Panch Pandav Cave

(i) Unity of Religions

Panch Pandav Cave is on the Kadri hill at a distance of two miles from Mangalore town. Of the six caves on this hill the one occupied by Ramdas was the largest. It is so situated that at dawn the sun’s rays pierced straight through the darkness inside the cave flooding it with their golden effulgence. He remained in this cave for nearly three months. He was then clad in a coarse khaddar cloth, and used for asan and bed a bare deerskin. A tiny earthen dish with cotton wick and cocoanut oil served the purpose of a lamp. Added to these, a copper water pot comprised his equipment in that solitary retreat. His diet consisted of milk and plantains twice a day.

During the day he had a stream of visitors from the town and other parts of the district. They would take unfeigned delight in listening to the story of his travels and experiences in the course of a year’s absence. The visitors were drawn from all castes and creeds. Hindus, Christians and Muhammadans, all alike, vied with each other in granting him the joy of their company. Itinerant sadhus and sannyasins would also bless him with their visits.

He discoursed with the Hindus upon the one supreme Brahman as the sole cause of creation, preservation and destruction. This great Reality has incarnated in India and other parts of the world in different ages to subdue evil and establish the rule of love and righteousness. Rama, Krishna, Buddha, the great rishis, mahatmas and saints point to the one goal as the highest aim of life, viz. liberation and union with God. Human life is solely intended for attaining this blessed state. The supreme Lord is seated in the hearts of all beings and creatures. He is absolute existence, consciousness and bliss – Satchidananda. You can realise Him through one-pointed devotion and complete self-surrender. The initial step on the path to this goal is purity and control of mind which is acquired through concentration. An easy method for concentration is constant repetition of the divine Name and performance of all actions as a sacrifice to the Lord. You may call God by any name – Rama, Krishna, Shiva or any other name you hold dear. The Name Himself is Brahman. The reiteration of the Name coupled with the meditation on the attributes of God purifies the mind. Prayers, hymns and fasting are necessary aids. You must develop the divine qualities of compassion, peace and forgiveness. God reveals Himself in that heart in which these ennobling virtues reside. Now the divine light shining within you dissolves the ego-sense, and your identity with the Godhead is realised. This experience grants you the knowledge of immortality. Thereafter, you dwell in a divine consciousness and your vision becomes universalised, bringing you supreme peace and ecstasy. Now it is that you behold the whole universe as the very expression of God whom you have discovered within you. Now God is everywhere for you, in everybody and everything. This transcendent vision unlocks the infinite fountain of love in your heart – a love that fills and embraces the entire cosmos. All distinctions now disappear in the equality of this vision. This supreme state of beatitude bestows on you liberation and immortal joy. Believe that incarnations or divine teachers like Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Zoroaster and others are also manifestations of the same great Truth. Verily all the different religions are so many paths that lead mankind to the one universal God.

To the Muhammadans, Ramdas would speak of Allah, Muhammad. Allah means the almighty. Islam signifies the way to peace. God is indeed all power and peace. Prophet Muhammad established Islam among the warring and ignorant tribes of Arabia so as to awaken in them the spirit of peace, love and brotherhood. He taught the way to reach Allah – the almighty. How to obtain Him? He says, “Surrender your will to Allah’s will. Have full faith in His omnipotence and understand that everything happens by His will.” Self-surrender is the path pointed out by Muhammad. He emphasised that surrender comes only through perfect self-control by prayer and fasting. He enjoins upon his followers to say Namaz or prayers at least five times a day. This communion would keep them in continued recollection of God, forming a strong basis for a life of purity and peace. Conditions for this attainment are: practice of love, compassion and kindness to all fellow-beings. He held that they should exercise toleration towards other faiths which also take the aspiring souls towards God. His dictum is really this: there should be no compulsion in religion. He laid specific stress upon charity, sincerity, honesty and fellow-feeling. He preached that unity born of self-sacrifice and mutual love makes you recognize the oneness and omnipotence of God. To realise unity amongst mankind is to dwell in the one God – in the mansion of eternal power and peace, and to earn everlasting life.

To the Christians, Ramdas would say: To have faith in Christ means to accept him as your ideal. Your sole aim should be to attain the Christ-ideal and to live up to his pure and selfless life. Let the thought of Christ-ideal possess your very soul and inspire your life and its activities. Christ is an embodiment of divine love. He defines God as love, and this truth he has come to prove in his life. What is the nature of the love he enunciates? It is a mingled perfume of meekness, purity and mercy. Blessed is he who is filled with the fragrance of love, because he will then be a true and accepted child of God – love of God has become manifest in him. He exhorts: Love one another and God dwelleth in you. It is this supreme love that converts you into the image of God. This supreme love enables you to enter into the kingdom of eternal happiness. The kingdom of heaven is nothing but a blissful consciousness which is born of everlasting life. He reveals the secret of this kingdom when he says: “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” The Father and the Son are one. Identification with the Son is identification with the Father. Father is eternal peace manifest as the Son – the infinite love. So your life should be ruled by Christ, that is love. Then he leads you to the realm of the Father, the absolute peace. Do not think that Christ is the only way to salvation. Great souls have been, long before Christ, holding aloft the torch of divine knowledge for the illumination of the world. Christ held humility as the highest virtue; love and sympathy for all alike as the criterion of conduct; and resignation to the will of God as the means for the attainment of the kingdom of heaven or everlasting life and peace.

Ramdas does not belong to any particular creed. He firmly believes that all creeds, faiths and religions are different paths which ultimately converge to the same goal. The very sight of a Muhammadan reminds him of Muhammad; of a Christian, Jesus Christ; of a Hindu, Rama, Krishna or Shiva; and of a Buddhist, Buddha; of a Parsi, Zoroaster. All the great teachers of the world are from one God – the first eternal cause of all existence. Whether it be in the Gita or the Bible or the Koran or the Zend Avesta, we find the same note insistently ringing, viz., self-surrender is the supreme way to liberation or salvation.

(ii) Service of God

Reverting to the mode of life Ramdas was leading in the cave, he would rise at about three o’clock early morning and run down directly to the water tanks for bath. Though the path to the tanks was rough and risky, he would not forego his morning dip even in the darkest night. After bath he would sit in Asan for meditation till day-break. For some days his meditation consisted of only the mental repetition of Ram-mantram. Then the mantram having stopped automatically, he beheld a small circular light before his mental vision. This yielded him thrills of delight. This experience having continued for some days, he felt a dazzling light like lightning, flashing before his eyes, which ultimately permeated and absorbed him. Now an inexpressible transport of bliss filled every pore of his physical frame. When this state was coming on, he would at the outset become oblivious of his hands and feet and then gradually his entire body. Lost in this trance-state he would sit for two to three hours. Still a subtle awareness of external objects was maintained in this state.

Some friends would pay him visits early in the morning when he was absorbed in the trance, and he had at the time a hazy recognition of their presence. He could hear sounds of talk, if any, mere sounds without sense or meaning for him. Whenever he fell into the trance he would feel its grip so firmly that he could not easily shake it off. At the longest it would not last more than three hours. After returning to body-consciousness he would be engaged in singing to himself some hymns glorifying God, and also in the loud recitation of the mantram. In fact, except when conversing, reading or writing, he used to utter the mantram ceaselessly throughout the day.

The trance experience brought about another change, viz., sleep thereafter became a state of half-wakefulness or awareness during which he was filled with pure ecstasy. Sometimes, at dead of night, a friend would pay him a surprise visit. Although Ramdas was in the trance-state, he could know the friend’s approach even when he was yet a furlong from the cave. It was during this time that Ramdas, as willed by the Lord, devoted two hours past midnight to the work of writing the book “In Quest of God”. The last days in the cave also saw the trance condition encroaching upon the hours of the day while no visitors were present. The utterance of the mantram would stop of itself and he would transcend the body-consciousness. Here a unique experience is worthy of note. One morning he was standing inside the cave gazing on the golden orb of the rising sun, and he felt the trance stealing over him and very soon he was entirely absorbed in it. Some time passed and he came back to the body-idea. A casual downward glance disclosed to his view a serpent coiled round his right leg. Its forked tongue was briskly licking his big toe. Ramdas was not affected by the sight. In the same motionless posture he watched the loving attention of the serpent. A minute or two thus passed and the reptile slowly unwound itself and crept out of the cave. He recollects to have addressed it thus: “O beloved Ram, why art thou in such a hurry to go?” The Lord’s lila is really wonderful. All forms are His and He plays in various ways. The serpent friend conceived such a great love for Ramdas that it would come to see him every morning consecutively for three days after which it stopped away for good.

In accordance with a distinct command from the Lord within, he observed a vow of silence for seven days. Despite the pressure of friends he could not break it before the fixed time. For, he felt he was quite helpless in the matter. Surely, God had complete mastery over His servant.

Ramdas had noted a batch of lepers underneath the banyan trees in the Mangalore maidan. One of the lepers, whose disease was in an advanced state, was conveyed every day in a hand-cart by a small stout lad for alms from door to door. The face of this leper was so much disfigured by the fell disease that his features were quite indistinguishable. His whole face was one big sore – red and dripping with pus. His eyelids, nose and lips had all been eaten by the disease.

As commissioned by the Lord, Ramdas undertook to feed these lepers at noon. The kind visitors to the cave condescended to offer food for them. On collecting food from three houses a day, he would go to the maidan reaching at about one o’clock in the afternoon and feed them. The leper who had the worst attack came in for service first. His toes and fingers also having fallen a prey to leprosy, he could with great difficulty raise the food to his mouth.

While he was engaged in eating, Ramdas would be busy in driving away the flies that were settling on his face which at other times he covered with a piece of cloth. Ramdas had also to rub off gently the stream of pus coursing down his cheeks into his mouth. The remaining food would then be distributed to the boy and other lepers. The Lord put him to this service for about two months. All the time, far from feeling any weariness or repugnance, he performed the task in a spirit of enthusiasm surcharged with an objectless ecstasy. A few days before he bid adieu to the cave, the feeding work was suddenly stopped by the command of the Lord. O Lord, Thou feedest all Thy creatures in Thy own inscrutable ways, Ramdas is but an instrument in Thy omnipotent hands.

Soon after the feeding of the lepers had ended, a Malayali, that is, a native of Malabar, came to stay with Ramdas in the cave for a few days. He was so emaciated that he was only skin and bones. Ramdas thanked God for his having given him another opportunity to serve Him in the form of this skeleton-bodied Malayali. Ramdas scarcely found this friend in a talkative mood. The only expression that was now and again issuing from his lips in a weak voice was “Krishna, Sharan, Sharan”. Ramdas would both at noon and in the evening run down to the city and by begging collect food to feed this welcome guest. O Lord, Thy manifestations are most marvellous. The lepers and the Malayali that he served are Thyself in those forms. The entire universe is Thy Self-revelation in which Thou art manifest in a variety of masks. Thou art the one absolute Truth, birthless and deathless; pure Satchidananda, eternal existence, knowledge and bliss.

Amongst the daily visitors mention has also to be made of a goat and a cow. Both would appear at the cave regularly for their share of plantains. The goat played with Ramdas with great familiarity. He would dance on his seat and sometimes climb on his shoulders. The cow on the other hand would quietly come to the entrance and with outstretched neck receive a plantain and then walk away.

(iii) Young Aspirants

The kind mother – Ramdas’ wife in his old life – was laid up with fever for some days owing to the strain of the journey by steamboat while accompanying him from Hubli to Mangalore. He was visiting her once in every two or three days until she recovered. During one of the visits, the reputed saint of Puttur – Krishnarao was in the house. He came to where Ramdas sat beside the ailing mother. At the sight of him, Ramdas prostrated at his feet. He sat down.

“Was it necessary that you should have entirely renounced the householder’s life and taken up the diksha of sannyas?” he asked.

“Ram willed it so. Ramdas could not help it.” Ramdas replied.

“Your Ram must then be wonderful. May I know where He is?” he questioned.

“He is residing in the hearts of us all, because He is all-pervading.” Ramdas rejoined.

“I cannot see Him. How can we know that it is His will that guides us?” he asked again.

“He is invisible to the ordinary eye, but can be seen through a purified vision,” Ramdas said. “Only when you see Him, you realise that it is His will that directs your actions. Freedom from attachment and complete surrender to Him are the conditions of this supreme vision.”

“I cannot fully understand what you say,” Krishnarao persisted. “I believe that worldly life need not be abandoned in order to realise God.”

“True,” Ramdas replied. “Ramdas still belongs to the world, not in a partial sense but in totality. His Beloved is not only in particular persons but is discovered to be residing, in all His power and glory, in all beings, creatures and things.”

Here the conversation ended, and Ramdas left the house and returned to the cave.

One day at about five o’ clock in the evening, a Saraswat lad of 14 years of age, who was an occasional visitor to the cave, dropped in. He was in tears. With an outburst of anguish he exclaimed:

“Rama, I will in future always dwell with you. I am not going to give you up. I desire to dedicate my life to Ram Nam.”

“Ram,” Ramdas advised him, “you cannot remain here. Your parents will be anxious about you. Go back to them.”

“I have nothing to do with parents, house and the world. You are my all in all,” the lad said, “I will go on repeating the holy Name in your society.”

“You can do the same in your house,” Ramdas suggested. “It is not necessary that you should stop with him for uttering the Name.”

“No,” he said, “I cannot take the Name in our house. I am forced to go to school for which I have conceived a disgust.”

“Where is the harm in attending school?” Ramdas asked.

“Oh! I have had enough of it. I fell into the society of certain boys who always indulged in unchaste talks, and my mind got terribly distracted. I will never again step into a school.”

“In that case,” Ramdas replied, “you may not attend school but remain pure by practising devotion at home. You are too young to take the proposed step without consulting your parents. Be guided by them. They mean always well. Only do not give up taking the holy name. Trust Him whose Name you are uttering. Avoid the company of boys who defile your mind.”

“Don’t ask me to go back. My father, mother, teacher and all are yourself.” Saying thus the boy entered the interior of the cave and, taking his position in a dark nook, went on with Ram-Japa. Ramdas going up to him told him again to return to the city as it was growing dark. For some time he stood firm and would not yield, but at last agreed to go back to his parents. The night having come on, it was now quite dark. So Ramdas offered to escort him to his house which lay in the precincts of a temple in the city.

While descending the hill with the lad Ramdas met a friend with a lantern coming to invite him for a kirtan party in the house of his master. Ramdas handing the boy to his charge asked the friend to take him to his house. Ramdas proceeded to attend the kirtan party.

A few days later, another young man, a Kanarese Brahman just out of his teens, walked in at dusk and proposed to throw in his lot with Ramdas. Here again the school life had driven him from home, relations and friends. This young man was thoroughly stubborn and refused to return to his friends in spite of Ramdas’ utmost efforts. He remained for the night. He would disappear for the day, wandering aimlessly on the extensive tract of the Kadri hill and regain the cave in the night. He did not care for food. Ramdas would share with him what little food he was getting which consisted of but a small quantity of milk and a few plantains. For about a week the young man continued to live a life of an apathetic recluse. For the last night of his stay he stopped away, but turned up early the following morning, his clothes soiled with the brown stains of the earth. He said that he spent the night in the open on the hill, lying down on bare ground.

At noon a party of four men arrived at the cave. These were the young man’s friends. His parents lived in a village, and he was in Mangalore for his studies. His friends asked him to go with them but he refused point-blank to do so. Then they appealed to Ramdas to advise him. Ramdas assured them that he had used all his powers of persuasion to induce him to return to his house but he had failed. However, he called the young man by his side and resting his hand on his shoulders said: “Ram, don’t cause any further sorrow and pain to your parents. Do please go back.” Strange as it would appear, the young man now obeyed and left with the friends who had come in search of him.

(iv) The True Vision: Samadarshan

For two years from the time of the significant change which had come over him, Ramdas had been prepared to enter into the very depths of his being for the realisation of the immutable, calm and eternal spirit of God. Here he had to transcend name, form, thought and will – every feeling of the heart and faculty of the mind. The world had then appeared to him as a dim shadow – a dreamy nothing. The vision then was mainly internal. It was only for the glory of the Atman in His pristine purity, peace and joy as an all-pervading, immanent, static, immortal and glowing spirit.

In the earlier stages this vision was occasionally lost, pulling him down to the old life of diversity with its turmoil of like and dislike, joy and grief. But he would be drawn in again into the silence and calmness of the spirit. A stage was soon reached when this dwelling in the spirit became a permanent and unvarying experience with no more falling off from it, and then a still exalted state came on; his hitherto inner vision projected outwards. First a glimpse of this new vision dazzled him off and on. This was the working of divine love. He would feel as though his very soul had expanded like the blossoming of a flower and, by a flash as it were, enveloped the whole universe embracing all in a subtle halo of love and light. This experience granted him a bliss infinitely greater than he had in the previous state. Now it was that Ramdas began to cry out “Ram is all, it is He as everybody and everything.” This condition was for some months coming on and vanishing. When it wore away, he would instinctively run to solitude. When it was present, he freely mixed in the world preaching the glory of divine love and bliss. With this externalised vision started Ramdas’ mission. Its fullness and magnificence was revealed to him during his stay in the Kadri cave, and here the experience became more sustained and continuous. The vision of God shone in his eyes and he would see none but Him in all objects. Now wave after wave of joy rose in him. He realised that he had attained to a consciousness, full of splendour, power and bliss.

Ramdas gave up the cave and set forth once again on a wandering life. He gave a touch of the inexpressible bliss he was enjoying to all who came in contact with him. Vast crowds thronged around him wherever he went. Divine love thrilled his entire being at the sight of big multitudes. In a state of perfect ecstasy he delivered himself out in accents of love and joy.