyone and anything. Leading up to that vision I had for some years been inquiring, with growing intensity, into my true nature.

And then, in 1958, I started reading seriously the early Zen masters – and felt lonely no longer. Here were friends who described what was unmistakably my own experience of myself as void. O joy! And, on the heels of this delightful company, came Maharshi himself.

Why is he so Superb?

Firstly, one has to thank him for the gift of encouragement, a precious gift indeed. Not for confirmation of what I see (only I am in a position to see of all things); not for friendship or even love (unless one can be friends with oneself). I am having difficulty in saying what I mean by the kind of encouragement he gave me when I needed it most. Perhaps I should call it – his darshan. Anyhow, from then on my dedication to the One-I-am was complete. No more wavering, no periodical discouragement, no other real interests than this.

Accessibility of Self-knowledge

Secondly, one has to be grateful to Maharshi for his insistence on the ever-present accessibility, the naturalness, the obviousness, of Self-realisation. Many a time one has been informed, and had read, that Enlightenment is of all states the rarest and the remotest and the most difficult – in practice, impossible and here was a great sage telling us that, on the contrary, it was the easiest. Such, indeed, was my own experience, and I had never been intimidated by those religious persons who were careful to tell me that I couldn"t see what I saw.

Nevertheless it was for me marvellously refreshing to find that Maharshi never sent inquirers away with instructions to work for liberation at some distant date. It is not, he insisted, a glittering prize to be awarded for future achievements of any sort: it is not for earning little by little, but for noticing now, just as one is. Other sages, of course, have stressed the availability of this, but here Maharshi is surely the clearest, the most uncompromising, of them all. How wonderful to hear him saying, in effect, that compared with Oneself all other things are obscure, more or less invisible, fugitive, impossible to get at: only the Seer can be clearly seen.

To Be Continued

About the author

The author, Douglas E Harding was an English mystic who was drawn to the teachings of Ramana Maharshi.