The Aham Sphurana series
From the Aham Sphurana Manuscript Open Sky Press is publishing a carefully edited trilogy — each volume focusing on a pillar of Bhagavan’s teaching, while also offering an intimate glimpse of Ashram life in 1936.
Selections were first shared on John David’s website blog and on a special Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi page; over time they were refined into the books. Initially only one-on-one teaching dialogues were chosen — then it became clear that Gajapathi’s reporting of daily life around Bhagavan also held valuable practical teachings.
From Vichara · Self Enquiry
Sri Gajapathi Aiyyer
There has not been discovered any confirmed photo of Sri Gajapathi in the Ashram archive. However, this interesting photo from 1936 was for a long time on display in the Ramana Ashram dining room.
In Vichara, Sri Gajapathi’s story is given a larger focus. Beyond his remarkable English, he was also a gifted teacher. He kept careful nightly notes of meetings in the Hall. Those notebooks became the heart of the manuscript later titled Aham Sphurana [“I”-Pulsation]. Of his six-month stay, only three months of the diary have survived.
How Gajapathi met Bhagavan
Swami Rajeshwarananda — later the friend who saved the diaries from being burned — tells of a young man who lost his parents early. Grief left him wary of fate and order. Raised by relatives, he fell into difficult company, then into a severe illness that left him barely able to eat.
One day, sacred ash [thiruneer] from Tiruvannamalai was quietly mixed into his drink. That night he dreamed of a yogi in a simple loin cloth [koupeenam], deep in practice [tapas] in a cave on a mountainside. Thinking of the yogi brought tears to his eyes. When he recovered, his family urged him to visit the Annamalaiyar Temple and give thanks.
As the train neared Tiruvannamalai, he recognised Arunachala as the mountain of his dream. Enquiries led him to Sri Ramana Ashram. At their first meeting, Bhagavan’s glance touched something deep in him; he would not leave. He asked for spiritual initiation [diksha] — and, against his family’s hopes for a conventional life, was allowed to stay for six months. From that day, he said, love for the Master was his only practice [sadhana].
Oh! No. The moment I came here and Bhagavan looked at me, I forgot all about myself. Now I think only of Bhagavan, who is already a Jnani [Self-realised sage]. So for whom am I to ask Jnana [spiritual knowledge]?
Bhagavan: The secret of Jnana [spiritual knowledge] is bhakti [devotion]. Unselfish Love — motiveless, incessant, intransigent Love — is the key that unlocks the Gate of the Heart once and for all.
Love as his only practice
In his own words, those six months and thereafter he followed only one practice: love for the Master — the same as quietly setting aside personal will so that Bhagavan’s will could take over.
He did not display any siddhis [spiritual powers] except this one: he made me fall in love with him… Here, there are no thoughts, only effortless awareness of being, which surges up to swallow the thought-making faculty whole… and thereafter remains by itself shining as Blissful Love.
Three or four days after arriving he felt a “meaningless desire” to write down the conversations in the Hall. When he did so, he stayed immersed in that current of love; when he resisted, misery returned. He often slept only two hours a night — yet, he writes, his Master saw to his health. He left with a tearful farewell on 31st December 1936, notebooks in hand.
Saved from the fire
After leaving the Ashram he married, studied law, and later practised as an advocate. In 1948, while packing to move to Madras, he meant to burn a heap of old papers. Swami Rajeshwarananda noticed the Ashram notebooks and stopped him — saying gently that if writing them without permission was one offence, destroying them in secret would be a second.
In December 1948 they brought a trunk of red-rexine hardbound notebooks to Bhagavan. He went through them patiently and smiled: “See, how nicely the child has written everything!” When Gajapathi feared the notes might mislead others, Bhagavan answered that someone may have the same doubts — and that there is a destiny guiding the course of events.
A rare last meeting
On the afternoon of 31st December 1948, before Gajapathi returned to Madras, Bhagavan invited him to a rare private meeting in the Hall. What followed was a profound and intimate exchange — which John David, in the editorial notes to Vichara, gently surmises may have been a glimpse of Self-realisation, or a moment of it.
Naming Aham Sphurana
Asked to suggest a title for the combined synopsis, Gajapathi chose Aham Sphurana [“I”-Pulsation], because Bhagavan taught that this state of consciousness is the doorway to final Realisation. He and Swami Rajeshwarananda hoped the teachings would endure for the whole of mankind.
He signed the completed manuscript in Madras, December 1950. A family letter later records that someone called Gajapathi Aiyyer died in a freak accident in his early forties — less than a year after Bhagavan’s Mahasamadhi [passing of a realised sage]. Part of the original material was later lost in a flood at the family home; Athreya, a Bhagavan devotee in Chennai, later typed and shared what remained, including pages from the original notebooks.
Drawn from John David’s Introduction and the author chapter in Vichara · Self Enquiry.
