On April 14th thousands of people in India and devotees all over the world were in mourning. Their guru Sri Ramana Maharshi had entered Maha Samadhi and they could never have the joy of sitting again in his physical presence. Although it is the tradition in India to discount death and look upon it as a welcome release from the trammels of the flesh, that is in the case of ordinary mortals, in the case of the Guru the feeling cannot be quite the same. He was the sheet anchor to whom we had become accustomed to cling; without his physical body we feel that our moorings have suddenly broken loose and that we are drifting alone on the troublesome sea of the world.

When Bhagavan passed away, the behaviour of the devotees with very few exceptions was calm and even cheerful. He would never leave us, we told each other. Had he not himself said, 'You think I am going to die. I shall be more alive than ever.' But still in spite of our cheerfulness, in spite of our implicit belief in what he said, there was a gap. The ashram did not seem quite the same. All the memories of his twentyeight years association with it were undoubdtedly there, but we missed the benign smile, the understanding response to our enquiry. In future we must understand that this must now be contacted within, which made it a question of faith and of our own response. It was not nearly so easy, for this demanded personal surrender and patience. No, it wasn't the same.

But whether in his physical frame or not Bhagavan was and remained the Sadguru to hundreds of thousands of people. Some of these fortunate to have lived with him for a time ; some to have visited him ; the rest only to have heard of him . But it was the same for all of them , they all loved him , all felt that they were his children and that he had an especial regard for each of them individually. For were they not his disciples ?

Here it may be objected that Bhagavan himself had said that he had no disciples, so how can I possible say that he was the universal Guru? When questioned on this very subject Bhagavan explained that though from from the jnani's point of view all were equal so that he could admit of no such relationship as Guru and disciple, all being a manifestation of the one Self, from the point of view of the person in the bondage of individual limitation such a relationship undoubtedly did exist. It was, as it stood, up to them. They must realize this relationship in themselves, they must be able to see the Guru as the pure manifestation of the Self. And in the case of Ramana Maharshi that necessity was realized by so many thousands, which alone proved his supremacy and the fact that he was indeed entitled to be called the Sadguru.

It must be remembered that only a limited number of people visited Bhagavan because of his philosophy or because they intended to carry out a serious sadhana under his personal direction. They came to him as the supreme Sat (Existence) Itself in the flesh, something tangible and visible which was not merely an abstraction. Philosophy and tapas were all very well for sadhus but let us leave them to them, was the attitude. Here is something that we can worship, that calls out all the best in our nature, whose very presence gives us comfort and solves immediate problems. We think of him frequently when we are away from him and leave the rest to him. He will look after us.

But it was not only the sophisticated and elders who looked on him as their Guru. Children had a special love for him, and in fact treated him as their private property. Thirty years ago when Bhagavan was living in one of the caves on the side of the Hill an English Police Officer came to see him and specially remarked on this fact. He said that children of all ages would climb the Hill in the scorching midday sun, just to sit for a while in his presence.

The greatness of his teaching was not the intellectual depths he probed. Doubtless he had a brain of the first magnitude, but every word came from his personal experience, it was not just logical conclusions valid in the realm of language, it was fact and needed no study of books or intellectual attainment for its achievement. All could attain to it if they would only follow his instructions and practice assiduosly for a while.

So many people have tried to make out that the path of Advaita is a complete denial of the world. He never taught any such thing. He would point out its impermanence and the temporary aspect of its reality, but would always say that the world was undoubtedly there for all of us and its problems could not be evaded but had to be faced. It was the way of facing these, the different point of focus, that he tried to impress on us. The realized person saw the world with the rest of us , but he saw it as appearance or, as we might say, limitation of Reality.

Change the focus and look on Reality itself and then the all-engrossing appearance of the world would cease to hold a position of supreme importance any longer. It would still be there doubdtless, but there as the play of light and shade on a summer landscape, a fact for the beholder, but only a fact of appearance.

His great calm and his wonderful silence caused him to be more and more associated in people's minds with the Hill Arunachala he loved so much. His long stay of fiftyfour years in Tiruvannamalai by its side was itself a feat of immovable solidity. That he loved the Hill dearly is known to all. Did he not write five beautiful hymns in its praise while still a young man? He used to say that Kailas was undoubdtedly the abode of Lord Siva Himself. And for thousands of us he himself was the Hill. Even on the hottest days of the year he would go walking on it several times a day without any covering, when most of us could not even bear to put our feet on the ground. He carried out this practice regularly for years and only ceased near the end when his health began to fail.

Do you remember the five verses he wrote in its praise ? I can think of no more suitable ending to my short talk than to read them to you: