Serving at the feet of Sri Bhagavan: Dennis Hartel as I know him

om namo bhagavate śrī ramaṇāya

I am beginning with a quote from the last email that Dennis wrote to his friends, titled 'Refuge' :

I first saw Dennis at the Ramanashramam in Thiruvannamalai around 1997. I did not interact with him then, except thinking how Sri Bhagavan attracts so many devotees all around the world to His abode. Nearly 21 years later, I met Dennis at the Arunachala Ashrama in New York in the fall of 2018. Therefore, one may say that I am the most inexperienced novice, and perhaps the most unqualified to talk about Dennis in this Satsang where several other devotees have known him for many decades. So, please forgive me and this childish act of audacity.

When I met Dennis in 2018, he struck a deep chord in me even before I got to exchange a single word with him. There were very many things that stood out: his simplicity, his warmth, and the way he went about talking to everyone. Without knowing anything else about him at the time, the deepest thing I felt was his unconditional surrender to Sri Bhagavan. As a third generation devotee of Sri Bhagavan, I never had the pleasure of meeting any of the old devotees. Something in me told me that Dennis belonged to that caliber of devotees who served Sri Bhagavan in His physical form. However, I had no way to know any of that during that first meeting.

Subsequently, I got to hear stories about Dennis from very many friends and devotees of Sri Bhagavan. Funnily enough, it was Dennis who introduced me to those devotees and made them as my friends in his own way.

In essence, I had only a very short, and yet meaningful time, to get to know Dennis, and form a very deep devotion to his devotion to Sri Bhagavan. Among many things, Dennis had this incredible ability to say the exact right thing at the right moment to a devotee. I have two specific incidents to recollect today.

In the early summer of 2019, I began reading the archives of 'The Maharshi' newsletter from 1991 one by one. Right around that time, I began to be very attracted to Tamiḷ literature and particularly to Thayumanavavar, a saint poet who lived in the 15th century. Bhagavan had a very high regard for him, and there was a great article written in Jul-Aug, 1995 edition of 'The Maharshi' newsletter. The article provided English translations of Thayumanavar’s ten verses which were selected by Sri Bhagavan. It was very difficult to track those ten verses in Tamiḷ based solely on the translation presented in the article. So, I sent an email to Dennis, who was in Nova Scotia at the time, to check if he knew what the original Tamiḷ verses were.

The very next day, Dennis responded to me with the following email:

I left this matter at that as Dennis was in Nova Scotia, and it would be very unlikely that I could see the original ten verses anytime soon.

And, somehow, the very next day, as early as 7:21 am Eastern time, I got an alert in my phone indicating an email from Dennis. It would be unusual to get an email from Dennis that early from Nova Scotia.

When I opened the email, it read as follows:

This simple act of scanning these Tamiḷ verses printed 70 years ago, as mundane an act as it could be considered, somehow indicated to me the surrendered state with which Dennis led his life. Every genuine ask of him got a reply from him.

The second incident was even more interesting. Along with Swaminathan’s family, we visited the Nova Scotia Ashrama during August 2019 to spend a week there in meditation. A week before our trip, I had a very vivid dream.

In the dream, I entered the old Hall at Ramanashramam, and Sri Bhagavan was seated in the north eastern corner reclining on his sofa with a gentle smile on his luminous face. I felt so much thrill seeing Bhagavan and his lustrous smile. I prostrated and sat in the first row facing Him. I gently closed my eyes in meditation. Someone tapped me on my right shoulder and said in a whisper, which I recognized to be Muruganar, “You have Paramatma right in front of you, why do you have to close your eyes to realize him? You can just see him right here”. I instantly opened my eyes to see Sri Bhagavan still reclining on his sofa with his gentle smile, showering love with his kind eyes. And, in a few seconds, the face of Sri Bhagavan changed, while all of his body remained exactly as it was clad in Kaupina, and this time it was the face of Dennis with his gentle smile.

Then I must have fallen asleep. That dream was so vivid, that even today, roughly 15 months later, it is as if I had the dream yesterday night.

When we were at Nova Scotia, we looked forward to the daily evening walks with Dennis to feed the fish in the pond, as very many of you may know, a practice that Dennis kept up for the past few decades. During one of the fish feeding trips, I told Dennis about this dream. After a few minutes of silence, Dennis continued to talk about how the fish welcomed eating their daily portions of corn that were fed to them over the years.

However, two days later, when I had a chance to walk with Dennis to feed those fish again, Dennis told me about a dream he himself had a few years ago, in which Dennis was in the Old hall as one of Sri Bhagavan’s servants fanning Sri Bhagavan using the punkah.

Yes, Dennis wanted to be a servant of Sri Bhagavan and a servant of all of Sri Bhagavan’s devotees. That was his life’s mission, he said once to me.

As we gather to celebrate the first anniversary of his refuge, we wonder in which part of the world is Dennis residing right now. I know Dennis is right here listening to us talk, pray, sing, and celebrate his devotion. He is just patiently awaiting us to recognize him as he is right in our hearts smiling and giving us perfect guidance - as he did in person to all of us before.

How do I know this? Because Dennis himself left us a clue in his last email:

“I fully believe, though physically absent, I will now extend a greater service to the Ashrama than ever before. You may not understand this, but I believe in time you will arrive at the same conclusion.”

om namo bhagavate śrī ramaṇāya