Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

Snide thoughts about upholstery

A photograph of Ramana Maharshi, half life-size, was reverently propped up on the couch. My view was clear, except for a middle-aged man at the very edge of my vision. He was performing a strange sequence of actions. He would sink to his knees and then struggle upright, only to be brought to his knees again. His face was washed with ecstatic tears. It was as if he was being swept over and buoyed up, continuously, by jostling waves of devotion. Eventually he subsided into a prostrate position, with his arms outstretched and clasped in front of him. It was as if he had been swept off his feet at last by a seventh wave of self-realisation, bigger than the rest. The closeness of those holy tears vividly brought back the weeping of S. P. Munshi at Bombay airport, and the way that its electrolytic dew had seemed to percolate directly into my skin.

At this point, though, it was hard to say if the osmotic transfusion of spiritual energy from that generous liquor had made any difference. My view of the couch was clear, and yet the couch itself was an obstacle. It was undeniably gaudy, covered as it was with red brocade.

An outsider could easily think that this was a religion based on the couch — a furniture cult. Couches outnumbered gurus in the Old Hall, after all, two to one. Here was the couch itself, with a photograph of the couch displayed on it. Yes, it had Ramana Maharshi sitting on the couch in the picture, but that might just be some sort of testimonial to the excellence of the springing, as attested on a historical occasion. The guru seemed to make no attempt to match the couch. He was as plain as the furniture was fancy.

From the corded look of his neck this must be a picture from late life. His facial hair and the stubble on his head are white, but his unpresumptuous smile is ageless and the expression in the eyes quietly expectant. He is leaning against a low wall of white cushions. His right hand rests lightly on his knee, while the arm is placed a little higher up the leg. His legs are crossed, so that the sole of his right foot is presented to the camera.

The couch has no significance at all. Bhagavan’s choice was to sit on the floor, until he was persuaded that he would make it easier for devotees if he adopted the traditional pose. He was indifferent to such choices on the part of his followers, and the couch was the merest prop.

Another traditional pose for the guru is sitting on a tiger skin. I had seen photographs of Bhagavan doing just that and found them very jarring. I felt queasy, not liking to be reminded that there was an overlap between spiritual leaders (or their advisers) and big-game hunters. I prefer the symbolic power of the big cats, their aura, to be kept separate from their skin, sliced from the owner — the owner-occupier — at huge karmic cost.

I did know something of the history of that particular skin, though, the one in the photographs, and how little importance it had for Ramana Maharshi himself.

One day a devotee appeared to pay his respects to the guru and left with the tiger skin rolled up under his arm. The worthies of the ashram nabbed him and asked him what he thought he was doing. He simply said, ‘Swami gave it to me.’ Obvious nonsense, but for form’s sake they had to check with Bhagavan before turning him over to the worldly authorities. ‘Yes, that’s true,’ he said.

But why? His answer was classic Maharshi in the gentle chiding it delivered to his followers (not that they noticed, I dare say): ‘Somebody comes in and says sit on the tiger skin. I do so. Somebody else comes in and asks to keep it. I say yes.’

Later in his life Bhagavan sat in the New Hall instead. When he was sick, and Mrs Osborne and others were treating him, a sign went up: no one to enter between twelve o’clock and two. The usual well-meaning acolyte meddling. The idea was to give Bhagavan time to recover. He himself voiced no objection to the rule. In fact he took it so much to heart that he vacated the premises between those hours, so as to be freely available outside.

The couch in front of me was something that someone’s tasteless auntie would sit on, something that might turn up at a flea market. I had travelled here to find out who I really was, not to think snide thoughts about upholstery, but it wasn’t easy. Even at these high spiritual temperatures the asbestos of habit fought against combustion. My reflex of triviality was a stubborn vasana , a deep rut from a previous life needing to be raked smoothly over in the sand of the new one.

I sat in the wheelchair looking at the two couches and the single guru, but my mind was straying to other rooms, other images and times. It was almost worse to be sitting in the Old Hall thinking of the New Hall than it would have been to be thinking of Bourne End. I seemed to be more attuned to anecdotes and the past than to the numinous room in the present. My attention wandered, and my reverence had no focal depth.

If anything preöccupied me, it was some of the words Ganesh had used while we were approaching the ashram. Strength of devotion. Determination. My determination was really only passive resistance, though some people (such as Dawn Drummond) had run a finger along its militant edge and left a little trace of blood there.

Those qualities had brought me to this place, but now they were blocking my path. Passive resistance was the parachute which had allowed me to descend safely into these new surroundings, but now it was entangled in a tree and had become a threat. I must free myself. If only there was a quick-release mechanism on the harness of the ego, one which would let me drop into freedom with a single decisive click! I had the sense that I would be dangling there for some time in the breeze, while the leaves yellowed, fell and renewed themselves, without their meaning any reproach by it.

Executive moonlight

Of course Ganesh had referred to Mrs Osborne’s determination as well as my own. She was calm as well as determined, certainly calm rather than frantic, but it was a sort of steel calm, lacking flexibility. I couldn’t honestly say that I thought her ego functioned as it does (by all accounts) in a realised person, persisting merely as the moon does in the daytime — the ego emeritus, performing little administrative tasks, pottering in its contented retirement.

Far from it. Her ego seemed robust, even fierce. Sometimes it positively spoiled for a fight. It was strategic even in its retreats, as when Mrs O had given way on the pradakshina question so as to get her own way about my meeting Ganesh. If Mrs O’s ego was mere executive moonlight, then why was it so hard to look at directly? Still, the state of her ego was really none of my business. I must mind my own.

When Ganesh came back to find me, it was actually a relief to be interrupted. He had left me alone for a good stretch of time. I wasn’t getting anywhere with meditation, with stilling my thoughts and holding my mind alert in quest of itself. Altogether self-enquiry seemed to have reached a dead end. The whole idea seemed impossible, like using the light of a candle to make out the silversmith’s mark on the base of the candlestick. Meditation solves the problem by detaching the flame from the wick, letting its light float free, but currently I seemed to have lost that knack.

Ganesh was too tactful to ask if I had profited from my first encounter with the ashram, but I said something about finding the presence of other devotees distracting. Instead of pointing out that I was a hopeless case if I couldn’t ignore such irrelevancies he offered to have me brought back at a time of day when it would be quieter.

I began to feel a little flattered qualm about Ganesh’s obligingness and approachability. He was making time for me in a way which could hardly be standard practice. He was certainly easier company than Mrs Osborne, though of course we only really discussed one subject, and that subject was the reason for my being in India in the first place.