Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950) The Sage of Arunachala

“I am Awareness pure and simple; I am indeterminable, neither grasped nor lost but indescribable. I am therefore Brahman and ever blissful.”

“The universe has no external support, nor is it cognized from without; but as you make it so it becomes.”

“The mind seeks attachment and this causes it to wander. Destroy its attachments so as to turn inward and stabilize it there. Do not disturb it when there.”

“Just as space is unaffected by contact with the elements, similarly one’s Primal State is unaffected by contact with objects. Meditate on that.”

“One who asks himself ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Where am I?’, though existing all the while as the Self, is like a drunken man who enquires about his own identity and whereabouts.”

“The One Self, the Sole Reality, alone exists eternally. When even the Ancient Teacher, Dakshinamurti, revealed It through speechless eloquence, who else could convey it by speech?.”
Sayings from The Collected works of R. Maharshi, edited by Arthur Osborne

“If you practice self-enquiry you will reach the heart which is the self.”

“What is the mind? If one searches to find out, then there would be no separate entity as the mind.”

“There is no entity by name of mind. Because of emergence of thoughts, we surmise something from which they start. That we term ‘mind’.”

“Look for it and ego vanishes and Self alone remains.”

“In the enquiry ‘Who am I?’, the ‘I’ is the ego.”

“Your duty is to be and not to be this or that. The method is summed up in the words ‘Be still’. What does stillness mean? It means giving up the notion that ‘I am so and so’.”

“Meditation is possible only if the ego is kept up. There is the ego and the object meditated upon. The method is therefore indirect because the Self is one. Seeking the ego, that is, its source, the ego disappears and what is left is the Self. This method is the direct one.”

“It is the ego that is the cause of all the world and if the ego is dissolved by enquiry everything crumbles and reality of the Self alone remains.”

“Self-enquiry itself is the mantra, japa, yoga and tapas”

“The mind is commonly said to be strong if it can think furiously. But really the mind is strong if it is free from thoughts.”

“The mind turned inward is the Self; turned outward it becomes the ego and all the world. The mind does not exist apart from the Self, i.e., it has no independent existence. The Self exists without the mind, never the mind without the Self”

“Are you distinct from your thoughts? Do you exist without them? But can thoughts exist without you?”

“The truth of oneself alone is worthy of being scrutinized and known. Taking it as the target of one’s attention, one should keenly know it in the heart. The knowledge of oneself will be revealed only to the consciousness which is silent, clear and free from activity of the agitated and suffering mind. Know that consciousness which always shines in the heart as the formless Self, ‘I’. It is known by one’s being still without thinking about anything as existent or non-existent.”

“The heart is to the body what the sun is to the world” From The Sayings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, Compiled and classified by A.R. Natarajan