ANNAMALAI SWAMI REMEMBERED

TRYING TO ESCAPE

I was very happy to have found such a great Guru as Bhagavan As soon as I saw him I felt that I was looking at God Himself However, initially, I was not very. impressed either by the ashram or by the devotees who had gathered around him. The management seemed to be very autocratic and most of the devotees didn't seem to have much interest in the spiritual life. So far as I could see, they were primarily interested in gossiping. These early impressions disturbed me. 

I thought to myself: 'Bhagavan is very great. But if I live in the company of these people I may lose the devotion that I have.' 

I came to the conclusion that it would not be spiritually beneficial for me to associate with people who didn't "seem to have much devotion. I know now that this was a very arrogant attitude, but those were my true feelings at the time. These thoughts disturbed me so much that for three or four nights I was unable to sleep. I finally came to the conclusion that I would keep Bhagavan as my Guru but live somewhere else.

I remember thinking: 'I will go and do meditation on the Self somewhere else. Without having the distracting friendship of any human beings, I will go to an unknown place and meditate on God. I will go for bhiksha [beg for food] and lead a solitary life.' 

About three weeks after I first came to the ashram, I left to take up my new life. I told no one, not even Bhagavan, about my decision. I left at 1 a.m. on a full-moon night and started to walk towards town. I went straight through the town, past Easanya Math [a monastic institution on the north-east side of Tiruvannamalai] and started walking towards Polur. I had no particular destination in mind, I just wanted to get away from the ashram. I spent the whole night walking and reached Polur [twenty miles north of Tiruvannamalai] just after dawn. The walk had made me very hungry so I decided to go for bhiksha in the town. It was not a great success. I begged at about 500 different houses but no one gave me any food. One man told me that I should go back to Tiruvannamalai while another man, who was serving a meal when I approached him, shouted at me, telling me to go away. Eventually, I gave up and walked to the outskirts of the town.

I found a well in a field and spent about half an hour standing in it, with the water up to my neck, hoping that the coldness of the water would take my hunger pains away. It didn't work. Then I made my way to the samadhi [shrine] of Vitthoba and sat there for a while. 

(Vitthoba was an eccentric saint, rather like Seshadri Swami, who lived in Polur in the first decades of this century. He died a few years before Annamalai Swami went there.) 

I finally got something to eat when an old lady came to do puja. 

She looked at me and said, 'It seems as if you are very hungry. Your eves are starting to sink into your face. I don't have much myself but I can give you some ragi [millet] gruel.' 

As she was saying this she gave me about 1 and 1/2 tumblers of the ragi gruel to drink. It didn't do much for my hunger pangs but I was still very happy to receive it. 

The long walk and the lack of food had made me very tired. As I sat there I began to question the wisdom of leaving Bhagavan. It was clear that things had not turned out in the way that I had expected. This indicated to me that the decision might not have been correct. I formulated a plan which I thought would test whether my decision had been correct or not. I took a large handful of flowers, placed them on the samadhi of Vitthoba and started to remove them two at a time. I had decided in advance that if there were an odd number of flowers I would return to Bhagavan.If there were an even number I would carry on with my original plan. When the result indicated that I should go back to Bhagavan, I immediately accepted the decision and started walking towards Tiruvannamalai. 

Once I had accepted that my prarabdha [destiny] was to stay with Bhagavan, my luck began to change. As I was walking into town a hotel owner invited me into his hotel and gave me a free meal and some money. He even prostrated to me. I had decided to return to Tiruvannamalai by train because I wanted to get back to Bhagavan as soon as possible, but before I could reach the station some more people invited me into their house and asked me to eat. I ate a little food there and then excused myself on the grounds that I had just eaten a big meal. I had decided to try to travel without a ticket, wrongly assuming that the money I had been given would not be enough for the journey. My good luck continued on the train. Halfway to Tiruvannamalai a ticket inspector came to inspect all the tickets. I seemed to be invisible to him, for I was the only person in the carriage who was not asked to produce a ticket. 

A similar thing happened at the end of the journey. When I paused in front of the ticket collector on the station platform he said, 'You have already given your ticket. Go! You are holding the others up!' Thus, by Bhagavan's grace, I escaped on both occasions. 

I walked the remaining distance to the ashram. On my arrival I went straight to Bhagavan, prostrated before him, and told him everything that had happened. Bhagavan then confirmed that it was my destiny to stay at Ramanasramam. 

Looking at me he said, 'You have work to do here. If you try to leave without doing the jobs that are destined for you, where can you go?'

After saying this Bhagavan looked at me intently for a period of about fifteen minutes. As he was looking at me I heard a verse repeating itself inside me. It was so loud and clear it felt as if someone had implanted a radio there. I had not come across this verse before. I only discovered later that it was one of the verses from Ulladu Narpadu Anubandham [one of Bhagavan's philosophical poems which deals with the nature of reality]. The verse says: 

"The supreme state which is praised and which is attained here in this life by clear self-inquiry, which rises in the Heart when association with a sadhu is gained, is impossible to attain by listening to preachers, by studying and learning the meaning of the scriptures, by virtuous deeds, or by any other means."

Although the word 'sadhu' generally refers to someone who is pursuing a spiritual career full-time, in this context it means someone who has realized the Self. 

The meaning was very clear: staying near Bhagavan would be more beneficial for me than doing sadhana alone in some other place. 

At the end of the fifteen minutes, I did namaskaram to Bhagavan and said, 'I will do whatever work you order me to do, but please also give me moksha [liberation]. I do not want to become a slave to maya [illusion].' 

Bhagavan made no reply but I was not perturbed by his silence. 

Somehow, the mere asking of the question had made my mind peaceful. Bhagavan then asked me to go and eat some food. I replied that I was not hungry because I had recently eaten. 

I added: 'I don't want food. All I want is moksha, freedom from sorrow.' 

This time Bhagavan looked at me, nodded, and said, 'Yes, yes.'

- LWB, p 30-33