There were times when Ramana Maharshi actually appeared before me, advised or discussed. Death had not ended our relationship or barred our communions. He still existed in my mind, life, as a veritable force, an entity bereft of the flesh but clearly present at such times. And then one evening which I shall never forget, about a year and a quarter after his physical passing, he said that we needed to part and that he would vanish from my field of awareness. He did. I never saw him again. If it was his spirit, as I believed, it was either no longer able to maintain communication with this world, which I did not believe, or had withdrawn because the next step in my own development imperatively called for this freedom, which subsequently proved to be the case. [In 1981, P.B. said more about this "next step". He said that while the inner contact had never in fact been broken, he had lacked the ability to recognize that at the time. He had to stop looking for the contact through any sort of imagery, and learn to recognize its presence as pure essence rather than personalized image.--Ed.]
-- Notebooks Category 12: Reflections > Chapter 6 : The Profane and The Profound > # 183
