RAMANA MAHARSHI

BHAGAVAN SRI RAMANA'S TALKS : J.K. SIVAN 

IT IS NOT DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND BHAGAVAN RAMANA IF YOU READ THE QUESTIONS PUT TO HIM AND THE ANSWERS GIVEN BY HIM, SLOWLY, CONCENTRATING ON EACH WORD ATTENTIVELY WITH INVOLVEMENT AND INTEREST TO LEARN.- It is made simple for you so that you will enjoy His teaching profusely.

Maharshi Ramana:   Go to the root of the thoughts and you reach the stillness of sleep. But you reach it in the full vigour of search, that is, with perfect awareness. That is again jagrat-sushupti spoken of before. It is not dullness; but it is Bliss. It is not transitory but it is eternal. From that the thoughts proceed. What are all our experiences but thoughts? Pleasure and pain are mere thoughts. They are within ourselves. If you are free from thoughts and yet aware, you are That Perfect Being.

You do not leave one place for another. You are always stationary. The scenes go past you. Even from the ordinary point of view you sit in your cabin and the ship sails but you do not move. We see a picture of a man running several miles and rushing towards us but the screen does not move. It is the picture that moves on and away.

Devotee: I see, but I can understand it only after I realise the Self.

M.: The Self is always realised. Were Realisation something to be

gained hereafter there is an equal chance of its being lost. It will

thus be only transitory. Transitory bliss brings pain in its train. It

cannot be liberation which is eternal.

Were it true that you realise it later it means that you are not realised now. Absence of Realisation of 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.

D.: Yes, I shall understand it in course of time.

M.:You are already That.     Time and space cannot affect the Self. They are in you; so also all that you see around you,  are in you. Let me tell you a  story.

A lady had a precious necklace round her neck. Once in her excitement she forgot it and thought that the necklace was

lost. She became anxious and looked for it in her home but could not find it. She asked her friends and neighbours if they knew anything about the necklace. They did not. At last a kind friend of hers told her to feel the necklace round the neck. She found that it had all along been round her neck and she was happy! When others asked her later if she found the necklace which was lost, she said, “Yes, I have found it.” She still felt that she had recovered a lost jewel.

Now did she lose it at all?

 It was all along round her neck. But judge her feelings. She is happy as if she had recovered a lost jewel. Similarly with us, we imagine that we would realise that Self some time, whereas we are never anything but the Self.