The keys

It was then the Ashram’s custom to honour the newcomer by giving him his first meal in a line directly opposite the Maharshi’s seat and at hardly four feet distance from it. My leaf-plate was thus placed there with two rice cakes on it. I took no notice of the cakes, although my hand fingered them, but directed my whole look at the peaceful ountenanance of Sri Bhagavan. He had by then finished eating and was slowly rolling a betel-leaf for a chew,as if deliberately to give me a little more of his company,when a man entered from the back door, which was the passage to the small kitchen, and, in

a low voice, said something in Tamil to him,from which I understood the single word“keys.”Then Maharshi rose, looked at me by way of farewell, and left the room. I hastily swallowed half a cake, gulped the cup of tea, and went out in search of the room to which my luggage had been taken.But alas,Icould not have a bath or a change of clothes – everything was locked up in the suit cases. I was greatly embarrassed, and started thinking of breaking them open, when someone announced that Sri Maharshi was coming to the Darshan Hall.I stopped thinking and rushed straight to the Hall with my hat and full suit on. Behind me calmly walked in the tall, impressive figure of the Maharshi with leisurely though firm steps.

I was alone in the Hall with him. Joy and peace suffused my being – never before, had I such a delightful feeling of  purity and well-being at the mere proximity of a man. My mind was already in deep contemplation of him – him not as flesh, although that was exquisitely formed and featured, but as an unsubstantial principle which could make itself so profoundly felt despite the handicap of a heavy material vehicle. When after a while I became aware of my environment, I saw him looking at me with large penetrating eyes, wreathed in smiles rendered divinely soothing by their child-like innocence. All of a sudden I felt something fall in my lap and heard the jingling of keys – my keys! I looked up at the Maharshi extremely puzzled. The man – Sri Ramaswami Pillai – who had dropped them through the door behind me came in and explained that he had gone to the railway station on a bicycle and found the station master waiting for him. It appears that during the few minutes that the train had stopped at the station a passenger had providentially entered the very compartment I had vacated, and, seeing the keys on the seat, he picked them up, and, wonder of wonders! ran up to the station master and handed them over to him. The latter by an unusual flash of intuition surmised that the keys belonged to an Ashram visitor, whom he might have seen detrain in the morning, and awaited a claim for them.

It was a series of miracles which occurred on my behalf in the short space of barely ninety minutes, of which I was blissfully ignorant, absorbed as I was in the entrancing personality of this magnificent human magnet – Sri Ramana Bhagavan.

It is needless to say that from that day Ramanashram became my permanent home.

(Guru  Ramana -by  S  S  Cohen ).