Andavan Picchai

Maragathamma returned to her house and resumed her usual life. Sometime in 1951, while she was sitting in her courtyard, she heard the voice of Ramana Maharshi saying that two grandsons would soon be born to her. He asked her to name the first one Ramana and the second one Dandapani. Ramana (the baby) was born in June that year, and Dandapani followed on 20th August. One more major Ramana experience was to come, and it took place about a week after the birth of her grandson Dandapani:

On 28th August 1951, the day of the gayatri japa, Amma told her cook that she would manage the kitchen and that he could join the male members of the family for the japa. The cook was a Naishthika Brahmachari. He went upstairs, after placing a large vessel of water on the stove for making coffee. Amma went into the courtyard at the back of the house – where also the puja room was situated – to decorate the puja room with kolam or rangoli. The courtyard was the place where, on bhajan days, they all sat together and performed bhajans. There was a platform there, built around two trees, and when Amma opened the door into the courtyard, the sight which greeted her eyes froze her into a statue. In front of her was Ramana Maharshi, sitting on the platform in his usual pose, holding Dandapani’s hand.

He spoke to Amma, ‘Are you afraid of me, thinking that I am a ghost? Please come close to me. I have come to talk freely with you, as you desired when you met me last time.’

He asked her to clasp Dandapani’s hand tightly and not let him go. Amma prostrated to the Maharshi and sat near him. He explained [many philosophical things] to her and initiated her into the gayatri mantra. Being a woman, Amma felt hesitant to recite that holiest mantra, but the Maharshi made her repeat it along with him. Much of his upadesa, however, was transmitted to Amma through his piercing look.

Once again Amma prostrated to Ramana and tried to touch his feet. She could not do so. Ramana Maharshi laughed and told her that her gross body could not feel his subtle body. He blessed her by placing his hands on her head. That she could feel. The Maharshi then explained that he could touch her. The vision then vanished and she lost count of time. She was transported to the highest consciousness. In her very position of prostration she went into samadhi.

That was Friday. Amma’s husband and his sister came to the kitchen at about 10 a.m. to have coffee. Amma was not there; and they found the water boiling in the vessel. They thought that Amma must be in the puja room. Instead they found her in the courtyard, near the bhajan platform, in the prostrating position and unconscious of the world around her. She was carried inside and given injections which however failed to revive her. The next two days also Amma remained in the same condition.

On Sunday morning, the bhajan party arrived as usual. Tiruppugazh Mani asked where Amma was and was told that she was unwell. He insisted on seeing her and so a chosen few were taken upstairs. They saw that Amma was in a state of samadhi and they started singing ‘Kandar Anubhuti’ [an Arunagirinathar composition] in a loud tone, interspersing it with cries of ‘Haro Hara!’ Amma slowly opened her eyes. Seeing her husband and others seated and she herself lying, she tried to get up, but could not do so. They all asked her not to bother and slowly helped her to a sitting position.

Thirupugazh Mani singing a song from Arunagirinathar’s Thirupugazh

Mani then applied kumkum on her forehead and prostrated before her. He queried her about her state of consciousness and her experiences during samadhi. A song burst forth from Amma’s lips in which she explained that she climbed six steps and saw ‘Annamalai Jyoti’ [the Light of Arunachala]. When she went further, there was nothing, and she merged into that nothingness. When they wanted more explanation of her experience, she could not say anything, because as soon as she thought of it, she again lost consciousness of this world. Later on, however, through the grace of Bhagavan Ramana, she wrote a number of songs called ‘Shashthimalai’, giving a description of all the six states of consciousness.

The Tiruppugazh Mani mentioned here is the same man who had first published Maragathamma’s poems. Tiruppugazh Mani had had a Guru, Pinnavasal Swami, who had promised him, just before he passed away, that he would return and give him darshan in some other form. When Maragathamma first went to see him, it was the day before Sivaratri and Tiruppugazh Mani said he was busy. He asked her to return the following day. That night Tiruppugazh Mani had a dream in which his old Guru appeared and ridiculed him:

I promised I would come and give you darshan in some other form, and when I did so I asked you if you would be able to recognise me. You told me that you would recognise me in any form I took. Yesterday morning, you not only failed to recognise me, you also sent me away, saying you were busy.’

On her visit to Srisailam in 1949 Maragathamma had been initiated by Tiruppugazh Mani into the Shadakshari mantra. When they met later, Maragathamma asked if he remembered the incident. Tiruppugazh Mani replied that he had never been to Srisailam. In that moment she realised that Muruga Himself had appeared to her in the form of Tiruppugazh Mani and given her the initiation. Having received this initiation from him, she accepted him as her Guru. When Tiruppugazh Mani realised that his former Guru had given him darshan as Maragathamma, he in turn accepted her as his own Guru. Thus there was the strange situation of each of them being the other’s Guru.

In the early 1950s Maragathamma became something of a minor celebrity in Madras. Bhajan groups were formed to sing her compositions, and one of her songs, recorded by a famous singer of the era, sold a huge number of records. Her house was besieged by visitors, so much so that her husband asked her to go and temporarily live with her family in Delhi to give him a respite from all the activity in his home.

‘Maname inimel’, one of Maragathamma’s compositions, performed by her granddaughter, Meera Prakash

Though the yogi Ramakrishna had taken up residence in Maragathamma’s body in 1949, the developments of the next few years seemed to be part of the natural progression of her own life. The passion for Muruga and the composition of songs praising him were very much ‘her’ samskaras, rather than ‘his’. However, in the early 1950s, the presence of Ramakrishna took over and directed the body in a wholly different direction.

In the early 1940s, while he was still occupying his former body, Ramakrishna went to Swami Sivananda Ashram in Rishikesh and asked to be initiated. When Swami Sivananda refused, Ramakrishna went home and initiated himself. This pending desire for an association with Sivananda Swami came up in 1954 when Maragathamma went to Rishikesh and met Swami Sivananda. The jiva of Ramakrishna immediately asserted itself. ‘He’ became a disciple of Swami Sivananda, and took the desired sannyasa initiation from him. Swami Sivananda was delighted to have such a great devotee come to him. He gave Maragathamma his own robes and sandals as a measure of the respect he felt towards her. The desire for sannyasa was wholly Ramakrishna’s. Maragathamma still had a family, and her husband was wholly opposed to the move. In order to satisfy all the parties Maragathamma/Ramakrishna took formal initiation from Swami Sivananda, but then he sent her back home to live as a sannyasini in her own home in Madras. Ramakrishna fulfilled his desire, and Maragathamma was allowed to remain with her family.

Swami Sivananda in and around his ashram in Rishikesh

In the next decades it was Ramakrishna who was directing operations. At one point Swami Sivananda even asked Ramakrishna, the tenant of Maragathamma’s body, to perform a kriya ceremony for the ‘departed’ soul of Maragathamma:

Amma was asked to perform religious rites to her previous soul… As instructed by Swamiji, Amma [i.e. Ramakrishna] performed the kriya ceremony of the soul of Maragathamma; and the ‘double’ that had been pestering her till then vanished for good.

Ramakrishna had taken over so completely, he wanted to remove all traces of the body’s first occupant. To some extent he succeeded. Consider this account he wrote of his association with Swami Sivananda:

‘That day when I was half insane, knowing and yet not knowing my whereabouts, and was struggling like a ship caught up in a storm, I came to the [Sivananda] ashram. Though I was almost a stranger, Bhagavan Sivananda acted like a light house and gave abhaya [freedom from fear], calling me by his side. He gave me mantra diksha. This was the seed of knowledge implanted in the dry ground of Pichhai’s heart by his graceful personality. He watered and manured it by his nectarine upadesa, now and then, till it became a healthy sprout. Being well protected by his Guru kataksha, it grew into a small sapling. On March 3rd 1954, an armour was put on it by giving sannyasa, and I was sent back to live in the world in my own house as a sannyasini. The plant started bringing forth flower and fruit within the household fence from 1954 to 1968, being well-protected all around. If it had continued to stay there itself, the raw fruit might have dried up and withered, and fallen away without ripening. Hence on 4th July 1968 it was removed to Vaishnavi [temple in Madras] to be under the protective care of the Devi. It started to ripen there. It was felt that the ripe fruit, if left on the tree, was likely to be eaten away by crow, sparrow, squirrel or monkey and be lost. Mother Vaishnavi Devi wanted to give the fruit, when it ripened, to Gurudev Bhagavan himself, who had planted the seed. The fruit came into the hands of Swami Chidananda, Gurudev’s beloved one [and successor], so that he could offer the ripe fruit at the right time to Gurudev himself.’

In the late 1940s Maragathamma took Tiruppugazh Mani, a great Muruga bhakta, as her Guru. It is inconceivable to me that this Maragathamma, who had spent a lifetime being devoted to Muruga to the extent that she was permanently aware of Him in her heart, would suddenly decide that spiritually she was ‘struggling like a ship caught in a storm’ and in need of another Guru who could save her, particularly one who was not imbued in the Muruga bhakti tradition. It was simply Ramakrishna asserting his own desires, even to the extent of trying to exorcise the spirit of Maragathamma from her own body.

I mentioned the story of the kriya ceremony to a foreign woman from Ramanasramam yesterday. She snorted in disgust and said, ‘Typical man! First he moves in without permission, and then he tries to kick her out of her own home.’

Did he succeed? I like to think that Maragathamma survived her ‘funeral ceremonies’ and continued to exist as a silent and possibly liberated witness to the decades of sadhana that Ramakrishna put in with Swami Sivananda. Perhaps her own spiritual work was done when she attained the ‘jiva-Brahma aikya’ (the union of jiva and Brahman) that she spoke and wrote about after her darshan of Bhagavan in 1950. Perhaps the second half of her life ran its appointed course merely in order to enable Ramakrishna to fulfill his allotted destiny with Swami Sivananda. I can’t comment with authority on any of this, but I am encouraged in this belief by a foreword that she wrote for her own biography that came out in 1983. In it she wrote:

He [Muruga] took permanent residence inside my heart and his presence was felt whether I was awake or asleep. It is so from the time he entered my being in 1908 till this day, the Lord guarding me like the eyelids protecting the eyeball. He has shown me that he exists in all forms, that he is present in all names, and that he alone appears as father and mother, as uncle and aunt, as lover and the beloved, and as children and relations. He bestowed the vision of his divine presence in all his creatures and showed the way to serve them all with love and affection. I found the one Supreme reflected as many, like the one sun reflected as many in the waves of the ocean. My mind became calm and undisturbed, reflecting the Lord’s presence, as the placid lake reflecting the full moon.

He is the OM, the source of all. He is the Lord Ganesha who removes all obstacles in the path. He alone appears as so many deities and is the serpentine power rising from the muladhara to the sahasrara. It is the Lord Muruga who has taken hold of me completely and has protected me so far, and for the remaining small tenure of my life, may he keep me in peace and solitude to be in His presence only. Let me serve others in utter humility and affection. He appeared before me several times and blessed me….

He who is in the past, the present and the future enters into perishable bodies and, residing in them, makes them dance to his tune. He himself is the dancer. He fills the cosmos as well as the atom. He has made this body bring out this story, or else how can this inert lump ever do anything?

What is one to make of the central premise of this story – that, following a curse, Ramakrishna became the co-tenant of Maragathamma’s body? Swami Sivananda accepted it, and so did Swami Chandrasekharendra Saraswathi, the former Sankaracharya of Kanchipuram. He had great respect for Maragathamma and, recognising the relationship between the two jivas, personally gave her permission to remain at home with her family after taking sannyasa from Swami Sivananda. He is also on record as saying that she (or rather Ramakrishna) is only the fifth Hindu on record to take up occupancy in another body, the others being Raja Vikramaditya, Adi Shankaracharya, Tirumular and Arunagirinathar. Since Swami Sivananda and this Sankaracharya are among the most respected spiritual figures of twentieth-century India, their opinions have to carry some weight in this matter.

Maragathamma did not remain in Madras for the rest of her life. She went back to Rishikesh and stayed there for many years. At the age of eighty-nine, when she became seriously ill, she returned to Madras and passed away there in her family home in November 1990. She was ninety years old at the time of her death.

I have my own very minor postscript to add to this story. In 1992 I was in Lucknow, trying to persuade Papaji to tell me the story of his life. Although he had promised to do so, he never uttered a word on the topic during the first few days of my stay. Then, one afternoon, I found myself sitting next to him while he was having his afternoon tea. I asked him if he had ever heard of Maragathamma, and I gave him a brief synopsis of her life that included the early visions of Muruga and the subsequent darshan of Bhagavan where she experienced the full meaning of ‘Who am I?’

After remaining silent for a few moments, he replied, ‘I should have asked myself “Who am I?” when I was eight years old. If I had done it then, I wouldn’t have had to spend a quarter of a century chasing visions of gods.’

Then, without further prompting, he told me the whole story of his life, starting from his first samadhi at the age of six up till the moment he had his meetings with Ramana Maharshi in 1944. It took over an hour. That tea-time narrative was the basis of the account that appeared in Papaji Interviews. After Papaji had read the first draft of that chapter (I posted it to him from Tiruvannamalai) he wrote to me and asked me to come back and write the full story of his life. That project, the writing of Nothing Ever Happened, took up the next four years of my life.