On my visits to Sri Ramanasramam I would sit in the hall with the Maharshi, listening to him deal with all the questions and doubts that devotees brought to him. Occa­sionally, if some answer was not clear, or if it did not tally with my own experience, I would ask a question myself. My army training had taught me that I should keep on questioning until I fully understood what was being ex­plained to me. I applied the same principles to the Maharshi’s philosophical teachings.

On one occasion, for example, I heard him tell a visitor that the spiritual Heart-centre was located on the right side of the chest, and that the ‘I’-thought arose from that place and subsided there. This did not tally with my own experi­ence of the Heart. On my first visit to the Maharshi, when my Heart opened and flowered, I knew that it was neither inside nor outside the body. And when the experience of the Self became permanent during my second visit, I knew that it was not possible to say that the Heart could be lim­ited to or located in the body.

So I joined in the conversation and asked, ‘Why do you place the spiritual Heart on the right side of the chest and limit it to that location? There can be no right or left for the Heart because it does not abide inside or outside the body. Why not say it is everywhere? How can you limit the truth to a location inside the body? Would it not be more correct to say that the body is situated in the Heart, rather than the Heart in the body?’ I was quite vigorous and fearless in my questioning because that was the method I had been taught in the army.

The Maharshi gave me an answer which fully satisfied me. Turning to me, he explained that he only spoke in this way to people who still identified themselves with their bodies. ‘When I speak of the “I” rising from the right side of the body, from a location on the right side of the chest, the information is for those people who still think that they are the body. To these people I say that the Heart is located there. But it is really not quite correct to say that the “I” rises from and merges in the Heart on the right side of the chest. The Heart is another name for the Reality and it is neither inside nor outside the body; there can be no in or out for it, since it alone is. I do not mean by “Heart” any physiological organ or any plexus or anything like that, but so long as one identifies oneself with the body and thinks that one is the body, one is advised to see where in the body the “I”-thought rises and merges again. It must be the Heart at the right side of the chest since every man, of whatever race and religion, and in whatever language he may be saying “I”, points to the right side of the chest to indicate himself. This is so all over the world, so that must be the place. And by keenly watching the daily emergence of the “I”-thought on waking, and its subsiding in sleep, one can see that it is in this Heart on the right side.’

I liked to talk to the Maharshi when he was alone or when there were very few people around, but this was not often possible. For most of the day he was surrounded by people. Even when I did approach him with a question, I had to have an interpreter on hand because my Tamil wasn’t good enough to sustain a philosophical conver­sation.

The summer months were the best time to catch him in a quiet environment. The climate was so unpleasant at that time, few visitors came. One time in May, at the height of the summer, there were only about five of us with the Maharshi. Chadwick, one of the five, made a joke about it: ‘We are your poor devotees, Bhagavan. Everyone who can afford to go to the hills to cool off has left. Only we paupers have been left behind.’

The Maharshi laughed and replied, ‘Yes, staying here in summer, without running away, is the real tapas’.

I would sometimes accompany the Maharshi on his walks around the ashram. This enabled me to talk pri­vately with him and to observe first-hand how he dealt with devotees and ashram workers. I watched him super­vise the sharing out of the food, making sure everyone received equal portions; I watched him remonstrate with workers who wanted to prostrate to him rather than carry on with their work. Everything he did contained a lesson for us. Every step he took was a teaching in itself.

The Maharshi preferred to work in a low-key, unspec­tacular way with the people around him. There were no great demonstrations of his power, just a continuous subtle emanation of grace which inexorably seeped into the hearts of all those who came into contact with him.

One incident I witnessed illustrates very well the subtle and indirect way that he worked with us. A woman brought her dead son to the Maharshi, placing the dead body before the couch. The boy had apparently died from a snake bite. The woman begged the Maharshi to bring him back to life, but he deliberately ignored her and her repeated requests. After a few hours the ashram manager made her take the corpse away. As she was leaving the ashram she met some kind of snake charmer who claimed that he could cure her son. The man did something to the boy’s hand, the place where he had been bitten, and the boy immediately revived, even though he had been dead for several hours.

The devotees in the ashram attributed the miraculous cure to the Maharshi, saying, ‘When a prob­lem is brought to the attention of a jnani, some “automatic divine activity” brings about a solution’. According to this theory, the Maharshi had done nothing consciously to help the boy, but at a deeper, unconscious level, his awareness of the problem had caused the right man to appear at the right place. The Maharshi of course disclaimed all respon­sibility for the miraculous cure. ‘Is that so?’ was his only re­sponse when told about the boy’s dramatic recovery.

This was typical of the Maharshi. He never performed any miracles and never even accepted any responsibility for those that seemed to happen either in his presence or on account of a devotee’s faith in him. The only ‘miracles’ he indulged in were those of inner transformation. By a word, a look, a gesture, or merely by remaining in silence, he quietened the minds of people around him, enabling them to become aware of who they really were. There is no greater miracle than this.