An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950)
It was an adolescent experience of the reality of death which triggered 
Ramana Maharshi’s spiritual awakening. He felt convinced that he was 
about to die, lay down and seemed to undergo an experience of being 
dead. The continuation of his consciousness during this event led him to 
the understanding that he was eternal spirit in a body which dies. Leaving 
home soon afterwards, he settled near Mount Arunachala, which is deeply 
revered by Hindus, and there, in Tiruvannamalai, he set up his ashram. 
He dealt with the question of the self, explaining that the sense of indi-
viduality arises with the body but is not bound by it. He taught release 
from the individual self by surrender to the Self, ultimate reality – the 
doctrine of 
advaita
or non-duality. 
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1911–2008)
It was the Maharishi who brought the technique of Transcendental 
Meditation to the West and founded the TM movement. His technique 
was based on Hindu practice, repeating a 
mantra 
(sacred word(s) or 
sound) to still the mind and attain tranquillity and enhanced creativity. 
He advocated that two twenty-minute periods of meditation should be 
undertaken daily, bringing increased health, calm and relaxation, as the 
metabolic rate during meditation falls to below that of the level of sleep.
The TM method is expensive to learn, which has led to criticism. How-
ever, it survives, and in 2008 film director David Lynch and folk singer 
Donovan toured Britain to drum up enthusiasm for TM in schools and 
universities as a method of inculcating calm and focus in young people.
Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1533)
Visvambhar was born in West Bengal on a night of a full moon and lunar 
eclipse. Legend has it that as he was born to the sound of chanting of the 
holy name of Krishna, this continued to soothe him as a baby. Later in life 
too, although a renowned scholar, he became a devotee of Krishna and 
took the name of Krishna Caitanya. He travelled all over India populariz-
ing the chant of the holy name. Eventually he became worshipped as an 

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Less Well-Known Religious Traditions
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avatar of Krishna. He left eight verses of instruction as a basis for the 
movement of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, devotion to Vishnu and Krishna.