Ganapati Muni was well versed in Sanskrit and verses would easily flow from him and he was conferred the title ‘Kavyakantha’, Kavya meaning poetry and Kantha meaning throat.
Profile
Ganapati Muni was born as GanapatiSastri on 17th November 1878 in a village Kalavarayai in Andhra Pradesh. He was the second son of NarasimhaSastri and Narasamamba. When he was 18 years he left home and began wandering and learning from different masters. He was one with eidetic memory so whatever learnt once could be recalled with ease. Once in the city of Nabadwip in Bengal there was extempore test in Sanskrit prose and poetry. Ganapati won all the competitions and was given the title “Kavyakantha” and he was just 22 years old then. Soon he returned home and in 1904 he was offered a teaching post in Vellore. He was a master in Sanskrit but the appointment was to teach Telugu. It took him just 15 days to master the language and he began his teaching career. However he was not very happy as his spiritual practises were not progressing as desired. In 1903 he had heard of young swami living in Tiruvannamalai and visited the place and had seen him. Now with spiritual practises being disturbed Ganapati Muni decided to visit the young swami. Ganapati sought guidance from the swami and from then Ganapati Muni accepted this Swami who was known as Venkataramana as his guruon 18th November 1907. There is an interesting story that Ganapati Muni named this young swami as RamanaMaharshi which later became BhagavanShriRamanaMaharshi. Ganapati Muni is said to have removed Venkata from the original name and added Maharshi.Ganapati Muni had also met Sri Aurobindo, another spiritual luminary. Ganapati never stayed in any one place and travelled. In 1934 he settled ina village of Nimpuraand he died two years later on 25th July 1936.
Philosophy Propounded
Ganapati Muni followed the tantric principles and had many experiences of siddhis, special powers. There was a time in his life when he experienced lot of physical pain which resulted in ‘kapalabheda’ by which the skull was split on top and joined together to form a ‘y’ shape. All these are experiences of Siddhas. It is strange thatBhagavanRamanaMaharshi, the guru, advocated Advaita Vedanta and complete silence inside and outside while Ganapati Muni, the disciple, talked all the time and practised tantra.
Work Done to Spread the Philosophy
Ganapati Muni wrote books ‘Uma Sahasram’ and MahavidyadiSuras’ which reduced the prejudice around Tantric teachings. He was the one responsible for introducing the first western disciple of BhagavanRamanaMaharshi and thereby introducing him to the world. Ganapati Muni had many followers and T.V. KapaliSastry was the most prominent one who took Ganapati Muni teachings forward.
