Papa Ramdas: One Mantra, and Nothing Else

Arunachala, 1922

Among the places he went as a mendicant was Tiruvannamalai, and he went to see Ramana Maharshi.

The account is brief and is the pivot of his life. He asked for instruction. Ramana did not speak. He looked at him.

And Ramdas then went up the hill into a cave and stayed for about three weeks, doing nothing but the mantra.

What he came out saying

That everything was Ram.

Not that everything belongs to Ram, or is made by Ram, or should be offered to Ram. That the tree was Ram, the rock was Ram, the person walking past was Ram, and Ramdas was Ram, and there was nothing anywhere that was not.

And from that point he addressed everybody as Ram, for the rest of his life, and it was not a mannerism: he called every person he met Ram, and animals, and objects, and the accounts have him doing it consistently for forty years.

The wandering

He walked across India for years, with nothing, begging, and the record of it is his own.

In Quest of God, published in 1925, and In the Vision of God, which follows it, are among the best written spiritual autobiographies in English by anybody, and they are unlike almost everything else in this genre for one reason.

They are cheerful.

He is robbed, beaten, thrown out, arrested, mistaken for a madman, left hungry, and made to sleep in the open, and the tone throughout is delighted. Not stoic and not saintly patient. Delighted, because whatever has just happened was also Ram.

And they are funny, which is rarer still.

The third person

And this is the formal feature that puts him next to Anandamayi Ma in this batch.

He does not write I.

Throughout both books and throughout his recorded conversations, he refers to himself as Ramdas. Ramdas went. Ramdas was hungry. Ramdas did not know what to do. Never I.

And Anandamayi Ma said this body for sixty years, which the earlier entry describes.

Two people, unconnected, in different languages, arriving at the same device: remove the first person and see what the sentence does.

Which is a practice anybody can try in an afternoon, and it is uncomfortable, and the discomfort is the information.

What he did not have

It is worth listing, because the list is the argument.

• No lineage. His mantra came from his father in a house, not from a guru in a line
• No philosophical system. He did not produce one, did not want one, and when asked metaphysical questions gave answers that were about the practice
• No Sanskrit training and no textual apparatus
• No sadhana beyond the name. He did not do asana, pranayama, elaborate ritual, or any of the technical disciplines. He said the mantra
• No qualifications of any kind that a traditional teacher would have checked

And what he had was thirteen syllables and forty years.

Mother Krishnabai

1903 to 1989, and she is not a footnote to him.

She was a widow.

Married young, widowed young, with children, in a Karnataka brahmana household, and therefore in exactly the position the Sarada Devi entry in this batch describes: the white cloth, the removed ornaments, the restricted food, the exclusion, and a social position close to invisibility for the rest of a life that had barely started.

She came to Ramdas in 1928.

And what happened afterwards is that she became a spiritual authority in her own right, had her own realisation which the tradition treats as complete, and was regarded by Ramdas himself as his equal in attainment and said so.

And she built the place.

Anandashram

Founded in 1931 at Kanhangad in Kerala, and Krishnabai ran it: the buildings, the kitchen, the finances, the discipline, the people, the daily order, and the practical existence of an institution that Ramdas had no interest in administering.

She is called Mataji and the ashram's own accounts are clear that without her there would not have been an ashram.

Which is the same division of labour the Madhavdeva entry describes, with the difference that here the organiser was a widow with no standing whom the surrounding society had written off.

Akhanda nama

The unbroken name.

At Anandashram the mantra is chanted continuously, around the clock, in relay, and has been for decades.

Which is the physical expression of the whole teaching: not a session, not an hour, not a practice fitted into a schedule, but a sound that does not stop while people come and go from it.

A visitor can walk into it at any hour.

What the ashram is like

Plain, and this is worth saying after everything the previous batches have had to warn about.

Anandashram does not sell initiation, does not price darshan, does not run graded courses with escalating fees, and does not require anybody to be anything before arriving.

Accommodation and food are provided at a nominal charge or free. The daily order is chanting, some readings, meals and silence. The mantra is given to anybody who asks and there is no fee and no ceremony required.

Which is what the whole of Papa's position implies, because a teaching whose entire content is that a father can hand a son a line in a kitchen cannot then charge for it.

Who came

Western seekers came in numbers from the 1950s, and his books, being in English and being readable, travelled.

And Yogi Ramsuratkumar, later of Tiruvannamalai, received the Ram nam mantra from Papa Ramdas at Anandashram in 1947 and treated him as his father in the tradition, which puts a line from Kanhangad back to the hill where Ramdas had sat in the cave.

Papa died on 25 July 1963 at Anandashram. Krishnabai continued for another twenty six years and died in 1989. Their samadhis are there.

The mantra

Om Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram.

Thirteen syllables. His father gave him the second part and he put the Om in front.

What is required to start

Nothing.

No initiation, no teacher, no permission, no fee, no ritual purity, no caste, no gender requirement, no diet, no prior practice, no belief that you already have to hold.

This is the entire practical point of Papa Ramdas and it is why he is the last entry in this batch. After seven entries about lineages, qualifications, institutions, succession disputes and who is entitled to what, here is a man whose whole method was a line his father said to him in a difficult year, available to anybody who reads this sentence.

How to do it

One. Say it out loud when you can and silently when you cannot.

Out loud is easier and works better at the start, because the mouth holds attention that the mind will not.

Two. Attach it to something you already do.

The commute. The walk. The washing up. Waiting. The pockets of the day when nothing is being asked of your attention are the material, and there are more of them than people think.

Three. Use beads if they help and do not if they do not.

A mala of a hundred and eight gives a count and a shape. It also turns the practice into a task with a target, which suits some people and defeats others. Papa's own emphasis was continuity rather than count.

Four. Expect it to stop and start it again.

You will forget for six hours. Then you will remember. The remembering is the practice, and a person who has restarted a thousand times is doing it correctly, and the only failure is deciding that having stopped means you are not the kind of person who does this.

Five. Do not wait for it to feel like anything.

For a long time it will feel like saying words. That is normal, it was normal for him, and the accounts of his own early years describe exactly that.

What he claimed happens

That the name goes on by itself.

That after enough of it the repetition stops requiring you to start it, continues underneath sleep and conversation, and eventually the distinction between the one saying it and the name being said stops being obvious.

And then the thing he came out of the cave saying: that the name and what it names and everything else are the same, and Ram is what you have been looking at all along.

A reader is free to treat that as a claim to be tested rather than a doctrine to be accepted, which is how he presented it: he told people to do it and see.

The one caution

Everything is Ram is a sentence that can be used against you.

A person who has arrived at it through decades of practice, from inside, about their own life, is describing something.

The same sentence said to somebody else, about their situation, is an instruction to accept it.

And it gets used that way: it is God's will, it is all Ram, this is what has been given to you, and the person saying it is usually not the one absorbing the harm.

Papa's own conduct is the correction. He fed people. Krishnabai ran a working institution that housed and cared for the sick and the poor. Neither of them responded to somebody else's difficulty by explaining that it was Ram.

If somebody is quoting divine will at you to keep you in a marriage that is hurting you, a job that is destroying you, or an arrangement that benefits them: women's helpline 181, police 112, free legal aid 15100, Tele MANAS 14416.

Where to go

• Anandashram, Kanhangad, Kasaragod district, Kerala, about ninety minutes from Mangalore, with the samadhis of Papa and Krishnabai and the continuous chanting
• Nityanandashram, the nearby cave temple complex at Kanhangad
• Arunachala, Tiruvannamalai, where the cave was and where Ramana is, and the entry earlier in this batch covers it

What to read

• In Quest of God, which is short, and is the one to start with
• In the Vision of God
• Thus Speaks Ramdas and the collections of his replies
• Guru's Grace by Krishnabai, which is her own account

A daily practice from this entry

• Om Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram, in the gaps, without a target
• And the Ramdas experiment, which takes one afternoon: describe your own day in the third person and notice what happens to the complaints

Who: Swami Ramdas, called Papa, born Vittal Rao on 10 April 1884 at Hosdurg, now Kanhangad, in Kasaragod district, Kerala, to a Saraswat brahmana family, and died there on 25 July 1963. He trained in textile technology at the Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute in Bombay, worked in the cotton industry, and then started his own ventures, which failed repeatedly, so that by the early 1920s he was in real financial difficulty with debts and no prospects. He married Rukmabai and they had a daughter, Ramabai.

The mantra: in the middle of that, his father gave him Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram. There was no initiation ceremony anybody records, no lineage, no fee and no qualification: a father in a household under financial strain handed his struggling son a line to say. He said it continuously, at work, walking and lying awake, until it was running underneath everything rather than being done at a time.

1922: he put on ochre, took the name Ramdas and walked out with nothing. He had a wife and a young daughter and he left them. The tradition's account is that he obtained Rukmabai's consent and that relatives took on the household, both of which may be true, and Rukmabai and Ramabai did later come to the ashram with Ramabai taking sannyasa there. The plain description is also that a man in debt walked away from his dependents, and both belong in the record. In India a wife and children have a legal right to maintenance which does not depend on anybody's consent or spiritual condition: maintenance can be claimed in a magistrate's court in a summary proceeding designed to be quick, the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act 1956 provides for a wife's maintenance and the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 provides monetary relief and residence orders, free legal aid is a statutory right on NALSA 15100, and the women's helpline is 181.

Arunachala: as a mendicant he went to Tiruvannamalai and asked Ramana Maharshi for instruction, and Ramana did not speak but looked at him. Ramdas then spent about three weeks in a cave on the hill doing nothing but the mantra, and came out saying that everything was Ram: not that everything belongs to Ram but that the tree was Ram, the rock was Ram, the person walking past was Ram and Ramdas was Ram. From then on he addressed every person, animal and object as Ram, consistently, for forty years.

The books: In Quest of God, 1925, and In the Vision of God are among the best written spiritual autobiographies in English by anybody, and they are unlike the genre because they are cheerful. He is robbed, beaten, thrown out, arrested, mistaken for a madman and left hungry, and the tone throughout is delighted rather than stoic, because whatever had just happened was also Ram. And he never writes I: throughout both books and his recorded conversations he refers to himself as Ramdas, which puts him next to Anandamayi Ma, who said this body for sixty years, two unconnected people in different languages arriving at the same device.

What he did not have: no lineage, since his mantra came from his father in a house rather than a guru in a line; no philosophical system, which he neither produced nor wanted; no Sanskrit training or textual apparatus; no sadhana beyond the name, with no asana, pranayama or elaborate ritual; and no qualifications a traditional teacher would have checked. What he had was thirteen syllables and forty years.

Krishnabai: 1903 to 1989, married young and widowed young with children, and therefore in exactly the position the Sarada Devi entry describes. She came to Ramdas in 1928, became a spiritual authority in her own right with a realisation the tradition treats as complete, was regarded by Ramdas as his equal and said to be so by him, and she built and ran Anandashram, founded in 1931 at Kanhangad: the buildings, kitchen, finances, discipline and daily order of an institution Ramdas had no interest in administering.

Anandashram: the mantra is chanted continuously around the clock in relay and has been for decades, which is the physical form of the whole teaching. The ashram does not sell initiation, price darshan, run graded courses with escalating fees or require anybody to be anything before arriving, and accommodation and food are nominal or free, which is what Papa's position implies, since a teaching whose content is that a father can hand a son a line in a kitchen cannot then charge for it. Yogi Ramsuratkumar received the mantra there in 1947.

The practice: Om Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram, requiring no initiation, teacher, permission, fee, purity, caste, gender, diet or prior belief. Say it aloud when you can and silently when you cannot, attach it to the commute and the washing up and the waiting, use beads only if they help, expect to forget for six hours and treat the remembering as the practice, and do not wait for it to feel like anything. And one caution: everything is Ram, said by somebody who arrived at it through decades of practice about their own life, is a description; the same sentence said to somebody else about their situation is an instruction to accept it, and it is used that way by people who are not the ones absorbing the harm. Papa fed people and Krishnabai ran an institution that housed and cared for the sick, and neither responded to somebody else's difficulty by explaining that it was Ram.