At The Feet Of Swami Ramdas

   By: Seetha Vijayakumar   

SWAMI RAMDAS is known as a votary of the divine name and inspired Sai devotees to perform ‘Akhanda Sainama Japa Yajna’ all over the country. His poorvashram granddaughter Prema is known to us and affectionately has adopted my husband as her brother.

Swami Ramdas was born in 1884 at Hosadurga near Mangaluru in Karnataka and named Vittal Rao by his parents, Sri Balakrishna Rao and Smt. Lalita Bai, a devout Saraswat couple. He studied Textile Technology and was also employed. He was married and had a daughter too. He lived the ordinary life of a householder in and around his community until age thirty-six. During that time he experienced a variety of trials and tribulations from the worldly point of view, but in his case they caused him to enquire deeply into the true meaning of life. An intense spiritual transformation occurred in him basically out of nowhere and suddenly he was filled with an overwhelming wave of dispassion. In the process, he came to realize the futility of worldly pursuits, and the need for real, everlasting peace and happiness.

Inspired by the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Swami Ram Tirtha, he became convinced that God alone can give one eternal peace and happiness.

At that critical time, his father initiated him into the Ram mantra and assured him that by repeating it unstintingly he would, in due time, find true peace and happiness. It was then that he renounced the samsaric life and went forth in quest of God as a mendicant sadhu. It was thus that on one morning in December 1922 he left home by train. The mantra “OM SRI RAM JAI RAM JAI JAI RAM” was ever on his lips and in his heart.

Besides chanting the divine name, his practice was to look upon everything in the world as form of Ram – the God, and to accept everything that happened as happening by the will of Ram alone.
Eventually, he was directed to Srirangam. Here he bathed in the holy Cauvery and, after offering up his old white clothes to the sacred river, donned the ochre robes of a sannyasin and underwent a spiritual rebirth. It was at this time, prompted by Ram Himself, Vittal Rao assumed the new name of Ramdas (servant of Ram) and took the inviolable vows of sanyasa, renunciation. Ramdas never referred to himself in the first person again.

With the name of God constantly on his lips, he continued his travels in the company of itinerant sadhus. The journey took him to Tiruvannamalai, where he met with Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi and prayed for his grace. Stating his experience Ramdas said, “The Maharshi, turning his beautiful eyes towards Ramdas, and looking intently for a few minutes into his eyes as though he was pouring into Ramdas his blessings through those orbs, nodded his head to say he had blessed. A thrill of inexpressible joy coursed through the frame of Ramdas, his whole body quivering like a leaf in the breeze.”

Ramdas went to spend nearly a month in a cave on the slopes of Arunachala in constant chanting of Ramnam. This was the first occasion that he went into solitude and during this period of solitude, he never bathed, shaved, or cut his hair. When he ate, he only ate very little. After twenty-one days, when he came out of the cave he saw a strange, all-pervasive light: everything was Ram and only Ram. Following his experience in the caves of Arunachala, Ramdas continued his travels for nearly eight years, travels which took him to many parts of India many times.

Swami Ramdas stayed at Shirdi and had the nectarine bliss of Sai Baba’s blessings in the post-Mahasamadhi period. Abdulla Baba considered himself as heir to Sai Baba and sat on the stone on which Baba used to meditate. Some force made him fall down on the ground and roll in agony with the entire body of Abdulla itching. Swami Ramdas who was watching this applied Baba’s Udi and gave him relief. Swami Ramdas told Abdulla that Sai Baba is ‘Para Brahman’ and never to consider himself as his heir. He was with Upasani Maharaj at Sakori for some time. He was with Aurobindo at Puducherry and also with Swami Shivananda at Rishikesh. finally settling down in a small ashram built by one of his devotees at Kanhangad, where the present Anandashram was founded in the year 1931. This Ashram became a field to put into practice the universal love he gained as a result of his universal vision.

Later he was joined by a widow Krishnabai who evolved to be a great Saint. She is Mother Krishnabai – mother to not only Swami Ramdas but also to millions of spiritual seekers.

Ramdas attained Mahasamadhi in 1963 and his Samadhi at Anandashram is eternally vibrating with Ramnam chants.