Ramana Maharshi was an Indian Hindu sage and jivanmukta. He was born Venkataraman Iyer, but is mostly known by the name Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. He was born in Tiruchuli, Tamil Nadu, India.

Arudra Darshanam, a festival that commemorates the manifestation of Lord Siva as Nataraja, the Lord of Cosmic Dance, was being celebrated with great ardor in the Bhuminatha temple in Tiruchuzhi, South India, on December 29, 1879. The decorated icon of Lord Siva was ceremoniously carried in procession through the streets during the day and late into the night. Just as the Deity re-entered the temple past midnight on December 30th at 1:00AM, the first cry of a baby boy was heard in a house adjacent to the temple. The fortunate parents were Sundaram Iyer and his wife Alagammal. The newborn child received the name Venkataraman and was later known as Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. As the child was being born, a lady with poor eye-sight exclaimed that the new born was enveloped in light.

Venkataraman’s early childhood was quite normal. He joined others of his age in fun and frolic. When Venkataraman was about six years old he made boats out of old legal papers belonging to his father and floated them in water. When his father reprimanded him, the boy left home. After a long search the priest of the temple found the boy hiding behind the statue of the Divine Mother. Even as a child he sought solace in the Divine Presence when troubled by the world.

The turning point in Venkataraman’s life came spontaneously in mid-July 1896. One afternoon, the youth for no apparent reason was overwhelmed by a sudden, violent fear of death. Years later, he narrated this experience as follows:
It was about six weeks before I left Madura for good that a great change in my life took place . It was quite sudden. I was sitting in a room on the first floor of my uncle’s house. I seldom had any sickness and on that day there was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden, violent fear of death overtook me.There was nothing in my state of health to account for it; and I did not try to account for it or to find out whether there was any reason for the fear. I just felt, ‘I am going to die,’ and began thinking what to do about it. It did not occur to me to consult a doctor or my elders or friends. I felt that I had to solve the problem myself, then and there.

The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: ‘Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies.’ And I at once dramatized the occurrence of death. I lay with my limbs stretched out stiff as though rigor mortis had set in and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the enquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, so that neither the word ‘I’ or any other word could be uttered, ‘Well then,’ I said to myself, ‘this body is dead.

It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body am I dead? Is the body ‘I’? It is silent and inert but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of the ‘I’ within me, apart from it. So I am Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. This means I am the deathless Spirit.’ All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly, almost without thought-process. ‘I’ was something very real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with my body was centred on that ‘I’. From that moment onwards the ‘I’ or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination.

Fear of death had vanished once and for all. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time on. Other thoughts might come and go like the various notes of music, but the ‘I’ continued like the fundamental sruti note that underlies and blends with all the other notes. Whether the body was engaged in talking, reading, or anything else, I was still centred on ‘I’. Previous to that crisis I had no clear perception of my Self and was not consciously attracted to it. I felt no perceptible or direct interest in it, much less any inclination to dwell permanently in it.