D.: What is the best way of living?
M.: It differs according as one is a Jnani or ajnani. A Jnani does not find anything different or separate from the Self. All are in the Self. It is wrong to imagine that there is the world, that there is a body in it and that you dwell in the body. If the Truth is known, the universe and what is beyond it will be found to be only in the Self. The outlook differs according to the sight of the person. The sight is from the eye. The eye must be located somewhere. If you are seeing with the gross eyes you find others gross. If with subtle eyes (i.e., the mind) others appear subtle. If the eye becomes the Self, the Self being infinite, the eye is infinite. There is nothing else to see different from the Self.
D.: So it is. How to get Bliss?
M.: Bliss is not something to be got. On the other hand you are always Bliss. This desire is born of the sense of incompleteness. To whom is this sense of incompleteness? Enquire. In deep sleep you were blissful: Now you are not so. What has interposed between that Bliss and this non-bliss? It is the ego. Seek its source and find you are Bliss. There is nothing new to get. You have, on the other hand, to get rid of your ignorance which makes you think that you are other than Bliss. For whom is this ignorance? It is to the ego. Trace the source of the ego. Then the ego is lost and Bliss remains over. It is eternal. You are That, here and now.… That is the master key for solving all doubts. The doubts arise in the mind. The mind is born of the ego. The ego rises from the Self. Search the source of the ego and the Self is revealed. That alone remains. The universe is only expanded Self. It is not different from the Self.
D.: What is this Self again?
M.: The Self is known to everyone but not clearly. You always exist. The Be-ing is the Self. ‘I am’ is the name of God. Of all the definitions of God, none is indeed so well put as the Biblical statement “I AM THAT I AM” in EXODUS (Chap. 3). There are other statements, such as Brahmaivaham, Aham Brahmasmi and Soham. But none is so direct as the name JEHOVAH = I AM. The Absolute Being is what is - It is the Self. It is God. Knowing the Self, God is known. In fact God is none other than the Self.
D.: Why are there good and evil?
M.: They are relative terms. There must be a subject to know the good and evil. That subject is the ego. Trace the source of the ego. It ends in the Self. The source of the ego is God. This definition of God is probably more concrete and better understood by you.
Ramana Maharshi is not the frail, old, dying body that I saw reclining on a chair, but the Unimaginable, egolessness, pure radiance, and the body, however much we may have loved its appearance, was merely like a glittering diamond reflecting the light that he really was.
I did not understand all this, when I first arrived. To me, he was something like a divine person, and I was inclined to compare him with Jesus or the Buddha. But Jesus or the Buddha were images in my head, formed on the basis of the belief in which I had been brought up, and on stories heard and read later on.
And Sri Ramana Maharshi, from the first second I saw him, was anything but an image in my head. He was a bomb, exploding the myth of my life until then, within a few minutes, and without a word. His famous, to some, notorious question, “Who Am I?” immediately got a totally new colour. For several years, at home, I had been meditating on it, and it had something of a mystical, yogic and philosophical ring about it.
Now it turned into, “Who on earth do you think you are, that you should be so important as to cultivate a garden full of problems and questions”? And this was not by way of condemning my ‘self’, my ego as it is usually called in Vedantic circles — but the question took this form in a sphere of utter astonishment: how, boy, tell me, how have you been so misled as to think that you or your ego had any importance? Instead of seeing that an ego is a mere stupidity or the belief in a fantasy, you have been cherishing it and even cultivating it by feeding it with important questions and problems. Your life until now was led by the belief in something totally imaginary
WHAT DO WE SEEK?
When I first came to Bhagavan and heard him repeating constantly that everyone must eventually come to the path of self-enquiry, I wondered whether he was being partial to his own teaching, but I soon understood why he insisted that this is so. The final goal is only oneness, and to experience oneness our mind must subside, which will happen entirely only when we attend to nothing other than ourself.
So long as we attend to anything other than ourself, our mind cannot subside, because attention to other things sustains it, since that which experiences otherness is only this mind. When the mind subsides completely, only self-attention remains, and self-attention alone is the state of absolute oneness. Bhagavan used to repeat this teaching every day, maybe ten or twenty times, but still we didn’t change. He didn’t change his teaching either, because to him this truth was so clear.
The answer keeps in line with the former one: “Meditation is sticking to one thought. That single thought keeps away other thoughts; distraction of mind is a sign of weakness. By constant meditation it gains strength, that is to say, its weakness of fugitive thought gives place to the enduring background free from thoughts. This expanse devoid of thought is the Self. Mind in purity is the Self.” (Talks, 293).
Another question: “Shall I meditate on ‘I am Brahman’?”
(‘I am Brahman’ is one of the four Great Sayings or Mahavakyas of the Upanishads.)
“The text is not meant for thinking ‘I am Brahman’. ‘I’ is known to everyone. Brahman abides as ‘I’ in everyone. Find out the ‘I’. The ‘I’ is already Brahman. You need not think so. Simply find out the ‘I’!” (Talks, 266).
The same question turns up repeatedly.
“ ‘I am Brahman’ is only a thought. Who says it? Brahman himself does not say so. What need is there for Him to say it? Nor can the real ‘I’ say so, for ‘I’ always abides as Brahman. To be saying it is only a thought. Whose thought is it? All thoughts are from the unreal ‘I’, i.e., the ‘I’-thought. Remain without thinking. So long as there is thought there will be fear.” (Talks, 202).
Meditation, as a yoga practice almost a parlour game nowadays, was also foremost among the subjects about which questions were put before Ramana Maharshi. His answers point, as usual, to the way already mentioned... how to make it most effective.
The purpose of meditation is known: Quieting the restlessness of the mind, also the method, fixing the attention on one thought only, until finally this thought also vanishes. Ramana Maharshi’s interpretation of meditation is different:
“Meditation is your true state...now. You call it meditation, because there are other thoughts distracting you. When these thoughts are dispelled, you remain alone, i.e., in the state of meditation free from thoughts; and that is your real nature which you are now attempting to gain by keeping away other thoughts. Such keeping away of other thoughts is now called meditation. When the practice becomes firm, the real nature shows itself as the true meditation.” (Talks, 310).
Somebody utters doubt: ‘Meditation is with mind. How can it kill the mind in order to reveal the Self?’
D.: What is the best way of living?
