post 12

My path to Bhagavan was a long and arduous one. Having a strong atheist background, I had to undergo many years of doubts and sufferings before I could generate enough faith to accept implicitly that Bhagavan was guiding me and protecting me all the time. Other luckier

devotees had faith right from the beginning of their association with Bhagavan.

I remember in particular one devotee who had both faith and the intellectual simplicity that I lacked. He was an old Telugu man living in the Draupadi Temple about 300 meters from Sri Ramanasramam. His only

possessions were an iron pot and an axe that he used to cut firewood for cooking. 

He would beg food in the town and cook it in his pot. Each day, for hours together, he could be seen standing and looking at Bhagavan. He would spend the night in the Temple, which was then dilapidated, abandoned and surrounded by jungle.

I once found him standing alone in front of the Temple. When I asked him what he was doing in such a remote spot, he told me that he slept there. 

I exclaimed, 

“You sleep here all alone. Are you not afraid?”

“Afraid of what?” retorted the old man: “Bhagavan throws his light on me.

All night I am surrounded by a blue radiance. So long as his light is with

me, how can I be afraid?”

This encounter made me deeply humble. Bhagavan’s love and light are given in full measure to a poor old beggar, but there are many in the Ashram like myself, who called themselves his devotees but who had

failed to receive such grace because we were too busy attending to the contents of our mind.

- Face to Face with Sri Ramana Maharshi.

Chalam. (49).