Sri Ramana became known henceforth by this name for the rest of his life. Ganapati Shastri, a Vedic scholar of repute, visited Ramana in 1907 at Virupakshi Cave, and was enlightened by Ramana's utterances 'If one watches whence the notion 'I' arises, the mind gets absorbed there.' To Ganapati Shastri, this was a revelation, and he felt special affection for Ramana and proclaimed him as Bhagvana. Several people visited him and many became his disciples. Sri Ramana did not make anyone Guru but he often said that Arunachal was his guru. Nagging by his elder brother about his changed behavior led him to leave the house secretly and travel to Tiruvannamalai at the foothills of Arunachal.
Although he didn't know what the word meant, he was attracted to it. He heard somebody mention 'Arunachalam' (name of a hill associated with Lord Shiva). Venkataraman stayed at his uncle's house in Madurai for two months after this experience. Then he felt 'I am not this perishable body. In the middle of 1896, at age 16, he had a feeling that he was about to die. Venkataraman's father died when he was twelve, so he moved to his uncle's house in Madurai. He was born in a village called Tiruchuzhi near Madurai in Tamil Nadu, South India. Sri Ramana was the second of four children of Sundaram Iyer and Azhahammal, and was named Venkataraman at birth.
Sri Ramana was renowned for his saintly life, his convincingly supreme thought-practice of self-inquiry, and an amazingly simple and down-to-earth personality. Ramana Maharshi differ markedly from other Indian saints in that he was not formally initiated into sanyasa not that he had a vow of silence but he hardly had any inclination to talk he answered questions of many people but never considered himself to be anyone's Guru (spiritual teacher), and he never tried to make anyone his disciple. He primarily advocated Self-Enquiry (Who am I) to attain self-realization. Ramana Maharshi (DecemApril 14, 1950), also known as Maharshi Sri Ramana, Bhagavan Raman or the sage of Arunachala, was probably one of the most famous Indian sage of the twentieth century.