Bhagavan’s Self-realisation

In 2008 I posted two entries on my blog (here and here) that gave details of Bhagavan’s ‘death’ experience in Madurai in 1896. I am amalgamating them here into a single article, and adding additional material and commentary. I have changed the name from ‘Bhagavan’s Death Experience’ to ‘Bhagavan’s Self-realisation’ since, contrary to some reports and beliefs, Bhagavan did not physically die in 1896. The 1912 experience on Tortoise Rock was, according to Bhagavan’s own account ‘The only occasion on which both my blood circulation and respiration stopped’ (Self Realization p. 269).

The accounts of B. V. Narasimhaswami

This is the most well-known version of the experience, as reported by B. V. Narasimhaswami around 1930:

It was about six weeks before I left Madurai for good that the great change in my life took place. It was so sudden. One day I sat up alone on the first floor of my uncle’s house. I was in my usual health. I seldom had any illness. I was a heavy sleeper. When I was at Dindigul in 1891, a huge crowd had gathered close to the room where I slept and tried to rouse me by shouting and knocking at the door, all in vain, and it was only by their getting into my room and giving me a violent shake that I was roused from my torpor. This heavy sleep was rather a proof of good health. I was also subject to fits of half-awake sleep at night. My wily playmates, afraid to trifle with me when I was awake, would go to me when I was asleep, rouse me, take me all round the playground, beat me, cuff me, sport with me, and bring me back to my bed – and all the while I would put up with everything with a meekness, humility, forgiveness, and passivity unknown to my waking state. When the morning broke I had no remembrance of the night’s experiences. But these fits did not render me weaker or less fit for life and were hardly to be considered a disease. So, on that day as I sat alone there was nothing wrong with my health. But a sudden and unmistakable fear of death seized me. I felt I was going to die. Why I should have so felt cannot now be explained by anything felt in my body. Nor could I explain it to myself then. I did not however trouble myself to discover if the fear was well grounded. I felt ‘I was going to die’, and at once set about thinking out what I should do. I did not care to consult doctors or elders or even friends. I felt I had to solve the problem myself then and there.

The shock of fear of death made me at once introspective, or ‘introverted’. I said to myself mentally, i.e., without uttering the words – ‘Now, death has come. What does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies.’

I at once dramatised the scene of death. I extended my limbs and held them rigid as though rigor-mortis had set in. I imitated a corpse to lend an air of reality to my further investigation, I held my breath and kept my mouth closed, pressing the lips tightly together so that no sound might escape. Let not the word ‘I’ or any other word be uttered!

‘Well then,’ said I to myself, ‘this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body, am “I” dead? Is the body “I”? This body is silent and inert. But I feel the full force of my personality and even the sound “I” within myself – apart from the body. So “I” am a spirit, a thing transcending the body. The material body dies, but the spirit transcending it cannot be touched by death. I am therefore the deathless spirit.’

All this was not a mere intellectual process, but flashed before me vividly as living truth, something which I perceived immediately, without any argument almost. ‘I’ was something very real, the only real thing in that state, and all the conscious activity that was connected with my body was centred on that. The ‘I’ or my ‘self’ was holding the focus of attention by a powerful fascination from that time forwards. Fear of death had vanished at once and forever. Absorption in the Self has continued from that moment right up to this time. Other thoughts may come and go like the various notes of a musician, but the ‘I’ continues like the basic or fundamental sruti note which accompanies and blends with all other notes. Whether the body was engaged in talking, reading or anything else, I was still centred on ‘I’. Previous to that crisis I had no clear perception of myself and was not consciously attracted to it. I had felt no direct perceptible interest in it, much less any permanent disposition to dwell upon it. The consequences of this new habit were soon noticed in my life.

In the first place I lost what little interest I had in my outward relationship with friends, kinsmen or studies. I went through my studies mechanically. I would take up a book and keep the page open before me to satisfy my elders that I was reading. As for my attention, that was far away, gone far indeed from such superficial matters. In my dealings with relatives, friends, etc., I developed humility, meekness, and indifference. Formerly, when among other boys I was given some burdensome task, I would occasionally complain of unjust distribution of work. If boys chaffed me, I might retort and sometimes threaten them, and assert myself. If someone dared to poke fun at me or take other liberties he would be made quickly to realise his mistake. Now all that was changed. All burdens imposed, all chaffing, and all fun were put up with meekly. The old personality that resented and asserted itself had disappeared. I stopped going out with friends for sports, etc., and preferred to be left to myself. Oftentimes I would sit alone by myself especially in a posture suitable for meditation, close my eyes and lose myself in the all-absorbing concentration on myself, on the spirit, current or force (avesam) which constituted myself. I would continue it despite the constant jeers of my elder brother, who would mock me, address me by the titles jnani (Sage), Yogiswara (Lord of Yogis) and advise me jocularly to go away to a dense primeval forest like the rishis of yore. All preference and avoidance in the matter of food had gone. All food given to me, tasty or tasteless, good or rotten, I would swallow with indifference to its taste, smell or quality.

One of the new features related to the temple of Meenakshisundareswara. Formerly I would go there rarely with friends, see the images, put on sacred ashes and sacred vermilion on the forehead and return home without any perceptible emotion.

After the awakening into the new life, I would go almost every evening to the temple. I would go alone and stand before Siva, or Meenakshi or Nataraja or the sixty-three saints for long periods. I would feel waves of emotion overcoming me. The former hold (alambana) on the body had been given up by my spirit, since it ceased to cherish the idea I-am-the-body (dehatma-buddhi). The spirit therefore longed to have a fresh hold and hence the frequent visits to the temple and the overflow of the soul in profuse tears. This was God’s (Isvara’s) play with the individual spirit. I would stand before Isvara, the Controller of the universe and the destinies of all, the Omniscient and Omnipresent, and occasionally pray for the descent of his grace upon me so that my devotion might increase and become perpetual like that of the sixty-three saints. Mostly I would not pray at all, but let the deep within flow on and into the deep without. Tears would mark this overflow of the soul and not betoken any particular feeling of pleasure or pain. I was no pessimist. I knew nothing of life and had no idea that it was full of sorrow; and I had no desire to avoid rebirth or seek release, to obtain dispassion (vairagya) or salvation. I had read no books other than Periapuranam, my Bible lessons and bits of Tayumanavar or Tevaram. My notion of God (or Isvara as I called the infinite but personal deity) was similar to that found in the Puranas. I had not heard then of Brahman, samsara, etc. I had no idea then that there was an Essence or Impersonal Real underlying everything, and that myself and Isvara were both identical with it. At Tiruvannamalai, as I listened to Ribhu Gita and other works, I picked up these facts and discovered that these books were analysing and naming what I had previously felt intuitively without analysis and name. In the language of the books, I should describe my mental or spiritual condition after the awakening, as suddha manas or vijnana, i.e., the Intuition of the Illumined.” (Self Realization, pp. 19-24)

This version, this retelling of the events of that day in 1896, has become the accepted, definitive version of Bhagavan’s Self-realisation. Extracts from it have appeared, without modification, in virtually all the English biographies, and a large portion of this account, describing the events on the day of his enlightenment, can now be found painted on a huge signboard in the New Hall at Ramanasramam.

What many people fail to appreciate is that the account was penned, somewhat creatively, by Narasimhaswami himself, not Bhagavan. A note in Self Realization indicates that he took certain liberties with what Bhagavan originally told him:

The exact words have not been recorded. The Swami [Bhagavan] as a rule talks quite impersonally. There is seldom any clear or pronounced reference to ‘I’ or ‘you’ in what he says. The genius of Tamil is specially suited for such impersonal utterances, and he generally talks Tamil. However, one studying his words and ways discovers personal references, mostly veiled. His actual words may be found too colourless and hazy to suit or appeal to many readers, especially of the Western type. Hence the use here of the customary phraseology with its distinct personal reference.

B. V. Narasimhaswami not only added personal pronouns, he strung together answers that Bhagavan gave on different occasions, and then pepped them up to sound more colourful and less hazy. Bhagavan was not shown the manuscript of the book before it was published, so we cannot tell what he thought of Narasimhaswami’s version of events. However, when he was asked about the book Self Realization in the deposition he gave on the Perumal Swami case, he told Perumal Swami’s lawyer that he had not read the book prior to its publication, and that there were some mistakes in the text. He never pointed out what they were.

Fortunately, there are other sources that can be used to gain a more accurate and detailed picture of exactly what happened to Bhagavan on the day of his enlightenment.

In 1980 I discovered Narasimhaswami’s original notes in the Ramanasramam archives. They had been languishing there for decades, forgotten by just about everyone. Amongst this collection of papers was an unedited account of the Self-realisation experience that Narasimhaswami had written in 1930, presumably after listening to what Bhagavan had told him. The account is not complete, but most of the important aspects of the experience are covered. Since I was editing The Mountain Path at the time, I published this new and earlier version of the Self-realisation experience there:

My fear of death was some six weeks before I left Madurai for good. That was only on one day and for a short time. At the time there was a flash of excitement; it may roughly be described as ‘heat’, but it was not clear that there was a higher temperature in the body, nor was there perspiration. It appeared to be like some avesam or some spirit possessing me. That changed my mental attitude and habits. I had formerly [had] a preference for some foods and an aversion to others. This tendency dropped off and all foods were swallowed with equal indifference, good or rotten, tasty or tasteless. Studies and duties became matters of utter indifference to me, and I went through my studies turning over pages mechanically just to make others who were looking on think that I was reading. In fact, my attention was never directed towards the books, and consequently I never understood their contents. Similarly, I went through other social duties, possessed all the time by this avesam, i.e., my mind was absent from them, being fascinated and charmed by my own Self. I would put up with every burden imposed on me at home, tolerating every slight with humility and forbearance. Periodically, interest in and introspection on the Self would swallow up all other feelings and interests.

That fear was only on the first day, that is, the day of the awakening. It was a sudden fear of death which developed, not merely indifference to external things. It also started two new habits. First, the habit of introspection, that is, having attention perpetually turned on my Self, and second, the habit of emotional tears when visiting the Madurai Temple. The actual enquiry and discovery of ‘Who I am’ was over on the very first day of the change. That time, instinctively, I held my breath and began to think or dive inward with my enquiry into my own nature.

‘This body is going to die,’ I said to myself, referring to the gross physical body. I had no idea that there was any sukshma sarira [subtle body] in human beings. I did not even think of the mind. I thought of the gross physical body when I used the term body, and I came to the conclusion that when it was dead and rigid (then it seemed to me that my body had actually become rigid as I stretched myself like a corpse with rigor mortis upstairs, thinking this out) I was not dead. I was, on the other hand, conscious of being alive, in existence. So the question arose in me, ‘What was this “I”? Is it the body? Who called himself the “I”?’

So I held my mouth shut, determined not to allow it to pronounce ‘I’ or any other syllable. Still I felt within myself, the ‘I’ was there, and the thing calling or feeling itself to be ‘I’ was there. What was that? I felt that there was a force or current, a centre of energy playing on the body, continuing regardless of the rigidity or activity of the body, though existing in connection with it. It was that current, force or centre that constituted my Self, that kept me acting and moving, but this was the first time I came to know it. I had no idea of my Self before that. From that time on, I was spending my time absorbed in contemplation of that current.

Once I reached that conclusion (as I said, on the first day of the six weeks, the day of my awakening into my new life) the fear of death dropped off. It had no place in my thoughts. ‘I’, being a subtle current, it had no death to fear. So, further development or activity was issuing from the new life and not from any fear. I had no idea at that time of the identity of that current with the personal God, or Iswara as I used to call him. As for Brahman, the impersonal absolute, I had no idea then. I had not even heard the name then. I had not read the Bhagavad Gita or any other religious works except the Periyapuranam and in Bible class the four Gospels and the Psalms from the Bible. I had seen a copy of Vivekananda’s Chicago lecture, but I had not read it. I could not even pronounce his name correctly. I pronounced it ‘Vyvekananda’, giving the ‘i’ the ‘y’ sound. I had no notions of religious philosophy except the current notions of God, that He is an infinitely powerful person, present everywhere, though worshipped in special places in the images representing Him. This I knew in addition to a few other similar ideas which I picked up from the Bible and the Periyapuranam. Later, when I was in the Arunachala Temple, I learned of the identity of myself with Brahman, which I had heard in the Ribhu Gita as underlying all. I was only feeling that everything was being done by the current and not by me, a feeling I had had ever since I wrote my parting note and left home. I had ceased to regard the current as my narrow ‘I’. This current, or avesam now felt as if it was my Self, not a superimposition.

While, on the one hand, the awakening gave me a continuous idea or feeling that my Self was a current or force in which I was perpetually absorbed whatever I did, on the other hand the possession led me frequently to the Meenakshi Sundaresa Temple [in Madurai]. Formerly I would visit it occasionally with friends, but at that time [it] produced no noticeable emotional effect, much less a change in my habits. But after the awakening I would go there almost every evening, and in that obsession I would go and stand there for a long time alone before Siva, Nataraja, Meenakshi and the sixty-three saints. I would sob and shed tears, and would tremble with emotion. I would not generally pray for anything in particular, although I often wished and prayed that…

The rest of this particular manuscript is missing, but a few weeks later, on 5th February 1930, Narasimhaswami questioned him again on this topic, and Bhagavan added the following comments:

That avesam continues right up to now. After reading the language of the sacred books, I see it may be termed suddha manas [pure mind], akhandakara vritti [unbroken experience], prajna [true knowledge] etc.; that is, the state of mind of Iswara or the jnani. (The Mountain Path, 1981, pp. 67-69)

I will give the remainder of Narasimhaswami’s notes in another section, at the end of this article.

There are many interesting points in this alternative, earlier version, but the one that particularly strikes me is Bhagavan’s use of the word avesam to describe what had happened to him. Initially he says:

It appeared to be like some avesam or some spirit possessing me.

If you ask a Tamil what this word avesam is, you will be told that it means possession by a spirit, and this indeed appears to be the meaning that Bhagavan is referring to when the term first appears in the account. The next occurrence of the word is consistent with this interpretation:

Similarly, I went through other social duties, possessed all the time by this avesam, …

However, as the account progresses, the definition of the word changes. Midway through the narrative Bhagavan starts referring to it as a ‘current’, and he observes that he came to understand that this current was not an alien imposition, nor was it something that was associated with any sense of being an individual person.

I had ceased to regard the current as my narrow ‘I’. This current, or avesam, now felt as if it was my Self, not a superimposition.

By the end of the story it is clear that Bhagavan had come to regard this avesam as the Self, or the state of the jnani.

That avesam continues right up to now. After reading the language of the sacred books, I see it may be termed suddha manas [pure mind], akhandakara vritti [unbroken experience], prajna [true knowledge] etc.; that is, the state of mind of Iswara or the jnani.

There is a flexibility in this word that allows it to denote both the original erroneous impression that some sort of alien possession had occurred, and also the subsequent correct understanding and experience that the current was his own Self.

When I made this post on my blog, a devotee from Delhi, Arvind, pointed this out in one of his comments:

Clearly, the word ‘avesam’ adds a whole new dimension to the ‘death experience’ and can have layers of meanings for the serious devotee.

Though in Tamil (sadly, which I do not speak or know) the meaning could be taken as ‘spirit possession’, the fact is that ‘avesam’ is not an original Tamil word at all, and so the direct meaning must come from the language from which it was picked up – Sanskrit. Here the word (‘avesa’) primarily means ‘joining one’s self, entering, entrance, absorption of the faculties in one wish or idea, intentness, devotedness to an object, etc’ and only the secondary derived meaning is taken as ‘demonical frenzy, possession etc.’ These definitions are taken from the venerable Monier-Williams dictionary. The word ‘avesa’, or the closely related ‘samavesa’, is used to describe the highest spiritual experience in a lot of the ancient Sanskrit Saivite texts. Sri Bhagavan, by 1930, when the conversation with Sri BVN was held, would have gone through many such texts. It is quite possible that Sri Bhagavan used the word in a purer sense than what Sri BVN imagined.

I had already raised the possibility with Arvind (and will do so later in this article) that the Self-realisation experience was a non-volitional process that ‘happened’ to Bhagavan, rather than something he actively pursued. Arvind continues by mentioning this exchange we had had:

And also, I believe, it was used by Sri Bhagavan in the sense that you have so aptly mentioned in your reply to my earlier posting – ‘that [his realisation was] something [that] happened to him, rather than something that he did’. This is so as the Sanskrit ‘avesa’ or ‘samavesa’ also has the sense of ‘grace’ associated with it – that It comes of Its own volition when the time is ripe – rather than by ‘individual effort’.

And we may remember here that we, in discussing Sri Bhagavan’s ‘death experience’, are talking about the highest spiritual attainment, moksha itself. A state in which there can be no ‘possessor’, as a differentiated spirit, to ‘possess’ a differentiated human body. After all, in the state of final liberation, there is no second entity, only the Self is.

However, I would believe that a young lad unschooled in religious texts and unfamiliar with spiritual experiences would struggle, initially, to express in words His enormous attainment. Initially He could only perhaps express it as ‘avesam’ in the sense of ‘spirit possession’. And, as you have so aptly mentioned, its meaning changes as the account progresses. From initially denoting ‘spirit possession’ to a young lad, it ends up being described by the Great Master as suddha manas, prajna and akhandakara.

As an aside, I may add here that some recent Indological scholarship has been fascinated by the concept of ‘possession’ (as in demoniac possession, ecstasies, etc.) and its linkages to spirituality. They have equated ‘avesa’ with ‘spirit possession’, drawing particularly from the beliefs and impressions of the common Indian public these days… They hold that ‘avesa’ or ‘samavesa’ in the ancient texts refers only to ‘possession by a spirit’ – whether demoniac or beneficial. Though one can respect their sincerity, dedication and efforts, in my humble opinion, they have missed the big picture. Because, put very simply, as discussed above, if everyone agrees that the terms denote the highest spiritual attainment, then in that state, where is the duality for a ‘spirit’ to possess another entity ‘body’ ? Unless of course, the belief is that the highest spiritual state is a dualistic state in the first place!

Last year Arvind posted some supplementary comments on this post:

Just happened to chance upon some fascinating material on ‘Avesa’, ‘Samavesa’ and ‘Bhava’ as technical terms appearing in classical texts, and thought to put an update on this old topic.

I did not know till now that the great sage Sri Abhinavagupta (10th century or so) defined the Sanskrit ‘avesa’ directly in his magnum opus ‘Tantraloka’. Now we may remember that besides the spiritual works he wrote, Abhinavagupta was a great aesthetician, poet, musician and grammarian; and his knowledge of Sanskrit was nonpareil. This is probably the only definition of the Sanskrit term ‘avesa’ found anywhere in classical literature.

Avesasca asvatantrasya svatadrupanimajjanat.
Paratadrupata Sambhoradyacchaktyavibhaginah.

(Tantraloka – Ahnika I, verse 173)

Avesa means the mergence or disappearance of the limited self into and becoming identical with Supreme Siva, who is at one with the Adi Sakti.

Of course the terminology is that of Saivism, but the meaning is clear. What is described above is the state of enlightenment in non-dual Saivism. ‘Avesa’ means Self-realisation.

Though Bhagavan did not use this term in any other account of his Self-realisation, I think there is enough evidence in these notes to indicate that he was aware of the implications, in Sanskrit, of this term, and that he specifically chose the word avesam because he knew that it covered both his initial misperception of spirit possession and his later true understanding that the current was his own Self. I think it is also fair to say that Narasimhaswami was not aware of the full implications of Bhagavan’s repeated use of this term. Though he dutifully recorded Bhagavan’s words in his notes, in his final draft, the one that was published in Self Realization, avesam gets one passing mention, where it is defined as ‘spirit, current or force’. He omitted the initial perception of Bhagavan that he had been possessed, and at the end of the account he fails to associate avesam with the terms that are synonyms for jnana.

In the comments section of my original post I made the following observation. I will repeat it here since it ties the avesam misconception to another erroneous idea that Bhagavan initially had about his state:

It is clear from other remarks he made on this subject that Bhagavan initially had no idea what had happened to him in 1896. He is, for example, on record as saying, apropos the death experience, that he initially thought he might have caught some strange disease, but was happy for it to stay since it was such a pleasant one. Having made it quite clear in this account that he knew nothing about God or Brahman, it is not surprising that he grasped at explanations that fitted the rather limited world-view he had acquired as a child and a teenager: possession or a disease. Within a few weeks, however, he understood that ‘This is my own Self; this is not something imposed from outside, and it not is not something that is going to come and go.’ The avesam of possession moved on to the avesam of Self-abidance.

There is another, more crucial point that Narasimhaswami seems to have missed as he was going through his notes. In the published account that appeared in Self Realization there is no indication that Bhagavan performed an act of self-enquiry while he was lying on the floor. This is what was described in the published version:

‘Well then,’ said I to myself, ‘this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body, am “I” dead? Is the body “I”? This body is silent and inert. But I feel the full force of my personality and even the sound “I” within myself – apart from the body. So “I” am a spirit, a thing transcending the body. The material body dies, but the spirit transcending it cannot be touched by death. I am therefore the deathless spirit.’

This describes an intellectual process in which Bhagavan separated his sense of ‘I’ from the body and its functioning, but at no point does he say that he asked himself ‘Who am I?’ or put his attention on the ‘I’-thought. The notes that Narasimhaswami took clearly indicate that Bhagavan did undertake an act of self-enquiry, but when he wrote up or edited the final version, the crucial act of enquiry was omitted. This is how the story was written down in his notes:

That time, instinctively, I held my breath and began to think or dive inward with my enquiry into my own nature…

So the question arose in me, ‘What was this “I”? Is it the body? Who called himself the “I”?’

So I held my mouth shut, determined not to allow it to pronounce ‘I’ or any other syllable. Still I felt within myself, the ‘I’ was there, and the thing calling or feeling itself to be ‘I’ was there. What was that? I felt that there was a force or current, a centre of energy playing on the body, continuing regardless of the rigidity or activity of the body, though existing in connection with it. It was that current, force or centre that constituted my Self, that kept me acting and moving, but this was the first time I came to know it. I had no idea of my Self before that. From that time on, I was spending my time absorbed in contemplation of that current.

The enquiry outlined in the first two paragraphs preceded, and was ultimately the cause of, the experience that followed. The omission of these sentences from the final draft that was published shows, to my mind, a startling lack of knowledge in a biographer who was writing an account of Bhagavan’s life. I will revert to this topic later, after I have given another account of what happened on the day that Bhagavan realised the Self.