From “The Mountain Path” Published by Sri Ramana Ashram Tiruvamanalai India, Spring 1993

I was born on January 21, 1928, in Manhattan, New York. From the very beginning, as far back as I can remember, when I was in my crib, a little man with a grey beard, white hair, about two feet tall, would appear before me at the other end of the crib, and speak gibberish to me. Of course, being a child, I didn’t understand anything he said. I thought this was normal, that everybody had this experience.

When I was about five or six years old, I told my parents about it. They thought I was playing games. I told my friends, and they laughed at me. So I stopped saying anything about it. The visitations stopped when I was about seven. My father died and all of a sudden the little man stopped coming to me.

I asked my mother, “What am I doing here? I don’t belong here.” I didn’t understand what I was saying, but I felt that I was out of place. My mother thought I was crazy, and so did a lot of other people. She took me to a doctor. The doctor told her that it would go away.

Something very interesting happened. Whenever I wanted anything, a candy bar or a toy, I would say God’s name three or four times and somebody would bring it to me or it would come from somewhere.

Once, I wanted to play the violin. My mother told me that it would be too hard for me to play, so she wouldn’t buy me one. I said, “God, God, God,” and a few hours later my uncle appeared, whom I hadn’t seen for about five years. He had thought I needed a violin and brought me one. This went on and on while I was going to school.

When I was at school, I never really fit in because I was always daydreaming. I never used to study. When we had a test I would say, “God, God, God,” and the answers would come.

When I was fourteen, a strange phenomenon occurred. I was in my junior high school class. There were about 35 children. The teacher’s name was Mrs. Riley. She weighed about 300 pounds, and when she got angry she used to jump up and down. So, of course, we used to make her angry [laughter]. I would borrow a bobby pin from a girl. There was a hinge in the back of the seat. I would stick the bobby pin in the hinge and twang it, and she would go crazy. She didn’t know where the noise was coming from and she’d jump up and down — a very interesting phenomenon [laughter].

Anyway, it was the end of term and we were taking our final test. It was mathematics. I never studied it, so I didn’t know anything. I said, “God, God, God.” Instead of the answers coming, the room filled with light, a thousand times more brilliant than the sun. It was like an atomic bomb but it was not a burning light. It was a beautiful, bright, shining, warm glow. Just thinking of it now makes me stop and wonder.

The whole room, everybody, everything was immersed in light. All the children seemed to be myriad particles of light. I found myself melting into radiant being, into consciousness. I merged into consciousness. It was not an out-of-body experience. This was completely different. I realized that I was not my body. What appeared to be my body was not real.

I went beyond the light into pure, radiant consciousness. I became omnipresent. My individuality merged into pure absolute bliss. I expanded. I became the universe. The feeling is indescribable. It was total bliss, total joy.

The next thing I remembered was the teacher shaking me. All the students had gone. I was the only one left in the class. I returned to human consciousness. That feeling has never left me.

Q&A Sections

Q: What score did you get on the math test? [Laughter]
R: [Laughs] Zero. I didn’t take it.

Q: When you first saw Ramana Maharshi, did he remind you of the person you had communication with as a baby?
R: Definitely, yes.

Q: Did you speak of this later with him?
R: No, I never did. We just smiled at each other. I had some personal conversation with him, but even at the end of 1947, he was sick. He couldn’t walk very well — he had a cane — and had to be assisted by his devotees.

From Sri Maharshi in Supplement to Forty Verses, 1:
“By association with the Sages attachment (to material things) is removed. When this is removed, the attachment of the mind also vanishes. Those who have got rid of their attachment of mind become one with That which is motionless. They become Liberated even while alive. Seek their company.”