Ramana's life · The golden years

The Skandashram years: the golden time on the hill

Between the wild cave years and the great ashram lies a golden in-between time ~ the years at Skandashram, high on the green slope, with his mother in the kitchen, a small family of devotees, and the teaching quietly being born. The tenderest period of the whole life.

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Between the raw, wild absorption of the first cave years and the settled institution that Sri Ramanasramam became, there is a golden, in-between time ~ the years at Skandashram, high on the slope of the hill, from about 1916 to 1922. It is, for many who love Ramana, the most beautiful period of all: the sage now approachable and even, at times, talkative; a small, intimate family of devotees gathered around him; his mother cooking in the little kitchen; and the whole of it perched on a green terrace with the great temple and the plain spread out below. If the cave years belong to the solitary and the last years to the multitude, Skandashram belongs to the family ~ and it has left us some of the tenderest stories in the whole tradition.

The green terrace on the hill

Skandashram itself is part of the story. A little above the Virupaksha Cave, a devotee named Kandaswami had, by sheer devoted labour, coaxed a small ashram out of the bare hillside ~ clearing rock, building a shelter, and, most miraculously, finding and channelling a spring of sweet water where none had been, so that a garden could grow. It became a place of shade and greenery and quiet on the dry slope, and Ramana moved there around 1916. From its terrace the view is one of the loveliest in Tiruvannamalai, out over the temple's towers to the far plain. It was a real home, tended and loved ~ the first place, since he had left his mother's house as a boy, that Ramana truly lived in rather than merely inhabited.

His mother in the kitchen

The heart of the Skandashram years is the presence of Alagammal, his mother. She had come, at last, to stay, and she took charge of the little kitchen, cooking for her son and the devotees ~ and in doing so, cooked herself, slowly, all the way to liberation. There are lovely, homely stories from these years: of Ramana quietly training his mother out of her lingering orthodoxies and attachments; of his insistence, even here, that the food be shared with perfect fairness; of the ordinary, holy rhythm of a household that happened to have a fully realised sage doing his share of the kitchen work. When she lay dying in 1922, it was here, and Ramana's guiding of her to freedom that night is the culminating event of the whole period ~ after which he came down the hill for good.

The years he began to speak

The Skandashram years are also when the great silence began, gently, to give way to teaching in words. Ramana was still spare of speech, still teaching mostly by presence ~ but now, more and more, when a sincere seeker put a real question, he would answer, and answer with a clarity and depth that the devotees began, urgently, to write down. It was in this fertile period, and the cave years just before, that the seed-texts took shape: the questions of Sivaprakasam Pillai that became Who Am I?; the Five Hymns to Arunachala, sung and composed in these years and on the walks around the hill. The teaching that would one day reach the world was, in the Skandashram years, being quietly born, verse by verse and answer by answer, on a green terrace on the mountainside.

If the cave years belong to the solitary, and the last years to the multitude, the Skandashram years belong to the family ~ and hold the tenderest stories of all.

The gathering family

And around him, in these years, the first true family of devotees formed ~ the ones who would become the pillars of the later ashram. Kunju Swami came in this period; so did others who would give their whole lives to Bhagavan. It was small enough, still, to be intimate ~ everyone knew everyone; the sage was within arm's reach; the whole community could fit on the terrace. Those who were there in the Skandashram years, and lived to see the great crowds of the later ashram, always spoke of this time with a special tenderness ~ the springtime of it all, when Arunachala's sage was a young man on a green hillside with his mother and a handful of friends, and the world had not yet found the path up the hill. It could not last, and it was not meant to; but while it lasted, it was, by every account, something close to heaven.

Last updated 20 October 2026. Following the documented record preserved by Sri Ramanasramam and his devotees; where an account is traditional, it is told as such.