Paul Brunton was a writer, mystic, and philosopher. Through his books and writings about the great Indian sage, Sri Ramana Maharshi and others, he is credited with almost singlehandedly opening up to the west to the experience and knowledge of Enlightenment, Awakening, the Absolute, and things Zen.
Prior to Brunton there was only one trailblazer. Although now largely unknown, the first western disciple to visit and stay with Sri Ramana Maharshi was a man named Frank Humphreys. In 1911 he went to India to fill a high post in the Department of Police at Vellore in Madras State. Interested in the study of Hinduism he was sent to visit the Maharshi by Ganapathi Muni. Throughout his stay and shortly afterwards he contributed articles in English to the 'International PsychicGazette' about his experience with Sri Ramana and the Ashram. This helped spread the fame of Ramana Maharshi quickly throughout the world. In 1925, a nearly disguised young American traveler that gained fame anonymously some years later in a novel by the famous British playwright W. Somerset Maugham and published in 1944, arrived in India, and starting around 1928 stayed on and off at the Ashram nearly two years, one of the first Americans to do so. It has been written that from his stay he gained peace of mind. Another American that made an early mark in India was Julian P. Johnson. Johnson studied under an Indian guru in the years 1933 through 1939. His book Path of the Masters, an account of those years, was published posthumously in 1939.
However, it still remains that the FIRST MAJOR work from a writer from the west was Paul Brunton who visited the Maharshi in 1931. Trailblazers and others notwithstanding, his book A Search in Secret India, published in 1934, is considered to be THE starting point for the Maharshi's worldwide fame beyond India --- in the process creating an influence as wide-ranging and diverse as the mysterious spiritual literary figure Wei Wu Wei to feminine seductress Mercedes De Acosta whose book Here Lies the Heart (1960) outlines her meeting with Sri Ramana. Interestingly enough, although Brunton doesn't bring it up anywhere in his writings, De Acosta's book also discusses meeting Guy Hague at the ashrama who was there at the sametime as Brunton. Hague, who was studying under Ramana at the time, is thought by many to be the role model for Mauguam's main character Larry Darrell in The Razor's Edge.
As an illustration as to how one could be totally influenced by Brunton's book, De Acosta for example, who, as presented in Shri Ganesha, Sri Ramana, and Maugham, in 1938, visited the ashrama and met with the Maharshi. She writes in her book Here Lies the Heart:
"At one of these dinners I met Paul Brunton who had written a book called A Search in Secret India. When I read this book it had a profound influence on me. In it I learned for the first time about Ramana Maharshi, a great Indian saint and sage. It was as though some emanation of this saint was projected out of the book to me. For days and nights after reading about him I could not think of anything else. I became, as it were, possessed by him. I could not even talk of anything else."
Be as it may, Brunton's influence was not always viewed so favorably by everyone. One day in 1939, Brunton was sitting taking notes in the meditation hall and told in English by a high ranking ashram dignitary that he was no longer permitted to take notes while sitting before the Maharshi. Brunton asked, "Is this also Bhagavan's view?" The Maharshi, who was easily within earshot, continued sitting quietly and didn't say a word. A few tense moments passed. Then Brunton got up and left. That was the last time Brunton took notes in the hall and also when he began distancing himself from the ashram.
In later years, because of that incident and a misinterpretation of a shift in his philosopical outlook, Brunton was no longer welcome at the Ramana Ashram, mainly because of the attitude of certain high level disciples. During later travels in India he would sometimes come within a few miles of the ashram but not be unable to visit. He would write: "A lump would come into my throat and a choking sensation would seize me as I thought how close we were in spirit and yet so harshly separated by the ill-will of certain men and by the dark shadows of my own Karma." He continued with: "That I was most unfairly treated by one ashram in particular and many Indians in general is a shameful fact, but nevertheless it was a fact which helped my own emancipation."
In the end however, Brunton's long-standing conflict with the ashram dissipated, with him actually being invited to spend his final years there, which he was not able to do for a variety of practical reasons.
Brunton had numerous visions and visitations of Sri Ramana similar to the BILOCATION experiences described by Ramana in relation to one of his most devout followers, Ganapathi Muni. Nearly all of the experiences occurred in England thousands of miles from the ashram, with the last occurring some fifteen months AFTER the holy man's physical death in 1950. The sage appeared before him and told him that they had to part. Brunton experienced no further similar visions after that.
A bilocation experience not to dissimilar to that of both Brunton and Muni, but more closely related to that of Brunton because of the distance involved and being in another country as well, is reported in THE MEETING: An Untold Story of Sri Ramana. The translocation by Ramana was a Siddhi induced follow-up by Ramana after what happened between a young boy and the Maharshi years earlier. See:
SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI: THE LAST AMERICAN DARSHAN
RECOUNTING A YOUNG BOY'S NEARLY INSTANT TRANSFORMATION INTO THE ABSOLUTE DURING HIS ONLY DARSHAN WITH THE MAHARSHI
It should be noted that Adam Osborne, who, as a young boy grew up at the Ramana Ashram and the son of one of the foremost Ramana biographers Arthur Osborne, played a prominent role in the Last American Darshan as linked above.
PAUL BRUNTON WITH SRI RAMANA IN HAPPIER DAYS
-- "PAUL BRUNTON: From Journalist To Gentle Sage" by Georg Feuerstein.
-- "PAUL BRUNTON: The Guru-Disciple Relationship" by Victor Mansfield.
-- "A Mind for Peace" by Anna Bornstein.
-- "Paul Brunton" An appreciation by John Behague.
-- "Rediscovering Paul Brunton" by Platek and Soiffer, East West Journal, October 1986; contemporary.
-- "Beyond the Maps: Paul Brunton's View of Self-Transformation" by Paul Cash, The American Theosophist, c. 1984.
--"Reflections on Paul Brunton" by Paul Cash, Yoga International, May/June 1994.
--"PAUL BRUNTON" The art of multi-dimensional living, May 1998.
Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where
we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience
and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.
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The above with thanks to:
PAUL BRUNTON: Writer, Mystic, Philosopher
