Letters from Sri Ramanasramam, by Suri Nagamma

The young man was confused. “What is the meaning
of this?” he exclaimed. “Being an elderly person, I thought
he would tell me of some holy place where I could stay,
but instead of that he tells me to stay where I am. I am
now near this couch. Does that mean that I should stay
here near the couch? Was it to receive such a reply that I
approached him? Is this a matter for jokes?”
One of the devotees took him out of the hall and
explained, “Even when Bhagavan says something in a lighter
vein there is always some deep meaning in it. Where the feeling
‘I’ arises is one’s Self. Tapas means knowing where the Self is
and abiding in it. For knowing that, one has to know who one
is; and when one realises one’s Self what does it matter where
one stays? This is what he meant.” He thus pacified the young
man and sent him away.

Similarly, someone asked yesterday, “Swami, how can
we find the Self (Atma)?”
“You are in the Self; so how can there be any difficulty
in finding it?” Bhagavan replied.

“You say that I am in the Self, but where exactly is that
Self?” the questioner persisted.

“If you abide in the heart and search patiently you will
find it,” was the reply.

The questioner still seemed unsatisfied, and made the
rather curious observation that there was no room in his
heart for him to stay in it.

Bhagavan turned to one of the devotees sitting there
and said smiling, “Look how he worries about where the Self
is! What can I tell him? What Is, is the Self. It is all-pervading.

When I tell him that it is called ‘Heart’ he says there is no
room in it for him to stay. What can I do? To say that there is
no room in the heart after filling it with unnecessary vasanas
*
is like grumbling that there is no room to sit down in a house
as big as Sri Lanka. If all the junk is thrown out, won’t there
be room? The body itself is junk. These people are like a man
who fills all the rooms of his house chokeful with unnecessary
junk and then complains that there is no room for keeping
his body in it. In the same way they fill the mind with all sorts
of impressions and then say there is no room for the Self in it.

If all the false ideas and impressions are swept away and thrown
out what remains is a feeling of plenty and that is the Self
itself. Then there will be no such thing as a separate ‘I’; it will
be a state of egolessness. Where then is the question of a room
or an occupant of the room? Instead of seeking the Self people
say, ‘no room! no room!’, just like shutting your eyes and saying
there is ‘no sun! no sun!’. What can one do under such
circumstances?”