Treasure Trove of Sri Bhagavan’s Grace
A. Bose
Aravinda Bose was a scientist, an inventor and an industrialist. After his higher education in Germany, he returned to India and started a factory in Bangalore for manufacturing batteries for automobiles and industries, under the brand name “Amco Batteries”. It was the first factory of its kind in the whole of Asia!
Bose was fully devoted to Sri Bhagavan. He spent his weekends at Arunachala with Sri Bhagavan. Finding that ladies could not stay within the Ashram premises after sunset and had to therefore go all the way to the town for the night, Bose bought a big plot of land in front of Sri Ramanasramam and built ten well-furnished cottages in it. It was popularly called ‘Bose Compound’ and many of the more well to do devotees, especially Westerners, used to stay in these cottages in the 1940s.
Married to a German lady, he was living in Bangalore with their son who was being groomed to take over the factory. But a terrible tragedy took place that shattered Bose’s life. At the young age of twenty, this bright boy — the apple of his father’s eye — suddenly died, drowning Bose in inconsolable pain and misery. On hearing about it, some of the devotees of Sri Bhagavan went to Bangalore and tried their level best to console Bose. They could not even meet him as he had locked himself up in a room. When the devotees went back and reported the situation to Sri Bhagavan, He asked them to bring Bose to Arunachala. This time around, no doubt because it was Sri Bhagavan’s aadesha, Bose was persuaded to return with them to Arunachala.
On being brought to the ashram, Sri Bhagavan asked them to leave Bose alone with Him in the Old Hall. Rolling on the floor, Bose vent out his grief and pain at his unbearable loss, with sobs racking his whole body. Sri Bhagavan kept looking at Bose with a steady gaze of Grace. After some time, Bose in desolate disappointment and deep pain, shouted: “Bhagavan! What is God?” For a devotee of such long standing, the question seems completely out of place. Though, in fact, it reveals how much Bose was devastated.
Sri Bhagavan kept silent for a long while. Then, with a look filled with Grace and in a soft voice brimming with Compassion, He replied, “Bose! Your question itself contains the answer: ‘What IS [is] God!”
This was not merely a clever or well thought out answer. That may be so in the case of ordinary men. A Purna Jnani’s utterances are free from the intermediary action of the ‘mind’ which colours and often distorts the Truth. In the case of rishis, it is said: “Sense follows speech.” Also, Sri Bhagavan’s deep and cleansing Silence before answering the question, was evidently meant to prepare the questioner to receive the full impact of the answer.
This was proven by the fact that while this illuminating answer was the perfect one to the question itself, it also dissolved Bose’s mountain of grief and pain at his son’s loss.
Revived and rejuvenated, Bose asked for further guidance. Sri Bhagavan told him to bury the body of his son in Bose Compound with the assurance, “He is absorbed in Arunachala!”
