Ramana Maharishi

Indian mystic of the Hindu religion who, after a mystical experience at age 17, left his parents to become an aesetic. The second of three sons of a farmer, he was raised in a religious family who gave ritual offerings and visited the temple. A disinterested student, Ramana was more concerned with seeking his own identity and meaning. When he slept, his sleep was so profound that nothing could wake him and his brothers teased him about being a sleeping figure from legend. In the summer of 1896, Ramana went into an altered state of consciousness which had a profound effect on him. He experienced what he understood to be his own death, and later returned to life. He also felt himself as being outside of his own body, an entity of light. He heard of a place called Anarchala and the word seemed to speak to him. When he decided the following year to leave school, he felt that it was Anarchala to where he must go. He arrived after four days of hot and dusty travel by train and went directly to the temple to dedicate himself. Ramana spent ten years of silence and meditation, living in temples and hillside caves as an aesetic. It is the custom in India to regard such holy men, seeking non-attachment, with respect and he was called "The Sage of Anarchala." Devotees brought him a bit of food and books of religious tradition, and when he began to teach, disciples came. After his decade of discipline, he lived a more normal life in an ashram that his disciplines built and taught student and supplicants. The ashram was a sanctuary for animals and Ramana had great fondness for the cows, monkeys, birds, and squirrels that inhabited the grounds. When Ramana had cancer, he accepted this with the same equanimity that he had for mundane goods, and died on 4/14/1950 sitting in the lotus position with his last word, the sacred syllable OM. Link to Wikipedia biography