I had to self-study
I was not satisfied with my father’s attitude or answer and decided to try and study by myself. decided to try to study by myself. I got hold of two books, one containing the stories of King Vikramaditya and the other the verses of Pattinatar (a 9th century Tamil poet and saint), and tried to teach myself to read.

Although I had never come across statements like this before, I had always had a natural inclination towards the spiritual life. Nobody had ever talked to me about religious matters, but somehow I had always known that there was a higher power called God, and that the purpose of life was to attain this God.

Intuition about God from young

Without being told, I instinctively felt that everything I saw was somehow illusory and not real. These thoughts, along with the idea that I should not become attached to anything in this world, were part of my consciousness even in my earliest boyhood.

I remember one incident which happened when I was only six years old. I was walking with my mother near the village when a sādhu in orange robes walked by. I asked my mother, ‘When will I become a sannyāsin like him?’
Without waiting for an answer, I started walking along the road behind the sādhu.

As I was walking I heard my mother expressing her disgust to the local village women: ‘Look what a useless boy he is! Even at this young age he is trying to be a sādhu.‘

My father, unfortunately, did not share my spiritual predilections. He did do an elaborate pūjā (ceremonial worship of a Hindu deity) every day for about half an hour, but his motives were entirely materialistic.

Once, while I was still a young boy, I asked him, “Why are you doing this pūjā every day?’
He replied, ‘I want to get wealth, I want to get land, I want to get gold and a lot of money’.
I told him, ‘These things are all perishable. Why are you praying for these perishable things?’
My father was astonished that I had an understanding of such matters at such an early age. “How do you know that these things are perishable?’ he demanded.
‘I know, that is why I am telling you,’ I replied. The knowledge was inside me but I couldn’t explain it or account for it in any rational way.

When my father discovered that I was taking an interest in spiritual matters, he tried to discourage me. He put many obstacles in my path and it was not until many years later that he finally conceded that I was destined to become a sādhu.

Good luck Mascot
While I was still quite young the villagers adopted me as a kind of good-luck mascot. Whenever anyone began to build a new house, I would be asked to put in the first frame. I was asked to pull out the first weed when the weeding started in the fields and during marriages I would be asked to touch the statue of Ganapati at the beginning of the ceremony. The most pleasant chore, though, was eating sweets. Whenever people in the village prepared sweets for a special occasion, I would be invited to come and share them. I don’t know when the villagers first came to believe that I would bring them good luck, or how they arrived at this conclusion, but the tradition persisted till I was about thirteen years of age.

My Spiritual practices began early

I became more acquainted with religious rituals on a visit to Vriddhachalam, a Saivite pilgrimage centre near my village. I observed some brahmins doing anushtānas ( a wide variety of religious practices) there and asked them to initiate me into these practices. They refused on the grounds that sudras (members of the lowest caste) were not permitted to practise these rites. Soon afterwards I saw some non-brahmin Saivites (followers of Siva) performing the same rituals. I learned these anushtānas from this group and performed them regularly when I returned to my village. My father had, despite his rather cynical attitude to religion, previously initiated me into Sürya Namaskāram, (a well-known ritual in which one repeats a number of mantras and then prostrates to the rising sun.) I added these new rituals to this one which my father had already taught me.

I adopted one other practice: each month, on ēkādasi day (the eleventh day of the lunar fortnight), I tried to meditate all night without falling asleep. I soon discovered that if I tried to meditate in a sitting position I fell asleep. I tried walking meditation, but even that didn’t work because I fell asleep while I was walking. After a little experimentation I discovered that I could fight off sleep by taking baths in the local river and by rubbing sand in thighs to induce pain. I also used to chew a piece of tobacco because I was told that chewing tobacco stimulates the rajoguna (one of the 3 gunas or qualities of creation that is responsible for action).