Tiger's prey

It is a different story for those Ramana charms totally, who are taken body and soul, in a no holds barred union. Such ones have no eyes except for that indescribable wonder, the Master's eyes. They cannot escape the bewitchment of His smile. Nothing matters to them, save to be His and let His Presence seep through every pore their body. The joy of self-forgetfulness, of oneness, fills their Being.

This mood, however, is not for keeps, nor even 'till death do us part'. Imperceptibly, bodily hunger, the demands of flesh, stage a virulent come back to the point of negating the joy of being Ramana's. It is certain that Ramana will not leave anyone by the roadside and that His succour would be there to strengthen and sustain. But in the intermediate stage when one is not steadfast in love for Ramana, many ego-traps of attachments seem to be there ready to lure one away. For, when the Sad-guru's tiger-like fangs begin to chew one's ego, the job is never done at one stroke. It is often left incomplete to be finished at a time which He alone knows to be the best. In this half-way house when one is tossed between the sensate and the spiritual, when one neither His nor the world's, one is inclined to pray sometimes 'Please stop being a magnet. Do not take me at all or take all.' It appears as if Ramana is aloof, withdrawn, unconcerned. Not that He is really, but the dryness, the slipping away makes one forlorn.

Sometimes then one cries out in 'where have you gone my God, forsaking me? One yearns and prays 'put out this fire, cool ocean of boundless grace, put out the fire of separation'. One finds 'Arunachala Padigam' replete with pleading to the Sad-guru not to 'stop mid-way and leave the task unfinished.

~ A. R. Natarajan, The Tiger's Prey, The Mountain Path