EPILOGUE

MAHA SAMADHI

THE MONSOON RAINS swept down from the mountain overnight. Ramana could hear it in his sleep like warm dull thunder on the roof, or the knocking of the gods. It was loud enough to make him restless but not to wake him up completely. He had dim thoughts of closing the window by his bed. He remembered the small hole in the roof that needed a bucket underneath to catch the drip. Yet for some reason he couldn’t feel rain splashing from the windowsill and heard no dripping sound.

Strange, he thought drowsily.

The dull thunder continued, hour after hour. Too many hours. Ramana opened his eyes, flicking his gaze to the windowsill and the place under the hole in the roof. Both were dry. Where was the water? Why was it still thundering?

Then he knew. It was the gods knocking. Death had come like the monsoons, the season of year Ramana loved the best. He wasn’t surprised that he could still feel his body or that the room was intact. His old master, who had died sixty years ago, told him how things would be. Sixty years? Could that be right? Suddenly Ramana couldn’t remember how old he was himself. Seventy-five, eighty? This confusion triggered a change. His body began to feel lighter, as if age were slipping away. He was rising, the whole room was rising, in fact, and the dull thunder began to fade.

Ramana wondered if he was about to disappear, but the world saved him the trouble by disappearing first. He had never much believed in the world, so this didn’t surprise him. For one last moment he was still in bed, looking out the window at a sky that turned from blue to a soft white, and then there was only whiteness and no room. He looked down, and his body was gone too. It had slipped away so easily that he was reminded of something his master had told him: “The body is like a cloak. For the enlightened, dying is like letting the cloak fall to the floor. For the unenlightened, it is like ripping off a cloak that is sewn on.”

What would slip away next? Ramana could still pose mental questions, so his mind hadn’t left him. He saw himself as a boy of twelve, when he first met his master, who lived in the same forest retreat that became his after the master died. The old man sitting in lotus position on a worn deerskin had said, “Do you want to learn from me?” The boy nodded. “Is it because your parents think it would be a good thing?” The boy nodded again. Then the master waved his hand, sending Ramana’s parents out of the room.

When they were alone, the master said, “Come to me when it’s your desire, not that of your parents.”

“Why?” Ramana asked. “My parents only want what’s good for me.”

“That’s not enough,” the master replied. “You can’t be with me and remain like ordinary people. Ordinary people need the support of family, or they would die of loneliness. They need the support of society, or they would have no friends or spouse. They need the support of their bodies, or they would starve. And most of all, they need the support of their minds, or they would go crazy.”

“I don’t see why you’re telling me this,” said the boy.

“Because if you lose family, friends, your body, and your mind—all of which you must—I don’t want you to die. I want you to be free.”

The boy didn’t come back for ten years, and even then the master laughed and said he had been quick about it. “After what I told you, most people would stay away forever.” During his period as a disciple Ramana had found the teaching difficult. He often stumbled but never fell. Everything his master foretold came true. The time came when the disciple no longer needed the support of his family. But this wasn’t a loss, because he now saw them with great compassion. He didn’t need the support of society, but this wasn’t a loss, because he saw himself as part of all humanity. He didn’t need the support of his physical body, but this wasn’t a loss, because his body took care of itself better when he stopped worrying about it.

The one thing Ramana never quite gave up was the support of his mind. “Ah, you fear that without a mind you will die,” his master said patiently. Ramana adopted the same patience. He learned to go inward in samadhi to experience silence, and over the years this became home to him, a place free of the constant activity of the mind.

On the day his master died, Ramana knelt by his bed and wept. “So you imagine that I am leaving you,” his master whispered. “Your mind still has you in its spell.” He said this affectionately, not in reproof, and that consoled Ramana. An hour later his master went into the deepest of all silences, maha samadhi.

Ramana could remember all these things now that he too had died. He looked around. There was no one to greet him, no family, not even his master. For a second a shiver of fear gripped him, then it faded, and with it the power to think. Ramana didn’t even get to think, There goes my mind. He slipped effortlessly to where mind was no longer needed. There was no whiteness around him anymore, but even this perception lasted for only an instant, because there was no darkness, either. When his mind slipped away, it took light and dark with it.

Now he was enveloped in silence, which came as an indescribable relief. Like thieves in the night, whole worlds wanted to enter him and take his silence away. But all they could do was glance off him ever so lightly, like feathers off a rock. He was impenetrable now. There was no universe and no God, no divine presence, no love.

He lingered like that, in the womb of the timeless, for a while. Then Ramana felt a soft breath, and it beckoned him back. He was stirring to life again. Not because he wanted to live on earth, for that would have been a thought. The breath was its own reason. There was a split second when he could choose not to return. Eternal peace was just as possible as another lifetime.

Only then did he realize that he was free at last. Human life could be his again, only now he also would have eternal peace, the two together. Ramana smiled to himself, if one can say that the cosmos smiles. The breathing grew louder. He relaxed and let it carry him downward back to earth. One breath, then another, always louder, until it became like the monsoons drifting down the mountain, or the knocking of the gods. He couldn’t see what family he would be born into, but Ramana knew his new purpose: to show these dreaming humans, whom he loved so much, how to wake up.