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Re: Ramana Maharshi
The post by rkubarych@aol.com (RKubarych) prompts me to offer these
selections from THE TEACHINGS OF RAMANA MAHARSHI, edited by Arthur
Osborne, Samuel Weisner, Inc., New York; first published 1962):
(Note: Shri Ramana Maharshi, regarded by many as the most important
saint of Bharat and sage of the present century, was born on
December 30, 1879. I have posted his Jyotish charts on the
newsgroup alt.jyotish in the recent past. He taught the doctrine of
"Advait Vedant," signifying non-dualism, and urged most of his
students to pursue self-realization by the method known as
"self-enquiry." These selections were drawn from dialogues with
students or visitors to his ashram.)
The Nature of Man
RM: The individual being which identifies its existence with that
of the life in the physical body as "I" is called the ego. The
Self, which is pure Consciousness, has no ego-sense about it.
Neither can the physical body, which is inert in itself, have this
ego-sense. Between the two, that is between the Self or pure
Consciousness and the inert physical body, there arises
mysteriously the ego-sense or "I" notion, the hybrid which is
neither of them, and this flourishes as an individual being. This
ego or individual being is at the root of all that is futile and
undesirable in life. Therefore it is to be destroyed by any
possible means; then That which ever is alone remains resplendent.
This is Liberation or Enlightenment or Self-Realization.
Suffering
Q. God is perfect. Why did he create the world imperfect? A work
partakes of the nature of its author, but in this case it is not
so.
RM: Are you something separate from God that you should ask this
question? So long as you consider yourself the body, you see the
world as external to you. It is to you that the imperfection
appears. God is perfection and his work is also perfection but you
see it as imperfect because of your wrong identification with the
body or ego.
Q. Why did the Self manifest as this miserable world?
RM: In order that you might see it. Your eyes cannot see themselves
but if you hold a mirror in front of them they see themselves.
Creation is the mirror. See yourself first and then see the whole
world as the Self.
Nature of God
Q. Is God personal?
RM: Yes, He is always the first person, the I, ever standing before
you. Because you give precedence to worldly things, God appears to
have receded to the background. If you give up all else and seek
Him alone, He will remain as the 'I', the Self.
Q. The final state of Realization is said, according to Advaita, to
be absolute union with the Divine, and according to Visishtadvaita
a qualified union, while Dvaita maintains that there is no union at
all. Which of these should be considered the correct view?
RM: Why speculate about what will happen some time in the future?
All are agreed that the 'I' exists. To whichever school of thought
he may belong, let the earnest seeker first find out what the 'I'
is. Then it will be time enough to know what the final state will
be, whether the 'I' will get merged in the Supreme Being or stand
apart from Him. Let us not forestall the conclusion, but keep an
open mind.
Q. Are the Gods, Ishvara and Vishnu, and their heavens, Kailas and
Vaikuntha, real?
RM: As real as you are in this body.
Q. I mean have they got a phenomenal existence like my body, or are
they pure fictions like the horns of a hare?
RM: They do exist.
Q. If so they must be somewhere; where are they?
RM: In you.
Q. Then they are only my idea; something which I create and
control?
RM: Everything is.
The Path of Self-Enquiry
RM: All the scriptures are meant only to make a man retrace his
steps to his original source. He need not acquire anything new. He
only has to give up false ideas and useless accretions. Instead of
doing this, however, he tries to grasp something strange and
mysterious because he believes his happiness lies elsewhere. That
is the mistake.
All scriptures without exception proclaim that for attaining
salvation, the mind should be subdued. And once one knows that
control of the mind is their final aim, it is futile to make an
interminable study of them. What is required for such control is
actual enquiry into oneself by self-interrogation: "Who am I?" How
can this enquiry in quest of the Self be made by means of a study
of the scriptures?
To enquire Who am I that is in bondage? and to know one's real
nature alone is Liberation...We are all really Sat Chit Ananda
(Being Knowledge Bliss) but we imagine that we are bound by destiny
and have all this suffering.
Q. Why do we imagine this, why does this state of ignorance come
over us?
RM: Ask yourself to whom this ignorance has come and you will
discover that it never came to you and that you always have been
Sat Chit Ananda. One goes through all sorts of austerities to
become what one already is.
Q. If the Supreme Being is omnipresent, as He is said to be, His
realization ought to be an easy thing. The scriptures, however,
declare that without His grace the Lord cannot even be worshipped,
much less realized. So then, how can the individual by his own
effort realize the Self, or the Supreme Being, except through His
grace?
RM: There was never a time when the Supreme Being was unknown or
unrealized, because He is one and identical with the Self. His
Grace is the same as the conscious immediacy of His Divine
Presence, in other words Englightenment or Revelation. One's
ignorance of this self-revealing immediacy of Divine Grace is no
proof to the contrary...Grace is the Self. It is not something to
be acquired. All that is necessary is to know its existence. In the
same way, the sun is pure brightness; it does not know darkness,
although others speak of darkness fleeing away on its approach.
Like darkness, ignorance is a phantom, not real. Because of its
unreality, it is said to be removed when its unreality is
discovered.
The sun is there and shines and you are surrounded by sunlight;
still, if you would know the sun you must turn your eyes in its
direction and look at it. Similarly, Grace is only to be found by
effort, although it is here and now.
Q. Why should Self-Enquiry alone be considered the direct path to
Realization?
RM: Because every kind of path except Self-Enquiry presupposes the
retention of the mind as the instrument for following it, and
cannot be followed without the mind. The ego may take different and
more subtle forms at different stages of one's practice but it is
never destroyed. The attempt to destroy the ego or the mind by
methods other than Self-Enquiry is like a thief turning policeman
to catch the thief that is himself.
Instead of setting about saying there is a mind and I want to kill
it, you begin to seek its source and you find it does not exist at
all. The mind turned outwards results in thoughts and objects.
Turned inwards it becomes the Self.
By steady and continuous investigation into the nature of the mind,
the mind is transformed into That to which 'I' refers; and that is
in fact the Self. The mind has necessarily to depend for its
existence on something gross; it never subsists by itself. It is
the mind that is otherwise called the subtle body, ego, or soul.
The first and foremost of all thoughts that arise in the mind is
the primal 'I' thought. It is only after the rise or origin of the
'I' thought that innumerable other thoughts arise. In other words,
only after the first personal pronoun, 'I', has arisen, do the
second and third personal pronouns (you, he, etc.) occur to the
mind; and they cannot subsist without it...The 'I'-thought is
therefore the root thought. If the root is pulled out, all the rest
is at the same time uprooted.
Q. If 'I' am always--here and now--why do I not feel so?
RM: Who says that you do not? Does the real 'I' or the false 'I'?
Ask yourself and you will find that it is the false 'I'.
Q. Should we not find out the ultimate reality of the world as
individual and God?
RM: These are conceptions of the 'I'. They arise only after the
advent of the 'I'-thought...Does the world tell you: 'I am the
world'? Does the body say: 'I am the body'? You say: 'This is the
world,' 'this is the body,' and so on. So these are only your
conceptions. Find out who you are, and there will be an end of
doubts...If the ego is, everything else also is. If the ego is not,
nothing else is. Indeed the ego is all. Therefore the enquiry as to
what this ego is, is the only way of giving up everything.
The state of non-emergence of 'I' is the state of being THAT.
End of selections from THE TEACHINGS OF RAMANA MAHARSHI.
Jai Maharaj <jai@mantra.com> Jyotishi, Vedic Astrologer
%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:% *-=Om Shanti=-* %:%:%
