Bhagavan's satsang with animals

 The Setting:

TRA Narayana of Chennai, Branch Manager of a large British firm, visits Sri Ramanasramam in Tiruvannamalai on a hot April day, along with his colleague Parathasarathy. It is about five in the evening and Bhagavan is not on his couch so the two men decide to explore the ashram. As they are returning to the thatched verandah from the other side they stumble upon this scene. They stand affixed, watching the scene unfold without making a sound.

The Scene:

They hear a childish voice say, “Chee, asatthe (Fie, you creature).” They see no children around. Therefore they look around to find the source of the voice. They observe some movement among the leaves of the vegetable plant in the kitchen garden near the thatched verandah.

At a closer look, they see a small goat, a little monkey and a squirrel and Bhagavan!  Bhagavan is sitting with his legs semi-folded. The goat is nestled between his knees, the monkey has its head on his right knee and the squirrel is perched on his left knee.

Holding a packet of paper in his left palm, Bhagavan picks up groundnuts from the packet with his right hand, and one by one, he feeds the goat, the monkey, the squirrel and himself turn by turn.

His remarks of “Chee, asatthe” appear to have been addressed to the monkey, which had tried to snatch the nut away just as Bhagavan was going to place it between the squirrel’s lips. It was like a doting grandfather censuring the grandchild for its naughtiness.

As the two men watch quietly, the four companions go on enjoying their picnic, ‘The Satsang’.

The visitors stand there transfixed, watching and enjoying this wonderful divine state quite oblivious of the world around. The four companions in the scene before them seem to be equally happy. The way they look at each other and stay so close together. The goat, the monkey and the squirrel and Bhagavan have obviously forgotten their differences in species! 
 
The groundnuts are finished. Bhagavan throws the paper away and says, “Pongoda (Go away fellows),” just as an old man would speak lovingly to his grandchildren. The goat, the monkey, and the squirrel leave. Bhagavan also gets up to go to his couch in the thatched verandah.

Later, Narayana recalled, “I did not see four different forms, but one all-pervading Lord running in and through all four of them. Words are inadequate to describe the feeling that passed through my being at the sight. The vision of Transcendence appeared as a flash of lightening, which revealed to me the essence of ‘Being-Awareness-Bliss’, the ‘Sat-Chit-Ananda’.