The death-experience at sixteen
In July 1896, alone in an upstairs room of his uncle's house in Madurai, the boy Venkataraman was overcome by a sudden conviction that he was about to die. Rather than resist, he lay down and submitted to it deliberately — observing, with full attention, what was happening. The body went stiff; the breath stopped; and yet, he reported, the sense of I was undisturbed. Whatever he was, it was not the body that was apparently dying. The recognition was complete and never left him.
Six weeks later he left for Arunachala, the mountain in Tamil Nadu that Hindu tradition reveres as a manifestation of Shiva. He never left. For decades he sat — at first in caves, eventually in an ashram that grew up around him — answering questions from anyone who came.
Self-enquiry
Ramana's principal teaching can be stated in two sentences. All thoughts depend on the I-thought. Trace the I-thought back to its source and the rest dissolves with it. The practice is to ask, persistently and without expecting a verbal answer, Who am I? — and to follow the question inward until the questioner itself is found, or rather, not found.
This is not a technique in the ordinary sense. There is nothing to do, no posture to adopt, no breathing pattern to follow. There is only the patient, repeated turning of attention toward the one who is paying attention.
His influence
Almost every Western teacher of non-duality traces back to Ramana within one or two generations. Nisargadatta Maharaj, whose dialogues I Am That are a sister-text, was independent but converged on the same recognition. Rupert Spira and Spira's *Being Aware of Being Aware* sit squarely in this lineage. Carl Jung, Somerset Maugham, Paul Brunton and many others made the pilgrimage to Arunachala during Ramana's lifetime.
He died of sarcoma in April 1950. His final reported words, when devotees expressed grief that he was leaving them, were: Where would I go? I am here.
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