The Evolution of the Mother’s Temple

Throughout the 1930s Annamalai Swami had been supervising all the major building projects in the ashram. Each day he would receive his instructions directly from Bhagavan, and each evening he would go back to Bhagavan to tell him how much had been completed and how much still remained to be done. Chinnaswami therefore decided that Annamalai Swami was the best person to find out what Bhagavan’s intentions really were.

He approached him and said, ‘Bhagavan always tells his buildings plans directly to you. Please ask him what we should do about the Mother’s Temple. Ask him whether we should build it simply or on a large scale.’

When Annamalai Swami conveyed the query to Bhagavan, Bhagavan finally disclosed his decision: ‘If it is constructed well, and on a large scale, I shall be happy.’

Chinnaswami, who had been in doubt about Bhagavan’s intentions, was delighted because he had been wanting to build a big temple over his mother’s samadhi for many years. He immediately began to make preparations for the construction. Since it was not ordinary building work, a qualified outsider had to be brought in. After careful consideration, the whole project was entrusted to Vaidyantha Sthapati, an expert in temple architecture and engineering. He brought with him many accomplished stone-masons who had had a lot of experience in temple construction.

When the project started, the ashram only had enough money to pay for a small portion of the work. Bhagavan knew that funds were in short supply but he made it clear that he wanted the temple to be financed out of unsolicited donations. He repeatedly told Chinnaswami and all the other devotees that they should never ask for funds on the ashram’s behalf. Chinnaswami, however, felt that the temple could not be built without an aggressive fund-raising drive, so he went against Bhagavan’s wishes and made several attempts to raise money. One typical effort, which was followed by a typical Bhagavan response, was described by T. P. Ramachandra Iyer in Bhagavan Smrtulu:

There was once a shortage of funds while the temple was being built. Money was needed immediately. At that time a man called Chhaganlal Yogi came from Bombay for the first time. On seeing him Chinnaswami suggested to me: ‘We need Rs 50,000 for the temple. So why don’t the three of us go to Jamnalal Bajaj for the money and bring it? Introduce Chhaganlal Yogi to me so that we can start.’

Chhaganlal Yogi felt that the proposal was unacceptable. But because he was a newcomer and was feeling rather shy, he felt that he had no alternative but to accept. Chinnaswami made all the arrangements for his luggage but before we could depart we had first to cross the hurdle of telling Bhagavan about our mission. Chinnaswami never came before Bhagavan to speak; he always used to send a messenger if information had to be passed on to Bhagavan. On this occasion he selected me and asked me to tell Bhagavan about our journey.

‘How can I tell Bhagavan such a thing?’ I asked. ‘You come with me.’

Chinnaswami did not even have the courage for that so we had to collect some other people. We all went to Bhagavan while he was having a rest alone in the afternoon. We stood before him for some time but he didn’t even look at us. His gaze was fixed elsewhere. Each of us wanted one of the others to speak. Finally, Mouniswami told him what we wanted.

For a long time Bhagavan made no response, but eventually he spoke: ‘I have told you not to beg in my name. Now I am telling you again. Be satisfied with what you have. What is to happen will happen. If you now go and ask for money, will not the donors ask you whether you have my agreement or not, and whether I gave you permission for this? What do you intend to tell them if they ask questions like this?’

Chhaganlal Yogi had got the excuse he was looking for.

He told Bhagavan, ‘Unless we tell them that you consented to this, none of them will given even a paisa.’

What more could they do? They slipped out one by one, and Chinnaswami’s journey was cancelled. After this incident Bhagavan remarked, ‘Did the construction of all these buildings occur because of my begging? It all happened in the way it was destined to happen. Nothing happens purely as a result of anyone’s own efforts.

Bhagavan’s attitude to the construction work, and to the financing of it, is also brought out in the following stories which were narrated to me by Annamalai Swami:

Because all the stone masons who were working on the temple were paid on a daily basis, I was asked to supervise some of them to ensure that the ashram got value for money. Although I knew nothing about temple construction, I had had enough experience of supervising workers to see that the stone-masons were deliberately working very slowly. Since they were classified as skilled workers, they were getting a very high daily wage for doing very little. It seemed to me that they were deliberately taking about three days to do one day’s work. I told them that they were cheating the ashram, and I tried to persuade them to work more honestly, but they refused to change their ways.

One of them told me, ‘All you people are eating and sleeping here for nothing. Why are you troubling us about work? It is no loss to you if we work slowly.’

After a few unsuccessful attempts to get them to work, I reported the matter to Bhagavan.

I told him, ‘The temple workers are working very slowly. In the evening Chinnaswami pays them whatever I have written on the wages list. I don’t like to waste the ashram’s money on dishonest workers, but I have no authority to dismiss them. If I write each day that they must be paid for work that they have not done, am I not also cheating the ashram?’

Bhagavan replied, ‘Don’t worry about this matter. If they cheat like this and get money that they have not earned out of the ashram, this money will not stay with them. Ultimately they will find that their only possessions are their hammers and chisels. The wages that they have received dishonestly will go to waste. They cannot cheat Bhagavan, they can only cheat themselves.’

Then, after pausing for a while, he added, ‘We should not worry about the financial aspect of the work because God will supply all the money that we need.’

As usual, Bhagavan’s faith was justified. The temple put a severe strain on the ashram’s finances but we always managed to keep the work going. On some days the ashram had to depend on donations received during the day to pay the wages in the evening. At the start of the day we would hire workers, even though we knew that we had no money to pay them. During the day donations would arrive in various ways and by evening there would always be enough to pay the workers.’

Bhagavan made daily visits to the temple to watch the progress of the construction and to inspect the quality of the workmanship. If any of the work was not up to standard, he would call attention to it and request that the necessary improvements be made. On one visit, for example, he pointed out that there was too much space between the flagstones around the garbhagraha (the inner shrine), and on another occasion he requested that some cracks in the wall be property pointed with cement. Bhagavan occasionally initiated jobs himself. For example, when the walls of the garbhagraha had been completed, Bhagavan decided that the name of the temple should be inscribed on the front wall. Annamalai Swami, who was asked to help with this work, told me how it was done:

If one looks over the entrance to the garbhagraha one can see two elephants carved out of stone. Under their feet is a carved stone scroll. The full name of the temple, ‘Mathrubuteswaralayam’, meaning ‘the temple of God in the form of the Mother’, is carved in stone on this scroll. Bhagavan himself wrote out this name for me in big Sanksrit letters. His idea was that I should make a stencil and then paint the letters on the scroll. Later, one of the sthapatis would carve out the name by chiselling out the area covered by the painted letters. I sat in Bhagavan’s presence in the hall, carefully cutting out the name. I kept all my attention on the work because I knew that I would not be able to get away with even the smallest of mistakes. Bhagavan was watching me all the time I was working. At about 3 p.m. Bhagavan used to go out of the hall to urinate. At that time, on that day, he stood up and started to move towards the door. Everyone in the hall, except for me, stood up. I was in the middle of cutting out a letter; but I didn’t want to risk spoiling it by taking my scissors away from the paper.

I heard a man muttering behind me, ‘Bhagavan has stood up but this man has no respect. He is still sitting on the floor. He hasn’t even stopped working.’

Bhagavan must have also heard this man because he seemed to change his mind about going outside. Instead, he came and sat next to me on the floor. He put his hand on my shoulder and watched intently as I finished cutting out that letter. Then, without bothering to take his expected trip outside, he got up and sat on his couch again. After that there were no more complaints about my disrespect. When the cutting was over, I painted the letters on the scroll under the elephants’ feet. As I was working there, the chief sthapati tried to stop me.

He called up to me: ‘Stop doing that! I am the only man who is competent to write letters like that. How can you do these things properly?’

Bhagavan came to my rescue again. He had been standing nearby, watching me paint the letters.

He silenced the sthapati by saying, ‘He did not do it on his own authority. I myself told him to do it.’

The construction of the temple, which was concluded at the beginning of 1949, took approximately ten years. When it was finished the temple complex included a large stone hall that was originally intended to replace the old hall that Bhagavan had lived in since 1928. A large stone sofa was installed there for him to sit on, but when it came time to make the move, Bhagavan clearly indicated that he didn’t want to either sit or live there. When he was first shown where his new sofa would be located, he complained that if he sat there, the monkeys and squirrels would not longer have access to him.

And later, when a sculptor was carving a stone statue of him, he deflected a request that he move into the new hall by saying, ‘Why don’t you get the stone Swami to sit on the stone sofa?’

He was finally persuaded to sit in the new hall, but even after the move he still continued to complain. After some time in his new residence he noticed a group of villagers trying to summon up courage to come in and see him. On that occasion he protested that the hall had been built on such a grandiose scale, poor people who wanted darshan would be too intimated by the size and grandeur of the building to enter it. Bhagavan eventually stayed in the new hall for about six months. The remaining few months of his life were spent in the mahanirvana room.

Although the main purpose of the Mother’s Temple and the adjoining new hall was to provide an appropriate structure over the samadhi of the Mother, Chinnaswami had long nurtured an idea that Bhagavan’s samadhi could also be incorporated into it. It seems that he had a plan to inter Bhagavan’s body in a shrine that would be slightly to the north of the new hall. Chinnaswami had planned to make a large doorway in the northern wall that would connect the new hall with this shrine. In his reminiscences (The Guiding Presence of Sri Ramana, pp. 63-4) K. K. Nambiar related the story of how Chinnaswami asked him to build a portion of the northern veranda of the new hall in such a way that it could be easily dismantled and replaced by an additional samadhi shrine. Chinnaswami tried to get Bhagavan’s approval for this scheme. He sent a plan to Bhagavan that gave details of a large doorway in the northern wall of the new hall, but Bhagavan rejected it and sent back a reply that the wall should remain as it was. It would seem from these incidents that although Bhagavan fully supported the construction of the Mother’s Temple, he had no inclination either to live or be buried in any part of it.

The kumbhabhishekam ceremony for the Mother’s Temple, which was performed in March 1949, was a fitting climax to the years of effort that had been expended in its construction. The ceremonies, which lasted for four days, were attended by tens of thousands of people from all over India. On the final day alone, over 15,000 people were fed in the ashram. So many visitors came that extra trains were laid on from Madras and Madurai. For four days a shuttle service of buses ferried visitors to and from the train station, and the local Post Office had to be temporarily upgraded and expanded for a week to handle all the extra business. Two hundred priests, under the supervision of the Sankaracharya of Puri, carried out the rituals, while Bhagavan himself empowered the Sri Chakra that was to be worshipped in the main shrine. The temple had come a long way from the coconut-leaf hut of 1922.

Bhagavan himself summed up the rapid development of both the temple and the ashram when he remarked to T. P. Ramachandra Iyer, ‘I suggested that the body be buried silently before dawn. But things happened the way they had to happen. See how many constructions have now come up on the site where a body was silently buried!’

I included many of the stories that are narrated in this article in a Youtube talk on the Mother’s Temple. It also includes several other photos of the temple that are not featured in this article.