CHADWICK ABOUT BHAGAVAN
As regards the period of his life, during which it is recorded that he kept Mownam or a vow of silence, I questioned him. He told me that there was never any such vow, but while living in temple at one time he found himself seated for a while by a Sadhu who was observing such a vow and saw how convenient it was as the crowds did not worry the Sadhu in the same way as they worried him. So for convenience he pretended to copy him. “There was no vow, I just kept quiet, I spoke when it was necessary,” he explained. I asked him how long this had continued. “For about two years,” he replied.
People talk about the intense Tapas he performed, but such Tapas is as mythical as his Mownam. He never performed Tapas, there was no need. His Self-realization, attained in the upstairs room of his uncle’s house in Madurai was final, there was no more to be done. He was only a boy and it took him time to fit this all-embracing realization into his day-to-day life. It embraces that as it embraces everything else. It is perfection, Purna. So he just sought out quiet places where he thought that he would not be disturbed and where he might enjoy Bliss.
Actually he had reached that state where nothing could any longer disturb him, he was beyond such things. Boys threw stones at him and teased him, but he was quite indifferent. He was, however, not unconscious. Bhagavan’s realization was not some featureless blank. Appearance continued for him but he knew it as appearance and was no longer deceived into thinking it was Reality. And here, I presume, lay his complete indifference to the world. It was all a dream anyhow, so why do anything about it? Just sit somewhere and enjoy the Self. What did teaching others and helping the world signify? There were no others.
Major Chadwick, A Sadhu’s Reminiscences of Ramana Maharshi
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