Introducing
Arunachala Bhakta Bhagavat
One of the staunchest and most ardent devotees of the sage of Arunachala is Bhagavat Prasad Singh, now known as Arunachala Bhakta Bhagavat. Born on Diwali day in 1912 in the village of Sahuri in Bihar to Sri Giro Roy and his wife, Pancha Devi, Bhagavat Prasad from childhood manifested an intense religious fervour. But that was not unusual in the Roy family, all the members of which were deeply pious. Morning and evening the house rang with readings from the Gita and Ramayana, the songs of Kabir, Surdas and Tulsidas. As the children grew up, the parents sometimes feared that Bhagavat Prasad might one day renounce family life and become a mendicant wandering the earth singing the praises of God.
But even his parents could not read Bhagavat Prasad well for the lad soon began to display a great precocity for secular learning and, to the astonishment of his parents, breezed through school, climbed easily the next higher rungs of education and, on reaching the top, immediately walked into a teacher's job in Darjeeling. He also worked for some years as a journalist in Ujjain and Calcutta.
In Darjeeling, Bhagavat Prasad had an odd experience. He came across Paul Brunton’s book, A Search in Secret India and was spell-bound by the photograph of Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi in it. ‘Could this be my Guru?’ he suddenly asked himself.
For years, while he had been studying, working, there had been growing deep within him a restlessness which had nothing to do with his work but was related to something he could not put his finger on. He suddenly also began to see himself as inexorably moving towards something, some as yet unspecified goal. He could neither control the movement nor define the goal. He seemed to be troubled by a spiritual hunger which cried out to be satisfied. But how? By whom?
The first sight of Maharshi’s photograph had shaken him, thrown him off balance. He could not just then answer the question he asked himself : “Is this my Guru?” But eleven years later, when he was living on a Quaker farm in Worcester, Pennsylvania, the question was answered for him in the affirmative, when Maharshi appeared to him in a dream. This second Darshan, the second sign, as it were, simply swept Bhagavat Prasad off his feet and annihilated his physical personality. In his place rose, as if newly born, Arunachala Bhakta Bhagavat.
It was in 1961 when Bhagavat came to Sri Ramanasramam for the first time that the idea of a Ramana Centre in New York was suggested to him by Arthur Osborne. The suggestion, like all suggestions made in earnest by the devotees who loved the Sage, soon became fact. Thus came into being “Arunachala Ashrama”, Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi Centre Inc. The centre, now fifteen years old, is a place for quiet meditation and exudes an atmosphere of simplicity and warmth.
It has been the experience of Maharshi’s devotees that when a suggestion occurred to them and they transmitted it to the sage they were to consider their duty done and sit back. The quiet conquest of the New World by the Maharshi came about in the same manner. But, in truth, it was not a conquest because nobody lost anything, everybody won!
In 1965, a little over ten years after Bhakta Bhagavat’s dream, an Arunachala Ashrama was inaugurated at 342 East Sixth Street, New York City A year after, it was incorporated in the State of New York.
As has consistently happened at other Ramana Centres established in india and abroad, the New York Ashrama at once attracted many seekers and, in course of time, became a centre for religious and spiritual guidance. In 1971, Matthew and Joan Greenblatt and Dennis Hartel joined the Ashram.
Installing the picture of an Indian guru who had shed his mortal coil twenty years before in a small town in South India, in an Ashrama in New York city, undoubledly called for indomitable faith and courage. But of these Bhakta Bhagavat had aplenty. There were difficulties, of course, but once the Maharshi’s picture was installed, Bhagavat left it to the sage to do the rest. Sure enough, the quiet Ashrama soon began to attract people.
In 1972 a permanent residential Ashrama was built in the peaceful valley of Nova Scotia on the Clarance Road, in Bridgetown, Canada, thanks to the untiring efforts of the Ashrama devotees, Sri Arunachala Ramana Mandiram was inaugurated in April 1975. Some months later Sri Chakra was installed in the temple.
Sri Bhagavat’s active participation in Sri Bhagavan’s Birth Centenary Celebrations is remarkable and praiseworthy. He sent his loyal lieutenants, Matthew and Joan, well in advance to Sri Ramanasramam and made them return to the States only after the completion of the huge task of bringing out A Pictorial Biography of his Master. When the 24-member ‘Ramananjali’ group visited the States and Canada, a penniless Bhagavat saw to it that ‘Ramana Music’ was heard in the Western hemisphere. Though it is his active effort and elaborate arrangements that led to the successful fulfilment of this Centenary commitment, he attributes it all to the blessings of Sri Bhagavan and the co-operation of His devotees!
But Bhakta Bhagavat is still not a contented man. It is not enough for him that a steadily growing number of poeple in the United States have been attracted to the Maharshi. He wants the whole new world to come to know the greatness of his guru. But his problem is how to convey to the world the Maharshi’s message in the language which the Maharshi used? How to spread the language of enlightened silence which is the sage’s mother tongue?
The great teaching of Jesus Christ spread by word of mouth. It took a long, long time but the day did finally come when His name and His gentle, beautiful face came to be known in every corner of the earth. Great spirits like Jesus Christ and Ramana Maharshi are not born, they happen. And while today with all our many means of communication it should be possible to “publicise” Ramana Maharshi very successfully, the real spread of His instruction only be by word of mouth from one enlightened human being to another. And Ramana Himself is always there somewhere near to support His devotees.
Meanwhile, Bhakta Bhagavat’s ambition to tell the world about Ramana Maharshi seems to increase day by day. His resolve now is to establish a temple for the Maharshi on the Fifth Avenue, New York, no less! He is not daunted at all by the magnitude of the project. All he has to have is the Maharshi’s nod or look. He is hopeful that one day it would come. He is prepared to wait. Waiting for the Maharshi is a joy and a blessing!