Lakshmana Sarma


Lakshmana Sarma who came to Sri Ramana in the late 1920s, spent most of his life translating the Maharshi's teachings into Sanskrit. Sri Ramana closely supervised his Sanskrit translation of Ulladu Narpadu. Other than Muruganar, he was only person to have received private lessions by Sri Ramana on the intent and meanings of his works. His Sanskrit treatise Sri Ramana Paravidyopanishad (1950), contains teaching of the Maharshi, a few of which are:

The man who has not experienced his own real Self, thinking 'I amd this body' sees himself as 'I', the first person of grammer. He sees another person whom he calls 'you', and refers to a third person as 'he''. These three distinct persons are not real. They are seen on account of the false notion, 'I am the body'. When the ego-soul is lost as a result of quest of the real Selt, only the Self, consiciousness alone, will shine.

Just as one who has become wise to the truth of the mirage may again see the mirage without being deluded, so too the sage, seeing this world, does not think of it as real, as does the ignorant one.

When, forgetting the Self, one thinks that the body is oneself and goes through innumerable births and in the end remembers and becomes the Self, knows that this is only like awakening from a dream wherein one has wandered all over the world.

If during the quest of one's Self, the mind turns outwards on account of its attachment to objects of perception, the seeker should turn it inwards again. He should bring the mind back again and again and re-engage it in the quest. There must be a resolve to become aware of the truth of oneself by means of the question, "Who is he that has this attachment to objects of perception?" The answer to this question is not an intellectual conclusion. The correct answer to it is only the experience of the real Self.

The quest of the source of the soul is name as 'The Great Yoga'. It is the yoga of action, the yoga of devotion, the yoga of restraining the mind and also the yoga of right awareness. By the practice of meditation mental strength will be intensified. Therefore, meditation is an aid to the quest. After first achieving stillness of the mind by meditation, the valiant aspirant must seek truth of his own self.

Just as a woman, suffering intelorably in her father-in-law's house, obtains peace in her mother's house, so the mind, harried by samsaric (wordly) sufferings, wins peace by returning to the source: the Real Self.

To create empty space in a room one only has to remove the encumbering, unwanted lumber. In the same way, to realise the Self nothing more is needed than the removal of false knowledge that 'I am the body'.

For him that is established in the supreme state, desires do not arise, because the desirer, the ego, has ceased to exist. The sage in that state is ever contented.

In the end the writer says: To that supreme one, the Self of all creatures, who became our Guru, Sri Ramana - let there be thousands of namaskarams until the extinction of the ego is secured.