medicine for the mind

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Just don’t seek from others or you’ll be far estranged from Self.

I now go on alone; everywhere I meet It: It is now me; I now am not It.

Don’t try to figure anything out.

beauty devoid of thought

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For those who live in Self as the beauty devoid of thought there is nothing that should be thought of. 

That which should be adhered to is only the experience of Silence because in that supreme state nothing exists to be attained other than oneself.

The Self is Silence.

Ramana

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change of perspective

the eternal, pristine Being

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Q: I believe that we should not inflict suffering on other lives. Should we then endure the mosquito bite and submit to it also?
Ramana: You do not like to suffer yourself. How can you inflict suffering on others? Just keep off mosquitoes since you suffer by their stings.

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Q: Is it right that we kill other lives, e.g., mosquitoes, bugs?
Ramana: Everyone is a suicide. The eternal, blissful, and natural state has been smothered by this life of ignorance. In this way the present life is due to the killing of the eternal, pristine Being. Is it not a case of suicide? So then, everyone is a suicide. Why worry about murders and killing?

source PDF p. 67

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inside and outside

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Ramana – Talk 42

Mr. Duncan Greenlees, Madanapalli, wrote as follows: One has at times had vivid flashes of a consciousness whose centre is outside the normal self and which seems to be inclusive. Without concerning the mind with philosophical concepts, how would Bhagavan advise us to work towards getting, retaining and extending those flashes? Does abhyasa in such experiences involve retirement?

a vision of God

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Ramana – Talk 30

Mr. N. Natesa Iyer, the leader of the Bar in a South Indian town, an orthodox Brahmin, asked: “Are the gods Iswara or Vishnu and their sacred regions Kailasa or Vaikuntha real?
Ramana: As real as you are in this body.
D: Do they possess a vyavahara satya, i.e., phenomenal existence, like my body? Or are they fictions like the horn of a hare?
R: They do exist.
D: If so, they must be somewhere. Where are they?
R: Persons who have seen them say that they exist somewhere. So we must accept their statement.
D: Where do they exist?
R: In you.
D: Then it is only idea – that which I can create and control?
R: Everything is like that.
D: But I can create pure fictions e.g., hare’s horn or only part truths, e.g. mirage, while there are also facts irrespective of my imagination. Do the gods Iswara or Vishnu exist like that?
R: Yes.
D: Is He subject to pralaya (cosmic dissolution)?
R: Why? Man becoming aware of the Self transcends cosmic dissolution (pralaya) and becomes liberated (mukta). Why not God (Iswara) who is infinitely wiser and abler?

source p. 45

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D: Is it not possible to get a vision of God?
R: Yes. You see this and that. Why not see God? Only you must know what God is. All are seeing God always. But they do not know it. You find out what God is. People see, yet see not, because they know not God.

source p. 49

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A Selection of True Awakening Experiences Part III

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This article is in response to Barbara Franken’s challenge: link

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I am asked to relate my awakening experience. This article is about the time that I first became aware of all that we take to be ‘the world’ is not what we think it is. It was in 1966 and I was a 16-year-old who had hitch-hiked to Istanbul from Trieste, Italy where I lived at that time.

perfect peace is Bliss

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Ramana:

Talk 28.

Q: What is the interrelation between regulation of thought and regulation of breath?

Ramana: Thought (intellectual) and respiration, circulation, etc. (vegetative) activities are both different aspects of the same – the individual life. Both depend upon (or metaphorically ‘reside’ or ‘inhere’ in) life. Personality and other ideas spring from it like the vital activity.

what is mind?

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Talks with Ramana:

Talk 25

Q: What is this mind?

R: Mind is one form of manifestation of life. A block of wood or a subtle machine is not called mind. The vital force manifests as life-activity and also as the conscious phenomena known as the mind.

Q: What is the relation between mind and object? Is the mind contacting something different from it, viz., the world?

R: The world is ‘sensed’ in the waking and the dream states or is the object of perception and thought, both being mental activities. If there were no such activities as waking and dreaming thought, there would be no ‘perception’ or inference of a ‘world’. In sleep there is no such activity and ‘objects and world’ do not exist for us in sleep.

ecstasy and calm

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Q: So one should not try to perpetuate blissful or ecstatic states?

Ramana: The final obstacle in meditation is ecstasy; you feel great bliss and happiness and want to stay in that ecstasy. Do not yield to it but pass on to the next stage which is great calm. The calm is higher than ecstasy and it merges into samadhi. Successful samadhi causes a waking sleep state to supervene. In that state you know that you are always consciousness, for consciousness is your nature. Actually, one is always in samadhi but one does not know it. To know it all one has to do is to remove the obstacles.

a worthy occupation

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Ramana:

175. The only worthy occupation is to thoroughly absorb the ego by turning Selfward and, without allowing it to rise, to thus abide quietly, like a waveless ocean, in Self-Knowledge, having annihilated the delusive mind-ghost, which had been wandering about unobstructed.

176. The truly powerful tapas is that state in which, having lost the sense of doership, and knowing well that all is His Will, one is relieved from the delusion of the foolish ego. Thus should you know.
(The last sentence may also mean, ‘Therefore, acquire such tapas’.)

source: Ramana, Guru Vachaka Kovai PDF p. 75

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My Comment:

I notice that here it is said “…thoroughly absorb the ego by turning Selfward…” This sense of absorbing the ego changes the idea of having to annihilate, or suppress, or fight the ego. The ego structure as a behavior pattern of the limited self, is of course part of who and what I am and so to attempt to divorce myself or separate myself from ego is illusory. When awareness is no longer obstructed by ignorance then ego is naturally absorbed into the greater Self. 

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