NUMEROUS devotees who visited Bhagavan back in those days never shared their experiences outside family circles. Their stories, passed down through generations, continue to inspire children and grandchildren. Dr. Vaidyanathan's story is one such case. Though he was in Bhagavan's presence only briefly in 1923, the experience was so memorable that it influenced the whole of his life. And his family urged him to recount it repeatedly.

Born the second son of a wealthy family in December 1910, Vaidyanathan was named after the Kula Daivam. His father, A. R. Aiyer, owned property opposite the Kapaleeswarar Temple pond in Mylapore as well as in his native Ganapati Agraharam. A man of integrity, A.R. Aiyer was awarded the title of Rao Bahadur.

The family enjoyed considerable comforts, including a saloon car for railway travel. Distinguished visitors often came to their home, including Sri Sarada Devi Ma, the spouse of Sri Ramakrishna, during her visit to South India.

As a boy in a prominent household, Vaidyanathan was surrounded by servants and all the comforts of a well-to-do life. However, tragedy struck in 1924 when Vaidyanathan's father died suddenly. His mother, Lakshmi, was devastated. A. R. Aiyer had been the only child of his parents and only his old mother was still alive, his father having passed away years earlier. Vaidyanathan's mother, Lakshmi, had a big family with father, mother, brothers, and sisters. After the thirteenth-day ceremony, Lakshmi fell ill during her protracted illness, her father brought papers for her to sign. Unknowingly, she signed away her property to her relatives, who then claimed everything after her death. The judge recognized the fraud and even exclaimed from the court bench, "I have seen many kinds of fraud, but this is the first time I'm seeing grandparents cheating their own grandchildren". Nevertheless, the judge had to rule based on the evidence, resulting in the children losing everything. Vaidyanathan, his siblings, and their elderly paternal grandmother, were left destitute.

Fortunately, a friend of A. R. Aiyer took them in and supported them until the children could graduate from high school. Vaidyanathan became a pharmaceutical salesman, traveling extensively across India. Though this eased the financial burden, the betrayal by his relatives left him questioning the existence of God. With tremendous grief, he ever pondered, "Where is this God who allows such injustice?"

In 1923, before the family disaster, the direct glance of Bhagavan fell on Vaidyanathan, and he received prasadam directly from the Master's hands. At thirteen, his uncle Seshu Iyer took him to Ramanasramam, where they met Bhagavan early one morning. This happened shortly after Bhagavan had moved down from Skandasramam to his mother's samadhi. In those days, the kitchen was only a thatched hut and they went directly there upon arrival to find Bhagavan sitting in front of the fire, stirring the contents of a large vessel. When Bhagavan saw the boy and his uncle, he said, "Come here and taste this. See if it tastes okay and if there is enough salt." So saying, Bhagavan took some of the contents from the top edge of the vessel, and holding it in his palm, he blew onto it. It was upma Bhagavan was holding, and he was blowing on it so as to cool it to an edible temperature. Then he made a small ball out of the upma and gave it to Vaidyanathan. The boy was thrilled, hungry from his travel, and ate it with great relish. They stayed on for two days before returning to Madras.

In the aftermath of losing his father the following year, Vaidyanathan turned his back on tradition and worshipping an 'unjust' God, but the encounter with Bhagavan helped him endure and despite losing his parents and home, and experiencing family betrayal, he did not become bitter. Instead, he resolved to serve others and made the decision to enter the medical profession. After saving money from his pharmaceutical job, he joined Stanley Medical College. After graduation, he met an elderly gentleman, Doraiswamy, who was looking for a groom for his widowed daughter. The girl, it seems, had been given in marriage when she was nine years old, according to the norms of those times, but before she could formally 'go to her husband's house' (after puberty),  her husband died. That was a great calamity in those days and, according to custom, the girl would never wed again. But when her father approached the young doctor and requested him to marry his daughter, Vaidyanathan readily agreed despite her widowhood, as he no longer abided by religious customs and rituals. The happy couple raised eight children.

Dr. Vaidyanathan set up a successful medical practice in Matunga, Bombay, becoming one of the leading South Indian doctors there. Despite his loss of faith in God, he remained compassionate and charitable, treating many patients for free and donating generously to charity, saying he knew what poverty felt like.

He frequently hosted visitors from Ramanasramam, including T.N. Venkataraman, Ganesan Anna, Mani Anna, and Somasundaram, a senior devotee who used to come each week to hand over books to Vaidyanathan. In 1967 Arthur Osborne came to the house. Osborne smiled looking at a photo of Ramana sitting on a tiger skin hung in the main hall. When Vaidyanathan went to Tiruvannamalai a little later, Osborne presented him with a picture replica of the one kept on Bhagavan's sofa in the old meditation Hall. While doing so, Osborne told Vaidyanathan, "He will guide you and answer you". The tiger skin photo was replaced by this one in the family home.

Dr. Vaidyanathan's wife also had a deep connection with Sri Bhagavan. Her father, Doraiswamy, had served Bhagavan in Tiruvannamalai. When Doraiswamy was a boy, he had given 'oil baths' to Sri Seshadri Swamy. After his graduation, he wanted to move to Bombay but was scared to broach the subject with his father. He went to Bhagavan instead, sat in his presence silently asking the question in his heart. When he felt that he had gotten a reply, he got up from his place and then stumbled on a coin. He took the coin up in his hands and just then, saw Bhagavan who nodded in assent to the Bombay plan. Doraiswamy kept this coin as a sign of Bhagavan's grace till the end of his life in 1954.

Dr. Vaidyanathan often re-enacted the scene of Bhagavan blowing on the upma, wiping away tears from his eyes with his towel. This first encounter with Bhagavan inspired him throughout life, providing strength to overcome the adversities of his youth.

Later when he was travelling one foggy evening in the Himalayas on a rickety bus in the front seat next to the driver, for some reason Vaidyanathan felt that Bhagavan was telling him to pull the hand brake. He did so, startling the driver as the bus jerked to a halt. The driver shouted at him, but then suddenly realized the bus was on the edge of a gorge and if it had travelled one foot further, it would have tumbled down a precipice. Again, tears would be wiped off with his towel, when in later years Vaidyanathan narrated this account.¹

Following Vaidyanathan's demise in October 1973, Mrs. Vaidyanathan wrote to Lucia Osborne, then editor of The Mountain Path: Her letter was published in the journal and reads as follows:
Last September (1973) just a month before his death, Dr.Vaidyanathan had a vivid dream. He told me he climbed a mountain and on top there was a mantapa. There he saw Bhagavan seated on a wooden swing with a crowd of people, men and women, seated around him all silent. As my husband prostrated before Bhagavan, Bhagavan said smilingly: "Oh! So, you have come. We have been wondering why you had not come. Good. Come sit here by my side." And he indicated a place next to him on the swing. My husband hesitated to sit in such proximity with Bhagavan but urged by Bhagavan he sat down. Bhagavan put his hand on his shoulder, patted him with affection and asked, "Are you tired? Will you have something to drink?" My husband replied in the negative. Then Bhagavan took him to a nearby well, made him take a bath, gave him vibhuti and asked an elderly man there, "Sastrigal! Shall we begin?... He is now ready." The old man looked at the clock and said, "No, there is still time. I think we shall do it later." Whereupon Bhagavan told my husband to go now and come back later. Just then he woke up and realised it was all a dream. He felt thrilled!

Now it is all over and I remain here thinking of him, waiting to finish the duties (he has left undone) to the children. Patiently, peacefully, I am waiting my turn. In the three years since his first major heart-attack, he prepared me so well for this that now I feel it is all the will of providence and I should face it with courage.
Signed, Mrs. Vaidyanathan²

OVER THE LAST three issues, we explored the profound simplicity and peace embodied by Bhagavan on his sofa in the darshan hall. While modern life drives us toward the endless pursuit of possessions and accomplishments, Bhagavan's example shows that true fulfilment comes from within.

Earlier we explored the challenges of achieving self-emptying, focusing on our black bag filled with unresolved wounds. The black bag leads to a preoccupation with an imaginary small self, manifesting in compulsive behaviours and the perpetual quest for external validation. By bringing awareness to the black bag, we begin the process of self-emptying, releasing all that is not true in us and moving toward a more integrated psyche.

In the last segment we delved into self-emptying by examining early life experiences and unresolved psychological residues from the deep past. Residual afflictions, symbolised by the black bag, prompt us to seek external compensation for a sense of inadequacy. We traced the origins of the black bag to pre-verbal memories and explored how Bhagavan's inquiry might help integrate hidden fragments of the Heart, even if such work involves painful self-assessment and the relinquishment of long-cherished defences. Facing the contents of the black bag through honest inquiry enables us to greet inner demons with compassion instead of denial. Early wounds predispose us to seek comfort in external stimuli, influencing our emotional responses right up into adulthood. We considered how compulsive behaviours are a compensation for the lack of maternal bonding in early life.

Till now, we have not addressed the relationship between pre-verbal memories¹ and influences from prenatal life, from former generations and what tradition refers to as former births. From a spiritual perspective and that of our healing, there is likely little difference between early life samskaras and those formed before birth. The indistinctness of karmic and samskaric accretions may be the reason why dealing with the black bag is so daunting: Memories of events before language formation are foggy, and karmic accretions originating in the deep past lack conscious recall. If we resist the black bag, it may be because much of its content is unavailable to ordinary consciousness, though it can present itself as sensation and potent emotionality. The indistinctness of the black bag's contents lends an air of eeriness. Hence coming to know ourselves only comes with a genuine effort to cleave the shadows within. Lao Tsu's admonition comes to mind here:

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing oneself is true wisdom.

Samskaras from the distant past cause us to imagine that they are who we really are. As mental impressions and psychological imprints formed through past experiences, samskaras are embedded in the subconscious. As conditioning, they influence our behaviour and thought patterns, shaping our reactions and perceptions without conscious awareness. They are related to implicit memory in that they store past experiences and influence present behavior without deliberate recollection.²

Bhagavan tells us that whatever comes about in time will pass away in time, meaning actions from early life and beyond are not the Self. Adventitious accumulations appearing in time cannot corrupt the Self, for, according to Bhagavan, the Self is incorruptible.

The popular assumption that whatever comes to us born of past actions is irremediable and cannot be addressed through inquiry would mean that we are stuck with the black bag forever. Bhagavan takes a different approach, even if the message he wrote to his mother seems to align with this more conventional understanding:

Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it.

Many interpret these words of Bhagavan to mean that all things are controlled—absolutely. But did Bhagavan mean that karma is permanent? Bhagavan seems to have had something else in mind. First of all, the 'you' in this line is referring to the ego, not to the Self. Bhagavan comments:

If the agent, upon whom karma depends, namely the ego, which has come into existence between the body and the Self, merges in its source and loses its form, how can the karma, which depends upon it, survive? When there is no 'I' there is no karma.³

Bhagavan's primary concern was with the Self free of karmic accumulations and not with the ego, which for him was an illusion. When he wrote in his message that the Ordainer controls the fate of souls according to their prarabdha karma, he was making an a priori statement, true in any world. After all, the Ordainer ordains, and what is ordained must come to pass—that is what 'ordained' means. Bhagavan tells us that prarabdha means 'already begun' and is that portion of sanchita karma that is already being worked out.⁴ The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad weighs in on this discussion:

You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.

If we change our desire, the whole chain is altered. As for the message to his mother, Bhagavan seems to be saying that what is determined will take place according to deterministic laws. This does not mean that Bhagavan intends his listener to conclude that all things are strictly determined.⁵

Witness the following conversation in the hall between Bhagavan and the Maharani Saheba. The Maharani is operating precisely under this assumption, imagining she is unable to practice Bhagavan's surrender because her karma and destiny prevent it. When Bhagavan tells her, 'Partial surrender is possible for all,' the Maharani asks:

Bhagavan seems clear on karma's adjustability. But why would popular culture view karma as irreversible and fixed?

It could simply be an effort to temper the suffering experienced in earthly life by resignation to and acceptance of it. Such acceptance would aid in surrendering identification with doership. The spiritual usefulness of this approach is obvious. Yet, there are other paths to developing the sense of non-doership whereas this one may have disadvantages. For example, what if this view—and we could call it a fatalist view— were an accommodation of the small self? What if there are times when resignation to conditions may not be called for, such as, for example, when we are acting out egoically? Might such passivity be designed—albeit unconsciously—to preserve and protect the small self?

The fact is nobody wants to deal with the black bag. We are afraid that looking into it would destabilise our lives, affecting relationships, career and self-understanding. We are happy to overcome neurotic impulses, but nevertheless we cling to the security they seem to afford us. The larger the black bag's size, the longer we have neglected it and the less likely we will want to deal with it. The collective conspires with our resistance, tacitly submitting to a social compact that allows for ignoring this cache of samskaras within, normalizing them, as if all were well. Here we recall a familiar truism: nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself. ⁷

Ever the survivor, the small self stops at nothing to ensure its continuance. Neglect of the black bag could thus be seen as denial and avoidance designed to safeguard the status quo of the small self. If Bhagavan referred to the ego as an illusion, a creation of the mind born of personal will, how could we not be complicit in its continuance?

In this connection what if the small self is in part fortified by misplaced survival instincts? No doubt the mammalian survival instinct supports the continuation of life and species preservation through its aversion to threats and pursuit of safety. But what if the human fear of mortality, rooted in the biological imperative to survive, were entangled with a mind-created entity? In other words, what if the ego were only a psychological correlate to the body's instinct to survive?

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein suggested that the 'I' is a product of language. Languages that require a grammatical subject may promote the formation and reinforcement of a personal identity. By repetitive use of the word 'I', we come to assume that the grammatical 'I' has a referent in space and time.⁸ More than a linguistic convenience, however, as the small 'I' gets reified through language, it becomes a cognitive framework, and what might have otherwise been seen as fluid and contextual appears solid and fixed.⁹ In traditional language, this is known as 'superimposition' (adhyasa).¹⁰ In this instance, a linguistically derived entity serving as the agent of personal thought is granted a status that it does not deserve.¹¹

No doubt, the 'I' plays a significant role in human relations, but what if the survival instinct had become enmeshed with the samskaras of the black bag, propping up the perception of solidity? What if salient emotions connected with samskaras of wounding were boosting the sense of fixity and separateness of the small self? In a domain of woundedness and the black bag, confusion is bound to occur.

If the black bag with the Self at its core shapes our identity, it is not surprising that we resist letting go of it. Yet, when seeing the small 'I' as a product of psychological and linguistic constructs, our frame of reference is enlarged and the process of disentangling the 'I' is enabled. In exploring a more profound sense of being, karma is understood to be made up of mere fragments born of past actions and early wounding. Our task then becomes peeling back the layers of accretion through inquiry and bringing the light of awareness to shine on them in order to see them more clearly. Bhagavan comments:

The 'I' casts off the illusion of 'I' and yet remains as 'I'. Such is the paradox of Self-Realization. The realized do not see any contradiction in it. His 'I' renounces the lower 'I' but remains as the higher 'I' which is indivisible.¹²

The notion of karma as permanent and fixed derives from apprehensions about the black bag. But when the black bag's demons are exposed to the light of day, they are discovered to be insubstantial. Bhagavan remarks:

Karmas carry the seeds of their own destruction within themselves.¹³

Earlier we saw how the psychologist R.D. Laing spoke of a fear greater than death: the fear of one's own mind. In that segment, we looked at children's stories that depict a hero battling monsters in a dark cavern or lake to retrieve a precious pearl. This symbolism is relevant for the sadhana of the black bag where the hero is the jiva, the darkness a symbol of what lies hidden within the black bag, and the deep lake or cavern symbols of the subconscious. The monsters represent the black bag's samskaras, and the pearl represents the Heart enfolded in layers of unresolved wounds.

Scary as such work may be, it is doable, Bhagavan tells us, in spite of prevalent assumptions to the contrary:

If the guru has been likened to a mother bird and the sishya to the baby bird inside the unhatched egg, it is the baby bird that must peck first. Only then will the mother bird assist by pecking from the outside. Most of us are like the baby bird confined within the shell of ego but never willing to make the first move.

Our work begins within, patiently examining the fragments of the black bag through inquiry and in daily life. Emerson's words resonate: What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

When overwhelmed by samskaras, noting the presence of unhappy mental states, monitoring them and focusing on the rhythms of the body and breath can lead us back to stillness. When asked if the turmoil of the mind and its distractions can be cast off once for all, Bhagavan replied emphatically:

Yes. Many have done so. Believe it! They did so because they believed they could. Vasanas can be obliterated. It is done by concentration on that which is free from vasanas and yet is their core. ¹⁵

Accepting the black bag as the site of our vasanas involves embracing fragility, recognizing our frailties, and opening to grace. We watch for visaya vasanas of achievement and unconscious desires born of the need to excel outwardly as compensation for inherent feelings of unworthiness.¹⁶ True strength arises in greeting what menaces us. A saint once said, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, and in difficulties. For when I am weak, I am strong.¹⁷

In the state of surrender, we are malleable, ripe for growth, and willing to give ourselves over to the black bag, to look into it honestly so that we might bring about healing. When we start to understand the triggers and patterns that dominate our inner world, gratitude emerges as a refuge amidst the turbulence, shifting our attention from what is lacking in us to what is true and valuable. If it has been said that truth is not an object of possession but rather something one is possessed by,¹⁸ we reject the black bag's logic of ascendency and triumph gained through quantity, acquisition and outwardness in favour of journeying inwardly to embrace Bhagavan's surrender and the truth it promises to uncover.

If we forthrightly question ourselves about what we should be doing but are not doing in respect of our spiritual growth, we will find ourselves in short order doing that very thing—and to great effect. By and by we will cease to be infatuated with quantity as a stand-in for true living, and instead, will relish a life of depth and meaning. We will find ourselves seeking the hidden corners of the heart to ferret out and mend the last vestiges of unforgiveness, resentment, regret, cynicism, acquisitiveness and blame.

By getting to know our black bag, the complexion of things is changed and things appear in a fresher light. If the path of discovery consists not in "seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes," ¹⁹ we come to see the beauty in present conditions, rousing our spirits to challenge our former inaction.

To reach the further shore, merely standing and staring at the water²⁰ will not help us, as has been said. But if we begin to engage with a life that pushes us ever onward, we find that we are no longer able to change our outward circumstances, and so are left with no option but to change ourselves. If such change begins with the black bag, it is because the black bag holds the key to a profounder understanding, and by tackling it, we move, ever so incrementally, a step closer to Bhagavan's simplicity. —

(series concluded)

• 1 The foregoing is adapted from an account written by Dr. Vaidyanathan’s son, V. Arunachalam.
• 2 This selection taken from the ‘Letter to the Editor’ in The Mountain Path, April 1974. p. 133.

• 1Implicit memory is a type of long-term memory that operates unconsciously and enables people to perform tasks without conscious awareness of previous experiences. Pre-verbal memory refers to memories formed before the acquisition of language, typically in infancy. These memories are often implicit, as young children cannot encode experiences linguistically. However, pre-verbal memory is specific to a developmental stage, while implicit memory spans across all ages and includes various non-conscious learning processes
• 2Just as implicit memory guides automatic responses based on prior learning, samskaras subtly direct actions and attitudes, reflecting the cumulative impact of past conditioning on one's psyche. Understanding samskaras offers insight into habitual be-haviors and the subconscious mind's role in shaping identity.
• 3Spiritual Instructions, chap 3, §9 from Collected Works, p. 68.
• 4Talks, §37, §515.
• 5See Saranagati, Nov 2020, p. 10.
• 6Talks, §244; see also Saranagati, April 2023, p. 12.
• 7Ludwig Wittgenstein, the 20th-century Austrian philosopher and mathematician, from his Culture and Value.
• 8That there is awareness of this process in common language is made plain by a simple Sanskrit word like ahamkara (aham mean- ing ‘I,’ + kara meaning ‘making’ = ‘the ‘I-maker’) suggesting that the ‘I’ is constructed and embedded in our cognitive processes.
• 9Among the Shoklang of Brazil, the distinction between ‘self and other’ is not appreciable owing to the simple fact that agency is not emphasized in the Shoklang language. In what linguists call ergativeabsolutive grammatics, action is expressed without reference to an actor: “There was eating”, “there was sleeping”, etc. Though subjective personal pronouns exist in Shoklang, regular usage is only made of the first-person plural, we. (University of Texas, Austin, Dept. of Anthropology); see ‘No Inner, No Outer; Transcending Mind through the Power of Enquiry’, from The Mountain Path, January 2008, p. 18.
• 10 Adhyasa is when the qualities of one entity are mistakenly attributed to another, in other words projected onto unrelated objects or situations, leading to misconceptions and distorted perceptions, in this case, distortions about a mind-generated entity.
• 11In Indo-European languages, the words for 'conceit' (born of the notion of a separate self) and 'concept' (the elemental com­ponents of the thought stream) are etymologically related. For ex­ample, in Pali, māna, usually rendered as 'pride,' is associated with maññati, i.e. to conceive, to imagine, to think; asmi-māna means the pride that says 'I am', and the word 'conceit' straddles both the meanings of 'pride' and 'conception.' Visuddhimagga, footnote 18, p. 361; see also Saranagati, December 2023, p. 12.
• 12Talks, §28.
• 13Talks, §11.
• 14Talks, §290. In the same segment of this series, we recalled the Devi Mahatmyam where Chandi Devi used her long tongue to catch each drop of Raktabij's blood lest one of them touch the ground and sprout a new Raktabij. Because of Raktabij's boon, the Devas were unable to conquer him by conventional means, i.e. by masculine strength and bravery. But Chandi Devi employ­ing archetypally feminine courage fought a different kind of battle: imbibing the blood of her enemy to overcome him. This represents the kind of battle we must fight with the sword of Bhagavan's vichara to clean up the black bag and liberate the Self trapped within it, namely, becoming intimate with the monsters of the Heart through the direct assimilation of them.
• 15Talks, §28. If samskaras are the seeds of experience that shape the subconscious, vasanas are the latent tendencies that arise from them. Samskaras form the foundation, while vasanas are the habitual inclinations that drive the cycle of thought and action.
• 16Here we recall mythic figures like Goethe's Faust who sold his soul in exchange for worldly knowledge or Shakespeare's Pros­pero who lost the dukedom and was exiled from Milan born of preoccupation with developing siddhis (of magic and wizardry).
• 17St. Paul from 2 Cor 12.10.
• 18Swami Abhishiktananda, The Further Shore, pp. 68-69.
• 19 Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust.
• 20The King of Dark Chamber, the drama of Rabindranath Tagore.