Books available by the same author:
Guru Ramana, Srimad Bhagavata, Forty Verses and
Advaitic Sadhana
Sri Ramanasramam
Tiruvannamalai
2006
© Sri Ramanasramam
Tiruvannamalai
First Edition 1959
Second Edition 1971
Third Edition 1979
Fourth Edition 1990
Fifth Edition 2006 -- 1000 copies
CC No. 1038
ISBN: 81-88018-38-4
Price: Rs.
Published by
V.S. Ramanan
President
Sri Ramanasramam
Tiruvannamalai 606 603
Tamil Nadu
INDIA
Email: ashram@ramana-maharshi.org
Website: www.ramana-maharshi.org
Typeset at
Sri Ramanasramam
Printed by
Gnanodaya Press
Chennai 600 034
To write a commentary on Sri Ramana Bhagavan's
words, which are deemed to be lucidity itself, may seem to
be a superfluous labour; yet there are thousands of studious
seekers who have not had the privilege of hearing the teach-
ing direct from the Master's lips, who would feel benefited
and, indeed, happy to receive an exposition of it from those
who have. For the sake of these I have culled from the com-
pendious work, now the well-reputed Talks with Sri Ramana
Maharshi, such gems and in such numbers as in my humble
opinion can fairly and comprehensively represent the
teaching, adding my own reflections, as "Notes", to each
quotation which I have named "Text", to indicate its origin.
I have, moreover, sifted and classified them in separate
chapters so as to facilitate the study of each individual subject.
I deem it essential to give here a brief biography of the
book in question. It is named "Talks" from being a record
in the form of a diary of some of the conversations which
the visitors and disciples have had with the Master on
Spiritual matters for almost exactly four years -- April 1935
to May 1939. In those years it used to be called "The
Journal". For roughly half of this period it was written in
the Darshan Hall itself by the diarist, or recorder, Sri M.
Venkataramiah, the late Swami Ramananda Saraswati, at the
end of each particular conversation at which he was present.
Sri Bhagavan scarcely ever answered in English, but invari-
ably in Tamil, which very often the diarist himself translated
into English to the questioner within the hearing of the
whole audience. But questions in Telugu and Malayalam,
Bhagavan answered in the same languages, and the answers
in the latter language may be said to have been lost to the
diarist, who did not understand Malayalam.
Therefore the language of this diary is of the recorder,
more often it is a paraphrase of the Master's answers, occa-
sionally His very words, rendered into English, for it was
impossible to write down afterwards all He had said, or to
keep pace with Him even if the answers were to be taken
down verbatim on the spot. What we want is the Truth as
expounded by Bhagavan, and this Truth is all here, which
is all that matters.
As for the teaching of Sri Bhagavan, it has by now ac-
quired a worldwide recognition, and has attracted earnest
seekers from all the five Continents, as much for its fresh
simplicity as for its sturdy rationality, which appeal both to
the head and the heart. It can, however, be summed up in
the ancient dictum "Know thyself ", or "Seek the seeker",
which the Master dins in one form or another in practically
every answer he gives. Find out the questioner, he insists,
and you will know the truth, which will solve all your
problems and remove all your doubts.
Peace, by whatever name and in whatever guise it goes
-- happiness, knowledge, liberation, truth, etc. -- is the
conscious and unconscious aim and object of all human
endeavour; for, the Master tells us, it is the very nature of
our being, our very Self, so that self-seeking in the last
analysis turns out to be a quest for Peace, from which there
is no escape. There is no feeling, no thought, no action
which does not stand on the foundation of Self. Self-
preservation, or self-love is the dominant instinct in all life.
When the Lord God commanded the Children of Israel
in the wilderness to love their neighbour as themselves
(Leviticus, XIX, 18), He meant that the maximum good
that one man can do to another is to love him as much as
he loves himself, self-love being the strongest of all passions,
and the substratum of all emotions. We have no doubt heard
of the self-immolation of many a mother for her child in
cases of extreme danger, and of a patriot for his country,
but the gratification derived from this immolation is to the
Self. My child, my country, clearly denote the `I', or Self,
and what is immolated is only the body, and not the Self,
which, being pure knowledge, pure spirit, can never be
destroyed to be immolated.
We, therefore, seek the Self in everything, in every
circumstance, and at every moment. It is self-love or self-
seeking that induces us to desire, to work, to learn, to
compete, to exert, to become politicians, administrators,
scientists, black marketeers, gamblers, philanthropists,
patriots, and finally yogis. It is self-love that makes us scour
the skies, dig the earth and plumb the oceans. But alas, this
self-seeking, being unintelligent, is sought outside the Self
and thus succeeds only precariously, if at all. To seek the
Self we have to go to the Self, not to the not-Self.
When people, therefore, group round the Master with
bundles of problems, bundles of questions and grievances,
he knows that they are seeking only the Self, and to the Self
he turns them. "You are asking all these questions in the
interest of your own self," he virtually tells them, "all your
efforts have so far been directed for the good of this self of
yours; now try to find out whether this good has been a
genuine good, and this self is your true Self. You have been
seeking this good in the wrong direction, in wrong things
and wrong places, because you have been mistaken about
your own identity. What you have been taking for yourself
is not yourself at all. Your instinct of self-love has got mixed
up with your sense-perceptions and brought you down to
this strait. You fell victim to a hoax, from which to be saved
you have taken the trouble to come to this Ashram with your
load of worries and misery for luggage.
"Now what you should do is to learn what the Self is,
and then directly seek it. Do not digress in irrelevant matters,
in bodies, koshas, involution and evolution, birth and death,
in supersensuous sights and sounds, etc., for all these are
glamorous irrelevancies which trap and seduce you away
from the reality of yourself and retain you in the delusion of
the senses from which you are now attempting to escape.
What is of importance is not what you perceive, think or
do, but WHAT YOU ARE." Sense-perceptions, conceptions,
sensations, actions, are mere dreams, mere pictures in the
consciousness that perceives them. They rise from it, like
dreams from the dreamer, distract its attention for a while
and disappear in it. They change incessantly, have a begin-
ning and an end, but he, the thinker and knower, being pure
intelligence, remains ever. The knower is thus indestructible.
The light of knowledge comes only from him, the subject,
never from the object, the body. What we therefore call our
Self is not the body, which is born, grows and dies, which is
made of innumerable non-homogeneous parts which do not
think, do not seek, do not perceive and do not understand.
We are the intelligent indivisible unit `I' -- life itself -- which
pervades and uses the body, which sees but cannot be seen,
hears but cannot be heard, smells but cannot be smelled,
knows but cannot be known: for it is always a subject, never
an object. And because we cannot see, hear or smell our `I',
we mistake it for the body which can be seen, heard and
smelled. Thus the self-instinct, the `I'-sense, getting mixed
up with the sense perceptions, loses itself in the world of
sense-percepts, from which none can save it but the Supreme
Guide, the divine Guru.
Thus the knower, or dreamer, is alone real; the known
is sheer dream. This sums up the teachings of the Srutis,
and conforms to the experience of Sri Ramana Bhagavan.
To follow up the Quest till the Self is realised, is the
path of Jnana, of Supreme Knowledge, of Liberation and
Bliss everlasting -- a path which has been viewed by the
Master from every side and discussed in every detail. He
has said everything that needs be said and revealed everything
that needs be revealed. And whatever he has not said and
revealed is scarcely worth knowing.
This is, therefore, the spiritual Kamadhenu,1 which
can satisfy the hunger of all Truth-seekers. The sadhaka, or
yogi, who puts the teaching to the test will find in it ample
material to guide him in his inner quest. What helps one
sadhaka in his forward march may not help another; but
every sadhaka will find in it the hints which will help him
most to work out for himself the method of practice which
suits him best and which is likely to lead him straight to the
Goal. He who looks in it for long, detailed lectures on the
rules of meditation and samadhi, as he is accustomed to do
on the laws of physics and mathematics, will look in vain;
for we do not deal here with sensuous problems and equa-
tions which can be verified and resolved in the common
world of liquids and solids, of durations and dimensions,
but with the obstacles of the seeking mind itself to perceive
its own native state -- obstacles which none can remove but
the very same mind through self-investigation and self-
control, without the help of any sensuous medium or scien-
tific instrument.