THE MOUNTAIN PATH Arunachala! Thou dost root out the ego of those who meditate on Thee in the heart, Oh Arunachala! Fearless I seek Thee, Fearlessness Itself! How canst Thou fear to take me, O Arunachala ? (A QUARTERLY) — Th$ Marital Garland " Arunachala ! Thou dost root out the ego of those who of Letters, verse 67 meditate on Thee in the heart, Oh Arunachala! " — The Marital Garland of Letters, verse 1. Publisher : T. N. Venkataraman, President, Board of Trustees, Vol. 17 JULY 1980 No. Ill Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai. * CONTENTS Page Editorial Board : EDITORIAL: The Journey Inward .. 127 Prof. K. Swaminathan The Nature and Function of the Guru Sri K. K. Nambiar —Arthur Osborne .. 129 Mrs. Lucy Cornelssen Bhagavan's Father .. 134 Smt. Shanta Rungachary Beyond Thought — Dr. K. S. Rangappa .. 136 Dr. K. Subrahmanian Mind and Ego — Dr. M. Sadashiva Rao .. 141 Sri Jim Grant Suri Nagamma — Joan Greenblatt .. 144 Sri David Godman A Deeply Effective Darshan of Bhagavan — /. D. M. Stuart and O. Raumer-Despeigne .. 146 God and His Names — K. Subrahmanian .. 149 Religions or Philosophy? — K. Ramakrishna Rao . 150 Managing Editor: The Way to the Real — A. T. Millar .. 153 V. Ganesan, Song of At-One-Ment — (IV) Sri Ramanasramam, — K. Forrer .. 155 Tiruvannamalai Scenes from Ramana's Life — (III) — B. V. Narasimha Swamy .. 159 * Transfiguration — Mary Casey .. 162 Garland of Guru's Sayings — Sri Muruganar Annual Subscription Tr. by Professor K. Swaminathan .. 163 INDIA Rs. 10 Reintegration, Part II, Awareness — Wei Wu Wei 165 FOREIGN £ 2.00 $ 4.00 Ramana Maharshi and How not to Grow Life Subscription : Old — Douglas Harding .. 166 Rs. 125 £ 25.00 $ 50 Sharing Fruit — K. K. Nambiar .. 170 Sri Ramana the Divine Sage Single Copy : — Sri Swami Sivananda .. 171 Rs. 2.75 £ 0.60 $ 1.25 Understanding Bhagavan Ramana — R. Viswanathan .. 173 * Introducing — Sri G. Bhoganatham Pillai .. 175 Nirvana ' Star' Seen in Madras All letters and remittances to be sent to : — N. K. Srinivasan .. 176 The Managing Editor, " The Mountain Path ", The Arunachala Hill picture in the cover page was Sri Ramanasramam, P.O., drawn by Sri Bhagavan Himself. Tiruvannamalai-606 603, S. India, CONTENTS — (Contd.) Page ®tje fountain Book Reviews 177 (A QUARTERLY) Ashram Bulletin 183 The Mountain Path — Life Subscribers 191 The aim of this journal is to set Sri Ramanasramam — Life Members 192 forth the traditional wisdom of ail religions and all ages, especially as testified to by their saints and mystics, and to clarify the paths Contributors are requested to five the exact data available to seekers in the condi• as far as possible for quotations used, i.e. source tions of our modern world. and page number, and also the meaning if from another language. It would simplify matters. Arti• cles should not exceed 10 pages. All remittances should be sent to the MANACMNG EDITOR and not to the Editor. 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North, Central and South America, THE MOUNTAIN PATH Canada. New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii 2.30 5.00 (All tilt abovo surchargoi are ovor and above the annual is dedicated to subscription.) Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi The Mountain Path Vol. 17, No. Ill, July 1980 EDITORIAL THE JOURNEY INWARD |^JINIMUM secular education which can lives and also to send our individual hostages equip an individual to cope with the world to fortune to expensive schools and insti• of today is, for a start, a matter of fifteen years tutions of higher learning and Developed of slogging for, roughly, six hours a day, five Countries in that order. The highways to days a week and nine months in the year. progress and material success are getting These figures increase progressively as the clearly marked in secular education. student levitates to the higher levels of learning. There are then those who go in for " speciali• Religious education which aims at producing sation " and from there to "research" and professional priests of various categories who finally disappear into the rarefied atmosphere of can officiate at the innumerable religious obser• "pure research "never to be seen again except vances which punctuate the life and death of as silent participants in terribly sophisticated a Hindu, has also become much better organised seminars held under the aegis of acronyms. than before. Even this education is a matter of ten years in residence with a teacher followed The continuing unbridled phenomenon called by at least five more years of apprenticeship " knowledge explosion " is constantly changing under an experienced senior practitioner. the mode of teaching, substance and patterns of division in education, substituting, among That is, there are rules and regulations and others, the training of memory by the teaching age specifications in regard to secular and reli• of the library art of reference. The result, gious education and practices. predictably, is a multiplication of cadres of gatherers of facts-for-the-sake-of-facts which It is spiritual education which continues to themselves are likely to be put to use only in be what it has always been — a private, the 21st century. But much of this garnered individual pursuit. Many of the aspirants of treasure may well go unused because by then this course of study and practice do not have Man may already have had new types of a regular teacher, a guru though all of them visions. need the guidance of such a director from time to time. Even this guidance can only be given The point that is laboriously, and rather in the form of hints and suggestions and, where cynically, being made by all this is that we these are unvocable, by a look or a touch. accept without protest the dedication of our Students who take to this study also belong, best years to equipping ourselves to lead in age, to a range which stretches from youth well-paid, well-housed, successful, satisfying to old age. Signposts on this spiritual journey 128 THE MOUNTAIN PATH July are few and far between and often go unrecog• learnt in the course of thirty or forty years of nised because of the inexperience of the working and living. Unfortunately, this is far traveller and the strangeness of the territory. from the truth. Man learns many things The spiritual quest is a lonely, long voyage from secular education and the experiences of pure discovery. of life, bur none which will help him in his spiritual quest except, perhaps, a sense of There are conditions, of course. The journey humility. inward has first to be desperately desired. It cannot be undertaken merely to satisfy academic In the case of Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi curiosity. All other quests of man are outward- it was spontaneous enlightenment preceded oriented but the desire to know himself (his by years of unidentified very deep sleep Self) demands an inward journey into a world which had probably been misjudged as dull- different from the outside world because it is wittedness or slothfulness or accepted as a void and endless. One has to be mentally sign of adolescence. That moment of illumina• and psychologically mature and ready for it, tion marked his separation from worldly rela• nay more, must have an insatiable hunger for it. tionships. He moved away to live for years and It must be undertaken because that and that years in a state of undisturbed spiritual absorp• alone is what one wants. One must cry for it. tion, totally alone. The discipline of silence entered him unbidden as he kept moving Of all experiences that man derives or plun• farther and farther away from human contact. ders from life, this is the only one which can It needed a Ganapathi Muni and a mother's really be called unique and indescribable. death to bring him back to the people. That may also be the final agony of the living saint, that having himself had this incom• The question can be asked whether great parable experience, he yet is unable to com• saints and sages have sui generis a.