All Kinds of Magic: One Man's Search for Meaning Across the Material World (16 page)

‘What do they do exactly?’

He tucked his knees more tightly beneath his robe. ‘Only
within
can you find this answer. God is what we call the macro, and man is the micro. The goal is to merge these two into one. That is the goal and the answer also.
Siddhas
know this.’

‘Do you sit here all the time?’ I asked.

‘When it pleases me,’ he said. ‘Now you must go to the cave. You are the first pilgrim this morning, so you will be alone. That is best.’

I got to my feet and thanked him. Clearly, the interview was over. He smiled again, a warm smile, and reached down into his Gladstone bag, taking out a small picture. It was of Ramana Maharshi.

‘You must take this,’ he said. ‘For many are the saints who have stayed here on Arunachala, but none have been like Bhagwan. Do not worry that you have not found the one on the hill. Another will come. If you go on working with the light available, you will meet your Master.’

I walked on, bemused, holding the photograph. I tucked it into my bag. The view was spectacular now, and the peace made me forget the remnants of sickness. Over the next rise I came to Skandashram, the original hermitage of Ramana Maharshi in the early days, and the site of his meditation for the first six years. A simple lime-washed building stands around the cave, with a small courtyard before it; smells of earth and devotional incense; no one about.

The path dropped down some two hundred feet as I headed towards Virupakasha cave, where it is said Ramana lived for almost two decades in retreat. It is named after a great yogi of Tiruvanammalai, who preceded Ramana Maharshi. One story recounts how, at the end of his life, Sri Virupakasha told his students that he wished to be alone for some time. After a while, the students started to wonder where their guru was, but when they entered the cave, all they found was a pile of ashes. Ramana Maharshi, during his residency, formed these same ashes into a tall pile.

I went inside. It was dim and musty, but someone had already lit oil lamps. Perhaps the Wandering Swami had already been up here? Perhaps there was a caretaker, whose sole purpose in life was to watch over this sacred place and keep it tended? I stooped down to enter the cave and found myself in a narrow, dry enclave where, I imagined, the great saint must have found respite from the elements. Not a single noise was discernible, and the air smelled of ghee and camphor. Old mats lined the ground, providing a peaceful place to sit, and as I sat down, legs crossed, I felt the world outside diminish. What brings a man to give up everything for such a life? I wondered. What lessons emerge from year upon year of pure silence, immersed in the mystic consciousness of
samadhi
?

I concentrated on my breathing, following the breath in and out as I’d been taught. The gentle noise echoed from the roof of the cave. In meditative practice this is known as
pratyahara
– withdrawal of the senses – and it involves the removal of cognition both from the external world and from the images or impressions in the mind field. With practice it comes easily.

Gradually, a silence came over me, a peace that was primal, born of the absence of mental chatter. One minute I was sitting there trying to get somewhere, the next I was merely sitting, effortlessly, without aim or thought. A great serenity filled me completely and I let myself sink into it, as if I were falling through space without any fear. My breath came smoothly, deeply, quietly.

Some time passed – perhaps an hour or more. When I came to it was as if from a dreamless sleep. My eyes opened slowly. I knew I hadn’t slept. I became aware again that I was in a cave, halfway up a tall hill in south India. What was I doing here? How did I arrive? How much time had passed?

Outside, the sun seemed impossibly bright. Emerging, I felt that I’d come to the closest point yet on my journey to glimpsing what lay on the other side of the ‘self ’. Ramana Maharshi taught that, behind our compulsive thoughts, there is no ‘I’, as we commonly suppose, but something far deeper. And yet how difficult, for us egocentric Westerners, to give up the self and all its quixotic pieces. If we give it up, we suppose then we are nothing. The great paradox of Eastern thought, however, is that the very opposite is true: we are everything.

As dusk fell – shades of umber and sienna behind the cone of Arunachala – I arrived wearily back at my guesthouse. My landlady, Mrs Vasikari, had moved her plastic chair out and was surveying her neighbourhood with a proprietorial air, oblivious to the mosquitoes. She was a pensive, angular woman, with something of the look of Indira Gandhi about her. Perhaps it was the clearly defined stripe of white across her tightly drawn black crown, or the fine boned stoical features. But every time she spoke to me, I felt myself scrutinised, as if before the steely gaze of India’s former prime minister.

‘You have been to Sri Ramanashram today?’ she enquired.

I said that I had been to the cave.

‘And how did you feel in His presence?’

I thought for a time. Perhaps I couldn’t answer that question for myself at this point. ‘It’s a peaceful place, Mrs Vasikari. I’m not exactly sure if I felt his presence. But something happened . . .’

She tittered. ‘Questions are there, yes. Too many questions you foreigners carry round with you. But wait a little time here in Tiruvanammalai. Bhagwan’s grace will touch you, I can assure you of that.’

‘Can you tell me about the Deepam festival?’ I asked. ‘Even since this morning, the town seems to be getting fuller.’

‘Just wait!’ she said. ‘Within one week this town will look like every person in India is here. Just now there are only first few arrivals. Deepam is our oldest and most important festival. Like a South Indian
diwali
. On that day, every person is cleaning their house. Not half cleaning but
full
cleaning is done on that day, so that everything is sparkling. Then, when darkness comes, we are putting
too
many oil lamps outside our house. Whole town is shining! Finally, at stroke of midnight,
sadhus
are lighting huge fire on top of Arunachala. Fire is so hot it can be seen for miles in every direction. Fireworks are being lit. Explosions are occurring.’ She sighed. ‘This was my husband’s most favourite day of the year.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know your husband had passed away.’

She shook her head. ‘Husband is not dead. He has taken
sannyas
since four years.’

I had heard of this. In Hinduism, after the three main stages of life are fulfilled (student/householder/retirement) a fourth may be adopted – that of
sannyasin
or renunciate. While most men defer this final stage to a future life, the most ardent bid farewell to their families and possessions and set out, during their final years, to find detachment from all worldly pleasures and thus draw closer to
moksha
, enlightenment or liberation from the wheel of rebirth. As a cultural institution, it is perhaps the greatest signifier of just how much orthodox Hinduism venerates the spiritual quest.

‘Did you always know your husband would become a
sannyasin
?’ I asked.

Mrs Vasikari nodded. I looked at her, expecting to see sadness there, or regret, but there was none. Instead, her face was shining, even proud. ‘My husband was always very devout man,’ she said fondly. ‘Every day he was doing
puja
, going to temple. But also he was very good family man. We have three children: two daughters and one son. Husband worked at post office for forty years. And although he never talked of
sannyas
during that time, I said to myself, he is a good Hindu, it is his duty.’

‘Will you see him again?’

She shook her head. ‘No, no. He is dead to this world now. Perhaps I will see him in the next?’ She waved suddenly to a young girl passing in the street, a regal wave. ‘Tell me, Mr Piers, do you take
sannyas
in your culture?’

‘We don’t,’ I said. ‘For us retirement is the final stage. Many people, you know, do not believe in God in my country.’

‘God is everything,’ she said simply. ‘And after God, duty is most important. Many people are forgetting that these days. I will tell you one story my husband would often discuss. There was a holy man rescuing a scorpion who had fallen into a pond. Scorpion was stinging but holy man would not stop until he had saved it. One student asked holy man why he was prepared even to be stung so he could save tiny scorpion. And the holy man laughed and said: “Duty of scorpion is to sting. Duty of
sadhu
is to save other beings from suffering. Since scorpion does not give up his duty, why should
sadhu
?”’

‘What does this mean?’ I asked.

‘It means we must do our duty,’ she said, rising to her feet and picking up the plastic chair. ‘Even if sting is there.’

In the evenings I took to eating in Manna, a small café frequented by travellers, not too far from Mrs Vasikari’s guesthouse. Amongst the coterie of Westerners who wind up in Tiruvanammalai, a larger proportion than usual seemed to me to be genuine spiritual seekers. The usual tie-dyed crowd was there, the hedonists, ageing flower children, trustafarians playing at spirituality, but there was also a noticeable crowd of serious, usually older, devotees of Ramana Maharshi. Several of them had made Tamil Nadu their home for many years and seemed to live serious, contemplative lives, drawing little attention to themselves. Others amongst them, such as Dave, the owner of the Manna Café, seemed to enjoy a different role.

‘I used to smuggle acid into Goa back in the day,’ was his opening line to me, as I chewed my banana cake in the corner. ‘We used to bring in sheets of LSD blotters and just walk down Anjuna beach lighting people up. Man, that was the day. Five hundred, a thousand people tripping. We did it for free sometimes! That was a special time, you know. We thought we were changing the world, one consciousness at a time.’

I asked how he’d come to Tiruvanammalai.

‘Well, you can’t play the party game for ever, mate,’ he said, a trace of his East London accent coming back. ‘And the acid turned us on to God – it gave us a glimpse – but we couldn’t sustain it. So I started on the ashram circuit. Wanted to find that high permanently. I ended up here. Fell in love with a girl. Had a kid. Bought this place. Stayed twenty years!’ He held up his palms and gave me a wide-boy’s grin.

‘That’s what happened to Ram Dass, wasn’t it?’

I was referring to the well-known Californian teacher, formerly known as Richard Alpert, who’d been one of the pioneers of LSD use in the 1960s, lost his professorship at Harvard as a result, and then journeyed to India. He’d had a profound experience with an Indian master and changed his name to Ram Dass: servant of God. Over the last thirty years, perhaps no one has so eloquently translated the central ideas of Indian philosophy to a Western audience.

‘Fucking
Richard
,’ said Dave. ‘We used to see that guy around all the time. I knew him in Rishikesh way back in the beginning, when he was living with Neem Karoli Baba. Guy was refusing to wear shoes. Wore all these beads and dressed like a
sadhu
. Even then, he was intense, though. He had this Jewish intellectual vibe going on. I mean he
really
wanted to get enlightened, you know!’

‘And what about you?’ I asked. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

Dave looked disconsolate, then clapped his hands loudly. A young Indian girl came in, and he ordered her to fetch his whisky. ‘Well, you know my priorities changed,’ he continued, some of the bluster leaving his voice. ‘I opened this place, had to start raising my daughter. Perhaps some of the fervour went out of me? Perhaps I just accepted that I’d gone far enough this time around.’

The girl returned with his plastic bottle of cheap whisky and a tumbler. I finished my banana cake while he poured himself two fingers, sipped it gingerly, and ran his tongue across his lips.

‘Fuck it, I don’t know,’ he muttered, talking more to himself now than to me. ‘The thing is once you’ve been out here long enough, you
can’t
go back. I know that much. Here I have this place, a quality of life. Back home I’ve got nothing. I’d be in a council flat, government pension, dying in some shit-hole run by the state. No fucking way. I’d curl up and die. That wasn’t the freedom I set out to find.’

‘Inner freedom?’ I suggested gently. He was drinking the whisky in short, angry draughts now. ‘Wasn’t it inner freedom the hippies wanted?’

‘Sure, mate,’ he said, refilling his glass. ‘Thing was, it was easy to pop a pill and feel
that
. But to get there without chemicals . . . Jesus.’ He swatted his hand at some imaginary fly. ‘It takes a lifetime. Many lifetimes, if you believe the Indian system of things. And you have to give up
everything
! You can’t have family, can’t have commitments. When you’re ready to walk out of your own front door naked and never look back . . . then you’re ready to begin.’ He lit a Gold Flake, blew a plume of smoke. ‘I guess I wasn’t. So in this case, I’m talking about external freedom. The freedom to work less, live more. That counts for something in my book.’