Above Orthodoxy and Unorthodoxy

By Krishna Bikshu

The Maharshi was criticised by some in his lifetime for being orthodox, by others for being unorthodox. There were literalist Brahmins who would not go to his Ashram because it was not orthodox, modernists who would not go because it was. A profound explanation was given by the late Sundaresa Iyer, himself an orthodox Brahmin, whose obituary appears in our issue of April, 1965: "Bhagavan was above orthodoxy and unorthodoxy. He was higher than Manu and could not therefore be bound by Manu. He was himself the Source of orthodoxy and therefore whatever he did or said was orthodox because he did or said it, whether according to the sastras or not."

The Maharshi was establishing a spiritual path open alike to Brahmins and non-Brahmins, Hindus and non-Hindus; and he knew when and by whom and to what extent traditional orthodoxy had to be observed or dispensed with.

Krishna Bikshu, author of the article, 'A Chakra at Sri Ramanasramam', in our issue of April, 1965, elucidates the Maharshi's attitude in the following article, showing from the wealth of his observation during his long association with the Master, how both the blind defenders and the blind attackers of orthodoxy were liable to be offended by it.

An upholder of formal orthodoxy was speaking accusingly to Sambasiva Rao, late secretary of the Sri Ramanasramam Committee: "We learn that your Guru, the Maharshi, does not observe the rules prescribed by the Sastras for daily conduct or the regulations governing the life of a sannyasin."

"No, he does not," Sambasiva Rao agreed.

"We learn also that he has received no formal initiation into sannyas."

"No."

"And we hear that he chews pan, sits on a sofa with a mattress on it, drinks coffee and is accessible to untouchables."

"Yes, that is so."

"Then we can't accept his way of life. He may be a great man, but he sets a bad example and people will naturally imitate him. Thereby they incur sin which must be imputed to his leadership."

This was the view held by many orthodox pandits who could not see the Spirit for the letter. It is true that in Sri Ramanasramam many of the sastraic injunctions are not followed. The Ashram is built upon a former burial ground (which in itself is irregular) and therefore no part of the Vedas except the Sri Rudra Sukta should be recited there; and yet it contains a Veda Patasala (school for learning to chant the Vedas). Not only that, but there is also a temple in which the worship of the Siva Linga and Sri Chakra is performed with full daily ritual including Vedic mantras and other holy texts. From this one might well conclude that Bhagavan considered the sastras and all scriptural injunctions useless. But it was not always so. I have observed incidents which showed how he discriminated between one case and another according to the need.

For instance, Major Chadwick, who, not being a Hindu, was not subject to the sastras, asked Bhagavan once whether eating onions was not an impediment to spiritual progress, and Bhagavan agreed that it was. Chadwick thereupon gave up onions completely. But they still continue to be used in the Ashram kitchen.

He took meticulous care to see that the injunctions of the sastras were carried out in the building and consecration of the Ashram temple.

In the lifetime of Bhagavan there was a screen across the dining hall separating the Brahmins from the others. Bhagavan himself sat against the wall at right angles to both and in view of both. This is important to remember for the incident that follows. The screen implied an interdict on inter-dining between Brahmins and non-Brahmins. One day a relative of Bhagavan (and therefore a Brahmin) demanded to eat among the non-Brahmins but the Sarvadhikari (Ashram manager) would not allow it. They were disputing about it when Bhagavan came on the scene and asked what was the matter.

"He says that he has no caste," the Sarvadhikari told him: "that all are equal in the presence of Bhagavan and that he is simply a human being not bound by the shackles of caste, creed, clime or colour."

"Oh, is that so?" Bhagavan said, looking surprised "then in that case you are wrong to insist that he should eat with the Brahmins."

But then, turning to his cousin, Bhagavan remarked: "But you too are wrong. These people here feel that they are non-Brahmins. You have no caste feeling so how can you sit among them? There is only one person here who has the feeling of being neither Brahmin nor non-Brahmin, and that is myself. So," calling to the attendant, "place a leaf-plate for him by my side; let him sit with me." The young man was shocked by the implications of this proposal and immediately took his place at the Brahmin side.

Now let us consider the standpoint of those who condemn all orthodoxy. A visitor once said to me: "I hope your Bhagavan is not hide-bound, following all the rules of Hindu orthodoxy?"

I replied cautiously: "Let me understand you before committing myself to an answer. First of all, do you believe that Bhagavan is a realized man? And secondly, what do you mean by Hindu orthodoxy?"

"How can I say whether he is realized or not? You say he is. And as for orthodoxy, you are only pretending not to know. I mean all the rules that govern your daily conduct - eating, sleeping, bathing etc., and your social conduct among yourselves and towards others: the rules that were made for you by the so-called Sages of ancient times, Manu and the rest."

"You are right insofar as neither you nor I can exactly evaluate the position of Bhagavan," I said: "But as for orthodoxy, have you ever investigated the purpose of the Sages in laying down these rules of life? Have you tried to understand them? Or have you tried to follow them and noted the results in a scientific spirit?"

"What!" he exclaimed: "If primitive people invented nonsensical superstitious rules and called them dharma am I to follow them without proof or logic? That's impossible."

"Then you are unscientific," I replied. "Before you condemn a law you should first follow it and find out by experiment whether its results agree with what is claimed for it. Anyway, I will explain it to you.

"The ancient Hindus recognised four aims in life, which they called purusharthas. These are: dharma, artha, kama and moksha. Dharma is the law of being; wealth (artha) has to be earned and life enjoyed (kama) according to dharma. The final result will be Moksha, that is Liberation from bondage. He who follows this course is an integrated personality. He has harmonised his prana or vital force with his mind and characteristics or samskaras. A man acts according to his samskaras, that is his tendencies inherited from past lives. His inclinations result from the reaction of these past tendencies to present environment. They should be directed to achievement of the purusharthas culminating in Moksha. The ancient Seers or Rishis had the vision to see the implications of every word, gesture or act of a man and on this basis framed rules which would, they said, if properly followed, help him to achieve his purpose in life. He could pursue the true goal either in society or as a sannyasin outside society, but only by following the rules. His earthly life should be so conducted as to lead to the final goal of Moksha.

"Spiritual endeavour to achieve this indicated end is called sadhana and he who dedicates his life to it is a sadhaka. It involves cultivation, control and final conquest of body, emotions, senses and the entire ego and leads to Liberation. The Seers have noted the whole discipline required to this end. Control is a hard task. Control of a running horse can only be achieved step by step, and so it is with the ego. It is the Liberation towards which it leads that is the justification of sadhana. The ancient Seers did not claim to have invented rules for it, only to have seen the result of spiritual, emotional, mental and physical disciplines on a man. They laid down the law of being and working of all aspects of the human personality. That is why the smritis that go by their names are said to be merely suhrut sammita, advising as a friend, not compelling as a ruler. They merely indicate the road leading to the required end. If you break the rules they adumbrate they do not punish, only you do so at your own peril, that is peril to the success of your venture.

"Take the question of food - just one among many. Modernists tell us that the food we eat has nothing to do with our spiritual progress; but the Chandogya Upanishad says that the subtlest part of the food you eat becomes your mind. Bhagavan said the same, and it is indicated in the last sentence of his Self-Enquiry. And Krishna in the XI th Canto of the Bhagavata lays down the several types of purity necessary for the sadhaka, one of them being pure food. Even if we think the opinions of modern reformers outweigh the statements of the Vedic Rishis, the Maharshi and Sri Krishna, should we not be scientific and give what they say a fair trial and note the results?"

Returning to the question of the Maharshi: it is true that he did not personally follow all that is laid down in the scriptures regarding food, but he did not need to, since he was not a sadhaka but a Mukta, having already achieved the Goal. It is true also that he allowed a good deal of licence to his followers, but that does not necessarily mean that he approved of it; simply that his way was rather to influence than to command.

The true command should come from within, leading to voluntary, not enforced, right action. He never ordered Devaraja Mudaliar to become a vegetarian, but when the latter was hesitating whether to do so or not, wondering whether he would find the food sufficiently nutritious, and asked Bhagavan's advice (as he relates in his book My Recollections of Bhagavan Sri Ramana ) Bhagavan assured him categorically that he would. Another example: once when my brother Sri Venkatesa, author of a Hindi Life of Bhagavan, came to the Ashram he was offered coffee and told that he could drink it safely as it was Bhagavan's prasad.¹ Like many sadhakas he did not take coffee, finding that it disturbed his equanimity, so he hesitated. Before accepting it he asked Bhagavan outright: "Am I to take this as your prasad?" Bhagavan immediately replied: "No. These people want to drink coffee and so to justify themselves they offer it first to me and then call it my prasad."

There was a still more extraordinary case in the early years of the Ashram. Some of the sadhakas used to take bhang (a hallucinatory drug sometimes used by sadhus), and they also would offer it to Bhagavan first to justify themselves. Bhagavan would accept it when offered and it had no effect on his serenity of mind, since he had no mind to be disturbed. Once they offered some to Sri Kavyakantha Muni also,² thinking thereby to justify its use by sadhakas, since Bhagavan was not a sadhaka but a Mukta. Sri Ganapathi Muni saw through their trick, however, and was about to curse them for their audacity, but the motherly spirit awoke in his wife, who was present on the occasion, and she induced him to leave the scene, so that the miscreants escaped punishment.
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1. Prasad or prasadam is some article, usually of food or drink, given to a spiritual man and then received back as a vehicle of his grace.
2. For an article on whom see our issue of April, 1965.

Two things may be deduced from these examples: one that adventitious aids to sadhana, such as pure and sattvic food, are very important and not to be despised or neglected; the other that Bhagavan did not adhere rigidly to the rules himself or enforce them strictly in his Ashram but approved of people who did follow them. In fact he disapproved of both extremes, of exaggerated formalism on the one hand and hedonistic laxity on the other. Indeed, on one occasion when Bhagavan was asked to define the true Brahmin he included among the qualifications the ability to cook his own food so that he would not have to break his caste dharma when wandering in search of knowledge.

In a general way his mode of life did, after all, conform with the pattern of the Sastras. He would rise with the calling of the birds as prescribed by them. He would hear the early morning chanting of the Vedas, take his bath, etc., and then engage in his normal routine activities. The shades of evening would find him absorbed in contemplation of the Self, again as laid down by the Sastras. He neither over-ate nor starved. He followed the Gita precept about keeping to a proper diet, his waking time following a proper mode of life, sleeping properly and spending his waking time properly. The Bhagavata devotes a full canto to the daily routine followed by Sri Krishna as a model for his clansmen. When they failed to follow it and took to drunkenness a catastrophe ensued leading to their complete extermination. But all these rules of life are really advice given to one whose sincere purpose in life is the quest of Liberation. How many of us can truthfully lay our hands on our hearts and assert that this really is our goal in life? Sadhana for many of us is no more than a hobby or a secondary interest. Times have indeed changed since the Seers laid down the rules of life. Insofar as a pleasurable worldly life is now all the purushartha we follow we can indeed call them primitives and dispense with their guidance.

The brunt of the modernist attack is against the rules of varna dharma, commonly called caste.³ And to gladden the heart of modernists it must be admitted that Bhagavan did not follow the social code laid down by the Sastras, since he allowed

non-Brahmins untouchables and foreigners free access to him and sponsored the daily chanting of the Vedas with all sitting shoulder to shoulder listening to them. But he knew what he was doing. Those who came to him were his people, independent of the accident of birth. And, as I mentioned above in connection with the incident of the dining hall, he himself belonged to no caste and could not be bound by caste rules. Indeed he actually stated this once in a deposition he made to a commission that came from a law-court to interview him in connection with a fraudulent claim someone had made to ownership of the Ashram. Asked about caste, he asserted that he was atiasrami, that is outside the framework of the four varnas and the four asramas or stages of life. Indeed, one could say that there was no individual Ramana; and it is noteworthy that he never signed his name. There was no individual to sign. The individual Ramana had become extinct and merged in the Universal. Therefore it is futile to ask whether we, as individuals, can model ourselves on his conduct.

There is a warning and a paradox in this. He was the highest model of rectitude and wisdom, and yet we cannot model our personal and social conduct entirely on him, since we are seekers and he was not, and we are therefore bound by obligations from which he had become free. He was and is the Brahman and had therefore nothing to achieve and required no discipline as an aid to achievement. This paradox is explained in the Bhagavata in a warning given by Suka Deva to Parikshit: "Transgression of the normal dharma by the spiritually perfect is an exception and they are too eminent for it to bring about their downfall. Fire devours everything but is not said to be polluted thereby. One who is not at that final eminence should not even dream of doing such things. If he is obstinate enough to try he will perish."
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3. 'Caste' is used to translate four Sanskrit words: Varna, jati, kula and vamsa. The four varnas are the basic classes of Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Shudra which embrace many jatis.