Ganapati Muni

"Kapali was the chief disciple of Ganapati Muni, who was perhaps the chief disciple of Ramana. Ganapati had first discovered Ramana as a young boy then called Brahma Swami, because he was a Brahmin boy. He renamed him Ramana and Bhagavan. Ganapati wrote several important Sanskrit works on the Maharshi and also put Ramana’s teachings into Sanskrit, which Kapali as his disciple commented on. I decided to search out the works of Ganapati Muni, particularly on the Vedas, as he was reputed to be a Vedic scholar as well. I asked M.P. Pandit about Ganapati and whether his Vedic work was important. He said that there was little about the Vedas in the scattered works of Ganapati, though Ganapati did accept an exalted status for the Vedic mantras. I asked at the Ramanashram about Ganapati and his Vedic works but at first nothing came of it. In 1992, I came in contact with K. Natesan, who in his eighties, was one of the oldest living disciples of Ganapati and Ramana. When Natesan discovered my interest in Ganapati he revealed his great secret. He had collected Ganapati’s work for decades. Besides copies of Ganapati's printed works, most of which were out of print; he had painstakingly transcribed Ganapati’s handwritten manuscripts and gathered nearly all of them. He had much material that even M.P. Pandit never knew about, including extensive works on the Vedas by Ganapati. He happily made copies of all these works for me and I took them back home to America to study. Natesan guided me to Ganapati and became a source of his grace and his influence. In Ganapati’s works I found an approach to the Vedas in harmony with my deepest thoughts."

"Ganapati was a Vedic scholar, a Tantric yogi, an Ayurvedic doctor and a Vedic astrologer, as well as an active social thinker and reformer – covering the same basic range of fields that I had and at a much deeper level. He even researched the history of the Vedas and the Mahabharata. He was probably the greatest Sanskrit poet and writer of this century. His greatest work, Uma Sahasram, has a thousand verses and forty chapters each down flawlessly in a different Sanskrit meter. I recognized him as a model for what I was attempting in all aspects of my work. He also presented an approach that balanced my connection with both Aurobindo and Ramana. Through Ganapati I was able to bridge the gap between the two. No doubt a secret affinity with him was behind the position that I had taken."