1870 - 1929 · Tiruvannamalai
The elder light of Arunachala
Before Ramana was known, another god-intoxicated saint already wandered the streets of Tiruvannamalai — Seshadri Swamigal, who arrived at the holy mountain as a young man and spent forty years there in states the townspeople could neither predict nor doubt. Tradition lovingly records that it was he who first looked after the silent boy newly arrived from Madurai — the future Ramana Maharshi — earning him the name of elder brother in the lore of Arunachala.
He saw the divine indiscriminately — in temple images, in animals, in passersby — and behaved accordingly, to the frequent bewilderment of shopkeepers. His scattered recorded counsel returns to one theme: see God in everything, and the mind's knots untie themselves.
From his way, a practice anyone can begin: for one hour a day, deliberately regard every being you encounter as a form of the divine, and act accordingly. What he lived in ecstasy can be practiced in discipline — and the discipline, his tradition holds, invites the ecstasy.
