Yogi Ramsuratkumar

Born in a tiny village on the Ganges near Varanasi, Ramsurat graduated from university and became the headmaster of a village school in Bihar, where he lived with his wife and four children.  A powerful longing for the Divine called him to a series of pilgrimages to south India, where over time he met his three “spiritual fathers"--Sri Aurobindo, Ramana Maharshi and Swami Papa Ramdas. Upon meeting Sri Ramana, the great saint of Arunachala, Ramsurat experienced a powerful spiritual transmission through an extended gaze shared with the great being, Sri Ramana Maharshi, during a meditation.

After the deaths of Ramana Maharshi and Sri Aurobindo, Ramsurat turned fully to Swami Ramdas. In 1952 he was initiated by Ramdas into the mantra, Om Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram. After one week of constant mantra repeition, he was thrown into a state of God-intoxication that caused him to break into spontaneous ecstasies of song and dance. His guru, Swami Ramdas soon instructed him, “Under a big tree, another tree cannot grow. Go and beg.” 

Ramsurat wandered as a mendicant for seven years and finally arrived in Tiruvannamalai in 1959 where he lived on the dirt streets around the brass market and in the Shiva temple, subsisting entirely on the good will and gifts of food and clothing given by kind village women and later by a growing number of admirers and devotees. In the mid-1970s, after living on the streets for many years, enduring rain and sun and storm, hunger and persecution as a beggar, Yogi Ramsuratkumar was finally willing to accept a permanent shelter from his devotees. 

His tiny “house” on Sannadhi Street was messy and strewn with many seemingly unnecessary things, including piles of newspapers, dried flower garlands and odds and ends given to him as prasad. Dressed in rags with palmyra fan in hand, he often sat for hours with those who came—regardless of caste or station in life—conversing with them and listening to their stories, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and raising his hands to invoke the blessings of the Supreme Reality, in his own words, “My Father in Heaven blesses you,” and “Ram, Ram!”

On many occasions his devotees were thrilled to see Yogi Ramsuratkumar enter into ecstatic bhavas, in which he danced and spontaneously chanted, Sri Rama Jaya Rama Jaya Jaya Rama or Sita Ram, Sita Ram, Sita Ram. These irresistible, compelling dances—reminiscent of Lord Nataraja—have been the source of many devotees’ most cherished memories of Yogi Ramsuratkumar from his early days in Tiruvannamalai. 

As the years passed, the intimate atmosphere of small gatherings grew into vast numbers of pilgrims and people who came seeking a glimpse and a touch of the blessing power that emanated from a great saint. Over time, thousands of people received the darshan of the Godchild of Tiruvannamalai (as he was affectionately known) on the tiny enclosed porch of Sannadhi Street. Most of them came seeking help for basic problems in their lives: “Heal my sick father,” or “Bless my childless wife with children.” Among many others who became devoted to the divine beggar, in January 1977, Lee Lozowick first encountered Yogi Ramsuratkumar and was so deeply moved that he became an ardent disciple. In 1993 another passionate devotee, Devaki Ma, a former professor of physics at the university in Salem, began to serve as his attendant and remained at his side until his death.

After seeing the lines of devotees standing in the sweltering sun outside his house—sometimes for hours—in hopes of receiving his darshan, in 1993 Yogi Ramsuratkumar gave his devotees permission to buy land and build an ashram in Tiruvannamalai not far from the holy hill, Mt. Arunachala. “For the devotees,” he said, not promising that he himself would be willing to live there. By the spring of 1994 the construction of the Yogi Ramsuratkumar Ashram was undertaken by a flood of disciples and ardent supporters.

I do not seek for happiness. I only want to do my Father’s Work. If even one being has benefited from my life, that is enough. It has been worthwhile. And if this body dies, the soul that may remain, may it be born again to do my Father’s Work. —Yogi Ramsuratkumar

And so he came to “hold court,” giving darshan twice a day in the vast temple of his own ashram from 1994 through 2001. He appeared twice a day, dressed as always in the garb of a beggar, wrapped in a copious woolen shawl and carrying a palmyra fan and coconut begging bowl in hand. During those years he took shelter at the nearby Sudama House, the home of four of his closest devotees, including Devaki Ma. Throughout these years, the utter simplicity of his innocence and spontaneous ecstatic joy or sorrow never changed. Within him shone a being of profound spiritual majesty, whose countenance was imbued with a captivating beauty. 

Like many who are Baul in essence, Yogi Ramsuratkumar did not teach in linear terms, but through the transmission of presence in everyday circumstances. Although he often laughed, joked and enjoyed the company of his devotees and visitors, his eyes were ever turned inward toward the Divine. In the moments that he spoke of the dharma, his all-consuming vision of the unity of life spontaneously poured from his lips as ecstatic blessings. 

Ma Devaki recounted the story of an exchange that occurred in the early 1990s, when several people were sitting with the master under a tree at the home of a devotee. Yogi Ramsuratkumar looked at the doctor who was attending to him and, in ecstatic tones, said: 

God alone exists. There is nothing else and no one else. He is all-pervading. He alone exists, nothing else, neither in the past nor in the present nor in the future. He is everywhere—here, there…everywhere! He is indivisible, indescribable, beyond ordinary intelligence. He is total, beyond words, complete….No one is separate.

While he spoke, the eyes of the beggar saint looked around at each person. Then he said:

It is for people, for ordinary mortals who do not understand this, that name and form are necessary. All are in Father. Father is in all of us. This beggar does not understand advaitic philosophy, but he remembers the lotus feet of his master, Swami Ramdas. Ramdas gave this beggar Ramnam. For this beggar, the lotus feet of his master and Ramnam will do!

These words of inspiration come from a human being whose life was an example of faith in Grace and the totality and oneness of “Father in Heaven,” his metaphor for the Supreme Reality. Yogi Ramsuratkumar’s frequent nondual declarations of the unity of all life were expressions of the sahaja ideal: he embodied a lucid, natural, unpremeditated relationship to the world around him, which he ever viewed from the eyes of God-realization.

Yogi Ramsuratkumar was unique in his ability to relate with Westerners and Indians alike. He had an uncanny instinct that gave him a deep understanding of each individual. He worked with many Westerners, particularly Lee’s students, in ways that imparted a profound transmission that continues to reverberate as time goes on.

The “Work” that Yogi Ramsuratkumar referred to had profound and universal dimensions. It could be experienced as a tangible force, a powerful mood around him that was sometimes perceived as joy, sometimes as sorrow and on rare occasions as fleeting anger—but always there was the penetrating communication of compassion and love. Oftentimes it seemed that Yogi Ramsuratkumar was engaged in a powerful inner work that commanded all of his formidable energies to bless all beings, to focus on a specific problem in the world, or on something that troubled one of his devotees. Of his work he once said, “Ever since this beggar died in 1952 he hasn’t been able to do anything. Now Father in Heaven does everything. I do only His work. Only what He tells me. It’s slavery—sweet slavery.”

When Yogi Ramsuratkumar was working in a particular way that his friends and devotees came to know well, he smoked Charimar cigarettes. During the ashram years Yogi Ramsuratkumar sat in darshan for four hours a day, listening while his devotees chanted, smoking cigarette after cigarette, slowly, with great care and meaning in every nuance of movement. 

Smoking came to Yogi Ramsuratkumar after he was taken by divine madness, and at times he commented that he never liked smoking “before this madness came to this beggar.” As an aid to his work, smoking became a ritual of singular elegance for Yogi Ramsuratkumar, as his movements were perceived by many as a pure expression of the Divine in form. Each cigarette became a prayer in his hands, and his silence and deep inner stillness was rich with the thundering, soundless sound of praise. Within the fire and air and smoke of each inhalation, in the transformation of matter into spirit, Yogi Ramsuratkumar consumed and transformed samskaras. With each exhalation a new Universe of possibility unfolded once again, and the whole of it—inhalation and exhalation—became a guileless and impeccable breath of the heart. 

Chant This Beggar’s Name

Like his master, Swami Ramdas, Yogi Ramsuratkumar gave one basic instruction for sadhana to his devotees: Chanting the divine name in the mantra, Yogi Ramsuratkumar, Yogi Ramsuratkumar, Yogi Ramsuratkumar, Jaya Guru Raya. 

It is said in the Indian tradition that in the Kali Yuga (the dark eon or age in which we live), the only effective recourse of sadhana, the only hope of liberation, is to chant the name of God. This yoga is an all-consuming practice of repeating the mantra using a mala (beads), written repetition, speaking, singing or thinking. Yogi Ramsuratkumar himself said on many occasions that to chant his name once would bring unfailing divine “help.” When a mantra is chanted, the practitioner becomes resonant with the vibration or essence of that which the mantra represents. The gift of his name, Yogi Ramsuratkumar, as the invocation of Grace, reflects the inner condition of the beggar king of Tiruvannamalai: His complete Surrender to the Divine.

Yogi Ramsuratkumar as Sahajiya

Central to the Bauls is the potential of the sahaj manus, or the natural man—a fully realized human being who embodies a conscious, attuned awareness that flows spontaneously, smoothly, easefully from the wisdom that resides in the deep heart and soul. 

The one who dwells in sahaja abides in changelessness in the earthly realm of change; therefore they are “dead” to the seductions, distractions, and fascinations of this world. Although they are engaged with the world in a benevolent way, their mystic gaze is turned inward toward the Supreme Reality; they are self-contained, self-luminous, self-abiding. 

One who has realized the sahaja naturally cares for the welfare of others and is of a deeply humble and devotional nature, a state of being that radiates from deep within. They are servants of God and seek always to assist in the evolution and development of other souls. They are concerned if harm is done to another, and practice kindness, compassion, and generosity, perhaps even to a (seemingly) extreme degree.

A sahajiya has reclaimed the state of original innocence in which he or she resides beyond the constant influences of the three gunas or qualities of primal nature that work at the foundation of all Creation. Such an individual is the master of himself or herself, and from that consistent, steady place of equanimity, is turned toward serving others. Such a one naturally exudes the noble qualities of selfhood and is not swept away by the common flux and conflict of emotions and entanglements that characterize the maya of ordinary life. 

Love flourishes in such a one; love arises from the wellspring of being in a never-ending fountain that showers its nectar on all who come near. Chandidas said, “Love makes the man”—a superb love that is not of this world. Such human beings are rare indeed. It is said of the sahaja man that because of the perpetual union of masculine and feminine, or Krishna and Radha within him, he has realized the Supreme Reality and is also known as the “man eternal” who has gone beyond life and death. These descriptions accurately characterize the true guru, who is the epitome of the natural human being.