Swami Ramanagiri: A biography

Introduction Summary timeline

Per's relatives, upbringing and education

Per's relatives — His father Robert — Growing up and schooling

India 1947—1950

Per Westin's sources of inspiration

Vivekananda — Sunyata — The Dikshaguru — Ramana Maharshi

India 1950—1955

Per's teaching & disciples — 'Cold Fire' — Residency

Disease

Passing away

Per's ashram

Final words

Attachments

Information text — items

Literature

Introduction

Per Westin (1921-55) is a fascinating and enigmatic personality. What made him leave the upper-class environment in Danderyd for a life as a Hindu monk in India during the years 1947-55? Here I go through both his family's history and religious historical context to find a good answer.

Per is unique in Sweden in that, as a spiritual seeker, he was in the presence of the greatest mystic of the 20th century, Ramana Maharshi. Per also gained his own disciples and has a now functioning temple dedicated to him, the Ramanagiri Swamigal Ashramam in Tamil Nadu. How did this happen and what shaped him?

Without previous research on Per Westin, there are several false information in circulation about him. He is said to be of royal birth, to have given away $8 million to become a monk, and is sometimes given almost supernatural abilities. What is the truth behind these myths?

The research is based on digital archives and sources, and also contacts. What is missing are letters and stories that could have given a more colorful picture of who Per was. If new information is added, I will make additions.

It will be a journey that begins in the Roslagen archipelago and ends in the jungles of southern India. The career-driven family's journey over three generations is marked by drastic and tragic breakups, and the journey ends in strange encounters with mystics and a quest for spiritual and human perfection.

1870—1914 Skipper crisis in Roslagen within Per's relatives.

1906 Per's father Robert begins training as an engraver in Stockholm.

1917 Robert starts the company 'Westin's atelier'.

1921 Per is born, lives in Gamla Stan.

1923-24 Per's sisters are born, move to Söder.

1930s 'Westin's atelier' becomes successful factory.

1932 The family moves to Danderyd.

1939-43 Per goes to Lundsberg school.

1943 Per's father Robert dies.

1944 Lecture on 'Raja yoga' at the Theosophical Society.

1944-45 Per trains to be a corporal in order to later become a sergeant.

1946 The family moves to a smaller house.

1943-47 Per studies at Uppsala University.

1947, Nov. Per travels to Varanasi, India to study for a master's degree at BHU. Judith Tyberg is there.

1948, spring Per meets the mystic Sunyata. They go to Almora.

1948 Per again in Varanasi. Meets his dikshaguru and becomes a sannyasi monk.

1949, 24 Jan. "a Swede" sits among the congregation at Ramana's ashram.

1949, February 17 Per gets an enlightening experience at the ashram.

1949 Per returns to Almora.

1950, April 15 Ramana Maharshi dies, Per is at the funeral ceremony.

1950, Oct. Per travels to Madras, spiritual experiences. Lives on the beach for 2-3 months.

1951 Per has 5-7 disciples.

1951-53 (approx.) Per makes a trip between a number of places in Southern India.

1952 Possible shorter trip to Sweden.

1952, Sept. Per settles at the foot of the Sirumalai mountains. Writing on "Cold fire".

1955, 23 May Per dies of TB in the sanatorium. "Ramanagiri Swamigal Ashramam" is established.

Per Westin's relatives

Per Alexander Westin was born on June 19, 1921, when the family lived in the middle of Old Town in Stockholm, a few hundred meters from the Royal Palace. But it was not at the castle that he had his relatives. It was in Roslagen's beautiful archipelago around Rådmansö. His grandfather August was a skipper from Tjockö, and his grandfather Per Olof had the same occupation on Björkö. It was a family of hard-working skippers, seamen, fishermen and farmers.

Firewood was primarily transported to Stockholm on stable sailboats. But the trip in could take 3.5 hours or, on a windless day, five days. When railways began to be built and steamboat traffic modernized traffic, the sailboats, so called "Rospiggar"— rose spikes, were gradually outcompeted between 1870-1914. It was the end of a successful era for the so-called "skeppsadeln" ("the shipping nobility"), who had been well off with large houses on the islands.

In 1895 skipper August dies and Per's grandmother Amanda is alone with 5 children in the household. It forms the backdrop to the first breakup in Per's dramatic backstory.

Per Westin's relatives, an overview:

Per Westin's father was Robert Westin (1891–1943), born at Tjockö, Rådmansö, and his mother was Rudith Westin (born Westerlund, 1892–1964), born at Gräddö, Rådmansö.

Per's sisters:
Britt Westin (1923–2011), married in 1949 to civil engineer Bengt Christiansson (1917–2009).
Siv Westin (1924–2009), married in 1947 to director Paul Troborg (1910–1994). Children: Thomas (1950–1978) and Per-Olof (born 1953).

Father's Siblings:
Betty Westin (1888–1970), married in 1912 to foreman at Westins ateljé David Person (born 1889). Nelly Westin (1893–1950), married to sea captain at A.B. Nordstjernan, John Söderman (born 1890). Asta (Augusta) Westin (1895–1973), married to manager Knut Anberg (1894–1976). Children: Kerstin Margareta (born 1935).

Per's father Robert also had four half-siblings from a previous marriage.

Mother's siblings:
Rut Johansson (born Vesterberg, 1886), lived at Finnholmen, Blidö, with boat builder Petrus Herman Johansson (born 1879). Rostil Vesterberg (born 1892, moved to Stockholm in 1917).

Per's grandparents:

Grandfather on the father's side: August Westin (1853–1895), skipper from Tjockö, Rådmansö. His parents were Magnus Westin (1812–1863), skipper from Marö, Rådmansö, and Britta Ersdotter (1811–1891), Rådmansö.

Grandmother on the father's side: Amanda Söderlund (1865–1943), housekeeper, later wife of August Alexander. Her parents were Jan Fredrik Söderlund (1835–1902), farmer from Rådmansö, and Josefina Berg (1829–1879).

Grandfather on the mother's side: Per Olof Westerberg (1852–1920), skipper and homesteader on Björkö. His parents were Johan Olsson Westerberg (born 1822), fisherman from Rådmansö, and Brita Cajsa Jansdotter (born 1826), from Wätö.

Grandmother on the mother's side: Anna Lovisa Jansdotter (born 1864 in Husby-Lyhundra, now Norrtälje). Her parents were Jan Petter Jansson (born 1823), tenant from Loharad and Maria Margareta Ersdotter (born 1827), from Frötuna.

Per's father Robert

Robert and his three sisters Betty, Nelly and Asta realized, like so many others, that the only option was a new life inside Stockholm. Robert moved there in 1906 and invested in engraver training. The choice of profession indicates an artistic ambition and at the same time someone who has a great ability to control and detail. Until 1918, he was first a student, then a steel engraver for master engraver Per Engström on Observatoriegatan. The training was long and laborious, but the investment really paid off. He came in 1921 to establish his own successful metal factory in the Old Town, Westins Ateljé ('Westin's atelier').

The housing situation was crisis-like in Stockholm, when the city's population tripled in 50 years. Robert lived during the 1910s at Odengatan 100, an address that several relatives also used. Also Per's mother Rudith would have moved in there first, but it seems that she had a hard time leaving her Gräddö. It is only after Robert and Rudith get married in Rådmansö church in the summer of 1919 that Rudith comes along. Then they move in the autumn to Österlånggatan 24, 2 tr. in Gamla Stan, the gate next to the house where Robert's company was established.

The narrow street was one of the busiest in Stockholm at the time. Many of the city's sailmakers, clothing stores and shipping companies were located here, and the area was visited by many sailors. They probably came here through the family's contacts among skippers and shipowners.

Robert Westin's atelier started as an engraving and goldsmith's company in 1921. Together with his brother-in-law David Person, former elite gymnast, they produce medals, sports badges and other small metal objects. In 1923, e.g. 10,000 entry tokens to the Vasaloppet was made. They find their own niche with a slightly cheaper and simpler quality than the competitor Sporrong. The company begins to roll well in the 1930s when they become a supplier to the Swedish Gymnastics Association and others. With the medal artist Sven Sköld in 1935, the status is further raised and the medals for the Lingiaden are made with motifs of King Gustav V. During the war, there are more and more commemorative decorations and awards for military units. The company has 32 employees in 1947, when it was taken over by accountant Erik Jarlebring. In 1970 the company was bought up by Sporrong.

It is through Robert's career-wise brave choice that Per got a stable financial foundation to stand on. The cohesion within the family meant everything to how things turned out. The sisters married wealthy men and Robert purposefully began to build a large network of contacts in sports, the Free Church, the military and with other entrepreneurs. It is this strong will that later led Per beyond the borders of both the country and the senses.

In 1941, Robert invests in expanding a tar factory in Järbo in collaboration with his son-in-law, engineer Bengt Christiansson, who specializes in a new manufacturing method. The factory barely got by and was shut down after the war. It was a major setback in Robert's otherwise successful career. Perhaps it contributed to the tragic end Robert's life later came to have.

Per's upbringing and schooling

During his upbringing, Per gets to experience something of a social class trip. Per's sister Britt was also born at the address in Gamla stan in 1923, and in the winter of 1924 the family moved to Tjärhovsgatan 42 A, 3 tr. in Söder, where sister Siv is also born in December. The environments in Gamla stan and on Söder were quite rough at this time. Primary school Katarina Norra on the same street is the closest to Per. His early days in the 1920s were probably quite tough and busy among the small children in the cramped apartments and in Söder's schoolyards.

It is during the early 1930s that things start to go well for the father's company, and the family leaves the noisy city environments for the rich and neat residential area Djursholm in Danderyd. After a couple of years at Burevägen 6 – a castle-like multi-family house – they move in the autumn of 1934 into their very own large house at Fritiofsvägen 5. They get domestic help, and to help them they have the modernities of the new age such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines. Per's school here is probably Djursholms Samskola, famous in Stockholm for its "snobbish" students.

From 1932, Robert was a youth leader in the YMCA and for Valhalla Mission Church's scout-like activity for boys aged 10–13, the "Valhalla boys". They had a summer camp in Roslagen, and it was quite likely that Per was there on some occasion. At least they probably stayed with their family in the archipelago during the summers among relatives on Gräddö, Tjockö or Blidö.

Our Boys' (SMU) "laws" provide an image of the morals that characterized the mission church and its youth activities. A member...

Always shows reverence for God and His Word.

Willingly obeys parents, leaders and teachers.

Always speaks the truth and never breaks his word.

Is friendly, attentive and courteous and helps others, especially the weak.

Carry out their work at home and school quickly, willingly and carefully.

Always in a good mood, even in difficulties.

Is pure in thought, word and deed.

Is a good comrade and does his duty without thought of reward.

Is kind to animals and gets along well in the woods and fields.

Is thrifty to be able to sort himself out and help others.

There was then a different kind of hierarchical division of roles within the family and society than it looks like today. Obedience, duty and courtesy were seen as almost unshakable virtues.

For Per, Robert's involvement in the Valhalla Mission Church (now the Immanuel Church) may have had several different meanings. In addition to witnessing the youth camps, he may of course have been directly colored by his father's faith and heartfelt religiosity. Perhaps Per heard stories or read about the conditions in the Congo, China and India in which the missionaries worked. However, there is no information that Per himself was active in the church. Per's two sisters were baptized when they were in their teens one day in February 1939. Within the congregation you could be baptized at any age. However, Per did not do so on that occasion, and there is no record of him being baptized earlier either. Could it be a sign that he already felt doubts about getting involved in the Free Church in his early years?

In the years 1939–1943, Per Westin studied at the exclusive boarding school Lundsberg's school in Värmland, where he lived in the student dormitory Forest Hill. His sisters may have gone there, too. Usually you get there at the age of 10, but Per came late and graduated when he was barely 22 years old. It was expensive to go to boarding school, and it was perhaps only then that Robert had made a sufficient fortune. The boarding school may also have been a security for the father, in that he had the children in a safer place during the war years.

Lundsberg was founded in 1896 on the model of an English boarding school for boys. The school works for a strictly disciplined Christian, evangelical upbringing. This is where the cream of the Swedish upper class elite came. Noble families such as the Wachtmeister family and several members of the royal Bernadotte family have attended the school over the years. There was no royal person present when Per went there, but the idea of Per's royalty may have come from the noble reputation of the school.

The school is characterized by peer education and uses a hierarchical division of younger/older students. There were often fights between the different student dormitories. Home trips were only made twice per semester, so the boarding school became like a small community of its own with its own specific rules and a culture of silence that continued even after school. Despite the harsh environment, there were great opportunities to make contacts ahead of the continued working life. In Per's address book, the names of nobles and Indian gurus are mixed on the pages. In May 1943, Per graduated at the same time as, among others, Stig Klingspor and Jan Cappelen, who became major business leaders.

Where was Per's spirituality among this, one wonders. Somewhere a seed must have been planted, and a longing for a more open and deeper life. In March 1944, the Theosophical Society held a lecture series on yoga on Östermalmsgatan, Stockholm. It was held by the Danish bishop Otto Viking. Before his Catholic career, he was a representative of the wisdom teacher J. Krishnamurti and the Adyar branch of theosophy in the Nordics. Each week there was a new topic for lectures: karma, bhakti, gnana and"symbolic" yoga. Interesting for us is the lecture on March 29, "Raja yoga". There is no evidence that Per attended, but it is not entirely improbable that he may have come out from the lecture with the book Raja Yoga by Vivekananda in hand. It is the book that really came to shape Per's search during his first time in India.

In the middle of the raging war, starting on June 10, 1944, Per Westin did his military service (in the summer of 1942 he had also served, but was then deferred for studies). He was a command student in the infantry and trained as a corporal at the platoon leader's school at the Gotland regiment between April and September 1945. For a time he was a group leader. In the summer of 1946, there was rope training. At the beginning of the 1950s, Per would then have completed training as a sergeant and transferred to Svea life guard. Judging by the consistently very good witticisms, he fulfilled his duty in the best possible way. You can see that Per really invested fully in a career in the military. Within the family there were some married military men and Robert's father was active in the Home Guard.

According to a source, Per had suffered an injury to his upper lip caused by an explosion during military service. He is also said to have had a slightly forward-leaning stoop in 1947 and he came to use a cane during his time in India. However, there is nothing written about any damage in Per's conscription card.

On the eve of Valborg fair in 1943, Per's father Robert dies in the central hospital in Stockholm, aged only 52. According to the death book, the cause was "8750", where the cold numerical code stands for poisoning by unnatural means under the heading "suicidium". In other words, the father has taken his own life. Just ten days earlier, Robert's mother Amanda had passed away. From Robert's estate record, which states that "no will could be found", one understands that everything may have happened hastily. The family asked to bury Robert in Rådmansö parish where he grew up.

You understand that it must have been extremely traumatic for the children when your father and grandmother disappear so suddenly and close to each other. The father's death must have been a very big blow to the family. It became a time of breakup during a time when safety and security are important. It is likely that this is included in the luggage when Per later chooses to leave his old life in Sweden behind, in order to go to India in 1947.

The estate register shows that Robert made himself a fortune which today corresponds to approximately SEK 5.75 million. He owned three properties as well as stocks and bonds for large amounts. But he also had debts, mainly from the investment in the tar factory in Järbo, which took away about half of his assets. The entire estate was sold after the father's death. The inheritance went to Rudith, but Per somehow later got a sixth of one of the property plots in Danderyd, his own estate register shows.

The family does not stay long in the old house. In September 1946, the remaining family moved to a newly built slightly smaller house in Danderyd. But even that becomes something of an intermediate station.

What happened to the family?

Mother Rudith changed back to her old surname Westerlund. She moved in 1948 to an ordinary simple apartment in Norrtälje, where she died in 1964. Norrtälje is close to Rådmansö where she had grown up and where she had her closest relatives.

Per's sister Britt married in 1949 civil engineer, later director, Bengt Christiansson. Bengt had previously been married and then had a daughter Boel. They continue to live in Stockholm and later end up on Strandvägen. Through his work, Bengt has been abroad in Argentina, Poland and the USA, and in the 60s Britt also seems to have been outside Sweden. They did not have any children. Britt Christiansson died in May 2011 and is buried with her husband at Galärvarvskyrkogården on Djurgården.

Sister Siv married director Paul Troborg on 30 March 1947. Per attended the wedding and the subsequent dinner at an exclusive inn. The family had two children, of whom Per-Olof (born 1953) is the only surviving close relative of Per (apart from Robert's sister Asta's only child). It is unknown to me what the sisters worked on. In 1950, Siv is a philosophy student, just like Per was. The family remains resident in Stockholm, and Siv Troborg dies in October 2009.

One can now notice a split in Per. Alongside the tougher military line, he invests in studies in the humanities. In the fall semester of 1943, Per starts at Uppsala University, and then calls himself "the candidate". The fact that he was a philosophy student does not necessarily mean that he studied philosophy in particular, it could have been various humanities subjects or social sciences. What is special about Uppsala is that there were many opportunities to delve into texts about India's religious and cultural life, which had previously caught Per's interest on some occasion. After an interlude until the end of the war at the platoon leader's school, he probably resumed his studies in the fall of 1945.

Indology, the study of India, has a long tradition within Uppsala University. As early as the beginning of the 19th century, Sanskrit, the original language of the Vedas, was studied there. Language and religion research focused mainly on comparative Indo-European studies influenced by the German Orientalist Max Müller and the linguist Georges Dumézil.

At the university, Per could have met some of the most prominent researchers who were active in Sweden during this time. Indologist Kasten Rönnow was interested in the Vedas and their connection to Greek and Indian religion. Periodically the professor of religious history was the orientalist Geo Widengren. The Danish assistant professor Hans Hendriksen studied, among other things, the Rigveda and Pali texts. Stig Wikander wrote about the symbolic division of Indo-European religions and transferred the theory to the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata and Nordic mythology. Probably Per read Professor Jarl Charpentier's book "India – history, religion, caste" from 1925. The great interest in Indology and comparative research probably paved the way for Per to get approval to go to India for further studies.

In society there was also an interest in the oriental, which had been seen in art, design and philosophy since the turn of the century. At the end of the 19th century, the Theosophical doctrine introduced new ideas about spirituality and mysticism. If Theosophy initially devoted itself to pseudoscientific theories, during the 1920s and 30s it became increasingly devoted to "the spiritual journey inward". It brought it closer to Christianity in its expression and thereby became increasingly accepted.

Theosophy was clearly noticed in Sweden during the first part of the 20th century. Among writers, artists and noble people, even King Oscar II, there was an interest in the occult. The Point Loma branch held a summer camp on Visingsö under the name "Raja Yoga pedagogy" until 1930. The foundation in 1913 was supported by the king. However, this branch of Theosophy wanted to purge much of the mystical features, in contrast to Adyar Theosophy, based on Annie Besant's philosophical legacy. Adyar was stationed in Madras (today Chennai) and that was also where the Theosophical Society in Östermalm had its ideological basis. The influence of Theosophy, we will see, accompanies Per in various ways throughout his life, and the people he meets and is influenced by often have a background within the movement.

After 1933, occultism and mysticism became increasingly mixed with ideas of racialism and nationalism. According to the Nazi Himmler, the superhuman Aryans, with roots in Tibet, originally descended from the mythical island of Atlantis. During the 1930s and 40s, there were several such theories in circulation that came to color both serious and pseudoscientific research.

There also began to come depictions of India's spiritual spectrum that reached a larger audience, such as e.g. Paul Brunton's "A Search in Secret India" (1934), which portrayed wisdom teachers, including Ramana Maharshi. All in all, it made the image of Asia and especially India associated with spiritual mysticism and something archaic, original. More and more people came to search there to find their "spiritual roots".

So in summary, spirituality and mysticism were definitely in the air during Per's upbringing. Indology and comparative Indo-European studies flourished as research fields. The boundaries between Christianity and other kinds of religiosity were also increasingly dissolved. And after the end of the war and India's declaration of independence on August 15, 1947, which (1950) established at least formal criteria for democracy, there was also greater openness and opportunities for Per to meet India's religious world of ideas on the spot.

India 1947-55

After his studies at Uppsala University at bachelor's level in philosophy, Per chooses to continue his studies in India at Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in Varanasi. There, he is supposed to take his master's degree during one academic year.

After the war and India's independence in August 1947, Varanasi became a melting pot for intellectuals and spiritual seekers from all over the world. Like Almora in the Himalayas, which attracted visitors when the heat became too intense to the south, Varanasi on the sacred river Ganges became a natural starting point for pilgrimages to the great spiritual leaders of the time: Sri Aurobindo, Ramana Maharshi, and to some extent Sri Anandamayi Ma. There, along the banks of the Ganges, sadhus (Hindu ascetics) gathered who gave a much deeper insight into daily religious life than Per could ever get from his studies in Uppsala.

On May 27, 1947, Per is granted permission to travel to India through the Royal University in Uppsala. The certificate was valid for 1 year. One of Per's notes shows that he had been in India since November 20, 1947, which may be true, as planning with visas and other paperwork could have taken a few months before departure.

Per probably came with scheduled flights, whose traffic had started quickly after the end of the Second World War. The airline SAS was founded in 1946. Some stopovers were needed, probably in Amsterdam and Istanbul, among others, and it took longer to fly then, but really it was not much more difficult than today. The missionary flight Ansgar also had a few flights to India every year.

Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi was founded in 1916. It was the first and largest university with its own boarding school in India, so it is only natural that Per ended up there. The main campus is located near the river Ganges, in the southern outskirts of Varanasi. Per probably studied at what was then called "Indian Religion and Philosophy", with courses in mainly Hindu, but also Jain and some Buddhist practices and philosophies.

The school aims to promote the study of ancient Indian shastra, Sanskrit language and Sanskrit literature and "remove the misconceptions about religion, spirituality, astrology and tantra from the society". It wants to highlight Hindu culture and religiosity as particularly prominent and significant. There is a streak of Hindu nationalism about the school even today.

Among Westerners who studied at the school during Per's time was Judith Tyberg (1902–1980). She was a former theosophist, established Sanskrit scholar and later yogi under the name "Jyotipriya". She describes the meeting with BHU, and her intentions in getting there, in a similar way as it might have been for Per. She leaves the US to, like him, complete a master's degree. But in her diary, Tyberg expresses her feelings for another, deeper goal - spiritual search. She was looking for "the lost secrets and authority of the Vedas". Tyberg thinks the dry studies at home were too strongly influenced by Max Müller and other Orientalists, and lacked an element of deeper spirituality and understanding. She believes that it was only presented as "a kind of nature lyric" or as an "interesting remnant of barbarism". However, she is disappointed when she sees that the same ideas have taken hold at BHU (Mandakini 1981).

But, Tyberg writes in her diary, on the course in India she meets a committed lecturer named Arabinda Basu. He gives her a book by Aurobindo, "Secret of the Veda". She reads it all night and becomes enchanted by the book. She wants to travel further in India on a pilgrimage. Tyberg is said to have then spent two months in the fall of 1947 at Aurobindo's ashram in Pondicherry. There, on November 24, she describes spiritual experiences with words such as "I just felt God, a marvellous feeling of expansion". She felt an "electrical current and whirling motions" that gave her the awareness: "[I] really knew what was my soul". After these life-changing experiences (which lasted for several days), she then returned to Varanasi and completed in 1949 her master's degree (Mandakini 1981).

Per ought to have met Judith Tyberg after her return to Varanasi in December. Back at school, Tyberg wanted to become a "divine channel" that made the school's walls "ring with the reverbations of the eternal things". What influence did she have on how Per's spiritual path came to be? The idea of leaving the dry studies and just following your heart with spiritual experiences during a pilgrimage should have attracted Per. Tyberg gained new strength for further studies. Was that perhaps what Per was initially looking for when he came to venture out on new paths? But unlike Tyberg, he eventually found himself forced to interrupt his studies abruptly in order to gain real spiritual knowledge.

Uncertain sources (YouTube etc.) mention that Per visited Aurobindo's ashram. He is said to have said that "Aurobindo was the greatest personality he met, and Ramana Maharshi was the greatest non-personality he met". With Pondicherry's proximity to Tiruvannamalai and Chennai, and with Tyberg as a frequent visitor until her return home in March 1950, regardless of the truth of the expression, it is highly likely that Per was there at some point.

The person who attracted Tyberg to India was the (until January 1948) vice-chancellor of BHU, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975). He was strongly influenced by Vivekananda and was a friend of the non-dualist philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. He was also an outspoken defender of Hinduism in religion and politics. Nevertheless, he worked tirelessly to create bridges between Eastern and Western philosophy. Radhakrishnan is one of the most influential scholars of comparative religion and philosophy in the 20th century. It may have been important for Per to get the go-ahead to travel to BHU. If he taught, of course Radhakrishnan could also have a direct influence on Per.

Another teacher who was at BHU in 1947–48 was Charles A Moore (1901–1967), professor of comparative philosophy. In his research, he has compared Indian and Western philosophy, and believes that the Indian philosophy is based on religiosity and goes "one step further" in everything in order to thereby find the final, "ultimate perspective". He notices this in how intuition precedes reason, in the theories of ahimsa (non-killing), asceticism regarding the law of karma, and in the ultimate salvation from suffering, moksha. Taking things to the extreme is exactly something that we will see Per live out next. He seems to be a person who dares to challenge his limits and is equipped with an iron-hard will and a strong need for control that makes him capable of transcending ingrained beliefs.

Lecturers such as Basu, Moore and Radhakrishnan, along with Tyberg and her wide network of contacts, gave Per a deeper picture of India's spirituality. Something of the student's longing for what was missing in his studies at home was caught and blossomed in him. Other professors at the school at this time, such as B. L. Atreya and T. R. V. Murti, also praise Tyberg's heartfelt religious outspokenness (Mandakini 1981). Meetings could take place at school with students and teachers discussing religion and spirituality in a more open way, without letting academics obscure the inner spiritual life that lay behind the words of the studied ancient religious scriptures.

Most likely, Per's father's faith and involvement in the Valhalla mission church, and then his father's tragic passing, had confronted Per with the incomprehensibility of life and how to deal with its innermost questions. But Per does not seem to have felt that the Christian alternative gave him complete answers. He therefore sought other alternative paths to spirituality. Were the studies, as for Tyberg, perhaps just a pretext to be able to meet India's spirituality - and himself - more directly and more deeply than he had previously allowed himself to do?

In our continuing story of Per Westin's life, we come to the part where the sources become more spiritually colored. There is a long tradition in India of so-called hagiographies, which aim to exaggerate or embellish the course of events in order to emphasize the nobility with which the "saint" lived and worked. It is sometimes difficult to isolate these mythic elements in the sources.

The sources referred to hereafter are for the most part taken from The Mountain Path, a quarterly magazine published by Sri Ramanashramam. It is shorter articles about Swami Ramanagiri written by his disciples. One is by the pseudonym "A Chela" from 1980 (1) and another by Professor K. C. Sastri from 1986 (2). Besides these, David Godman, author of books on Ramana Maharshi, has also published an extensive chapter on Ramanagiri in his book "The Power of the Presence, Part Two" (3). In the book, and similar blog posts, Godman compiles material from the sources mentioned together with excerpts from Sunyata's book "Dancing with the void" (4), in which Ramanagiri has been given a separate chapter. There are also two sources that provide other or unique information: 'A pilgrimage, part 2' by Dennis Hartel (5), and a Facebook post from 11 October 2018 (6).

Here is an example of biographical account by K. C. Sastri, weaving in questionable facts and emphasizing how quickly Per wanted to leave academic life behind and devote himself to his spiritual practices:

Born into a princely family (he was related to the King of Sweden) in 1921, Swami Ramanagiri was an only child. Coming across the book Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekananda he was able to at once, grasp and practice the truths contained in it. He waited for a suitable opportunity to come to India. As soon as the war ended, in 1949, he came and studied philosophy in Benares Hindu University. It was not long before he realised that the Ultimate Reality lay not in study but in practice. He gave up his studies, renounced property worth more than eight million and took sannyasa. (2)

One gets the impression that all of Per's studies have only focused on realizing the ultimate truth. He has a fantastic ability to understand spiritual truths and a desire to practice yoga as quickly as possible and dedicate his life to becoming a sannyasi, Hindu monk. In fact, he had studied for a long time at the university in Uppsala, and probably envisioned a career within the university. The text also does not include the uncertainty that was surely there about what Per wanted with his life after the tragic events in his homeland. The studies in philosophy and religion became the basis for his new direction in life, and the cultural encounters with India then determined how the development was to be. The biographical depictions are often colored by the desire to see Per's life as determined to spiritual enlightenment, but do not take into account the uncertainty and non-religious elements that underlie life decisions.

Per Westin's sources of inspiration

The inspiration for Per's philosophy, which is now beginning to take shape, came from many different sources. Per never became a pure Advaita monk, but imparted to his future disciples a blend of the wisdoms of his main sources of inspiration: Vivekananda's Raja Yoga, Sunyata's mysticism and, increasingly, Ramana Maharshi's Advaita Vedanta.

Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) was one of the key figures in the spread of yoga and Vedanta in the West. He made a deep impression as a charismatic lecturer at the "Parliament of Religions" in Chicago in 1893. He was the foremost disciple of the guru Ramakrishna, but before that was strongly influenced by Western esotericism and the Brahmo Samaj movement, which opposed polytheism and caste restrictions and sought a universalist interpretation of Hinduism. A prolific writer and lecturer, he became one of the most influential Hindu theorists and promoted encounters between Eastern and Western religiosity.

Vivekananda's book "Raja Yoga" (1896) is mentioned in the sources as a major source of inspiration for Per Westin. It is a practical tutorial in realizing the divine power within us. As the book was widely distributed in the Western world, it could have come into Per's possession in many different ways, perhaps already in his early years. One alternative is the lecture on yoga at the Theosophical Society in 1944, which Per may have attended.

The book's front page sets the tone:

EACH SOUL IS POTENTIALLY DIVINE. THE GOAL IS TO MANIFEST THIS DIVINE WITHIN, BY CONTROLLING NATURE, EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL. DO THIS EITHER BY WORK, OR WORSHIP, OR PSYCHIC CONTROL, OR PHILOSOPHY, BY ONE, OR MORE, OR ALL OF THESE—AND BE FREE. THIS IS THE WHOLE OF RELIGION. DOCTRINES, OR DOGMAS, OR RITUALS, OR BOOKS, OR TEMPLES, OR FORMS, ARE BUT SECONDARY DETAILS.

The emphasis on acquiring psychological control and the distancing from dogmas and rituals could have resonated with Per in relation to his father's religiosity and the insecure period after his passing.

Swami Vivekananda's book on "Raja Yoga" (meaning "royal yoga") is his interpretation of Patanjali's "Yoga Sutras", a collection of Sanskrit texts on yoga written in the fourth century CE. Unlike the body-oriented yoga we know today, Vivekananda's interpretations focused on cognitive and spiritual insights. The sutras are embroidered and include elements from traditional Hinduism, but also Western science, idealism, neo-vedantic esotericism, occultism, theosophy, transcendentalism, mesmerism and Unitarianism.

Central to the book is the idea of offering a practical scientifically based way to realize the divine power within us. If you only approach it methodically, the results will appear in the same obvious way as after any other scientifically tested method. The only difference is that this concerns spirituality. For the practical Per, this scientific approach to spirituality must have been appealing.

The writer De Michelis has observed three overarching models that run through the book:

1. The "Prana model" was heavily influenced by mesmerism, popular at the turn of the century. Prana is the central life force, which can be controlled through Raja Yoga. The accumulation of prana leads to liberation and promotes the speed of getting there. Breathing exercises play a key role in this model.

2. The "Samadhi model" focuses on the power of the mind and is heavily influenced by transcendentalism. Yoga here becomes a journey for the mind back to its origins with the help of meditation exercises. The mind is only a small part of the "universal mind", and therefore by withdrawing the mind it leads to samadhi.

3. The "Neoadvaita method" is about putting aside all efforts to try to achieve something, and instead being in a completely transcendental state. This state is reached in the final stage of samadhi and is equal to the complete identification with purusa - "The One", also called "The Absolute" or "Self".

Here we see the basis for Per's use of his own mix of breathing techniques and advaita vedanta. Knowledge of the various entryways to spiritual techniques means that there are meeting grounds in the impending acquaintance with Ramana Maharshi's teachings. The transcendental ascent into the Self and the identification with the Absolute that can be achieved through exercises such as meditation and reflective techniques are already included as concepts in this book, albeit described in a simpler and Western-adapted way. The book is a good starting point for getting to know Indian religiosity and an invitation to start exploring yourself on an inner level.

Sunyata

Alfred Julius Emmanuel Sörensen (1890–1984) was a Danish gardener who was invited to visit India by the poet Rabindranath Tagore. There he came to stay under the name of Sunyata for 40 years, with his home in a cave in Almora. The city in the Himalayan mountains has throughout the ages drawn seekers in search of tranquility and a deeper spirituality, from Swami Vivekananda to the beatniks of the 1960s.

Sunyata is a fascinating person who during his long life personally got to meet many prominent Indians, such as Mahatma Gandhi and the Nehru family. He lived next door to the Buddhist Lama Govinda and regularly met personalities such as Swami Ramdas and Neem Karoli Baba. To Ramana Maharshi's ashram he traveled on four different occasions in the years 1936–46, and was called by him "a rare born mystic". While Sunyata could thrive in the most high-profile social contexts, he was an ascetic who primarily "preached" the importance of silence and contemplation. Above the entrance to his cave was the sign "No visitors - silence".

Philosophically, he is close to Buddhism, but made extensive use of Hindu concepts and terms. Western philosophy and literature, Jung's psychology and the mysticism of the Danish thinker Martinus are also noticeable in his texts.

Sunyata was indeed educated and well-educated in several fields, but he playfully called ordinary education "headucation". Similarly, he often made use of self-constructed words and a language that was more like a flowing stream with no direction or end goal. His open attitude and different way of relating to wisdom, words and learning surely influenced Per as he sought beyond the academic life. Here, Per met a real mystic who became a friend for life.

In Varanasi, the student Per is said to have met the Dane by chance while walking along the river bank. Sunyata fed a donkey with her leftover food, and the generosity impressed Per. The story is reproduced in the book about Sunyata's life, "Dancing with the void". The chapter on Per (there called Peer Wertin) is, however, a heavily edited section of a longer text found in "The typewritten manuscripts", which contain Sunyata's collected texts. I have transcribed the part of the text where Per is described, and it is the one I refer to in the following.

Sunyata describes Per as civilized and respectable, "pyntelig", with the appearance of an academically learned person. At this time, he could not notice the TB Per would later suffer from. As new friends, Per and Sunyata went around Varanasi to meet and see holy people and places. A holy man, sadhu, gave Per the name "Sri Hanuman" ("meaning Rama-Bhakti") after the Indian monkey god. Despite Sunyata's skepticism, it made a big impression on Per. When the heat got too much in Varanasi, Per went to visit Sunyata and lived in his cave in Almora.

Sunyata describes Per as a person who was in great need of throwing off the old and opening up. Both clothes and ego came off, Sunyata puts it as, in his very own poetic painting (and untranslatable) way:

(...) he imbibed the gracious Solitude — in pure, Krishna-blue akasha-realm-, while Param-hansa-wings [swan wings] grew and unfurled. There was the psychological urge or cult of sahaja [spontaneous enlightenment] stark openness and nudeness — (Nack-Kultur)-, the need of being natural, without rags of ego-deceit, artificial respectability or artistic hiding-. In pure and purna Unity-touch the mental fig-leaves become positively indecent or vulgar prudery-.

Per is said to have felt at home with "books and rich inner life" in the beautiful nature among the mountains, the winds and the pines that "singing Self-radiant Silence" and "Aums". Sunyata mostly left Per to himself except for occasional service and chats, and when naked cutting grass and chopping wood "all part of Himalayan contemplation". After Almora, Per went on a pilgrimage in the Himalayas, writes Sunyata. Perhaps Per once met Sri Anandamayee Ma, who in June 1948 was in Almora? Per and Sunyata were in contact by letter during Per's continued time in India.

Sunyata saw a spiritual potential in him – a special Swedish occultism; "a siddhic play for Power-, control, conquest (of age ?)" which he associated with Lagerlöf's "Gösta Berling's saga", but not with the softer childlike mysticism of H. C. Andersen. But did Sunyata think Per achieved enlightenment during his lifetime? The text was written after Per's death in 1955 and is retrospective and reflective. I will now try to describe in detail how Sunyata felt about Per's spiritual journey.

Sunyata begins his text by telling how Ramana Maharshi died the ego-death at the age of 17, yet lived in his body for a long time thereafter. However, Per, who went through an 8-year sadhana (spiritual strengthening exercises), made the spiritual journey too quickly for what his body could handle. The journey should be made slowly "on the middle way of tao", says Sunyata: "Mature awareness is all". He also likens it to alchemy, where a "bright, shining fire" never gets too strong. Implicitly, he means that Per's death from TB was due to this hard training. It is common among Westerners who perform sadhana too rigorously without sufficient grounding and traditions to fall into traps that lead to psychological imbalance and physical problems.

From initially expressing uncertainty in the text as to whether Per "came through", i.e. transcended the ego, Sunyata switches to calling Per "one in a million" who really succeeded in his goal. Per's last letter to Sunyata is seen as evidence of his approach to a final awakening in its "'last' word-stuttering about the ineffable". After years of sadhana, the body was gone but Per "transcended body-awareness, and, to no-bodies-bodies, are no matter-, no reality. " He succeeded in unfolding his swan wings (Paramhansa) and transcending the ego:

" (...) he flew beyond the Him to the Alaya as a real and fully-fledged Paramhansaji-, Gate, Gate, Paramagate, Samparamgate, Bodhi, Swah — Wu !"

Sunyata also reflects on that Per was now being worshiped in his temple in South India, which he saw as something of an irony. "It is easy to become a god and to be worshipped as such in India" he says through Wuji, Sunyata's dog (whom he believed to be an enlightened being). It is difficult to recognize a real saint, who is often inconspicuous and avoids ego-driven expressions, says Wuji.

Per initially struggled with the Indian context, still "wallowing in western theories, values, philosophies and ideal abstractions" and seeking quick powerful kicks of mysticism, but found in the Himalayas a deeper understanding and calmer awareness. Sunyata looked sympathetically at Per's prejudices and "blinkers". It was only with Ramana Maharshi's entry into Per's life, says Sunyata, that awareness was founded and led him to ego-transcendence and a final awakening in what he calls "integral Adwaita-experience":

We had introduced the Himalayan Rishi Ramana to Peer-, and in and through him he, later on, came to complete awakening, conscious Self-awareness or Adwaita-Experiencing,- although his tools had to go. Hanuman dropped off and Ramanagiri emerged-.

Sunyata's text portrays Per as a success story in spiritual terms, a testament to the powerful transformative power of self-awareness. He is one of many seekers of harmony beyond the limitations of the ego, and each has his own unique way of overcoming the difficulties life throws at the individual. The text, in all its subtlety, highlights the gradual awakening of Per, Sri Ramanagiri. "Blessed be the Name", Sunyata concludes his text with.

Sunyata gives us an insight in his book (4) how a mystic or self-realized experiences the world. He refers to how the Christian mystic and author Evelyn Underhills (1875–1941) defined mysticism, which may have influenced the presentation:

- a mystic has awakened into total union with Reality, or at least strives for it.

- In the mystic's unity consciousness there is no sense of personal or individual identity, no I or mine, and yet it is a form of witnessing consciousness. One is in a kind of "affectionate detachment" where no mental discrimination or judgment takes place. Only self-awareness is secure and stands firm.

- everything is experienced as perfect and harmonious, and nothing feels unnecessary or bad - "All is well".

- the power of love permeates and transcends everything. God/Self/Grace surrounds us and "we live, move and have our being in God".

- The One gives us the non-dualistic experience of "the non-thing-ness". To know God is to be God.

- complete acceptance of everything that life brings. Conflict and suffering are like "waves on a calm ocean".

- no dualism between body and soul. There is a difference in degree, but not in essence. When consciousness becomes enlightened, so does the body. It can be seen in the aura of a self-realized person, which shines with the light of wisdom when the ego has fully surrendered to the Self.

- a mystic is "carefree, age-free and ego-free". The mystic has transcended time and space and ended up in a "new dimension" where joy, love and empathy reign.

- everyone can become enlightened and feel the joy and grace that comes from the path of wisdom.

The Dikshaguru

Back in Varanasi, Per must have felt a strong calling to devote himself to yoga full-time. According to the sources (1, 5), Per is said to have read a lot of religious literature in Almora, which made him want to learn the teachings of the Upanishads from a qualified guru. Presumably he then seeks out the same man who gave him the name "Sri Hanuman". However, he had strict requirements to be able to study scriptures under his supervision. As the guru only taught the teachings to other sannyasis, Per had to become one first.

The initiation, dikshan, meant that Per had to put on the ochre-yellow beggar monk's robe and shave off his hair. Henceforth he was never to wish for anything for himself and only accept what was offered to him. He had to finish his academic studies and give up what he owned. According to K. S. Sastri has referred to "property worth more than eight million", another source (3) adds "dollars" to it.

The day after the diksha, it is told (1, 3) how Per passed by a friend's house, but the friend no longer recognized him. Unaware that the monk is his friend, he gives him some rotten bananas. That was Per's first donated meal (bhiksha) as a monk. The next day, a soldier stands outside a royal palace and invites him. It was a tradition to invite the first sannyasi they see in front of the palace gate to a royal dinner and to give him gifts.

When Per then tells about these situations to his dikshaguru, he says that Per should be indifferent to these things because food is only for the survival of the body. In the future, says the guru, Per should never handle money again, but only live on alms and never ask for anything.

Nothing is said about how Per gave up his money or to whom he gave it. Of course, Per didn't have 8 million that he suddenly gave away. The inheritance from the father went to Per's mother, who was still alive. It is likely that money still came to him after the sale of the property they previously lived in, but it cannot have been a question of any huge sums he had access to on the spot in India. A conceivable scenario could have been that it was the travel cash he gave up, by donating it to a nearby temple.

At the time of his death in 1955, Per was actually a wealthy man. According to the estate register, Per owned one-sixth of the property Sleipner 9 at a value of SEK 80,333 ($ 8000). Bonds, life insurance money and SEK 793 in the bank gave assets of SEK 111,753. Since Per took out several loans against security from the property and also had a debt to his mother of SEK 10,000, the final balance of assets at Per's death was SEK 51,434. In today's money value (2024) it is 922,625 kroner, i.e. almost one million kronor ($ 100 000).

Although the property was a locked-in asset, it gave him a financial advantage through the ability to use it as collateral for loans. Per had made several loans in this way. Unfortunately, they are undated in the register, but it is not unlikely that some of them were made while he stayed in India.

The estate register clearly shows that Per, as a monk, did not give up everything he owned. The high amounts mentioned should probably be seen as an exaggeration, to underline the importance of Per making great sacrifices for a new, spiritually inclined life. That he never handled money as a monk also sounds unlikely. He had to travel and buy necessary articles sometimes. Regardless of the truth behind the stories, the essential thing is that Per's great ambition now was to live a simple life where he devoted himself fully to spiritual development.

Per Westin's sources of inspiration

The inspiration for Per's philosophy came from several different sources. He was not a pure Advaita monk in his transmission to his disciples, but drew on the wisdom of his main sources of inspiration: Vivekananda, Sunyata and, increasingly, Ramana Maharshi.

Swami Vivekananda

The sources specifically mention Vivekananda's book "Raja Yoga" as a major source of inspiration for Per Westin. This book was widely distributed in the Western world and could have come into his possession in many different ways, perhaps already in his early years. As we have seen, an alternative is the lecture on Raja Yoga at the Theosophical Society held in the spring of 1944.

The book's front page sets the tone:

This emphasis on control and mastery, as well as a distancing from dogmas and rituals, was certainly important for Per when he was looking for new ways and security after the time of departure.

Briefly, Swami Vivekananda's book on "Raja Yoga" is his interpretation of Patanjali's "Yoga Sutras", a collection of Sanskrit texts on Yoga written in the fourth century CE. It is clearly adapted for a Western audience. The book, published in 1896, was an immediate success and was highly influential in the understanding of yoga in the West.

Unlike the body-oriented yoga we know today, Vivekananda's interpretations focused on cognitive insights. The author embroidered the Yoga Sutras, incorporating other elements from traditional Hinduism, but also ideas from Western science, idealism, neo-Vedantic esotericism, occultism, theosophy, transcendentalism, mesmerism and Unitarianism.

Central to the book is the idea of offering a practical scientifically based way to realize the divine power within us. If you approach it methodically, the results will appear in the same obvious way as after any other scientifically tested method. The only difference is that this concerns the spiritual realm. For the practical Per, this scientific approach to spirituality must have been particularly appealing.

Author De Michelis has observed three overarching models that run through the book:

1. The "Prana Model" was heavily influenced by Mesmerism, popular at the turn of the century. Prana is the central life force, which can be controlled through Raja Yoga. The accumulation of prana leads to liberation and promotes the speed of getting there. Breathing exercises play a key role in this model.

2. The "Samadhi Model" focuses on the power of the mind and is heavily influenced by Transcendentalism. Yoga here becomes a journey for the mind back to its origins with the help of meditation exercises. The mind is only a small part of the "universal mind", and therefore by withdrawing the mind it leads to samadhi.

3. The "Neoadvaita Method" is about putting aside all efforts and attempts to achieve something, and instead being in a completely transcendental state. This state is reached in the final stage of samadhi and is equal to the complete identification with purusa - "The One", also called "The Absolute" or "Self".

In Per's upcoming practice, I see many similarities here, both in his upcoming use of breathing techniques and with Advaita in the form of Ramana Maharshi's techniques. Here was already the foundation that allowed the meeting with Per's wisdom teacher to have the great effect it did. He was already familiar with the ideas of identification with the Absolute before the trip, thereby gaining a foundation for his future encounters with wisdom teachers and the non-dualistic Advaita philosophy.

Sunyata

Alfred Julius Emmanuel Sörensen (1890–1984) was a Danish gardener who, on a visit to England, received an invitation to visit India from the poet Rabindranath Tagore. He came under the name Sunyata to stay 40 years in Almora among the Himalayan mountains. Almora was and still is today a magnet for spiritual seekers seeking tranquility and a deeper spirituality, from Swami Vivekananda to groups of beatniks in the 1960s. Vivekananda described the place as follows:

These mountains are associated with the best memories of our race: Here, therefore, must be one of centers, not merely of activity, but more of calmness of meditation, and of peace and I hope someone to realize it.

But it is not there but in Varanasi, then called Benares, that the student Per is said to have met the Danish mystic by chance while walking along the riverbank. Sunyata is said to have fed a donkey with her own leftover food, and the mystic's generosity had impressed Per. The story is recounted in a chapter dedicated to Ramanagiri in the book on Sunyata's life, "Dancing with the void". Sunyata describes Per as civilized, respectable and balanced, with the appearance of an academically learned person. At this time, he could not notice the TB Per would later suffer from.

Meeting him was a real stroke of luck, as Sunyata is a fascinating person with a wide network of contacts. Sunyata came to personally meet many prominent Indians during her life, such as Mahatma Gandhi and the Nehru family. He lived next door to the Buddhist Lama Govinda and visited or was visited by spiritual personalities such as Swami Ramdas and Neem Karoli Baba. He traveled to Ramana Maharshi's ashram on four different occasions between the years 1936–46. By Ramana he is said (according to Paul Brunton, who passed on the words) to have been called "a rare born mystic" and in his presence he received lasting insights. While he was a person who had an ability to blend in and thrive in the most high-profile social settings, he was an ascetic who primarily "preached" the importance of silence and contemplation. He lived in his cave with the sign "No visitors - silence".

If one dares to characterize him philosophically, he is perhaps closer to Buddhism, but he extensively used Hindu concepts and terms taken from e.g. Advaita Vedanta. There are also features of Western philosophy, theosophy, Jung's psychology and the mysticism of the Danish thinker Martinus.

Sunyata was indeed well-educated in several fields, but liked to somewhat playfully refer to ordinary education as "headucation". Similarly, he used an outlandish language in his lyrics that was more like a flowing stream of words with no direction and no end goal. For Per, it must have been a revelation of a different way of relating to words and learning, which may have contributed to him choosing a different direction than the academic one. Here Per met a real mystic who became a friend for life.

Sunyata gives us an insight in his book how a mystic or self-realized experiences the world. He refers to how the Christian mystic and author Evelyn Underhills (1875–1941) defined mysticism, which may have influenced the presentation:

- a mystic has awakened into total union with Reality, or at least strives for it.

- everything is experienced as perfect and harmonious, and nothing feels unnecessary or bad - "All is well".

- the power of love permeates and transcends everything. God/Self/Grace surrounds us and "we live, move and have our being in God".

- The One gives us the non-dualistic experience of "the non-thing-ness". To know God is to be God.

- complete acceptance of everything that life brings. Conflict and suffering are like "waves on a calm ocean".

- a mystic is "carefree, age-free and ego-free". The mystic has transcended time and space and ended up in a "new dimension" where joy, love and empathy reign.

- everyone can become enlightened and feel the joy and grace that comes from the path of wisdom.

As new friends, Per and Sunyata went around Varanasi to meet and see holy people and places. A holy man, sadhu, gave Per the name "Sri Hanuman", after the Indian monkey god. It made a big impression on him. Then in the spring, when the heat became too great in Varanasi, Per went to visit Sunyata to live at his cave in Almora.

Sunyata describes Per as a person who was in great need of throwing off the old and opening up. Both clothes and ego came off, Sunyata puts it as, in her very own poetic painting (and untranslatable) way:

He imbibed the gracious solitude in the pure, Krishna blue akasha realm, while Paramhansa wings grew and unfurled. He had the psychological urge towards strong openness and nakedness. It was the need of being natural, without the rags of ego deception, artificial respectability or artistic hiding. In this purity, the mental fig leaves become positively indecent or a kind of vulgar prudery.

Mostly Per seems to have been by himself in Almora, in meditation or just taking in nature. Sunyata saw a spiritual potential in him – a "special Swedish occultism and intense longing to realize the Truth".

Sunyata, in his article "A hermit from Himalaya in Oslo", describes his life in the cave as a timeless state, which sometimes included socializing with other seekers whom he helped make caves for:

There are the daily chores, lots of repair work, fruit garden and food fuss, some reading and writing and maybe, even some ego talk; but there is no fixed routine of plan or schedule. Time is elastic and not very real, not a demi-god on the mantle-piece (peace). The play is coordinated, spontaneous and joyful ease. There is natural "Yogic skill in action" without tapasya or special Yogic discipline. There may be natural, sahaja, Yoga-, intuitive Yoga, Gupta Yoga or spiritual Yoga.

Per and Sunyata had contact by letter throughout Per's continued time in India. One way to notice the inspiration from Sunyata is in the great mix of religious words they both used and the way they talk about themselves in the third person. Instead of "I", Sunyata wrote "we", and Per called himself "the fool".

The Dikshaguru

Back in Varanasi, Per must have felt a strong calling to devote himself to yoga full-time. He finished his studies and is said to have also disposed of money that he owned. However, the circumstances around this are described in different ways, and how much it mattered. Someone writes 8 million, another adds "dollars" to it.

The sources tell us that Per should have read many religious scriptures in Almora, which then led him to want to learn the teachings of the Upanishads from a qualified guru. The one he had met earlier in Varanasi (perhaps the same man who gave him the name "Sri Hanuman") could only teach the teachings to other sannyasis, so Per had to become one first. It provided the opportunity to study scriptures under his supervision.

This dikshaguru of his told him never to desire anything for himself and only accept what was offered to him. With the initiation, dikshan, he had to give up all his wealth and finish his academic studies to put on the ochre-yellow beggar monk's robe and shave off his hair. One story tells how he passed by a friend's house, but the friend did not recognize him. Unaware that it was his friend the monk, he gave some bad bananas, which became his first donated food item as a beggar monk.

Another story is about a soldier outside a royal palace who invites him to a lavish dinner. The dinner culminates in an advice from his guru to feel indifference to such bodily things as food. In the future, Per would never handle money again, but only live on alms like a true sannyasi. However it happened in practice, Per must have felt both an inner and outer demand to renounce the worldly in order to achieve spiritual knowledge.

How did it go in practical terms when Per gave up his money? And if so, who did he give the money to? Nothing is said about it. Apparently, Per didn't have 8 million that he suddenly gave away. The inheritance from the father may have come to him, partly as fixed assets but perhaps also as cash after the mother's sale of the property they previously lived in. But of course it wasn't the huge sums we are talking about here. One conceivable scenario was that it was the travel cash he gave up as a new sannyasi monk by donating it to a nearby temple.

One can probably regard the high amounts mentioned as a tall tale, the means of which is to underline the importance of the fact that Per chose to live a life not dependent on money. That he, as a monk, should never have touched money sounds just too unbelievable. For example, how did he travel between Almora and Tiruvannamalai? Probably by rail, and if he hadn't paid he simply wouldn't have arrived, unless some friendly fellow passenger paid for him.

One way to take a closer look at Per's financial situation is to look at his estate register from 1955. According to it, he owned a sixth of the property Sleipner 9, then worth SEK 80,333. Together with bonds and life insurance money and SEK 793 in the bank, he had assets of SEK 111,753 at his death. However, he had taken several loans against security from the property, and also had a debt to his mother of SEK 10,000. So the amount of assets he had at his death amounted to SEK 51,434.65. In today's monetary value (2024) it is 922,625.82 kroner, i.e. almost one million kroner ($100,000). Although the money was locked up in a property he could not sell, it still provided financial benefits through the ability to obtain more loans. There is no dating on the loans he made, but it is not unlikely that some of them were made with the goal of being able to remain in India.

Ramana Maharshi

Ramana Maharshi becomes the most important person for Per's continued spiritual development. Per now becomes very serious in his practice. After receiving a vision from his teacher, he has a breakthrough on a beach near Madras where he forgets both himself and the world. Everything comes in a new light. What he experiences will affect him for the rest of his life, and in gratitude to his teacher, he changes his name to Ramanagiri, believing that every breath he takes is ordained by him. Bhagavan, whom he reverently calls his teacher, becomes like a father whom he almost worships as a deity.

Although Per practiced Raja Yoga for several years, he immediately felt an attraction to atma vichara - the self-examination that was Ramana Maharshi's method through the question "Who am I?". It is about a deep introspection where one examines where one's thoughts and feelings come from. In the end, it should lead to the Self, the Atman – the true self – taking command, and one is no longer governed by egoistic aspirations and thoughts. Per's dikshaguru is said to have approved of this new spiritual orientation and considered Ramana Maharshi to be his true guru.

In Per's ashram there is a Sanskrit manual in Per's possession called "Sri Raman Puja Vidhanam," which means "The Ritual of Worshiping Sri Raman" with the addition "and the thousand hymns names of Sri Raman." Thus, it is actually a book of worship dedicated to Ramana Maharshi which contains various purification and sacrificial rituals to be performed in total devotion to the Guru. We don't know how much Per went into this, but it still gives a sense of what track he was on in his relationship with the guru. It may also be recalled that Ramanagiri can mean "Son of Ramana". In quotes from Per, the family theme, such as father-son or mother-son, appears again and again, as a symbolic paraphrase of Per's devoted worship.

Sunyata is said to have been the one who introduced him to Ramana Maharshi. Here some of the sources present it as a personal meeting between Per and Ramana. According to the sources, he arrived in Tiruvannamali around 17 January 1949, and after 40 days at Ramana's side, spiritual enlightenment took place for Per on the day of Maha Shivaratri on 25 February 1949. Shivarartri is a day that signifies the celestial union of the god Shiva and the goddess Parvati.

The following statement should be a description from Per of what happened that day:

I don't know anything,

and that 'I' which knows is nothing but an ignorant fool.

I think, when I don't think,

that I have no end and no beginning.

That which thinks has to take thousands of births.

When there is 'I' He is not; when He is, I am not.

When I looked more closely at how it is written about this in the sources, I encountered a problem. There was nothing to confirm that Per had met Ramana Maharshi in life. This made me initially suspect that there had been no meeting. What did the sources actually say?

Sunyata, who knew Per closest, did not write a word about Per meeting Ramana. Just that he introduced him to Per and that he received enlightenment "in and through" him. It is in a footnote in the book "Dancing with the Void" that it is mentioned that he met Ramana, but that footnote was probably written by the editors, Betty Camhi and Gurubaksh Rai, and not Sunyata:

Peer A Wertin was born into an aristocratic Swedish family in 1921. He became a wandering Pilgrim in India in 1945 and subsequently renounced his property worth about eight million dollars. He was related to the king of Sweden. He practiced the "who am I" technique of Ramana Maharshi with intense zeal. He had a direct experience of the Self on Sivaratri day in 1949, after he had undertaken intensive yoga practice for 40 days in Bhagavan's presence in the ashram in Tiruvannamalai. Ramana Maharshi gave him the name Ramanagiri. After eight years in the Himalayas Peer died, his body depleted by tuberculosis.

I also knew that the editors reworked Sunyata's texts to make them more readable, which they mention in the preface to the book. My interpretation is therefore that the editors received the data from a less careful reading of K. C. Sashi's text in The Mountain Path 1986, which they then passed on in the footnote to provide a biographical context.

K. C. Sashi, or Sastri as it is written elsewhere, does not directly write that Per met Ramana personally in 1949:

In a pilgrimage to South India he visited Arunachala and was at once drawn to the 'great magnet', Bhagavan Ramana. Thus by the grace of Bhagavan and following the path of Atma Vichara' laid out by his Sat Guru he attained realization within 40 days.

Thus, Per could only have visited the place or mountain Arunachala and not necessarily Ramana's ashram. Per was drawn to, and followed the path of his Satguru Ramana Maharshi, which paid off. There is actually no record of any direct meeting or conversation with Ramana, just an "event":

"On that day I became a fool", was his favorite way of describing the event! Afterwards he would refer to himself as 'this fool' instead of 'I'. The faith he had in Bhagavan was total and his surrender utterly complete. He often said that even the breath he breathed was ordained by Him.

K. C. Sastri also does not mention the experience on the beach in Madras, so if one interprets the words in another way, the 40 days he writes about could possibly refer to this event. Perhaps the meeting with the dead Ramana Maharshi in 1950 and the experience on the beach got mixed up?

Nor does 'A Chela' in The Mountain Path 1980 write anything about a visit to Ramana Maharshi in 1949, and David Godman, who reports that Per was there in 1949, also only compiles previously mentioned sources.

Per himself, then? In a passage of a letter reproduced by Godman, Per writes that what he teaches is "the way Sri Ramana taught in the days of silence at the foot of the holy Arunachala". But as we will see, Per has recurring visions of Ramana Maharshi. He describes these visions as real encounters, but in fact they have only taken place as a spiritual experience that Per has had.

In The Mountain Path magazine December 1994 there is an illustrated text box, see image above, signed by the editor, V. Ganesan. He is Ramana's nephew, so he has an agenda to portray his relative in good light and to make articles in the newspaper appear relevant. It makes me question the authenticity of the petition. Here is a passage that Per is said to have "stood in a long queue" and looked into the eyes of "the Great Magnet" Ramana, describing them as "sun-like" in a "moon-like face". It is supposed to have established him in a state of "permanent realization". Per is said to have said this several times, but no other sources for these statements exist. Is this perhaps also one of Per's "visions"? Sunyata recounts a similar experience he has had, where he meets Ramana's eyes "shining like stars" and how it is like looking into eternity. Have Sunyata and Per perhaps gotten mixed up?

For a while it felt impossible to be able to prove that Per Westin was at Sri Ramanasramam between January 17 and February 25, 1949. I had to go through everyone who could possibly have been there during the time period.

First in all literature published by the ashram. Here, Ramana's condition, the cancer that was treated with a minor operation on his arm on February 2, 1949, and how things gradually got worse for him with several operations that year, were described in the most detail. During some of the dates of the period there were records of what Ramana said on those days. But it yielded no clues, other than that Eleonore Noye had an elderly female friend visiting the ashram, who I thought might be Mrs. Wally Groeger. But she was born in 1900, so then only 49 years old, and not "older". Who could it have been?

That led me to investigate more closely which other Westerners could have been there at the time. Thelma Benn (Rappold), Frederick Spiegelberg, Mouni Sadhu (Sudowski) and especially Ethel Merston seemed like possible candidates. Merston was born in 1886 and could be considered a bit older. She had contact with a Frenchman, Henri Le Saux, who called himself Abhishiktananda. In a book about him, "The Cave of the Heart", I read that he had been to the ashram in January 1949, but it did not say much more than that it was no great experience for him. However, there was a footnote to a quote by Ethel Merston in the book. I found that she was, among other things, friends with Sunyata and had several contacts among Westerners in India. She was also interested in the mysticism of Gurdjieff, Ouspenski and Krishnamurti.

The footnote was taken from Abhishiktananda's book "The Secret of Arunchala". In that book there was a much more verbose description of the Frenchman's first meeting with Ramana than in the former. And there I found the proof that Per Westin had been there on this very day, February 24, 1949 (Ethel's date of her diary entry), with the short words "also a Swede". Here the author describes the gathering around Ramana:

(...) this gathering of devotees, their attitude and their recollectedness made quite as deep an impression on me as did the person of the Maharshi. Some of them in particular seemed to be established in an extraordinary state of inner concentration. Among these I noticed a young Englishman, who was dressed in the robes of a Buddhist monk with one shoulder bare, also a Swede, and especially one young man from North India, whose face wonderfully reflected the intensity of his inward gaze.

Of course, it says nothing more than that a Swede was there that very day, who sat there and focused with great concentration on Ramana Maharshi. It must nevertheless be considered an unequivocal confirmation that Per Westin was indeed present next to Ramana and met him in the living life.

An interesting aspect of how Per's paths to Tiruvannamalai may have gone is a short text by the Tamil author Chalam, Gudipati Venkatachalam (1894–1979), who wrote down shorter stories related to Ramana Maharshi. The story is about a Norwegian, but could it not be a misinterpretation about a man from the north? I have not come across any famous Norwegian who met Ramana Maharshi. Several things seem to agree with being Per, others maybe not completely. There is no dating on the story that could provide any more clues.

"The Norwegian"

A friend from Bombay came to have a look at the Ashram and to find out what it was all about. He had little faith himself, but wanted to know what exactly drew people to Bhagavan.

He would get hold of this man and that and keep on asking all sorts of questions. A Norwegian sadhu lived at that time near the Ashram and we went one evening in search of him. He lived in a small cubby hole, meant for a bathroom. He slept and cooked his food there. It was wonderful to think that an educated European had accepted this kind of life just to be near Bhagavan. With his beard, long hair and weather-beaten face he looked old, but in reality he was quite young. During his university years he had studied comparative religion and thus was attracted to India and to Indian philosophy. Even in Norway, whenever he would meet an Indian he would question him eagerly, only to discover that Indians on the whole knew very little of their glorious heritage. This had only strengthened his desire to go to India, meet the people who knew, and learn from them. He tried hard and got a job as a lecturer in religion in one of the North Indian colleges. He joined and in his spare time was searching for a Guru. He was told that he could find one only in the Himalayas. He roamed the mountains and at last he found somebody who agreed to guide and instruct him. The Norwegian was very reticent about his Guru and would tell neither name nor place. But he gave up his job, joined his Guru in the mountains, learnt sankhya yoga under him and was told to do sadhana [?] for four years and then come back. How was he to live for these four years? Again he got a job, this time in Bangalore. A fellow traveller in the train advised him strongly to go and meet Bhagavan before he took up his duties. He broke his journey, saw Bhagavan and could not leave. In Bhagavan's presence his sankhya sadhana became very vigorous and speedy. He had no money and just stretched every copper. He did not feel the need to return to the Himalayas. He said he would go on till the goal was reached. We returned wondering at Bhagavan's mighty power which attracted all, however small or great. Our Bombay friend felt that there might be something in the Ashram beyond his ken and grew very humble.

If we play around with the idea that this was Per (who else could it be?), then we can observe some interesting things. One is that he applied for work based on his university background. Per had friends like Professor K. C. Sastri, who, according to my research, must have lived in Madras. Why did he associate with learned "pandits" if he had left university life behind to become a sannyasi? It is reasonable if he, as the story describes, is poor and looking for work that he seeks out similar contacts.

Was it then in Bangalore that Per looked for work? According to a list of places preserved in Per's ashram, Per must at one time have been in the suburb of R. R. Nagar in south-west Bangalore. I've looked, but there doesn't seem to be any obvious place for a pilgrim to be. So maybe he was there looking for a job? However, Chalam's text says that he cut short his trip and never went to Bangalore, so it doesn't have to be related to that at all.

Above all, the text gives a picture of the grim reality that these seekers around the ashram lived in. I can imagine that it is similar to the hard life Per led in 1949 before he got disciples to support him. The guru in the Himalayas could be Sunyata, although it doesn't sound right that he tells Per to do sadhana for four years.

So what was it like at Ramana's ashram at this time? The author of the article "Holy man" in Life magazine May 30, 1949, Sergeant, was there March 14-17 and gives a vivid picture of the scene at the darshan of Ramana Maharshi on his divan:

His couch was flanked by a couple of privileged disciples in the yellow robes of the Hindu priesthood, and sitting cross-legged on the floor about him were two or three dozen people, all gazing rapturously at the master. From time to time a particularly fervent disciple would prostrate himself on the floor before the couch, methodically touching forehead, right ear and left ear to the flagstones. Occasionally one of the faithful would come forward with an offering of a banana or an orange, which Sri Ramana accepted with a benign smile.

There are 20-30 who live at the ashram, and thousands who wander in and out throughout the day. The occasional Westerner sits in the dining room. Ramana's ashram seems by this time to have become something of a circus. Getting close to Ramana was difficult, and one was not allowed to touch him. In "Letters from Sri Ramanasramam", 10 January 1949, Ramana Maharshi gives a view that wooden gates were built around him, as if he were in a prison. Guards protect people from getting close. To be able to talk to him, you have to ask for permission from the office. Everyone wants to get Ramana's attention and give fruits as offerings, but the chaos makes it difficult.

That Ramana there among all the people would notice Per and also personally "assign him" the name Ramanagiri and present him with gifts in the form of a coconut bowl seems unlikely. Getting access to sit near Ramana was probably a process that took a long time and work, I think. But maybe there were quieter periods when it was easier to get close.

The story of the coconut bowl, which also includes a conversation with Ramana, comes from the temple owner through Sri Kannadasan, who passed it on to Godman. It may be worth reproducing in its entirety, as it both gives an image of what the saint's stories can look like, as well as expressing how the saint's objects become surrounded by a religious atmosphere:

His original name was Per Westin. He belonged to the royal family in his native Sweden. He came to India to study Sanskrit at Banaras Hindu University. He met Bhagavan and did not return to his native place. Bhagavan gave him a small begging bowl made by himself, out of coconut shell. In the following days, he could not get sufficient quantity of food as bhiksha, and complained to Bhagavan about it. Bhagavan told him that thereafter he need not go in search of food as it would come to him. From that time he did not have to bother about his food. He then moved to different places and settled at this place, which is near a jungle stream. The coconut shell begging bowl, made by Bhagavan, is kept safely in a jewel box, along with other belongings of Sri Ramana Giri. They gave it to me see it. It has been made by cutting the coconut vertically. Though small in size, it is in perfect oval shape, and nicely polished. Holding it in my hands, I was overwhelmed by emotion. As a souvenir, I was given an old visiting card of Sri Ramana Giri with his original name. The card has his old name and address as 'Djursholm'.

One would think that it would have attracted attention if Ramana had given a gift to one of the disciples, and that it would have been written about in the many books detailing what happened at the ashram. But it says nothing as far as I could see. Per is not mentioned at all in the literature about life around Ramana at this time. Giving gifts is also not typical of Ramana, as it could be perceived as favoring some of the disciples. He was very careful not to do that, from what I heard.

After his travels, Per is said to have gone back to Almora, where he stayed for some time. In March 1950, he then received a vision, a "psychic message" that he should return to Ramana Maharshi's ashram, as the guru's nirvana was comprehensible. The second meeting with his guru therefore took place along with 1500 others at his deathbed during Ramana Maharshi's Mahasamadhi on April 15, 1950, the day after the guru's death. This event is filmed by the ashram and is available for viewing on YouTube. Per is seen bowing reverently to his guru.

Interestingly, Per is listed as "Emigrated from the Kingdom" on the conscription card on April 14, 1950, the same day Ramana died. Whatever it actually means, if it was a question of him being regarded in Sweden as having left the country, or not, it still feels quite symbolic in the context.

The time after 1950 became a completely new period in Per's life, where the wandering life was eventually replaced by a settlement with his own disciples. Unfortunately, it was also marked by his tuberculosis, which over time would become more and more serious and eventually end his life.

India 1950-55

After that, Per wants to return to Almora, but was persuaded by a friend to stay a few days in Madras. One day when he was out walking in the park outside the Theosophical Library at Adyar (which was then located in the headquarters) he had a vision of Ramana Maharshi who "signaled with his hand" and commanded him to go further south and stay there. It led him to Tiruvanmiyur, a fishing village during this time, but now part of Madras.

Here, Per is said to have sat immersed in deep meditation. When his host did not hear from him for a while, a search was launched and he was found sitting motionless in deep samadhi [the highest state of meditation].

A temporary sunshade was put up around him, and when he regained normal consciousness he was asked to accompany him to his host in Madras, but he refused, saying that Bhagavan (the reverential title of Ramana Maharshi) had told him to stay where he was.

A curious passage in one source (7) indicates a different course of events:

Swami Sureshananda, a longtime devotee of Bhagavan from Palghat, soon joined him; both sat there for a couple of days, unaware of the world. Meanwhile, Ramanagiri's Madras host had been frantically trying to locate him. At that time, a devotee residing in the Theosophical Society had a dream of Bhagavan requesting her to prepare food and take it to his two devotees sitting on the beach, which she did. This devotee was none other than the American from California, Eleanor Pauline Noye.

How famous disciples of Ramana Maharshi could be there at that time and that Noye would somehow supernaturally sense that Per and the disciple needed food seems strange. It is probably some kind of imaginative story weaving that wants to bind Per more firmly with Ramana Maharshi, here through two of his disciples.

They built a more stable shed around him and arranged for him to be fed daily. It still seems to have become a great strain on Per's body, as it is said that it was at this time that the tuberculosis settled in him. At first he refused treatment, but he was persuaded to enter the city for treatment. So this must have been around October-November 1950, and he must have stayed here for about 2-3 months. He seems to have stayed in December, because then Per collects a passport at the Swedish consulate in Madras, according to what is recorded in their archives.

Per himself has described the spiritual experience on the beach in a letter to his friend Sunyata:

Dearest Sunya,

In this letter I must tell you that I have sailed away. I have sailed to a far-off place, a place which cannot be described by words. To describe it is to pollute it. The steamer on which I sailed is a very powerful one, but it rolls hard in the sea if the weather is stormy. The place is called by many names, but still no name can cover its reality.

Some used to call the place nirvikalpa, others satchitananda or nirguna Brahman – some call it God or Self, others call it pure consciousness or the egoless state. To describe it, I have to put up a big wall before it.

The name of the steamer is 'mind'. With the help of prana one reaches the place that for the jiva seems so far away; but really speaking, is nearer than one's own breath. If the sense-weather is stormy, the steamer will roll badly on the samsaric ocean. By now, you must understand the art of my sailing, and why I have been so silent. Let me tell you what happened and why I have been so silent.

The same day as I was going back to North India I visited the Theosophical Library at Adyar. And while walking in the garden, Sri Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi appeared before me. He asked me to follow him. I went along the seacoast to a little place where I sat down for meditation. There Sri Bhagavan's voice told me that my only duty (dharma) from now onwards was the Self. Further, he gave me some upadesa which I followed for some days.

One night, between 12 and 2, kundalini was aroused to sahasrara and the jiva merged into the Self. On account on the sound Om from the waves of the sea, I was brought back to body awareness; otherwise I would have left my body because in that state there is no one to come back, and no one to make any effort. After having regained body-consciousness, I discovered that I had lost all my memory. All events before the time of Sri Bhagavan's appearance in the garden had gone out of my mind. Friends who had been very close to me looked like strangers. People whom I thought I had never met before came and told me that we had met in Madras only a few days before. Everyone and everything looked so new and strange and unreal.

Now I am getting back my memory, but mostly recollections connected with spiritual experiences and deep love. That is why I am writing to you, because those who are near my heart turn up again in this mind, which is so different from the previous one.

The village people have built a little hut for me, but there is no post office in this little fishing village, the name of which I do not even know, so I cannot give you any address yet. I don't think any postman will take the trouble to come down to the sandy beach, but I shall let you know later.

From the letter it can be seen that he was supposed to go to northern India that same day, but stayed behind as a result of the experience and the visions. It was after this event that Per began to attract different kinds of disciples. "A Chela" (meaning "a devoted follower") who wrote the article in Mountain Path is one of them. He describes the meeting with Per with almost Christ-like undertones:

When I saw Swamiji, I felt so thrilled that my head began to reel and I became confused. "My God, I am in the presence of Christ!" were the words that formed in my mind (Swamiji had a really remarkable resemblance to Jesus in all aspects). This lasted for a few minutes.

The same wordless mediation that Ramana Maharshi is known to perform describes "A Chela" happening to him in the meeting with Per Westin. He doesn't talk to him much. Per looks out the window and then closes his eyes. But to the writer this means everything. He is now accepted as Ramanagiri's disciple, without a word actually being exchanged on the matter:

I saw him close his eyes. I also closed my eyes. Everything became very still. I had not known such deep silence and calm before. Then, abruptly, I felt jolted by what I can only call a shock in my heart which shook me and, simultaneously, a tremendous pull from the Swamiji like that of a jet engine sucking air. My whole being seemed to go totally still but I felt no panic, only a great peace enveloping me. My Guru had pierced my heart and taken my mind very deep into it. Mentally I asked Swamiji: "Will you please take me as your disciple?" The answer "Yes" was also an unspoken one. But it was a very firm and unhesitating "Yes." After this experience, it seemed as if the Swamiji and I both opened our eyes simultaneously and looked at each other. The Swamiji bent towards me with a bewitching smile and peered into my eyes as if inquiring if I got his message and if I was happy and satisfied with it. What joy and relief that look gave me! I knew I had been accepted as a disciple. That was enough. I offered a pranam and left.

Per received more disciples, but not many. In pictures they appear to be usually 5-6 standing around him. Nor was there any aspiration on the part of Per to make himself known as a guru. According to K.C. Sastri there are not many descriptions of exactly the relationship Per had with his disciples. However, there is a story about how a disciple of Per gave away a bull figure with Shiva, a nandi, in the hope of exchanging Per's own nandi. Before the disciple said anything, Per did just that.

On another occasion, a disciple is said to have asked Per how one feels that it is a real saint one has met. Per replied that "In the presence of a saint, one never has an evil thought".

One senses a certain willingness to see Ramanagiri as supernatural, with abilities such as reading the minds of others. Something special and captivating draws people to Per. Perhaps it is his in India so different, somewhat Christ-like and tall appearance (he was 182 cm tall) that attracted interest. Then his intense devotion to Ramana Maharshi and earnest search for spiritual values must of course come into play. And judging by the quotes and letters that have been preserved from him, he was also very good at English and at formulating his thoughts and values in words.

Per would then, after his stay near Madras, have received more visions of Ramana Maharshi. One told him to go to and stay in the Sirumalai Hills:

After Bhagavan's Mahanirvana, Bhagavan directed him, in a vision, to stay in the Sirumalai Hills, 20 miles away from Madurai. He spent most of his time there absorbed in bliss with little consciousness of his bodily needs. In fact, he treated the body and the world around him with utter indifference. (2)

His "Jiva Yatra" [soul journey] was lived mostly in South India, by seashores, in jungles and at the grail glowing, holy mountain Arunachala. (5)

However, it seems that before he ended up in the Sirumalai Hills, Per undertook a circuitous journey in South India. In his temple is preserved a list which mentions a number of place names, among them Vadipatti which is near the Sirumalai Hills. He goes first from a suburb of Bangalore to the southern tip of India, up along an arc near the greener natural areas up past Vadipatti and up to the Kerala border. There he turns downwards towards Vadipatti again:

R. R. Nagar (a suburb southwest of Bangalore) - Sattur - Tiruchendur - Sattankulam - Tandupattu - Suchindram - Valliyur - Nanguneri - Seranmadevi (Cheranmahadevi) - Ambasamudram - Senkottai - Kutralam - Vasudevanallur - Srivilliputtur - Vadipatti - Chinnalapatti - Palani - Udumalaipettai - Kerala Border - Nallappillai

The place he finally chose is near a large natural area, it is a beautiful place with mountains and waterfalls. One can assume that it appealed to his younger self who spent summers out in Roslagen. It was also where he stayed until his life ended. You can see videos online that show what it looks like, but I found a nice description that captures something of the atmosphere that Per may have been drawn to:

His samadhi is maintained by a Trust and a full-time guard resides at the small temple built over the tomb. This temple is picturesquely located in the middle of a vast 15-acre mango orchard, speckled with large, ancient trees. Some of the mango trees are large with thick branches that spread out horizontally. The entire area is shaded and cool. The water taps provide naturally cold spring water year round. A seasonal stream runs alongside it.

A 30 by 25-foot mantap has been erected in front of the samadhi entrance. Upon entering the samadhi shrine a palpable stillness is felt. It is that same deep stillness experienced at the samadhi shrine of Bhagavan or the peace one feels standing before a genuine sage or jnani. I was told that sometimes a group of Vipasana practitioners have a retreat there for a few days every year. It is a perfect place for the practice of meditation as one's consciousness naturally becomes clear, still and begins to sink within.

Following footpaths near the samadhi, under the cover of mango and other large trees, we saw a half dozen small shrines with images of different gods and goddesses all within 75 meters of Swami Ramanagiri's samadhi. These add to the spiritual sanctity and charm of Swami Ramanagiri's memorial. Admirers of his, after his death, constructed these shrines. Who can tell, maybe a century from now a large temple and spiritual center will arise on this very ground made sacred by a young, tenaciously earnest, foreign devotee of Bhagavan.

Pers' spiritual advice to his disciples

What spiritual advice did Peter give to his friends or disciples? In letters and notes given in my references you can see how he expresses himself in a rather direct and clear way. You notice that there is a lot of thought behind the words and that he is careful about what he says. It is, of course, important to bear in mind that Per has adapted to the particular individual he is talking to, so it does not have to be a matter of general advice.

In a letter to a student, Per has described how he himself did to reach the true Self, and what obstacles one might encounter on the way:

Our own mind is the greatest cheater in the world. It will make thousands of different reasons to go its own way. There are three ways of handling this cheat, who is nothing but a bundle of thoughts creeping into the conscious mind.

First, to treat him as a friend and give him full satisfaction. This is a very long and tiresome way because he is never satisfied.

Second, to treat him as an enemy and with all force try to get rid of him. This is only possible by the grace of the divine because the mind has got two very powerful weapons – the discriminating intellect and the imaginative faculty. These two fellows can convince even God himself that black is white.

The third way is the way taught by Sri Ramana in the days of silence at the foot of sacred Arunachala. This way, which has been adopted by this fool, is to treat the mind as a patient, or rather several patients who are coming to a doctor to complain about their various ailments.

Just as a doctor sits in his room receiving different kinds of patients, this fool imagines himself sitting in the sacred cave of the Heart and receiving the different thought-patients. You know that a sick person likes to babble for hours about his complaint. In the same way a thought likes to multiply itself, but the doctor always cuts it short, saying, 'Very good. Take this medicine. Thank you very much.' And then he calls for another patient. This is how this fool decided to meditate.

First the fool slows down his breath as much as possible, but only to the point where there is no discomfort. To this fool, two breaths per minute is the proper speed, but that may not be possible for you because this fool has practised for a long time. You may be able to decrease your breathing to 8-10 per minute in the beginning. Don't get to a level where you are uncomfortable, because that discomfort will give rise to thoughts.

After the breathing exercises and the removal of "disturbing patients", the atma vichara follows:

This fool decided to receive twenty patients before closing the dispensary of the Heart. He calls out 'Number one!' and he waits for thought patient number one to come. The thought patient may say, 'Smt such-and-such is not well. Sri so-and-so is worried.'

Then this foolish doctor says, 'Oh, you are number one. Very good. The name of Lord Murugan will cure you. Thank you very much.'

Then he calls for number two, and he waits till the second patient is entering the room. 'Mr so-and-so may get mukti this life,' he says.

'Very good. You are number two. The whole world is benefited if one soul gets liberated. Thank you very much.'

Numbers three, four, five, and so on are dealt with in the same way. When all the twenty thought patients have come and gone, the doctor closes the room to the Heart, and no one else is allowed to come inside. Now he is alone. Now there is time for atma vichara.

He asks himself, 'To whom have all these thoughts come?'

Three times he slowly repeats the same question, along with the outgoing breaths.

Then he, in that same slow manner, answers, 'To me, to me, to me'.

'Then who am I? Then who am I? Then who am I?'

All questions and answers are repeated three times, very slowly.

'This "I" is not a thought. This "I" is not a thought. This "I" is not a thought.'

'Then who is the receiver of the thought? Then who is the receiver of the thought? Then who is the receiver of the thought?'

'"I" – "I" – "I"' Now the mind is centralised in the source itself. '

'Then who am I? Then who am I? Then who am I?'

Now the breath comes to an end and the attention is concentrated 100% on the sound caused by the palpitation of the heart, as if the sound would give the answer to our questions. This is nothing but the pranava itself. If, during this time, the sakti which was static is converted to movements or becomes dynamic, trance will occur. If the primal energy reaches the space between the eyebrows, savikalpa samadhi will occur. If the energy rises up to the top of the head, nirvikalpa samadhi will occur, which is nothing but the Self itself.

However, you should also know that even if the doctor has closed the dispensary door, some patients may come and peep in through the window to complain about their ailments. At the beginning of atma vichara, the patients at the window are many. In the same way, although the door to the cave of the Heart is closed, some thoughts may occur at the time of dhyana.

For example, a thought may come: 'Mr Iyer's sushumna nadi has opened up.'

Since the patient has not come at the proper time, the doctor doesn't attend to him.

Instead, he continues the quest: 'To whom has the thought of Mr Iyer come?' 'To me, to me, to me.'

'Then who am I? Then who am I? Then who am I?'

Dearest 'S'. In all humility this fool has babbled something about how he tries to establish himself in the experience of ananda, which is no different from the Self itself.

It is clear that it is not a question of any pure atma vichara Per practiced, but it was mixed with breathing exercises and other mystical thoughts he encountered on his journey. In essence, however, it is the same method that Ramana Maharshi prescribed to the deepest seekers. In fact, Ramana's earliest instructions included breathing exercises among his recommended exercises, then the main instructions became either atma vichara or devotional submission to the guru, whichever suited the disciple best (according to "The collected works of Sri Ramana Maharshi").

It is touching that one of the "disturbing patients" that Per mentions are the letters he receives from his family back home in Sweden. He chooses not to open the letters, as they may cause too many thoughts and feelings:

Three years ago I found that letters from my previous family became an obstacle on the spiritual quest, so whenever any letter came, I never opened it or read it. I experienced that the divine was on my side in spite of my improper action.

After reading many of Per's statements, it strikes me how similar they are to the expressions that are often found within the Free Church. The devotion and the total surrender to God, and the ascension through Him, as Christian motives are very similar to the spiritual experiences Per describes. For example, this is from a letter from the time he lived in Sirumalai:

The whole night nothing but fire, light, bliss and pranava.

O Father! O Father! What happiness!

No thought, only the enjoyment and the enjoyer

O Father! How near I was to losing myself completely in your embrace.

O Father, why do you turn me back to the state of the mind

where I suffer from thoughts and where I am tormented by an ego?

With his practices of pranayama and atma-vichara, Per could feel a strong sense of bliss, which he tries to describe here:

Bliss is not a product of fantasy, but the most convincing experience we are capable of. If this experience would be a product of the imagination, the hair would not stand on end, nor would tears of happiness come in streams from the eyes, nor would the nose start flowing, nor would there be any shivering of the body, the skin would not turn red-hot, and there would be no levitation of the body. How many times have I found the body at another place in the room after having enjoyed Mother's bliss. In padmasana [lotus position] the body is not capable of moving.

'Cold Fire'

At the request of a disciple, Ramachadran, Per is said to have kept a notebook (gifted by another disciple, Ramu) in which he wished Per to write down a few words every day. Per did as they wished, despite the fact that he had little interest in preserving his thoughts and experiences. He came to call the book 'Cold Fire'. The notes were then copied on a typewriter and distributed to a number of disciples, and from the copied texts comes the following. They are statements and advice to disciples from letters or written just for the moment as small notes.

His Name, taken once with wholehearted love and a one-pointed mind, is worth more than the knowledge collected from every book all over the world.

Learning is learned ignorance. Unlearning is learning.

What you speak about others doesn't reveal anything about them, but about you.

The power of listening attracts more than the power of speaking.

Jnana and bhakti are not separate from each other. One cannot know Him without loving Him, and one cannot love Him without knowing Him.

Non-attachment does not mean indifference; love does not mean attachment; attachment is that which takes; love is that which gives.

Shut the doors and the door will be opened.

Religion is experience. It should be practised, not studied or discussed, and at the very least not preached. Those who preach don't know; those who know don't preach.

About your worldly troubles: you must do as you think best yourself, but it is good policy to keep away from other's plates, however sweet and inviting they look. Both sugar and arsenic are white.

When a soul turns his mind towards the divine, the following two things will happen. First, he will get some joyful experience, which shows that he is on the right path, and that he is progressing. Second, when the asuric forces see that he is progressing, they will put every possible obstacle before the sadhaka in the form of worldly troubles, mental botherations and sex urges. I think you have reached that second stage and will get further troubles. But don't mind. They are good in so far as they make us fed up with the world.

If the ego is allowed to play with our emotions, it is capable of causing havoc. Only by drawing the ego to its source can the saddest feeling be converted into ananda.

Perfection in any form is the manifestation of the divine. The greatest service to humanity is self-enquiry, and the greatest remedy for this world is Self-realisation, but that does not mean that we should not do anything for others. As long as we have not got the power to withdraw the mind from the objects of sense perceptions, we should do, and must do, whatever we can for others. Selfless activity will soon give the power of introversion, but when the mind has become introverted, we should not spoil what we have gained by outward activity.

The main thing with worship is not what we worship, but that we worship, and if we have got love, we can easily surrender the feeling of 'I' which is the wall between ourselves and God.

The disciple's love for the Guru is more important than the Guru's power.

The behaviour of a fool and a wise man is the same. The only difference is that a fool goes from life to lives while a wise man goes from lives to Life. One leaves the ocean behind; the other returns.

To speak or write about Him is pollution. The only truth which becomes falsehood when expressed is aham Brahmasmi or Sivoham.

The best weapon of defence is ahimsa. The best weapon of offence is love.

The ego will cry like a mad man when he sees that he is going to be killed.

The human body is the greatest hindrance in realising the Self, but it is also the only means.

O Mother! What a painful bliss you gave this child! Mother is always the same, but we are different, depending on the purity of the body, mind and heart. That is why Mother's bliss sometimes gives extreme pain, sometimes extreme joy.

Renunciation of that which renounces is renunciation.

In my father's lap, Mother, Father and I are one; or there is none; but IT is.

To become bliss is very different from enjoying it. Last evening I could not get to sleep on account of some noisy music going on nearby. So, I was lying and mentally repeating the pranava. Suddenly everything became so quiet, so quiet that it gave me a surprise that it could ever be so quiet. Then I found myself floating on a most beautiful silvery ocean. Then the body started to move backwards on the surface as if taken away by some stream. I did not do anything to or for as I enjoyed the effortless moving like a little leaf in a big, big river. Then I regained the waking consciousness on account of a terrible shaking as if an earthquake had broken out and Mother started to climb the dreadful back of Mount Meru. My first thought was: 'I had better be in a sitting position if samadhi occurs.' Along with that thought I contracted the anus so that Mother might not return. That made the upper portion of the body swing up like a spring without the help of any muscular effort except for the contraction of the anus. The result was that the whole body [rose] into the air… As long as I was contracting the anus, the body was hanging self-suspended in the air. When I released the contraction, the body came down again in the bed. I felt very sad, and was on the point of weeping, because Mother returned and I did not get samadhi. Again I felt I was a prey to these rubbish powers, which do not make a person more spiritual. On the contrary it gives ego, and that too a very bad and strong one, which is very, very difficult to overcome.

We are imprisoned within the walls of our thoughts.

Out of all human beings, 108 are chosen. Out of these 108, nine are selected. Out of these nine, seven go mad. One goes knowingly back to maya, and one goes to the Supreme.

The interior of Swami Ramanagiri's samadhi shrine

O Father, why have you taken me to this place? It must be the hall. I suffer badly here. Even the worst torture loses its grip in sleep, but here there is no sleep. I weep without tears, and I have lost even the last power: the power to pray. I feel like a dog running after its own tail, without getting tired. After an endless time of darkness, a little squirrel came and sat before me. I asked the little squirrel, 'Have you also come to run after your tail? Or are you a messenger from my father?' The little squirrel smiled and ran away. The appearance of the squirrel caused a thrilling sensation of joy and two tears came into the right eye. The first tear gave me back my faith; the other gave me the strength to pray.

O Father, let every human being be happy. Let every creature have peace and blessings. Help the parents who once gave me a gross form to realise You. Help every dear and near one. Father, father, do not give me ego or mind. Make me simple and humble and let me always speak the truth. Father, may I always shun money, and do not give me any sexual thought, desire or dream… OM SHANTI OM SHANTI OM SHANTI.

After days and nights in prayer, the little squirrel again came and sat before me and asked: 'Who is suffering? Who is praying?'

There are no secret doctrines, no secret masters, no secret teaching, and no secret India, only secret authors. Their secret is fame and money. What is the use of giving food if it is not to be eaten? Would you call food not offered 'secret'?

It's a play with toys, but not a play for children. It is a mad play, and when one doesn't know it's a play, one suffers badly. Meditation is for the strong, not the weak.

I feel a boiling pressure in the region of the navel and a kind of nervousness as if I was going to appear in an important examination. I cannot sleep any more. As soon as I lie down I get electric shocks in different parts of the body, and when it occurs in the head, I go mad. As long as we try to balance on the razor's edge, we are bound to fall and cut ourselves to pieces, but we have to try till we give up trying. It is not a question of balancing, but balancing without effort.

By the help of the intellect we get discrimination; by experience we get knowledge.

Mother's bliss is just like a thrilling screw of boundless joy inserted into every cell of the body.

Discrimination is our destiny.

Lord Ramana, Lord Subramania, Lord Siva, my Father and the Self are one and the same. Mother is His tool, Arunagiri their child, and Ramanagiri this fool.

There is no information about who or who today owns a copy of 'Cold fire'. Michael James claims to have received his copy from one of Per's disciples, Ramakrishnan.

There are also other undated extracts and quotations from letters without attribution appearing in various texts on Ramanagiri. It is frustrating not knowing where they come from, or who might own these letters. Some may come from Ramanagiri's ashram, but they do not have a website or blog listing what they have preserved from Per Westin's estate. Some notes, a calendar from 1947, a lookup in an address book, etc. featured in a random way in some videos under the name of the temple. Unfortunately, there seems to be no proper organization or preservation strategy of the items at "Ramanagiri Swamigal Ashramam", which makes one worry that photos and items from Per may be lost or damaged. Unfortunately, the survivors have no interest in this either.

One goal of this investigation can be said to be to get an inventory of Per's estate and arrange for a documentation and preservation strategy of the material, perhaps in a state archive or an institution.

Residence permit

A note on Per's conscription card makes me wonder if Per was an Indian citizen for a couple of years:

"Moved out of the kingdom" on 14/4 1950

"Moved into the kingdom" on 4/3 1952

How should this be interpreted? Could this mean that he received a residence permit until 1950 and then, when it ended and he did not return home, he was considered to have moved out of Sweden? It may not necessarily mean that he actually went back to Sweden again in March 1952. Perhaps he handled the correspondence with Sweden from India.

There is still a possibility that he went back to Sweden in 1952, I think, without having any tangible evidence. Perhaps there was then, as there is today, a requirement from the authorities that he must leave the country for a period of time in order to apply for a new visa. A possible trip to Sweden may also have something to do with the TB, that he sought treatment in Sweden. He may also have applied for a loan, from the bank or from his mother. Those loans are reported in the estate register (unfortunately undated). Maybe there were other unresolved issues he needed to deal with in Sweden.

In September 1953, he is anyway in the small village of Katchaikatti, where the temple "Ramanagiri Swamigal Ashramam" is now located, north of Madurai in Tamil Nadu. Per then applies to be able to stay in India for another year. The application can be found as a framed painting in Per's temple. It is a memorandum dated 30/9 1953.

"Home dated" 12/9 1952 should mean that Per established himself at the place then. Per's application must have been dated 23/9 1953, where he asks to stay for one more year from 20/11 1953, i.e. until 20/11 1954. It also says that Per is a "Swedish national", i.e. a Swedish citizen .

In another letter, he receives a confirmation 2.5 months later that he can stay until 20/11 1954:

Extension of stay in India

1. Madurai Dt. Supt. of Police's Ref (...)

19/11 1953, 1/12 1953 and 5/12 1954

2. His application dated 19/10 1953 and

3. other notes

Per Westin (...) allowed to stay in India until 20/11 1954.

The approval of his residence permit extended

of the District Registrar, Madurai

(signature) 12/1 [1954]

It may be interesting to note that Per's friend Sunyata only became an Indian citizen in 1953, after living in India for decades. It can be considered natural that Per retained his Swedish citizenship despite having such strong ties to India.

Disease

Per had suffered from tuberculosis, TB, so it might be appropriate to write something about tuberculosis and how it manifests itself.

Vaccination was done for BB already from the mid-1920s (until 1975), but it did not provide complete protection. Maybe Per was vaccinated, but it didn't help, or he was born a few years too early for the vaccine.

The reason why you get TB is probably not sitting out on a beach, as was said about Per. Poor diet, vitamin deficiency and genetic susceptibility or kidney disease may have played a role. It can be noted that the grandfather died of kidney disease. The symptoms of TB are cough, fatigue, loss of appetite, emaciation and night sweats. You can see in several pictures of Per how he sits in the lotus position rather emaciated, with a long beard. He seems to have stopped caring about his exterior and instead focused on the inner exploration.

The treatment of TB came about in three stages, where all the parts gave an increasingly greater effect together. PAS was introduced as a treatment in 1943. In 1948, the combination PAS came along with Streptomycin, which gave a better effect. But the percentage that became resistant was, despite this, 70%. A breakthrough in treatment came in 1952, when the drug Isoniazid was patented under the name Rimifon. It could have received a patent as early as 1948, but then the patent failed. In a triple combination with the other agents, over time TB cases in the Western world could be reduced by as much as 90%.

Perhaps it was too late to help Per, or the effective medicines did not reach his part of the world. Unfortunately, we do not know what it looked like in practice around Per's illness.

Passing away

Per's tuberculosis worsened during the year 1955, and he had to spend his last days in the Perunderai Sanitorium. The hospital is further north inland, about half way to Tiruvannamalai.

His body was emaciated, but he was apparently still in good spirits.

"It is the body that suffers," he told his visitors. "I am well. Sakti is stronger now than ever before, and it is here (he points to a place between the eyebrows)."

The summer mangoes had just arrived, which he accepted as an offering. "I will eat a nice mango now, but it will be garbage tomorrow morning," he said, alluding to his impending death.

At the time of his death he is said to have been completely withdrawn in a deep meditative state, with his hair standing on end. In his last moment he whispered "Let us go". According to the stories, blood is said to have flowed out of a hole in the forehead, the place from which yogis are supposed to leave their body.

Per Westin dies May 23, 1955.

His body was buried at the foothills of the Sirumulai Mountains. Per called the place 'Ramana Padam', meaning 'Raman's feet' — an expression that testifies to his deep respect and devotion for his spiritual master. A Shiva lingam was later installed over his samadhi (burial place).

Per's Ashram

"Ramanagiri Swamigal Ashramam", located near Kutladampatti Falls with address 42G8+GXQ, Sirumalai R.F., Tamil Nadu 625501, India.

It is difficult to get a handle on how large the area where the temple is located is or the number of buildings. There is no website or blog, so one is relegated to viewing images on the Google review page or on the YouTube channel administered by the temple's owner. It doesn't help that all informational text at the ashram is in Tamil. I have to put my faith in OCR tools and AI when translating from images.

The owner calls himself Mahanth Giri Prasad and is said to be related to the founder of the temple. On an aged diploma-like framed paper, Giri R Raman Prasad is said to be the managing director and trustee. There is also a person responsible for "Yoga Technique for Health", Chocka Ramanagiri Dassa Lingam. It is difficult to know what the people's birth names are, because different titles of honor seem mixed up in the respective names.

Current owner Mahanth Giri Prasad with his family introduces himself in a picture on social media.

The building complex has an entrance hall and a main hall where the shrine's altar is located. The entrance hall is used for gatherings. Along the outer and inner walls of the temple shrine are photos of Swami Ramanagiri.

On one of these walls there are pictures of Sri Sadhu Om, and a poem by him. He was a close disciple of Ramana Maharshi, but how he is connected with Ramanagiri is unknown to me. The wall may be related to the disciples of Ramanagiri.

The entrance hall is also used for the education of children and young people. Twice a year there are gatherings at the shrine to commemorate the day of his samadhi at Ramana Maharshi's side, and the date of Per's passing. A distribution of food to the poor is carried out where over 2,000 people (however, the number sounds exaggerated) can come to join the events.

On the 2nd floor of the main building there is an altar dedicated to Ramana Maharshi. There is also a roof terrace for more secluded gatherings.

In the courtyard is another separate building with ornate metal doors leading to a room containing photos and framed paintings set up beside a wall altar with a Ganesha figure.

Another smaller building on the farm. In an alcove in one of the buildings stands a guardian god, possibly Muniandi, Muneeswarar or Ayyanar.

What appears to be a lingam stands in a special roofed smaller building.

Final words

My investigation of Per Westin doesn't feel quite complete yet, but I'm posting what I know so far. I have had difficulty e.g. understand how he moved in India, who he met or which disciples he had. I don't know what his daily life was like. Letters and literature are missing, and one often has to rely on hearsay and scattered stories to get a picture of who Per might have been.

What will the legacy of Per be and how will he be perceived by new generations? Despite his ascetic existence in India, we know that Per owned about one million kroner in today's money value, which after his death seems to have been transferred to the heirs without any will. The circumstances surrounding the opening of "Ramanagiri Swamigal Ashramam" are somewhat unclear, but a foundation appears to have been established after his death. From what can be seen on the ashram's YouTube channel, quite a few gifts in the form of photographs, personal documents and other items are there. According to my inquiries, Per's descendant has no interest in this inheritance. The ashram should therefore be able to continue as long as there is someone who wants to manage it. There seems to be a genuine interest in this, even if the religious activity is sometimes marketed in a way that can be perceived as commercial. However, this can be seen as a consequence of the business being kept up by a family that also uses it as a source of income.

One of the purposes of this essay has been to confirm that Per Westin actually met the living Ramana Maharshi, as well as to dispel some of the myths spread about him online, such as that he was of royal birth or that he renounced eight million dollars for a life of asceticism. Of course, there was no such money, although his father's success (together with the support of family and friends) made it possible for Per to travel to India. It's an aspect you might not think of at first, but it's important to understanding his journey. I hope that my research has, after all, given a clearer picture of who Per was and how he went from the free-church upper-class environment in Stockholm to an ascetic life among the mango groves of southern India.

It is also essential to point out, not least for the sake of the survivors, that Per's behavior from a religious history perspective (I who write has a master's degree in religious history) is not particularly remarkable or different. Per followed an ancient tradition that saints have followed throughout history. What in Sweden can be perceived as mental illness is considered in the Indian context as a natural and desirable part of the spiritual path. Bodily levitation, spiritual energies in the body, and visions of masters are found in stories told about gurus over thousands of years. Per's experiences and unique encounters with spiritual masters led to him not only achieving spiritual success, but also having his own disciples and followers who continue his legacy to this day. In this light, Per's spiritual investment appears to have really produced a lasting and unique result, something that few other Swedes (I can only remember Saint Birgitta) have achieved. Per Westin is actually a forgotten gem, a religious historical sensation.

Per Westin deserves more attention in Sweden. A knowledge forum about his life and work, preferably with a permanent archive, should be established, and contacts between Sweden and the ashram could ensure its continued existence and development.

My investigations have shown this which was not known before:

- Family relations, definitely not royal ones. These ideas may have come from his going to Lundsberg's school, something that was not known before.

- He was trained as a corporal, with a planned further education in the military.

- That the father died in a tragic way in 1943. Facts about the father's company "Westin's atelier" and the inheritance thereafter, which definitely did not give Per 8 million dollars, but Per left behind (in today's money value) 1 million kroner in assets.

- He evidently met Ramana Maharshi, as a source states that "a Swede" was there on 24/1 1949. In the past there have only been circumstantial evidence and stories but no concrete evidence that Per Westin met the living Ramana.

- Per's spirituality was marked by free-church Christianity, by yoga and mysticism he encountered in books and in meetings with Sunyata, as well as by Ramana Maharshi's non-dualistic philosophy.

Attachments

A. Information text

Here I take a closer look at informational text on the ashram:

Plaque giving a brief description of Ramanagiri's life (trans. from Tamil):

Sri Ramanagiri Swami was born on June 19, 1921, in Sweden. He belonged to a very large royal family. His birth name was Ber Alexander Westlin.

He was born into Saivism. After completing his schooling, he participated in World War II. Due to the grace of Murugan, he survived. He studied the four Vedas at the Banaras Hindu University. He was a student of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.

He received initiation from Babaji in the North and practiced Rajayoga in Kashi. Due to doubts that arose in his Advaita knowledge, he traveled south. On his way, he met Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi in Tiruvannamalai, received his grace, and became his disciple. He attained Jeeva Samadhi at the age of 34.

He attained enlightenment on Mahashivratri. He attained liberation on the Mrigashira star in the month of Vaisakha in 1955.

Due to the grace of Swami Ramanagiri, people are making progress and enjoying all the comforts of life. Many devotees are experiencing various miracles through his grace. May you also attain all eight forms of prosperity and attain enlightenment through the grace of the all-powerful Swami Ramanagiri.

2. Sign with biography and information about 4 spiritual teachers to Ramanagiri:

A. Biography:

Original name: Per Alexander Westlin [Also known as] Swami Ramanagiri;

Born: 19 June 1921; Country: Sweden; Education: B. A. Uppsala University, M. A. Banaras Hindu University; Samadhi Day: Month of Vaisakha, 1955, Star Mrigashira.

B. First Guru:

Maha Avatar Babaji; Nayan Deeksha [initiation via eye contact]; Kriya Yoga.

C. Second Guru:

Name: Sivashankari Mathaji ["Divine Mother of Shiva"]; Initiation: Rajyoga Initiation; Place of Birth: Kuzhandhai [meaning "child (of)"], Kolkata, Madurai; Apprentice to: Anandar [Or Aanandhar].

[The Guru referred to is Shankari Mai Jiew, also called Shri Shri Shankari Mataji. She was the only disciple of the South Indian guru Trailanga Swami, who is said to have lived to be 280 years old. However, Shankari Mai was born in 1826, so to say the least, it is uncertain whether Per Westin will be able to meet her, if she is not now over 120 years old, as they say. She is described in "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Yogananda. Her main form of yoga was Raja Yoga].

D. Third Guru:

Gaudapada [5th century CE, teacher of Advaita Vedanta], Sannyasa Diksha, Sannyasa Yoga, Adi Shankara Lineage.

E. Fourth Guru:

Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi, Jnana Deeksha [initiation into the path of knowledge], Jnana Yoga [yoga of knowledge], Tiruvannamalai.

"Having received the four initiations in due order, he became a guide to us all, a Guru, comprising four Gurus, including (Swami Ramanagiri), he became a Jeevasamadhi* containing five Gurus, unparalleled in this world.

He has become a guru suitable for eliminating karmic actions and attaining wisdom, and here he lives as a living being. He bestows upon devotees the necessary grace, wealth and wisdom, Bhagavan Ramanagiri Swami."

*["Jeevasamadhi" is a term referring to a living saint who attains enlightenment and continues to reside in the physical body. "Karma" refers to actions and their consequences. "Bhagavan" is a title of respect for a divine or spiritual being.]

3. Two large banners

3.1.

[Text:] Articles required for Puja:

Good quality oil, Ghee (clarified butter), Perfume, Sandalwood oil, Pineapple lamp, Incense, Milk and fruit, Betel nut and betel leaf, Honey, Sugarcane juice, Holy ash, Eleusine coracana flour, Saffron, Turmeric powder, Bilva leaf powder, Powder of 108 herbs, A specific type of holy powder, Cardamom powder, Soap nut powder, Musk, Cotton wick, A specific type of red dye or powder, Rice flour, leaves, flowers and garlands, Deepam (lamp)

3.2.

[Left Column] Practice: Worship/Rituals, Chanting/Recitation of Mantras, Yoga, Meditation

[Text above Per's head] Wisdom "If you do righteous deeds, your karmic deeds will decrease."

[Right Column] Virtue: To remove your karmic actions, do righteous things

By practicing rightly you attain liberation

Subject

-Miscellaneous items belonging to Per Westin

1. Jewelry/small sculpture; 2. Rosary; 3...

- Drawings made by Per Westin (hanging in a frame above the altar)

- Altar sculpture

Literature (selection):

Books and articles:

Abhishiktananda: The cave of the heart

Abhishiktananda: The Secret Of Arunachala

Cohen, S.S.: Guru Ramana, Memories and notes, 1998

Ganasan, V: Ramana Periya Puranam

Godman, David: The Power of the Presence

Merston, Ethel: A woman's work

Mouni Sadhu: In Days of Great Peace

Nagamma, Suri: Letters from Sri Ramanasramam,

Natarajan, A. R.: Timeless in Time, Sri Ramana Maharshi

Sadhu Arunachala (A. W. Chadwick): A Sadhu's Reminiscences of Ramana Maharshi, 1961

Sunyata: Dancing with the Void, pp. 59–63

Vivekananda, Swami: Raja Yoga, 1896.

Life Magazine, Magazine Article May 1949 (access through https://ashramsofindia.com/holy-man-an-article-form-life-magazine-30-may-1949/)

Websites:

The Mountain Path, July 1977, p 167 Prof K.C. Śāstṛi,

(accessed 24-09-13: https://archive.arunachala.org/ramana/devotees/sw-ramanagiri/1977-jul-mp#footnote.1)

The Mountain Path, October 1980, pp 229-230 'Guru', written anonymously by 'a Chela',

(accessed 24-09-13: https://archive.arunachala.org/sri-ramanasramam/mountain-path/1980-oct)

The Mountain Path, April 1986, pp. 71-4, Prof. K. C. Sashi [note. different spelling than 1977]

(accessed 24-09-13: https://archive.arunachala.org/ramana/devotees/sw-ramanagiri/1986-apr-mp)

The Mountain Path, Jayanti 1994, pp 144-8, David Godman (and Sri Kannadasan)

(https://archive.arunachala.org/ramana/devotees/sw-ramanagiri/1994-jayanti)

The Mountain Path, January 2010, David Godman, pp 47-60 (wrong author given in web version)

(https://archive.arunachala.org/ramana/devotees/sw-ramanagiri/2010-jan-mp and https://realization.org/down/mountain-path/47-1.2010-Jan.pdf)

Blog post (newer version), David Godman (access 240913: https://www.davidgodman.org/swami-ramanagiri/2)

Blog post (archived, with comments), David Godman: (access 240913: https://web.archive.org/web/20160621030455/https://arunachala-ramana.org/forum/index.php?topic=7839.0)

Blog post (Jan 3, 2009) by David Godman:

(access. 240913: https://sri-ramana-maharshi.blogspot.com/2009/01/swami-ramanagiri.html)

Blog post 'A pilgrimage', part 2 by Dennis Hartel (unique details about sitting on the beach)

https://archive.arunachala.org/newsletters/2019/jul-aug#article.2

The Story of the Norseman, by Chalam, Gudipati Venkatachalam (date unknown):

https://ramana-smriti.blogspot.com/2007/07/tales-of-bhagavan.html

"mens sana in corpore sano": En studie om Lundsbergs fostrande funktion åren 1910-1968

https://www.academia.edu/1118113/_mens_sana_in_corpore_sano_En_studie_om_Lundsbergs_fostrande_funktion_%C3%A5ren_1910_1968 (tillg. 240909)

About Judith Tyberg: https://ashramsofindia.com/early-western-devotees-of-ramana-maharshi-1940-to-1950

"Redargårdarna på Björkö-Arholma", (access 240909) https://catalog.lansstyrelsen.se/store/39/resource/2007__54

"Indien i Uppsala": https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1504689/FULLTEXT01.pdf (sid 97-121)

https://whowaswho-indology.info/5262/ronnow-kasten-anders/).

G:son Berg, Kerstin: Redare i Roslagen, 1984, (tillg. 240909, only access in Sverige): "https://pubs.sub.su.se/3450.pdf"

The tar factory in Järbo:

https://www.jarbohembygd.se/kultur.php?art=tjarfabriken

Screenshots taken from videos on the "Swamy Ramana Giri Ashram" YouTube channel, add. 240909, https://www.youtube.com/@swamyramanagiri.9769

"Barn med tuberkulos" Blomquist/Sigfridsson

Einar Petander, Teosofi och vetenskap i Teosofisk Tidskrift under mellankrigstiden Aura: Tidskrift för akademiska studier av nyreligiositet, Vol. 5 (2013), 35–72.

(access 240916) https://journals.uis.no/index.php/AURA/article/download/493/321/

Kunglig förening: Den teosofiska raja yoga-pedagogiken och det tidiga 1900-talets yogareception

Johan Nilsson Aura: Tidskrift för akademiska studier av nyreligiositet Vol. 12 (2021), 25–40

(access 240916) https://journals.uis.no/index.php/AURA/article/view/535/356

Oloph Bexell: Religionshistoria, s 95-123 i Teologiska fakulteten vid Uppsala universitet 1916–2000 Historiska studier,

(access 240916) https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1504009/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Archives:

Arkiv Digital (conscription card, estate records, BiS Population in Sweden 1800-1947, Statistics Sweden)

Stadsarkivets digitala plattform: Rotemansarkivet,

Riksarkivet

Runebergsprojektet: Röda boken (telephone directory),

Data provider:

Secretary at Lundsbergs school

Mahanth Giri Prasad, Superintendent of the temple "Swamy Ramana Giri Ashram"

I. Jarlebring, Erik Jarlebring's son

Seth Stiebar-Ekström

contact: denlillaekorrenmusic@gmail.com

Swami Ramanagiri: A biography

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