Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi (Arkana S.)

by Ramana Maharshi

Sri Ramana maintained that the universe is sustained by the power of the Self. Since theists normally attribute this power to God he often used the word God as a synonym for the Self. He also used the words Brahman, the

Sri Ramana's God is not a personal God, he is the formless being which sustains the universe. He is not the creator of the universe, the universe is merely a manifestation of his inherent power; he is inseparable from it, but he is not affected by its appearance or its disappearance.

The experience of the Self is sometimes called jnana or knowledge. This term should not be taken to mean

swarupa, meaning real form or real nature. He also used the word ‘silence’ to indicate that the Self was a silent thought-free state of undisturbed peace and total stillness.

It underlies unrealities, itself being real. Reality is that which is. It is as it is. It transcends speech. It is beyond the expressions

You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that is of the not-Self.

They desire to see it as a blazing light etc. How can it be so? It is not light, not darkness. It is only as it is. It cannot be defined. The best definition is ‘I am that I am’.

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.

The state we call realisation is simply being oneself, not knowing anything or becoming anything.

The world does not exist without the body, the body never exists without the mind, the mind never exists without consciousness and consciousness never exists without the reality.

we wish for liberation shows that freedom from all bondage is our real nature.

is like a cinema. The screen is always there but several types of pictures appear on the screen and then disappear. Nothing sticks to the screen, it remains a screen.

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.19

Q: What is the difference between the mind and the Self?

Self alone exists and that it can be directly and consciously experienced merely by ceasing to pay attention to the wrong ideas we have about ourselves.

As soon as one ceases to imagine that one is an individual person, inhabiting a particular body, the whole superstructure of wrong ideas collapses and is replaced by a conscious and permanent awareness of the real Self.

At this level of the teaching there is no question of effort or practice. All that is required is an understanding that the Self is not a goal to be attained, it is merely the awareness that prevails when all the limiting ideas about the not-Self have been discarded.

Stillness or peace is realisation. There is no moment when the Self is not.

The fact is, you are ignorant of your blissful state. Ignorance supervenes and draws a veil over the pure Self which is bliss. Attempts are directed only to remove this veil of ignorance which is merely wrong knowledge. The wrong knowledge is the false identification of the Self with the body and the mind. This false identification must go, and then the Self alone remains.

But the fact is that there is no bondage but only liberation. Why call it by a name and seek it?

‘I am the body’ is the cause of all the mischief. This wrong knowledge must go.

There is the continuity of being in all the three states, but no continuity of the individual and the objects. Q: Yes.

Truly there is no cause for you to be miserable and unhappy. You yourself impose limitations on your true nature of infinite being, and then weep that you are but a finite creature. Then you take up this or that spiritual practice to transcend the non-existent limitations. But if your spiritual practice itself assumes the existence of the limitations, how can it help you to transcend them?

You are always that Self and nothing but that Self. Therefore, you can never be really ignorant of the Self.

Then you will know that there is no mind. When the Self is sought, the mind is nowhere.

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