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Though he had clearly arrived in a state of intense devotion, this first visit did not go smoothly. B.V. Narasimha Swami interviewed Muruganar while he was researching his biography, Self-Realization. This is what Muruganar told him in February 1930:

This account is so excessively self-deprecating, I can only conclude that in the final paragraph Muruganar was deliberately downplaying his experiences and accomplishments.

Muruganar made a second visit to Bhagavan about three months later and on that occasion he also had a vision of Bhagavan surrounded by light. He again had the fear that if he remained at Ramanasramam he would become a sannyasin. Since he was still very attached to his mother and feared that she would be left without anyone to support her if he abandoned his career to live in Tiruvannamalai, he fled Tiruvannamalai after only one day and returned to Madras. It was on this visit that Bhagavan encouraged him to write poetry using the same style and subject matter that Manikkavachagar had used more than 1,000 years before. Sri Ramana Sannidhi Murai, one of Muruganar's major works, closely follows the format of the Tiruvachakam, Mannikkavachagar's most celebrated poetry collection.

For the next three years, Muruganar was a regular visitor to Ramansramam. He would come whenever he had free time and was so attached to being in Bhagavan's presence, on many occasions he would find it physically impossible to board the return train. He would wait on the platform in the station, watch the train leave, and then return to Ramanasramam. When he was asked about this, he would say that his body could not step onto the train. After this had happened a few times, Bhagavan would send someone to the station with him to force him to get into a carriage.

3. I asked Kunju Swami what he remembered of Muruganar's first visit.

He replied, 'We didn't know what the problem was. He was babbling incoherently and seemed very agitated. Bhagavan asked us to keep an eye on him because he didn't look like he was capable of looking after himself. Bhagavan's darshan sometimes had a very dramatic effect on new visitors. We knew that nothing bad could happen to a visitor while he was under Bhagavan's protection, so I wasn't really alarmed by Muruganar's behavior. He just needed someone to look after him for a few hours till he calmed down.'

It is possible that the 'medicine' that Muruganar was given was ganja since there were several sadhus who congregated around Bhagavan who regularly took this drug. Bhagavan frequently expressed his disapproval of this behavior, but it still continued on the fringes of the ashram.

Verse 339 of Sri Ramana Sannidhi Murai seems to refer to this dramatic first visit to Bhagavan:

To those who come to you, O Lord,
Your grace is like the ocean vast.
When I, on service bent, had reached
Your Feet, with smiling face you glanced
At me, and at that moment you
Revealed to my mind's eye
Rare visions, various, wonderful,
Never by man beheld before!

(Click to return to text.)

4. I discovered this account while I was cataloguing the Sri Ramanasramam archievs in the early 1980s. The manuscript was in B. V. Narasimha Swami's handwriting. I doubt that Muruganar himself would have described his first days in Tiruvannamalai in this way had he been prevailed upon to write an account himself. This version was published in The Mountain Path, 1981, pp. 84-88. (Click to return to text.)