Discovering Mastan

These samadhi states did not give him a full and permanent experience of the Self. When his mind reasserted itself, he went to Bhagavan for advice:

Once, while I was on my way to see Bhagavan, I prayed for his grace.

On my arrival at Virupaksha Cave he asked, ‘Do you like saguna upasana [meditation or worship of form], or do you like nirguna upasana meditation or worship of the formless]?

I replied, ‘I only want nirguna upasana’.

Bhagavan then told me, ‘Fix the mind in the Heart. If you keep your attention at the source from where all thoughts arise, the mind will subside at the source and reality will shine forth.’

I had already come across similar teachings in Maharaja Turavu, Mastan’s verses and Sukar Kaivalyam. I had also seen these instructions in several other books. I took a firm decision that this was the way for me. After this meeting with Bhagavan I had no further doubts about this. No doubts at all. (From B. V. Narasimhaswami’s interview)

In a brief, unpublished account of Mastan’s life Kunju Swami made the following comments on Mastan:

‘Mastan had a very peaceful disposition.…After [his] first visit he used to come to Arunachala whenever he felt like it and have Bhagavan’s darshan at Virupaksha Cave for long periods, but standing at a distance. He would not speak anything to anybody… He did not get married and remained a brahmachari. He was leading a peaceful life, practising his weaving profession and having Bhagavan’s darshan.’ (Taken from Ramana Bhakta Vijayam, an unpublished manuscript Kunju Swami was working on when he passed away. It was going to be an account of all the major devotees of Bhagavan whose stories were known to him.)

Though Mastan was clearly an outstanding devotee, very little information is available about him or his years with Bhagavan. The few stories that exist come from people who were associated with him. Akhilandamma, who probably knew him better than anyone else, has described how they used to come to Tiruvannamalai together:

Mastan and I would come to Arunachala from our village to have the pleasure of serving Bhagavan. Mastan, a weaver, belonged to our village, but he did not stick to his craft. A man of whims, he would suddenly suspend his weaving and go to live with Bhagavan for months on end. During this time he would keep his body and soul together on alms that he begged.

In those early days we had no buses. I would make a bundle of provisions, such as rice and pulses, and put them on his head. Loaded in this way, we would start on our journey of forty miles to Arunachala. We would walk slowly and leisurely, telling each other stories of Bhagavan.

Mastan occasionally made towels and kaupinas and offered them to Bhagavan, who accepted them with deep regard.

Bhagavan once remarked, with great joy, ‘Mastan’s craft, though it did not give food either to him or his parents, gives me clothes’.

On full moon nights we would go round the hill in the divine company of Bhagavan. In those days there would be about ten of us – Perumal, Mastan and a few others. On those moonlit nights we would walk in rapture, forgetting the entire universe, except for the sacred mountain. I don’t think those enchanting days will ever come again!
On one of those occasions Mastan began to sing at the top of his voice. I had never heard him singing so loudly.

‘Mastan, what happened to you today?’ asked Bhagavan as soon as the pradakshina was over. ‘You never ever sing, so why did you sing like that?’

‘It was nothing,’ replied Mastan, casually. ‘Perumal instructed me that I had to sing in order to ward off your drowsiness. To raise my spirits and to equip me for the job, he made me take a drink containing ganja.’

‘So that’s what happened. Ganja intoxication was behind your wild singing. How many times have I told you that I need no external help to keep me awake? Also, I have told you before not to do anything for my sake. Don’t listen to other people who tell you differently.’

Though Bhagavan rebuked Mastan in this way, I don’t think he took the criticism very seriously. Mastan was a very innocent man, and events like this didn’t touch him.

I remember one incident that took place when Bhagavan lived at Skandashram. A golden mongoose entered the ashram premises and made straight for Bhagavan. It sat on his lap for a while. Later, it wandered around and closely inspected all the different parts of the cave. When the inspection was over, it disappeared into the bushes on the hill. While all this was happening, Mastan was the only devotee with Bhagavan.

Some time later Perumal came back to the ashram and Mastan told him about the visit of the mongoose. One can get a glimpse of Mastan’s state of mind at the time from the remarks he made.

‘I was afraid that the mongoose might harm our peacocks,’ he said, ‘so I kept myself ready in case it made an attack. I had a big stick handy. Fortunately, it moved away without making any move towards the peacocks.’

Perumal told him, ‘Mastan, you should have caught it. If you had managed to capture it, we could have brought it up here and kept it as a pet.’

Bhagavan was listening to this conversation.

Addressing Mastan, he said, ‘Whom do you think he was? Do you think you could have caught him, and do you think that this other man could have domesticated him? This was a sage of Arunachala who took on this form to come and visit me. He wanted to pay his respects to me. How many times have I told you that sages come to see me in various forms?’

Mastan never told me about this mongoose. Bhagavan himself mentioned the incident to me on one of my later visits. (‘My Reminiscences’ by Akhilandamma, Arunachala Ramana, May 1982, pp. 5-9)

The story of the visit of the golden mongoose has been narrated in many accounts of Bhagavan’s life, but this is the only version I have found which states that Mastan was the only devotee with Bhagavan at the time of the visit. Since the unusual visit took place on a busy festival day, other people were visiting Skandashram, but none of the other ashram residents of Skandashram was present. The mongoose had earlier visited Palaniswami, Bhagavan’s long-time attendant, in Virupaksha Cave before coming up the hill to see Bhagavan. This would place the incident in 1915, the year that Palaniswami died. When Bhagavan moved to Skandashram that year, Palaniswami stayed in Virupaksha Cave, where he passed away a few months later. This is Bhagavan’s own account of the visit of the mongoose:

I was living up the hill at Skandashram. Streams of visitors were climbing up the hill from the town. A mongoose, larger than the ordinary size, of golden hue (not grey as a mongoose is) with no black spot on its tail as is usual with the wild mongoose, passed these crowds fearlessly. People took it to be a tame one belonging to someone in the crowd. The animal went straight to Palaniswami, who was having a bath in the spring by Virupaksha Cave. He stroked the creature and patted it. It followed him into the cave, inspected every nook and corner and left the place and joined the crowd coming up to Skandashram.

I noticed it. Everyone was struck by its attractive appearance and its fearless movements. It came up to me, got on my lap and rested there for some time. It went round the whole place and I followed it lest it should be harmed by the unwary visitors or by the peacocks. Two peacocks of the place looked at it inquisitively. The mongoose looked nonchalantly from place to place and finally disappeared into the rocks on the southeast of the ashram. (Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, talk no. 82 dated 16th October 1935)

Some writers who have mentioned this incident have speculated that the visiting mongoose was Arunachaleswara, the presiding deity of Arunachala, who had come to visit Bhagavan in this form. Bhagavan never confirmed or denied this speculation when it was mentioned to him. This account by Akhilandamma is the only one in which Bhagavan seemed willing to commit himself to a definite identification of his visitor.

In 1914, shortly after Mastan had become a devotee, he and Akhilandamma decided to open a math in the village of Desur that would function as a choultry, a place where visiting sadhus and pilgrims could be accommodated and fed. Akhilandamma had been feeding sadhus prior to this date for many years, but her operations had been based in her own house. Her relatives had not approved of the amount of time, energy and money she was devoting to sadhus, so she left her family home and found a separate house in Desur. For many years this was the base of her charitable activities.

Around 1914 an opportunity arose to have a proper math in the village. Kannappa Mudaliar, a long-time resident of Desur, has described how the math came into existence:

I started going to Bhagavan around 1930, having been influenced to do so by Mastan and Akhilandamma, who both came from my village. In those days there were only about ten families in Desur. We all got on very well. We were like one big family. Mastan never married, but the descendants of his family are still living in the village. I met Akhilandamma at the Sri Ramanananda mathalayam, the math in our village that was dedicated to Bhagavan. Akhilandamma once told me about the early days of the math.

Mastan, she said, helped in the construction of the math. He cleared the ground and did some of the building work himself. The math functioned as a choultry, offering food and accommodation to visiting pilgrims and sadhus. Many of the sadhus from Ramanasramam came to stay here, particularly when they were sick and needed someone to look after them. We also had visitors from other places.

When the building was completed, Mastan regularly did parayana of Bhagavan’s works there. By this time Mastan had more or less abandoned his career as a weaver. He lived as a sadhu and usually went out to beg his food, although sometimes Akhilandamma fed him. Akhilandamma would cook in the math. If no food was available there, Mastan would go out to beg. Whenever devotees would come to visit, Mastan would take them to the math and talk to them about Bhagavan.

In 1928 Nandagopal Mudaliar, a local man, gave some money that was used to construct a new building on the north side of the math. A plaque was placed on the wall stating that Nandagopal Mudaliar had given the money for its construction. Mastan, it seems, wasn’t happy with this plaque. He didn’t want to live in a place that had a name other than Bhagavan’s on the wall. He was so offended by this plaque, he decided to leave the math and live elsewhere.

Muniswami Gounder, a man who lived a few kilometres away, heard about this development and invited both Akhilandamma and Mastan to come and stay in his village at his expense. He lived in Matam, a small village about four kilometres from Desur. Muniswami Gounder was sponsoring a math in his own village that was named after Appar and he expected Mastan and Akhilandamma to live in this place. Mastan, though, had already made it clear that he didn’t want to stay in any place that was named after anyone other than Bhagavan, so he also refused to stay in this second math. As a compromise, Muniswami Gounder built him a small hut near the math. Akhilandamma decided to stay in Desur. Both of them would occasionally leave and go to visit Bhagavan in Tiruvannamalai. Sometimes they walked there and sometimes Mastan would drive a cart loaded with provisions for the inmates of Bhagavan’s ashram. (From a personal conversation with Kannappa Mudaliar, September 2001)

When Akhilandamma told Bhagavan that she had opened a math in her village to serve his devotees, he said to all the devotees present:

‘Now our name and fame will spread over the entire country. You see this Desuramma has girded up her loins. She has set up Ramanananda mathalayam.’

Saying this, he laughed loudly. (‘My Reminiscences’ by Akhilandamma, Arunachala Ramana, June 1982)

‘Desuramma’ means ‘the mother from Desur’. Since Bhagavan was known to dislike publicity, his first sentence can definitely be taken to be ironic.

When Bhagavan heard at a later date that Mastan had moved to the village of Matam, he asked Akhilandamma to move there as well to look after him. She took this as a direct command.

Saying, ‘Wherever he is I will serve him,’ she went to the math in Matam. (Taken from the notebook that is preserved at Mastan’s shrine.)

Mastan himself has recorded only one other encounter with Bhagavan: a conversation that took place shortly after Bhagavan had moved down the hill from Skandashram.

For some time, while I was meditating at night for about an hour, I used to hear the sound of a big bell ringing. Sometimes a limitless effulgence would appear. In 1922 when I visited Bhagavan at his new ashram at the foot of the hill, I asked him about this.

He advised me, ‘There is no need to concern ourselves about sounds such as these. If you see from where it rises, it will be known that it arises on account of a desire [sankalpa] of the mind. Everything appears in oneself and subsides within oneself. The light, too, only appears from the same place. If you see to whom it appears, mind will subside at the source and only reality will remain.’ (From Narasimha Swami’s interview.)

Mastan continued to visit Bhagavan throughout the 1920s, although his visits were less frequent than in earlier years. He was present in Ramanasramam, along with a small number of other devotees, on a famous occasion in 1924 when Bhagavan was attacked by a gang of robbers who were under the mistaken impression that a large amount of money was kept there.

Bhagavan received a severe blow on his leg during the robbery, but in a characteristic response he told the robbers, ‘If you are not satisfied, you may strike the other leg also’.

Ramakrishna Swami, one of the devotees present, was so outraged by the assault on Bhagavan’s person, he took up an iron bar with the intention of attacking the intruders.

Bhagavan restrained him, saying, ‘Let these robbers play their role. We shall stick to ours. Let them do what they like. It is for us to bear and forbear. Let us not interfere with them.’

Mastan appeared to follow Bhagavan’s advice during this attack since there is no record of him reacting in any way to the violent invasion. In one of his rare recorded statements, Mastan is reported to have said, ‘Even if the sky falls on your head, or even if a sword is firmly driven through your chest, do not slip from your true state.’ (See verse five of the concluding poem.) The final clause, which can equally well be translated as ‘do not get agitated’, seems to sum up Mastan’s response to this event.

Akhilandamma rushed to Tiruvannamalai when she heard the news. This is her report of how Bhagavan reacted to the assault:

What one could not imagine had happened: Bhagavan was beaten up by thieves. The news took wing and many like me ran to the ashram in great anxiety.

Seeing me Bhagavan expressed surprise and said, ‘Oh, Desuramma, you have come as well. Kunju Swami is telling the story over there. Go and listen.’

It was as though Bhagavan had directed some children to go and listen to a story that was being told some distance away. I learned that Bhagavan had appointed Kunju Swami to relate all the incidents surrounding the robbery. From his reaction I gathered that the persistent questioning by devotees annoyed Bhagavan more than even the beatings of the thieves.

Sitting at the feet of Bhagavan and stroking the wounded leg, I expressed surprise and sorrow, saying, ‘How unjust! What injustice!’

Bhagavan contradicted me. ‘What injustice is there in this? As you feed me sweets, so they have fed me blows, and I have received them too. However many times I tell you that I am not the body, it never goes into your head.’ (‘My Reminiscences’ by Akhilandamma, Arunachala Ramana, June 1982, pp. 23-4)

When Bhagavan described the incident, he sometimes said that he had received poosai from the thieves, a Tamil term that denotes both beating and worship. Though Mastan had only the tiniest of roles in this drama, I have included the whole story here since it has not been told by any of the narrators in The Power of the Presence series.