Sunyata’s most ‘Himalayan’ and transforming experience came through Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi.
On three occasions, Sunyata (born Alfred Julius Immanuel Sorenson in Denmark) traveled south from his home in the mountains to Tamil Nadu to visit Sri Bhagavan briefly during the cool and pleasant winter.
He spoke only once to Sri Ramana, on their first meeting in 1936, in answer to some cursory questions put by Sri Bhagavan. Thereafter, he always sat silently in the back of the Hall, intuitively aware that Sri Bhagavan’s power is in His silence.
After he had left for the north, on that first visit, Paul Brunton, whom he had met at the Asramam, wrote to him that Sri Bhagavan had stated that Sunyata was a ‘rare born mystic’, one in whom the ego never really developed and who was, therefore always very close to Realization.
One day on a subsequent visit, while meditating with eyes closed, Sunyata, then still Immanuel Sorensen, suddenly felt the full power of the Maharshi fixed on him. Sri Bhagavan’s voice spoke to him telepathically and with power: ‘We are always aware, Sunyata.’ From that locution, he took his initiation and his spiritual name.
Though he was never looking for a Guru, he recognized at that moment the crucial point in his life. He always kept a large picture of Sri Bhagavan in a place of honor and praised his precepts as the highest Truth, Truth that he, now Sunyata, was discovering through his own awareness of the One Self. He had darshan of Sri Bhagavan only one more time.
After his passing, a few paragraphs were found in Sunyata’s writings which offer some insight into his Awakening process, about which he had been silent all his life.
“When different stages of sadhana were being manifested through this body, what a variety of experiences I had then! I thought there was a distinct shakti residing in me and guiding me by issuing commands from time to time. Since all this was happening in the stage of sadhana, Jnana was revealed in a piecemeal fashion.
The integral wisdom (vijanana), which this body possessed from the very beginning, was broken into parts and there was something like a superimposition of ignorance.”
“In my sadhana I was told by the invisible Monitor, ‘From today you are not to make obeisance to anybody.’ Later on, I again heard the voice within myself which told me, ‘Whom do you want to bow down to? You are everything.’ At once I realized that the universe was, after all, my own manifestation.
Partial knowledge then gave place to the integral, inherent wisdom, and I found myself face to face with the Advaita One that appears as many.”
He further states that during this period many vibhuti (powers) were manifesting, though, to anyone’s knowledge, he told no one about this during his life. Sunyata seems to have had, among others, the siddhi of healing by touch.
Sunyata describes how he found that whenever he touched a patient, that individual would be immediately cured. He says he tested this on a number of people and found it to be invariably true.
Excerpted from Mountain Path, Jan. – Mar. 2011.The 125th birth anniversary of Sunyata was observed on Oct 27
James Johnson
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