I have already mentioned that my mother was an ar­dent Krishna bhakta. I should also mention that she had a Guru who was a well-known teacher of Vedanta.

He knew many vedantic works and could lecture on them all with great authority. His favourite was Vichar Sagar by the Hindu saint Nischaldas. My mother could recite large por­tions of it by heart. Many years later, when I became ac­quainted with Sri Ramana Maharshi, I found that he too liked it and that he had even made a Tamil abridged ren­dering of it under the title Vichara Mani Mala.

My mother’s Guru had made her memorise many vedantic slokas which she used to chant at various times during the day. Traditional vedantic sadhana is done by af­firmation and negation. Either one repeats or contemplates one of the mahavakyas such as ‘I am Brahman’ or one tries to reject identification with the body by saying and feeling, ‘I am not the body, I am not the skin, I am not the blood,’ etc. The aim is to get into a mental frame of mind in which one convinces oneself that one’s real nature is the Self and that identification with the body is erroneous.

My mother used to chant all these ‘I am not…’ verses and I used to find them all very funny. I was, at heart, a bhakta. I could appreciate any sadhana which generated love and devotion towards God, but I couldn’t see the point of these practices which merely listed, in endlessly trivial ways, what one was not. When my mother had a bath she would chant, ‘I am not the urine, I am not the excrement, I am not the bile,’ and so on. This was too much for me. I would call out, ‘What are you doing in there? Having a bath or cleaning the toilet?’ I ridiculed her so much that eventually she stopped singing these verses out loud.

My mother’s Guru encouraged me to join a local lend­ing library which had a good selection of spiritual books. I started to read books on Vedanta and Hindu saints. It was this library which introduced me to Yoga Vasishta, a book I have always enjoyed. One day I tried to borrow a book about Swami Ram Tirtha, a Hindu saint who went into se­clusion in the Himalayas in his twenties and who died there when he was only thirty-four. I had a special reason for borrowing this book: he was my mother’s elder brother, so I naturally wanted to find out more about him.

The librarian had watched me borrow all these books with an increasing sense of alarm. In middle-class Hindu society it is quite acceptable to show a little interest in spiri­tual matters, but when the interest starts to become an ob­session, the alarm bells go off. This well-meaning librarian probably thought that I was taking my religion too seri­ously, and that I might end up like my uncle. Most families would be very unhappy if one of their members dropped out at an early age to become a wandering sadhu in the Himalayas. The librarian, feeling that he was acting for the best, refused to let me borrow this book about my uncle. Later, he went to my mother and warned her that I was showing what was, for him, an unhealthy interest in mysti­cism. My mother paid no attention. Because her own life revolved around her sadhana, she was delighted to have a son who seemed to be displaying a similar inclination.

My mother’s Guru liked me very much. He suggested books for me to read and frequently gave me advice on spiritual matters. He owned a lot of land, had many cows, and spent half his time in teaching and the other half in managing his properties and possessions. One day he made my mother an astounding offer: ‘Please give me your son. I will appoint him my heir and spiritual successor. When I die everything I have will be his. I will look after his spiritual development, but to get all this he must agree to one condition. He must not marry and he must remain a brahmachari. If he agrees, and if you agree, I will take full responsibility for him.’

My mother had great love and respect for this man, but she was far too attached to me to consider handing me over to someone else. She turned down his offer. I too had great respect for him. If my mother had accepted his offer, I would happily have gone with him.

At around this time she announced that she was going to take me to a different swami because she wanted me to get some special spiritual instructions from him. I didn’t like the idea and I didn’t like the man she chose for me. I told her, ‘If you take me to this man I will test him to see if he has really conquered his passions. As soon as I see him I shall slap him in the face. If he gets angry, I will know that he has no self-control. If he doesn’t get angry, I will listen to him and accept whatever he has to teach me. My mother knew that I was quite capable of carrying out the threat. Not wishing to be embarrassed by my disrespectful activities, she dropped her plans to take me to see him.