In December 31, 1989. Lucy Cornelssen – “Lucy Ma” to us, the Ashramites – “went gently into the night”. She did not “rage against the ending of the light”. Why should she? It was the end of the shadow, not the light. Her Sadguru Ramana had shown her that the Self, one’s own true Being, is eternal Light. So she went gently. After ninety beautiful years on earth, her last day here was also the last day of the year.
Lucy Ma came from a land which has produced great Indologists, like Max Mueller and Heinrich Zimmer. In earlier times, Arthur Schopenhauer, who saw the world as a Will and an Idea, lost his heart to Indian metaphysics. “If I were to be reborn,” said he, “I would like it to be in India.” Goethe, Germany’s Shakespeare was enraptured by Kalidasa’s famous play and sang in praise of its heroine Sakuntala. One may see in Lucy Ma’s return to the Source the restoration of her Fatherland’s unity.
This love of India was in Lucy’s blood too. Her mother was an Indologist of impressive erudition. Young Lucy often saw “Mutti” poring over huge tomes. One day, the girl was struck by the jacket of a book on her mother’s table and opened it at random. This book fascinated her before she read a single word of it.
A page in it had a strange picture which t
ransformed her all at once. She lost all sense of her body and surroundings. All that remained was an awareness of immense joy. After a while, her mother came in, shook the girl, and brought her back to herself. Lucy pointed to the picture and asked, “Mutti, what is that?” The mother said: “My dear child! This is Siva, the great god of India. There are three main gods for them: Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. Brahma creates, Vishnu preserves, while Siva destroys to make way for re-creation. See, how fierce Siva looks as He dances on the cremation ground! But to His devotees, He is sweet and gentle like a mother.” Precocious young Lucy was thrilled! From that moment she became a devotee of Siva at heart. It was years later that she realized that the trance-like state induced in her by that picture was very deep meditation which comes but rarely to people, what we call ‘samadhi’.
Siva became for her a living god. During many of her wakeful moments, she saw the fierce-looking figure dancing before her mind’s eye. Far from resisting that experience, she revelled in it.
Lucy was a beautiful girl. Left to herself, she would have remained single, wedded only to Siva. But “the stars that govern our conditions” decided otherwise and lovely Lucy married and became Frau Lucy Cornelssen. Lucy took to writing or rather was called to that vocation. Those were days when serious writers could just manage to keep the wolf from the door. “I was always poor!” said Lucy Ma once. But that was sadhana in a rich sense. Did she not in later years become a very articulate, highly polished writer, producing such well-received books as ‘Hunting the I’ and very perceptive German translations of Sri Bhagavan’s works?
The Second World War broke out in 1939, which did not spare a single household. “Wars always devour the best”, says a German proverb. The best in physical strength and valour, in patriotism and heroism. The best-minded Germans, like the great novelist Thomas Mann, left the Fatherland reluctantly and in disgust. Bertolt Brecht, the dramatist and passionate pacifist, dared the warmongers who burned his inflammable books, to burn him, and moved from one country to another to escape the evil of war. Einstein, the greatest German since Goethe, had left the country earlier, an exit which was later to prove disastrous to those who made him quit. Many stayed and suffered; Lucy was one of them. she had already found a measure of inward poise; the war did not touch her inmost being. She quietly retired to a life of solitude in a little hut in the midst of a dense forest.
Siva had come to Lucy in her childhood. Now Arunachala Siva Ramana came, for she was ready to receive and spread His teaching.
One night Lucy had lost the way to her hut and was groping around in the dark. Weary and dispirited, Lucy was about to collapse, when she saw a dot of light at some distance. When she reached the spot, she saw that it was another hut. The door was open. Lucy was not the kind of person to walk into a house unannounced. But on that night, she neither knocked nor called out. She just walked in. On a table near the candle, whose little flame had guided her to that hut, there stood the photograph of the head and shoulders of a man whose eyes shone with a rare lustre. Lucy saw the photo and stood still, a monument of bliss. . . Lucy found it strange that she now felt fully alive as never before and yet her body was nowhere.
The owner of the hut walked in after a while. She was surprised to see a youthful lady standing entranced and statue-like, a look of rapture on her radiant face. She shook Lucy and brought her out of the trance.
Lucy learnt that the person was the lady’s spiritual Master, that he lived at the foot of Arunachala, the Hill of the Holy Beacon, in South India, and was called Sri Ramana Maharshi.
Not much later a copy of Heinrich Zimmer’s book “Der Weg zum Selbst” (The Way to the Self) in which the great Indologist had written a glowing account of the Sage’s life and teachings and had made first-class translations of some of His works, “somehow found its way into my deep forest solitude.” That photograph and that book totally transformed Lucy’s life. The devotee of Siva had found her Sadguru!
Lucy Ma wrote in The Mountain Path in 1979: “I should say that it was my spiritual earnestness which brought about my acquaintance with Sri Ramana Maharshi through that book. I was able to perceive that Ramana was an authentic representative of the lofty Upanishadic Wisdom in our own days.”
Lucy started saving money to go to South India to be at the feet of her Master. Just when she was ready to leave, news came of His Mahasamadhi. She was just not destined to see her Sadguru in the body. True, he often said that He was not the body, but she was sad.
However, she soon braced herself and her grief was transmuted into energy for action. She resolved to bring out accurate translations in German of Bhagavan Ramana’s works, and towards this end, she made up her mind to acquire adequate proficiency in Tamil. By the time she left for India in 1956, she had a good passive knowledge of Tamil and had put together a manuscript of her German translation of His works. She said that she completed the draft translation “in a matter of weeks”. But then deeply meditative preparation had lasted years.
Lucy Ma came to Sri Ramanasramam because it was there that her Master had lived and sanctified every inch of the Holy Hill and the ashram by His footsteps. She would place her manuscripts at His feet and also seek confirmation from His disciples that her translation was flawless and worthy of the original. At the Ashram she got an excellent guide. T.K. Sundaresa Iyer – popularly called TKS – was well-read in English, Tamil and Sanskrit and had a deep understanding of Sri Bhagavan*s teachings. Affectionately called “Sundaresa” by Bhagavan, he was held in esteem by everyone in the Ashram. Lucy found in TKS a match for her Teutonic diligence and thoroughness.
When her translations were printed – In three volumes – Lucy Ma in characteristic humility, had hidden behind the nome-de-plume “Satyamayi”. Lucy Ma and TKS allowed me the privilege of assisting them in this project.
Lucy Ma, lover of peace and loneliness, spent more than seven months in sylvan surroundings at “Nirudhi Lingam” shrine on the hill-round route. It was here that Nayana (Kavyakantfia Ganapati Muni) had done tapasya before he met the young Swami whom he recognized and named as Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. Now around this sacred spot has sprung up a colony of very earnest sadhakas, deeply devoted to Sri Bhagavan, most of them from West Germany.
Lucy Ma kept shuttling between Germany and Tiruvannamabi. In response to my humble request and Ashram’s invitation, she finally came to Arunachala forever in the 70’s. Her daughter, Heike Becker-Foss, kept coming from Germany to spend some time with her mother, but Lucy Ma stayed put in Arunachala. Heike, daughter of her mother, tall and regal, bright and sensitive, wrote of the Ashram: “It Is another world than we are used to live in; strange and yet as if it were, the real world of the Soul, seemingly lost since centuries, yet never forgotten!”
Lucy Ma lived, till her last day, in a little apartment offered by me in front of the ashram. Once during my long absence from the town, she had arranged for her permanent stay in an Old Women’s Home in Germany. When I returned, she divulged her plan to me. With tears in my eyes, I pleaded with her not to leave dozens of her spiritual children, and me, her son, who needed her guidance most. She pleaded she was becoming too weak and a burden on the Ashram. I reasoned with her. Where was the question of burden? Lucy Ma magnanimously relented and said she would stay on if only for my sake. I was overwhelmed. When comes such another mother?
Lucy Ma observed silence on Mondays. The board “MOUNAM ~ MONDAY” hung at her door every Monday. But she would graciously consent to receive and talk to a serious seeker who could not wait till Tuesday. Actually, it was an atmosphere of silence prevailed in Lucy Ma’s apartment on all days. Her soft-spoken words had the quality of silence. She spoke little, but with great effect.
And wrote likewise. Her book ‘Hunting the I’ is one of the best and most original books on Sri Bhagavan on our shelves. It has fascinated many seekers with an intellectual bent of mind. Using her knowledge of philosophy, sociology, biology, archaeology, psychology, and other disciplines, she has interpreted Sri Bhagavan’s teachings in a novel and convincing way, anticipating all questions and copiously quoting Sri Bhagavan’s own words. …
The little book of 100 pages is a masterpiece of rigorous analysis and clarity of thought. Lucy Ma showed her gracious affection when she dedicated the original German version of ‘Hunting the I’ to me.
Her clarity impressed visitors. Only those were sent to her who would benefit by talking to her – mainly those who wanted to see her and those who knew only German or French. After a brief session of conversation with her, many came away clearer in mind.
Like me, Helga, the brave Bulgarian-born German lady, regularly visited Lucy Ma. She is now sorting out Lucy Ma’s few unpublished writings and translating them into English.
It so turned out that neither Helga nor I was at Lucy Ma’s bedside when she passed away. We were both out of town. Before I left, when I went to her to take leave, she was intensely emotional and said: “Thank you for everything, my son! You are taking leave of me and I am taking leave of everybody soon. I bless you!” I drenched her feet with my tears and walked away.
A day after I left, she was absorbed in Arunachala. Her body was interred inside the Ashram premises; her samadhi is built near those of Major Chadwick, S.S. Cohen and H.C. Khanna.
She went gently, happily. It was into the great Light that she went. Goethe, in his last moments, muttered: “Light, more light”. To Lucy Ma that great Light was never in doubt, ever since she realized the truth of Sri Bhagavan’s teaching, “the Self is Light”.
– The Mountain Path 1990
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