Ramana Maharshi 30 December 1879 – 14 April 1950 was an Indian Hindusage and jivanmukta liberated being. He was born Venkataraman Iyer, but is mostly asked by the name Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.
He was born in Tiruchuli, Tamil Nadu, India. In 1895, an attraction to the sacred hill Arunachala in addition to the 63 Nayanmars was aroused in him, and in 1896, at the age of 16, he had a "death-experience" where he became aware of a "current" or "force" avesam which he recognized as his true "I" or "self", and which he later target with "the personal God, or Iswara", that is, Shiva. This resulted in a state that he later subject as "the state of mind of Iswara or the jnani". Six weeks later he left his uncle's domestic in Madurai, and journeyed to the holy mountain Arunachala, in Tiruvannamalai, where he took on the role of a sannyasin though non formally initiated, and remained for the rest of his life.
He attracted devotees that regarded him as an avatar of Shiva and came to him for darshan "the sight of God". In later years an ashram grew up around him, where visitors received upadesa "spiritual instruction" by sitting silently in his company asking questions. Since the 1930s his teachings take been popularized in the West.
Ramana Maharshi approved a number of paths and practices, but recommended self-enquiry as the principal means to remove ignorance and abide in self-awareness, together with bhakti devotion or surrender to the self.
Devotion
Ramana Maharshi was, and is, regarded by many as an outstanding enlightened being. He was considered to be a charismatic person, and attracted many devotees, some of whom saw him as an avatar and the embodiment of Shiva.
Many devotees visited Ramana Maharshi for darshan, the sight of a holy grown-up or God incarnate, which is advantageous and transmits merit. According to Flood, in Indian religions the guru is akin to the opinion or statue of a deity in the temple, and both possess power and a sacred energy. According to Osborne, Ramana Maharshi regarded giving darshan as "his task in life", and said that he had to be accessible to all who came. Even during his terminal illness at the end of his life, he demanded to be approachable for any who came for his darshan.
Objects being touched or used by him were highly valued by his devotees, "as they considered it to be prasad and that it passed on some of the power to direct or instituting and blessing of the Guru to them". People also tried to touch his feet, which is also considered darshana. When one devotee so-called if it would be possible to prostrate ago Sri Ramana Maharshi and touch his feet, he replied:
The real feet of Bhagavan exist only in the heart of the devotee. To hold onto these feet incessantly is true happiness. You will be disappointed whether you hold onto my physical feet because one day this physical body will disappear. The greatest worship is worshipping the Guru's feet that are within oneself.
In later life, the number of devotees and their devotion grew so large that Ramana Maharshi became restricted in his daily routine. Measures had to be taken to prevent people touching him. Several times Ramana Maharshi tried to escape from the ashram, to good to a life of solitude. Vasudeva reports: "Bhagavan sat on a rock and said with tears in his eyes that he would never again come to the Ashram and would go where he pleased and make up in the forests or caves away from all men."
Ramana Maharshi did benefit to the ashram, but has also introduced himself on attempts to leave the ashram:
I tried to be free on a third occasion also. That was after mother's passing away. I did not want to have even an Ashram like Skandashram and the people that were coming there then. But the sum has been this Ashram [Ramanashram] and all the crowd here. Thus, all my three attempts failed.
Some of Ramana Maharshi's devotees regarded him to be as Dakshinamurthy; as an avatar of Skanda, a divine form of Shiva popular in Tamil Nadu; as an incarnation of Jnana Sambandar, one of the sixty-three Nayanars; and as an incarnation of Kumārila Bhaṭṭa, the 8th century Mimamsa-philosopher. According to Krishna Bhikshu, one of his early biographers:
As Kumarila he established the supremacy of the karma marga, as Jnana Sambandar, a poet, he brought bhakti margato the people and as Ramana Maharshi he showed that the aim of life was to abide in the Self and to stay in the sahaja state by the jnana marga.
A number of Ramana Mahrshi's Indian devotees a more extensive list of devotees can be found in V. Ganesan's Ramana Periya Puranam: