A brush with Existence...
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"As long as your hands are open, you can feel the river flowing through it. When you try to hold onto it, you miss it!"
- Paramahamsa
When he was about 12, Paramahamsa was sitting on a rock one day in the Arunachala hill and meditating; actually playing with a technique given to him; a technique of watching the source from where thoughts arose.
It was on Buddha Purnima day - full moon day - in the month of Vaikasi
- May-June as per the Tamil calendar - and evening sunset time.
In the midst of his meditation, Paramahamsa felt something opening up within him, something was getting crushed, something else was getting created. It was like a vessel inside getting broken and a door opening, both together at the same time. It was a feeling of creation and destruction at the same time and a very pleasurable feeling. A feeling of calmness descended on him.
With his eyes closed, he had a 360-degree vision around him. He could see the hill, the trees, the buildings, everything around him with his eyes closed!
Paramahamsa recalls,
'At that moment, I awakened to the realization that I was one with the whole of Existence and everything was I!'
Ever since his first spiritual experience, there was no sense of balance in the body because of which he could not ride a bicycle. His elder brother used to take him on a pillion ride on his cycle to school. When he was refused a ride, he would walk.
Arunachala was Paramahamsa's everything. There was not a single crevice or rock that had not felt the fervour of his yearning. Here he is seen meditating and basking in the glory of his beloved Arunachala. His structure was lean, but his eyes were always ablaze with an intensity that softened only upon seeing Light.
(Raghupati Yogi and Kuppammal were instrumental in shooting these pictures with apparent foresight.)