A friend from Kerala shared the story "How I came to the Maharshi" By H.W.L.Poonja from Saranagathi eNewsletter, June 2010, originally published in "The Mountain Path", July 1965.
I have been a visionary from childhood. When I was only five years old I already had visions of Sri Krishna. At first I thought every one could see them. I once said to my mother: “Look! He's standing there!” but she explained to me that only I saw him."
Surprisingly my second granddaughter who is one year of age, would look up and bring her palms together and say "AUM". It did not surprise us when she did that at their altar where my daughter had taught her daughters to do so. But this happened frequently elsewhere too. We used to ask what did she see? This reminds me of how my family had observed that I would turn back to look at my childhood home as I left home for school, raising my hands high in the air in salutation as to the Kopurams or towers at temples. I too can remember what I did but I have no answer as to why I did that.
Hari Wench Lal Poonja or popularly known as H.W.L.Poonja continues,
When I grew up I joined the army. However my desire for God-experience grew so strong that after some years I resigned and decided to devote my life to sadhana. I wanted to become a sannyasin but could not because I had a wife and children to look after. I started visiting Swamis and asked each one point blank: “Have you seen God and can you show me God?” I would allow no hedging. If they began to talk around it I said: “Please give me a straight yes or no.” I found no one who could answer ‘yes’ and returned to my home in the Punjab feeling very depressed.
One day my wife was just serving my midday meal when a sadhu came and stood in the doorway. I invited him in and told her to serve him food too and then asked him whether he could direct me to a Swami who could show me God. He told me that I could find what I was looking for from Ramana Maharshi of Tiruvannamalai. It was the first time that I had heard of the Maharshi or of Tiruvannamalai, so I wrote down both names. But how was I to get there? It was right down in the South, and my funds were almost exhausted. However, the next day I saw an advertisement in the paper for an ex-army man to run a canteen in Madras. I applied and was at once given the post and my fare paid.
When I got to Madras I said that I must first pay a visit to Tiruvannamalai before taking up my duties. Arriving there, I dumped my bedding in the Ashram dormitory and went into the meditation hall; and who should I see there on the couch but the sadhu who had visited me at my home in the Punjab! I decided that he was a fraud. He had been travelling about India boosting himself and had then taken a train back and arrived before me. So I got up and left the hall. I got my bedding and was just putting it back on the horse-cart that had brought me from the station when a devotee asked me why I was leaving so soon. I told him and he said: “It must be a mistake, because the Maharshi has never left this place since he first came nearly fifty years ago. Either it was someone else you saw or he appeared to you by supernatural power.” So I was back to the hall.
As soon as I had an opportunity to see Bhagavan alone I asked him my usual question. I added: “It's a bargain. I am willing to pay any price, even my life, but your part of the bargain is to enable me to see God.” At first he sat silent, but I said “That's no good; I don't understand silence. Please give me a straight answer.” Then he said: “I can enable you rather to be God than to see God.” That puzzled me. I had very little understanding then.
In answer to Narendra's (Swami Vivekananda) question, "Sir, have you seen God?" the Master (Ramakrishna Paramahansa) said: "Yes, I have seen God. I have seen Him more tangibly than I see you. I have talked to Him more intimately than I am talking to you." Narendra was amazed. These words he could not doubt. This was the first time he had ever heard a man saying that he had seen God. During his second visit, about a month later, suddenly, at the touch of the Master, Narendra felt overwhelmed and saw the walls of the room and everything around him whirling and vanishing. He saw his own ego and the whole universe almost swallowed in a nameless void. With a laugh the Master easily restored him. Narendra thought he might have been hypnotized, but he could not understand how a monomaniac could cast a spell over the mind of a strong person like himself. But during his third visit, Narendra fared no better. This time, at the Master's touch, he lost consciousness entirely.
Narendra, because of his Brahmo upbringing, considered it wholly blasphemous to look on man as one with his Creator. One day at the temple garden he laughingly said to a friend: "How silly! This jug is God! This cup is God! Whatever we see is God! And we too are God! Nothing could be more absurd." Sri Ramakrishna came out of his room and gently touched him. Spellbound, he immediately perceived that everything in the world was indeed God. A new universe opened around him. Returning home in a dazed state, he found there too that the food, the plate, the eater himself, the people around him, were all God. When he walked in the street, he saw that the cabs, the horses, the streams of people, the buildings, were all Brahman. It took him a number of days to recover his normal self. He had a foretaste of the great experiences yet to come and realized that the words of the Vedanta were true. (Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Introduction by Swami Nikhilananda)
A few days later I went for a walk in the rough country at the foot of the north slope of Arunachala and fell into a state of ecstasy during which I again had a vision of Sri Krishna. When I got back I told Bhagavan. He asked me: “Can you see Krishna now?” I said, “No; only when I have a vision.” So he said: “What is the use of a God who comes and goes? If he is a real God he should be with you always.” That shocked me. Again I almost lost faith in him, but some of the devotees explained to me.
Before I left for Madras I asked Bhagavan for a mantra but he did not give me one. I asked him for permission to take sannyas, but he refused. However, shortly after my return to Madras he appeared to me in a dream and gave me a mantra. Soon after this I had a vision of God in human form. This was followed by a great change in me. I lost interest in all the ritual and incantations and breathing exercises that I had been doing up to then. For instance, I used to get up at three o'clock in the morning to attend to my statue of Sri Krishna. All such things ceased to interest me. I was very worried about this. I thought it meant I had become an atheist. At the first opportunity I went to Tiruvannamalai. I told Bhagavan about the change that had come over me and how I had lost interest in all the ritual that I had been practising regularly for so many years past. Bhagavan looked steadily at me for some time and then said something to me in Tamil which I was told, on enquiry, meant “You, that is me, that is Bhagavan.” These words sank into my heart and I experienced the most wonderful feeling of bliss I had ever known. It was from this time that I began to understand Bhagavan and his teaching.
I had come across H.W.L.Poonja's story earlier in the book "Wake Up and Roar - Satsang with HWL Poonja" Volume 1, published by Papaji Satsang Bhavan, Lucknow. The manner in which I came by this book and what it means to me today rather surprised me and my daughter. My daughter passed me this book as she was leaving for work one day in 2018. The book was waiting to be taken in the section "Take One" of the International School library where she was working temporarily after finishing high school. She had identified three books to her liking, but as she was pretty busy with work could not pick them up earlier. When she dropped by finally only one of the three books was left to take. The other two had been taken up by others. So she picked the book that she had targeted earlier and happened to notice another. She flipped through it and her gaze fell on a name familiar to her that of Ramana Maharishi. She took it thinking I might like it, although she knew I was contemplating dropping all my reading then. The page she stopped at was 155. When she passed the book to me, she pointed it out and asked me to read it too. I cried reading it. This story was posted earlier at https://agathiyarvanam.blogspot.com/2018/04/making-appearances.html.
It was about one Harilal's experience with the divine. Harilal was sitting on the veranda of his father's home when a sadhu appeared. Harilal invited him to have a seat while a meal was being prepared. Then Harilal told the sadhu about how he had left the army in search of fulfilling his desire to see God. He explained that he was doing all the rituals and prayers needed towards receiving their grace and darshan. He had sought the means and ways to have his desire fulfill from all the mahatmas he had met but it was all in vain as no one could help. Neither could all his spiritual efforts bring him to have Sri Krishna's darshan. Harilal asked the sadhu if he knew of anyone who could reveal the secret of receiving Sri Krishna's darshan. The sadhu replied in affirmation and mentioned that Ramana could fulfill his long-standing yearning and desire. Harilal followed as told. He soon found himself at Sri Ramana's ashram in Tiruvannamalai some days later. He found the Maharshi seated on his couch. He bowed to him and took a seat. After an hour he left the hall and prepared to leave the ashram grounds when someone stopped him from leaving, inquiring the reason for him to make a quick exit for he had just arrived. Harilal explains that he had seen the Bhagavan at his father's home in Punjab near Peshawar just two weeks ago. He went on to explain to him what had transpired earlier between them. Now rather angry, he questioned the need for the sadhu to have him travel some three thousand kilometers from his parent's home only to sit all oblivious to what was happening around him. Harilal questioned if indeed Bhagavan was really able to make him see Sri Krishna, he could have shown Sri Krishna back at his village home. Harilal was sore too that Bhagavan was indifferent to him, not recognizing him. He complained further that Ramana neither wore a tulasi rosary nor did rosary prayer. He hardly murmured the names of Sri Krishna or Radha. The stranger who stopped Harilal was taken aback and replied that Sri Ramana never left the ashram nor the town in all his forty-odd years after arriving from Madurai. The stranger persuaded him to stay.
I had read of many saints making appearances. The story of Neem Karoli Baba is told of how he took a moment's leave, leaving his chair to go to ease himself while having his beard shaved. The barber had been complaining to him about his son who had run away from home many years back and not heard off. As he was getting old, he found it an ordeal to keep the business running and support the family too. He wished his son would come home. Baba returned shortly and the barber completed shaving his beard. The next day surprisingly the son appeared at their home and tells them that an old man with a face half-shaven had arrived at his workplace some hundreds of miles away and forced him to return home immediately. Neem Karoli Baba had manifested in another place while having a shave back home.
Just as the barber's wish was granted, I had told my wife of the need to postpone my mother's hospital appointment again in lieu of the rising numbers of Covid cases over lunch some moments ago. What do you know? I receive a call from the hospital telling me of their intent to postpone her appointment to January next year. I was speechless and happy that "someone" is listening to our talks.
Tavayogi too has been said to make his appearance in other places, which he brushes aside with another question as usual, "What is this son, they are saying things. How is this possible?" "என்ன மகனே என்னமோ சொல்லுராங்க. இது எண்ணப்படி நடக்கும்?" His able cook Nadarajah immediately called him to say that he had seen Tavayogi walk up to their Kallar ashram as Nadarajah was coming down the small hillock. On nearing him Tavayogi had vanished into thin air! But Tavayogi was then in Malaysia and I was with him when the call came in. Making our rounds to the temples in India stipulated by Agathiyar and more that Tavayogi brought me to, including caves and samadhis, a peddler of rosaries on the grounds of the famed Breehadeswar temple in Tanjavur stepped up to us as we alighted from our ambassador and remarked asking what Tavayogi was doing there "again" as he had been there the day before! "என்ன சாமி திரும்பவும் வந்திருக்கீங்க? நேத்து தான் உங்களை பார்த்தேன்" We both looked at each other as we never separated and had only arrived there then!
Coming back to the story of Harilal, this was the first time I read about Ramana manifesting in two places at the same time.
Harilal spent several days at the ashram before leaving for Madras. He made trips back to the ashram fortnightly. One day Ramana materialized again, this time in Harilal's puja room in Madras. Ramana whispered a mantra in his ears asking him to use it. Harilal began to recite the mantra. Wanting to clear his doubt, during his following visit, he asked Ramana if he was the one who appeared in his puja room. The Maharishi replied with "an indistinct hmmm-hmmm." Harilal questioned him if he should go on using the mantra to which Bhagavan replied, "If your heart tells you to." Harilal took to repeating the mantra continuously till a miracle eventually took place. Bhagavan Sri Krishna appeared in front of him just as one does in the present, as a lad of about fifteen, whose beauty no one could possibly describe. Harilal's soul experienced great joy such as he had never, never felt before. Finally, his desire had come true. On his next visit to Ramana, Harilal prostrated before Bhagavan. He excitedly mentions that he had seen Sri Krishna in the flesh. But Ramana coolly replied, "Oh so Krishna came then?" Harilal answered in affirmation to which Ramana said, "Then he went away?" When Harilal affirms again, Ramana simply answered, "Oh, oh!" without any excitement or reaction to the news. During another moment in prayer, Harilal saw both Sri Rama and Lakshmana. He returned to Bhagawan for an answer, having been disturbed by the vision of Rama and Lakshmana rather than his idol Krishna and Radha. Ramana simply answered,
"Krishna came to visit you and then went away. Rama has done the same. Why are you concerned with gods who come and go? Don't You see Japa, Mantras, Puja, prayer and rituals are all excellent up to a certain point. But the time comes when all that has to be left aside. You have to take a leap into the beyond... in the beyond you find the real only. When everything has been left behind, Devas along with everything else, can you find the vision which has no beginning and no ending, the vision of being, of the self."
Tavayogi too played it down when I revealed my desire to see Agathiyar and Ramalinga Adigal. They shall come he replied but "What next?" he asked.
Harilal then saw the vision told of by Ramana. He had desired to see God. God had finally revealed himself not somewhere else but so close to him that from that moment on it was impossible to see him and address him as "thou". The light was now shining in his own deepest self. After hearing Ramana speak, all his desires dropped.
It is until you reach the peak that you need the ropes and the tools. Once you are there you shall have no need for them unless you want to return. Tavayogi took me on a profound journey in 2005 of a new discovery for me and a revisit for him trekking through the jungles and staying in caves. It was all new to me being a city dweller. Miracles were shown. Further initiations too were given. Then Tavayogi came again in 2008 and taught us Yoga. What was an individual's personal home puja soon included family and friends with Agathiyar coming in the form of a bronze statue in 2010. My home was opened up to many more seekers when Agathiyar directed them to witness the Pournami puja that we conducted. Soon the numbers grew. Taking the cue from the couple Sri Krishna and Sri Dewi we took up doing charity in the streets by feeding the homeless. The pace picked up fast as my home became Agathiyar Vanam Malaysia. Then it was time to wind up and go within. We had to evolve further just as Tavayogi had told us that we needed to come out of devotion or Bhakti into Gnanam. We were told to quit the rituals and put the tools down. Agathiyar gave us new tools to travel the remaining journey that was subtle in nature compared with the physical and gross earlier.