spirituality
Sri Ramana Maharishi
( or 'great soul'), 1879-1950, is a notable example of the non-dual or Advaita
experience. The distinguished Indian scholar T M P Mahadevan described Ramana
as 'an incarnation of pure Advaita'. Ramana left 
home at seventeen and made his way to the holy mountain of Arunacala in South
India, where he spent the rest of his life. A sudden fear of death, led him
to dramatise the experience of death. By so doing he realised that he was one
with the Self, which is untouched by death. He said later, 'Absorption in the
Self has continued from that time onwards.' In his mystical experience, the
sense of personal identity or of the 'ego' disappeared and he was conscious
of his oneness with the Self or Soul of the Universe. He had a profound influence
on Swami Abhishiktananda, whose book Saccidananda is a Christian
Approach to Advaitic Experience ( ISPCK, Delhi, 1974).
Ramana
Maharshi
Richard Jefferies (1848-87), was the
son of a Wiltshire farmer who, during his lifetime, won a wide reputation as
a writer who combined a remarkable power of observing nature with a deep poetical
and philosophical insight. He is a good example of 'nature-mysticism' - the
sense of a oneness with all life. He said in his The Story of My Heart:
'I was no more tha
n
eighteen when an inner and esoteric meaning began to come to me from all the
visible universe.' He said of Nature, 'I am in it, as the butterfly floats in
the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity, now is
immortal life. Here this moment, by this tumulus, on earth; I exist in it...
To the soul there is no past and no future; all is and will be ever, in now.'
The sense of eternal radiance shone though every aspect of Nature - 'through
every grass blade in the thousand, thousand grasses; through the million leaves,
veined and edge-cut on bush and tree.' Most of his Victorian contemporaries
regarded him as an atheist.
Richard
Jefferies House and Museum
Teresa of Avila (1515-82) was a Spanish
Carmelite nun and mystic. In her Autobiography, the Way
of Perfection and 
Interior
Castle, she traces the spiritual life from its beginning to union with
God in what she calls 'spiritual marriage'. She expresses an intense theistic
mysticism or personal communion in which the soul is united with God. She describes
the Prayer of Quiet in this way: 'The soul rests in peace... all (her) powers
are at rest. The soul understands, with an understanding quite different from
that given by external senses, that she is now quite close to God and that if,
she drew just a little nearer, she would become one thing with Him by union.'
Teresa
of Avila
