The Ramanashram: Encounter with Lord Skanda

Ramana Maharshi is probably the most famous enlightened sage of modern India, the very personification of the Atman, a pure unbounded Self-realization, even though he did nothing to gain recognition for himself. He has great appeal to a rational and modern mind willing to transcend name, form and culture. Yet what I discovered at his ashram and in the psychic environment of the town and hill was something different and unexpected.

I came to the Ramanashram to contact Ramana and his path of Self-inquiry, which is a method to experience the non-dual state of pure awareness. What I actually discovered was the God Skanda, the child of fire, who demanded purification, death and spiritual rebirth. I encountered one of the Gods, not as a devotional or cultural image but as a primordial and awesome power. Ramana came to me through Lord Skanda, the son of Shiva, with whom Ganapati Muni identified him. I came to understand Ramana as Lord Skanda, the embodiment of the flame of knowledge.

Coming into Tiruvannamalai I felt the presence of a tremendous spiritual fire, which also had, in its more benefic moments, the face of a young boy. The image of a small boy carrying a spear, rising out of a fire, kept arising in my mind. This brought about an intense practice of Self-inquiry that was literally like death, though it was the ego’s death, not that of the body.