Yogi Ramsuratkumar Ashram Mahakumbhabhishekam: March 25, 2016

Ramsuratkumar was born in 1918 as Ramsurat Kunwar at Nardara, a small village along the stretches of river Ganges. After his intermediate education, he went in search of spiritual enlightenment. On that quest he visited three important saints of South India — Ramana Maharishi at Tiruvannamalai, Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry and Papa Ramdas of Kerala. 

Yogi Ramsuratkumar later moved to Tiruvannamalai and asked people to turn inward for spiritual enlightenment. He was hailed as the ‘God Child of Tiruvannamalai’, and renowned as a mystic saint. Many devotees consider him a Siddha Purushar (mystic) in the tradition of the Tamil Nadu Saivite Siddhars. 

Thoughout his life at Tiruvannamalai he lived like a beggar. Dressed in simple clothing and generally with a palm leaf fan he was called Visiri Saamiyaar in Tamil. He would also carry a coconut shell in his hand, wear a green shawl and live very simply. 

To read the biography of this great saint visit my website Arunachala Samudra at this link here.

Bhagavan Ramsuratkumar died at his Tiruvannamalai Ashram on 20th February 2001. Mahakumbhabhishekam of the then newly consecrated Adhishtanam of Bhagavan Yogi Ramsuratkumar was celebrated on 27th June 2004. Subsequently Mahakumbhabhishekam of Bhagavan Yogi Ramsuratkumar was also celebrated this year at his Tiruvannamalai Ashram on Friday, 25 March, 2016. 

Programme of the 2016 Mahakumbhabhishekam Programme

To watch videos of the complete 2016 Mahakumbhabhiskeham programme please visit the official Yogi Ramsuratkumar You Tube channel at this link here. 

 

Yogi Ramsuratkumar

Below are photographs of part of the celebratory programme recently observed at the Ashram. 

Wonderful decorations welcoming devotees to the Ashram

Specially constructed hall for the yagasalai programme

Main entrance to the Hall

Inside the Hall

Statue of Yogi Ramsuratkumar

It is the experience of many that this statue of Yogi Ramsuratkumar has a powerful energy and a particularly blessed place to visit if one needs help and inspiration in one’s life. To read more visit this link here.

Story of the Statue

Sri Yogi Ramsuratkumar Mahasamadhi

Daily Programme: 

Bhajans 10 a.m. to 12 Noon and 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. 

Pooja and Abishekam for the Sivalingam morning and evening. 

Temple open from 5 a.m. to 12 Noon and 4 p.m. to 8p.m. 

Special Poojas on Thursdays and Festivals 

Group of Senior Devotees

As always the devotees of Yogi Ramsuratkumar created a beautiful, loving function dedicated to his name. The decorations and facilities at the Ashram for visiting Pilgrims were excellent. 

This Ashram always creates wonderful Divine Displays and Functions during Festivals and Holy Times. In particular the Kolu displays during the Navaratri Festival and the representation of Arunachala Hill during Mahadeepam are always special and should be visited by Arunachala pilgrims. 

Line for Meals during the Festival

Great attention was given to the comfort and care of visiting devotees

Shamiana tents specially built for visitors during the Mahakumbhabhishekam Functions

You can visit the Official Website dedicated to Yogi Ramsuratkumar at this link here. 

To watch a video of Yogi Ramsuratkumar giving darshan please watch the below. 

Paul Brunton and Arunachala

In the previous posting I wrote about the upcoming restoration of Paul Brunton's Cottage at Palakottu, west of Ramana Ashram and at the base of Arunachala. To read the posting go to this link here. Below is a short biography and extract from his famed book, "In Search of Secret India." 

Paul Brunton (1898-1981) was a British philosopher, mystic, and traveller. He left a successful journalistic career to live among yogis, mystics, and holy men, and studied a wide variety of Eastern and Western esoteric teachings. With his entire life dedicated to an inward and spiritual quest, Brunton felt charged with the task of communicating his experiences to others and, as the first person to write accounts of what he learned in the East from a Western perspective, his works had a major influence on the spread of Eastern mysticism to the West. He was also one of the first Westerners to first bring Arunachala and Sri Ramana Maharshi to greater public attention. 

Pencil drawing of Paul Brunton in his Cottage

The following extract taken from Paul Brunton 1936 book ‘A Message from Arunachala,’ describes the Hill’s appearance and antiquity in a way which has not been bettered: 

The Hill

"Somewhere in South India there is a lonely Hill which has been honoured with a high status in Hindu sacred tradition and legendary history. It lies near the same latitude as French-ruled Pondicherry, yet does not enjoy the latter’s advantage of catching the cooling coastal breezes. A fierce sun daily flays it with darting rays. Its form is uncouth and ungainly – a tumbled, awkward thing whose sides are jagged and broken. Whose face is a mass of jumbled rocks and thorny scrubs. Snakes, centipedes and scorpions lurk beneath the crevices of its multitudinous stones. During the dry summer months, cheetahs make their bold appearance with dusk, descending the Hill in a snarling quest of water. 

The whole peak offers no pretty panorama of regular outline, straight sides and balanced proportions, but rather the reverse. Even its base wanders aimlessly about on an eight-mile circuit, with several spurs and foot Hills, as though unable to make up its mind as to when it shall come to an end. Its substance is nothing but igneous and laterite rock. 

A geologist friend from America who visited me lately proclaimed Arunachala to have been thrown up by the earth under the stress of some violent volcanic eruption in the dim ages before even the coal-bearing strata were formed. 

In fact, he dated this rocky mass of granite back to the earliest epoch of the history of our planet’s crust, that epoch which long preceded the vast sedimentary formations in which fossil records of plants and animals have been preserved. It existed long before gigantic saurians of the prehistoric world moved their ungainly forms through the primeval forests that covered our early earth. He went even further and made it contemporaneous with the formation of the very crust of the earth itself. Arunachala, he asserted, was almost as hoary and as ancient as our planetary home itself. It was indeed a remnant of the vanished continent of sunken Lemuria, of which the indigenous legends still keep a few memories. 

The Tamil traditions not only speak of the vast antiquity of this and other Hills, but assert that the Himalayas were not thrown up till later. Untold centuries, therefore, pressed their weight upon this time-defying pile which rose so abruptly from the plain. 

And yet this unbeautiful and doddering greybeard among heights took my heart in pawn a few years ago and would not let me redeem the pledge. It held me captive in an intangible and indefinable thrall. It imprisoned me from the first moment when my eyes glanced at it till the last reluctant turning away of the head. I could no longer regard myself as a free man when such invisible chains clanged around my feet."