Ramana Maharishi ↘↖
The ego is a very powerful elephant which cannot be brought under control by any creature less powerful than a lion, which, in this instance, is none other than the Guru, whose very looks make the elephant-like ego tremble and die. You will know in due course that your glory lies where you cease to exist.
The Life and Message of Sri Ramana Maharishi
As a young man of 17, in South India, Sri Ramana Maharshi suddenly had an overwhelming sense of imminent death. So sure was he that he was about to die that he simply lay down and relaxed into the inevitable. Holding still as a corpse and holding his breath, as though already dead, he inquired into ‘who’ it was that died. What he realized was that the ‘I’, the awareness itself didn’t die. This was not just an insight, but a deep and permanent awakening to his eternal self. A few weeks later he traveled to Arunachala Hill, an ancient sacred site in Tamil Nadu in Southern India, where he spent the next 50 years teaching others of this self, and giving the silent transmission of awakened consciousness until his death in 1950.
‘Who am I?’ I am not this physical body, nor am I the five organs of sense perception; I am not the five organs of external activity, nor am I the five vital forces, nor am I even the thinking mind. Neither am I that unconscious state of nescience which retains merely the subtle vasanas (latencies of the mind), while being free from the functional activity of the sense-organs and of the mind, and being unaware of the existence of the objects of sense-perception.
Therefore, summarily rejecting all the above-mentioned physical adjuncts and their functions, saying ‘I am not this; no, nor am I this, nor this’ - that which then remains separate and alone by itself, that pure Awareness is what I am. This Awareness is by its very nature Sat-Chit-Ananda (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss).
- Sri Ramanasramam - Bhagwan’s Ashram in Tiruvannamalai, India
- Teachings of Bhagwan Sri Ramana Maharshi
- Nan Yar - Teachings on Who Am I?
- Vicharasangraham - Teachings on Self Enquiry
- Ulladu Narpadu - The Forty Verses On Reality
- Web Directory - Other websites on Sri Ramana Maharishi
“Jnana is given neither from outside nor from another person. It can be realised by each and everyone in his own Heart. The jnana Guru of everyone is only the Supreme Self that is always revealing its own truth in every Heart through the being-conciousness ‘I am, I am.’ The granting of true knowledge by him is initiation into jnana. The grace of the Guru is only that Self-awareness that is one’s own true nature. It is the inner conciousness by which he is unceasingly revealing his existence. This divine upadesa is always going on naturally in everyone.”
Much of Sri Ramana Maharishi teachings have deep similarities with The Bhagavad Gita message.
