Behind My Hand

“It is false to speak of Realisation. What is there to realise? The real is as it is, ever. How to real-ise it? All that is required is this. We have real-ised the unreal, i.e., regarded as real what is unreal. We have to give up this attitude. That is all that is required for us to attain jnana. We are not creating anything new or achieving something which we did not have before. —- Ramana Maharshi, Day by Day, 9-11-46

When I entered the hall Bhagavan was already answering a question which, I gathered, was to the effect “Is the theory of evolution true?” and Bhagavan said, “The trouble with all of us is that we want to know the past, what we were, and also what we will be in the future. We know nothing about the past or the future. We do know the present and that we exist now. Both yesterday and tomorrow are only with reference to today.Yesterday was called ‘today’ in its time, and tomorrow will be called ‘today’ by us tomorrow. Today is ever present. What is ever present is pure existence. It has no past or future. Why not try and find out the real nature of the present and ever-present existence?” Another visitor asked, “The present is said to be due to past karma. Can we transcend the past karma by our free will now?” Bhagavan: See what the present is, as I told you. Then you will understand what is affected by or has a past or a future and also what is ever-present and always free, unaffecte...

The atma is as it is. It is sakshat always. There are not two atmas, one to know and one to be known. To know it is to be it. It is not a state where one is conscious of anything else. It is consciousness itself. —- Ramana Maharshi, Day by Day, 28.12.45, afternoon  ————- The Atman does not love, it is love itself. It does not exist, it is existence itself. The Atman does not know; it is knowledge itself. —- Christopher Isherwood, Swami Prabhavananda, How to Know God, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, number 17 (commentary)

Question: When I think ‘Who am I?’, the answer comes ‘I am not this mortal body but I am chaitanya, atma, or paramatma.’ And suddenly another question arises — ‘Why has atma come into maya?’ or in other words ‘Why has God created this world?’ Answer: To enquire ‘Who am I?’ really means trying to find out the source of the ego or the ‘I’ thought. You are not to think of other thoughts, such as ‘I am not this body, etc.’ Seeking the source of ‘I’ serves as a means of getting rid of all other thoughts. We should not give scope to other thoughts, such as you mention, but must keep the attention fixed on finding out the source of the ‘I’ thought, by asking (as each thought arises) to whom the thought arises and if the answer is ‘I get the thought’ by asking further who is this ‘I’ and whence its source? —- Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi, Day by Day, 28.12.45, afternoon

Talking of the innumerable ways of different seekers after God, Bhagavan said, “Each should be allowed to go his own way, the way for which alone he may be built. It will not do to convert him to another path by violence. The Guru will go with the disciple in his own path and then gradually turn him into the supreme path at the ripe moment. Suppose a car is going at top speed. To stop it at once or to turn it at once would be attended by disastrous consequences. —- Day by Day with Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi 22.11.45

The visitor also asked, “When a man realises the Self, what will he see?” Bhagavan replied, “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 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 realising, i.e., 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, or in other words, ‘Be the Self’. At one stage one would laugh at oneself that one tried to discover the Self which is so self-evident. So, what can we say to this question? “That stage transcends the seer and the seen. There is no seer there to see anything. The seer who is seeing all this now ceases to exist and the Self alone remains. —- Ramana Maharshi, Day by Day, 19.11.46

I ask you to see where the ‘I’ arises in your body, but it is really not quite correct to say that the ‘I’ rises from and merges in the heart in the right side of the chest. The heart is another name for the Reality and it is neither inside nor outside the body; there can be no in or out for it, since it alone is. I do not mean by ‘heart’ any physiological organ or any plexus of nerves or anything like that, but so long as one identifies oneself with the body and thinks he is in the body he is advised to see where in the body the ‘I’-thought rises and merges again. It must be the heart at the right side of the chest since every man, of whatever race and religion and in whatever language he may be saying ‘I’, points to the right side of the chest to indicate himself. This is so all over the world, so that must be the place. And by keenly watching the daily emergence of the ‘I’-thought on waking and its subsiding in sleep, one can see that it is in the heart on the right side. Ramana ...

There is no difference between dream and the waking state except that the dream is short and the waking long. Both are the result of the mind. Because the waking state is long, we imagine that it is our real state. But, as a matter of fact, our real state is what is sometimes called turiya or the fourth state which is always as it is and knows nothing of the three avasthas, viz., waking, dream or sleep. Because we call these three avasthas we call the fourth state also turiya avastha. But it is not an avastha, but the real and natural state of the Self. When this is realised, we know it is not a turiya or fourth state, for a fourth state is only relative, but turiyatita, the transcendent state called the fourth state. ( Ramana Maharshi, Day by Day, 5. 1. 46 )

Joshi : I am a beginner. How should I start? Bhagavan : Where are you now? Where is the goal? What is the distance to be covered? The Self is not somewhere far away to be reached. You are always that. You have only to give up your habit, a long-standing one, of identifying yourself with the non-self. All effort is only for that. By turning the mind outwards, you have been seeing the world, the non-Self. If you turn it inwards you will see the Self. (Ramana Maharshi in Day by Day, 5. 1. 46)

From N.N.Rajan's diary,   After a brief discussion between Major Chadwick and Bhagavan on the necessity of periodic action to ensure that the body remains healthy, there was a ten-minute silence. Then a devotee asked, "It is stated that one should dive into oneself with a keen one-pointed mind controlling speech and breath. Is it necessary to control the breath also?" Bhagavan replied, "If all thoughts are controlled, automatically the breath is also controlled. By intense and sustained practice it will become habitual. Controlling the breath through various yogic exercises is like putting brakes to the train when the entire engine is working. But by watching the source of the mind with full concentration, the thoughts would get controlled. This method will be more effective and easy. It is like shutting the power of the engine and thereby stopping the train completely."