Ramana Maharshi

Ramana Maharshi lived in India from 1879 till 1950. At the age of 16 he had the experience that he was dying. Rather than resisting the experience, he welcomed it, and asked himself, "Who is the one who is dying?" In this inquiry he awoke to his own unchanging nature.

A few weeks later he felt moved by an invisible force to leave his life and family and to make his way to the holy mountain of Arrunachala. He lived here for the rest of his life, first alone in a secluded part of a temple, then in various caves on the holy mountain, and later in an ashram that was built around him.

For many years he did not speak at all, and remained in isolation. Slowly people were attracted to his presence, and he began to answer their questions on small scraps of paper. Later he talked more freely, and these talks were written down by his devotees.

The body of Ramana died in 1950, but his presence and teachings live on in the ashram where he lived, and in the many living teachers who have awakened through his Grace.

Here are a few quotations from his many talks:

Affection toward the good, compassion toward the helpless, happiness in doing good deeds, forgiveness toward the wicked, all such things are natural characteristics of the Master.

Reality is simply the loss of the ego. Destroy the ego by seeking its identity. It will automatically vanish and reality will shine forth by itself. This is the direct method.
There is no greater mystery than this, that we keep seeking reality though in fact we are reality. We think that there is something hiding reality and that this must be destroyed before reality is gained. How ridiculous! A day will dawn when you will laugh at all your past efforts. That which will be on the day you laugh is also here and now.

Realisation is getting rid of the delusion that you haven't realised.

Q: Does my realisation help others?
Ramana: Yes, certainly... Realisation of the Self is the greatest help that can be rendered to humanity. Therefore the saints are said to be helpful, though they remain in forests...
Q: Would it not be better if he mixed with others?
Ramana: There are no others to mix with.

(One who is Self-realised) helps the whole of humanity, unknown to the latter.

The easy way, the direct way, the shortest cut to salvation is the inquiry method. By such inquiry, you will drive the thought force deeper till it reaches its source and merges therein.

The mind, turned outwards, results in thoughts and objects. Turned inwards, it becomes itself the Self.

We have to contend against age-long mental tendencies. They will all go.

If one surrenders oneself there will be no one to ask questions or to be thought of. Either the thoughts are eliminated by holding on to the root-thought "I", or one surrenders oneself unconditionally to the higher power. These are the only two ways for realisation.

All talk of surrender is like pinching brown sugar from a brown sugar image of Lord Ganesa and offering it as naivedya [food offering] to the same Lord Ganesa. You say you offer your body, soul and all possessions to God. Were they yours that you could offer them? At best, you can only say, "I falsely imagined till now that all these which are yours were mine. Now I realise they are yours."

It is enough that one surrenders oneself. Surrender is to give oneself up to the original cause of one's being. Do not delude yourself by imagining such a source to be some God outside you. Your source is within yourself. Give yourself up to it. That means that you should seek the source and merge in it.

But when you talk of love, there is duality, is there not - the person who loves and the entity called God who is loved? The individual is not separate from God. Hence love means one has love towards one's own Self.

Only if one knows the truth of love, which is the real nature of Self, will the strong entangled knot of life be untied. Only if one attains the height of love will liberation be attained. Such is the heart of all religions. The experience of Self is only love, which is seeing only love, hearing only love, feeling only love, tasting only love and smelling only love, which is bliss.

The Guru is both external and internal. From the exterior he gives a push to the mind to turn it inwards. From the interior he pulls the mind towards the Self and helps in the quietening of the mind. That is Guru's grace. There is no difference between God, Guru and the Self.

The master is within; meditation is meant to remove the ignorant idea that he is only outside. If he is a stranger whom you await, he is bound to disappear also. What is the use of a transient being like that? But so long as you think you are separate or that you are the body, an external master is also necessary and he will appear to have a body. When the wrong identification of oneself with the body ceases, the master will be found to be none other than the Self.

A: The sadguru [the Guru who is one with being] is within.
Q: Sadguru is necessary to guide me to understand it.
A: The sadguru is within.
Q: I want a visible Guru.
A: That visible Guru says that he is within.

Q: May one have more than one spiritual master?
A: Who is a master? He is the Self after all. According to the stages of development of the mind the Self manifests as the master externally. The famous ancient saint Dattatreya said that he had more than twenty-four masters. The master is one from whom one learns anything. The Guru may be sometimes inanimate also, as in the case of Dattatreay. God, Guru and the Self are identical.

You are neck-deep in water and yet cry for water. It is as good as saying that one neck-deep in water feels thirsty, or that a fish in water feels thirsty, or that water feels thirsty.

Grace is the beginning, middle and end. Grace is the Self. Because of the false identification of the Self with the body the Guru is considered to be a body. But from the Guru's outlook the Guru is only the Self. The Self is one only and the Guru tells you that the Self alone is. Is not then the Self your Guru? Where else will grace come from? It is from the Self alone. Manifestation of the Self is a manifestation of grace and vice versa. All these doubts arise because of the wrong outlook and consequent expectation of things external to oneself. Nothing is external to the Self.

Guru is not the physical form. So the contact will remain even after the physical form of the Guru vanishes. One can go to another Guru after one's Guru passes away, but all Gurus are one and none of them is the form you see. Always mental contact is the best.

Peace is your natural state. It is the mind that obstructs the natural state. If you do not experience peace it means that your vichara has been made only in the mind. Investigate what the mind is, and it will disappear. There is no such thing as mind apart from thought. Nevertheless, because of the emergence of thought, you surmise something from which it starts and term that the mind. When you probe to see what it is, you find there is really no such tying as mind. When the mind has thus vanished, you realise eternal peace.

...sahaja sthiti, meaning the natural state, and swarupa, meaning real form or real nature.

You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that is of the not-Self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure awareness alone remains, and that is the Self.

There is no seeing. Seeing is only being. The state of Self-realisation, as we call it, is not attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far away, but simply being that which you always are and which is far away, but simply being that which you always are and which you always have been. All that is needed is that you give up your realisation of the not-true as true. All of us are regarding as real that which is not real. We have only to give up this practice on our part. Then we shall realise the Self as the Self; in other words, "Be the Self". At one stage you will laugh at yourself for trying to discover the Self which is so self-evident. So, what can we say to this question?

However much one may explain, the fact will not become clear till one attains Self-realisation and wonders how one was blind to the self-evident and only existence so long.

Q: How can I attain Self-realisation?
A: Realisation is nothing to be gained afresh; It is already there. All that is necessary is to get rid of the thought "I have not realised".

Q: True - but we are ignorant.
A: Only remove ignorance. That is all there is to be done.
All questions relating to mukti are inadmissible. Mukti means release from bondage which implies the present existence of bondage. There is no bondage and therefore no mukti either.

Q: But how is one to reach this state?
A: There is no goal to be reached. There is nothing to be attained. You are the Self. You exist always. Nothing more can be predicated of the Self than that it exists. Seeing God or the Self is only being the Self or yourself. Seeing is being. You, being the Self, want to know how to attain the Self. It is something like a man being at Ramanasramam asking how many ways there are to reach Ramanasraman and which is the best way for him. All that is required of you is to give up the though that you are this body and to give up all thoughts of the external things or the not-Self?

Q: Does my realisation help others?
A: Yes, certainly. It is the best help possible. But there are no others to be helped. For a realised being sees only the Self, just like a goldsmith estimating the gold in various items of jewelry sees forms and shapes are there. But when you transcend your body the others disappear along with your body-consciousness.

Q: That will take some years.
A: Why years? The idea is no time for the Self. Time arises as an idea after the ego arises. But you are the Self beyond time and space. You exist even in the absence of time and space.

Were it true that you realise it later it means that you are not realised now. Absence of realisation in the present moment may be repeated at any moment in the future, for time is infinite. So too, such realisation is impermanent. But that is not true. It is wrong to consider realisation to be impermanent. It is the true eternal state which cannot change.

Q: There must be something that I can do to reach this state.
A: The conception that there is a goal and a path to it is wrong. We are the goal or peace always. To get rid of the notion that we are not peace is all that is required.

...The potter's wheel goes on turning round even after the potter has ceased to turn it because the pot is finished. In the same way, the electric fan goes on revolving for some minutes after we switch off the current. The prarabdha [predestined karma] which created the body will make it go through whatever activities it was meant for. But the jnani goes through all these activities without the notion that he is the doer of them. It is hard to understand how this is possible. The illustration generally given is that the jnani performs action in some such way as a child that is roused from sleep to eat eats but does not remember next morning that it ate.

Friendship, kindness, happiness and such other bhavas [attitudes] become natural to them. Affection towards the helpless, happiness in doing good deeds, forgiveness towards the wicked, all such things are natural characteristics of the jnani (Patanjali, Yoga Sutras, 1:37).

Devotion is nothing more than knowing oneself.

From where does this "I" arise? Seek for it within; it then vanishes. This is the pursuit of wisdom. When the mind unceasingly investigates its own nature, it transpires that there is no such thing as mind. This is the direct path for all. The mind is merely thoughts. Of all thoughts the thought "I" is the root. Therefore the mind is only the thought "I".

Q: How is the ego to be destroyed?
A: Hold the ego first and then ask how is it to be destroyed. Who asks the question? It is the ego. This question is a sure way to cherish the ego and not to kill it. If you seek the ego you will find that it does not exist. That is the way to destroy it.

...A day will dawn when you will yourself laugh at your past efforts. That which will be on the day you laugh is also here and now.

A: This is a mistake that people often make. What happens when you make a serious quest for the Self is that the "I"-thought disappears and something else from the depths takes hold of you and that is not the "I" which commenced the quest.
Q: What is this something else?
A: That is the real Self, the import of "I". It is not the ego. It is the supreme being itself.

If the mind becomes introverted through inquiry into the source of aham-vritti, the vasanas become extinct. The light of the Self falls of the vasanas and produces the phenomenon of reflection we call the mind. Thus, when the vasanas become extinct the mind also disappears, being absorbed into the light of the one reality, the Heart.

Just as a pearl-diver, tying a stone to his waist, dives into the sea and takes the pearl lying at the bottom, so everyone, diving deep within himself with non-attachment, can attain the pearl of Self.

Q: Then you do not teach the way of yoga?
A: The yogi tries to drive his mind to the goal, as a cowherd drives a bull with a stick, but on this path the seeker coaxes the bull by holding out a handful of grass.

You have to ask yourself the question "Who am I?" This investigation will lead in the end to the discovery of something within you which is behind the mind. Solve that great problem and you will solve all other problems.

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