Bhagavan Ramana narrates Devotion of Saint Kannappar

Bhagavan began to read out the life of Kannappar,the great devotee saint. He went on reading incidents in his early life, and how he went to the forest and found Kudumi Devar, the Sivalinga, his Lord, up the Kalahasti Hill in the Chitoor district (of Andhra state). Then he told how Kannappar worshipped the Sivalinga with water carried in his own mouth, flowers taken from his own hair, and the well-cooked and tasted beef prepared for his own meal — knowing no better and having no better to offer his beloved Lord. The way in which the ordained priest, Siva Gochariar, resented the intruding defiler of the sacred Sivalinga was so characteristically brought out by Bhagavan, with His own explanations of the rites and the meanings of the mantras used in the worship, that it
enriched the recital greatly to the benefit and admiration of the devotees.

Then came the scene of scenes, when the Lord in that Sivalinga tested Kannappar and incidentally revealed to Siva Gochariar the intensity of the forest hunter’s worship from a place of hiding. He saw the unexpected trickling of blood from one of the eyes on that Sivalinga;he saw Kannappar running to and fro for herbs, and
treating the Lord’s eye with them. Then he saw how,finding them all useless, Kannappar plucked out one of his own eyes and applied it to that in the Sivalinga; then,seeing the treatment was effective, he ran into ecstasies of joyful dance.

When Bhagavan came to the story of how Kannappar was plucking out his second eye to heal the second of the Lord, and of how the Sivalinga extended a hand to stop him, saying “Stop, Kannappar!” Bhagavan’s voice choked, His body perspired profusely, His hairs stood on end,tears gushed out from His eyes; He could hardly utter a word, and there was silence, pin-drop silence in the Hall.
All were dumbfounded that this great Jnani could be so overpowered by emotion and ecstasy at the great hunter saint’s
devotion. After a while Sri Bhagavan quietly closed the book, dried the tears in His eyes with the ends of His towel, and laid aside the book, saying, “No, I can’t go on any further.”

Then we could realise the import of His words in Aksharamanamalai: “Having become silent, if one remains
like a stone, can that be called real silence?” His blossomed
Heart had in it the perfect warmth of devotion, no less than the supreme light of Knowledge.

- 'At the Feet of Bhagavan', TKS