Mother’s Example
I have
already mentioned that my mother was an ardent Krishna bhakta.
I should also mention that she had a Guru who was a well-known teacher
of Vedanta.
He knew many vedantic works and could lecture on them all with great authority. His favourite was Vichar Sagar by the Hindu saint Nischaldas. My mother could recite large portions of it by heart. Many years later, when I became acquainted with Sri Ramana Maharshi, I found that he too liked it and that he had even made a Tamil abridged rendering of it under the title Vichara Mani Mala.
My mother’s Guru had made her memorise many vedantic slokas
which she used to chant at various times during the day. Traditional
vedantic sadhana
is done by affirmation and negation. Either one repeats or
contemplates one of the mahavakyas
such as ‘I am Brahman’ or one tries to reject identification with
the body by saying and feeling, ‘I am not the body, I am not the skin,
I am not the blood,’ etc. The aim is to get into a mental frame of
mind in which one convinces oneself that one’s real nature is the Self
and that identification with the body is erroneous.
My mother used to chant all these ‘I am not...’ verses and I
used to find them all very funny. I was, at heart, a bhakta. I
could appreciate any sadhana which generated love and devotion
towards God, but I couldn’t see the point of these practices which
merely listed, in endlessly trivial ways, what one was not. When my
mother had a bath she would chant, ‘I am not the urine, I am not the
excrement, I am not the bile,’ and so on. This was too much for me. I
would call out, ‘What are you doing in there? Having a bath or
cleaning the toilet?’ I ridiculed her so much that eventually she
stopped singing these verses out loud.
My mother’s Guru encouraged me to join a local lending library which
had a good selection of spiritual books. I started to read books on Vedanta
and Hindu saints. It was this library which introduced me to Yoga
Vasishta, a book I have always enjoyed. One day I tried to borrow a
book about Swami Ram Tirtha, a Hindu saint who went into seclusion in
the Himalayas in his twenties and who died there when he was only
thirty-four. I had a special reason for borrowing this book: he was my
mother’s elder brother, so I naturally wanted to find out more about
him.
The librarian had watched me borrow all these books with an increasing
sense of alarm. In middle-class Hindu society it is quite acceptable to
show a little interest in spiritual matters, but when the interest
starts to become an obsession, the alarm bells go off. This well-meaning
librarian probably thought that I was taking my religion too seriously,
and that I might end up like my uncle. Most families would be very unhappy
if one of their members dropped out at an early age to become a wandering sadhu
in the Himalayas. The librarian, feeling that he was acting for the best,
refused to let me borrow this book about my uncle. Later, he went to my
mother and warned her that I was showing what was, for him, an unhealthy
interest in mysticism. My mother paid no attention. Because her own life
revolved around her sadhana, she was delighted to have a son who
seemed to be displaying a similar inclination.
My mother’s Guru liked me very much. He suggested books for me to read
and frequently gave me advice on spiritual matters. He owned a lot of
land, had many cows, and spent half his time in teaching and the other
half in managing his properties and possessions. One day he made my mother
an astounding offer: ‘Please give me your son. I will appoint him my
heir and spiritual successor. When I die everything I have will be his. I
will look after his spiritual development, but to get all this he must
agree to one condition. He must not marry and he must remain a brahmachari.
If he agrees, and if you agree, I will take full responsibility for
him.’
My mother had great love and respect for this man, but she was far too
attached to me to consider handing me over to someone else. She turned
down his offer. I too had great respect for him. If my mother had accepted
his offer, I would happily have gone with him.
At around this time she announced that she was going to take me to a
different swami because she wanted me to get some special spiritual
instructions from him. I didn’t like the idea and I didn’t like the
man she chose for me. I told her, ‘If you take me to this man I will
test him to see if he has really conquered his passions. As soon as I see
him I shall slap him in the face. If he gets angry, I will know that he
has no self-control. If he doesn’t get angry, I will listen to him and
accept whatever he has to teach me. My mother knew that I was quite
capable of carrying out the threat. Not wishing to be embarrassed by my
disrespectful activities, she dropped her plans to take me to see him.