Bhagavan’s health was deteriorating very quickly and the darshan hours were often drastically curtailed. He had a sarcoma in his arm and the toxic by-products were spreading to the rest of his body. Several operations had failed to check the damage. After one such operation, he gave darshan lying on a couch outside the ashram dispensary. His eyes were nearly closed as I approached him, but as I stood before him, Bhagavan opened his eyes and gave me his usual radiant smile. I was so engulfed by this smile, I forgot to give the customary namaste greeting [palms together in front of the chest], and the ashram manager had to remind me to do it. After I left, Bhagavan relapsed into his former state.
Though I never sought to attract Bhagavan’s attention, he always seemed to know if I was in his vicinity, even if he couldn’t see me. On an earlier occasion, when Bhagavan was giving darshan in the new hall, his view of me was completely obscured by a newspaper that one of his attendants was holding. He immediately asked the attendant to remove the newspaper and then beamed his usual smile at me.
As the darshan hours became less and less, I began to spend more and more time sitting quietly in my room. I did pradakshina of Arunachala once a week, and I still sat on the mountain every evening, but my life was beginning to enter a new phase. I would spend hours and hours each day sitting in my room in a thought-free state in which I had no awareness of either my body or the world. This tendency to withdraw into the Self became stronger and stronger as the weeks and months went by.
By April 1950 it was clear to everyone that Bhagavan was about to give up his body. The cancer had debilitated him to such an extent, he could barely move. About a week before his death I was walking around the Mother’s Temple, the one which was being consecrated on my first visit to the ashram. On my way round I stopped to look at a statue of Ganesh that had been recently garlanded. As I gazed at the statue, it began to move in its niche. The head and shoulders started to rock backwards and forwards, and each time it rocked forwards, the bowed head of Ganesh moved nearer and nearer to mine. I suddenly realised that if I stayed there any longer, the garland would slip from the statue’s neck onto my own. I didn’t want to be garlanded in this way, so I moved away from the statue and continued my walk around the temple.
A week later, on the evening of April 14th, I was cleaning my room in Palakottu when a picture of Bhagavan, which was normally kept on a stool in the corner of the room, fell to the ground. I put it back in its usual place, making sure that it was not in a position that would cause it to overbalance again. A few minutes later it fell to the ground for a second time. I felt intuitively this was a sign that Bhagavan was dead or dying. I felt a strong urge to go to the ashram, but before I could leave I lost awareness of the world and I became wholly absorbed in the Self for a period of about two or three hours. Consciousness of the world returned shortly before 9 p.m. when I heard a great noise coming from the ashram. I knew then for certain that Bhagavan was dead. I rushed to the back gate of the ashram, the nearest gate to his room, only to find that the police had already locked it.
By the time I made my way into the ashram by the front gate, Bhagavan’s body had already been removed from the room where he had died. It had been put on display outside it. Later that night, when most of the grieving devotees had left, it was taken inside the new hall.
I had seen Bhagavan for the last time earlier that day. On that occasion, as we looked into each other’s eyes, I experienced such a strong wave of ecstatic bliss, I became completely oblivious of my surroundings. Now, seeing Bhagavan’s lifeless body, I experienced very little emotion. People were crying all around me and my first reaction was that I too should shed a few tears for my Guru. But no tears came. I was unhappy that Bhagavan had died, but at the same time I was unable to cry or participate in the sorrow of the other devotees because I knew that nothing had really happened. I knew that Bhagavan was the Self before he gave up the body and I knew that he was the same Self afterwards. Filled with this awareness that nothing had really happened, I left the thousands of grieving devotees and silently returned to my room.
Most of Bhagavan’s devotees left the area within a few days of the funeral, but since I had no urge to go anywhere, I remained in my room in Palakottu. In the weeks and months that followed, my health began to deteriorate. I spent most of my time in my room in a state of deep samadhi in which it was impossible for me to pay any attention to the body’s needs. When the girl who cooked for me brought me my midday meal, I often ignored it. Sometimes I ate it, but mostly I gave it back to the girl to eat herself.
After several weeks of living like this, my body began to waste away. I started to get attacks of dizziness when I stood up and my digestive system started to malfunction. One attack of food poisoning left me so weak, I discovered I didn’t even have the strength to pull a bucket of water out of the Palakottu tank. When I put the bucket in the water and pulled, the weight of the water pulled me into the tank. In my weakened state I was lucky to survive at all. One sadhu I knew succumbed to cholera and died, and there was an epidemic of malaria in the area that was also claiming many lives.
I ignored all these events and continued to sit quietly in my room. While I was inside I only ever wore a kaupina, but none of the thousands of mosquitoes that shared the room with me ever bothered to bite me. The only other occupant of the room was a squirrel that used to sit on my lap when I was in samadhi. I used to keep some peanuts near me, and whenever I emerged from samadhi, the squirrel would eat a few out of my hand.
News of my weakened condition reached my relatives in Gudur. Despite our previous quarrels they were still concerned about me. They asked me to return to Gudur where I could be properly looked after, but I refused to leave. Sometime later my mother and brother came to visit for a few days. When they discovered the extent to which I was neglecting my body, they renewed their attempts to get me to come back to Gudur. My brother offered to build a hut for me where I could live alone and also undertook to provide me with food. I again refused, saying that I didn’t want to leave Arunachala.
I spent a total of nine months in Palakottu, mostly just sitting quietly in my room. Towards the end of this period my skin turned yellow and it stayed that way for the next three years. Around October 1950 I finally admitted to myself that I was no longer capable of looking after my body. I had no one to take care of me, and I was never aware of my body for long enough to do the job myself. Reluctantly, I decided that I would accept my brother’s offer, go back to Gudur and let my family look after me.