Pilgrimage to Tiruchuli

When I came back here after a two week’s stay with you in Madras, I found that the condition of Bhagavan’s body had changed a good deal for the worse.

When I came back here after a two week’s stay with you in Madras, I found that the condition of Bhagavan’s body had changed a good deal for the worse. Hence, with a view to give him some rest, no one was allowed to remain in his presence except during the time of the Veda Parayana. I could

not therefore write to you about the questions of devotees and the replies of Bhagavan as they have become rare. As I was troubled over it, I began going through my old papers when I found the notes I had taken about incidents that happened in Bhagavan’s presence and the remarks made by Bhagavan from time to time. The notes were written before I began writing these letters to you. I am therefore copying the notes and sending them on to you.

You have already heard of the installation of the photos of Bhagavan and his parents in Sundara Mandiram in Tiruchuli where Bhagavan was born. That was done some time in June or July 1944 when, with the help of devotees, the building was acquired and taken possession of by the Ashram authorities. With a view to repairing the house, the Sarvadhikari started with some devotees on 17-1-1945 for Tiruchuli. Before he actually left, he invited us all to accompany him, saying that there would be several travel facilities for the occasion. Alamelu Amma, Bhagavan’s sister, and some other women and men also went. Though I was unwilling to leave Bhagavan’s presence, who is to me the personification of God, I was prevailed upon to go with them. As we were about twenty devotees for this journey, it was interesting in its own way.

To go to Tiruchuli, one has to get down at Madurai and go by bus for about thirty miles via Aruppukottai. As the Sarvadhikari had some work to do at Madurai, we had to halt there for two days. We were put up in the house of Krishnamurthy Iyer. At night, all of us who came with the Sarvadhikari, offered worship at the Meenakshi Temple and also saw the idols of the sixty-three saints before whom Bhagavan, in his boyhood, overwhelmed with devotion, used to stand frequently, with eyes full of tears. The next morning, some of us went to the temple of Perumal (Vishnu) where in

the three storeys of the building, Lord Varadaraja reigns in three different poses, and we offered worship. Thereafter we began enquiring about the holy house where Bhagavan attained jnana (knowledge of the Self). A devotee of Bhagavan and his boyhood friend joined us and took us that evening to the house, No. 11 in Chokkanatha Street on the western side. We entered that old house and went into the upstairs room which was by the side of the staircase. “This is the room where Bhagavan realised his Self,” said the people there. They also pointed out the place where he sat at 11 o’clock in the morning of the day he left Madurai, where he had to write an imposition from Bain’s Grammar given to him as a punishment by the teacher and where Bhagavan got immersed in meditation. My heart was filled with devotion, my eyes with tears and my voice got choked. I was in a state where I could not know whether it was grief or happiness that overcame me. In the eleventh verse of the “Supplement to the Forty Verses on Reality” Bhagavan had written as under: Who is born? Know that he alone is born who, enquiring ‘Whence am I born?’ is born in the Source of his being. The Supreme Sage is eternally born, again and again, day after day.

As Sri Ramana was born in the way described above for the welfare of the world, how holy and blessed that place must be!

It is from this small house that Bhagavan started, renouncing everything, after leaving in the almirah by his side a note which he wrote after a hearty meal, and sitting in an easy chair. The provocation was a remark made by his elder brother which was by way of a reprimand, saying, “Why all these things (writing and study) when a person is like this (sits still)?” Bhagavan was at the time deeply immersed in

meditation. It looked as if Lord Arunachala did not wish him to remain for more than six weeks in the place where he attained jnana. Lord Buddha attained jnana after living in a forest for six years and doing penance day and night. It is that place which is known as Buddha Gaya and is now a place of pilgrimage. In the case of Ramana Bhagavan, however, he attained jnana without any effort in an ordinary house in a narrow lane in the centre of a city and in a small room surrounded by all his relatives. How strange!

I was grieved to find such a holy place remaining unknown, though it was here that Bhagavan changed from a young boy into an Atmananda Ramana (a Ramana who enjoys the bliss of Self-knowledge); the place wherefrom he started with the Brahmastram known as ‘Who am I?’, to go to Arunachala and vanquish the myth about the greatness of pandits who go on arguing but have no practical experience. However, I felt confident that, with Bhagavan’s grace, this place also would become a place of pilgrimage like the Sundara Mandiram in Tiruchuli. I prostrated with devotion in the room, went on to the terrace at the side and went down the staircase. There I met an old woman. Her name is Subbamma, aged seventy-five. She told us that she was there in the same street when Bhagavan went away on his travels and told us some stories about his boyhood. We took leave of her in due course and came back to our lodgings.

Next morning we started by bus, passed through Aruppukkottai and, as we were approaching Tiruchuli, we first saw the Gopuram of the temple of Bhuminatheswara. After passing by the temple and its compound wall, we reached Sundara Mandiram where the bus stopped. We all got down, entered the house where Bhagavan was born and, on seeing the picture of Sri Ramana seated in the padmasana pose in between the pictures of his parents we prostrated before it with emotions of great joy. We and the people that had come to see us, numbering about forty, had our meals in that house. Several others who came later while we were taking rest began saying that the house used to be full like that during the days of Sundaram Iyer.

During the three days that we were there we bathed in the Koundinya River, had the darshan of Kaleswara, worshipped Bhuminatha with his consort Sahayavalli, went round Pralayarudra, prostrated before Bhairavi and saw all those places where Bhagavan had spent his boyhood days. Subsequently among those who came from Tiruvannamalai, some went to Rameswaram on pilgrimage; the Sarvadhikari with his associates stayed back on account of some work; and I alone neither stayed there nor went to Rameswaram but came to Madurai by the night of the 22nd, started again the next day and so reached the lotus feet of Bhagavan. Even before I came, people here came to know about the house in the Chokkanatha Street through a letter written by Krishnamurthy Iyer. All the devotees enquired about it and were pleased on hearing the details from me. It is only after that, that the Ashram purchased the house with the financial help of the Wanaparti Raja. The joy I felt when I related the details of my journey was beyond description, even much greater than what I felt when I actually saw them. What is more, Bhagavan, while enquiring whether I had seen this and that place, told me a number of events about his boyhood. I noted down some of them as they were not in the biography. I shall write to you about them in another letter.