God in Everything

In Tiruvannamalai, India there is a little beggar
Who lived on a garbage heap for 25 years
Before He was found out
And they started coming by the thousands
to worship Him. The king of the world
is always a master of disguise

These words were written by a prize-winning American poet late in the 1990s. While this poet, Red Hawk, had never met Yogi Ramsuratkumar in the physical body, still he had been deeply touched by the beggar’s spirit and his poem capture the essence of the beggar’s profound mission interwoven with his hidden nature.

Ramsuratkumar looked for no kingdom other than the kingdom of hearts in which his father lived. "This beggar is a disciple" and "everything is my Father” he would say to a group of American Visitors in the 1980s. All praise belonged to God alone. It made no difference to him whether he was acknowledged or not. In fact, at times, he even went to humorous lengths in obscuring his "status". One day, when Sadhu rangarajan was sitting with Yogi Ramsuratkumar, a large crowd of "rustics" country people entered the master’s residence to receive his darshan. Because Rangarajan was dressed in the ochre robe, one man in the visiting group assumed that the sadhu was the one whom they had come to see. He prostrated to Rangarajan, and the others in his party soon followed suit. The sadhu was aghast, immediately objected, and tried to point them to the elder, his master, Ramsuratkumar, who sat off to one side of the room, smoking. But, before he could say anything, the bggar had gotten hold of the sadhu’s hand.

"Rangarajan, would you keep quiet!" Yogi Ramsuratkumar said in English, so that his country guests wouldn’t understand. Sitting silently, he merely watched as one after another prostrated to the sadhu and then went out.

Bhagawan, what his this Tamasa [Fun play] Rangarajan asked with embarrassment when guests had left. "They came here to have your darshan."

"What is wrong!" replied yogi Ramsuratkumar "They have had my dharsan in your form. What is wrong in it?

Still the sadhu objected, trying to argue that these people had come such a long way" and so on.

"No Rangarajan, this beggar is not different from you", Yogi ramsuratkumar was instructing all of his hearers in this profound teaching. "All praise goes to my father!” Then he went on, "Second thing, you know their respect and regard for that dress. This beggar is in this beggar’s garb, by you are in this ochre robe, and this is our country’s tradition. You must appreciate those values. You must not complain. It makes no difference whether they prostrate to you or to me."

Ramsuratkumar’s interactions with humanity had no caste or religious limitations. In later years, he would be available to a high ranking statesman who was driven to his door in a Mercedes Benze, and even more available to the man’s ired driver. His heart was open to the suffering muslim as much as to the suffering Hindu, and these early years on the road would have exposed him to all of it. He himself would be despised , or he would be honored, as his father Ramdas was, and he would take it all the same.

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Only God: A Biography Of Yogi Ramsuratkumar