Letters from Sri Ramanasramam, by Suri Nagamma

It transpired subsequently that this happened in the last
moment of her life.”
“Did she tell anyone there about this experience?” I
asked. “We enquired about that but she was not at that time
in a condition to speak,” said Bhagavan. “That means, you
had blessed her with your darshan in the same way as in the
case of Nayana. Would the privilege of the drinking of milk
from your mother go to waste?” I said. “Yes, that is so. Mother
used to give her breast milk to both of us. I was drinking
mother’s milk till I was five years of age. If my father saw, he
used to scold her, saying, ‘What is this giving of milk to a
grown up child like that?’ So I used to wait until he had
gone and then drink milk. Mother had plenty of milk,” said
Bhagavan.

A devotee asked, “Why does Bhagavan call Ganapati
Sastri ‘Nayana’ (Nayana means father)?” “There is a reason
for it,” he replied, “it is my custom to address all people with
respect. Moreover, he was older than me. I therefore always
used to call him Ganapati Sastri Garu. That was very distressing
to him and so he begged me times out of number not to do
so, saying, ‘Am I not your disciple? You should call me by a
familiar name. This is very unfair.’ I did not pay any heed to
his protests. At last one day he insisted on my giving up the
formal way of addressing him and adopting a familiar one.

All his disciples call him ‘Nayana’, you see. So I made it an
excuse and said I too would call him ‘Nayana’ like the others.

He agreed to it because ‘Nayana’ means a child and a disciple
could be addressed as one’s own child. I agreed because
‘Nayana’ also means ‘father’ and hence it would not matter
so far as I was concerned. I was still addressing him in
respectful terms. Whenever I asked him to come here or go
there he was still uncomfortable because after all that he
had done, I continued to talk to him with the respect due to
elders,” said Bhagavan.

I said, “You stated that Meenakshi was not in a condition
to tell others about the darshan she had. That is all right, but
Nayana did tell others about the darshan he had, didn’t he?
In Vedantic language, what do they say about similar
experiences that two people have at the same time?”
Bhagavan said, with a smile, “ They are called ‘divya darshanas’
(divine visions).”