Sri Ramana Maharshi on SELF-ENQUIRY - 4

ॐ OAM NAMO BHAGAVATE SRI RAMANAYA ॐ

The following questions were put by Mr.Bhargava,
an elderly visitor from Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh:
(1) How am I to search for the 'I' from start to finish?
(2) When I meditate, I reach a stage where there is a vacuum or void. How should I proceed from there?
Bhagavan: Never mind there are visions or sounds or anything else or there is void. Are you present during all these or are you not? You must have been there during the void to be able to say that you experienced void. To be fixed in that 'you' is the quest from start to finish. In all books on Vedanta you will find this question of a void or nothing being left raised by the disciple and answered by the Guru. It is the mind that sees objects and has experiences and that finds a void when it ceases to see and experience, but that is not 'you'. You are the constant illumination that lights up both the experience and the void. It is like the theatre light that enables you to see the theatre, the actors, and the play while the play is going on but also remains when it is all finished. Or there is another illustration: We see objects all around us but in complete darkness we do not see them and we say 'I see nothing'. In the same way, you are there even in the void.

You are the witness of the three bodies: the gross, the subtle and the causal, and the three times: past, present and future and also the void. In the story of the tenth man, when each of them counted and thought there were only nine, each one forgetting to count himself, there is a stage when they think one is missing and do not know who it is; and that corresponds to the void. We are so accustomed to the notion that all that we see around us is permanent and that we are this body, that when all this ceases to exist we imagine and fear that we also have ceased to exist.

Bhagavan also quoted verses 212 and 213 from Vivekachudamani in which the disciple says " After I eliminate the five sheaths as not-Self, I find that nothing at all remains" and the Guru replies that the Self or That by which all modifications, including the ego and all its creatures and their absence ( that is the void), are perceived, is always there.

Bhagavan continued and said: "The nature of the Self or 'I' must be illumination. You perceive all modifications and their absence. How? To say that you get illuminations from another would raise question how he got it and there would be no end to the chain of reasoning. So you yourself are the illumination. The usual illustration of this is the following: You make all kinds of sweets of various ingredients and in various shapes and they all taste sweet because there is sugar in all of them and sweetness is the nature of sugar. And in the same way all experiences and the absence of them contain the illumination which is the nature of the Self. Without the Self they cannot be experienced, just as without sugar not one of the articles you make can taste sweet.

(Later he continued): First one sees the Self as objects, then one sees the Self as void, then one sees the Self as the Self; only in this last case there is not seeing because seeing is being.
Day by Day with Bhagavan by A.Devaraja Mudaliar [ 5th Edition, 2002]

ॐ    OAM NAMO BHAGAVATE SRI RAMANAYA   ॐ

Bhagavan on GOAL and PRACTICE

In answer to a question as to what is the best way to the goal, Bhagavan said: 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, that is yourself. Seeing is Being. You, being the Self, want to know how to attain the Self. It is like a man being at Ramanaashramam and asking how many ways there are of going to Ramanashramam and which is the best way for him. All that is required of you is to give up the thought that you are this body and give up all thoughts of external things or the non-Self. As often as the mind goes out towards objects, stop it and fix it in the Self or “ I “. That is all the effort required on your part.
Day by Day with Bhagavan by A.Devraja Mudaliar, 5th edition, 2002, page 332.

Ceaseless practice is essential until one attains without the least effort that natural and primal state of mind which is free from thought, in other words, until the ‘I’, ‘my’ and ‘mine’ are completely eradicated and destroyed.

Spiritual Instruction Chapter II 18

Concentration is not thinking of one thing. On the contrary, it is excluding all thoughts, Since all thoughts obstruct the sense of one’s true being. All efforts are to be directed simply to remove the veil of ignorance.

Day by Day with Bhagavan by A.Devraja Mudaliar, 5th edition, 2002; page 26

Concentrating the mind solely on the Self will lead to happiness or bliss. Drawing in the thoughts, restraining them and preventing them from straying outwards is called Detachment [VAIRAGYA]. Fixing them in the Self is spiritual practice [SADHANA]. Concentrating on the heart is the same as concentrating on the Self. Heart is another name for Self.

Day by Day with Bhagavan by A.Devraja Mudaliar, 5th edition, 2002; page 294

Sri Ramana Maharshi on Self Enquiry - 3

Devotee: Why should Self-enquiry alone be considered the direct path to Realisation.?
Bhagavan: 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. Self-enquiry alone can reveal the truth that neither the ego not the mind really exists and enable one to realize the pure, undifferentiated being of the Self or the Absolute.
Source: Maharshi’s Gospel p.38.

Bhagavan: To ask the mind to kill the mind is like making the thief the policeman. He will go with you and pretend to catch the thief, but nothing will be gained. So, you must turn inward and see where the mind rises and from then it will cease to exist.
[ In reference to this answer, Sri Thorai of jaffna, who has been living as a sadhu in Pelakothu for over a year, asked me whether asking the mind to turn inward and seek its source is not also employing the mind. I put the doubt before Bhagavan]
Bhagavan: Of course, we are employing the mind. It is well known and admitted that only with the help of the mind, can the mind be killed. But instead of setting about saying there is a mind and I want to kill it, you begin to seek its source and then find it does not exist at all. The mind turned outwards results in thoughts and objects. Turned inwards it becomes itself the Self.
From: Printed page 111 – The Teachings of Bhagavan by Arthur Osborne 2005 edition;
Day by Day with Bhagavan by A.Davaraja Mudaliar [ 5th edition, 2002] - page 37

Sri Ramana Maharshi on SELF ENQUIRY – 2

When Bhagavan Sri ramana Maharshi was asked how Self-enquirey which was conducted in only one of the three states of mind – the waking state – could destroy all three states of mind itself, he replied: Enquiry into the source of aham-vriti [ the I – thought, the limited feeling if I-ness] is, no doubt, initiated by the sadhaka in the waking state of the mind. It cannot be said that in him the mind has been destroyed. But the process of Self-enquiry will itself reveal that the alternation or transmutation of the three states of the mind, as well as the three states themselves, belong to the world of phenomenon which cannot affect his intense introversion of the mind. What is finally realized as a result of such enquiry into the source of aham-vriti, is verily the heart of the undifferentiated light of Consiousness into which the reflected light of the mind is completely absorbed.

Maharshi’s Gospel, Book 2,
Chapter 6, pp66-67.202 13th edition

A distinctive feature of Sri Bhagavan’s direct method of Self-enquiry is that all desires, all vasanas, all feelings, all thoughts, all hopes, all sensations, the mind/ego itself must go. This is best expressed in Sri Bhagavan’s own words:

“ Seek the Self by meditation in this manner: trace every thought to its origin which is only the mind. Never allow thought to run on. If you do, it would be unending. Take it back to its starting place again and again nd the mind would die of inaction. Go back constantly to the question ‘Who am I?’ Tear everything away until only the source of all is left. And then live always in the present, only in it. There is no past or future except in the mind".

Source: Mountain path,
July-September 2009 issue, p.pages 25-26

Sri Ramana Maharshi on SELF ENQUIRY - 1

Sri Ramana Maharshi on SELF ENQUIRY

 

For the subsidence of the mind there is no other means, that is  more effective than Self-enquiry. Even though the mind subsides by other means, that is only apparently so; it will rise again.
(* Who Am I ? x 12.)

This is the direct method. All other methods are practised while retaining the ego and therefore many doubts arise and the ultimate question still remains to be tackled in the end. But in this method the final question si the only one and is raised from the beginning.
(* Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi 146 )

SElf -enquiry leads directly to Self realisation by removing the obstacles which make you think that the Self is not already realised.

(* Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi 298)

Meditation requires an object to meditate on, whereas in Self-enquiry there is only the subject and no object. That is the diffference between.

(* Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi 390)

End of Knowledge and Bhakti

End of Knowledge and Bhakti

Devotee: What is the end of the path of knowledge ( jnana ) or Vedanta?
Bhagavan: It is to know the truth that the ' I ' DOESNOT EXIST SEPERATELY from the Lord (Ishvara) and to be free from the feeling of being the doer ( kartrtva, ahamkara ).

Devotee: What is the end of devotion ( bhakti) and the path of Sidhanta ( i.e., Saiva Sidahanta)

Bhagavan: It is to learn the truth that all one's actions performed with unselfish devotion, with the aid of the three purified instruments ( body, speecah and mind), in the capacity of the servant of the Lord, become the Lord's actions, and to stand forth free from the sense of 'I' and 'mine'. This is also the truth of what the Saiva-Sidhantins call para-bhakti ( supreme devotion) or living in the service of God ( irai-pani-nittral ).

- Sri Ramana Maharshi, Spiritual Instruction