One man’s “magic”
is another man’s engineering.
~ ROBERT HEINLEIN
"Questioned as to what changes he underwent after coming to Arunachala, Sri Bhagavan Maharshi replied, “I am ever the same. There is neither sankalpa (will) nor change in me. Till I reached the Mango Grove I remained indifferent, with my eyes shut. Afterwards I opened my eyes and began functioning actively. Otherwise there is no change whatsoever in me”.
“But Bhagavan,” said one, “we do note many outward changes in you”.
“Yes,” replied Bhagavan, “that is because you see me as this body. So long as you identify yourself with your body you cannot but see me as an embodied being."
~ The Mountain Path, January 1966.
"In the beginning one has to be told that he is not the body because he thinks that he is the body only, whereas he is the body and all else. The body is only a part. Let him know it finally. He must first discern consciousness from insentience and be the consciousness only. Later let him realize that insentience is not apart from consciousness. This is discrimination (viveka). The initial discrimination must persist to the end. Its fruit is liberation."
~ Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi 192
"Even the most ignorant man understands the implication of the expression 'my body'. It is not easy, however, to resolve the mistaken identity of the 'I' with egoity (ahankara). That is because the inquiring mind is the ego, and in order to remove the wrong identification it has to pass a sentence of death, as it were, on itself. This is by no means a simple thing. The offering of the ego in the fire of wisdom is the greatest form of sacrifice.
The discrimination of the Self from the ego, we said, is not easy. But it is possible. All of us can have this discrimination if we ponder over the implication of our sleep-experience. In sleep 'we are', though the ego has made its exit. The ego does not function there. Still there is the 'I' that witnesses the absence of the ego as well as of the objects. If the 'I' were not there, one would not recall on waking from one's sleep-experience, and say; "I slept happily. I did not know anything". We have, then, two 'I's' — the 'pseudo-I' which is the ego and the true 'I' which is the Self. The identification of the 'I' with the ego is so strong that we seldom see the ego without its mask. Moreover, all our relative experience turns on the pivot of the ego. With the rise of the ego on waking from sleep, the entire world rises with it. The ego, therefore, looks so important and unassailable.
But this is really a fortress made of cards. Once the process of inquiry starts, it will be found to crumble and dissolve. For undertaking this inquiry, one must possess a sharp mind — much sharper than the one required for unravelling the mysteries of matter. It is with the one-pointed intellect that the truth is to be seen (drsyate tu agraya buddhya. It is true that even the intellect will have to get resolved before the final wisdom dawns. But up to that point it has to inquire — and inquire relentlessly. Wisdom, surely, is not for the indolent!
The inquiry 'Who am I?' is not to be regarded as a mental effort to understand the mind's nature. Its main purpose is 'to focus the entire mind at its source'. The source of the 'pseudo-I' is the Self. What one does in Self-inquiry is to run against the mental current instead of running along with it, and finally transcend the sphere of mental modifications. When the 'pseudo-I' is tracked down to its source, it vanishes. Then the Self shines in all its splendour — which shining is called realization and release.
The cessation or non-cessation of the body has nothing to do with release. The body may continue to exist and the world may continue to appear, as in the case of the Maharshi. That makes no difference at all to the Self that has been realized. In truth, there is neither the body nor the world for him; there is only the Self, the eternal Existence (sat), the Intelligence (cit), the unsurpassable bliss (ananda). Such an experience is not entirely foreign to us. We have it in sleep, where we are conscious neither of the external world of things nor of the inner world of dreams. But that experience lies under the cover of ignorance. So it is that we come back to the phantasies of dream and of the world of waking. Non-return to duality is possible only when nescience has been removed. To make this possible is the aim of Vedanta. To inspire even the lowliest of us with hope and help us out of the Slough of Despond, is the supreme significance of such illustrious exemplars as the Maharshi."
~ Excerpt from The Life of Sri Ramana Maharshi
"Ramana Maharshi's gift to the world was not that he realized the Self. Many people have had a deep realization of the Self. Ramana's real gift was that he embodied that realization so thoroughly. It is one thing to realize the Self; it is something else altogether to embody that realization to the extent that there is no gap between inner revelation and its outer expression. Many have glimpsed the realization of Oneness; few consistently express that realization through their humanness. It is one thing to touch a flame and know it is hot, but quite another to jump into that flame and be consumed by it."
~ Adyashanti, Inner Directions Journal, Fall/Winter 1999
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