Beauty ＆ Pure 11

The title of this chapter may not be quite appropriate, for those who knew Sri Ramana Maharshi know him forever. This is because even a single encounter with the Great Rishi on our life's path is an event that can never be forgotten or dimmed in our consciousness by the passage of time. For some of us, it meant a complete change in the course of our present and future lives, and this could never have happened otherwise. The scope of the subject is far too broad to be described in detail within the framework of such a short chapter and therefore I am compelled to condense it as much as possible.

The first time that I met him, I had come directly from the cart that had brought me from the Tiruvannamalai Railway Station. Before visiting the Ashram, I had been conversant with the Master's teachings for some four years and the many photographs had made his features quite familiar to me. So, when I was ushered into the dimly lit dining-hall, I was able to recognize him immediately, although at that time his figure was much more meagre than in the pictures I had seen. He was sitting close to a wall eating his evening meal. I bowed in greeting, and with an incomparable expression of kindness on his face, he asked me where the other devotee was who had arranged to come with me. I wondered at his very sharp memory, because my letter advising of my proposed visit had been written many months before. My friend's absence was explained, as he had not been in a position to come. Then Sri Ramana ordered that supper be brought to me.
It was not a matter of deliberation, but an intuitive flash, when I became conscious that at last I had found what I had been seeking all my life. Immediately I became absorbed into the presence of the Master. At first I was worried about his precarious physical state; but my grief quickly became dissolved in his spiritual radiation. The outer appearance soon merged into that mysterious inner link with him, which has remained unbroken from that moment up to the present time. While I was at his feet I learned to stop the thought-currents in my mind, a thing that formerly had devoured long years of effort and had never been completely successful despite the many exercises: they were quite inadequate in the sublime spiritual atmosphere surrounding the Master, which in itself permitted much faster development. The key to it, concentration, came of itself.