Today is the anniversary of Ramana's death, or Mahasamadhi, as the religious devotees call it. He was born in 1879 and, on April 14, 1950, he was 71 years old.

Ramana brought to us an incredible, simple insight. Those who have claimed Ramana as theirs -- the religious people, those in the Advaita Vedanta tradition in India and so forth -- would have it that Ramana (or Bhaghavan, as they call him), was a saint. An ethereal being who somehow came down from heaven to transmit and bestow upon us the experience of silence, peace and the vastness of being.

But, as far as I know, this is not the way Ramana saw himself. After this profound insight struck him, he spent most of the time running from people. He did everything he could to escape from those of us who ran after his heels trying to get him to bestow upon us this boon, this experience of the hugeness and vastness of being. He declined to speak for twelve years. Later, he said that during those 12 years he used to tell people that he did not speak because he had taken a sacred vow of silence, but that it was a lie. He just told them that so he would not need to go into a lot of explanations. He really just didn't want to talk. It was just that, no big spiritual deal. Perhaps he had tired of the uselessness of speech to say anything at all about what he had seen in this profound and simple insight that had struck him.

Complete recording of a Meeting with John Sherman in Ojai, California on April 14, 2007.

Length: 1 h 1 min File Size: 14.72 MB







MP3 File